María Esclapez, psychologist from 'The Island of Temptations': "Healthy relationships exist, but you have to work on them"

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Elche, 1990 Psychologist and specialist in clinical sexology, she swept her analyzes of

.

In

(Bruguera) she offers keys to building healthy relationships and avoiding toxic ones.

His book is called

.

Can't one love if one doesn't love oneself?

You can, wanting is an innate capacity of the human being.

But if we don't love ourselves, if we don't work on our self-esteem and assertive communication, if we don't learn to set limits, the relationships we establish with our partner, friends, family and, ultimately, with everyone else are not going to be healthy.

So it is much better to do that personal work in order to establish healthy bonds.

He says that toxic people don't exist... No, they don't exist, no matter how much they sell them to us.

There are behaviors or toxic behaviors, which we carry out consciously or unconsciously.

If the toxic label is hung on a person, the ability to change those behaviors and those toxic behaviors is being taken away.

There is no diagnosis of a toxic person as such at a clinical level, so it seems unfair to call someone that.

Many people come to my office worried saying that they are toxic, as if it were a trait of their personality, when it is not.

He devotes a lot of space in his book to talking about emotional dependency.

How is it identified?

We know that we are facing an emotional dependency or a dependent relationship when that relationship causes suffering.

Obviously there are also some good things, but on an emotional level what weighs more is the suffering.

And yet, despite this suffering, the person with emotional dependence has a significant inability to defend himself, to break that relationship, precisely because of that dependence.

Do dopamine and serotonin have something to do with that inability to break down?

Probably more dopamine.

Dopamine is a molecule that is secreted by the brain and is part of the reward system.

When there is a dopamine rush, the brain understands that we are facing a prize, something comforting, that generates immediate pleasure.

At the moment in which dopamine is withdrawn because the pleasurable stimulus disappears, there is an emotional slump and the desire to return again to get that pleasurable stimulus to feel the dopamine very high again.

What is emotional abuse?

They are a set of behaviors, behaviors, that generate situations such as manipulation.

Because what these emotional abuses seek is to emotionally dominate a person.

How to know if there is emotional abuse?

Through what I call

Dopamine is a molecule that is secreted by the brain and is part of the reward system.

When there is a dopamine rush, the brain understands that we are facing a prize, something comforting, that generates immediate pleasure.

At the moment in which dopamine withdraws because the pleasurable stimulus disappears, there is an emotional slump and the desire to return again to get that pleasurable stimulus to feel the dopamine very high again.

What is emotional abuse?

They are a set of behaviors, behaviors, that generate situations such as manipulation.

Because what these emotional abuses seek is to emotionally dominate a person.

How to know if there is emotional abuse?

Through what I call

Dopamine is a molecule that is secreted by the brain and is part of the reward system.

When there is a dopamine rush, the brain understands that we are facing a prize, something comforting, that generates immediate pleasure.

At the moment in which dopamine withdraws because the pleasurable stimulus disappears, there is an emotional slump and the desire to return again to get that pleasurable stimulus to feel the dopamine very high again.

What is emotional abuse?

They are a set of behaviors, behaviors, that generate situations such as manipulation.

Because what these emotional abuses seek is to emotionally dominate a person.

How to know if there is emotional abuse?

Through what I call

the brain understands that we are facing a prize, something comforting, that generates immediate pleasure.

At the moment in which dopamine withdraws because the pleasurable stimulus disappears, there is an emotional slump and the desire to return again to get that pleasurable stimulus to feel the dopamine very high again.

What is emotional abuse?

They are a set of behaviors, behaviors, that generate situations such as manipulation.

Because what these emotional abuses seek is to emotionally dominate a person.

How to know if there is emotional abuse?

Through what I call

the brain understands that we are facing a prize, something comforting, that generates immediate pleasure.

At the moment in which dopamine withdraws because the pleasurable stimulus disappears, there is an emotional slump and the desire to return again to get that pleasurable stimulus to feel the dopamine very high again.

What is emotional abuse?

They are a set of behaviors, behaviors, that generate situations such as manipulation.

Because what these emotional abuses seek is to emotionally dominate a person.

How to know if there is emotional abuse?

Through what I call

At the moment in which dopamine withdraws because the pleasurable stimulus disappears, there is an emotional slump and the desire to return again to get that pleasurable stimulus to feel the dopamine very high again.

What is emotional abuse?

They are a set of behaviors, behaviors, that generate situations such as manipulation.

Because what these emotional abuses seek is to emotionally dominate a person.

How to know if there is emotional abuse?

Through what I call

At the moment in which dopamine withdraws because the pleasurable stimulus disappears, there is an emotional slump and the desire to return again to get that pleasurable stimulus to feel the dopamine very high again.

What is emotional abuse?

They are a set of behaviors, behaviors, that generate situations such as manipulation.

Because what these emotional abuses seek is to emotionally dominate a person.

How to know if there is emotional abuse?

Through what I call

.

When we talk about

we talk about things that we may have normalized but that are not normal because they are part of these emotional abuses, these manipulations.

A very, very typical one -that we do both consciously and unconsciously- is the

.

It materializes when two people get angry, one of them understands that the other has done something wrong and through silence, through passive-aggressive behavior,

the other person.

Skip it completely, as if it didn't exist, even though they can live together.

Any other example?

Other

it would be manipulation in general: making the other person feel guilty all the time.

I see this a lot in consultation, when some couples come and one of the people in that couple understands that she has no responsibility for the malfunction of the relationship and that all the fault lies with the other person.

That obviously cannot be so.

What I try in my work is to identify all those

, all those emotional abuses or manipulations, see if they are done consciously or unconsciously and try to change them.

But whether or not it changes depends on the person.

Is love overrated, is it the most important thing in our lives?

Love is important, it is a feeling that unites us with others, whether they are a couple, friends or family.

But when it involves sacrifice and a tremendous expenditure of energy, perhaps that relationship is not very healthy.

Can you be friends with an ex?

See if the relationship has been healthy and even if the breakup hurts, because breakups always hurt, there is no problem in being able to maintain a friendship relationship.

Now, if there has been a dependent relationship it is super complex, because something basic like respect, trust, affective responsibility or emotional accompaniment, basic in a healthy relationship of friendship,

they are not in a toxic relationship.

In that case, how are we going to pretend to be friends with a person who did not give us that during the relationship?

Has no sense.

In those cases you recommend zero contact, right?

Yes. In a dependent relationship there is a certain emotional addiction, because there is that stimulus that causes us to dopamine in the form of a reward, and that plays an important role in the entire addiction mechanism.

In that situation, zero contact is essential, because in some way you are addicted to that relationship.

You cannot carry out a duel in which you work on yourself or on yourself if you continue to maintain a relationship with that person, so it would be very, very difficult to overcome that duel.

In this book, you open up and reveal that you, being a psychologist, have also had toxic relationships... Yes,

I have been the first to have done things badly, fatally.

I started my relationships with a partner when I was 18 years old and spent years chaining one dependent relationship with another.

I learned to generate dynamics that were not healthy for me.

And even though I'm a psychologist, I'm human.

There will be those who wonder how someone like me, who is supposed to know about dependent relationships, could have fallen into that.

But since I started my career at the age of 18 until I began to discover the world of dependent relationships, emotional dependence and toxicity, a long time passed.

Neither in the degree nor in the master's degree nor anywhere had I heard of this type of thing.

There were very few books on the subject at that time.

And how did you get out of those toxic relationships?

It was an important personal work, to realize what was really happening and to read, read and read,

because I read a lot and doing it helped me a lot.

A day came when I realized it and I began to change things, to work on things.

It was a process of years.

Personal jobs are not from today to tomorrow, they are very difficult and very painful jobs.

He has been in a healthy relationship for six years and I have read that he is getting married next year.

Congratulations... Thank you very much!

I am super happy, because it has been an important personal job and also as a couple, because I went with my backpack full of preconceived ideas, stereotypes and toxic behaviors that I had to change.

It has not only been important personal work on my part, but it has also been work as a couple.

And thanks to all that work and that effort we have been able and can have a healthy relationship.

Healthy relationships exist, but you have to work on them.

What would be the main advice to have a healthy relationship?

For me it is essential to achieve emotional stability and tranquility.

For me, tranquility is what defines a healthy relationship.

In toxic relationships, the person is always on alert, as if the relationship were hanging by a thread, as if by saying anything the relationship could end, as if because your partner does not immediately answer a message it means that they are going to leave you.

Living with that fear is not good, we have to live a relationship with the peace of mind of knowing that nothing happens for having complicated conversations, for expressing opinions, for saying no, for setting limits, because after all a couple It's a team.

The problem is one thing and the members of a couple another, and what they should do is fight together against that problem,

Whether it's a relationship issue or a non-relationship issue.

You have been the psychologist of 'The Island of Temptations'.

What have you learned in that 'reality'?

Many things.

I have been able to see and name, identify, much of the theory that I already knew, some of which I myself had lived at the time.

It has been very enriching to show all that to the public from a pedagogical point of view and to be able to destructure a little the idea of ​​relationships and love that was given in that program.

It was hard work, because it always hits you, but very enriching.

In general, what is the model of love that is transmitted in programs like 'La isla de las tentaciones'?

I would say the model of romantic love.

It is important to clarify that romantic love is not the beauty of the relationship, because many people confuse it.

I what I saw in

was a constant reflection of all the myths and ideals of romantic love, which are the breeding ground for all problems and all

that we saw at all times in the program.

The most prominent were two.

The first is the myth of Prince Charming, the myth of the better half, which comes to say that we cannot be happy until we find that other person.

That is a problem, because the moment someone conceives that a relationship is that, he is leaving his happiness in the hands of the other person.

And in the event that the relationship does not work and there is a breakup, that person will understand that the other person takes her happiness with them, which will make it very difficult for them to break that bond.

And the other myth?

The myth that jealousy is love.

Jealousy is not love, nor is happiness being uneasy.

It's a preconceived idea about that emotion, because jealousy is an emotion like any other.

The problem is not feeling jealous,

because we can all feel jealous.

The problem is how that jealousy is managed.

If they are managed through control or the preconceived idea that jealousy is love, it will be a disaster.

If they are managed with introspection, with working on that emotion, with seeing how it affects us and with assertive communication with the partner, it is something totally different.

I love myself, I love you

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