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Many of us have been in situations where we lose ourselves and struggle to find who we were again. The loss of our own selves due to traumatic interactions is so devastating that we spend much of our time searching for who we were everywhere we go. What we fail to understand is that we are no longer who we used to be.

Circumstances or relationships that were emotionally damaging left us with no choice but to change in every way. It is truly so exhausting knowing that so much sadness and fear live within us when emotional healing is needed, that we change without even realizing it.

There are layers of trauma that we don’t exactly consider as life altering until we sit down and it comes crashing down on us like waves in an ocean. We may have thought that where we were or currently are emotionally is safe and we convince ourselves to believe that we truly are, when in fact, we desperately need healing like never before.

We never think that we need this as badly as we do. We make excuses to not acknowledge our own pain. We let our pain eat at us and don’t realize that it is holding us down from moving on in our lives.

Here are 12 signs that you may be experiencing if you are in need of healing emotional wounds that were left unattended:

Lack of Confidence
Your confidence has dipped lower than your standards at this point. You look to others for approval, when you are the one disapproving of yourself. You feel incompetent in everything you do. You dress up and look good, yet you still compare yourself to others to the point that you make yourself feel bad about how you look and who you are. Lack of confidence only robs you of living your life, reaching your goals, and being proud of who you are.

Feeling Unworthy
People are left feeling unworthy when they are not able to connect to others, especially to someone whom they love and care deeply for. Sometimes in relationships you lose that connection and in losing that you begin to feel like you aren’t worthy of their love or any love for that matter. Even getting a compliment could feel meaningless to you. Accept the compliments and know that you are worthy of love, admiration, respect, and so much more. Never undervalue yourself.

Long for happiness
People who need emotional healing often wonder when their time of happiness is going to come. Happiness comes when they decide to make it happen for themselves. People often rely on their relationships and friendships for happiness. Happiness is something that already lives within and it is up to you to make it come to light or to dim that light. However, being in the wrong relationship could make you lose focus of that and even make you feel like you never even had that choice to begin with.

Self Conscious
It’s okay to be a little self conscious about yourself, even the most successful and most attractive people are. You may be self conscious about your body because you’re still holding on to some baby fat even though your baby is 6 years old. And??? Those curves look good, admire them and work it. Trying to change how you look and how you act is not the way to own your insecurities. That has to be accepted inside of you. Love who you are and you will attract those who will love you.

Doubting yourself
You begin doubting everything you do, from what you wear to what you say. You lose yourself so much that you don’t even know how to think clearly enough to stop making yourself feel like you are crazy. Start trusting yourself again and believe in you.

You overthink
Your mind goes from 0 to 100 in an instant leaving you drowning in thoughts, even some pretty toxic ones. Overthinking is a clear sign that you have been through trauma before. So, now you think of all the things that could go wrong so that you can try to stop it from happening. You can’t live a great life when you overthink everything. There is no peace in that. Let things be what they are going to be and move on.

You have trust issues
You have been lied to so much that even if someone was telling the truth you’d still think you see the lie in their story. Truth comes so rare these days anyway, but that does not mean you can discredit everyone from the get go. Healing is so important because trust is crucial in everyday life. You not only need to trust in your relationships and friendships but also doctors, family, and those you work with.

Anxiety and depression take over
After being emotionally hurt for so long, anxiety and depression take over your entire well being. This can make your everyday life so much harder than what it already is. Giving yourself time to heal is vital so that you can get to being whole again and enjoy your life.

Lack of energy
Another sign that you need healing is not having the energy for anything. Lack of energy will have you neglect things that you once found joy in like drawing, reading, or even spending time with family and friends. You need to find your energy again and get back to doing things that make you laugh and smile.

Feeling sick all the time
As stated before, being emotionally distraught will affect your entire well being. This can range from feeling nauseous everyday, losing your appetite and hardly eating, losing sleep, to having migraines. The list can go on and on. This is a red flag that you are emotionally overwhelmed.

Intuition is gone
This one goes hand in hand with doubting yourself. We are taught to trust our gut feeling and go with it, but if you have been in a toxic relationship then you know the gut feeling is almost always manipulated and undermined by that person. You then lose your sense of intuition and are left with uneasy feelings that you continue to ignore. Your intuition said what it said, be wise and listen to it.

Clinging to toxic people
And lastly, you are in such a bad place emotionally, mentally, and for some, even physically, but you are so afraid of change and of what could happen. Instead of leaving certain people behind that should be left behind you cling on to them even harder no matter how unhealthy it is for you. You need to break your own heart sometimes to heal your soul.

Healing Thoughts

There is nothing to be afraid of. Change is what makes us stronger and wiser humans. You deserve your peace and freedom from your emotional prison. You need to protect your well being, always. And to do that, you must put yourself first. You need healing and that is never a bad thing. In fact, it will help you gain a new perspective in life and love.

Everyone has had their share of toxic relationships at some point in their lives. When you part from an unhealthy relationship and enter a new one, months or even years down the road, you can still carry with you some of those toxic traits that had seeped into you during that time, dragging them into your new relationship. A new beginning should be fresh and easy, but having destructible characteristics will make that impossible .

Many deny having any unhealthy traits, but that does not mean that they are not part of their everyday behaviors without acknowledgment of it. Either you were in a relationship with someone who was toxic to you or perhaps you were the pernicious one. Take a close look at some of your past experiences in relationships and identify if you were the toxic one, your ex, or perhaps both. I made a short list of toxic patterns. If you recognize yourself in any of these, then perhaps personal growth is warranted before entering a new relationship.

Snooping Through Your Partners Phone
This is a very common impropriety in a relationship, especially one that is going nowhere fast. Maybe you have been cheated on before and found out about it in this type of way and now this is just what you do when you have a feeling that something is off. Though, this might have been your way of finding out in the past, it still is not healthy. If you cannot simply talk with your partner about what you are feeling and ask questions without thinking you aren’t getting a truthful answer, then this is a red flag that you are not truthfully happy and perhaps this is not the person for you. You don’t want to live this way, believe me on this!

Being Inconsistent
If your words and your actions are constantly inconsistent with each other, then there is a high probability that you have some toxic qualities that you need to work on. For example, you have some really good days with your partner, but on the days where you have disagreements you take off to a bar instead of sitting down with them and coming up with a solution to fix this bump on the road.

Not Trusting Your Partner
I know these days trusting people is difficult, especially if you have been hurt in the past, but this is not something that should be taken with you into the next relationship. If you are having trouble trusting people and do not feel like your heart can bear anymore dishonesty, then you need to stay single, focus on you, and heal.

Bringing up Past Behaviors/Mistakes
If you have been in your relationship for a few months and you are already throwing what they did to you in the past in their face, you are being toxic. If you chose to stay with that person after what they have done to you, then you should have forgiven him/her and moved on. Never bring up past mistakes or conflicts to relive.

Comparing Your Partner to Your Ex
Comparing your partner to someone you were with in the past is so belittling and disrespectful. No relationship ever improved by comparing what your now partner does to what your ex would do. You moved on so do just that and move on.

Lying and Sneaking Around
If you feel like you have to lie and sneak around then being in a relationship just isn’t for you at this point in time. Stay single and do whatever it is that you want to do. No one deserves to be lied to and sneaking around isn’t fair to the other person. If you are doing things that you know will hurt the other, it is better to let them go for their own sake.

Being Manipulative
Turning situations around and dumping your mistakes onto your partner is manipulation at its best. If you have been cheating on your boyfriend/girlfriend and get caught, but put the blame on them because they have been working “too much”, that is manipulation. To say you did something as payback because they did something first, is manipulation. Morbid mind games such as these are used to have power and control over another.

Whether one or all of these resonate with you, this is a brutal course in self-awareness that may be required for you to grow as an individual. The most important thing for you to know is that you are not the first or last person on this world to carry around traits such as these. Learn and grow from your mistakes. Take responsibility for your behavior and own up to your wrongs. Most importantly, be kind to yourself and to others.