Building Healthy Love After Toxic Relationships with ELLAVATE – Interview with Ann-Kathrin Petersen
Ann-Kathrin Petersen is a trauma-informed Healthy Love Coach, EFT practitioner and trainer, author, podcast host, and educator helping women elevate their lives, relationships, and standards after toxic love. She is the author of Ellavate – 7 Steps to Elevate After Toxic Love and the host of the podcast Team Ellavate, where she shares empowering conversations around healing, confidence, emotional regulation, conscious dating, healthy attachment, and creating love that feels safe, exciting, fulfilling, and deeply aligned.
Ann-Kathrin Petersen, Healthy Love Coach & EFT Practitioner
What first led you to focus your work on helping women create healthy love after toxic relationships?
I believe love and relationships can be one of the most beautiful and empowering experiences we can add to our lives. But I have also seen and experienced how exhausting, miserable and even dangerous love can become when the relationship is unhealthy.
What fascinated me was how complicated leaving actually is. "Just leave. He's bad for you." sounds logical from the outside, but it completely misses what can be happening underneath. Psychology, attachment, childhood experiences, hope, fear, biology, self-worth, all of it can become intertwined. Sometimes physically leaving is only the first step.
My professional work in trauma, domestic violence and crisis support deepened that understanding. Becoming a mum added another layer. I want our children to grow up seeing that love doesn't require you to abandon yourself. So much of what we learn about relationships starts at home.
That's why my work isn't just about recovering from toxic love. I want women to understand their patterns, trust themselves again and build a life where healthy love can actually add to their happiness. I don't believe in the Disney idea that Prince Charming comes along and finally makes your life good. Build your version of a happy life, and let healthy love add to it.
Why can someone understand their unhealthy relationship patterns clearly and still feel emotionally drawn back to them?
Because knowing something and feeling it are two very different things.
You can understand attachment theory, identify every red flag and know perfectly well that somebody isn't giving you what you need, and still desperately want it to work. Our decisions in love aren't made by our rational mind alone. Previous experiences, attachment, our nervous system, self-worth, learned beliefs and expectations all play a role. Hope is huge.
I call one version of this "dating potential": Maybe after the next court hearing. Maybe when work calms down. Maybe after the promotion. Maybe when he's healed. Maybe if I show him a little more how amazing we could be, he'll finally choose this.
We can end up having a relationship with somebody's potential instead of the person and relationship that actually exist today.
So telling a woman, "You know better," often doesn't help. She probably does know better. I'm much more interested in the question: If you know this isn't enough for you, what keeps pulling you back? That's usually where the real work starts.
How do EFT tapping and nervous system regulation help create change that insight alone may not reach?
I love understanding things. Psychoeducation can be incredibly empowering. But there is a point where a woman says, "I know all of this. I understand exactly what's happening, but I still feel it."
That's where I find EFT and body-based work so valuable.
I often describe the nervous system as our internal alarm and regulation system. It is constantly responding to what feels safe, threatening, familiar or unfamiliar. After prolonged stress or traumatic experiences, the body can react very strongly even when the rational mind understands that there is no immediate danger.
EFT, or tapping, is one of the tools I use. It combines focusing on what you're experiencing emotionally with tapping on specific acupoints. What I like about it is that we aren't only talking about the emotion; we're working with what is happening in that moment.
The goal isn't to never feel anxious, triggered, sad or attached again. The goal is to be able to feel something without automatically having to act from it.
There is a huge difference between "I feel this" and "therefore I have to do something about it." Creating that space can change a lot.
Why can secure, emotionally available love sometimes feel unfamiliar to someone who is used to intensity or inconsistency?
Because familiar doesn't automatically mean healthy.
If you're used to relationships with uncertainty, chasing, withdrawal, intense connection and then distance, you can start associating that activation with attraction. You're thinking: Does he want me? Why hasn't he texted? Did I do something wrong? Is he pulling away? And all of that intensity can make the connection feel incredibly important.
Then somebody comes along who is consistent. He calls when he says he will. His interest is clear. There isn't a constant puzzle to solve. Strangely, that can initially feel less exciting simply because it is unfamiliar.
I don't like the idea that healthy love is supposed to be boring. I don't believe that at all. Healthy relationships can have chemistry, sex, passion, adventure and depth. You just don't need instability to create those things.
So I encourage women to stop using intensity as the main measurement for connection. Look at consistency. Reciprocity. Emotional availability. Communication. Shared values. Pay attention to who you become around that person.
Sometimes butterflies are attraction. Sometimes they're anxiety. Learning to tell the difference is important.
What do you see high-achieving women struggle with most when their relationship standards do not match the standards they hold elsewhere in life?
The difference can be fascinating. A woman can manage a team, raise children, build a business, earn degrees and solve incredibly complicated problems, and then spend three hours analysing a two-word text from a man who has been inconsistent for six months.
I don't say that with judgement. Being intelligent or successful doesn't make us immune to attachment.
But high-achieving women are often used to effort producing results. At work, persistence, problem-solving and working harder can be rewarded. In relationships, that can become: If I communicate better, understand him more, give him enough space, become more attractive, stay patient or love him well enough, maybe I can make this work.
But another person's emotional availability isn't a project you can successfully manage.
One of the biggest shifts is going from "How can I make this work?" to "What is actually being offered to me here, and does it match the relationship and life I want?"
You can have compassion for somebody's circumstances without building your future around their potential.
What is one sign that someone is genuinely breaking an old relationship pattern rather than simply avoiding another painful relationship?
For me, it's when you can stay open to love while remaining loyal to yourself.
Avoidance can look very powerful from the outside: I don't need anyone. I'll never let somebody hurt me again. The second something feels uncomfortable, I'm gone. But that isn't necessarily security. Sometimes it's protection.
Actually breaking the pattern looks different. You can really like someone without immediately building an entire future around them. You can feel chemistry without ignoring incompatibility. You can tolerate some uncertainty without chasing reassurance. You can communicate what you need and then watch what the other person actually does with that information.
You can leave something that isn't right for you without needing to turn the other person into a monster.
One of the clearest signs of change for me is this: your standards remain intact even when you're emotionally attached.
It's easy to have amazing boundaries when you don't care. The real test comes when you really want someone and can still say: I want you, but I'm not going to abandon myself to have you.
When someone starts dating again after toxic love, what should they pay attention to beyond obvious red flags?
First, create a life you actually like living, or at least start creating one.
Know what you enjoy. Have hobbies. Have a few real friends. Have something in your work or future that matters to you. Build routines and interests that don't disappear the second an exciting man walks into your life.
Then, when you're dating, don't just look for obvious red flags. Watch patterns. Do his actions match his words? Is the effort reciprocal? Can he communicate when something is uncomfortable? Is he curious about you? Do your values and ideas about the future actually match?
Pay attention to what happens to you.
Do you remain yourself? Or does your entire emotional world suddenly start revolving around whether he texts, what he thinks and whether he chooses you? Are you still working out whether you actually like him, or are you mostly trying to work out whether he likes you?
Dating isn't an audition. You're not trying to perform well enough to be chosen.
You're finding out whether two real people are compatible enough, available enough and willing enough to create something healthy together.
What does "elevating after toxic love" mean to you beyond healing from what happened?
This is really what ELLAVATE means to me.
Toxic love doesn't stay neatly contained inside the relationship. It can have a ripple effect across your whole life. Your self-esteem changes. You start doubting your judgement. Friendships can suffer. Your career, finances or health can suffer. Even when you're highly successful, keeping everything together on the outside while hiding what's happening at home is exhausting.
Afterwards, there can be so much shame: How did I let this happen? Why didn't I leave earlier? How could I have been so stupid?
I don't want the end goal to be, "I'm finally over my ex."
Elevating means using what happened as a catalyst. Understanding yourself without shaming yourself. Rebuilding self-trust. Finding your friends again. Your ambition. Your body. Your joy. Your identity. Creating peace where there used to be chaos.
For me, toxic love can become the catalyst towards a much more self-led life. The relationship might be the reason you started the journey. But eventually, it isn't about him anymore. It's about you choosing your life.
What is the most important thing you want women to understand about creating love they will not need to recover from?
That you have a choice about where your energy goes.
The 90/10 rule originally came from my work around breakups. There is a phase after a relationship ends where analysing him can almost become a full-time job. What did he mean? Why did he do that? Does he miss me? Was any of it real? Your friends have listened, analysed the messages with you and probably had the same conversation with you ten times. There is a place for that. We need to process what happened. But at some point, continuing the spiral isn't helping you heal anymore.
That's when I use 90/10. Bring 90 percent of the focus back to you. Your healing, health, friendships, finances, career, business, education, children, well-being, fun, your life. The aim isn't to suppress what happened. It's to stop giving him the majority of your life force.
Over time, I realised I want women to understand that 90/10 applies before the breakup too. It applies in dating and relationships, particularly if you know you tend to emotionally attach very quickly.
Instead of constantly asking, "What does he mean? What does he need? How can I make this work?" Him, him, him, come back to yourself. Keep building your life. Let the man come towards you. Give him space to initiate, invest and show you who he is, rather than doing all of the emotional work for the relationship.
The energy behind that matters. "I want him to lead because I need somebody to save me and make me happy" is very different from "I'm responsible for creating a life that makes me happy, so I don't need to chase or control this. I can give you space to add to it."
That isn't selfish. I believe it actually creates more space for healthy love.
You can deeply want partnership, marriage and a family and still refuse to put your life on hold while you're looking for them. Focus on your finances. Build the business. Study. Heal. Get strong. Look after your health. Invest in your friendships. Create things. Have fun.
Love can be incredibly important without becoming the centre around which everything else revolves.
Create the life. Let the right relationship add to it.
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