#79 - Stop Attracting Toxic Relationships: Healing Self-Abandonment & Your Nervous System

Ever wonder why the same kind of person keeps showing up in your life — just wearing a different face?

In this episode, we’re unpacking why “toxic relationships” might not be about anyone being toxic at all — and what your triggers, patterns, and hardest goodbyes are really trying to show you.

🦋 You’ll Discover:

• Why the relationships you call “toxic” might actually be self-abandonment wearing a really convincing disguise.
• Why it’s your nervous system and not bad luck, that keeps attracting the same pattern in a different body.
• How to reclaim yourself — not by fixing anyone, but by finally listening to what your body has been trying to tell you.
• 
  

✨ Coming Home Question:

If every relationship in your life right now is a mirror… what is it reflecting back to you that you haven’t been willing to see?

💜 I created Coming HOME for the woman who has done everything right and still feels something is missing. It's free, it's private, and it might be the most important thing you listen to this year — sign up here!

🦋 Midlife Butterfly is a podcast for high-achieving midlife women navigating emotional exhaustion, people pleasing, self-abandonment, nervous system healing, identity shifts, and midlife awakening. Hosted by Kena Siu, Identity & Embodiment Guide.

Instagram: @midlifebutterfly
Website: midlifebutterfly.ca

Music: Back Home by Alex Productions and  Reborn by Alexander Nakarada

Transcript

[00:00:00] Kena Siu: What if the person driving you the craziest right now is actually your greatest teacher in disguise?

[00:00:47] In this episode, you will discover why the relationships you call toxic might actually be self-abandonment wearing a really convincing disguise. Why it's your nervous [00:01:00] system and not bad luck that keeps attracting the same pattern in a different body, and how to reclaim yourself, not by fixing anyone, but by finally listening to what your body has been trying to tell you.

[00:01:19] By now you have decades of practice, right? Becoming fluent in everyone else's needs before your own. The patterns that used to feel like love, loyalty, or being the strong one are starting to cost you something you can't keep ignoring:, your energy, your health, the sense of who you even are underneath it all. And that's not coincidence. It's not you finally, waking up. It's your nervous system refusing to keep abandoning you the [00:02:00] way you've been abandoning yourself.

[00:02:03] I used to believe in toxic relationships, and I don't anymore. This episode is not about labeling people toxic. It's about seeing where self-abandonment has been disguised as loyalty, love, or just how she is, you know? And this is what I believe instead

[00:02:32] The first thing is, we are here to heal ourselves and our lineage. Since you are a high-achieving woman, I know you're also doing the work, and this might resonate with you because you know that when you heal, you heal your lineage.

[00:02:54] What happened is that even when you have this [00:03:00] awareness. You gotta understand that a lot of what reads as family loyalty is actually early self-abandonment training. Because you learn as a kid to override your own signals in order to keep the peace, stay loved, stay safe, et cetera. And that override didn't stay in childhood, it actually stood in your nervous system. And he keeps bringing it up into every relationship since then.

[00:03:38] At our upbringing, you know, family, parents, uncles. They were the first people that we follow, right? That we see them interact, that we saw their patterns, and the wounds, even though they might be [00:04:00] very, very subtle. But those family wounds. A lot of them we inherit them, and of course, not by choice.

[00:04:14] So if you have the patterns of, being, controlling or needing to be right or loving in a way that doesn't quite make sense to us, all those behaviors, they came from somewhere. And I think it's important to understand, Because when we take the time to really observe, and if we have the time and the chance to still ask some of your family members, probably your mom, your dad, about how your family was at that moment that is causing you to have these patterns, [00:05:00] behaviors that you might be struggling with, when we get to understand and treat them with a lot of compassion, that's a way to really close a gap in a way Because at the same time You can say, "Okay, I understand it.

[00:05:21] I know it's not mine, so I don't have to stay loyal to this."

[00:05:28] And I want to give you an example here, like my scarcity mindset. I've been working on it for quite some time already, and luckily it has vanished a lot. S- of course, there are still kind of like thoughts and memories and little triggers here and there, but they are very subtle now. And I couldn't understand [00:06:00] really from where my scarcity mindset was coming from.

[00:06:07] So I asked my mom, I said, "I don't understand it." Like, I have all these doubt and these behaviors, but here at home, like my father, when I was younger, he had a very good job. We were able to go on vacation every summer, to go to the United States to buy clothing. You know, I- things like that, that I saw, , and I experienced the flow of money at home.

[00:06:34] And it was very hard for me to understand, like, why? So when I sat with my mom and asked her, she said, "Well, it came from my family and from your father's family, too." And, uh, just to mention, my grandfather from my father's side, he came [00:07:00] from China to Mexico when he was, like, 12 years old or something.

[00:07:06] So just by thinking that and understanding that, first the mentality of the Chinese, generalizing how I see it, is, , work, work, work, right? And for some of the stories that my father told me, of course my grandpa was like that with him. And then the fact that he came alone, like he never saw his parents again.

[00:07:33] He never came back to China. That was at the beginning of the 1900s. So Just to really quickly imagine what he was going through, you know? Just to taking a boat through the the Pacific on his own, and probably taking care of the little belongings that he had. [00:08:00] And then once settled in Mexico, also when he had probably more money, and I know at one point he has his business.

[00:08:10] But I don't know if he was able to really see, okay, I have money now, so it's okay. I don't have to feel this scarcity. Just by understanding that, a lot of stuff shifted in me.

[00:08:27] And the cool part is that when you heal yourself, you heal your lineage, either you want it or not.

[00:08:41] And then the second thing that I realize is that, and you have hear about this, I'm sure you have, it's the fact that we attract our vibrational match.[00:09:00]

[00:09:02] Right? So your friendships, some of the colleagues at work, and probably your partner, you attracted at your own vibrational state. And a lot of what gets called, , chemistry or vibration, it is actually your nervous system recognizing a familiar level of dysregulation or hopefully at this point regulation.

[00:09:35] The thing is that familiar isn't the same as healthy. It's just the fact that we don't, you know, the alarms don't set off because you've been regulating around it for your whole life. So you are used to that [00:10:00] dysregulation.

[00:10:00] So for example, if at one point you were with a narcissistic person

[00:10:08] You need to understand that the person who chose it was the person of that time, that version of you that probably was, like, five years ago, 10 years ago, I don't know. And it is not about, mm, blaming yourself because you choose him at one point. And probably at one point you didn't anymore, and you chose to leave that relationship.

[00:10:42] Or probably you are in that relationship, and you still can choose, my dear.

[00:10:52] It happened with me with one of my best friends back in the day. After I [00:11:00]separated, I noticed that I started to speak my truth more and to take decisions for myself and prioritizing myself. I mean, that's one of the main things why I left that relationship because I got tired of taking care of another boy.

[00:11:25] He was not a man. And when I was sharing this with her, even though she never said anything, but when she broke up with me, she told me that I was toxic, and I just realized, no, it's just the fact that I'm speaking my truth now, and probably that's what it triggered her. So since I was already doing a lot of inner work and all that, of course my vibration shifted, [00:12:00] and it just-- she felt it very strong that it just didn't align with her anymore, and she broke up with me.

[00:12:08] Was painful as hell, but it's just to understand that it can be sometimes very abrupt if we are in a current relationship with someone, or it could be very subtle, that it just kind of fades away. so as we are vibrational beings- It doesn't mean that the other person is bad or is wrong for us.

[00:12:34] Again, it's just the fact that that person doesn't resonate with us anymore.

[00:12:43] And it's up to you, remember that you get to choose, free will, my friend. To cut those patterns. Because [00:13:00] continuing with a personal story here, after I separated and then divorced and I was on my own for two years and a half, I enter into a new relationship. We were together only for six months because that was time enough for me to notice that, This person needed a mom.

[00:13:25] And I was like, "I just finished a relationship of 10 years of being a mom. I'm fucking done being a mom to anyone." So I just finished that relationship as fast as I could.

[00:13:44] It's up to us. We get to choose, and that's, again, I attracted someone similar, but I said, "This is it," and I cut it off.[00:14:00]

[00:14:01] If you've spent years being everyone's steady one, the fixer, the strong one, the mom, probably like me, The one who overfunctions so things don't fall apart, that's not just a relationship pattern. You need to understand that's self-abandonment, just with another title, and it's playing in that relationship.

[00:14:33] So it's up to you to cut it off, to really do the work, to change your vibration from within From the core. By shifting your habits of thought and habits of action as well.

[00:14:59] Another [00:15:00] thing that we have to consider is that we attract people to find clarity and people to learn from.

[00:15:13] Because as you might have already experienced, Some relationships are short chapters. They are guides for a specific season, and not everyone is here to stay And every relationship, as joyful or painful that it could be.

[00:15:38] I really consider them a teacher, and I hope you can do this too.

[00:15:47] Because yes, of course, relationships, they might hurt if we put a lot of energy and time and effort on them. But once they finished, [00:16:00] it's about questioning, what can I learn from this? Instead of, why is this happening to me? Because it's not happening to you, it's happening for you.

[00:16:15] If you ask the question of, to me, you are playing the victim, and you are putting the power to that other person instead of you taking responsibility. So you're having the focus outward. So when you turn around that question and say, "Why is this happening for me?" Or, "What can I learn from this?"

[00:16:43] You're really coming to you, to your truth. So asking the better question is literally an act to returning to yourself.

[00:16:57] Coming back to that narcissistic [00:17:00] relationship that you might have. So again, it's not about them. What about if what they are just showing you is that you have to prioritize yourself So you can give from a full cup instead of an empty one.

[00:17:19] ' Cause at this time in my life, I just don't believe in failure anymore. It's either I win or I learn. And usually it is the latter. That's it.

[00:17:43] And I think when we reframe and when we take that responsibility for that relationship and we own it and we say, "Okay, this happened, and I'm okay with it even though at one point it hurt or it's still hurting, but I know I'm gonna be [00:18:00] okay." we can shift and we can heal in such a beautiful way. 'Cause I remember the passing away of my father was so abrupt, it was just so fast that when I accepted it with all the pain in my heart, and when I saw all that people at the mass showing all that love to him and to us. Having that amount of gratitude.

[00:18:43] It's just so beautiful because it can really transform. It doesn't matter what kind of relationship is when you turn it into gratitude.

[00:18:59] It doesn't matter if that relationship was for a few weeks or months or years or decades. 'Cause the thing is, as women in mid-life, I know there's a [00:19:00] lot of women divorcing after being decades in a marriage, and then they feel empty, they feel lost, and it's because they put too much of their power on others.

[00:19:00] And they gotta remember, or you gotta remember in case you are there-

[00:19:40] That the closest relationship you will ever have is the one with yourself. And you were there before this person, and you are there after.

[00:19:54] So please, , please take care of yourself.[00:20:00]

[00:20:02] And please stop self-abandoning yourself.

[00:20:10] 'Cause you are worthy, you are valuable, you are loving, and you are being loved.

[00:20:24] I love this law. I don't know you have hear about the law of mirror, but I gotta tell you that this law is the one that helped me to get out of my victim state. Oh, yeah, because it's so nice blaming others, right? It's so cool. It's everyone's fault but us. Again, relationships are all, all the time about you, about [00:21:00] yourself and you only, because everything is a reflection of us. And once you understand it and actually practice it, it can really become your superpower. So if you haven't heard about the law of mirror, it's literally what the other person is reflecting to you.

[00:21:31] So if you have a situation that a person is triggering you because he's very controlling, because, mm, I don't know, that's the only thing that it came to my mind now because I just remember an experience that I have at one of my jobs, and I couldn't believe how this person was ... wanted to be always in control of, the company and ta, ra, ra.

[00:21:57] And once I realized [00:22:00] he was just mirroring how I wanted to be such a controlling bitch in the relationship with my husband and having control of, you know, of the finances and how the house needed to work and all those things. And once I truly saw that reflection of me in the mirror, oof. It was hard because of course that identity of me, of the controller, the one that I can, da, da, da, da.

[00:22:39] Again, if we come back to the nervous system, That was a vibration that I was emitting at all times.

[00:22:49] So it started shifting then little by little and little by little. It takes some time, and I can still say that I'm a control [00:23:00] freak in recovery. So really use this law because then you will realize who the, between quotes, the toxic person really is.

[00:23:15] And that's really the invitation underneath everything we'll talk about today.

[00:23:25] It's not about fixing the other person, not about fixing yourself either. And not to even just to heal the pattern, but to come back into your own body, your own truth, your own aliveness.

[00:23:50] And understand that every relationship that you've outgrown was never really about them. It was your body. It was [00:24:00] your nervous system, yourself asking you to stop abandoning

[00:24:09] yourself.

[00:24:13] And let's go with the weekly please yourself challenge. Yes, this is about pleasing yourself, and this is gonna be a little bit, mm, stretching. But this week, I invite you to notice one person who triggers you or one relationship, that you've been maintaining out of guilt or habit.

[00:24:50] And give yourself permission to either lean in fully or let it rest. Not in between. [00:25:00] Remember that you have the power to choose. Remember that your nervous system, it's always talking to you, so listen to it. Even though this might be hard because, yes, it's a relationship, but my dear, it's time for you to stop self-abandoning yourself and start honoring yourself fully.

[00:25:30] And as a closing point, I want to remind you that you were never meant to fix every relationship. Not at all. You were meant to remember yourself inside every one of them.

[00:25:48] Remember that relationships are your biggest teachers. So take the learning lessons of each of them so you stop [00:26:00] repeating the patterns and the same stories with a different face.

[00:26:10] Summary recap. In this episode, you'll learn why the relationships you call toxic might actually be self-abandonment wearing a really convincing disguise. Why is your nervous system and not bad luck that keeps attracting the same pattern in a different body? And how to reclaim yourself, not by fixing anyone, but by finally listening to what your body has been trying to tell you.

[00:26:44] And if you are done abandoning yourself for relationships that no longer reflect who you are becoming, I have something for you. I created Coming Home for the woman who has done everything right and it still feels something is [00:27:00] missing. If that's you, this is free, it's private, and it actually includes a practice about setting healthy boundaries. The link is in the show notes. Sign up for it. And coming home question. If every relationship in your life right now is a mirror, what is it reflecting back to you that you haven't been willing to see?

[00:27:31] As usual, sending you lots of love. Take care.