You Are Not Crazy (Patreon Exclusive Podcast)

In this episode I talk about what happens when gaslighting goes on long enough that it stops being about the facts of an argument and starts eroding who you believe yourself to be. I share some of the labels people have tried to put on me over the years. I’ve been called cold because I have boundaries. A school principal told me I come across as anxious while my child was being bullied and nobody was helping. My brother recently told me I’m hard to communicate with, even though I’ve sent almost all of the messages in our thread, and it still sent me back to scroll through them to check.

The question that helped me most is one I now ask whenever something starts to fester in my head: does this story serve them more than it serves me? If I’m anxious, the school doesn’t have to fix what’s failing my kid, and if I’m cold, nobody has to respect my boundaries. I walk through how I use that question and why the urge to defend yourself, even silently, is often a sign that someone else’s narrative has moved in. I also share a simple exercise of writing down what you’ve been told you are next to what you know about yourself.

If this is showing up in your relationship, my Unhooked course walks you through the full cycle of abuse and helps you map how it works in your own life. You can find it at jessicanight.thinkific.com.

When you’re close to leaving, the person who has been hurting you often starts promising to change, and the hope you feel in that moment is real. In this episode I talk about why the timing matters. Change that only shows up when someone is afraid of losing you is usually panic, and panic can look a lot like accountability until the crisis passes and the old pattern comes back.

I walk through some of the early signs I see in people stuck in this cycle, like feeling more guilt than joy in the relationship and feeling relief when the other person leaves the house. I also talk about the exhaustion that sets in after years of walking on eggshells, and how numbness and checking out can be your body telling you something you haven’t been able to say yet. I share some of my own experience too, including how my family of origin has always liked me best when I’m quiet, and how that kind of conditioning makes leaving feel like failure.

The question I keep coming back to is whether the motivation is healing or the fear of losing you. Someone who is motivated by healing keeps doing the work long after the crisis is over. I explain why staying usually gets you just enough change to reset the cycle, which is how false hope keeps you tethered. I also talk about DARVO and what it tends to sound like once you start pulling away. I close with the reframe I had to work my way toward myself: if the change is real, it will keep going without you there to hold it together.

If you’re in this place right now, Unhooked, my private podcast series and course on breaking the cycle of abuse, goes through it in more depth. To work with me or find more resources, email me at [email protected] or see the links below.

I've been caught in this question more times than I can count. They cry or rage, then tell you how much they love you, and it all looks completely sincere. Then someone in their family asks, "What if they're just hurting?" and I'd start wondering whether I was the one who lacked empathy.

In this episode I go through the questions I usually get when I explain this to clients. Their emotion can be genuine while the behavior is still manipulative, and I spend most of the episode on the gap between feeling something and taking responsibility for it. I also talk about how their mood ends up setting the terms for your whole day. When I feel myself about to blow up, I own it out loud, and I share what that sounds like.

Near the end I give a few questions to ask in place of "Is this emotion real?" The first one is "What do they do with their emotions?" If this episode hits home, I write about this dynamic regularly on my Substack. Search Jessica Knight Coaching or use the link in the show notes.

In this episode I answer your September questions. I start with whether it makes sense to go to a partner's siblings about what's happening at home, and I explain triangulation, which is what's going on when a partner calls family after arguments and then tells you they can't stand you. I talk about the urge to take the blame and placate as a fawn response. I also share some ways to ground yourself and buy time before you answer.

I spend a good part of the episode on why you can clearly name the abuse and still wonder whether you're the one being unfair, how self-trust gets worn down over years, and why writing things down helps you hold onto what actually happened. From there I get into the difference between supporting a partner and becoming their therapist, what it's like to be with someone who has BPD traits and a strong abandonment wound, and a few questions to ask yourself when you're unsure whether you're seeing things clearly.

I close with a listener's question about abuse in same-sex relationships and the fear of being the narcissist yourself, and I talk about what to do with anger and resentment that have been building for a long time.

Ask a question for next month here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeMInxIFVH04aCaxJiNsA58os45FHcxWtBBa-SFYlwaHBq4Yg/viewform?usp=header

Early release for Patreon members. This episode will not be released until November.

Most people reach out for help in the middle of the incident. The screaming, the threat, the thing that got thrown across the room. That is the hour of the relationship that looks like abuse, and it is the hour when you are the most frightened and the least able to think clearly. In this episode I make the case that the abuse has already done most of its work by the time that moment arrives, and that the pattern you need to see lives in the other three phases of the cycle.

I walk through each phase with the questions I would actually ask a client inside it. What the calm phase is doing to your memory and your hope. How your body registers tension building long before you are willing to say the word out loud, and why the editing you do during that stretch counts as evidence. What function the incident is serving, and what role it is trying to hand you. What a real repair can tolerate that a fake one cannot.

If you have been surviving the cycle long enough that you can only see it in the worst moments, this one is for you.

The final few minutes cover how to work with me and where to find Unhooked, the workbook, and my other courses. Returning clients can skip that part :)

https://unhooked.thinkific.com/

In this episode I look at why confusion, not fear, is often the clearest sign that a relationship is built on coercive control. I walk through four patterns that show up again and again: the gap between how someone behaves in private versus in public, the shift from talking about impact to litigating intent, direct distortion of what a person saw or heard, and boundaries that get reframed as emotional injuries against the other person. I explain why confusion works in favor of the person causing harm, since it lets them keep control of the relationship while still looking reasonable to everyone outside it. I also talk about what happens when this pattern follows someone into separation and custody proceedings, where there is rarely a clean incident to point to, and why that absence does not mean nothing happened.

**** Early Release Episode ****

I'm joined by Anne Blythe, founder of BTR.org (Betrayal Trauma Recovery), an organization that has supported over 9,000 women navigating a partner's lying, gaslighting, infidelity, and manipulation. Anne shares her own story of spending seven years and seven therapists trying to understand what was happening in her marriage, and what finally helped her see the truth.

We talk about why couples therapy so often fails women dealing with a partner who lies, why the search for a diagnosis (narcissist, sex addict, and so on) can actually delay a woman from trusting her own reality, and why "he's confused" is one of the most common and most dangerous excuses offered to victims. Anne also shares the framework behind her workshop, which helps women determine, with real clarity, whether their partner is telling the truth.

If you've ever been told you're too sensitive, too reactive, or too quick to see abuse where it isn't, or if you've sat through couples counseling with someone who is actively lying to you, this episode is for you.

This episode will be on my regular podcast in late September.

Connect with Anne Blythe:
btr.org
btr.org/podcast

In this episode, I answer three listener questions this month, and all three turned out to be about the same underlying issue even though they didn't start out that way.

I start with a question from a parent whose ex keeps rescinding medical and therapeutic approvals right after they finally get one. I talk about the difference between a single change of mind and a repeated pattern, and what kind of documentation actually turns a frustrating cycle into something a lawyer or evaluator can use.

Next I get into a trap I hear constantly: getting pulled into arguing about whether your ex looks bad instead of focusing on what actually matters for your case. I explain why that question is such an effective hook, and how to reframe the conversation around pattern and impact instead of getting stuck defending your own perception.

The last question is about a co-parent who tells every provider and evaluator that they're stable now without releasing any records to back it up. I talk about the difference between a self-report and collateral verification, why that gap matters more when there's a documented history, and how to raise the question of records without turning it into a personal attack.

If you're dealing with any version of these situations, I think this one will be useful.

***Early Release Episode***

Najwa Zebian returns for a second conversation, and this one picks up exactly where the first left off.

Her new book, The One Who Broke You Can't Heal You, comes out August 25th, and we talk through what it actually means to take responsibility for your own healing without slipping into self-blame.

We cover why setting boundaries with controlling people tends to make things worse before it gets better, why an apology from the person who hurt you will never be the thing that fixes you, and why closure has to come from inside rather than from a conversation you're still waiting to have.

Najwa also explains her thinking behind the book's first chapter, Closure Is a Myth, and why she believes you're never getting your old self back, and why that's not actually a loss.

When was the last time you felt like you were actually living in your relationship, not just surviving it? Not getting through the week, not making it to the next event or the next blow-up and silence, but actually living. If the answer didn't come right away, there's a reason for that.

This episode is about what happens when survival mode stops being a temporary response to stress and becomes the entire architecture of a relationship. When it's no longer "we're going through a hard season" but "this is who we are now."

We walk through the pressure cooker pattern, the way unresolved conflict gets shoved in a drawer while life keeps moving from one obligation to the next, until the drawer is so full nothing closes anymore. We talk about the difference between real repair and the version most people settle for, which is just tension breaking long enough to catch a breath before it builds again. We get into DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim and offender) and why setting even the smallest limit in a controlling relationship gets treated as the actual problem. And we connect all of it to the four-phase cycle of abuse and why survival mode isn't a personality trait, it's what your nervous system does after living inside a low-grade emergency for too long.

I am sharing this episode here because I think it needs to be heard. This is a bonus episode inside of Unhooked.