Hey there, it’s Kerri! Thank you so much for joining me on this latest episode of Invisible Wounds Healing from Trauma. This is episode 22 and we’re going to talk about the unintended “price we pay” in being involved in a relationship involving an abusive partner. I’m going to add a disclaimer here, because we are going to be discussing specific aspects of Domestic Violence or Intimate Partner Violence and it could be triggering. If it is, pause the episode. Do some mindful belly breathing, or any of the other tools we’ve learned, or one you like to use to get grounded, centered, and feel safe. Then come back when you’re ready.

I’m so glad that we’re walking the path towards healing together!

So just a quick reminder, I’m not a clinician, counselor, or physician. I’m a Certified Trauma Support Specialist with lots of lived experience with trauma. Also, the information presented in this podcast is for educational purposes only and not meant to replace treatment by a doctor or any other licensed professional.  An added note: If you are in a relationship where your safety, mental, physical, and emotional health are at risk, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for help in leaving the relationship safely and other resources. If you are in a situation where you feel you are in immediate danger, please call 911!

Alright let’s dive in!

In the last few episodes, we’ve gone over different types of relationships including abusive relationships, and how those of us with trauma histories can be particularly vulnerable to becoming involved with relationships involving abuse. I want to start off by reminding ourselves that IT IS NOT OUR FAULT! There is so much guilt and shame we associate with ourselves, and our choices. Our trauma histories have already gotten us to the point where we don’t believe in ourselves. Then our abusive partner just reinforces that belief by putting us down, telling us we’re “stupid” or we’re “no good.” We don’t think we can feel any lower than we already do, but layer on top of layer of that reinforcement sinks us right to the bottom.

I absolutely can’t stand that age old statement made by those who have no clue about the dynamics of an abusive relationship: “Why don’t they just LEAVE?!” Sure, in theory, it sounds simple, it’s just a choice you make right? I’m not good with this, I’m outta here! But that’s NOT how this works! To begin with, even though they hurt us, we love these people. We started out with who we thought was a loving, intense, passionate, kind, caring and devoted person. They treated us so lovingly, and well. We had no idea what we were walking into. Once the abusive behavior starts, they start knocking out all of our support systems. They cut us off from friends and family, they control our every move, everything we say and do. It doesn’t take long before we are in a very difficult position. We may have no job, or access to money. We may have no transportation, no way to get around. If we have children, that makes it even MORE difficult! Abusers, tell us that we’d never be able to make it without them, and that no one else would want us, and we believe it, we “buy the lie.” We become prisoners not only through them, but by what we believe in our own minds about ourselves. I know that at times in my abusive relationship, I felt like a trapped or caged animal. My brain constantly raced and alternated between trying to figure out how to be “perfect” to keep him from getting angry, to how I could escape, how would I survive, how could I get money to leave? The biggest fear was what he would do to me if he caught me? If he caught me trying to leave, I knew he’d kill me.  My thoughts were like a hummingbird, wings beating a million times a second, banging around in my head, swirling frantically, trying to find a way out. The answer was usually the same, it “made sense” to wait it out. Surely, I could love the anger and rage out of him, I just needed to do more, be “more” of what he wanted. But there is nothing: no amount of love, no better way to be, no other way to “do” things that will change the fact that an abuser is an abuser. They “get off” on causing us hurt and pain! They crush our souls, completely control us, then feed us just enough crumbs of love, attention, or affection to keep us hooked. The constant “whiplash” of these behaviors leaves us completely deflated, confused, feeling helpless, and hopeless. We live for and are desperate for the return of the person that we first fell in love with.  That person however, never really existed, that was the “hook” they used to get us under their complete control. That was the first lie we bought into, followed of course, by many others.

I’ve mentioned before that it took 5 times of leaving and going back before I stayed away for good. Every time I left; it was an act of complete desperation. I would decide I just couldn’t take it anymore and I would beg my parents to wire me money. My abuser was an extremely heavy daily drinker, so I would wait for him to pass out in bed at night. I could tell by his breathing that he was most likely out cold. Silently, I would grab my stuff out of the closet, and bedroom, terrified that he’d wake up. If he made a sound, or moved I instantly froze, my heart stopping. If he woke up and caught me, I would be dead, so I made peace with that in a strange way. There were times I was really physically injured, and this just made it harder to get my things together, and just move! I would make multiple trips out to load up my car. When I pulled out of the driveway as slowly and carefully as I could, it was gravel, I’d drive down the road slowly and quietly until the house was out of site. Then I’d hit the gas, flying, speeding away as fast as I could. My mind sort of started this “internal timer.” How far away, driving as fast as I could, would I get before he woke up and realized I was gone? I had to dive to a town in Maryland about 45 minutes away to pick up the money my parents had wired me. Several times, I’d get there long before the place was open, so I’d anxiously wait in the car, constantly scanning my surroundings, hoping he wouldn’t have found a way to follow me! When I was able to get the money, I’d drive as fast as I was able to, putting as many miles behind me as I could. Each state line I crossed, the more relieved I felt!

I’d get back to my parents’ house and tried to live some sort of a normal life for a while. With my toxic family, however, that wasn’t possible. I was still really young; and with all of the impacts of all of the traumas that I’d had, just had no clue who I was, what I wanted, needed, or deserved! So, my abuser would start calling the house. My parents would answer the phone, tell him off, or just hang up, but he was desperately persistent. Eventually, he’d get me on the phone, and he was that sweet person I had initially fallen in love with. I still loved him, I missed him, well I missed the person he pretended to be! He would apologize, over and over again for hurting me, saying he was “getting help” and that he wouldn’t do it again. He wrote me long, sweet letters (remember this was long before the days of cell phones and internet) which I loved getting. These things tugged on my heartstrings of course, this is exactly what he knew it would do. This behavior got me back 4 different times! So, I’d decide to go back, and for a while, things were great…. until they weren’t.  Every time I went back, the abuse intensified, and he made it even harder for me to leave. It was like a noose tightening a little more each time, strangling me slowly. When I finally left for good, he still called my parents house off and on for over a year before he finally stopped. He’d call after 11:00 PM, if the phone rang late like that, we knew it was him. It sent chills through me every time, I was still terrified of him.

The price that we end up paying for being in abusive relationships comes with a cost that is too damn high! That cost involves our entire being, body and soul. We end up sacrificing everything we are, everything we have, for someone else. We sacrifice all of the good things, the possibilities, the experiences, the opportunities we might have developed for ourselves. No relationship is ever worth giving up what makes you, YOU! No relationship should make us feel worthless, hopeless, or deprive us of our independence.  No relationship should be one sided: meaning we are giving everything and getting little to nothing in return! No relationship should EVER make us feel like our safety or even our lives, or that of our children’s is in jeopardy! No one has the right to tell us what we can and cannot do or control every aspect of our lives. We have at the very least, the most basic of human rights. In 1948, the United Nations created a document titled “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”  (I’ll link it in my show notes) and you can read it here.  We have the absolute right to live our lives in our own way, and to be treated with dignity, and respect. Every person has the right to live a life free from cruel, degrading, and inhumane treatment. We have the absolute right to live safely, happily, and as well as we can. I know it’s easier said than done however, and it takes seeing ourselves as deserving of all of those things! If we’ve had our spirits and souls broken, how do we begin the process of putting those pieces back together?

We begin by learning, which is what we’re doing together right now. When we learn what trauma has done to us, and how it has impacted us in every way: physically, mentally, emotionally, environmentally, spiritually, financially, socially, and in our relationships with others, we can give ourselves grace. We can begin to understand why we react, respond, and make choices the way we do, why we tend to “choose” the wrong people to be involved with. Remember, we “don’t know what we don’t know!” If we weren’t taught to love, respect, honor, and value ourselves, how would this affect our choices? If we weren’t taught to be self-confident, to be independent, how to create boundaries, or even what a good and healthy relationship looks like, how would we even know where to begin? The answer is, we don’t. But by learning and gaining knowledge , that leads to understanding and self-awareness. Understanding and self-awareness leads to us beginning to forgive ourselves for doing what we needed to do in order to survive. We can forgive ourselves for not knowing, for not realizing things we were never shown how to do, or ways to be. We learn to fill ourselves up from the inside out as opposed to the outside in. That grace, that space is what we have to give ourselves in order to move forward. We can give our lives some direction and take back some control for ourselves in our lives! It is a process, and it takes work, practice, and patience with ourselves. But we start with those tiny baby steps forward, understanding that there will be days we take a step or two back, and that’s okay. Healing the hurt will take as long as it takes, there is no timeline for healing. It’s not a switch you can flip or a “thing” you can just do or fix. You can’t just immediately change a lifetime of learned behaviors. We’ve learned to live with it, buried it deep, stuffed it all down so we could function every day. When I taught classes at a large domestic violence shelter several years ago, I used a visual to describe to my classes how I view my “stuffed down” trauma. I picture a closet like a coat closet, with the bottom part having a rod to hang coats on. It’s empty. Up above is a dark, very deep shelf that goes way back, farther than I can see. It’s up above my head, I’m short, so I can’t see how far back it goes. All of my traumas, I picture as large, white rectangular boxes done up with red ribbon, each with a big red bow on top. I’ve shoved all of my boxes up on that shelf, and pushed them back as far as I can, so I can’t see them. I’ve stored a lot up there! But every now and then, a box will fall off the shelf, and break open. It says “Here! Look at this! This is important, deal with me right now!” In the past, I’d just grab the box, put that lid back on, slide the ribbon over it and shove it right back up there, nope, not dealing with it! I have learned through my own healing to slowly grab one box at a time, and bring it down, open it, and process through what’s inside. One evening in the shelter after my class, I came upon one of the residents sitting in a chair, very upset and crying. There were several other residents with her trying to calm her. When I came up to her, and knelt down to see what was going on, she looked at me and said, “Oh Miss Kerri, all of my boxes fell down at once off my shelf and broke open!” We worked through the process together using that same visualization exercise of gathering up those boxes, looking at what was an immediate need to work through and putting the rest, back up in her closet shelf to be dealt with one at a time when she was ready. We’ll get there, one step, one box at a time together! Please remember If you are in an unsafe situation or in an abusive relationship, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 24/7 for help in leaving the relationship safely and other resources. If you are in a situation where you feel you are in immediate danger, please call 911!

So, this is where I like to close us out with a new exercise that we can add to that “mindfulness” toolbox we’re building together! Remember, you don’t have to do this now, or at all if you don’t want to, but you might just listen and tuck it away in your mind for future reference.

We’re going to do an exercise together to help us process some feelings or emotions that might have come up for us during our time together, or you can do this whenever you feel that these things come up for you. You can do this with your eyes open or closed, whatever feels safe and comfortable for you. If your eyes are open, you might just rest them gently on something, maybe something not too busy like a wall or a door.

We always start with our mindful belly breathing. Breathe slowly in through your nose, your belly naturally pushing out as you inhale, to a count of 5. Hold your breath for a count of 1. Then slowly exhale out of your mouth, your belly should naturally move in as you exhale, to a count of 5. Do this five times.

I’d like to invite you to focus inward, bring your awareness to your body. Is there an emotion or a feeling that is coming up for you? Does this feeling create any sensation in your body? If no emotions are coming up, try and identify what is going on in your body, a feeling, or any sensation? Continue letting your breath flow.

Whatever you feel, acknowledge that feeling, just listen and notice. Your breath is flowing slowly in and out.

Next, accept that these feelings or sensations are there, try not to struggle against them in this moment. Breathe into these sensations or feelings and allow the experience to be as it unfolds.

As you breathe, acknowledge that these feelings, emotions, or sensations are here for a valid and real reason. These feelings are perfectly understandable, even if you don’t know why you are feeling them. We don’t need to focus on the “why” or the reason. Our feelings are valid and real.

Breathe into the experience of these sensations. As you breathe, breathe into your sense of humanness, your compassion towards yourself, breathe in kindness, and love towards yourself.

Next, I would like you to imagine this compassion, this kindness, and self-love you are breathing in as a color. It can be any color you wish, as long as it feels safe and comforting to you. Is it a warmer color, like red, orange, or yellow? Is it a cooler color like blue or green? Any color you wish that feels safe, and comforting.

Next, I would like you to imagine yourself enveloped by this color. You could imagine it either throughout, or around you. Feel yourself embraced by this loving kindness color. It feels safe and loving. Continue letting your breath flow slowly in and out.

If you’d like, you could place your hand over a part of yourself that you feel needs some gentle loving energy, like your heart, or anywhere you’d like. Also, if you’d like, you could wrap your arms around yourself in a gentle hug. All the while feeling this loving color flowing through your body, wrapping you up safely, kindly.

You can stay this way for as long or as short a time as you wish, it’s up to you.

When you’re ready, slowly bring your awareness back to your breath, still slowly letting your breath flow in and out. If your eyes are closed, you can slowly open them. If they were open, bring your eyes back to something near you, let them gently refocus.

How do you feel? By acknowledging emotions, feelings or sensations that come up for us, and sitting gently with them while we envision love and kindness towards ourselves, we can understand that these are just things that we experience, they don’t have the true power over us that we give them.  We can acknowledge, and begin to learn to release them, let them float or drift away.

I hope these exercises are something you found helpful, and it’s more tools to add to our “mindful” toolbox that we’re building together. Whenever you need to go to that toolbox and pull out any skill we’ve learned in order to feel more grounded, safe, and connected, do it!! I have created a list of all of the techniques and exercises we’ve learned on my website invisiblewoundshealingfromtrauma.com and will add to it as we go along. I’ve also put each exercise to beautiful video and music on my YouTube Channel Invisible Wounds: Healing from Trauma! Please subscribe if you like what you see and hear!

Thank you so much for taking the time to listen today, and please keep on listening! Wherever you listen, please like, subscribe, favorite, and follow me! What you think really matters to me too, so comment on the show, what you think, whatever’s on your mind. You can find me on Facebook at Invisible Wounds: Healing from Trauma, Twitter at Kerriwalker58, and my website invisiblewoundshealingfromtrauma.com.

Look for my new episodes dropping every Monday on all of your favorite podcast, music, and listening apps! Please take extra good care of yourself, and we’ll talk soon!