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Blog – Rebuilding your Life

Disengage

The number one concept that keeps us trapped in a toxic situation is that we can’t let go of what we envisioned our ideal lives to be. Women as a whole are tenacious, we see adversary as a challenge and attack it head on. In an abusive relationship however, we may as well be attacking a brick wall head on. All we accomplish is the destruction of ourselves, the depletion of our emotional and mental energy as well as our financial resources. While we are trying to fix our relationship and move forward, our toxic partners are building themselves up for their next chapter with no regard to anything else.

Cliff Notes

  • Identify the need to leave the situation
  • Emotionally disengage
  • Be willing to reimagine your future

Now, your toxic partner will absolutely notice when you start to practice emotional disengage. The Pop Psychology terms are “Gray Rock” and “Yellow Rock” and they are used often to describe this type of mindset. When they can’t drive you absolutely insane with their normal BS, they react in two ways. First, they will do anything to keep your heart dangling on the line. It’s not over until they say it is. If a hot button issue in your relationship was the lack of alone time, for example, all the sudden they’ll initiate a date night. If you fought often over household chores, they’ll be pitching in overnight. They know what it would take to make you happy and create a functioning relationship, they’ve just been withholding it for their own sick pleasure. This is the stage where so many quests to leave stall out. I’m guilty of it myself. We’ve been starved of any attention and affection for so long, we mistake these bare minimum gestures as a desire to change and make things work. They aren’t. As long as it takes for you to stop the emotional disengagement is how long this stage will last. As soon as they feel you fully invested in the relationship once again, the switch will flip and you’ll find yourself back at square one. The interesting part about this particular type of emotional abuse, is that not only do they go right back to their old habits, they escalate. A very clear middle finger in your face, laughing at you for being so naive.

Don’t beat yourself up. Take the lesson and keep going.

The Second reaction to your disengagement and one that I experienced the most often, is the violent escalation. The toxic individual needs all your attention on them. The entire household is only there to cater to them and putting your attention anywhere else, even if it’s just on yourself for a change, will not work for them. I experienced this escalation as Domestic Violence.

We can create a plan for your unique situation, whether you are just starting your journey to freedom or need specific help along the way

Moving On

Imagine, a bleeding, limping animal of prey in a forest full of starving carnivorous animals. This is you after you leave that abusive relationship. Inevitably, you will encounter a savior, the being sent from above to slay all your enemies and whisk you away to a perfect life. No.

The Savior complex, the God complex, the #whiteknight (see article) the Mr. “I’m not like the rest of them” will always, always turn out to be the King of all the rest of them. The rest of them embodied into one broken, psychotic, seriously flawed individual who will “save” you and every other female he encounters as well. Run.

When you fail to stroke his ego appropriately, he will cheat.

When you fail to defer to him in every situation, he will turn on you.

When you find the courage to shine once again, he will pull out all the stops to suffocate and shame your light.

These God complex types need to be worshipped 24/7 and the amount of energy it takes to stroke their insatiable egos in a vain attempt to keep them faithful, is a waste of your precious life.

I use the pronoun “he” but rest assured, I’ve encountered plenty of females in this role as well. Take my pronoun usage loosely.

The level of mind boggling fuckery is beyond my years of mental health studies. Our parent’s and grandparent’s generations dealt with infidelity and physical abuse, but the elevation of psychological warfare far surpasses anything they ever encountered. One minute he’s accusing you of not being there when he wants you to be and three seconds later he’s “reconnected” online with a mistress from the past. One day he’s installing cameras at your house to “keep you safe” and the next he’s accusing you of cheating when you fail to check in for a grocery run. All the familiar patterns fall into place and before you know it, you’re in the same abusive relationship with a different man. By this time, you’ve shared all your past traumas, they know exactly what your ex did to keep you trapped in place for so long and they know how to not only replicate it, but take it up enough notches to keep you trapped forever.

Take it from me, the only way to avoid this pitfall is to do your inner work and forget that men exist until your nervous system is completely healed.

I don’t care how genuine he seems, whether or not you’ve been through the same traumas or if he deems himself ready to move on. He will destroy you if you aren’t strong enough to date yet.

Not all men are predatory sociopaths, but the ones who seek you out at the lowest point in your life, inevitably are.

Save Yourself.

Let’s Talk Intuition

It’s a blessing, it’s a curse. How envious I am of those who get to walk through life, blissfully unaware. The blessing end protects us at our most vulnerable, the curse is that we are faced with dealing with the burden of knowledge. I think it’s probably the same for most of us, the knot in our stomach, the shift in energies and that familiar sick feeling that someone we trusted has let us down in a big way. When I was younger, I faced these suspicions head on, ready for battle. I spent twenty years of marriage playing the proverbial detective and I am not pleased to announce that I was right every time. The knot turns into coincidences which turn into lies. Of course, those of us who have been in toxic relationships with emotionally stunted individuals know that as soon as the coincidences expose the lies and we work up the courage to address them, we will be met with immediate rage, lies, denials and the very best part, turning it back on us using mental gymnastics that would impress even Freud.

So what do you do with all this?

You’ve confronted, no matter how gently you approach, the rage level from the toxic individual will remain the same. The silence is killing you. You’ve been gathering evidence for weeks, months, because you know that as soon as you bring it up, they’ll start off with the entirely unoriginal “your’e crazy”. Your evidence will go unnoticed and no matter how distressed you are, they won’t ever own up to their actions. They will continue the mental gymnastics until you give up and resign yourself to a lifetime of misery, or leave. Depending on the type of supply they depend on you for, they’ll either help you pack or guilt you into staying.

You aren’t trapped. It feels like it, whether you’ve been with them for months, years or decades, the level of despair and heartache remains the same.

There is a way out. I will be posting the steps to emotional freedom and practical ways to implement them, even if you are still living under the same roof! These tools are completely free and backed by Psychological Science. You can’t get that just anywhere!