Navigating the Journey from Emotional Abuse to Self-Awareness and Love

How do you heal? In this episode, I dive into the emotional turmoil we all feel and how I emerged more self-aware, resilient and hopeful. 

I reveal how I found strength and broke free from a cycle of unhealthy relationships. We'll explore the vital mental shifts that were pivotal in this transformation, and how I recognized my pattern of settling for abusive and emotionally immature partners. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Welcome to the Relationship Recovery Podcast hosted by Jessica Knight, a certified life coach who specializes in narcissistic and emotional abuse. This podcast is intended to help you identify manipulative and abusive behavior, set boundaries with yourself and others, and heal the relationship with yourself so you can learn to love in a healthy way.

Speaker 2: 0:33

Hello and thank you for being here. As always, I've been wanting to do some Q&A episodes recently and have not gotten to it. Things have just been so busy, and in a good way, but also with the start of school, with being a single parent, it's just definitely one thing after another. But one thing that is important is that I talk to people all day about what they're going through and I help as many people as I can. My work primarily at least right now at the time of this recording is one-on-one and I really do love it and I really do feel like I can really help.

Speaker 2: 1:15

And a client asked a question today that I thought was really helpful, and in this conversation we talked a great deal about just relationships in general. She's a client that has been out of a narcissistic relationship for some time, but she's still experiencing a lot of the trauma of what that looks like and what she went through and basically, how does she get on the other side and how can she love in a healthy way? And now I know a lot of you have been in this place that when you are looking around and your friends are in relationships, or your friends are married or you seem like you're the only one or you're the one that messed up, I know for me. I always always felt like everybody's in relationships with me. Or like how come they can figure this out but I can't? Or like they seem like they're happy. Why is this so hard for me? Or like am I just nitpicky? I really always went back to there must be something wrong with me, why can't I figure this out? What are the patterns that have gotten me into this place? And like what is you know? Like I consistently choose partners that are not right for me? Obviously don't always know we're getting into an abusive patterns, but now that I know the patterns, I know what to look out for.

Speaker 2: 2:30

But the question that she asked me was how did you remain hopeful that you would find a partner during these times? And my first answer was that I wasn't. I wasn't hopeful. I was a little bit more reserved or surrendered to the idea that I would have another baby from a sperm bank if I wanted one. I had a timeline in my head for that. I also thought that I would most likely not ever really find anybody. That was a good fit because I was so protective over who could be around my kid and that if that was the case, then that's the case.

Speaker 2: 3:08

And I think I had like a little bit of a sad mentality when it came to partnerships that arose from that space. And I remember specifically being in Croatia with my kid alone, seeing all these happy couples, and I remember just sort of like finding a place to walk on a quieter street and I just cried Like I just teared up and felt sad and I kept saying to myself I want this too. I want this part of life. I wanted to know what it even felt like to experience a love that didn't hurt, but I had no idea what that felt like. I actually also had no examples of what that looked like.

Speaker 2: 3:49

And so over time and through a lot of therapy, a lot of coaching, a lot of healing in various ways I haven't talked about this too much, but there are a lot of alternative methods I did to heal, and one of them definitely was acupuncture and massage and being able, in my perspective, to move some of the trauma out of my body, because I didn't just get into abusive romantic relationships. I also grew up in an abusive home and I've had abusive friendships and I had abusive work environments, and this is a pattern for me and I know that I have trauma stored in my body. So I really worked to begin to move things around so that I could at least start to think clearly and get myself ready to begin to date again after a really long period of not dating. And I think that's an important point is that a lot of people that I talk to jump into a relationship without taking the time to heal and sometimes taking the time to heal really means not dating at all. It means taking space. It means really working on yourself. It means not putting yourself in a place that has potential pain or has the potential to explode or you're not fully ready for until you're actually fully ready. And what does ready look like? It's different for everybody, but I will say, not feeling addicted to your ex and feeling like you have an understanding of what loving healthy is definitely is closer to being ready.

Speaker 2: 5:22

Also, as time changed and I changed and I did date, I started to realize a few patterns. One I was dating. People that I would have dated at the time of when I met my ex-husband would have been like if I didn't meet him, I was dating people that I would have dated Ie, I was dating immature people because they were younger than me. They were fun, but they also were feeling a need that I didn't have met in my relationship and so, while that was fun for a bit, they weren't people that I could see a future with, even if I wanted that to happen in like a very idealistic or rational point of view.

Speaker 2: 6:03

One example is I dated this guy. He was five years younger than me. I really liked this guy. I felt like I really got to know him for who he was and at the beginning I'd say he really liked me too. But I will say he also was pretty realistic with how different we were and I probably should have appreciated that a bit more. He was not ready and I didn't let him I haven't really let many people, but I didn't let him meet my child and I also knew he was not ready for a relationship like a real relationship. He was ready to be himself, he was ready to continue to have fun, he was ready to do what he was doing, and I think what I wanted was just to be chosen by someone, and it wasn't about him. It was about I wanted someone to change or someone to reach their potential or someone to actually be a bit, to be who they say they are. I don't actually like from a birth, like if I zoom out now and I think about it, do I actually expect a 28 year old to be able to be who they say they are? Not really? Do I expect myself to hold myself to certain standards? Absolutely so.

Speaker 2: 7:21

In talking to this client tonight, I gave her that answer and that answer is first like look, this has been messy and I've had a million different perspectives. And then she was like well, after the abusive relationships, where did you land? That felt better Because I think in the space I am now likely come off to my clients as somebody who doesn't need a relationship and honestly, it's true, I don't need a relationship. I'm in a relationship right now. I don't need a relationship. I used to need a relationship and I'm actually working on a podcast that discusses like all the things that I thought was wrong with me and why I didn't have a relationship. So that one, once it's posted, I'll tag here, so if you're listening out of order, you can find it.

Speaker 2: 8:08

But this is the space I ended up in before I met my current partner. I basically said to her that I was dating and in relationships with people that gave me mostly what I wanted. They gave me to the full extent that they could give me what I wanted, and I probably gave. I went above and beyond to give them what they wanted. That's always been my pattern. I'm a great girlfriend 10 out of 10, but I don't want to just be a great girlfriend. I want to be in a great partnership and I had to really change my view of relationships.

Speaker 2: 8:44

I think I have a very liberal view of what a marriage is and what a relationship is. That doesn't mean that I believe in polyamory or open relationships or things like that. I actually don't, while I can respect it and understand it in other people's dynamics, I know it's not one for me. But, that being said, in romantic relationships I don't necessarily feel like I need to live with my partner. I don't feel like we always have to sleep in the same bed. I do think that we can have different wants and needs and I don't need to run things by them. I don't want them to ask me permission for things. I want it to be more free, flowing, and that's the girl that I've always been. But some of these dynamics have brought me away from being who I want to be, and so when I was healing, I really worked on some of these values and being who I actually want to be At my core. I am not the girl that gets anxious and worried when someone travels. Now that doesn't mean that they may not do behaviors that make me anxious and worried and we don't have clear communication. But in a healthy relationship, not at all.

Speaker 2: 9:54

So where I landed through my work was that, no matter what, I didn't want to be in an unhealthy relationship. I didn't want to be upset, I didn't want to be miserable, I didn't want to be settling for less. I didn't want to be giving somebody consistent outs if it wasn't the right partnership for me and if I'm doing all those things, it's not the right partnership for me. I wanted to be in a relationship. If I was going to be in a relationship that added to my life, not subtracted from it. The extra element there is that if I was to bring any man into my daughter's life, we wanted them to be a solid human who she could depend on and that I felt super proud. That's a tall order, especially for the expectations that I have of the person that would be around, my daughter, whose I argue is my actual, true soulmate. It is a tall order.

Speaker 2: 10:51

So, that said, the place I got to and like I'm making this sound like oversimplistic, but it's not that, and it definitely was through a lot of work, a lot, a lot of personal work. But the place that I got to with all of that and this is probably years and years in the making is I'm actually really okay being alone. If my story was that I ended up kind of just being like a kickass mom, helping people understand and heal from abusive relationships, being able to live like a bit of a, you know, traveling, vibrant life, making connections with people, having, you know, different kinds of intimate relationships, I would say I was thought like, okay, well, what if, like I don't have one partner but I end up like being with a bunch of different people, or like there's like a bunch of loves of my life, or like it's a little bit more free flowing and fluid, especially as my daughter? You know, if I have all these high standards of how somebody interacts with my daughter, maybe that's what I need, maybe like that's just out of the equation and it's more like my focus is her, and relationships just come as they come and maybe I learned how to let them go as they go Now.

Speaker 2: 12:04

That being said, I take heartbreak pretty hard and it's been the one thing that has really sparked the most amount of change in my life is almost marked by heartbreaks. My high school boyfriend that was definitely, in hindsight, abusive but also I was severely trauma bonded to. He still reaches out. He still reaches out just to quote unquote check in. So, like these people sometimes just don't go away. But I was okay in the place I got to was like I don't need that. I'd rather be alone than being a partnership that makes me feel alone all the time. I'd rather be alone than have to wonder where I stand with somebody. I didn't want that life. I don't want that life. I don't have that relationship to my partner.

Speaker 2: 12:49

Right now, my partner actually understands, knows and appreciates my independence and over our time together, has come around a bit to see that maybe a more flexible view of what a marriage and a partnership looks like is what supports our children individually and our relationship together. That we can begin to create it, and I think that's something that I said a lot is I want to be in a relationship where I get to create what that looks like. I don't want pre written rules put on me that I need to adhere to, because that's what led me into places of abuse and that's what led me into conversations I never wanted to be in and that's what led me to having to set boundaries with people that I never should have even been in a partnership with, you know, and that led me down this path of doing this work. And I don't know where you will end up. I don't know what pattern or what form of this you feel better with. I just know that this is my experience and sometimes sharing that here has been helpful for other people to at least have the invitation of being able to create theirs.

Speaker 2: 14:01

The client that I spoke with tonight she didn't have a final ending place of where she landed, of what she wanted to be or what perspective she wanted to have. I guess where we landed was that what she's doing now and the way she's approaching dating and even the methods. Everything needs to be shaken up right now because it's still it's stuck. But I know that by doing a lot of work on myself and really asking myself what I want and what I need and what I would be okay with. I actually opened up to being okay with a lot of different versions of what this looks like. What I absolutely was not an am not okay with is ever being in a relationship that makes me feel like I'm dead inside. I am done with that in my life. I will not ever let myself feel that way again, and I did let myself feel that way again after saying I was not going to let myself feel that way again. And then there was more healing and then there was more work, and I imagine that in my journey there'll be new perspectives and new healing and more work.

Speaker 2: 15:02

But from the kid that could not break out of relationship with a guy that continuously cheated on her in college To being a woman that is so okay being alone that it's actually harder for me to be in a relationship than it is for me just to be on my own, I think I've come a really long way in my healing and this is what works for me, and that's to say like I do have a partner right now. Well, I love very much, I'm able to be in a healthy relationship, I'm able to have conversations that best support me and my daughter and Our collective needs, and his kid and what he needs, and I'm able to create something that feels like mine or ours. I'm able to say, nope, this isn't for me, or nope, I don't agree with that. Or that's interesting, I don't know. And when I look back at where I once was, I know that it would have been impossible for me to get to that space.

Speaker 2: 15:58

And so if you are wondering or feeling, or thinking what if I'm alone forever? How, like, if I leave this, I'm going to be alone forever. I just really want you to ask yourself is being in this or being with somebody more worth you being happy? Is being with anybody worth more than you actually being with someone that makes you happy, or being able to create a life that does make you happy, that you do feel fulfilled by? And if the answer is no, I'd really question that within yourself, like, why am I choosing to be miserable, to be in a partnership, if I could feel something else?

Speaker 2: 16:35

And now the disclaimer is that if you have kids, if you can't leave, if there are other factors, of course, that comes into play here, right, like, but this is more about the mindset, the mindset of, because that's what needs to change first. Before any changes are made, you need to change the mindset first. So if your mindset is like I'd rather be with someone than nobody, I really would challenge that, because hurtful love is not better than figuring out how to love yourself. It actually probably will just trip up the process a bit more, and this is something that I work with people on. So if you are feeling like you are in this place of Needing support, wanting to figure things out, failing, stuck with this particular area, totally invite you to book validation call with me or a regular coaching call with me.

Speaker 2: 17:26

I love this work because I truly believe that we all can be healthier lovers and healthier people. I really appreciate you listening to this episode and you are not alone. I hope to be sharing some more of these more vulnerable episodes soon and if you ever need to reach out or need an ear, you can always reach out to me. You can find my Instagram at Emotional Abuse Coach. You can find my website, emotionalabusecoachcom and my email at Jessica at JessicaNightCoachingcom, and I will talk to you soon.