Elly | Counseling Psychologist
@elly.psychologist • 131,600 subscribers
Videos
If you can’t stop thinking about relationship cheating and find yourself stuck in a cycle of checking, questioning, and feeling unsafe, you’re not alone in that struggle. Constantly searching for proof or reassurance rarely brings relief and often fuels even more anxiety. Instead of focusing on every detail of your partner’s behaviour, take a step back and ask what is really making you feel insecure. Is there a pattern in the relationship that leaves you anxious, or is this worry coming from somewhere else? A healthy relationship should bring trust, not constant fear of cheating. It’s important to recognise what you need to feel safe and decide if this relationship is truly giving you that #cheating #cheater #cheaters ##relationshiptok #relationshiptips
Elly | Counseling Psychologist1,900,000 views • 4 months ago
Living with emotional abuse often means every attempt to resolve feelings through conversation gets met with denial, victim playing, convenient forgetting, or twisted events, which is exactly why trying to talk your way through emotional abuse can feel like struggling in quicksand, every attempt to reason your way to clarity just pulls you down further rather than getting you anywhere near solid ground. The practical fix for this kind of emotional abuse is not a better argument, it is changing what kind of conversations you are willing to have at all, keeping things to logistics and plans rather than feelings, and stepping back from anything that requires the other person to actually reflect on the emotional abuse they are causing, because that particular door simply is not open right now. The same logic runs through trying to fix a relationship affected by emotional abuse more broadly, because each well intentioned attempt tends to end the same way, more hurt rather than progress, which is really the same fire and fuel problem in a different form, approaching emotional abuse with good intentions does not change what happens the moment that fuel meets the flame. What actually protects you when you are living with emotional abuse is not more effort directed outward, it is redirecting that same energy back toward your own life, your health, your career, your income, your friendships, the things that quietly get starved while all your attention goes into managing someone who is not managing themselves. That reallocation away from emotional abuse and back towards yourself is not coldness or giving up, it is the only form of self protection genuinely available when the other person cannot see the harm they are causing, and putting your own wellbeing back at the centre of your own life in the face of emotional abuse is never selfish Official accounts and resources: www.ellyanastasiades.com #emotionalabuse #relationshipabuse #emotionalabusiverelationship #abusiverelationship #relationshiptips
Elly | Counseling Psychologist267,100 views • 1 month ago
If your mood depends on someone else’s emotions, building self-trust is key. When you learn to notice your own anxiety and gently turn your focus back to yourself, you start to break the habit of relying on others for emotional regulation. Self-trust grows each time you remind your nervous system that you’re safe and capable of looking after your own wellbeing. With consistency, you’ll find you’re less affected by others’ moods and more anchored in your own sense of calm. Self-trust is something you can build, one small step at a time #selftrust #trustyourself #selflove #therapytok #therapysessions
Elly | Counseling Psychologist1,100,000 views • 6 months ago
There is a particular kind of heartbreak that can happen in a relationship where someone genuinely cares about you but simply cannot see you clearly, because their own unprocessed fear has quietly replaced you with a version of yourself built entirely from their own insecurities. In a calm relationship, the mask often holds completely, they seem warm, present, genuinely lovely to be around, but the moment something small in the relationship brushes against an old fear, being lied to, being betrayed, not being loved enough, that fear gets projected straight onto you, and you suddenly find yourself accused of exactly the thing they are most afraid of, regardless of what actually happened. What makes this particular relationship dynamic so disorienting is that trying to explain yourself does not just fail to help, it can genuinely make things worse, because to someone viewing the relationship through that fear, your effort to explain gets read as more evidence rather than an honest attempt to be understood, so the harder you try, the more suspicious it looks to them. The hard truth underneath all of it is that no relationship improves because you found the right words, since you cannot reason someone out of a belief system being propped up by their own unresolved fear, that work belongs entirely to them and usually requires real professional support rather than more patience or clearer explanations from you. Which leaves one of the saddest realities a relationship can hold, that you can love someone completely and still not be seen by them, because what they are responding to is not actually you, it is a mirror quietly reflecting everything they are afraid of back at themselves Official accounts and resources: www.ellyanastasiades.com #relationship #relationshipproblems #relationshiptips #relationshipabuse #abusiverelationship
Elly | Counseling Psychologist261,100 views • 2 months ago
If you’re questioning whether your relationship is right for you, try shifting your focus from analysing your partner to noticing how you feel when you’re with them. A healthy relationship should help you feel calm, confident, and able to trust yourself. If you’re losing your sense of self, feeling anxious, or constantly monitoring your words and actions, these are red flags. The real measure of a relationship is not just how someone behaves, but how your connection affects your own independence and self-worth. Pay attention to what changes in you when you’re in this relationship and trust what you find #relationshiptok #relationshiptips #relationshipgoals #relationshipproblems #relationship
Elly | Counseling Psychologist453,200 views • 4 months ago
Your body pulling away from someone, tensing at a hug, avoiding closeness in bed, isn't a malfunction, it's often your nervous system picking up on something about the relationship before your conscious mind is ready to face it. Bodies are built to predict danger using sensory information and past experience, and when a relationship carries real inconsistency or harm, that system does exactly what it's meant to, flagging the person as unsafe, regardless of the story you're telling yourself about the relationship. The problem starts when that signal gets overridden. Being made to feel like you're the problem, that you owe affection, that you're lucky to have this person, often leads to pushing through the discomfort, forcing intimacy, or wondering what's medically wrong with you rather than questioning what's actually happening in the relationship. Overriding that signal doesn't make the discomfort go away, it just disconnects you further from the very thing trying to protect you, and that disconnection tends to cost more the longer it goes on. A more useful response is getting curious rather than correcting yourself. If your body tenses around someone in this relationship, it's worth genuinely asking what that's about, fear, guilt, the specific alertness of walking on eggshells, rather than assuming something's wrong with you for reacting at all. Your body isn't broken in this relationship, it's communicating, and that information is exactly what you need to move forward in a way that's actually healthy for you Official accounts and resources: www.ellyanastasiades.com #relationshiptok #relationshiptips #relationshipproblems #relationshipissues #toxicrelationship
Elly | Counseling Psychologist331,300 views • 3 months ago
Emotional abuse can make your mood depend on someone else’s behaviour, leaving you anxious, overthinking and desperate for reassurance. When your nervous system is constantly reacting to another person’s mood, it is easy to lose touch with your own needs and sense of safety. Recognising this pattern is the first step to breaking free. By grounding yourself in the present and finding new sources of comfort, you can start to rebuild your emotional resilience and stop the cycle of emotional abuse #emotionalabuse #relationshipabuse #emotionallyabusiverelationship #abusiverelationship #relationshiptok
Elly | Counseling Psychologist465,100 views • 5 months ago
If you’ve ever questioned whether you’re the problem in an emotionally abusive relationship, you’re not alone. Emotional abuse is a repeated pattern of manipulation, blame, and disrespect for your boundaries. When your needs and limits are constantly ignored, it’s natural to reach a breaking point and react in ways that feel out of character. This is called reactive abuse and it’s not the same as being emotionally abusive. Understanding these patterns can help you recognise what’s really happening and start to rebuild your confidence and self-trust #emotionallyabusiverelationship #relationshipabuse #emotionalabuse #relationshiptok #abusiverelationship
Elly | Counseling Psychologist271,000 views • 6 months ago
There's a few ways to react when people give you the silent treatment. When given the silent treatment most people will respond by trying to think of things that will help get that person out of the silent treatment. Something else a lot of people do when faced with silent treatment is to start saying really extreme things, like you're trying to trigger that person to get some sort of reaction out of them, therefore ending the silent treatment. But whichever way you try to stop the silent treatment, you're stuck in this mode of trying to get that person to engage with you again and end the silent treatment because the silent treatment is so uncomfortable. In this video I'm going to tell you how you should actually respond to the silent treatment... #silenttreatment #emotionalabuse #therapytok #therapy #abusiverelationship
Elly | Counseling Psychologist260,700 views • 7 months ago
Trusting your gut feeling about a relationship is hard because intuition and fear can feel almost tangled together in the moment, both present at once, but they actually work in completely different ways once you know what to look for. Intuition tends to be quiet, showing up briefly as a calm, almost understated sense that something in a relationship is not right, rarely dramatic and often vague, more like a whisper than a warning, and it is easy to miss entirely if a louder voice is competing for your attention. Fear works the opposite way in a relationship, it is loud, repetitive, and urgent, looping the same catastrophic scenarios over and over until they crowd out anything quieter, which is exactly why a relationship that your gut is quietly signalling is wrong can still feel impossible to leave. In practice, this often sounds like a small, steady sense that this relationship is not right for you, that you do not feel like yourself, immediately buried under a much louder fear insisting you might end up alone forever, that you will never find anyone else, or worrying about practical things like children or getting older, and none of that volume makes the fear any more true, it just makes it harder to hear the quieter thing underneath. The way through is not forcing yourself to trust your gut blindly or dismiss the fear altogether, it is separating the two on paper, writing down exactly what your intuition is telling you about the relationship without overthinking it, and then writing down precisely what you are afraid would happen if you actually listened to it, because naming a fear specifically is usually what makes it manageable enough for your intuition about the relationship to finally get heard Official accounts and resources: www.ellyanastasiades.com #relationship #relationshiptips #relationshipproblems #abusiverelationship #relationshipabuse
Elly | Counseling Psychologist70,600 views • 2 months ago
There’s a particular kind of tiredness that comes from being the only adult in a relationship. You manage their moods, plan around their needs, smooth things over before they blow up, and still somehow end up being asked what you actually contribute. When a partner starts to feel more like your child than your equal, it’s often a sign of a toxic relationship built around one trait that’s easy to miss: entitlement. Everyone has needs, and wanting support from the person you love is completely healthy. Entitlement is different. It’s the belief that their needs should always come first, that everyone around them should drop what they’re doing and cater to them, especially when they’re struggling, no matter how they’ve treated you along the way. So they can hurt you, neglect you or let you down, and still expect you to keep showing up at full strength. Meanwhile everything you do slowly becomes invisible. It isn’t seen as effort any more, just the baseline, and that’s one of the cruellest parts of a toxic relationship. You can be running on empty while they relax without a second thought, and over time the double standard starts to feel normal. You stop noticing how much you carry and start believing it’s simply your job, keeping everything going partly out of fear of what happens if you stop. Often this way of relating is learned early. Some people grow up being comforted and protected however they behave, so they learn that their feelings come first and that someone else will always pick up the pieces. Cultural expectations about who gives and who receives in a relationship can reinforce it too. Understanding where it comes from can help it make sense, but it doesn’t make it okay, and it doesn’t make it your responsibility to fix. In a toxic relationship like this, entitlement rarely changes on its own. Real change looks like someone taking accountability, reflecting honestly on their behaviour, understanding the impact it has on you and showing it consistently, not just promising it. Without that, the chances are slim. It also tends to travel with other patterns, like struggling to handle emotions without hurting the people closest to them, or being warm and charming in public while behaving very differently at home, which can make a toxic relationship even harder to explain to anyone else. If this feels familiar, it may be the foundation of something genuinely harmful, sometimes with emotional and psychological manipulation woven through it. Seeing it clearly is the first step towards putting some of that care back into yourself Official accounts and resources: www.ellyanastasiades.com #toxic #toxicrelationship #relationships #relationshiptok #relationshipproblems
Elly | Counseling Psychologist11,500 views • 10 days ago
One of the hardest things in a relationship is realising that the other person may genuinely not understand how much they are hurting you. When a relationship leaves you stuck explaining, re-explaining and hoping that this time they will finally see your pain, that relationship can become emotionally exhausting very quickly. A relationship like this often keeps you focused on getting them to understand, while pulling you further away from your own experience, your own needs and your own wellbeing. Sometimes the real shift in a relationship comes when you stop asking why they do not get it and start asking what this relationship is doing to you. If a relationship keeps reopening the same wound, the issue is not just whether they understand, but what that relationship is costing you emotionally. A healthy relationship should not require endless attempts to prove your pain is real #relationship #relationshiptips #relationshipproblems #relationshiptok #relationshipissues
Elly | Counseling Psychologist120,200 views • 7 months ago
Being in an emotionally abusive relationship often leaves you feeling confused and doubting your own experience. It’s common to question if things are really as bad as they feel, especially when your feelings are dismissed or turned back on you. To regain clarity, try noticing how your partner responds when you share your feelings, keep a private list of moments you’ve felt hurt or unheard, and write a letter (just for yourself) to acknowledge the true impact of the relationship. These small steps can help you ground yourself in reality, break the cycle of self-doubt, and begin to trust your own perspective again #emotionallyabusiverelationship #relationshipabuse #emotionalabuse #abusiverelationship #relationshiptok
Elly | Counseling Psychologist32,600 views • 6 months ago
If you’re wondering whether you’re being gaslighted, there are some patterns to look out for. Feeling the need to over-explain yourself, collecting evidence to justify your feelings, or even recording conversations can all be signs of gaslighting. These behaviours often show up when your feelings are regularly dismissed or questioned. In a healthy relationship, you shouldn’t have to prove your reality at every turn. Understanding how gaslighting works can help you spot emotional manipulation and begin to trust your own experiences again. Notice the patterns, not just the one-off moments #gaslight#gaslight #gaslighting #gaslit #gaslightingsigns #gaslightingawareness
Elly | Counseling Psychologist28,900 views • 5 months ago
If you’re always worrying about other's opinions, it’s easy to lose touch with your own values and sense of self. Basing your self-worth on what others think will keep you chasing approval that never truly satisfies. Instead, try to notice when you’re caught up in other's opinions and bring your focus back to what you think about yourself. Ask if you’re proud of who you are and if your choices feel right to you. Not everyone’s opinion needs to matter. The more you practice tuning in to your own view, the less power other's opinions will have over your life. Small, repeated shifts like this really do make a difference #opinions #othersopinion #opinion #otherpeople #self
Elly | Counseling Psychologist20,100 views • 4 months ago
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