Seven signs your body knows you're in relationship with the wrong person

A therapist explained that there are seven physical signs which might indicate your body is telling you you're in the wrong relationship.

You might have been in the unfortunate situation where you're struck by the realisation that the relationship you're in isn't working out and isn't the right thing for you.

It might be that you've basically known this for quite a while but didn't want to acknowledge it, and you might have had that gut feeling you'd been ignoring for a time.

Sometimes there's even more to it than that, as trauma therapist Shannon Thomas told Insider that many of her clients who were in toxic relationships started developing physical symptoms.

"I don't know of a client yet who hasn't experienced some sort of body reaction to being in an abusive relationship," she said, laying out a number of ways this might manifest.

You might feel something is wrong before you really start to realise it (Getty Images)

Worn down

Thomas explained that if you're in a bad relationship, it'd take a toll and give you 'high levels of stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol', but on the other hand, that'd also be competing with 'dopamine when given affection as a reward'.

She said that your body would react to that cocktail of contradictory chemicals, leaving you worn out and feeling just so tired all the time.

The therapist explained that the highs would feel great, but the lows could send your body 'into a crash'.

If your relationship is leaving you feeling worn out, that's got to be a red flag.

Autoimmune problems

The trauma therapist said many of her clients would tell her they were suffering from things such as inflammation, aches and rashes, but when they went to see a doctor about it, they were typically told they hadn't come down with something.

Instead, Thomas said these could be the 'symptoms of extreme anxiety' rather than the sign of catching some illness, but the signs could be a warning that all is not well.

With all sorts of stress hormones being produced from a bad relationship your health might take a hit (Getty Images)

Hormonal changes

Those stress hormones and cortisol going through your body because your relationship is messing up your life can have another negative impact on you.

Thomas said that with all that going through you, it could trigger your fight-or-flight response, and if you do neither, they can have nowhere to go and mess up your appetite.

She said a common sign of something being wrong with her clients was them saying they used to be able to eat anything, but were now having problems with certain foods.

Memory and speech issues

We're not just talking about gaslighting here, where a partner is actively trying to make you doubt your recollection of events, as the therapist explained that if you're always stressed out, then your brain has less bandwidth for memory and speech.

She said: "I've seen a lot of clients that have a very difficult time reading books or processing new information or holding information or memories. When they're in the middle of the abusive relationship, these functions are really hard."

While your mind is in a spin trying to figure out what's going on and is constantly scanning your next sentence for anything that could set off an argument, it can shake confidence in your own memory.

Thomas said many people in bad relationships struggled to eat (Getty Images)

The therapist said many people's moment of realisation that their relationship is toxic and they need to get out of it is when they realise their partner is working against them.

Plenty of relationship experts will tell you one of the secrets to making it work is to see issues which crop up as the two of you against the problem instead of the two of you fighting over the problem.

Even worse is when one of you is the problem and is fighting the other because of it, you don't need that s**t in your life.

Fortunately, Thomas said as 'part of the recovery process of finding their voice again' people did learn to speak again instead of treading on conversational eggshells.

Tense muscles

If you're tensing up around someone, then the therapist recommends you think about why that's the case, and you should wonder, 'why is my body reacting this way around this person?'

She suggested your subconscious might have noticed something and as such your 'body is sensing it' even if you haven't actively thought about the source of the problem yet.

The therapist said many people realised their partner was working against them (Getty Images)

Trust your gut

Thomas said that something she saw with so many of her clients who had suffered psychological abuse was them starting out not liking the person who ended up abusing them.

She said: "Something just didn't feel right but they rationalized it and kept spending time with that person, and that's when the trauma bonding began.

"But it's really common that way before any attraction happened there was an initial kind of 'no.' I hear it over and over."

If you get a gut feeling to steer clear of someone, then it's worth listening to.

Maybe you're right, maybe you're not, but if you're getting a bad feeling from someone, you can always remember there are billions of other humans in the world you could be spending your time with instead.

Lonely feelings

With only so much time and energy in the day, Thomas warned that trying to patch up a relationship that wasn't working could leave you ignoring the other people in your life.

In the worst cases, she warned that a toxic partner might actively try to cut you off from them, leading you to feel lonely.