Cycle Breaking in 3 Steps: How to Break Your Toxic Family Cycle
Updated January 2023: I’m so glad you’re here and taking steps towards healing. I do have a series of articles on reparenting but want to be upfront that I’m in a place in my healing journey where I’ve moved away from talking about narcissistic traits in others and I’m currently focusing solely on my expansion and what brings me joy. I’ve moved away from the textbooks and have jumped headfirst back into shadow work art (my original healing medium) mixed with a newfound interest in mushrooms. If the thought of using art and mushrooms to find peace outside of your family’s dysfunctions excites you then definitely do poke around. Sending you luck on your journey, friend.
If you’re a cycle breaker—or still stuck in a toxic cycle—this is for you.
Sure, with a title like cycle breaking in 3 steps, it sounds like it’s going to be easy. But you can trust me when I say it’s not. Each step is probably going to take a long time. Anyone who’s experienced real personal growth knows that it doesn’t happen overnight. It just can’t.
Hopefully, these steps give you an idea of where you are in your cycle-breaking journey—and a road map of where you need to go.
Step 1: Acknowledge your pain.
The first thing you need to do is acknowledge your hurt. This stage of discovery is often painful and fraught with negative emotions. Because of this, most people run away.
And it’s okay if your first instinct is to run, too. You might experience a lot of denial in this stage of cycle breaking. Defensiveness is a common coping mechanism for people who have experienced trauma.
After years of pretending like everything is okay or blocking out your negative experiences, finally confronting them is no small task.
When you remember things that happened to you or unpleasant moments from your childhood, practice being mindful. Listen to your memories and validate yourself. It did happen. And it wasn’t right.
That’s why you need to break the cycle.
Step 2: Accept your dark side.
Once you identify your wounds, you enter the healing stage of cycle breaking. This is where you face your dark side and accept it for what it is. Childhood trauma can turn us into people we don’t like. You might be short-tempered, unempathetic, or even cruel.
Your dark side doesn’t make you a bad person. It reveals that you are a wounded person in need of healing.
Acceptance comes in all shapes and sizes. It might look like a sincere apology to your child after you’ve yelled at them. It can come in the form of a deep conversation with your partner or friends about your flaws.
Our brains are hard-wired to protect our egos, so don’t expect admitting fault to come naturally. The more you practice, though, the easier it will become to see where you want to improve.
Step 3: Attune and integrate.
Finally, after the stages of discovery and healing, you’re ready to enter the stage of growth. This stage is where you attune your mind to your body.
In the growth stage, you are more capable of noticing when emotions like anger, irritation, sadness, grief, or abandonment bubble up inside your body. And you become able to identify why certain circumstances or someone’s actions made you feel that way. Through this process, you integrate the mind and the body. They become one whole person, in sync with each other.
Instead of letting emotions rule your behavior, you become mindful of how you want to behave when experiencing certain emotions.
During this stage of growth, try not to judge yourself for what you perceive to be your successes or failures. Being a parent and being a cycle breaker are both long, difficult learning journeys—and the fact that you have decided to seek out growth is amazing all on its own.
Key Takeaways: The Three Stages of Cycle Breaking
Don’t expect to move through the three stages of cycle breaking clearly or cleanly. As you progress, you’ll see that you might experience growth in one area while still denying your wounds in another. That’s totally normal.