207. Healing From Abuse

Today's episode comes from several recent conversations I've been having with clients, and from a new free video series I created called Am I in an Abusive Relationship? This is an area I specialize in and feel deeply passionate about — helping women find the language to describe what happened to them in their relationship.

There are destructive behaviors that show up inside betrayal — the lying, the hiding, the deception. There are behaviors that layer on top of those. And for many of my clients who maybe didn't recognize abusive patterns clearly during the marriage, post-separation abuse comes as a shock. One day they're leaving, and suddenly there's a whole new set of controlling behaviors showing up in ways they weren't prepared for.

Today I want to speak to two groups: those of you still in it — navigating the divorce, feeling pulled back into old dynamics with your soon-to-be ex — and those of you on the other side, wondering why it still doesn't feel like you're fully free yet. Both of those experiences are real, and both deserve to be understood.

Does Your Nervous System Know the Relationship Has Ended?

One of the questions I hear most from clients is: How do I know if I still need to heal from those patterns? How do I know I might repeat them?

Here is what I almost always find when I start exploring that question with someone: their nervous system doesn't know the relationship is over. The body has kept the score. It is still running on the old rules of the relationship — the roles you learned and adjusted to in order to stay safe inside that destructive dynamic.

Some signs that your nervous system may still be living inside that old territory:

- You brace before doing ordinary things — opening your email, making a decision, expressing an opinion, setting a boundary — because somewhere in your body it is still waiting for a negative, chaotic, or manipulative reaction.

- You minimize your own experience when someone shows up harmfully. Your default is to jump straight to making excuses for them, bypassing your own emotions and your own voice.

- You over-explain yourself, justify your choices, or feel like you need permission to make decisions that are fully within your own life.

- You move toward people very quickly and attach very intensely — or the opposite, you pull back fast because closeness feels threatening. Either extreme points to a nervous system that learned to survive in chaos.

- You measure your instincts against what someone else might say. You have a thought or a feeling, and your very next thought is: But what if I'm wrong? What if I'm the problem?

If any of these are landing for you, stay curious rather than ashamed. This is what prolonged exposure to a destabilizing, destructive relationship does to any nervous system. And it is absolutely healable.

The Couple Bubble: How Your Identity Gets Erased

"In an abusive relationship, you don't lose yourself all at once. It happens slowly, subtly — one correction, one criticism, one erasure at a time."

Here is a visual I use often with clients. Imagine drawing two small circles next to each other on a piece of paper — one for you, one for your partner. Now draw a larger circle around both of them. That larger circle is your relationship, your couple bubble.

In a healthy relationship, both of those inner circles stay visible and defined. In a controlling, abusive relationship, your circle starts to fade. Not all at once. It happens through correction, through criticism, through being told who you are often enough that you begin to believe it. You stop trusting your own read on things. You edit yourself before you even have a chance to fully feel what you feel.

And when you look inside that couple bubble after enough time has passed — who do you see? Only the other person.

I had a moment after I left my relationship. I was in my apartment, something happened that would have normally made me angry, and instead I just moved through it easily. I was walking out the door when this wave of clarity washed over me: I am not an angry person. Somewhere along the way I had accepted someone else's story about me as fact. And in that one moment, I took the pen back. I started drawing my own shape again.

That is what healing from abusive patterns is really about. It is not just recovering from what was done to you. It is recovering you.

Post-Separation Abuse: When the Patterns Don't Stop at Divorce

For those of you still in it — actively navigating divorce, post-separation abuse, high-conflict co-parenting — I want to name something that doesn't get nearly enough airtime.

Leaving the relationship does not mean the patterns stop. For many women, new patterns emerge. Litigation that drags far longer than it should. Co-parenting communication that keeps throwing you off balance. Messages that are technically civil, but you know this person, and you know exactly what they are doing. The performance of reasonableness in front of others while something completely different is happening behind the scenes.

And one of the most disorienting parts? The people around you are not seeing it. They see the nice version. And then you start questioning your own reality: Am I overreacting? Am I the difficult one?

You are not. What you're dealing with is someone who used control as a relational strategy. Losing formal access to you does not change the strategy — it just changes the avenue.

Here is where your power lives in this phase:

- Know your window of tolerance before you respond to any message. If you are dysregulated, you do not respond yet.

- Ground your body before you open a text or email from them.

- Move their contact to a separate folder you consciously choose to open when you are ready.

- Silence their notifications so your phone is no longer a source of hypervigilance.

- Have a communication protocol and do not deviate from it, no matter how they respond.

- Build a small inner circle of people who believe you, know you, and can hold the full picture of what you are navigating.

You are not powerless. You are in the hardest part of this process. Those are not the same thing.

What Healing from Abusive Patterns Actually Looks Like

I want to be honest with you here, because I think healing gets described in ways that sound clean and linear and box-checkable. That has not been my experience, and it is not what I witness in my clients.

Healing from abuse patterns is not a single moment. I see it as a series of small renegotiations your nervous system makes with what real safety actually is — because in that relationship, chaos had to feel safe in order for you to stay. Which means real safety might actually feel threatening at first.

Getting your shape back starts very small. Here is one place I often tell clients to begin: your food. In the morning, when you make your coffee or your tea, stop and look at what you chose. Ask yourself why. Say it out loud. Is this what you actually want? Or is it what they wanted, and you just kept choosing it?

It sounds simple. It is supposed to. In a controlling relationship, so much of what you did was reactive — calibrating constantly to their mood, to what was safe, to what kept the peace. Your choices stopped being your choices. They became survival strategy.

So you start with the small things. Am I saying yes to something I really want to say no to? Why am I avoiding this conversation? Why do I feel guilty for resting? What am I apologizing for right now?

Not to judge any of those answers. Just to notice. That awareness — that simple act of asking why — is how you start to find out who you are again when no one is watching.

The sandwich matters. Start there.

Signs That Real Healing Is Underway

One day you will notice:

- You made a decision and you did not spend three days second-guessing it.

- Someone raised their voice and your body registered that they were frustrated — instead of concluding that you were in danger and must have done something wrong.

- You had an opinion that was different from someone else's, and you did not automatically edit it to manage their reaction.

- You trusted something in your gut a little sooner than you used to — and that trust turned out to be warranted.

- You stopped needing someone to validate your experience before you could trust it as real.

The clearest sign I see in clients that real healing is underway: they stop outsourcing their reality. They start trusting what they notice. What they feel. What their body already knows.

Your Power in All of This

Your power is not in changing the other person. It is not in finally getting the acknowledgment you deserve. It is not in waiting for things to become fair — because none of this is fair.

Your power is in your relationship with yourself. Learning to listen to your body again. Knowing that you have the right to be wrong and change your mind — but believing your body first.

When you build the kind of internal safety that means their chaos can be loud and still not reach the center of you, that is when you know you are getting your power back.

The work you are doing, even by just listening to this episode, is not wasted. You are building something. You are starting to draw your shape again — and this time, you are the one holding the pen.

Journal Prompt

What is one place in my life right now where I am still operating from the old rules and roles?

Write it out. Take the next week to notice what shows up.

Resources

Free Video Series: Am I in an Abusive Relationship? — amiewoolsey.com

Work with Amie: lifecoachingwithamie.com