Abused No More

"How Do I Move On From An Abusive Relationship?"

 

 What stops abused women
getting over the trauma and the pain and
getting their life back? 

"Give me just one hour of your time, each week, for 10 weeks and I guarantee you will feel totally different about your abusive partner, yourself and your life… or your money back." 

 

Dear Friend

Nobody wants to be in an abusive relationship; we both know that.   

So what keeps women there?   

I don’t know you, but I do have an idea of what you’re feeling right now, because I’ve been there.  I’ve felt the despair and the fear, the shame and the worthlessness, the paralysis and the self-loathing. 

If anyone had told me then that one 10 hour course, spread over 10 weeks, would have transformed everything and fast-tracked my recovery, I’d have laughed in their face. 

"10 hours to move on from the misery of an abusive relationship?" 

"10 hours to put behind me a man I still ‘loved?" 

"10 hours to clear the self-doubt and believe that I can have a great future?" 

Over the last 8 years I’ve worked with over 7,500 women, helping them to heal from an abusive relationship.  I’ve discovered the very best techniques and strategies for healing and the most powerful ways to communicate them.   

Because I did it the hard way, I do everything possible to make healing as fast and painless as possible for the women I work with.   

Over the 10 week Accelerated Healing Teleclass Program you’ll learn how to let go of your abusive relationship once and for all.

CLICK HERE to discover what stops abused women reclaim their lives and how they can overcome the fear and shame look forward to a much, much better future.

Skipping In The Car Park For Joy!

Someone contacted me last week to tell me how worried her family were about her. 

 

You see, they found out that she had been skipping in a car park, one evening.

 

This woman had completed the June Healing Journey Teleclass Program, finally closed the door on her abusive relationship, once and for all, and was feeling a wellspring of happiness inside her. 

 

That was what led her to skip in that car park; a feeling of joy at being alive that she hadn't had in years, and years.  A belief that she had a life ahead of her.

 

Her family didn't recognize her.  They wondered if she had become 'unstable'.  They had become so used to the 'ground down' version of her, that anything else seemed odd, worrisome.

 

How sad is that? 

 

What took her from depressed, downtrodden and despairing, to the kind of person who could skip spontaneously for joy? 

 

It was all the things she discovered on the Healing Journey Program. 

 

If you had told her what would happen when she signed up for the program, she would never have believed it.  She'd thought that just maybe there was an outside chance it might help.  Instead, it transformed her life.

 

I'd love to help you to get the same result in just 10 weeks. 

 

Okay, so maybe you don't want to skip in car parks.  How about singing out loud, for joy?  Or laughing out loud because something strikes you as funny?  Or enjoying feeling liked, and likeable?

 

If you want to feel more happiness now, I'd urge you to join the Healing Journey Teleclass Program that started this Monday, November 2nd.  You're still in time to hear all the teleclasses and reap the benefits.

 

CLICK HERE to sign up to your Emotional Abuse Healing Journey Teleprogram.

 

"Was I married to your husband?"

 

 

As I often joke to a friend of mine, who has married and divorced 3 times by age 40, I only made the one mistake, but I made it in depth, over a couple of decades. 

 

So, in reality, I’m quite clear about who I was married to; and I can say, with confidence, that he was one dubious pleasure that you have been spared. 

 

Still, abused women often ask me: “Were you married to my husband?” because my abusive ex-husband sounds so much like their own abusive partner.

 

Now my husband was a physician and a cyclist, who sometimes abused alcohol, but did not have substance addictions of any kind.  He was a bright, articulate Antipodean, and the child of two concentration camp survivors.

 

In terms of the facts, he may be very different from your own abusive partner. In terms of behaviour and temperament, I’m guessing he was quite similar. 

 

He was controlling (although he could never be bothered to check up on me, as some abusive men do). 

 

He was punitive and much given to sabotaging any good moments I enjoyed. 

 

He hated women in general, and me in particular. 

 

He seethed with a deep sense of not being good enough and put me down to make himself feel better; and he told me I would never find anyone as good as him again. 

 

He was, as I have since found out, lousy at reading the future, and wrong in his predictions, but he was very persuasive, and much given to making dire prognostications – about my future, naturally. 

 

He habitually used words to humiliate and hurt, but he could do quite a nice line in passive aggression also. 

 

He flew into what appeared to be uncontrolled rages, but they were not.  He was calculating enough not to overstep the limits he had set himself. 

 

He was an obnoxious, damaging, destructive man, and when he thought he might have gone too far, he told he how much he loved me. 

 

He told me that he loved me, but he did not act in ways that showed love, or suggested that my best interests mattered to him at all.

 

He was callous and complained consistently about how I hurt his feelings.

 

He withheld love and reproached me for being needy.

 

He was unappreciative of all that I did and told me endlessly how I disappointed him.

 

And I told myself, and the world that I loved him, that he was a good man really who had had a hard time. 

 

He taught me that having had a hard time gave him the right to give me a hard time.  (Curiously, I did not have the same right; not because having had a hard time doesn’t give anybody the right to give other people a hard time, but because my hard time never mattered.  It was never as hard as his hard time etc etc.)

 

Does he sound familiar?

 

Abusive men are much more like one another than they are like anyone else. 

 

They are not your fault. 

 

We do them, and ourselves, no favours at all when we tolerate their bad behaviour.  Like spoilt children, indulging them only allows them to become worse.  But, as chronological adults, it is for them to take responsibility for their own behaviour; not us.  No matter how much they may tell us that their bad behaviour is our fault, that doesn’t make it true. 

 

We do ourselves no favour when we make excuses for them.  Interestingly, we stop doing so when we realize that our partner is not so much a ‘tortured individual’ as an ill-tempered, immature – and torturing – clone. 

 

I was never married to your husband, nor you to mine; happily for both of us.  But we have both ‘been there, done that, and sported the same T-shirt’. 

 

How wonderful that we can always make the decision not to be ‘fashion victims’ any longer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you feel like “the bad guy”?

  

Yesterday I was talking with a woman whose abusive partner has finally left.

Now, in an ideal world, this would be cause for celebration; women would hold “Thank God he’s gone!” parties, cards of congratulations would be sent, you’d be able to buy appropriate celebration cakes… In short, there would be public and private jubilation.

In practice, as we all know, it isn’t like that.  In practice, as an abused woman, you feel like you are drowning in a sea of fear and anxiety, and all you have to hold on to is a fragile splinter of self-belief. 

You worry that you will never be able to manage without him, that you could be making the biggest mistake of your life.  (Rest assured, the mistake – if such it was – was starting a relationship with him; not finishing it.)

You worry about being “the bad guy”.  If he makes a better relationship next time around, then that will prove that you were “the bad guy”.  Allegedly. 

You worry how people will judge you; especially if you had the misfortune of being with one of the superficially charming members of the breed. 

I’ve said many times that abusive men are far more likely to be believed by other people when they are lying than are abused women, when they are telling the truth.

Generally, this is very upsetting to abused women because they desperately need validation from other people.  They need that validation because they have been so thoroughly programmed by an abusive partner to believe that there is nothing good about them. 

Sadly, that programming does not up and leave when the abusive partner does.  If only…

Think about it for a moment: when your abusive partner finally ‘takes himself out of your misery’ the chances are that you are at rock bottom.  Logically speaking, who is likely to be more convincing?

Or, to put it another way, you have been living with an emotional vampire.  By the time he finally leaves, he has been feeding off you for so long that he has sucked you dry.  Who are other people going to prefer to identify with?  Remember these are the people who like to believe that nasty things don’t happen in their cozy little world, but only in foreign places far, far away.

The abuser will often present as a picture of physical and mental health – and why wouldn’t he, given all the transfusions he has had from you?  You, on the other hand, are a shadow of yourself; physically, mentally, and emotionally. 

There are lots of ‘nice’ people who cross the street so that they don’t have to speak to someone who, they have discovered, has cancer.  It can be the same kind of reflex with abused women.

Equally, it can happen because the 'street-crossers' belong to some kind of organization that believes the sanctity of institutions (like marriage) far outweighs the well being of individuals.

If that is their belief, there is no way that you can ever change it.

In fact, the bottom line is you can never, ever hope to persuade anyone of anything they don’t want to believe.  (Not even abusive men can really do that; they can undermine you, totally, but brainwash you as they may they can never completely silence your own beliefs and convictions.)

Maybe the ‘nice people’ will see you as “the bad guy”.  That is what is known as collateral damage. 

You cannot change their minds with your powers of persuasion.  You cannot change their minds, so the most useful thing you can do is to let go of trying.

Work on yourself. 

Grow your own certainty about the rightness of your decision.

(For the record; you made absolutely the right decision.  Not only will you never regret it but, as time goes on, you will be more and more delighted that you had the courage to make it.)

As you grow your belief in your own decision, so you will grow in stature.  When that happens, other people realize that you are “the good guy” without you having to do anything to persuade them. 

But, then, you wouldn’t anyway.  Because you will have stopped caring.  You’’ll have, as they say, bigger fish to fry; you’ll be focusing on more important, and constructive, stuff going on in your life that what they think.

If you want help in shifting that "bad guy" complex fast, then sign up for the Accelerated  Healing Journey Teleclass Program here.

"I love you, I'm sorry..."

“I love you, I’m sorry…”

 

 

Today I revisited one of those dark places of the soul. 

 

I sit here with brilliant sunlight streaming in through my window as I write this and think back to what my coach once said to me about those dark places that we – I – fall back into. 

 

She said: “The more you move on, the more the Universe likes to test you.  It’s as if the Universe is saying: ‘Okay! You’ve learned how to cope at that level.  But what happens when we up the ante?  What happens if we throw you a curve ball when you are least expecting it?’”

 

Because personal growth is all about learning how to deal more and more effectively with ‘stuff’. 

 

It’s about learning to deal better, and faster, with the things that ‘Life’ throws at us, and get back on track feeling good about yourself and your life.

 

Just as an abusive relationship creates a downward spiral into despair and self-loathing; recovery and personal growth require that we create an upwards spiral into self-worth and faith.

 

Faith in ourselves, obviously.  (Not the kind of crazy, disempowered faith we once placed in an abusive man, because we had too little love for ourselves ever to truly believe that we held anything good inside ourselves.)

 

So today another challenge landed at my door, a slow travelling product of old, negative patterns and beliefs. (These old patterns and beliefs lumber slowly through space to ‘re-attach’ themselves to us when we hesitate momentarily in our onward movement; and, sometimes, even when we do not.)   

 

After wrestling with this challenge for a while, I finally got it; I understood another piece of the puzzle of consistently creating joy and happiness in life.

 

I don’t know if you have heard of Ho’oponopono, as described in Dr Joe Vitale’s book: “Zero Limits”.  Ho’oponopono is described as: “The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Peace, and More”.

 

This System consists, essentially, of repeating just four phrases:

 

 

“I love you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Please forgive me.”

“Thank you.”

 

Now, I won’t go into the way the book develops its thesis, only how I connected with those phrases today. 

 

Working with abused women, and working with myself, I could hardly fail to notice how good we are at ‘stacking misery’. We stack misery when we pile one strongly felt state on top of another; the result is a very intensely felt emotion. 

 

In case you are in any doubt about how this works, let me explain it to you.  Something upsetting happens.  Within a fairly short time (it may be hours, minutes, or even seconds) you think of another time when something else upsetting happened, and another, and another.  In other words, you pile one upset on another, on another, until you end up feeling utterly helpless and powerless. 

 

So, in concrete terms, you start from the trigger: something upsetting in the here and now.  An element of shame may come into it; you may ask yourself: “how could I let that happen to me?”  (Because shame is never far from an abused woman’s consciousness.)  And then you start to explain it to yourself: “I did X, because I felt awful, and I felt awful because this had happened to me, and …”

 

Before you know it, you have listed upsets from last month, last year, and ten years (or more) ago, to justify your initial response to the upset.

 

And how do you feel?

 

Terrible.

 

That’s exactly what I was doing today. 

 

And then I finally got it. 

 

I was still punishing myself. 

 

Over recent months a family member has behaved less than well.  I’ve revisited that person’s behaviour rather often.  (I was upset.)

 

And I was punishing myself.

 

What happens, happens.  Period.  It has nothing to do with ‘being our fault’ or ‘not being our fault’.  It just happens.

 

We don’t have to punish ourselves.

 

It serves no useful purpose.

 

And yet we do.

 

Doing so keeps us stuck in the same loop: stacking misery, feeling powerless, staying stuck.

 

I decided it was time to clean up my dialogue with myself.  I can’t change what’s happened, and I certainly can’t change other people. 

 

But I can choose whether or not I want to remain stuck in pointless shame and pain. I can choose whether I want to sink, or swim.

 

And so I apologised to myself for keeping myself stuck like that, for ‘stacking misery’:

 

“I love you; I’m sorry.” 

 

I finally got it: it’s not about the other person, or the event, it’s about us.  It's about whether we create misery or happiness for ourselves.

 

What is the point of using a trigger to punish ourselves? And how will we ever know if we have punished ourselves enough?

 

What happens when we let go?

 

“I love you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Please forgive me.”

“Thank you.”

 

When will you give yourself a break?

 

 “I love you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Please forgive me.”

“Thank you.”

 

 

 

What Abused Women Believe To Be True

 

This morning I was talking with a dear friend.  She and I trained together in an alternative therapy over a decade ago.  We had the kind of training that left us very doubtful of our ability ever to be very good practitioners of that particular therapy.  (But that didn’t stop us being passionate about the therapy.)

 

Yesterday, someone called me to praise my friend to the hilt.  She was an ‘absolute treasure’ who had ‘turned one particular client’s life around’.  This person ‘couldn’t praise her enough’; she worked ‘magic’.  This person said all the things about my friend that we used to hear about senior therapists in this field.  In short, my friend is now spoken of as one of those amazing, senior therapists.  I called my friend to celebrate her coming of age with her.

 

But did she believe it?

 

You’ve guessed it: she did not. 

 

What she said was this: “It must be a case of mistaken identity.  He couldn’t have been talking about me.”

 

You could say that my friend is terminally modest.  I’d say something quite different.  I’d say she is so focused on what she imagines to be true, that she can completely overlook what goes on in the world around her, and all the positive feedback she gets.

 

I’m not suggesting you should be falling off your seat to know more about my lovely friend the therapist, that is not what you read this blog for.  But have you recognised your own pattern here?

 

Just in case you haven’t, let me spell it out for you.  Abused women are gifted individuals in all sorts of ways.  However, they respond to  - well earned – praise as my friend does; rather as if someone had thrown a tarantula into their lap. 

 

Right now I’m guessing that you are struggling with the ‘gifted individuals’ piece. I suspect that you may well have reacted by thinking: “Well, I’m sure some abused women are, but not me. There’s nothing gifted, or special, about me.  (At least, not any more.)”

 

Predictable, or what?

 

Abused women are, in the end, just women; some are more talented than others, sure.  But look at this way: to run uphill with a 50 lb rucksack on your back, requires you to be a better, stronger runner, than the person who runs, unburdened, up that hill.

 

An abusive relationship weighs far heavier on your shoulders than any 50 lb rucksack ever can. 

 

So what happened to my friend, and to you?

 

I believe that Maxwell Maltz (The New Psycho-Cybernetics) has the answer.  He says:

“Human beings always act and feel and perform in accordance with what they imagine to be true about themselves and their environment.”

 

What abused women imagine to be true about themselves and their environment, is what an abusive partner tells them. 

 

Telling the truth is not part of an abusive partner’s job description. If it were, he’d be obliged to admit that he is an insecure, immature, destructive snit [sic] who gets his good feelings from making you feel bad. 

 

Instead an abusive man paints your world in the way that is most supportive of his agenda.

 

You swallow his world-view.  That is your misfortune.

 

And then you find yourself acting and feeling and performing in accordance with his imaginings. 

 

To my friend I said: “Even if, by some chance, that person had got the wrong therapist, I would still encourage you to take their words on board.  Believing in your own gifts will only enable you to be a better therapist, because your unconscious mind will take that judgement on board, and adjust what you imagine about yourself accordingly.”

 

To you I say: “I believe that you are far, far more talented, courageous, and resourceful than you believe you are.  I base that judgement on a long experience of working with abused women.  But even if you believe that I have got it wrong, I would still encourage you take my words on board. 

 

“When you allow my words to change what you imagine to be true about yourself, you become able to act and feel and perform in accordance with that positive view of yourself.

 

“Be open to the idea that some time, very soon, people will talk about you, too,

in terms of ‘magic’ an ‘absolute treasure’ and not being able to praise you enough.  

 

“It will happen.”

 

 

 

"You're Too Sensitive"

Has your abusive partner ever told you: “You’re too sensitive?”

 

Okay, let’s be more precise about this; has your abusive partner repeatedly told you that you are too sensitive?  Because the chances are, if he has said it to you once, he’s said it a thousand times.  That’s how abusive relationships work; an abusive partner throws the same complaints at you over and over again.

Why?

 

We’ll come to that in a moment.  First, let’s deal with the really important question: How has that left you feeling?

 

Clearly, I don’t know you, and I can’t know how you think, but I’m guessing that it leaves you feeling small, needy, pathetic and very, very flawed.  Their partner's accusation of being ‘too sensitive’ tends to make abused women feel as if someone has exposed a very dark, unlovable, immature feeling at the very heart of their being. 

 

In short, it makes them feel unlovable. 

 

There is a reason for this.  When an abusive man says his partner is ‘too sensitive’, that is not just a throwaway remark, triggered by frustration; it is, actually, a well calculated barb with a venomous hidden agenda.

 

“You’re too sensitive”, is code; a code that, I suspect, CLICK HERE to break the code.

Are You In A Trance Of Misery?

I don’t know you, personally. 

 

I don’t know whether or not you have a faith that helps you get through the bad times.  

 

Still, what I do know, from my years and years working with abused women is what keeps women – what has kept you – in a trance of misery.

 

But let’s start from the beginning: in an abusive relationship, your abusive partner puts you into a trance of misery. 

 

How does that happen?

 

It may well be that you were already predisposed to that trance of misery by your childhood. 

 

You may have grown up in a family that projected a (very) negative view of your place in the world.  One way or another they gave you to understand that you CLICK HERE

"He's a Narcisssist"

Recently a number of abused women have told me that their abusive partner is a narcissist.  One or two have asked what I thought about that. 

First let me declare an interest: a long time ago now (happily) it struck me that my abusive husband might be a Narcissist.  Being even more of a technological dinosaur at that time than I am now, I duly scampered off to a bookshop and bought a book about Narcissists.   

I spent quite a lot of time poring over ever word: some seemed to confirm the hypothesis, some contradicted it.  Was he? Wasn’t he?   

It was quite confusing really.  If he was a Narcissist, then I emerged without blame, standing proudly on the moral high ground, the heroic dame who had tried to transform an abusive relationship and love a Narcissist into mental health.  If he was not, then the picture became murky, and I probably deserved some of the blame he was always quick to heap on me. 

So, with the clarity of hindsight, was my husband a Narcissist?   CLICK HERE to carry on reading.

What you learn in an abusive relationship

What did you learn in your abusive relationship? 

 

As an abused woman, you learned, doubtless, that: 

 

·     The world was not safe

·     You would never be good enough, or lovable enough

·     Your judgment would always, always, be wrong

 

There is little doubt that you experienced much, much more as well.  Equally, the chances are that you did not learn the lessons, or at least the most useful lessons, from what you experienced with your abusive partner.  Because you were brainwashed by an abusive man to believe that your judgment was always wrong. 

For now, I’d like you to focus on the curious way in which one thing comes to mean something quite different in an abusive relationship.  It’s something I’ve become increasingly aware of in the past few weeks, as I have caught myself behaving oddly. CLICK HERE to continue reading.

When "it is about you"

Abused women find it hard to make sense of what happened to them. 

Their experience does not tally with their dreams.  Their dreams do not tally with the reality of their abusive relationship but, hey, they won't let a little thing like that tarnish the dream.  Maybe that is because they have a bad case of "Beauty and the Beast Syndrome".  But, you decide for yourself.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful, gifted, generous, young woman.  She was modest also, and so she didn’t really believe that she could possibly be all those things. Still, she got on with her life the best way that she could. 

Like all princesses, even princesses who travel through the world incognito, fairies had been present when she lay as a newborn in her crib.   

Her fairy godmothers had done what they could to shower her with blessings. 

Sadly the wicked fairy (or wicked witch, if you prefer) had appeared and waved her magic wand, casting a spell that would make the baby girl susceptible to self-doubt and self-loathing. 

One fairy godmother had used her last spell to bestow upon the child the gift of intuition, that small, quiet voice that would warn her of danger at every turn in the road.   

Provided she only listened… 

Somewhere along the line she met a dead ringer for The Beast (as in "Beauty and  The Beast").  She knew, from the moment her eyes first fell on this Beast that this  creature was potentially very, very damaging for her.   

That still, small voice warned her. 

But the Beast was a cunning Beast, and  CLICK HERE to carry on reading