Leaving a toxic relationship should bring peace, but what comes first is often panic. That panic isn’t a sign that you made the wrong choice. It’s your nervous system reacting to the absence of the very chaos it adapted itself around. When instability becomes familiar, stillness feels foreign.
Your anxiety right now is withdrawal, not regret. The part of you that wants to go back isn’t longing for the harm—it’s longing for the pattern. Your body got used to the rhythm of emotional highs and lows, and now it doesn’t know what to reach for in the silence. This confusion is biological, not a reflection of your worth or your decision.
Peace can feel uncomfortable when your system was trained to anticipate danger. It takes time for your body to understand that quiet does not automatically mean something terrible is about to happen. You are not going backwards. You are detoxing from a cycle designed to keep you dependent.
Discomfort does not mean danger. It means you are stepping out of survival mode and into something that feels unfamiliar because it’s finally safe.