I Stopped Taking Toxic Relationship Dynamics Personally Once I Understood Human Design
Day Thirteen — 30 Days Of Writing About The Relational Patterns That Nearly Destroyed Me So You Don’t Lose Yourself Trying To Stay Loved.
Last year, for the first time, I taught a group of people my Personal Power & Harmonic Relationships body of work, which dives into the energetics of how we relate to one another.
Understanding the energetics of how we relate is a game changer when it comes to creating a pathway forward out of self-abandonment.
So I am going to share an insight into that work with you today. Think of this as part essay, part life-changing mini course that you will definitely want to save and return to over and over again.
Before we dive in, let’s do a VERY quick dummies guide to Human Design…. And also let’s refer to Human Design as HD, for short, moving forward. If you already know what HD is, feel free to skip straight to the juicy section about relating by design.
So HD is the science of your aura. It began in 1987, on the island of Ibiza. A man named Ra Uru Hu received what he described as an eight-day and eight-night transmission from what he called “The Voice.”
Human Design is a synthesis of ancient wisdom and modern science. It brings together several powerful systems, as a single blueprint that gives you a deeper understanding of how your energy moves through the world.
It draws from the I Ching, a 5,000-year-old Chinese system of wisdom, and the origin point for the 64 gates in your chart. Each gate is a frequency, an energetic signature that holds a specific theme, lesson, or gift. Think of them as archetypes encoded into your DNA. They shape how you express yourself, what you’re here to learn, and how you meet the world.
It incorporates the chakra system, though instead of seven chakras, Human Design reflects nine centres. This expansion reflects a shift in human evolution from survival-based energy to something more nuanced, more integrated. These centres are energy hubs that govern how you process information, connect to others, make decisions, and hold identity.
The Kabbalistic Tree of Life is the backbone of the chart’s visual structure, the circuitry that connects everything. It shows how energy moves through your system, which traits are amplified, where flow happens, and how different parts of your design speak to each other.
It also draws from Western astrology (tropical), but with a twist. Your chart is based on two precise moments: the time of your birth (your conscious self) and approximately 88 days before (your unconscious self and when your soul entered your body). These points combine to create a map of both who you know yourself to be and who you’re still becoming.
And finally, the part that grounds it all in science: quantum physics, specifically neutrinos. These are tiny subatomic particles that pass through the universe carrying information. At the moment of your birth, the positioning of planets transfers data into the stream of neutrinos, bathing your body. And as they imprint you, they influence the energetic patterns that make up your design. This isn’t a metaphor; neutrinos are scientifically proven. What Human Design suggests is that they don’t just pass through us, they leave a mark.
So, when you look at your chart, what you’re seeing is your energetic fingerprint. Not a personality test. Not a typology. But a living, breathing map of how your soul chose to move through the world in this lifetime.
PS — If you want to dive into HD in more detail and be guided through all aspects of your chart, my book A Liberation - Awaken Your New Beginning With Human Design is perfect for that.
Relating By Design
Most of us enter into relationships incorrectly and likely via our self-abandonment patterns. Your HD chart shows you who you need to be to enter into relationships that allow you to maintain your personal power and curate harmonic relationships.
It shows you the potential available should you release all need to minimise, suppress, and hide aspects of yourself.
I believe the most important aspect to grasp is your centres because they show you how you influence others, and therefore why someone would be attracted to you, as well as how you are influenced by others.
Your shadows live in your defined centres. This is where, as a child, you showed up in your authentic energy and were made wrong for it. For example, a child with a defined will centre who exerted their consistent will may have been called “demanding” or “too much.”
And as a child, scanning life to stay loved, connected, and accepted, we would learn to suppress that part of ourselves in shame because it was rejected by an adult or caregiver.
Or a child with a defined ajna centre may have been called a “know it all” or “stubborn minded.” Same rule applies. It would have been received as a shameful part of themselves that they must hide in order to be loved and accepted.
Your misaligned relationships live in your open centres / undefined centres. I know the HD community hate me for this, but I lump open and undefined centres into one concept of “open.” There is a subtle difference, but not enough of a difference to make at this level of conversation and, without going all HD semantics yawn mode, moving forward undefined and open centres will both be referred to as open centres. This refers to the white or uncoloured shapes in your HD chart.
Your open centres are where you are here to sample the energy of others and of life. Ra refers to this as where we go to school. I like to say the open centres are a window we get to look out of and see what’s going on in people and life around us.
The mind, when totally unaware of open or defined centres, sees your open centres as a problem to fix.
Our open centres absorb and amplify energy from others around us, and obviously we do not spend time with the same people all day long, so when people move away from us, that energy stops.
Our mind sees this as a problem because one minute we feel it, the next we don’t, and so it motivates us to seek it out, mentally whispering:
“You need this energy otherwise you will NEVER be complete and you will never be whole and that is a HUGE problem.”
It’s not.
The mind knows nothing about your energetic dynamics. The dynamics of your energy are held in your body (hence HD bodygraph), and the mind has no language for your energetics. It’s just out there trying to keep you alive and managing damage limitation in order to do so.
Incomplete energy translates as danger.
Energy that’s there one minute and not the next — danger.
Hanging around with people who give you that hit of energy — safe.
Even if those people are toxic, abusive, unhinged lunatics, the mind is not judgemental like that haha!
The irony is, although you feel pressure to move towards people who feel like they “complete you,” there is a high chance the same energy will get on your last nerve.
For example, I have an undefined ajna, so I am always drawn to people with a defined ajna, but those out-of-alignment defined ajnas… oh my god. Narrow-minded!!!
But that feeling of certainty that my undefined ajna used to crave, and would get a hit of in the energy of someone with a defined ajna, would have me biting my tongue and swallowing down my irritation at the narrow-mindedness…
You see, our brain speaks in the language of emotion and associates an emotional experience you must crave if it feels you lack it.
Undefined crown people will feel pressure to seek out and feel the emotional experience associated with possibility. So inspiration, awe, excitement.
Undefined ajna people will feel pressure to seek out and feel the emotional experience associated with certainty. So less anxious, relief, calm.
Undefined throat people will feel pressure to seek out and feel the emotional experience associated with being recognised and seen. So expressed, impactful, “I matter.”
Undefined G centre people will feel pressure to seek out and feel the emotional experiences associated with being loved and having a purpose. So love, adoration, connection.
Undefined will centre people will feel pressure to seek out emotional experiences associated with being worthy enough. So empowered, accomplished, worthy.
Undefined sacral people will feel pressure to seek out and feel emotional experiences associated with being capable and competent. So satisfaction, fulfilment, energised.
Undefined spleen people will feel pressure to seek out emotional experiences associated with safety. So being safe, secure, grounded.
Undefined solar plexus people will feel pressure to seek out only POSITIVE emotional interactions because lower emotional states can be physically unbearable, but nonetheless you are seeking to feel.
Undefined root centre people will feel pressure to seek out emotional experiences associated with motivation. So accomplishment, drive, achievement.
And when your mind is motivating you to do ANYTHING YOU CAN to feel these experiences, that’s when ignoring the red flags, self-abandonment patterns, and inauthentic behaviours kick in…
Your ACTUAL unique self-abandonment patterns are calculated using a variety of planetary activations that would be too complex to write about in one essay, but I am creating a self-abandonment pattern generator, so stand by.
But there are many ways we will abandon ourselves to feel whole.
That’s the motivation. We feel incomplete and we feel like we need someone to complete us, so we move towards the person who gives us that temporary emotional experience, regardless of whether it’s true love, aligned, or toxic.
Until now….
Because thanks to HD we can become so self-aware we avoid all of the trappings of our self-abandonment patterns and enter into relationships from a place of personal power.
Case Study
Below is a bodygraph chart of someone who we shall call “Katie”…… Let’s dive into what might be motivating her misaligned relationship connections. (Yes, it’s Katie Price. I mean the whole Lee Andrews, married after ten days, trauma bond, missing husband scenario is fascinating to me because I have looked at her chart.)
If you are not in the UK, you will not know who I am talking about, but still enjoy the case study….
As you can see, she has an open crown, G, will, solar plexus, and root centre. So her mind is convincing her to seek out…
Someone who will make her feel adored.
Someone who will make her feel worthy.
Someone who will make her feel good about herself.
Someone who will give her a sense of identity, i.e. “wife.”
Someone who will make her feel like she’s achieved something.
The most powerful centres in your bodygraph are the G, will, and solar plexus, so her dominant pressure is to feel loved, enough, and good about herself.
Now imagine that is the lens through which she is connecting to people… people who make her feel loved, adored, worthy, and good about herself.
Anyone showing up saying the right thing to activate those emotional experiences will be a big fat YES.
And if her mind is urging her to seek this, what does it believe is true about her?
That she is unlovable — so must seek to be lovable.
That she is unworthy — so must seek to be worthy.
That she cannot feel good about herself as she is — so she must seek to feel good about herself.
So she is entering into relationships with the inner beliefs of:
I am unlovable.
I am unworthy.
I cannot feel good about myself as I am.
The emotional pain associated with that must be challenging to navigate. I mean who wants to feel unlovable and unworthy? So of course the sabotaging mind will do ANYTHING to avoid the pain, which results in misaligned relationships that don’t last. Ignoring red flags. Ignoring previous relationship antics…. standing by her man…..
Her unique self-abandonment pattern is triggered when she feels like she has failed in relationships and feels the shame of not being enough. In those moments she will over-manage the situation with control.
She will control the narrative, regardless of whether it is rooted in truth or not. It’s true to her because it gives temporary relief from the emotional pain of feeling the shame of being unworthy. And a reminder, this is all in her Human Design chart as a potential…..
But none of these inner beliefs are true. They are all made up in the mind.
She has limitless potential, as we all do.
By design she is a deeply intuitive, charismatic, influential woman with the powerful ability to reinvent herself over and over again. She is not here to prove herself to anyone.
But all of that gets sidelined in favour of the quest to feel the emotional experiences she feels she is lacking, because her mind is telling her so - thanks a bunch mind.
The grip our limiting beliefs have over us, because our mind does not have awareness of our unique energy, can result in out-of-character behaviour, sabotaging behaviour, and landing ourselves in the hot water of a toxic relationship.
And it happens to us all.
Self-Awareness
Create your HD chart using the link below and look at where you are open and how you may have unconsciously been seeking out emotional experiences through others.
You are here to experience the energy of others, but not in a way where you convince yourself you need someone else to complete you.
Tons of love
L x