The recent murder of 27-year-old Shraddha Walkar, a resident of Vasai in Maharashtra, by her live-in partner Aftab Poonawala, 28, in Delhi, has highlighted how women are victims of toxic relationships and they often ignore the red flags they see in an abusive relationship as they don’t know how to get out of them. According to The Indian Express, Shraddha was physically assaulted multiple times during the course of her relationship. Her friends told the publication that Aftab used to emotionally blackmail her and threatened her to die by suicide if she left him. That’s not all, Shraddha, who used to speak to her friends over the phone, had stopped doing that, too, towards May-end, days before she was killed.
All these points, in this case, reflects that it was an unhealthy, toxic, abusive relationship that had many red flags. However, she didn’t know how to get out of it. Similarly, many women face the same. To understand this further, we reached out to Dr. Tarun Sehgal, Psychiatrist, and Co-Founder, Solh Wellness. He says, “Identifying relationship toxicity is not easy and it can be complicated. Sometimes people stick longer in toxic relationships and sometimes they quit too early or without much reason. A solution for one may not work at all for someone else. There are four things that women should do. Firstly, make abuse completely unacceptable. An abusive person will rarely stop abuse whether it is physical or mental or emotional or psychological. The moment you see abuse, run from the relationship. Secondly, every woman needs to define red flags for herself – What is acceptable and what is totally unacceptable. Thirdly, participate in support groups and learn from the experiences of others while you share what you are going through. Last but not the least, go for therapy early on in the relationship.”
Dr. Manoj Kutteri, Medical Director and CEO, Atmantan Wellness Centre, adds, “An abusive relationship can affect one mentally and physically. Women consciously need to take time to understand the person they decide to build a romantic relationship with. Emotional abuse is much deeper as it affects not only the mind but also the soul. Women should be encouraged to take a stand for their needs and understand their own strength and potential so that they can be brave enough to make an independent decision where they feel things are not progressing in the right direction.”
“Women inherently have a stronger sixth sense. The key steps to staying connected to this sense revolve around taking note of the little things, moving away from the herd mentality and gaslighting, and seeking help bravely among others. To encourage a fear-free life, women should also consciously be aware of their environment, culture, and immediate surroundings. Developing and focusing on practices like meditating, journaling, and choosing to stay away from negative relationships are a few practices that we can adopt to promote inner strength and knowledge,” Ms. Sharmilee Agrawal Kapur, Pranic healer, and Spiritual yogini, Co-Founder and Director, Atmantan Wellness Centre explains.
“Red flags include frequent lying, avoidance behavior, increasing aggression, isolating you from your support system, making you feel very vulnerable, encouraging substance dependence, cheating, threatening, and intimidation. Also, when you are made to feel low in mood and confidence, lack empathy, and miserable. When you are consistently made to feel guilty without any fault of yours. Relationship toxicity is when one constantly feels mentally exhausted, dissatisfied, and unhappy in a relationship. For any meaningful healthy relationship, one requires to build mutual trust, respect, healthy communication patterns, care and concern, empathy, understanding, and love,” Dr. Sameer Malhotra, Director and Head, Department of Mental Health and Behavioural Sciences, Max Hospital, Panchsheel Park says.
Aanchal Narang, a Counselling psychologist further tells, “Toxicity in relationships is simply anything that is harmful or could be harmful. Most intense and fast paced relationships tend to become toxic as a lot of decisions aren’t well thought out. We are often blindsided by love and mistake the intensity as passion and chemistry. This is also reinforced by mainstream Bollywood films and TV series. People often romanticise things like possessiveness and codependency.”
These are the following things to look out for:
• Lying
• Anger outbursts – screaming, yelling
• Paranoid
• Possessive
• Lack of trust
• Alcoholism and Substance Use
• Disrespectful and dismissive of your individuality
• Manipulating and exploitative: very controlling of your choices, opinions, who you meet, what you wear
• Attempts to isolate you from your existing social support system i.e friends and family • Codependency -depend on you for all their emotional needs; threatens to kill themselves if you try to leave or self harm like cut themselves
• Gaslighting : a type of psychological abuse where the individual tries to control your sense of reality. Example: if they are cheating and you suspect it they would try to tell you how you don’t trust them and are causing issues in the relationship.
• Physical or Sexual Abuse
• Push your boundaries
• Never takes any accountability for their mistakes: never says sorry, blames you for everything, if they do apologise it’s always conditional and is not followed by any actionable change
• Economic control – your financial assets and expenditures are controlled by them
She adds, “Amongst these lying, manipulation, isolation, gaslighting, codependency and abuse signify Intimate Terrorism. It’s a concept given by Michael P Johnson. He also talks about how this has a huge tendency to escalate and the partners involved form an enmeshed relationship. It becomes difficult to get out of it unless something extreme happens or they get timely help.”
