Hang In There

"If it could happen to me, it can happen to anyone." - Dr. Christine Cocchiola

In this episode, your host sits down with Dr. Christine Cocchiola, one of the most trusted voices in the field of coercive control, for a conversation about something so many survivors know deeply but struggle to explain. The words were never lost. They were taken.

The house where the rules keep changing. The child who learns to listen for footsteps. The adult partner who feels careful, confused, and smaller, without ever being able to say exactly why.

Dr. Cocchiola walks us through what coercive control actually feels like from the inside. The grooming that feels like love. The isolation that feels like care. The moment you realize the cage has been getting smaller for years. And why survivors so often can't explain what happened to them, not because nothing happened, but because the confusion was intentional.

This conversation also goes deeper, into how children feel coercive control in their bodies before they ever have words for it. Into why abusers choose the people they choose. And into what becomes possible when language finally returns.

Because naming what happened is often where healing begins.

Learn more about Dr. Cocchiola at www.coercivecontrolconsulting.com, listen to her podcast Perfect Prey, and watch her TEDx Talk "It's All Coercive Control" here.

Send us Fan Mail

The personal experiences shared in this podcast are the opinions of the individuals sharing them and are not intended to serve as professional advice or constitute accusations about any other person, organization, or group. We encourage you to seek professional support and assistance. 

The topics discussed in this podcast may be distressing and triggering for some listeners and could impact your mental health. 

The content of this podcast is intended for educational and awareness purposes only.

For more information and resources, please visit hanginthere.net.

A message to the survivors who are still living inside abuse- You are not forgotten.

This episode of Hang In There is dedicated to the survivors who are still living inside abuse.

To those who cannot safely leave yet.
To those who cannot speak yet.
To those who are doing everything they can just to make it through another day.

If you are listening quietly, please know this: you are not alone, and you are not forgotten.

Survivors around the world are speaking, building communities, and working to create systems that finally protect families and children. 

This episode is a message of recognition, solidarity, and hope.

If you are able, please help share this episode so it can reach the survivors who may need to hear it most.

We speak.
We rise.
We protect the next one.

Send us Fan Mail

The personal experiences shared in this podcast are the opinions of the individuals sharing them and are not intended to serve as professional advice or constitute accusations about any other person, organization, or group. We encourage you to seek professional support and assistance. 

The topics discussed in this podcast may be distressing and triggering for some listeners and could impact your mental health. 

The content of this podcast is intended for educational and awareness purposes only.

For more information and resources, please visit hanginthere.net.

"From the outside, it can look like someone simply went to work. They showed up. They did their job. They made it through the day."

In this episode, you are walked through one ordinary day as a trauma survivor, hour by hour, from the moment your eyes open at 5 am to the moment you pull into the driveway.

The scanning before getting out of bed. The checking inside the car before getting in. The three shots of espresso just to function. The mascara that still triggers a memory every single morning. The trucks on the highway that flood your body before your mind can catch up.

The unpredictable work assignment that throws your nervous system completely. The background music you screen all day while trying to do your job. The moment you run out of the room, covering your ears. The coworker who leaves his own break to help you take yours.

And the quiet, devastating realization mid-shift, "you are trapped. Just like you were in the trucks. Just like you were in the house."

This episode is for every survivor who has ever shown up to their life while fighting a battle nobody else could see. And for everyone who loves a survivor and wants to understand what that battle actually looks like.

Trauma doesn't just live in memory. It lives in the nervous system. And sometimes the strongest thing a person can do is simply get through the day.

Send us Fan Mail

The personal experiences shared in this podcast are the opinions of the individuals sharing them and are not intended to serve as professional advice or constitute accusations about any other person, organization, or group. We encourage you to seek professional support and assistance. 

The topics discussed in this podcast may be distressing and triggering for some listeners and could impact your mental health. 

The content of this podcast is intended for educational and awareness purposes only.

For more information and resources, please visit hanginthere.net.

"I'm nearly 50 years old and only recently allowed to work on myself."

This episode explores one of the most profound questions a survivor can ask: "Who am I now?" Not who I had to be. Not who I learned to become in order to survive. But who I actually am.

It reflects on the person who existed before, carefree, fearless, fully alive, and traces how that person didn't disappear. She adapted. She learned to stay small, question herself, and ignore her own needs. And now she is gently unlearning all of it.

It also explores what healing looks like in real, unglamorous terms, music triggers leaving a person exhausted, a birthday party sending someone to the bathroom in tears, calling a loved one just to hear their voice.

And it speaks to the survivors still wondering whether they lost themselves, with a quietly powerful effect. You didn't lose yourself either. The person you were before, the one who was curious and carefree and fully alive, is still there. Buried maybe. But still there.

"I didn't lose myself. I adapted. But that adaptation came with a cost. And now I'm learning how to live as the person I've always been, the part of me that never left."

Send us Fan Mail

The personal experiences shared in this podcast are the opinions of the individuals sharing them and are not intended to serve as professional advice or constitute accusations about any other person, organization, or group. We encourage you to seek professional support and assistance. 

The topics discussed in this podcast may be distressing and triggering for some listeners and could impact your mental health. 

The content of this podcast is intended for educational and awareness purposes only.

For more information and resources, please visit hanginthere.net.

"I'm so tired of him slipping into moments that should be mine."

This episode explores what it can feel like when a buried memory surfaces without warning, pulling a survivor straight back into a moment the brain had hidden just to make functioning possible.

It explores what freezing looks like in those moments. The urge to cross the room and comfort someone. The silence that follows. The panic attack that comes later in the dark.

It then breaks down the neuroscience of self-blame, why protective parents blame themselves for things they could not control, why self-blame becomes a survival strategy, and why the guilt survivors carry is not a character flaw but a core symptom of CPTSD.

It also speaks directly to the hypervigilant parent, the one whose nervous system never fully turned off after the danger ended, who still scans for threats, still intervenes before harm can happen, and still struggles to let their adult children simply be adults.

"We should not be paying the lifelong cost of the system's failure through diagnoses like CPTSD. And our children should not be paying with their childhoods."

This episode contains an optional 12-minute skip for listeners who find flashback content activating.

Send us Fan Mail

The personal experiences shared in this podcast are the opinions of the individuals sharing them and are not intended to serve as professional advice or constitute accusations about any other person, organization, or group. We encourage you to seek professional support and assistance. 

The topics discussed in this podcast may be distressing and triggering for some listeners and could impact your mental health. 

The content of this podcast is intended for educational and awareness purposes only.

For more information and resources, please visit hanginthere.net.

"Are you listening?"

This episode is different. It is not a story. It is not a clinical explanation. It is a direct appeal, spoken on behalf of survivors everywhere, to the judges, lawmakers, attorneys, and every person whose decisions determine the safety and futures of abuse survivors and their children.

It explores the cost to survivors when the system doesn't listen. What PTSD actually looks like in a courtroom. What happens when documentation is ignored. What it means when adult children are silenced by the very system that was supposed to protect them.

It sounds the alarm on the defunding of shelters and victim services, pulling the safety net strand by strand while asking survivors why they can't climb out.

It also asks the question that millions of survivors have been asking for decades: why are we still asking why she didn't just leave instead of asking why our country didn't help her feel safe enough to go?

Change is coming. Survivors are speaking. Children are finding their voices. And this time the world will not be able to look away.

Disclaimer:
The statements in this episode describe personal experience and widely documented systemic issues in family courts. They are not directed at any specific judge, attorney, or individual, and no reference is made to any identifiable person or case. Any resemblance to real individuals is coincidental and unintentional.

The content of this episode is opinion-based, experience-based, and advocacy-driven.
It should not be treated as legal advice, nor as a factual claim about any public official. Its purpose is to push for safer systems, accountability, and a future where survivors and children are truly heard.

Send us Fan Mail

The personal experiences shared in this podcast are the opinions of the individuals sharing them and are not intended to serve as professional advice or constitute accusations about any other person, organization, or group. We encourage you to seek professional support and assistance. 

The topics discussed in this podcast may be distressing and triggering for some listeners and could impact your mental health. 

The content of this podcast is intended for educational and awareness purposes only.

For more information and resources, please visit hanginthere.net.

"I'm looking at pictures of you for the first time in years and my heart is racing. My chest is tight. I'm shaking. I've spent less than 10 seconds looking."

This episode explores how a specific voice and a specific band became one of the most powerful PTSD triggers a survivor can carry, not because of who the artist is, but because of the environment their music once filled.

It walks through every physical sensation of a PTSD trigger, the tingling, the numbness, the nausea, the shaking, the dissociation, and explains exactly what is happening neurologically when the body reacts before the mind can catch up.

It also walks through the process of exposure therapy in real time, the fear, the stopping, the starting again, the cooking dinner with the music playing in the background, and the slow, hard work of building new associations.

And it finds something unexpected along the way, compassion. For the artist. For the survivor. And ultimately, the strength to separate the two.

"He took so much of my life from me. I will not give him anything else."

This episode contains a personal note: all references to Axl Rose and Guns N' Roses describe the host's own trauma response only and imply no wrongdoing by these individuals.

Send us Fan Mail

The personal experiences shared in this podcast are the opinions of the individuals sharing them and are not intended to serve as professional advice or constitute accusations about any other person, organization, or group. We encourage you to seek professional support and assistance. 

The topics discussed in this podcast may be distressing and triggering for some listeners and could impact your mental health. 

The content of this podcast is intended for educational and awareness purposes only.

For more information and resources, please visit hanginthere.net.

"Have you ever wished there were no holidays at all? No long weekends? No extra time at home? Because extra time at home means extra time with the person hurting you?"

This episode explores the hidden reality of the holidays for abuse survivors, why domestic violence incidents rise by as much as 20% this time of year, why extra togetherness brings dread instead of joy, and why leaving during the holidays is often the most dangerous time to try.

It walks through the financial traps that can arise during the holiday season, big purchases, joint credit, draining savings, using children's gifts as a form of control, and explores why these tactics are designed to make leaving harder.

It also speaks directly to survivors navigating abusive family of origin relationships, the manipulation of religious language, and the truth about no contact; you do not owe anyone your holiday just because they share your blood.

This episode closes with a guided self-compassion exercise for survivors.

You are worthy of love. You deserve safety. Not someday. Right now.

Send us Fan Mail

The personal experiences shared in this podcast are the opinions of the individuals sharing them and are not intended to serve as professional advice or constitute accusations about any other person, organization, or group. We encourage you to seek professional support and assistance. 

The topics discussed in this podcast may be distressing and triggering for some listeners and could impact your mental health. 

The content of this podcast is intended for educational and awareness purposes only.

For more information and resources, please visit hanginthere.net.

"You're never backsliding. You're always higher in elevation than when you started."

In this episode, your host welcomes Tara Floersch, a licensed clinical social worker and trauma specialist at Conscious Healing Counseling in Minnesota, and the therapist who built a unique collaboration that brings therapy directly to the Alexandra House shelter.

Tara breaks down the neuroscience of trauma in plain language, why triggers feel like they're happening right now even years later, why the fawn response is the most common survival reaction in domestic violence, and why leaving can actually feel more unsafe to the brain than staying.

She explains the critical difference between PTSD and Complex PTSD, what inner child work has to do with relationship patterns, and why your brain's love of predictability can keep survivors drawn back to what hurt them.

She also tackles the practical barriers, what to do if your abuser controls the insurance, how to find a DV-informed therapist, and how Alexandra House now offers free walk-in counseling with no insurance needed.

You are always in the driver's seat in therapy. This episode will help you understand what that means and why it matters.

Send us Fan Mail

The personal experiences shared in this podcast are the opinions of the individuals sharing them and are not intended to serve as professional advice or constitute accusations about any other person, organization, or group. We encourage you to seek professional support and assistance. 

The topics discussed in this podcast may be distressing and triggering for some listeners and could impact your mental health. 

The content of this podcast is intended for educational and awareness purposes only.

For more information and resources, please visit hanginthere.net.

"You do not know what loneliness is until you have encountered a narcissistic relationship in your life."

This episode explores why narcissistic abuse is a universal problem that crosses every culture, country, and community, and why the patterns are always the same regardless of where you live.

Shweta Nema, corporate professional, survivor of narcissistic abuse, author of Unmasking the Evil, and global advocate, breaks down the key tactics narcissists use: trauma bonding, triangulation, mirroring, gaslighting, smear campaigns, and financial abuse.

The conversation also explores the difference between someone with narcissistic traits and someone with full-blown narcissistic personality disorder, and what the path to healing can look like after 15 years in a narcissistic relationship.

Two survivors from opposite sides of the world. The same story. Proof that abuse knows no borders, and neither does healing.

Send us Fan Mail

The personal experiences shared in this podcast are the opinions of the individuals sharing them and are not intended to serve as professional advice or constitute accusations about any other person, organization, or group. We encourage you to seek professional support and assistance. 

The topics discussed in this podcast may be distressing and triggering for some listeners and could impact your mental health. 

The content of this podcast is intended for educational and awareness purposes only.

For more information and resources, please visit hanginthere.net.