Detaching from an Abusive Relationship

How do we detach from an abusive partner?  This episode explores why detachment feels tough—it's often likened to breaking an addiction—and offer strategies for stepping back.

One common obstacle is the urge to control an ex-partner's actions post-breakup—like checking if they get to work—but this hinders our own healing process. We also tend to manage how much they miss us by monitoring social media interactions or ensuring visibility in their lives.

Detachment isn't just about creating space between you and another person; it’s about prioritizing yourself over someone who has had too much power over you. This podcast covers how to start detaching effectively.

Transcript

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. Hello. And thank you so much for being here as always.

I haven't done a solo episode in a while. It's been so great connecting with so many guests, and I have some really interesting and exciting people coming up soon, but I've also been working on content on solo episodes to just dive back into some of the intricacies, what it feels like and how to begin to heal, recognize and learn from abusive relationships. And so today, I'm going to talk about detach from a narcissist and I just wanna be clear that when I talk about these things, and I use the word narcissist, I use the word of abuser, I use all these different terms what I'm really saying is like, the manipulative person, the person and the relationship. If you don't feel safe, it does matter if I call them Elmo or if I call them like George. They can be called anything.

It doesn't matter if their nurses doesn't matter if they're an abuser, it doesn't... These things don't matter if you don't feel safe. The label doesn't matter. Of course it matters. If you're being abused, I don't want you to be abused or wasn't The only part of this that does not quote unquote matter is label that they're called because it's the label that you're identifying with right now.

And that's what's important. So as you listen to this, if I interchange narcissist abuser and some of these other words. I just wanna tell you. Don't worry about that. So how do you detach?

That's a question that everyone seemed to ask themselves and me. And it probably feels like you will literally never detach. And I know that at least for me, and I know for a lot of people does feel like an addiction, which is also a fact and supported by a lot of research. And if you do feel this way that you literally can't attach, it is very normal. But today, I wanted to just discuss attachment to go over this topic.

And first, I want to start with some ways that you may not. Be detach. I'm gonna go over a few things and this is meant so that you can look at your own behavior, and see where you're in your own way. And even if you don't feel like you can make a change just yet what you can do is notice where these things are happening, and you could, at least you'll be doing them with awareness. So here are some ways you may not be detach.

Wanting to dictate their next moves. Now this may sound like something that they would do, but what I really mean here is allowing them to make mistakes. For example, when I was with an x, I remember after he broke up, I was really worried he wouldn't get to work. And honestly, that's completely on him, whether he gets up and gets to work on time, at all, that's his issue. And often, he was always in his own way with getting to work in the first place but I remember in the early days texting him to check it on it.

Like it would have any difference on my day, but I was convinced that by knowing if he got up and got to work, it mattered, and that I felt like, I couldn't let go of that responsibility that I had of making sure he was taking care of his life, and we all do this in some way, which is similar to the need to rescue them or fix them, I think that a lot of these relationships have patterns of trying to fix the other person. And in a lot of ways, we're trying to save them from being dysfunctional. Or even sick. You may even feel like they so messed up that they can't function without you. They may actually say this to you, which can be anything from I can't live without you to I'm going to commit suicide, and it may be what you tell yourself too to you may have noticed that they barely took care themselves or that you did everything in the relationship.

This is usually whether or not you live with them. And so it may feel like a death sentence to leave them, but you'll need to. We also try and control how and if They miss us. I did this a lot, and many of my clients have done this too and will notice certain things on social media, or oppose things on social media, looking for a specific response, will keep them unblock so that they have access to us we make sure that we see them again somehow showing up in their neighborhood or at an event or with their friends, We will want them to know that we are okay even if we're not. And this puts all the focus on them and not us.

When we don't attach, the focus stays on them, and we only heal if they realize what they did, Bill remorse or they change all of which we can't control. And all of which is not likely for a nurses or an abuser. Both of those personalities and as a reminder if you're a narcissistic relationship. They are abusive, narcissistic behavior abuse. Both personalities believe that they are right.

You are likely trauma and bonded, so you love them, even though they treat you poorly and see the best in them even though they don't deserve it and have it earned it. And learning to detachment help you see that the relationship had these unhealthy boundaries. You'll see things clearly, and in reality. The best way I've heard this described is this. Imagine being bit by a snake instead of helping, yourself heal from the poison, you try to catch the snake to find out the reason, beat you to prove that you didn't deserve it.

That 1 really hit home. Imagine you're being bed by a snake instead of hoping yourself heal from the poison. You try and catch the snake to find out the reason, beat you to prove that you didn't deserve it. Emotional detach is hard and it requires you to really change your thoughts and beliefs. And by learning to detach, you arm the other person by really eradicating their ability to hurt you, which happens over time.

In reality, detecting likely not at the response that you're looking for, but over time, you will begin to care a bit less. About the impacts on the other person and care more about how you can heal yourself. Attaching is really the basis for developing and maintaining save emotional distance from someone who you've previously given a lot of power to. Let's look at that a little bit deeper, a because here are some really hard truths about that. Love does not conquer all.

That belief that love conquer all is false. You cannot love an abuser into being non abusive. What you experienced or experiencing feels like love at times, but it is. It's a trauma bonded experience that is wrapped up in the cycle of abuse. You also cannot rescue or save them.

They are stuck in their own distorted reality. They're trying to rescue them and to change them is futile if they wanted to change or felt like they had to, they would, and they would have before at this point. The person you want them to be conflicts deeply with who they actually are. And the more you try, the more you will be dragged under. You may feel hopeless, obsolete, but you are not, and this is a moment in time in this relationship.

That you feel this way. And your sense of self was questioned over and over, and now it's time for you to move on and recover. Detach is also something that is more about future you. It focuses on the today you who you are today in this moment listening to this podcast and the future version of you. 1 powerful mindset that I had when breaking out an abusive relationship with that the I wanted to break the pattern for myself and for my daughter.

I knew that if I didn't do it, then she'd likely, normalize, this is her reality, just as I did when I was younger, and it might be subconscious or might be conscious. But when you heal the pattern for yourself, you heal the pattern for the generations coming after you. It's clear that detach will help you begin to take space and will help stop letting people take advantage of you in a relationship, but How do we do it? How do we do it when we're so stuck in the cycle? We need to work on the thoughts?

So negative thoughts will sleep and can ruin your day. You will need to be diligent with yourself and on your a game around this. And I'm going to walk you through a purge and talk back. This is the activity I use most often to work on the harmful sa thoughts that keep me stuck. I also just wanna be clear, this is absolutely 1 method of thought work.

There are a lot of methods of thought work. This is 1. A thought purge is when you take every single thought in your head and you put it down on paper. When I do this, I typically have a blank sheet of paper, and I just unload everything that's on my mind on that sheet of paper. And it could be none of it can make sense.

It could be totally irrational. I could be talking myself back into a relationship, the point is I'm getting it all on paper. I'm not letting the room nation continue in my head. And then after it's down, I give myself a break. I get up, I go for a walk.

I get a cup of tea. I might even wait until the next day. If I feel like I gotta a enough of a release from getting every single thought in the way that I talked to myself out on paper. But the key is that you have to come back to it and you have to talk back to those thoughts. I usually pick up a different pen or a pencil, if I used pen or a pen if I used a pencil.

And I start writing back to each thought of how I would want somebody to respond to me that knew me that loved me and that cared about me. And so if the thought said some... At the authentic thoughts said something like, well, I will never love anybody else again. If I wrote back to that thought right after writing that thought, my response would probably be like, an exclamation point like, yeah. Never get like, I will never love anybody again.

After some time, after getting myself a second after regulating my move, after taking deep breaths after even waiting a day, going back to it with the mindset up, I'm going to ride back to myself and the way I'd want somebody who loves me would respond to me, who cared about me. The way I respond would respond to that 1 is, It might feel right now like you'll never love again, but you are settling for a version of love that feels like torture. If a thought said, what if I'm the abuser? I might respond to it. Like, I know I'm not an abuser.

But if that thought was really strong because the other person was accusing me of that all the time, my response might be. I don't think I'm an a user, but if I am, I'm willing to change all my behaviors because I don't want to treat someone that way. If a thoughts said my entire life is about to change. I might write back, it might change, and it might be scary, but there's a lot of possibility on the other side. I like to respond to the authentic in the moment thoughts in a very thoughtful way in a very caring way, in a very...

I'm gonna hold your head and get you to this other side kind of way. And that's how I encourage you to approach it to. I encourage you to approach it in a way that's meeting you where you are. Meeting you with what you need, meeting you with compassion. If you start getting very stuck on a thought, I would really encourage you to just think of a bridge thought.

A thought of how can I help myself get to this point? How can I help myself? Get a bit closer because we don't wanna a salt gas light. Right? If it says, say the thought is like, I'm never going to love again.

The next thought is like, I'm, you know, the authentic, the talk that can't be, I'm gonna meet the love of my life tomorrow. It's not realistic. It's... Something along the lines of, I choose to believe I'm going to love again, or if you feel really confident about it, like, I know I'm going to love again. This just is really hard.

You know, you just sort of... I like to take where I am bridge to the next side. I'm learning to believe I choose to believe all of those kinds of thoughts help you get there. This is not easy. This is something that I work with people on a lot This is something that I know was helpful.

This is something that's a practice though. You know? And if you are really struggling, This is 1 thing you can do every day. It's a time that you give yourself to rum. I used to do it at night and then wake up in the morning and right back to it I did this when I was married.

I did this. Before that, I... I'm a journal I've been journal in my whole life. So writing out these purge. Like, at first, I had to get over this hump, like, I'm not going to journal the way that, like, I normally do, but this is really meant to be a purge.

Right? You might write things down. You don't even believe. But in the moment you do because it's it's in your head. This is 1 method to break the rum illumination, so you can begin to detach because what happens is is like, we have these neural pathways that tell us, these are the thoughts that we believe.

We believe we're never going to love again. We need to start to create some of those other neural pathways. We need to let that part of ourselves speak this part of us that honestly got you to this podcast in the first place. If you didn't think something was on and something was wrong. You would not be here right now.

And so, you know, the thought is gonna come in, It's gonna say, no This is the real 1 going But after doing this a few times, you're gonna start to have another thought on the other side that says, we wait. Maybe there's more. Maybe there's another thing to see. I hope this is helpful. If you feel like you need more support, You can email me at jessica at jessica dot com.

If you want support with just attaching and working on how can I begin? To change my thoughts and that you just want some time just to, like, work on this. You can set up a 1 on 1 with me that is just to focus on this, I called it a validation call, there may not be any reasonable times available. Right now, it's a book on my website. But if you email me, I can let you know if I have anything open sooner.

As if you're here, you know, Single mom. So there are times that I just have some blocks that I may not need that are in there, but that are in there because that's what we do. Saint paris. And if you need additional support or long term support, that's the best way to reach me as well. I know how hard this is.

I say that almost every time I know how hard this is. I know how hard this is, but keep showing up for the future you. That doesn't wanna feel the way that you feel right now. And if you need a few more resources, you can always go to emotional abuse coach dot com and find different ways to connect with me, and I hope to hear from you soon.