The Process of Healing from a Rollercoaster Relationship (AKA, the Anxious-Avoidant Dance)
Chances are, if you were in a relationship trapped in cycles of emotional highs and lows that kept you miserable, you might have experienced the anxious-avoidant dance, or perhaps you’re recovering from a relationship so fraught with insecurity that narcissistic protections showed up.
Gaining an understanding of how taxing this type of rollercoaster relationship has been on your body’s hormones, neurochemicals, and nervous system overall will help you in your recovery process—which doesn’t happen overnight.
Often, I have seen individuals eventually decide that a relationship is not providing them with enough connection or is no longer a safe haven for them, so they decide to leave. Walking away is a courageous first step if you know in your heart you can not repair the relationship. The first step leads to a recovery period where your nervous system and brain chemistry will need to go through a healing process of repair.
Intermittent Reinforcement and its Impact on Emotional Health
In these dynamics, you will get intermittent reinforcement, which is a pattern where rewards or positive interactions are given inconsistently or unpredictably to elicit a desired behavior. In essence, it’s a form of emotional manipulation. We are all wired to want to be in connection, and when the connection is not there, it feels awful. We are often left waiting, yearning for more. This deep yearning is also a childhood memory—the way a young one urges to connect with an unavailable parent. What we don’t realize is that the roots of this can be linked back to our earliest times. This is actually a profound opportunity to hold and heal these experiences by connecting them to their root and allowing someone to help hold the original pain with you.
Longing and feeling despair after leaving a turbulent relationship is common and can leave you feeling depleted, confused, lost, and alone. Many times your nervous system will reexperience sympathetic activation and other fear states even when your partner is no longer present in your world.
The Neurochemical Rollercoaster of Unstable Relationships
If you were in a pattern of intermittent connection with your partner, this may have caused your nervous system to create a stress pattern. If we are fearful of not getting enough connection or of loneliness in a relationship, the rollercoaster of chemical cocktails that our bodies get used to can also take a long time to level out.
When you come out of a relationship like this, your nervous system will continue cycling for a time. It can get stuck in states of hypervigilance. It can also collapse at times into despair. Because the constant stress hormones and other chemicals, such as cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline are not being released, it is also common to hit states of depression. We may not realize that after some time (maybe even years) our bodies get conditioned and addicted to the patterns we had in these unhealthy dynamics. Breaking free of them means learning to be with your nervous system in a whole new way.
The first key is to accept that your system will still cycle, and you possibly will still be on edge and in fear. Your body was so conditioned that transitioning back to a calm, balanced state could take some time. Support from other people who are calm, loving, and caring can help anchor you back in. Understanding that getting yourself to subconsciously process that it’s no longer participating in a dance with another could also take time. You might even find yourself engaging the dynamics in your head, releasing more stress hormones.
Pathways to Healing: Rewiring Your Brain Post-breakup
Neurological pathways in the brain are pruned and strengthened based on our experiences, including those in relationships. After leaving a rollercoaster relationship, the brain needs to adjust to the absence of intermittent reinforcement, which can feel similar to withdrawal (like detoxing from a drug). Over time, with conscious effort and a supportive environment, these pathways can be rewired. The process involves forming new, healthier patterns of thinking and behaving that support well-being and stability. Engaging in activities that promote self-care and emotional regulation can aid in this pruning process, gradually reducing the brain’s conditioned response to seek out unpredictable rewards that characterize the tumultuous relationship.
Getting to the core of your fears, understanding what surfaced for you in the relationship, and finding some caring support is one way you can start to recover. Allow your nervous system to continue to cycle and begin to slowly unwind from what might have been years of patterns that you wish to undo. Your nervous system needs to gradually start to slow down and trust the calm space it might encounter.
The Importance of Support in the Recovery Journey
Oftentimes, clients share that this is a period of relief. After some time with more tranquility and space, some of the inner work around why you might have stayed in the relationship could surface—including feelings of deep loneliness and fears of being abandoned. All of this is a beautiful opportunity to be with what prevented you from leaving in the first place. Having the right support to help hold these experiences, as well as allowing your nervous system to cycle and slow down, is how we start to break patterns.
Sometimes getting into a new relationship after you leave a rollercoaster relationship is not advised. I never judge or tell people what to do, but if you understand that your nervous system has been cycling, you might understand it will continue to do that. You might not even realize that you will bring that pattern right back into the next relationship. When we start to work on healing our nervous system, it is also important to take notice of our patterns.
Working into states of calm, gathering healthy support, and taking your time after leaving a rollercoaster relationship is definitely the hard way. But it’s also the way you can change your patterns, get more conscious of what kept you in those dynamics, meet your scared or hurting parts, and call in real support to help hold space for you—truly heal—really feel and break the patterns.
If you need more support during this time of healing after a tumultuous relationship but aren’t yet ready to call on a therapist or relationship coach, our 7 Stages of Detoxing from an Unhealthy Relationship course is designed to guide you through the intricate process of recovering from the anxious-avoidant dance. Through expert-led insights and supportive strategies, you’ll learn how to rewire your brain, soothe your nervous system, and build a foundation for healthier relationships in the future. You don’t have to let your past define your tomorrow. Take the first step towards healing now.
