I'm a psychologist who dated many toxic people until I finally realized I was the problem. Here's what I did about it.

• Even though I’m a psychologist, I kept find myself in toxic relationships.
• I realized I was the problem; I was attracted to toxic traits because of my childhood.

I recently found myself in yet another painful relationship with someone with unprocessed trauma and a reactive personality. They had several toxic traits: lying, fighting, and inability to commit.

Time and time again, I felt defeated, hurt, and ready to swear off relationships.

I would spend countless hours with friends, wallowing in yet another failed connection or chastising myself for staying too long with someone who lacked basic relationship skills or emotional intelligence. And, of course, my friends would sweetly enable me by reinforcing my perspective as I continued to say that everyone else was “the problem.”

As a therapist and clinical psychologist for more than a decade, I’ve seen many patients over the years who relay similar frustrations and shame of dating another narcissist, abuser, or cheater. This is usually followed up with statements like: “I have the worst luck,” “Why does this always happen to me,” or “They are just magnetized to me.”

While I knew exactly how to help those patients, it took me years to realize that the problem in all of my relationships was actually me.

I played a role in my own pain

After a recent breakup, I had to take a hard look at myself and ask the same questions that I encourage my patients to ask themselves. What in me is magnetized toward these patterns of behavior, and in what ways have I ignored or looked past red flags in my relationships?

I also had to look back in my past — the same way I encourage patients to do — and ask: What from my childhood does this remind me of, and what was the way I got attention and connection? So often, present-day issues can stem back to how love was modeled in our family life in the past.

I also wrote down all the problems and patterns in each of my previous relationships and circled the recurring themes.

As I started answering these questions and doing this practice, I realized I was unearthing how love got miswired with my survival strategies.

I realized why I was stuck in the same love story on repeat — an an-all-too-familiar reenactment of many childhood relational wounds. I unconsciously sought and chose the familiar chaos over something new and healthy. I was chasing the excitement or what I thought was chemistry, but really, it was just my trauma tingles — where the intensity was confused for intimacy. I was more interested in the chase than the embrace. I was avoiding the vulnerability of intimacy by having these dramatic relationships.

I was then determined to stop the pattern

In my long journey to stop the cycle of my dating life, I first leaned into awareness and radical responsibility without shame. I gave myself back my power by asking how something in me contributed to these consistent challenges in my relationships. Ownership and accountability equal power, but blame leads to shame.

I then engaged in some practices that helped interrupt and rewire my pattern of love. To start, I recognized that what I had been attracted to was someone else’s adaptive survival strategies — and thus have been trauma bonding. I identified the “toxic trait” or pattern that I was magnetizing or unconsciously attracted to and made it a turn-off. I would literally repeat to myself, “Lack of consistency is not sexy.”

Diving deeper, after identifying the currency of love in my childhood, it was important for me to make a list of the different ways to love and be loved. For example, instead of caretaking, I could find love through mutual respect.

Healing comes through slowing down, increasing self-awareness, clarifying what your needs are, setting goals as to how you want and deserve to be loved, communicating to other people, interrupting the reenactments in real time, and recognizing when what you need or how you want to be loved is beyond their capacity.

I’m still working on all of this today

I’ve identified my boundaries of what’s OK and not OK in my relationships, but it takes work, communication, and self-regulation. The process of rupture and repair is very much still a part of my everyday life.

One of the things that I’ve found both for myself and with patients is that even after doing work, you might still be disappointed in the experience with other people. Just because you’ve done your work doesn’t mean other people have. But despite what other people have or have not done in healing your past, you are reclaiming your own peace, power, and possibility of true and safe intimacy.