Healing from toxic relationships often involves we working through the toxic soul ties that have form in our journey. In today’s podcast, I want to talk about the importance of your relationship ties and your history of attachments, connections and bonds. You were made for relationship and designed to be knit together with other relationships in powerful ways. Yet at the same time, your enemy seeks to orchestrate relationship ties with people that reinforce bondage in your life.

Many discover in their healing and freedom journey that there are significant ties, often referred to as soul ties, that need to be broken.

While this is true, I want to first bring out the power of what healthy ties can bring about in your life. The subject of soul ties can be a powerful invitation for you and I to develop healthy bonds with the right people. You don’t have to remain stuck in the toxic attachments, bonds and ties that seek to hold you in bondage. There is freedom available and healthy bonds we can develop.

Video Broadcast:

Show Notes and Outline

The subject of soul ties, relationship ties, bonds or attachments is an important one to address in the healing and freedom journey. In addition, I think this issue impacts our lives way further than we often realize. In healing from toxic relationships, we often have to address the unhealthy ties we developed along the way. 

Toxic Soul Ties

Toxic is a good word to describe these unhealthy relationship ties, because it includes the meaning of the biblical words bitter and defilement, which are found in Hebrews 12.

looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled. Hebrews 12:15 (NKJV)

Toxic people do exactly that: they allow bitter roots to spring up and the spread the infectious trouble that springs out of it.  In the Scriptures, bitterness literally means poison, something that should not be inhaled or ingested, because if you do, it will have a negative effect.

Bitterness also means acridity, which means it leaves a strong and unpleasant odor. Bitter roots produce bitter fruit, but they are also contagious, spreading like a virus to other people. We become “defiled” by bitterness when our hearts become contaminated with another person’s bitter perspectives.

This toxic or bitter effect is often compounded because of the unhealthy soul ties that get formed with toxic people.

What is a Soul Tie?

Over the years, the term “soul tie” has become the popular term that people use to address the bonds, attachments and ways we become relationally knit to another person. It is usually brought out in a negative and destructive connotation. But a soul tie or relationship tie is actually designed by God to be a good thing.

For simple understanding, a soul tie is a bond or attachment that exists in a relationship. The truth is that a soul tie can be a healthy tie or an unhealthy tie. 

Relationship Audit

Take a moment and look back at your history of close-knit relationships. Allow your heart to do an honest assessment of where you’ve had strong relationship ties that were helpful, healthy and fruitful. But consider as well those relationship ties that were harmful, toxic and left you to cope with the collateral damage. 

Many of the toxic relationship experiences we’ve had are not relationships we just turn on and then easily turned off. They often involve deep investments, where it can become challenging to unwind from the negative experiences. 

Those who invest their hearts in spiritual and emotional healing often come to the point of realizing they need to “detox” certain unhealthy relationships. Many begin to realize that healing from toxic relationships is not so easy. There becomes these invisible ties that pull on them.