Some relationships break your heart.
Others slowly break the relationship you have with yourself.
Little by little, you start reading the room before you read yourself. You become hyperaware of someone else’s moods, needs, reactions, and disappointments. You people-please. You walk on eggshells. You question your instincts. You explain yourself over and over again.
And somewhere along the way, you realize:
I didn’t just lose the relationship. I lost me.
In this episode of The Manifestation Method Podcast, Ayelet sits down with certified life coach Kerry Rasenberger for a deeply honest conversation about what happens when you lose yourself inside a toxic or emotionally unhealthy relationship—and how you begin finding your way back.
Kerry helps women rebuild self-worth, self-trust, and healthy boundaries after relationships that left them questioning who they are. Together, Ayelet and Kerry explore why even strong, intelligent, self-aware women can become caught in painful relationship dynamics and why leaving the relationship doesn’t necessarily mean the relationship has left your nervous system.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why intelligent, capable women can still become trapped in toxic relationship patterns
- What trauma bonding can actually feel like from the inside
- Why inconsistent affection can make unhealthy relationships so difficult to leave
- How survival mode can disconnect you from your own needs and intuition
- How to recognize the difference between a difficult relationship and a genuinely toxic dynamic
- Why patterns matter more than isolated bad days
- How your body can reveal what your mind has been trying to rationalize
- What repeated gaslighting and criticism can do to your self-trust
- How to stop outsourcing your knowing to other people
- Why boundaries are one of the most powerful forms of self-care
- How to rebuild your inner authority through small, consistent choices
- Why healing eventually has to shift from focusing only on what someone did to you to asking what you need in order to stop abandoning yourself
One of the biggest themes in this conversation is trauma bonding—the cycle of affection, rejection, hope, hurt, and reconnection that can make someone feel almost addicted to a relationship they consciously know is hurting them.
Kerry explains why intermittent moments of love or validation can keep us reaching for more, even after years of painful patterns, and why getting grounded in the truth of what is actually happening can become such an important part of healing.
Ayelet and Kerry also explore the erosion of self-trust that can happen when your feelings, instincts, and reality are repeatedly questioned.
You stop asking:
“What am I feeling?”
And start asking:
“Am I allowed to feel this?”
“Am I overreacting?”
“Am I the problem?”
Healing means slowly reversing that process—learning to listen to yourself again, trust what your body is communicating, and make small choices that prove to yourself that your needs matter too.
And sometimes finding yourself again starts much smaller than we imagine.
Getting out of bed.
Taking a shower.
Saying no when you normally would have said yes.
Doing something you enjoy simply because you enjoy it.
Setting one boundary and actually keeping it.
Every small act of choosing yourself becomes another step home.
Because healing isn’t necessarily about becoming a completely different woman.
It’s about finding your way back to the woman who was always underneath the adapting, surviving, pleasing, and shrinking.
If you’ve ever looked at yourself inside or after a relationship and thought, “I don’t even know who I am anymore,” this conversation is an invitation to begin asking a different question:
Who am I when I’m no longer organizing my life around who someone else needs me to be?
You are still there.
And you can find your way back.
Kerry Rasenbergen Socials:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kerrylifecoach/
Website: https://www.kerryrasenberger.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kerrylifecoaching
Manifestation Portal App - https://www.ayeletpolonsky.com/mm
Inner Circle - http://ayeletpolonsky.com/innercircle
Ayelet’s Courses:
THE ULTIMATE MANIFESTATION MINDSET COURSE: https://www.ayeletpolonsky.com/manifesting
MANIFEST ABUNDANCE MEDITATION SERIES: https://www.ayeletpolonsky.com/abundance
Connect with Ayelet:
Instagram:instagram.com/ayeletpolonsky/ | Tiktok: tiktok.com/@manifestationmindset | Youtube: youtube.com/@AyeletPolonsky
