If you’re wondering how to get back to yourself after emotional abuse, listen to how Anne Blythe, M.Ed. came back to herself through writing, exercise, and boundaries.

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Transcript: How To Get Back To Yourself After Emotional Abuse

Anne: A few years ago, I was doing an interview for The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast. There was this freaky Friday situation. and the guest started interviewing me. I wanted to replay a portion of that episode for you today.

Juliane: What are some steps you’re taking and have taken that have helped you regain your own sense of balance?

Healing Through Writing After Emotional Abuse

Anne: I’m a writer. Writing has been healing for me. I wrote every abuse episode that I could think of. Every instance of gaslighting. Every instance of emotional or psychological abuse helped me sort out what was real, what wasn’t real. It was like a hundred pages. It was crazy. When I started using that as a draft to write my book, because I want to give people concrete examples. I was so sick of my own story.

I thought that was a good sign after emotional abuse. So instead of thinking, I have to prove that he was abusive, which is how I felt before. Now that I’m healed more, I don’t need to process that anymore. Now I’m deleting huge sections out of it, because now I’m thinking, which examples will help other women?

Juliane: And you don’t have to prove why it was so crazy making for you.

Anne: Yeah, totally.

Reclaiming Physical Health After Emotional Abuse

Anne: My no contact boundary is actually the most helpful thing to me. Because any interaction with him is insane, focusing on my own physical health has been good. I’ve always been really athletic, and everything went out the window the moment I married him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZj_YL19POM

I didn’t ski anymore or mountain bike anymore. And I didn’t row anymore. I didn’t do any of the things I love doing. And now I’m getting back to that. So I’m doing yoga every day and I’m weightlifting again. I may work at the ski resort the weekends when my kids are gone. So, I’m coming back to myself after emotional abuse.

Juliane: I love that phrase, by the way, coming back to myself.

Anne: Yeah, and part of that was the abuse. And also part of it is that I have three kids under the age of six, and getting out of the house is really hard. They’re getting older now. My youngest was eleven months old when he was arrested. Time has helped a lot, too. It took a lot of time to process.

Emotional Struggles & Support

Anne: In fact, I just went through a pretty hard period. I went off my antidepressant, and decided I wasn’t emotionally eating anymore. So there’s about a month where I was crying every day. I mean, really bad, in the shower. At church, finding a room where no one was, and locking myself in there. Sitting on the floor, full on bawling my head off about everything that had happened.

Because I didn’t have the crutch of food anymore, and I didn’t have my antidepressant. So there were some feelings that I hadn’t quite felt. My sister was worried about me. So was everyone else. I was like, guys, I’m gonna be okay.

https://youtu.be/yu4b-nA3gaM

I just need to feel this right now. I’m not going to eat popcorn, and I’m not going to eat Oreos. I’m not going to take an antidepressant. I just need to feel these feelings that I was not ready to feel years ago because it was too much. It would have killed me if I had to feel everything simultaneously.

So I used an antidepressant for years, and I ate a lot and gained a lot of weight. Which is fine. Both of those things are fine. Do it if that helps you.

Navigating Single Motherhood After Emotional Abuse

Anne: Now I’m stronger. Knowing even if you’re making progress, be gentle with yourself. Because women, at least in my situation, have all kinds of problems. We have financial problems. What will we do for work?

Juliane: A woman working with three children that are young on her own. I mean a round of applause for all the single working moms out there. It’s so hard to do that alone. Then, you’ve got these multiple betrayal traumas. That impacts you emotionally, psychologically, and physically.

Anne: And they were coming from therapists. My clergy took his side. And friends, family, when I say family, I mean his family. This is not a small thing.

Considering Medication After Emotional Abuse

Juliane: No, it’s not. For me, five years out, I was still hurting. It was like the pain would come rushing forward with all the fear and insecurity. It’s a long process. I love that you gave yourself the freedom and permission to just feel your feelings.

Anne: Because I knew that feeling these emotions is important for me now. Women are strong, and they’re smart. We can think rationally through those decisions and make the right decision for you. And one of them might be, oh, I feel good. But now I realize my brain is imbalanced, and now I’m going on an antidepressant.

Juliane: Absolutely, it’s there for a reason, and it wouldn’t work if we didn’t need it. Some women need it right away because of the trauma symptoms they’re having. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, you know, the constant worry, fear and anxiety.

And I’ve also seen fear get women through that period, because of all the adrenaline cortisol pumping through their system. It kind of keeps them on high alert, and they can get through the crisis. But a year or two years out, they kind of notice they’re slipping into depression and then need some support at that time.

Therapy Challenges After Emotional Abuse

Anne: Absolutely. Yeah, I am not anti-medication. I just want to make that clear to everybody. Please go on it if you need it. This is where I’m at right now.

Juliane: Well, kudos to you for all the hard work you’re doing and for the place you’re in. Betrayal Trauma Recovery is taking what harmed you and turning it around. To provide support, encouragement and resources for other hurting women out there. When I went through this, I never really bought into the co-dependency, co-addict model. It has impacted many women, and not for good. When I went through this, BTR helped so much.

Anne: Yeah, Betrayal Trauma Recovery doesn’t victim blame. That’s what the current pornography recovery field misses. Is the abuse first of all. But also this bigger, wider discussion of misogyny, the Me Too movement and feminism. Like, you might be going to a therapist who buys into codependency. Not realizing it’s a form of victim blaming, which is also misogynistic. So it’s so much bigger than just, “Does he look at porn or not?”

Juliane: Absolutely, absolutely.

Anne: That’s one reason I wanted to start Betrayal Trauma Recovery. It was to talk about all these important issues in one place. Because I was not seeing that in a typical 12-step group or a typical therapist’s office. Oftentimes traditional therapy that tries to get to the heart of, “why he doesn’t feel loved” or whatever. Rather than recognizing, wait a minute, he is loved. He can’t feel love because of his misogynistic attitude. And his feelings of entitlement and those aren’t going away.

The Importance Of Emotional Safety

Anne: The more therapy he does, the more he feels like he’s a victim. So I always like to warn people. You don’t want to give an abuser a shovel by having him go to therapy. Where he creates a story for why he has an abusive character. Because he’s just going to dig his trench even deeper. Because we see all the time, therapy fuels his entitlements and feelings of being a victim. It makes it worse for the wife.

That’s why at Betrayal Trauma Recovery helping women be emotionally safe is the top priority. And that could look like many things.

Juliane: Right, this is a woman who is violated. And there’s no sense of safety. So safety is of the utmost importance.

Anne: Yeah, and at BTR that’s actually the bulk of what we see. That therapists don’t assess emotional safety first, and if they do, and the woman isn’t emotionally safe. They propose things like, share your feelings with the abuser. Or let’s communicate better with him, and that is dangerous.

Court System After Emotional Abuse

Anne: It’s like the civil court system. A friend of mine is going through divorce with an extremely abusive man. She can’t talk to him without being psychologically abused and blamed. That sort of thing. And in court, the judge said, Look, you guys are both professional people, work it out.

Juliane: Oh, gee.

Anne: There’s no way she can work it out with him. It’s impossible. So a therapist might think, Okay, you both seem intelligent. You both seem nice, let’s work together. And you’re thinking, we can’t coordinate or cooperate about anything without me being harmed in the process. Every time I try to communicate or resolve something, I end up gaslit and taken advantage of.

Many people, lawyers, court people, clergy, and therapists, don’t have safety as the top priority. That has to be the top priority when any type of emotional or psychological abuse is involved.

Juliane: Absolutely, we can’t have a healthy relationship with an unhealthy individual.

Anne: This is why I created The Living Free Workshop, to help women get free of abuse.

Giving Back To Women

Anne: Thank you. That was fun to be interviewed for a little bit.

Juliane: Anne, thank you so much for having me. It’s been a joy and delight. I feel like I could talk another couple hours with you, but thank you so much. I want to applaud you for all your work and how you’re giving back to women through this podcast. And kudos to you for writing your book and giving up buckets of popcorn. I wish you all the best.

Anne: Thank you.