Depending on the level of toxicity in a relationship, sometimes you have no choice but to go "no contact". You have to not only leave the space, but also make sure that you remove all access to yourself by those who contributed to the negativity that warped your mind, your soul, and altered your way of seeing the world. You can't take anything with you from that space if you want to create something healthy for yourself. You shouldn't bring darkness into your new light.
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Sometimes to HEAL and to EVOLVE you have to pack up and go, leaving the darkness behind, so you can breathe again and find your true voice without constant resistance, anger, and completely maladapted people running you into the ground until you inevitably become just as broken and warped as them.
To truly be "Free To Be" ... you need to give yourself the space to unlearn, relearn, and thrive where you have support and the freedom to be you; a garden where you have the chance to bloom.
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This applies to relationships, family, and social media.
When you leave a toxic space you have to unlearn what you learned there otherwise you bring the same energy, attitudes, and negative behaviors with you ... you spread the disease that you are trying to escape from, you infect other people with that hue of darkness, madness, and negativity because you carry it within you.
Your trauma - and it IS trauma - is something that needs to be healed so you don't unconsciously "do onto others".
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CoSo is home to a lot of refugees. Refugees of a toxic, negative, soul sucking, mind altering relationship that is literally DESIGNED to infect as many people as possible with traits, attitudes, and behaviors that are completely maladaptive to normal life.
The Hellmouth has created an entire generation of people who are trapped in permanent FIGHT mode. The stress, the reactivity, the lower order thinking, the triggers ... it is all from staying too long in a toxic relationship.
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𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘶𝘮𝘢 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘮𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘦. - Dr Raquel Martin
The trauma many have experienced from toxic, controlling, violent, and oppressive relationships is a festering wound that many don't know how to heal if they even recognize the trauma in the first place.
Simply: If you have been driven to LEAVE one place to find a BETTER and HEALTHIER place then it's possible you already have experienced trauma and you carry it with you.
Many refugees are survivors of trauma.
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@thewebrecluse This reminds me of one of my favorite Seneca quotes. A young relative left Rome because of his troubles there. Later, he complained that he was finding the same problems in his new home.
Seneca replied, "Why did you expect things to change when you took the source of your problems with you -- yourself?"