5 Somatic Steps to Break Unhealthy Relationship Patterns

 Still attracting the wrong partners — even after all the inner work?

You’re smart. You’ve done the therapy, healing, and journaling. But somehow, you keep ending up in the same toxic relationship patterns.

I’ve been there, too. High-achieving on the outside, but stuck in painful cycles in love.

The thing that shifted everything for me? Somatic healing.

In this post, I’ll share the steps I took to break unhealthy relationship patterns — and how you can use them to create the kind of love and life you’ve been craving.

You’ll learn:

• Why you keep dating the same person over and over
• How your nervous system keeps you repeating old patterns
• A simple somatic practice to start creating real change

Let’s dive in.

How can you break the patterns of a relationship?

The first step is recognizing them because you can’t change what you can’t see.

Here are some of the most common unhealthy relationship patterns. See if any of these feel familiar:

• Chasing and distancing: Wanting more connection while your partner pulls away.
• People-pleasing and resentment: Saying “yes” to avoid conflict or abandonment, but ending up feeling invisible, used, or angry later.
• Caretaker and wounded child dynamic: Becoming the fixer or emotional caretaker while your partner stays emotionally immature, reactive, or dependent.
• Anxious-avoidant loop: Seeking closeness while your partner fears it.
• High highs and low lows (trauma bonding): Intense chemistry followed by painful conflict or disconnection, often mistaken for “passion.”
• Withholding love or affection: Being stuck in a dynamic where silence, withdrawal, or coldness is used to punish or gain control.
• Walking on eggshells: Constantly monitoring your words or behavior to avoid triggering your partner’s anger, insecurity, or emotional shutdown.
• Codependency: Losing your sense of self or boundaries to maintain the relationship.
• Conflict avoidance: Pretending everything is fine while resentment quietly builds.
• Repeating childhood dynamics: Choosing partners who replicate familiar wounds, such as emotional unavailability, criticism, or unpredictability.

Breaking these patterns starts with the first step: tapping into your body.

1. Understand what your body is telling you

Most women I work with are incredibly self-aware. They’ve analyzed their triggers from every angle — yet they’re still stuck.

That was me, too. 

On paper, I had it all: an Oxford degree with distinction and a dream career in London. 

But on the inside, I felt disconnected, anxious, and spent all of my 20s in unhealthy relationships.

Ironically, the day I graduated from Oxford was the day I entered my most emotionally abusive relationship.

But it wasn’t as if I wasn’t doing the work. 

No, I was constantly working on myself during this time – over 10 years.

I did therapy, mindset work, courses, meditation, you name it. 

But nothing seemed to stick. I began wondering if something was wrong with me.

What I didn’t realize was this: the part of me repeating the cycle wasn’t in my head. It was in my body.

Your body learned early on how to protect you: by shutting down, people-pleasing, chasing, or freezing. 

Science backs this up. Research shows our nervous systems are shaped by early attachment experiences, especially with caregivers.

So when you’re triggered, your nervous system goes back to what it knows: survival.

And here’s the key: emotions live in your body, not just your mind. If you want lasting change, you have to shift the felt sense of safety and love in your body.

That’s where somatic healing comes in.

Want to see how it works in practice? 

Try this:

• Find a quiet, meditative space.
• When you notice a sensation (e.g., tightness in your throat), acknowledge it: “Okay, tightness in my throat. I see you. I hear you.”
• Pause. See what arises (including feelings, images, or subtle shifts)
• Get curious: “What do you want from me?” or “What do you not want for me?”
• Stay with it. When you’re done, thank that part for showing up.

You can journal afterward to integrate what came through.

2. Create a felt sense of safety (not just the idea of it)

You can’t build something new if your nervous system still thinks love means danger.

Research in neuroscience and trauma recovery confirms this. Dr. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory shows that our capacity for connection depends on whether our nervous system feels safe or threatened in real-time.

That’s why somatic work isn’t about “fixing” your mindset. It’s about helping your body feel safe enough to relate in a new way.

When your body feels safe, you stop abandoning yourself to keep someone else close.

In my own healing, the biggest breakthroughs came when I finally felt calm and grounded in my body, not just in theory, but in sensation.

Try this:

• Find a quiet moment and wrap yourself in a soft blanket 
• Place one hand on your heart, one on your belly
• Take three slow, audible exhales. Let your shoulders drop.
• Say to yourself: “I don’t have to earn love. I’m safe now.”

This is a way of giving your body a new, safe experience.

The next step? To familiarize yourself with the part of you that’s “stuck.”

3. Get curious about the protective part

Most of us try to get rid of our patterns.

But what if that part of you (yes, even the one that shuts down or clings) is actually trying to protect you?

In somatic coaching, we don’t pathologize your defenses. We get curious about them.

Because behind every pattern is a brilliant survival strategy your body learned a long time ago.

Try this (when you feel regulated):

• Bring to mind a moment where you felt triggered.
• Ask the part that took over:
  “What are you protecting me from?”
  “What do you need instead?”
• Listen without judgment.

You’re building trust with the part of you that’s been working overtime to keep you safe.

Next up: 

Get your energy flowing. 

4. Move the stuck energy your body’s been holding

Many relationship patterns are actually incomplete survival responses.

Research by trauma experts like Dr. Peter Levine shows that when our bodies can’t complete a survival response (like screaming, running, or saying “no”), that energy becomes stuck and later resurfaces in relationships.

In other words, if something overwhelming happened, especially in childhood, and you didn’t have the space or safety to express what you felt, your body stored that energy. 

You can’t release that energy through talking. You need movement, breath, and nervous system completion.

This is one of the most powerful parts of somatic coaching.

Want to see how this works in action? 

Here’s a somatic tool I learned from Seth Lyon, a somatic trauma specialist. It’s simple but powerful.

1. Find a safe space and enter a meditative state.
2. Visualize the person who hurt you in two forms:
• First, see them in their purest form—connected to source, maybe as an innocent baby or soul.
• Then, visualize the version of them who harmed you. See this version as living inside of you—because that’s often how trauma lodges itself.
3. Move your attention back and forth between the two versions until you clearly feel the difference.
4. Now focus on the internalized version—the one inside of you. Let yourself fully respond:
• Scream.
• Hit a pillow.
• Shake.
• Roar like a protective mother defending her young.
  Let your body do what it needed to do at the time but couldn’t.
5. If compassion arises, direct it only to the external, symbolic version—not the one inside of you. Stay with the movement until you feel a real shift.
6. When you’re ready, visualize yourself standing in power. You can even imagine burning that internalized version—releasing it completely.

When you let your body release stored tension safely, it learns that it isn’t trapped anymore.

5. Rewire through new, embodied choices

When most of my clients come to me, they’re waiting to feel “fully healed” before they act differently.

But that’s not how somatic healing works.

Your nervous system rewires through experience, not just insight.

Research in embodied psychology shows that you can create new neural pathways associated with safety, boundaries, and self-trust.

So, through experiences, your body can start to believe a different outcome is possible.

Try this:

• Say “no” without explaining
• Pause before replying to that text
• Walk away when your body says “this isn’t safe”

These small actions are massive wins for your nervous system.

Ready to break your toxic relationship patterns for good?

Small shifts build momentum — but to fully break free, you have to go deeper. For me, that meant addressing the root cause of my patterns, not just the symptoms.

After my last emotionally abusive relationship, I hit my breaking point. 

On a gut instinct, I enrolled in a training program for somatic sex and relationship coaching. At the time, I didn’t even know what “somatic” meant.

But what I discovered changed everything.

In less than a year, somatic healing helped me do what ten years of therapy couldn’t:

• I broke my toxic relationship patterns
• I rewired my relationship with myself
• And for the first time in my life, I felt self-love and self-worth in my body, not just as an idea in my head

Why somatic coaching works when mindset alone doesn’t

Somatic work bridges intuition and science. Sessions can feel deeply emotional and even magical, but they’re grounded in neuroscience.

Your body is the link between logic and emotion. When you heal at the body level, you stop abandoning yourself and start making grounded, confident choices.

If you’ve…

• Never truly felt worthy or confident
• Done all the mindset work but still feel anxious or stuck
• Kept attracting the same types of relationships
• Felt exhausted from trying to “fix” yourself

…and you’re ready to:

• Deeply love and accept yourself
• Heal your relationships
• Attract the love you’ve been craving
• Create your life intentionally

…somatic coaching brings the missing piece: embodiment.

Instead of just understanding something, you feel it. That’s the shift that makes clients say, “Oh, this is what I’ve been missing.”

One client told me, “I had no idea how disconnected I was from my body.” 

She’d done years of healing work, but still felt angry, unlovable, and stuck. Through our work, she learned it wasn’t about suppressing those emotions, but integrating them. 

That’s when her self-love finally landed.

Want those results for yourself? 

My program: Manifest from Your Body

My somatic coaching program, Manifest from Your Body, is a three-month program designed to help you:

• Reconnect with your body’s innate wisdom
• Break destructive relationship patterns at the root
• Step into the love, confidence, and life you know you’re meant for

And here’s the part most people don’t expect: even though somatic work invites you to slow down… it actually creates faster results.

Many of my clients feel safer, calmer, and more grounded within the first few weeks and they start naturally setting healthy boundaries without the anxiety, guilt, or second-guessing that used to hold them back.

By the end of our three months together, you’ll see tangible, lasting changes so you can start breaking your relationship patterns and find the love you’re looking for.

And because this work is holistic, the ripple effect touches everything: your career, friendships, health, and how you show up in the world.

If you’re tired of fixing symptoms and ready to heal the cause, ready to finally live as the version of yourself who doesn’t just know her worth, but feels it in every cell, then this is your next step.

Click here to learn more or apply now.

About the author

Majo Torreli is a somatic coach who helps women reconnect with their bodies to create their dream life. After a decade of therapy, self-development, and mindset work that left her stuck in the same painful dating cycles, battling PCOS, and treating her body like an obstacle to overcome, Majo discovered somatics—and everything changed. She healed the “forever” diagnosis, transformed her relationships, and finally felt at home in her own skin.

Now, she guides women to partner with their bodies, trust themselves fully, and embody the version of themselves they’ve been striving to become—because your body isn’t your barrier; it’s your most powerful manifestation ally.