Free Toxic Pattern Check
Is it a difficult moment — or a recurring dynamic?
A brief, private reflection tool. Twenty statements, scored as you go, to help you organize what you have observed, notice repetition, and decide what deserves closer attention. You do not need a label for someone else in order to protect yourself.
Created by Dr. Nichelle Chandler, licensed psychotherapist · About 5 minutes · Your answers to the check stay private in your browser.
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Get the free Pattern Check
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Before you begin
- Educational only. This tool does not diagnose a person or relationship. It is not therapy, a clinical screening, or a crisis service.
- Private. Your answers to the check stay in this browser tab. They are not submitted, scored on a server, saved, or sent. Closing the page clears them. Only the name and email you gave above are kept, for the emails you agreed to.
- Safety first. If there is stalking, coercive control, threats, strangulation, escalating violence, or you fear for your safety, stop and reach out for specialized help now (see Support). Directly confronting someone about these patterns may not be safe.
- Digital safety. If someone monitors your phone or browsing, consider a safer device or private method of access.
- One person or situation at a time. Answer based on the overall pattern, not only the most recent interaction. Use the past 8 to 12 weeks when possible.
Your result
Where it showed up
One-off conflict or recurring dynamic?
Use these questions to look beyond intent and examine what the interaction actually does over time.
What changed after the concern was raised?
A one-off conflict usually allows for clarification, repair, and changed behavior. A recurring dynamic often produces excuses, retaliation, temporary improvement, or repetition.
Can I name a specific timeline?
Write the first example you remember, the most recent example, and what happened in between.
Is the behavior mutual or one-directional?
Conflict can involve two people making mistakes. A harmful pattern often concentrates confusion, accommodation, fear, or responsibility on one person.
Does the person respect a reasonable no?
The response to a boundary often reveals more than the original behavior.
Do words and actions move in the same direction?
Promises matter less than what consistently follows them.
Does the behavior change when others are present?
Selective respect can indicate awareness and control rather than simple misunderstanding.
How much of myself am I changing to manage this?
Notice whether you are silencing yourself, overpreparing, overexplaining, hiding information, or shrinking your needs.
What would I tell someone I love if this were happening to them?
Distance can make the pattern easier to see.
Your practical next-step reflection
The goal is not to decide everything today. Your next step may be to observe, document, pause, ask for support, reduce access, strengthen a boundary, or make a safety plan. Choose the smallest action that creates more clarity or protection.
Everything below stays on this page. Use “Print or save as PDF” if you want to keep it.
1. Name the pattern
What keeps happening? Describe the behavior without explaining it away or diagnosing the person.
2. Check what it touched
What has this affected — your confidence, peace, body, sleep, money, work, relationships, or sense of safety?
3. Identify the access involved
What access does this person currently have to your time, attention, information, body, home, money, work, or emotional energy?
4. Choose one protective adjustment
What is one realistic change you can make now?
5. Decide what evidence you need next
What would show genuine repair? What would confirm that the pattern is continuing?
6. Set a review point
You do not have to prove that someone is toxic to decide that a pattern is not healthy for you. Recognition is not the end of the process. It is the beginning of protection.
Support & next steps
You don’t have to sort this out alone.
If any of this resonated, the book walks through the F.U.C.K.E.M. framework in depth—how to recognize patterns and protect your peace. And if safety is a concern, reach specialized help; these lines are free, confidential, and available around the clock.
- Immediate danger: call 911.
- National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) (call), or text START to 88788.
- 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988.
