Soul ties are emotional bonds that form between people through relationships and experiences. While healthy soul ties can enrich our lives, unhealthy ones can keep us bound to people, places, or things that are destructive.
If you feel stuck in an unhealthy soul tie, know that with patience and intention, you can break free. Here are some tips on how to lose damaging soul ties and reclaim your sense of self.
Understand what soul ties are
A soul tie refers to an emotional or spiritual bond between two people that connects their souls. Soul ties can form in many relationships, including:
- Romantic relationships
- Friendships
- Family bonds
- Bonds between a parent and child
- Relationships with mentors or authority figures
- Even brief encounters with strangers
Healthy soul ties bring fulfillment, enrich connections, and help people grow. They’re built on mutual love, respect, and care for each other’s highest good.
Unhealthy soul ties, in contrast, create dependence, drain energy, and can keep people bonded to harmful situations or people. They form through manipulation, abuse, sex outside marriage, or controlling dynamics.
Know the signs of an unhealthy soul tie
How can you tell if a soul tie is unhealthy? Watch for these signs:
- Feeling inability to fully break free from a person or situation
- Loss of identity, purpose, or values in order to connect with someone
- Compromising your needs to make someone else comfortable
- Obsession over a person and desire for constant reassurance
- Feeling responsible for someone else’s emotions or problems
- Confusion over whether to stay in or leave a relationship
- Repeated patterns of unhealthy relationships
- A sense that someone or something has a “hold” over you
You may also experience symptoms like exhaustion, depression, anxiety, emotional volatility, dread of separation, or inability to connect with new people.
Reflect on the origin of the soul tie
Once you identify an unhealthy soul tie, reflect on its origin. Soul ties often form through:
- Childhood wounds: Bonds with unavailable, addicted, or abusive parents
- First intense loves: Powerful bonds, especially first sexual experiences
- Abusive relationships: Manipulation, gaslighting, sexual abuse, or violence
- Loss: Grief over death or broken attachments
- Sexual sin: Promiscuity, adultery, pornography
- Idolatry: Making someone or something higher priority than God
Understanding the roots of your unhealthy attachment helps break its power.
Release through prayer and forgiveness
Prayer and forgiveness are key to breaking soul ties. Some things to try:
- Confess involvement in any sin that formed the tie, receive God’s forgiveness
- Forgive the other person through prayer, even if they don’t know or admit wrong
- Ask God to spiritually sever the unhealthy ties
- Release the person/situation to God with a prayer like this: “God, I surrender this relationship to You. I release [name] into Your hands.”
- Bless them: “God, bless [name] with health, peace, and joy.”
This process may need to be repeated over time. Focus on speaking words of spiritual liberation over yourself daily.
Remove physical reminders and exit contact
It’s also important to:
- Remove the person’s belongings, gifts, photos, social media connections
- Stop all contact if possible – don’t reach out, and block their attempts to contact you
- Avoid places, songs, shows, etc. that represent the tie
- Move if needed to get distance from the person or location
Physically removing cues helps sever the spiritual and emotional memories sustaining the tie.
Get help from spiritual community
Don’t isolate as you navigate this process. Turn to:
- Counselors who understand soul ties and can recommend healthy coping strategies
- Support groups dealing with your specific issue (domestic violence, divorce, addiction, etc.)
- Spiritual leaders, pastors, or prayer groups to intercede for your freedom
- Trusted friends who can encourage you toward healthy change
This spiritual support system is invaluable in gaining freedom.
Fill your life with new healthy connections
Finally, don’t neglect the positive power of new healthy connections. As you release the old, purposely build:
- Meaningful friendships based on mutual care, interests, fun, and growth
- Mentoring relationships with wise counselors invested in your development
- A dating relationship with someone who treats you as beloved and cherished
- A vibrant spiritual community you can serve and be served by
Focusing your energy into life-giving relationships accelerates healing from broken soul ties. You rediscover your beautiful value apart from any human connection.
Additional tips for finding freedom
Along with the strategies above, the following tips can also help:
- Write down painful memories to process emotions, then discard the paper
- Seek professional counseling to unpack your attachment style
- Do identity work to rediscover who you are apart from the person or situation
- Take a relationship break if needed to detach and reset your boundaries
- Practice visualization meditations where you envision cutting the spiritual cord
- Perform spiritual deliverance if you sense dark spiritual influences
- Engage spiritual disciplines like worship, fasting, and Scripture reading to renew your mind
- Pursue inner healing prayer for wounds that initially bonded you
Draw on any combination of strategies that speak to your situation. Be patient with yourself through ups and downs. With God’s help, you can find redemption and restoration.
Signs the soul tie is breaking
How do you know if your efforts are succeeding in loosening the unhealthy soul tie? Watch for these signs of healthy detachment:
- Growing sense of freedom, lightness, and independence
- Released emotions/tears let you process pain and move forward
- Renewed alignment with your values and dreams
- Clarity that staying attached is no longer an option
- Able to recall bad memories without intense anguish
- Glimpses of beauty, joy, and hope despite lingering sadness
- Increased energy invested into self-care and personal growth
You may still feel the loss, but your identity is no longer intertwined with theirs. You regain authority over your life’s direction.
What soul ties feel like when broken
When an unhealthy soul tie is fully broken, you’ll experience a deep sense of freedom, peace, and fresh vision. Here’s what it may feel like:
- “I can finally breathe again.”
- “A huge weight has lifted off my shoulders.”
- “The constant anxiety is gone.”
- “I feel like ‘myself’ again.”
- “I have so much energy now that I’m not drained.”
- “I’m not obsessively thinking about them anymore.”
- “I’m ready to pursue healthy new relationships.”
You may still feel sorrow at times over the loss, but your core identity is not compromised. You can distinguish your own wholeness apart from the broken tie.
Can you reconnect after breaking a soul tie?
Once an unhealthy soul tie is broken, you may wonder: is there potential for a new, healthier connection in the future?
It depends on various factors:
- Nature of original tie – was it abusive or just imbalanced?
- Willingness of both people to grow and change
- Alignment on values and mutual respect
- Whether new boundaries could be maintained
- Degree of dependence vs. interdependence possible
- Input from counselors and wise community
Pursuing a renewed relationship should be approached slowly and carefully, if at all. And it will likely never be the same.
In many cases, once an unhealthy soul tie is severed, it may be healthiest not to reconnect. You can still forgive and bless one another from a distance.
When to seek professional help
In some circumstances, it’s advisable to seek professional help to break soul ties, including:
- Abusive relationships: Counseling helps establish safety and healthy relating patterns.
- Childhood wounds: Therapy can rework attachment styles formed in early bonds with parents.
- Addiction: Entering a recovery program supports sobriety and freedom from substance abuse ties.
- Infidelity: Couples counseling, to rebuild trust and intimacy after cheating.
- Soul ties strengthened over time: If they remain rigid despite personal efforts to break them.
- Mental health issues: A counselor helps identify pathological bonds exacerbating conditions like depression or anxiety.
- Demonic ties: Spiritual leaders can provide deliverance prayer and spiritual protection.
Professional support equips you to do the challenging personal work of releasing soul ties.
Healthy ways to relate after detachment
If maintaining contact with the person is unavoidable due to children, work, or other factors, strive to relate in healthy ways after breaking soul ties, such as:
- Limiting conversations to logistics and surface-level cordiality
- Avoiding vulnerable disclosure or seeking emotional comfort
- Refusing to be drawn into arguments or drama
- Not pursuing physical intimacy
- Keeping discussions focused on the present, not the past or future
- Being kind but brief in visits; don’t prolong contact
You can be respectful and compassionate without sacrificing personal boundaries.
What God says about unhealthy soul ties
Throughout Scripture, God offers wisdom and redemption for broken attachments and misplaced dependencies. Here are some key passages about finding freedom:
- “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
- “Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14)
- “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)
- “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)
- “For the Lord your God is a compassionate God; He will not fail you nor destroy you nor forget the covenant with your fathers which He swore to them.” (Deuteronomy 4:31)
God promises to liberate and redeem us from all that harms us – including unhealthy soul ties. We are never helplessly trapped in darkness. Resurrection life awaits!
Conclusion
Breaking unhealthy soul ties takes courage, wisdom, community support, and God’s grace. But take heart – freedom is possible. With patience and intention, you can sever damaging bonds, reclaim your identity in Christ, and open yourself to relationships that help you thrive.
You may bear scars from the broken attachment, but they remind you of God’s rescue. Now you can build connections that empower you to become all He designed you to be. Wholeness awaits!