July 25, 2025 • 59 mins
Amanda Nguyen shares her story, from full time stay at home mom, who after 20 plus years, found herself in a custody battle with her abuser- a tug of war between her and her abuser, where the children were the rope. She chose to lay down the rope, with the hope and intention of being able to reconnect with her children.
Through this, she did hit rock bottom, she was suicidal, but, has built back her life all the while, learning how to stay in contact with her 3 boys who live fulltime with their dad. While still living with the pain of not being able to parent as she once was able to, she's learned to parent from afar and managed to build a life she loves, despite her pain.
If you have experienced the intentional fracturing of your child's bond with you, the weaponization of your children, and feel helpless and hopeless, this is the conversation for you.
You can follow Amanda and her story as it unfolds on IG @thebakealong.
Visit: https://chantalcontorinescoaching.com to learn how to work with me.
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https://chantalcontorinescoaching.myflodesk.com/free-how-to-guide
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This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not legal advice.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Hello everybody.
Welcome to my very first episodeof The Survivor's Playbook.
I am Chantal Contorines, andthis is the podcast for every
survivor of abuse, be theyparent, child, or parent who's
being forced to co-parent withtheir abuser.
And this is with a twist, ifabusers can have a playbook that
they play by, why can'tsurvivors have a playbook?
(00:24):
And this podcast is stories ofhope from both experts as well
as survivors, and sometimes thepowerful combination of expert
survivors.
On that note, our very firstguest is one of my favorite
humans in this space.
I have, collaborated with herextensively in the past.
Her name is Amanda Nguyen, andshe's both a survivor as well as
(00:45):
an expert advocate.
On that note, thank you so much,Amanda, for being here for my
very first episode.
I'm beyond excited and also alittle bit nervous'cause I've
never done this before.
So thank you so much.
So let's dive into you a littlebit, as much as you feel
comfortable talking about yoursituation and how you climbed
(01:05):
yourself out of the bottom.
Whew.
Okay.
Let's not get too much in theweeds.
Yeah.
Because these are stories ofhope.
Yeah.
But a little context for mybackground is I was married to
my ex-husband at the age of 21.
Met him when I was 15.
We were together for 30 years,and it took me that long to find
(01:28):
my way out of the abusiverelationship.
I didn't quite have a grasp onthe depths of the abuse.
But after I left, it became veryclear that I had been in an
extremely abusive relationship.
And that's very common, right?
So many people assume that theyknow when they're in the
(01:48):
relationship, but abuse is soinsidious that you don't
actually understand you, it'snot good, you don't feel happy,
but it often takes time.
That's called the delayedrealization, right?
And that's very common.
Especially psychological abuse.
Yeah.
If others can't understand it,even the person in it can't
understand it.
It's very nuanced and it happensover a long period of time, and
(02:13):
so you don't recognize iteasily.
I naively thought that I couldjust leave and parent, co-parent
with my ex-husband and I wasmistaken.
Yep yep.
As soon as he understood that Iwas really leaving he be started
to behave differently.
(02:33):
And so I had to really think onthe fly and become strategic
about how I would protect myselfand my children after.
Let's see.
Three to four, three years ofprolonged litigation in the
family court.
I decided to do what I calldropping the rope and the tug of
(02:56):
war that you can't win.
I quickly realized that thecourts were no match for the
manipulation and skills andtactics that my abuser
possessed, that he wouldactually weaponize the courts as
a way to further disconnect mefrom my children.
And so I took, again, I wentagainst my attorney's
(03:20):
recommendations and against alot of people's recommendations,
and I left the courts.
I surrendered custody of mythree boys.
They were ages nine nine.
15 and 17 at the time.
I think, I can't rememberexactly, but there's been lot
(03:41):
that's been going on since then.
Yeah.
A lot's been going on.
So I negotiated outside of thecourts with my attorney's help
to surrender custody because Ifelt that would be the best way
to in some ways it's an oddstrategy.
Because you're actually givingthe abuser exactly what he
(04:04):
wanted, control over thechildren, but you're also not
engaging in the battle that hedesperately wants.
And I think it's so important,that piece right there.
So you went against therecommendations'cause we've
talked before Experts, yourlegal team.
So what you actually did issomething that a lot of
survivors have a hard time doingis trusting their instincts,
(04:26):
right?
When you've been partnered withthis type of person, when you've
been in a relationship being aparent or a partner, they
gaslight you so frequently thatyou actually stop being able to
trust your intuition becauseeverything is off within your
system.
And I think that's reallypowerful because you literally
took a giant leap of faith inyourself Knowing that you
(04:46):
actually knew your abuser betterthan anybody else, better than
any expert any legal team.
And, this was the only way foryou and your children to
possibly survive this And sothat's incredible.
Honestly, that's actually givesme goosebumps because you, you
did what so many people arescared to do is to trust
themselves despite that's a lotof pressure.
(05:07):
To be under, to have peopletelling you, don't do this.
You should do this.
And you're like, no, I have tolay down the rope.
The shame that you carry.
Yeah.
The shame that you carry fromrelinquishing custody.
I was a stay-at-home mother tomy three boys.
That was the only life I knew.
And I had to grapple with theidea that would society shame
(05:30):
me?
But I have to, every day that Italk to someone and they ask the
question, do you have children?
What would my answer be?
And could I deal with, I don'tknow.
Judgment, criticism, judgment,shame, especially as a mom,
right?
Especially when that has beenyour entire world.
Your identity was so entwinedwith your three boys?
(05:52):
That was who you were, a parentfirst and foremost.
The role loss, that was a roleloss.
That was so much of who I was, amother, a stayat home mother
full-time, knew nothing elseother than that.
And how sad is it that part ofyour decision making was how you
were going to be viewed byothers?
(06:12):
It shouldn't have even beenthat.
It's what should be in my bestinterest and my children's best
interest, not what other peoplethink of me, because nobody
understands this.
Nobody does.
If, and unless you'veexperienced this, you simply
don't understand what survivorsand victims have to endure.
And what that looks like and thetoll it takes on your mental,
physical, emotional, spiritualhealth.
(06:33):
Both adults and children alike.
But yeah, no, no one.
No one could give me theanswers.
I had to find them withinmyself.
And after 30 years of my ownintuition just being destroyed,
I had to find that, I had torealize that I was the best
(06:53):
expert in my case as everyone istheir own best expert in their
case.
And that is actually what welearn in school, is I'm a
graduate student earning mydegree in counseling psychology.
So let's just stop and recognizethat you went from this to where
you are right now, which isempowering and educating
yourself, and then helpingothers do so as well.
(07:17):
Honestly, every time I talk toyou, I just love you a little
bit more.
We can talk more about mystudies.
Yeah.
But they've been really helpfulpersonally and my work with
reconnecting with my three boys.
But the, I had to say, this iswhat I know is true.
And I took a really bold move.
And I remember that day becausethe person I had to convince
(07:39):
most was my attorney, who is adear friend and I love her and
she's amazing, and she was by myside the entire time.
But she's an attorney and so shehas a set of tools.
And those tools are the courtsjustice, the law.
But those are not tools thatcould be used in my case because
they were ineffective.
(08:01):
They, the courts do not have thecapacity to deal with the
psychological issues that wereinvolved in my case.
I'm not saying it's not foreveryone, but for mine, it was
not going to work.
And so I called her one day andI still had, visitation with my
youngest son who was nine at thetime.
And I said, I am not showing upto pick my son up this weekend.
(08:25):
I'm not doing it.
And that and how did that feelfor you?
It was sickening.
It was sickening because in thatmoment I was, in some ways in a
lot of ways I was abandoning myson and it's what you felt that
you were doing.
You weren't actually, you weredoing this because you knew that
he was going to traumatize yourchildren further.
(08:46):
This is the thing is thatcertain abusers, not every
abuser is as is exactly thesame, but yours was very, and is
very adept at manipulatingpeople psychologically and
mentally and emotionally.
And you knew that if youcontinued, he was just gonna
keep putting more pressure onyour children.
More pressure on my children andon myself.
And it became very clear that Ihad to find a way to get out,
(09:11):
and that was drawing a line inthe sand and saying, I will not
pick up my son.
I will not allow my ex-husbandto engage us all in this battle
to further separate us and abuseus.
And that was when my attorneyknew, okay, we need to find
another solution.
(09:31):
And she started working onfinding a solution.
It was a very creative solution.
And, she's a masterfulnegotiator, and, but you had a
good advocate in your corner,right?
So even though she didn'tnecessarily agree with your
approach, because that wasoutside of her scope, right?
She respected you and yourchoice and your intuition enough
(09:52):
to say, okay, now we're gonnapivot.
Yep.
I'm gonna be the best advocatefor you.
And most people don't have that.
Yes.
And so I was really fortunate tohave her, and I relied on her.
For her expertise innegotiation, not necessarily in
family court law.
Yeah.
Although she was an expert, butshe was an expert negotiator.
(10:13):
And so that's really was apivotal moment when she drafted
the document that released allof us from the abuse in the
family courts because you likeliterally took away the only
thing that tethered you to him,that he could actually continue
to further abuse you and yourchildren with which you just as
(10:33):
you said, and I love thisdescription, you were in a tug
of war and your children werethe rope and you chose to lay
down the rope.
And cut off his supply.
But that didn't, but that didnot mean that I was giving up
hope on reconnecting with mykids.
I also realized that I needed toheal because once I understood
(10:54):
that I was a victim of domesticabuse, extreme course of
control, I knew that there was alot that I had to unpack and
there was no way I could healwith my children if I wasn't
starting the process of healingmyself.
And so I reached out to, firstof all, I started writing.
(11:19):
That's really the first thing Idid, and that's how I stumbled
upon you was you wrote thisbeautiful nine piece essay.
And I was like, wow, okay.
She's a person who understandsthis.
Yeah.
So I thought it was verycathartic to share my
experience, and I did itselfishly because I wanted to
write these essays and I placedthem on Instagram.
(11:41):
That was my placeholder, wheremy story could be shared in case
my boys ever found it, in casethey went searching for what's
the truth?
Where's mom's side of thisstory?
And so I put it there notrealizing that it would resonate
with others, and that peoplewould reach out to me and say
(12:02):
that this is happening to me.
Maybe this is what I need to do.
Help me figure out.
And so these series of essayscalled How to Separate a Mother
and Child, just really wentthrough the, the strategy that
abusers use to separate you.
And I also talked about.
The ways in which I did not showup as a great parent where I
(12:27):
fell for the traps that myabuser laid, and I actually made
it worse for my kids.
And this is the thing that somany protective parents grapple
with is when you are partneredwith an abuser and you share
children together, it'simpossible to show up as the
kind of parent you would if youdidn't have the overarching
overwhelming stress from theabuse.
(12:47):
We are triggered, we are insurvival mode.
We're in fight, flight, freeze,or fawn.
Oftentimes, our children do notget the best version of us Not
because we don't love ourchildren unconditionally,
wholeheartedly, but because weourselves are victims of abuse
and we are barely surviving.
We are treading water andoftentimes going under.
(13:08):
And so this is really importantfor so many people to understand
you have to give yourself graceand space, you did the best that
you could with the support,knowledge and tools that you had
at the time.
Because I know a, like a lot ofmy clients, they, feel
tremendous shame and guilt fornot showing up the way that they
could have had they had theright support and the right
nurturing environment forthemselves to be the best parent
(13:30):
they possibly could be, right?
And I had to reflect on the waysthat I didn't show up and I.
Not wallow in it and lingerthere, but just logically think,
okay, this is how I showed up,but I need to show up
differently for my kids if Ireally wanna help them.
And that's when I startededucating myself on the
(13:51):
psychology of what happens inthese abusive dynamics and how
our abusers seek to createchaos.
And we, of course we fall forit.
Because we become reactive as away to survive.
Our behaviors make a lot ofsense when you look at them
through the perspective of theabusive dynamic.
(14:14):
They, everything makes senseabout how we behave, why we
don't leave our abuser, why weparent in certain ways.
And I, when I left that abusivedynamic, when I surrendered
custody, that didn't mean I wassurrendering the idea of being a
parent.
It.
Meant that I didn't, I wasn'tphysically with my kids.
(14:35):
Yes.
And the case with my older boys,it also meant I was not talking
with them not one word fromthem.
So I had to figure out how doyou parent from afar?
How do you parent from thesidelines?
And the first step was healingmyself.
And I'm not gonna say that I amhealed.
It is will be a life longjourney for me.
(14:58):
Yeah.
It's not a destination, it's ajourney.
And you take two steps forwardand half a step back.
And there are some days whereyou grieve and you cocoon and
you're a blubbering mess.
And other days where you feel,okay I've made the right
decisions for my, for myself andfor my children.
And so for you, you must havehit rock bottom.
Yep.
(15:18):
I will say that I was suicidal.
And that is a terrible place tobe for any person, but let alone
a protective parent.
Because, and there's so muchgoing on behind that.
So how did you, as a protectiveparent who's had to let go of
the rope in order to heal andthen reconnect with your
children, right?
Because you knew that was thebest strategy for you and your
(15:40):
children.
You were trusting your instinctsagainst everybody else, telling
you completely differently.
How did you climb back from thatlowest of lows?
So first was sharing my story,putting it on paper, writing it,
so it's there for me to justreview because sometimes I
forget how bad it was.
(16:02):
I know that sounds strange, butNo, but it's not because.
Like we minimize to be able tosurvive this.
When you're in the relationship,you have to minimize what you're
experiencing?
You justify it.
There's always an excuse or theyjust had a stressful day.
Or if I just did this a littlebit differently, if I was more
nurturing.
If I was more accommodating?
So everything, and when you'rein it, you can't see the forest
(16:23):
for the trees and gaslighting isso effective?
So we actually start to questionourselves and they also love to
project, so they, you are theproblem for so many of the
issues that you experience andwhich is why writing things down
is so important?
Even if it, you've neverbroadcast it to the world.
Even if you don't publish thisstuff, even just for you in your
own private time to say,actually I'm not crazy.
(16:46):
I actually really experiencedabuse and it was actually worse
that I'm painting it to be,because we still oftentimes
minimize it, even if we dounderstand, we say it wasn't
that bad.
And sharing my stories opened meup to a support network that I
didn't realize was out there.
And so it connected me withother parents in the same
situation.
(17:07):
It also let the people around meknow exactly what was going on
in my life without you havingto, every time you encountered
them, give them like, the Cole'sNotes version of, they could
just read this on their own timeand understand where you're
coming from, but also, you justtalked about something that's so
important.
Abuse is so isolating, abusersisolate their victims, be they
(17:29):
children or adults?
So part of healing is actuallyreconnecting with people who
understand without you having toexplain, write down your essay.
People just Hey, totally getwhat you experienced, Amanda.
And you don't have to justifyyour behavior.
You don't have to justify this,like the choices that you made,
which, when you are partneredwith an abuser, they take away
all your optimal choices.
(17:50):
And so you're left having tochoose from less than optimal
choices.
So no matter what you do, it'snot gonna be the best decision
because they've taken those allaway.
It's going to be the bestchoices you have given the
circumstances.
Correct.
So writing the next step waseducation.
I had to learn as much about thepsychology of this, and I
(18:15):
stumbled upon a doctor's lesson,the class about protective
parenting.
How best to reconnect with yourkid.
And it's not a straightforwardpath, it takes a lot of turns,
but the first is recognizingyour own traumas and starting to
(18:38):
heal them.
And for everyone that isdifferent.
And it's a combination of thingsand you just have to keep at it.
Every morning you get up and youkeep at it.
And for me it was a combinationof educating myself, seeking
support from my friends and myfamily.
(18:58):
The solidarity of the communitythat was experiencing the same
thing as I was and yoga.
Yep.
Yep.
Therapy.
And it's really just a, it's amix of things, right?
And you just see, you see whatworks in helping you deal with
your traumas.
(19:19):
I never stopped communicatingwith my kids.
I continuously sent textswhether they were reading'em or
not.
And then I did what I knew howto do best, which was bake.
And so I would send carepackages to their house and I
didn't know if they got'em ornot, but I sent, there was no
(19:41):
expectation of acknowledgement.
It was high love, low pressure.
Yeah.
They didn't have to, they didnot have to respond.
And this is a really big thingbecause so many parents,
protective parents especially,become very upset when they
don't get responses.
But you have to understand yourchild is doing the best they can
to survive in an inhospitablelike environment.
(20:02):
And sometimes a response issimply too much.
Like they are not safe torespond.
But it doesn't mean that youdon't stop, right?
And your text should not be, Ireally miss you and I can't
believe, this should be, I loveyou.
I thought of you.
I saw this thing and it made methink of you, this comic strip.
I thought that you would enjoythis.
I saw this book.
Maybe you could read the book.
In fact, I can email you thebook or mail you the book?
(20:24):
So low pressure, there was noexpectation of a response.
And don't take it personally?
Your child is also a victim ofabuse.
That's the reality.
Correct.
So I did a lot of researchinitially on how to communicate
with my kid in a one wayfashion.
And everything that you said isexactly what I did.
No need for a response and justsend love.
(20:48):
Just tell them, oh, today Ithought of you because it was
Easter and I remembered lastEaster we did this.
Wasn't that fun?
Send pictures.
Hey, this picture popped up inmy photo album today, and I just
thought of you.
That's all you do.
(21:09):
You don't say, why are you nottalking to me?
Where are you?
Are you safe?
I miss you so much.
Tell your father that this isnot right.
This is, yeah.
There's no shaming or guiltingor obligation.
They already get so much of thatfrom the other parent.
They get so much pressure, and Icall it high pressure, low love.
The text that I sent to mymiddle son that sparked our
(21:32):
reconnection was a text where Iapologized, and I, he had given
me this necklace and he wasquite young when he had given it
to me when we were in thedivorce process and I was nasty
and I said, how did you even payfor this necklace?
Did you get the money from yourfather?
(21:53):
Horrible.
Oh my God.
That was horrible.
But I said it, right?
Yeah.
So this is the thing though iswe are human and we're humans
who are under tremendouspressure?
We're in a pressure cooker.
So that was not your optimal,finest parenting?
You're not gonna be,broadcasting that far and wide,
(22:13):
although we just did on thepodcast.
But this is also to validateeverybody We've all done this.
Even parents who have the mostsupportive partner or co-parent
and have no financialobligations that that they can't
meet.
We all make mistakes we all saythings in the heat of the moment
due to stress, whatever thatstress might be.
And so what do we do?
We repair.
(22:33):
Yeah.
And so I needed to repair thatand I sent a text and I said,
Hey, that was horrible.
What I said to you.
I'm thinking that you must havefelt really bad because I
diminished the gift that yougave me that was so touching.
And so I'm just sorry for that.
(22:54):
And that was it.
End of the story, couple dayslater, boom.
A reply and it was, mom, I can'tforgive you for a lot of the
things that you've done to us,but I'm willing to talk with you
if you do one thing for me.
My response was, understood.
What can I do for you?
(23:16):
That was it.
But what a simple gift you gaveyour boy.
Of just hearing what he wassaying.
Validating his feelings and hisemotions without any kind of
pressure.
Just what can I do?
And so this is been a lot of mywork is realizing that there are
several narratives.
(23:37):
Each person holds their ownnarrative of the events that
happened.
It's like history, right?
It's our history, it's our ownpersonal history, and it's
biased.
It's our perspective on theworld.
And we look at that through ourtrauma lens, through all the
lenses that have created us tothis point.
And so we each have our ownnarrative, our own history.
So I had to understand that hehas his narrative, right?
(23:58):
I don't, I have not lived hislife.
I was not a 13-year-old boy.
He had a different relationshipwith his father than I had in,
in several ways.
So he viewed him differently anddidn't fully grasp what the
abuse was and what washappening.
And so I had to understand thatwe had two versions of a story
(24:24):
and neither were right norwrong, and I had to respect his
version, and I had to hold backon telling my version if I
wanted to reconnect with him.
And so his request, I couldsimply meet it because I let go
of my narrative, my version ofreality, and I just accepted
(24:49):
his.
And that opened the door to usreconnecting.
So now we were communicating ontext, and I was keeping it very
light and fun and really askinghim, how are you?
What do you need?
What's going on in your life?
How can I support you?
(25:10):
And I really became histherapist.
And I think this is the key toreconnecting with your kids, is
you do not parent the way thatyou thought you should parent,
you become a therapist for yourchild.
And when I reconnected with him,I was just starting graduate
(25:31):
school working on my master's incounseling psychology.
And what I didn't realize isthat all the skills they were
teaching us about how to be areally good therapist were also
the same for like how to be areally good parent that is
attuned to their child and canvalidate and repair any ruptures
(25:58):
in the relationship as theyhappen.
That's a really hard skill whenyou're a parent because you have
to let go of the parent so much,right?
Of so much.
Like you have to relinquishcontrol as a parent and parent
from a different perspective.
Graduate school has solidifiedit, and now I parent like a
(26:22):
therapist.
And those skills have beenreally helpful in helping me
reconnect with my son and stayconnected with my younger son as
well.
So you've been through it alland we've heard your personal
perspective, right?
Like your own story of abuse,how you went through the system,
(26:44):
how you walked out of thesystem, because you knew that
the system was not going besupporting you and your family
the way that it needed to, andfor you to actually live.
You were going to continue to beabused.
The system was gonna beweaponized against you and your
boys.
Now can we talk a little bitabout this wonderful document
that you sent to me and that I'mstill reading.
(27:04):
Because I think this is alsoreally helpful for protective
parents and I don't know whatyou plan on doing with this if
you're gonna publish it, if it'sgonna be expanded.
But I think these are alsoreally important tools that pair
beautifully with what you'vejust spoken about.
With how you actually parentyour boys.
Even though you don't have thephysical proximity, you're still
parenting in a different way.
(27:25):
And I think that's for everyprotective parent.
I always tell my clients, we'renot parenting the way normal
parents parent.
We have a different set of rulesof engagement.
Why?
Because there's coercivecontrol.
And so we don't approach ourchildren the way an average
parent would, approach theirchildren when there's issues
when they act out.
Because we're not simply dealingwith children's emotions and
(27:47):
their lack of, maturity andhormones as they, work through
teenage years.
We're dealing with so much morecomplex.
So do you wanna talk a littlebit about this document that you
have?
Yeah, so I started writing thisdocument on how to reconnect
with your children.
And going step by step.
It was based off a lot of myself study around estrangement.
(28:09):
And estrangement is defined asseparation from a family member,
a loved one when you're anadult, so it's not when you're a
child.
But there's a lot of lessonsaround estrangement and how to
reconnect.
And so I took those lessons.
And so I took the lessons onestrangement and how families
(28:31):
reconnected to build thefoundation of this document.
I also took a lot aboutattachment theory.
And how our kids are attached tous and how they're compromised.
A lot of it had to deal withinformed care around trauma
survivors and how we approachtrauma survivors'cause a lot of
(28:53):
us are dealing with complextrauma and it's actually still
occurring.
So the idea of PTSD where it'spost-traumatic doesn't really
work for us because we're allstill living.
Yeah.
Like we're living in the trauma.
When you are tethered to yourabuser with children, you're
still living the trauma.
The trauma doesn't go away.
You're still being forced into atrauma situation by this person.
(29:16):
What I really like about this Ithink people are better able to
understand it from thisviewpoint, which is more of a
macro.
Which is the cult.
When you have a cult it's allabout brainwashing and in like
indoctrination and isolation andmanipulation and control about
outside sources.
It's us versus them.
And if you view an abusiverelationship in the same, be it
(29:38):
partner or parent, in the samelens, when you have a person
who's so indoctrinated and isenmeshed with the cult leader
and the cult itself trying toforce them out with logic
doesn't work, they become somuch more defensive and they're
more likely to withdraw fromyou.
Even though it makes sense toyou from the outside looking
(29:59):
into them, they've had their,like their minds have been
worked on, they've beenmanipulated.
It's active brainwashing andthat's what happens with adults
and children who are, in arelationship with a coercive
controller.
It's the same sort of premise.
We just have the micro levelthat's more of the macro level.
So that was my second area ofstudy.
Cults.
Yeah.
And deprogramming.
(30:20):
And the strategies that theyused that families had used to
pull their children out of thecult, their adult children,
typically out of a cult and backto them.
And in the idea of working withfamilies that are suffering
through estrangement as well ascults, the idea is not to use
(30:43):
force.
Force has been used on survivorsand our children from day one.
That's how the coercivecontroller operates.
They use force coercion.
And so it means that whatevertactics we use, whatever tools
we use, you can never use force.
(31:03):
And that goes back to thetherapeutic skills that I'm
learning.
There never.
Never can it, it's nevereffective if you've used force
to make it happen.
Kids, people have to comewillingly to therapy.
So this was my next idea, thatreunification therapy, it falls
(31:26):
flat on the very premise becausereunification therapy uses
force.
It uses a court order by a judgethat says to a kid, you are
complied.
You are you must comply, and youare compelled to come to this
therapy session and sit with aparent that you don't wanna be
with.
(31:46):
It doesn't it?
It never works.
No, because again, you are thenit's.
Even though the intention istotally different, it's the same
premise.
Your child is being coerced,they're being forced to do
something against their will.
Even if their will is built on afoundation of lies and a
narrative that is false, it'swhat your children are currently
experiencing.
It's how they feel right now.
(32:08):
Doesn't matter why they feelthat way, it's how they feel.
And that's part of thevalidation and the respecting of
their feelings and theiremotions, even though you know
why they have those feelings andemotions and it's not truly how
they really feel.
If you were to, pair back and goall the way down to the basics,
that's how your child feelsright now.
Correct?
(32:28):
Correct.
So I took a playbook fromdeprogramming in a way.
And estrangement stories fromfamilies that were estranged.
And it's hard because Iunderstand that parents.
Think they have very few optionsand that even if they're using
(32:54):
the courts to get a child tocomply with the orders and sit
in an office with them, it just,it's never gonna work.
It just doesn't.
But I also, in this documentoutline strategies for what to
do if your kid is sitting acrossfrom you in reunification
(33:16):
therapy, and a lot of it comesfrom giving your child the say
and the control and the power.
They haven't ever had that.
They're very beautiful.
That is critical, right?
Just like us, just as the adultwho was abused, our children
have never had the power toadvocate for themselves.
(33:36):
To express themselves withoutfear of criticism or shame or
mockery or judgment or, wrath.
And so that's a huge, and it'scounterintuitive and it's really
hard for a lot of protectiveparents who are desperate.
If your child's attachment andthe relationship with you has
been severed or is beingfractured, you're desperate to
cling on, you're desperate tograb onto your child because
(33:57):
it's, you are so upset by thisall and understandably.
This is exactly why abusers dothis.
Correct, correct.
Because it's the ultimate painpoint for any parent.
You're grieving a child who'sstill alive.
We grasp at desperate measures,hoping to find the results we
(34:19):
want.
And there's a lot of injusticebehind what we experience, and
so we have to let go of that,right?
It's fair, we clinging to thatinjustice, right?
This is not right, this is notfair and correct.
It is not right.
It is not fair.
But if we hope to find justicethrough using force or even the
(34:39):
courts, it's the wrong place tolook for justice really.
So that's like the firstpremise, giving your kids some
control and some say more thanyou would in a normal parenting
situation.
That's the hard part.
So we're definitely parentingdifferently and this is really
important because a lot of myclients and even just a lot of
(35:01):
my followers get really up andarm.
No, I parent the way that Iparent.
I'm like, and I totallyunderstand where you're coming
from.
However, you can't parent theway an average parent parents.
All those books that we haveread on parenting really don't
apply when you have coerce somecoercive control in the mix.
It just, you have to, all thatgoes off to the wayside and
you're parenting from a verydifferent place.
(35:23):
This document that I created.
It was created for my attorneybecause she had said, because of
her, because of the issue shehad to deal with, in my case,
she became aware that the familycourts were no place to take
these custody battles, justice.
(35:44):
There's not gonna be any justicefound there very rarely.
So she decided that she would nolonger engage in custody
disputes for her clients.
She would keep the divorces thatshe was handling to just the
finances.
But at the same time, she alsofelt really bad because she
didn't have a solution for theseparents.
Because when you're divorcing,it's not just about the
(36:04):
finances, it's a lot about thecustody.
And so she asked me if I could.
Help with the clients she hadand help them find another way
that didn't use the courts, andthis document was created from
that.
And so I'm still working on itto fine tune it, but it's very
(36:27):
much a work in progress and Ihope to use it to help her
clients.
But beyond that, it made methink that, look, I wrote a
series of essays a few years agoon how to separate a mother and
child.
Now would maybe be a good timeto write a series of essays on
(36:47):
how to reconnect a mother andchild.
And I use mother because I'm amother.
'cause you are a mother andthat's your own personal
perspective.
You're not saying this is verykey because there's a lot of
people come out of the woodworkand they get defensive.
She's not saying that men don'tget abused, but this is her own
personal perspective.
She is a woman, she's a mom.
So that's where this is from.
(37:08):
But you can easily say, how aparent can reconnect with their
child.
Yep.
Can change the pronoun to suityour own specific it's
interchangeable.
Yeah.
But I feel like I need to bringit from my perspective, but
that's genuine and authentic.
It's your perspective.
So maybe a series of essaysneeds to be written on how to
(37:29):
reconnect a mother and child aparent and child.
And so I'm working on those thatcould be put out on Instagram,
because I think it would justbring back the idea that there's
hope and reconnection and also areal time diary on how I'm
reconnecting.
(37:49):
So that people could see thatit's not linear.
That if you do make contact withyour kid, it's likely to have
highs and lows.
You're likely to experiencetimes when there's no connection
and they've just gone silent.
You feel like all is lost.
(38:11):
Then there's moments wherethere's lots of connection and
you might feel a littleoverwhelmed by that amount of
connection as well.
And so it will maybe offer areal time diary on.
I love that.
Connect honestly, like yourfirst essay, which is what I
think somebody posted it in,like their stories and I started
(38:31):
and it was like a rabbit hole.
I went down and the way youwrite, you are an exceptional,
I'm an English psychology major,so English is I love good
writing and you are anexceptional writer and the way
you word it is so authentic andgenuine, and it's so relatable.
And so even if you don'tunderstand, like even if you've
(38:52):
never experienced abuse, I thinkit, it really helps people from
the outside go, oh, this is howthis happened.
This is why he or she stayed andthey didn't leave.
This is why it looks this way.
This is why there's reactive,emotional messages and,
breakdowns.
This is how this happens.
So I think you're not onlyhelping survivors who are living
(39:13):
it and experiencing it or have,escaped and have moved on, but
also for society at large tosay, okay.
And I think the more we havethese types of real life
experiences that are brought tothe forefront, the better off
everybody is, because knowledgetruly is power not only for
survivors, but also to get thesupportive community.
(39:34):
Because if you haven'texperienced this, it's really
hard to understand.
The nuanced complexities ofabuse and how seemingly smart
people, fall for this.
But you have to remember,abusers are expert con people.
They've spent their entire liveslearning how to con people.
And abusers aren't alwayshorrible.
If they were horrible all thetime, we would be more than
(39:55):
likely to leave.
But they give you just enoughgood stuff that you feel hopeful
and you feel like you have totry harder.
And it's also important for usto realize what we experienced
is also what our children areexperiencing.
It's very similar.
There's differences, but how wewere confused and we were adults
who understood that abuseactually happens they're just
children and it's their parent.
(40:16):
Correct.
I spent a lot of time explainingmy abuse to people who were not
familiar with this style ofabuse.
And that helped me get reallyclear on, on what I had
experienced.
And so every time I told mystory, I felt it was a, an
attempt to get people outside ofthis world to understand and if
(40:41):
they could just come away with alittle bit of understanding, I
had succeeded.
And so it helps you get reallyclear with your story, but you
mentioned something about yourchildren are in the same
situation and I think we forgetabout that because, in abuse,
the focus is so much on whathappened to us.
(41:02):
And we have to understand thatthe same thing that happened to
us is happening to our children.
And so that's why we're the bestexperts because abusers
typically tend to abuse and thesame manner and fashion across
the board with anyone they comein contact with.
They have their own playbook.
(41:24):
And tried and tested techniques.
They like literally have beendoing this for a long time and
they've come up with their besttechniques.
That, that actually have beenproven to work.
It's fascinating because when Ihelp other parents, the, one of
the first things I do is I askto read their text messages or
their email correspondence withtheir ex.
(41:46):
And the thing, I just see apattern that becomes very clear
in the way that abuserscommunicate it is mind-boggling
because it really feels likethey all read the same document
on, it's like they all went tothe same school, right?
Like, how, and that's what'struly fascinating from like a
psychological perspective, ishow do people from different
(42:10):
cultures, religions,backgrounds, genders, how do
they adapt in this way, in thismaladaptive way, and how do they
learn the same techniques?
That is what's truly sofascinating from a purely,
educational perspective.
Unfortunately this fascinationalso comes with a lot of
devastation.
'Cause they just cause so muchdevastation for anybody that
(42:31):
they come in contact with thatthey have a prolonged
relationship with.
And I can say from my schoolingspeaking with professors what,
how can you help abusers seewhat they're doing?
And most of the time theiranswer is, we can't.
It's really in these situations,it is a little humorous because
(42:51):
the way you treat it is youtreat everyone that had to deal
with it.
You help them heal and recoverfrom the abuse It's very rare
that you can treat the abuser.
And that's also how you find,it's all the people who are in
therapy, are, there's always acommon denominator, and it's the
person in the middle, andeverybody around is doing all
(43:12):
the work to heal themselves.
And this person who's like thecatalyst for all this
introspection and deep divesand, undoing like all the things
that have happened they'reincapable of the introspection
needed and the vulnerability,because this is hard work, which
is why so many people, like infamilies that are dysfunctional,
continue, the same dysfunctionthat they grew up in is because
(43:32):
it's hard to undo, it's hard tobe vulnerable, it's hard to do
the work.
So our kids, we will see, we'llwatch them, and a lot of the
things that they do will feelvery familiar to how the abuser
acts.
And I've had a lot of parentssay to me, oh my goodness, my
kid is just like the abuser.
(43:52):
They have all the same traits.
And I'm like, yeah, but no.
They're not the story has notbeen written for them yet.
Yeah.
They aren't an abuser.
But they are being weaponized.
They are being trained.
They are being, and you're beingabused by proxy.
So where your ex let off yourchild now comes back to you and
they're mimicking theintonations, the same wording,
(44:13):
the verbiage, the body posturelike rolls of the eyes.
And it's so triggering for somany people, because it's the
person, it's the people that youlove the most, more than anybody
else in the world.
And they're treating you the waythat your ex treated you.
So that has to be the shift inyour thinking.
You can't start saying, my kidslike the abuser.
(44:34):
No, they're not.
They have behaviors that aresimilar to the abuser because
they've had to, they've had toin order to survive those,
they're adapting hope, right?
Yep.
And so we have an opportunity asthe parents, if we have done our
own work and we've startedhealing, we have an opportunity
(44:54):
to heal with our children.
And so a lot of the study I'vedone is on co-regulation and how
we can build capacity in ourchildren by healing alongside
with them.
Children need our nervoussystem.
They borrow it from us.
And this can be up to the agesof, I don't even know, let's
(45:17):
just say into early adulthood.
Because a lot of these kids havea diminished capacity.
So much of their development hasbeen stalled because of the
abuse.
And so we have to remember thatthe kid we see in front of us at
age let's say 15, should not becompared to another 15-year-old.
(45:40):
So don't compare your children.
That 15-year-old that you havebefore you has developed in a
completely different way.
And so you need to really beable to hold space for who they
are at that moment and parentthem in a way that maybe feels a
(46:02):
little odd.
You might have to treat themlike a toddler.
Extreme patience.
But at the same time, givingthem a lot of control and say.
And that's very scary.
That's a weird world to be in.
So many people are like, but I'mgonna create a narcissist.
I'm gonna create an abuser if Idon't have rigid boundaries and
there aren't consequences tobehavior.
(46:23):
And I get a lot of backlashonline with this, a lot of
people are like, no, you'reabsolutely wrong.
And it's not my job to try topersuade you to do it.
This is the work that I do withmy clients.
But it's, and it'scounterintuitive, which it is.
Why we've talked about you arenot going to be parenting the
way the average parent parents.
You're just not.
Those same tools are not goingto work with your child who's an
active victim of abuse.
(46:45):
So let's say your kid is yellingat you and they're angry, or
they decide to give you thesilent treatment, and these are
behaviors that your abuser used.
The difference is that your kidis using'em to survive in an
impossible situation.
And so what you have to do islook beneath that behavior and
(47:05):
try to meet their primary needs.
Which for all of us, it's thesame.
It really is.
It's safety and being allowed tobe vulnerable with someone
that's what our children need.
They need to know that no matterwhat they say to us, they're
(47:26):
gonna be safe and we're notgonna use it against them.
That's the definition ofunconditional love.
Exactly right.
No matter, and I've told mychildren and it's a harsh way to
look at it, but this is what Imean when I tell you that I love
you unconditionally, it doesn'tmean that I always, like your
behavior.
Your behavior is not who youare.
(47:46):
You are different from yourbehavior.
Your behavior comes from a,trauma.
What you've experienced in theday.
I always love you.
I don't always like yourbehavior so much so that if you
were to kill a person, I wouldstill love you.
I wouldn't like your behavior,but I would still love you.
My love is not conditional.
It's not based on what you do orwhat you don't do or how you
show up in the world.
It's based.
'cause I actually love youunconditionally no matter what.
(48:09):
You'd obviously have to faceyour consequences to your
actions, but I would be there tosupport you.
You wouldn't get like a freecard.
I wouldn't try to cover it up,but I would be there to support
you as your mom Correct.
Yeah.
That's exactly what we need todo.
We need to give them theunconditional love that they're
not getting, much of the lovethey get from their other parent
is conditional.
(48:30):
Yeah.
And we don't even, it's not evenlove.
Like honestly.
Yeah.
If you define love, what they'reexperiencing isn't love.
And that's why I always usebrackets, right?
Quotes, like we can call itlove, but that's not really what
we show.
What we model is what real lovelooks like, what genuine love
looks like.
And it's not conditional, it'snot transactional.
It's not based on, if you dothis for me that I'm gonna give
(48:52):
you some affection and someattention today.
It's all the time, it's allencompassing.
It doesn't mean that we'reperfect parents, that we show up
perfectly for our children.
We make mistakes, but then weapologize and we repair.
Which is also something they'llnever get with their abuser.
Correct.
There's very little chance forrepair.
Yeah.
It always does come with acondition, but once you realize
(49:14):
that your child is not anabuser, you separate them from
their other parent, you canstart to look at their behaviors
with a different perspective andmake sense of them.
And this is when, this is whatthey call like attunement,
right?
When you are actually inattunement with your child, you
(49:39):
can look from their perspectiveand see the world through their
eyes for a moment and reallyfeel what they're feeling apart
from your experiences.
And kids feel that.
If you've ever had therapy,you'll know that feeling when a
(50:04):
therapist is really connectedwith you in a way that shows
you, they understand, theyauthentically understand.
That's attunement, that's whatwe want with our children.
We want that attunement.
And so that's a big part ofconnecting with your kids, but
you have to release this ideathat they're just like their
(50:27):
abuser.
Yeah.
And divest yourself from thatbelief or that fear.
That's a, so many protectiveparents have two fears, I think,
that their children are gonnabecome just like their abuser or
that they're gonna partner withan abuser.
'Cause it's what they know.
And we can't live in fear.
It doesn't mean that you don'teducate yourself.
It doesn't mean that we're notreal.
(50:47):
Like when I coach I am frank.
But you live with.
Knowledge.
Real knowledge.
And that's continuous.
You're continuously educatingyourself.
It's not unlike a one-stop shopwhere you just take one course,
it's constantly reading andinvestigating and doing deep
dives.
So you educate yourself becauseknowledge is always power and
empowering.
And then you take action and youtake action and you also couple
(51:09):
that with hope.
And I think when you have thosethree things those three
elements, and also support, beit expert support, community
support, or preferably both,right?
You're more likely to be able tonavigate this with more clarity
and more confidence and lesschaos.
They love to create chaos.
They love to create exhaustionon every level.
Because then you're far easierto manipulate person who's
exhausted mentally, emotionally,physically, spiritually, is more
(51:32):
likely to be like a keycandidate.
To be manipulated and to becontrolled.
Yeah, exactly.
And that's your kid, right?
And that was you at that time.
And that's what co-regulation iswhen I talk about like they
borrow your nervous system.
Yeah.
These kids borrow your nervoussystem,'cause theirs is not
fully developed yet to be ableto handle the emotions that come
(51:56):
with being a victim.
Really.
Yep.
And sustaining this abuse.
'Cause the system couldn'tprotect'em from it.
So they borrow your nervoussystem.
You don't want your kidsborrowing a traumatized nervous
system.
So you have to, you're stillparenting when you are healing
yourself.
(52:17):
That's the best gift you cangive your kid is a parent that
is in the process of healing.
On some journey.
Yeah.
Towards, some sort of healingjourney, right?
It's like you are a work inprogress, right?
So it doesn't mean that weexpect perfection because what
you're actually doing as aprotective parent who is still
being abused, it doesn't matterif you've laid down the road,
(52:37):
there's still abuse in thesystem, right?
There's still abuse happening,there's still trauma and there's
still all this sort of stuff.
But you do the best that you canand you move forward, right?
You embark on a journey that youmake for yourself and also for
your children, right?
Again, you cannot, just likewhen you're in an airplane, they
always say, put it on your ownoxygen mask first before you put
(52:58):
it on your children.
That feels selfish, but it'snot.
If you put it on your childrenfirst, you might expire before
you're able to actually helpyour children.
So you have to invest back intoyourself.
And I think this is alsosomething that so many people
who have, experienced abuse havea hard time with, is putting
themselves first.
It feels selfish, it feelsuncomfortable.
You've been conditioned to notput yourself first.
(53:19):
But if you don't take care ofyourself, then you certainly
can't show up as the parent thatyour children actually need and
deserve.
Correct.
Yep.
And that's, putting yourselffirst is gonna be different for
Yep.
For everybody.
Everyone's journey is going tobe different.
We are giving you like anoverview.
It doesn't mean you have tofollow exactly in this, these
footsteps, and do exactly whatAmanda did or what I'm talking
(53:40):
about.
But it's, you adapt, we'regiving you a playbook and you
use what works for you and putdown what doesn't work for you.
I learned early on that one ofthe best ways to help someone
leave a cult is to show them acult member that left and
survived and thrived.
And so I was like, oh, that'sme.
(54:02):
I'm the first member to leaveour little family cult.
Yeah.
And I knew that if I wanted myboys to leave, I'd have to show
them how to leave.
Yeah.
And how to leave in a way thatthey could not only survive, but
thrive.
And so a part of that was goingto school and I made it very
public.
Yeah.
(54:22):
That's why I posted everythingon Instagram.
Literally laying the foundationfor the steps for them to leave.
Yeah.
And I've talked about that.
But you are literally yourchild's model for how to escape.
And if escaping comes at toohigh of a cost, if you're
broken, if you are, in this andyou're stuck in this, place
where you, there's no forwardmovement, you're not healing,
(54:42):
you're not growing, you're notliving, your child is gonna be
like, why the heck would Ileave?
It's just, it's safer to staywith the abuse that I know than
venture out on the outside.
You would literally, and this isnot to place more shame and
guilt and pressure on protectiveparents, but you also have to
understand that how you'reliving your life post escaping
is also what your children arelooking for and towards.
(55:03):
And if you are thriving, it'sgiving them like a modicum of
hope.
Hey, there's life on the otherside.
Yes, this is gonna be hard, butI can actually still live a
great life on the other side andmy mom or my dad is showing me
how to do that.
Exactly.
Kids are smart.
They're gonna choose the personthat they think will help them
(55:24):
survive.
And unfortunately, becauseabusers diminish their spouses
in such a way, kids don't seetheir other parent as someone
that can protect them.
And this is again, nothing to dowith how wonderful and powerful
and capable you are as asurvivor, but when children,
(55:46):
it's survival.
Who is going to be the bestleader?
We are our children's leaders.
We have to be confident, we haveto be, capable.
We don't want leaders of ourcountries, of our organizations
who are lacking confidence, whoare feeling hopeless, helpless,
and powerless.
That is not attractive.
We don't gravitate towards them.
No.
You like, you gravitate towardspeople who are confident that
(56:07):
they can, help you.
That they are going to be, andour children are the same.
They're looking to you going, isthis person gonna be able to
keep me safe?
Correct.
Which is why the system fails ustoo.
'Cause the system, keepsenabling abusers.
Yeah.
And they don't understand howsurvivors present.
It's they're like, yeah that's awhole nother rabbit hole.
(56:28):
Yeah.
And we, yeah.
I am just so thankful that youwere able to take the time to
come on and be my first guest onmy first episode of my podcast.
I wanna have you on more'cause Ifeel like we could talk for
hours and hours.
So much of what you do is notonly remarkable, but it's also
(56:49):
exactly the kind of playbookthat people, survivors should be
looking at.
Again, not exactly what you'redoing, but taking parts, the key
parts.
How to get up from down, likeyou are at the bottom.
And you're living a great life.
It doesn't mean that you stilldon't have grief, doesn't mean
that you still don't havesadness.
It doesn't mean that you stilldon't have trauma that you're
working through, but it meansthat you've been able to live a
(57:11):
life that you actually love andyou've done a lot of great
things despite the great painthat you've had to experience as
well.
And those two things can liveside by side.
You can have pain and you canalso have pleasure.
Exactly.
You have to give yourselfpermission to enjoy life because
that is really what empowersyou.
When your kids see you livingthat life they're not jealous,
(57:34):
they're looking at you andsaying, I want that.
Maybe this is a parent that Ican come to for help.
Yeah.
If I do decide to leave, maybeI'm going to be safe.
You show them that safe way out.
And you only do that by modelingit.
Of course.
And so while it feels selfish,it's really not.
But it's the first, it's likeone of the first steps you have
(57:55):
to take is helping yourself.
Yes.
And that's a playbook out oflike cult survivors.
That's cult psychology 1 0 1right there.
Yep.
Exactly.
So thank you so much for beingon.
I wanna have you on again andagain, and probably again,
because I feel like this is,we've just scratched the
surface.
There's so much more that wecould talk about.
(58:15):
And next time I talk to you,you're probably gonna have more,
updates and more, intel forpeople to be able to read
through and listen to.
And thank you.
You're amazing.
As I always tell you, and everytime I meet you, I love you just
a little bit more.
Thank you.
I love being your first, and Ithink you were also the first
person in my membership too.
(58:36):
You're the first expert guestspeaker was inside of The
Collective.
Yeah.
You were.
Wow.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
And I think also my first live,is that possible?
I think that's possible.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How?
But that's how much you resonatewith people though, right?
Because you're authentic andyou're genuine, and you don't
pretend to be perfect and youdon't pretend to have all the
answers.
You are still learning, you'restill a work in progress.
(58:56):
And so learning means thatyou're not perfect all the time.
This is really important tounderstand this, right?
You're gonna make mistakes, butthat's how you learn.
Yep.
Yeah.
Thanks.
Thank you so much for having me.
I really thank you so much.
Thank you for listening to TheSurvivor's Playbook.
If today's episode help you feelless alone, more clear, more
confident, more educated andempowered, share it with
(59:18):
somebody else who you thinkmight also need to feel more
empowered and educated.
And if you're ready for deepersupport, you can join my monthly
membership or grab free tools atchantalcontorinescoaching.com,
the link is in my show notes.
Remember, your clarity is yourpower.
Your calm is your resistance.
You are not crazy.
(59:39):
You are not alone, and you arenot powerless.
Until next time, keep going.
I see you.
Hello everybody.
Welcome to my very first episodeof The Survivor's Playbook.
I am Chantal Contorines, andthis is the podcast for every
survivor of abuse, be theyparent, child, or parent who's
being forced to co-parent withtheir abuser.
And this is with a twist, ifabusers can have a playbook that
they play by, why can'tsurvivors have a playbook?
(00:24):
And this podcast is stories ofhope from both experts as well
as survivors, and sometimes thepowerful combination of expert
survivors.
On that note, our very firstguest is one of my favorite
humans in this space.
I have, collaborated with herextensively in the past.
Her name is Amanda Nguyen, andshe's both a survivor as well as
(00:45):
an expert advocate.
On that note, thank you so much,Amanda, for being here for my
very first episode.
I'm beyond excited and also alittle bit nervous'cause I've
never done this before.
So thank you so much.
So let's dive into you a littlebit, as much as you feel
comfortable talking about yoursituation and how you climbed
(01:05):
yourself out of the bottom.
Whew.
Okay.
Let's not get too much in theweeds.
Yeah.
Because these are stories ofhope.
Yeah.
But a little context for mybackground is I was married to
my ex-husband at the age of 21.
Met him when I was 15.
We were together for 30 years,and it took me that long to find
(01:28):
my way out of the abusiverelationship.
I didn't quite have a grasp onthe depths of the abuse.
But after I left, it became veryclear that I had been in an
extremely abusive relationship.
And that's very common, right?
So many people assume that theyknow when they're in the
(01:48):
relationship, but abuse is soinsidious that you don't
actually understand you, it'snot good, you don't feel happy,
but it often takes time.
That's called the delayedrealization, right?
And that's very common.
Especially psychological abuse.
Yeah.
If others can't understand it,even the person in it can't
understand it.
It's very nuanced and it happensover a long period of time, and
(02:13):
so you don't recognize iteasily.
I naively thought that I couldjust leave and parent, co-parent
with my ex-husband and I wasmistaken.
Yep yep.
As soon as he understood that Iwas really leaving he be started
to behave differently.
(02:33):
And so I had to really think onthe fly and become strategic
about how I would protect myselfand my children after.
Let's see.
Three to four, three years ofprolonged litigation in the
family court.
I decided to do what I calldropping the rope and the tug of
(02:56):
war that you can't win.
I quickly realized that thecourts were no match for the
manipulation and skills andtactics that my abuser
possessed, that he wouldactually weaponize the courts as
a way to further disconnect mefrom my children.
And so I took, again, I wentagainst my attorney's
(03:20):
recommendations and against alot of people's recommendations,
and I left the courts.
I surrendered custody of mythree boys.
They were ages nine nine.
15 and 17 at the time.
I think, I can't rememberexactly, but there's been lot
(03:41):
that's been going on since then.
Yeah.
A lot's been going on.
So I negotiated outside of thecourts with my attorney's help
to surrender custody because Ifelt that would be the best way
to in some ways it's an oddstrategy.
Because you're actually givingthe abuser exactly what he
(04:04):
wanted, control over thechildren, but you're also not
engaging in the battle that hedesperately wants.
And I think it's so important,that piece right there.
So you went against therecommendations'cause we've
talked before Experts, yourlegal team.
So what you actually did issomething that a lot of
survivors have a hard time doingis trusting their instincts,
(04:26):
right?
When you've been partnered withthis type of person, when you've
been in a relationship being aparent or a partner, they
gaslight you so frequently thatyou actually stop being able to
trust your intuition becauseeverything is off within your
system.
And I think that's reallypowerful because you literally
took a giant leap of faith inyourself Knowing that you
(04:46):
actually knew your abuser betterthan anybody else, better than
any expert any legal team.
And, this was the only way foryou and your children to
possibly survive this And sothat's incredible.
Honestly, that's actually givesme goosebumps because you, you
did what so many people arescared to do is to trust
themselves despite that's a lotof pressure.
(05:07):
To be under, to have peopletelling you, don't do this.
You should do this.
And you're like, no, I have tolay down the rope.
The shame that you carry.
Yeah.
The shame that you carry fromrelinquishing custody.
I was a stay-at-home mother tomy three boys.
That was the only life I knew.
And I had to grapple with theidea that would society shame
(05:30):
me?
But I have to, every day that Italk to someone and they ask the
question, do you have children?
What would my answer be?
And could I deal with, I don'tknow.
Judgment, criticism, judgment,shame, especially as a mom,
right?
Especially when that has beenyour entire world.
Your identity was so entwinedwith your three boys?
(05:52):
That was who you were, a parentfirst and foremost.
The role loss, that was a roleloss.
That was so much of who I was, amother, a stayat home mother
full-time, knew nothing elseother than that.
And how sad is it that part ofyour decision making was how you
were going to be viewed byothers?
(06:12):
It shouldn't have even beenthat.
It's what should be in my bestinterest and my children's best
interest, not what other peoplethink of me, because nobody
understands this.
Nobody does.
If, and unless you'veexperienced this, you simply
don't understand what survivorsand victims have to endure.
And what that looks like and thetoll it takes on your mental,
physical, emotional, spiritualhealth.
(06:33):
Both adults and children alike.
But yeah, no, no one.
No one could give me theanswers.
I had to find them withinmyself.
And after 30 years of my ownintuition just being destroyed,
I had to find that, I had torealize that I was the best
(06:53):
expert in my case as everyone istheir own best expert in their
case.
And that is actually what welearn in school, is I'm a
graduate student earning mydegree in counseling psychology.
So let's just stop and recognizethat you went from this to where
you are right now, which isempowering and educating
yourself, and then helpingothers do so as well.
(07:17):
Honestly, every time I talk toyou, I just love you a little
bit more.
We can talk more about mystudies.
Yeah.
But they've been really helpfulpersonally and my work with
reconnecting with my three boys.
But the, I had to say, this iswhat I know is true.
And I took a really bold move.
And I remember that day becausethe person I had to convince
(07:39):
most was my attorney, who is adear friend and I love her and
she's amazing, and she was by myside the entire time.
But she's an attorney and so shehas a set of tools.
And those tools are the courtsjustice, the law.
But those are not tools thatcould be used in my case because
they were ineffective.
(08:01):
They, the courts do not have thecapacity to deal with the
psychological issues that wereinvolved in my case.
I'm not saying it's not foreveryone, but for mine, it was
not going to work.
And so I called her one day andI still had, visitation with my
youngest son who was nine at thetime.
And I said, I am not showing upto pick my son up this weekend.
(08:25):
I'm not doing it.
And that and how did that feelfor you?
It was sickening.
It was sickening because in thatmoment I was, in some ways in a
lot of ways I was abandoning myson and it's what you felt that
you were doing.
You weren't actually, you weredoing this because you knew that
he was going to traumatize yourchildren further.
(08:46):
This is the thing is thatcertain abusers, not every
abuser is as is exactly thesame, but yours was very, and is
very adept at manipulatingpeople psychologically and
mentally and emotionally.
And you knew that if youcontinued, he was just gonna
keep putting more pressure onyour children.
More pressure on my children andon myself.
And it became very clear that Ihad to find a way to get out,
(09:11):
and that was drawing a line inthe sand and saying, I will not
pick up my son.
I will not allow my ex-husbandto engage us all in this battle
to further separate us and abuseus.
And that was when my attorneyknew, okay, we need to find
another solution.
(09:31):
And she started working onfinding a solution.
It was a very creative solution.
And, she's a masterfulnegotiator, and, but you had a
good advocate in your corner,right?
So even though she didn'tnecessarily agree with your
approach, because that wasoutside of her scope, right?
She respected you and yourchoice and your intuition enough
(09:52):
to say, okay, now we're gonnapivot.
Yep.
I'm gonna be the best advocatefor you.
And most people don't have that.
Yes.
And so I was really fortunate tohave her, and I relied on her.
For her expertise innegotiation, not necessarily in
family court law.
Yeah.
Although she was an expert, butshe was an expert negotiator.
(10:13):
And so that's really was apivotal moment when she drafted
the document that released allof us from the abuse in the
family courts because you likeliterally took away the only
thing that tethered you to him,that he could actually continue
to further abuse you and yourchildren with which you just as
(10:33):
you said, and I love thisdescription, you were in a tug
of war and your children werethe rope and you chose to lay
down the rope.
And cut off his supply.
But that didn't, but that didnot mean that I was giving up
hope on reconnecting with mykids.
I also realized that I needed toheal because once I understood
(10:54):
that I was a victim of domesticabuse, extreme course of
control, I knew that there was alot that I had to unpack and
there was no way I could healwith my children if I wasn't
starting the process of healingmyself.
And so I reached out to, firstof all, I started writing.
(11:19):
That's really the first thing Idid, and that's how I stumbled
upon you was you wrote thisbeautiful nine piece essay.
And I was like, wow, okay.
She's a person who understandsthis.
Yeah.
So I thought it was verycathartic to share my
experience, and I did itselfishly because I wanted to
write these essays and I placedthem on Instagram.
(11:41):
That was my placeholder, wheremy story could be shared in case
my boys ever found it, in casethey went searching for what's
the truth?
Where's mom's side of thisstory?
And so I put it there notrealizing that it would resonate
with others, and that peoplewould reach out to me and say
(12:02):
that this is happening to me.
Maybe this is what I need to do.
Help me figure out.
And so these series of essayscalled How to Separate a Mother
and Child, just really wentthrough the, the strategy that
abusers use to separate you.
And I also talked about.
The ways in which I did not showup as a great parent where I
(12:27):
fell for the traps that myabuser laid, and I actually made
it worse for my kids.
And this is the thing that somany protective parents grapple
with is when you are partneredwith an abuser and you share
children together, it'simpossible to show up as the
kind of parent you would if youdidn't have the overarching
overwhelming stress from theabuse.
(12:47):
We are triggered, we are insurvival mode.
We're in fight, flight, freeze,or fawn.
Oftentimes, our children do notget the best version of us Not
because we don't love ourchildren unconditionally,
wholeheartedly, but because weourselves are victims of abuse
and we are barely surviving.
We are treading water andoftentimes going under.
(13:08):
And so this is really importantfor so many people to understand
you have to give yourself graceand space, you did the best that
you could with the support,knowledge and tools that you had
at the time.
Because I know a, like a lot ofmy clients, they, feel
tremendous shame and guilt fornot showing up the way that they
could have had they had theright support and the right
nurturing environment forthemselves to be the best parent
(13:30):
they possibly could be, right?
And I had to reflect on the waysthat I didn't show up and I.
Not wallow in it and lingerthere, but just logically think,
okay, this is how I showed up,but I need to show up
differently for my kids if Ireally wanna help them.
And that's when I startededucating myself on the
(13:51):
psychology of what happens inthese abusive dynamics and how
our abusers seek to createchaos.
And we, of course we fall forit.
Because we become reactive as away to survive.
Our behaviors make a lot ofsense when you look at them
through the perspective of theabusive dynamic.
(14:14):
They, everything makes senseabout how we behave, why we
don't leave our abuser, why weparent in certain ways.
And I, when I left that abusivedynamic, when I surrendered
custody, that didn't mean I wassurrendering the idea of being a
parent.
It.
Meant that I didn't, I wasn'tphysically with my kids.
(14:35):
Yes.
And the case with my older boys,it also meant I was not talking
with them not one word fromthem.
So I had to figure out how doyou parent from afar?
How do you parent from thesidelines?
And the first step was healingmyself.
And I'm not gonna say that I amhealed.
It is will be a life longjourney for me.
(14:58):
Yeah.
It's not a destination, it's ajourney.
And you take two steps forwardand half a step back.
And there are some days whereyou grieve and you cocoon and
you're a blubbering mess.
And other days where you feel,okay I've made the right
decisions for my, for myself andfor my children.
And so for you, you must havehit rock bottom.
Yep.
(15:18):
I will say that I was suicidal.
And that is a terrible place tobe for any person, but let alone
a protective parent.
Because, and there's so muchgoing on behind that.
So how did you, as a protectiveparent who's had to let go of
the rope in order to heal andthen reconnect with your
children, right?
Because you knew that was thebest strategy for you and your
(15:40):
children.
You were trusting your instinctsagainst everybody else, telling
you completely differently.
How did you climb back from thatlowest of lows?
So first was sharing my story,putting it on paper, writing it,
so it's there for me to justreview because sometimes I
forget how bad it was.
(16:02):
I know that sounds strange, butNo, but it's not because.
Like we minimize to be able tosurvive this.
When you're in the relationship,you have to minimize what you're
experiencing?
You justify it.
There's always an excuse or theyjust had a stressful day.
Or if I just did this a littlebit differently, if I was more
nurturing.
If I was more accommodating?
So everything, and when you'rein it, you can't see the forest
(16:23):
for the trees and gaslighting isso effective?
So we actually start to questionourselves and they also love to
project, so they, you are theproblem for so many of the
issues that you experience andwhich is why writing things down
is so important?
Even if it, you've neverbroadcast it to the world.
Even if you don't publish thisstuff, even just for you in your
own private time to say,actually I'm not crazy.
(16:46):
I actually really experiencedabuse and it was actually worse
that I'm painting it to be,because we still oftentimes
minimize it, even if we dounderstand, we say it wasn't
that bad.
And sharing my stories opened meup to a support network that I
didn't realize was out there.
And so it connected me withother parents in the same
situation.
(17:07):
It also let the people around meknow exactly what was going on
in my life without you havingto, every time you encountered
them, give them like, the Cole'sNotes version of, they could
just read this on their own timeand understand where you're
coming from, but also, you justtalked about something that's so
important.
Abuse is so isolating, abusersisolate their victims, be they
(17:29):
children or adults?
So part of healing is actuallyreconnecting with people who
understand without you having toexplain, write down your essay.
People just Hey, totally getwhat you experienced, Amanda.
And you don't have to justifyyour behavior.
You don't have to justify this,like the choices that you made,
which, when you are partneredwith an abuser, they take away
all your optimal choices.
(17:50):
And so you're left having tochoose from less than optimal
choices.
So no matter what you do, it'snot gonna be the best decision
because they've taken those allaway.
It's going to be the bestchoices you have given the
circumstances.
Correct.
So writing the next step waseducation.
I had to learn as much about thepsychology of this, and I
(18:15):
stumbled upon a doctor's lesson,the class about protective
parenting.
How best to reconnect with yourkid.
And it's not a straightforwardpath, it takes a lot of turns,
but the first is recognizingyour own traumas and starting to
(18:38):
heal them.
And for everyone that isdifferent.
And it's a combination of thingsand you just have to keep at it.
Every morning you get up and youkeep at it.
And for me it was a combinationof educating myself, seeking
support from my friends and myfamily.
(18:58):
The solidarity of the communitythat was experiencing the same
thing as I was and yoga.
Yep.
Yep.
Therapy.
And it's really just a, it's amix of things, right?
And you just see, you see whatworks in helping you deal with
your traumas.
(19:19):
I never stopped communicatingwith my kids.
I continuously sent textswhether they were reading'em or
not.
And then I did what I knew howto do best, which was bake.
And so I would send carepackages to their house and I
didn't know if they got'em ornot, but I sent, there was no
(19:41):
expectation of acknowledgement.
It was high love, low pressure.
Yeah.
They didn't have to, they didnot have to respond.
And this is a really big thingbecause so many parents,
protective parents especially,become very upset when they
don't get responses.
But you have to understand yourchild is doing the best they can
to survive in an inhospitablelike environment.
(20:02):
And sometimes a response issimply too much.
Like they are not safe torespond.
But it doesn't mean that youdon't stop, right?
And your text should not be, Ireally miss you and I can't
believe, this should be, I loveyou.
I thought of you.
I saw this thing and it made methink of you, this comic strip.
I thought that you would enjoythis.
I saw this book.
Maybe you could read the book.
In fact, I can email you thebook or mail you the book?
(20:24):
So low pressure, there was noexpectation of a response.
And don't take it personally?
Your child is also a victim ofabuse.
That's the reality.
Correct.
So I did a lot of researchinitially on how to communicate
with my kid in a one wayfashion.
And everything that you said isexactly what I did.
No need for a response and justsend love.
(20:48):
Just tell them, oh, today Ithought of you because it was
Easter and I remembered lastEaster we did this.
Wasn't that fun?
Send pictures.
Hey, this picture popped up inmy photo album today, and I just
thought of you.
That's all you do.
(21:09):
You don't say, why are you nottalking to me?
Where are you?
Are you safe?
I miss you so much.
Tell your father that this isnot right.
This is, yeah.
There's no shaming or guiltingor obligation.
They already get so much of thatfrom the other parent.
They get so much pressure, and Icall it high pressure, low love.
The text that I sent to mymiddle son that sparked our
(21:32):
reconnection was a text where Iapologized, and I, he had given
me this necklace and he wasquite young when he had given it
to me when we were in thedivorce process and I was nasty
and I said, how did you even payfor this necklace?
Did you get the money from yourfather?
(21:53):
Horrible.
Oh my God.
That was horrible.
But I said it, right?
Yeah.
So this is the thing though iswe are human and we're humans
who are under tremendouspressure?
We're in a pressure cooker.
So that was not your optimal,finest parenting?
You're not gonna be,broadcasting that far and wide,
(22:13):
although we just did on thepodcast.
But this is also to validateeverybody We've all done this.
Even parents who have the mostsupportive partner or co-parent
and have no financialobligations that that they can't
meet.
We all make mistakes we all saythings in the heat of the moment
due to stress, whatever thatstress might be.
And so what do we do?
We repair.
(22:33):
Yeah.
And so I needed to repair thatand I sent a text and I said,
Hey, that was horrible.
What I said to you.
I'm thinking that you must havefelt really bad because I
diminished the gift that yougave me that was so touching.
And so I'm just sorry for that.
(22:54):
And that was it.
End of the story, couple dayslater, boom.
A reply and it was, mom, I can'tforgive you for a lot of the
things that you've done to us,but I'm willing to talk with you
if you do one thing for me.
My response was, understood.
What can I do for you?
(23:16):
That was it.
But what a simple gift you gaveyour boy.
Of just hearing what he wassaying.
Validating his feelings and hisemotions without any kind of
pressure.
Just what can I do?
And so this is been a lot of mywork is realizing that there are
several narratives.
(23:37):
Each person holds their ownnarrative of the events that
happened.
It's like history, right?
It's our history, it's our ownpersonal history, and it's
biased.
It's our perspective on theworld.
And we look at that through ourtrauma lens, through all the
lenses that have created us tothis point.
And so we each have our ownnarrative, our own history.
So I had to understand that hehas his narrative, right?
(23:58):
I don't, I have not lived hislife.
I was not a 13-year-old boy.
He had a different relationshipwith his father than I had in,
in several ways.
So he viewed him differently anddidn't fully grasp what the
abuse was and what washappening.
And so I had to understand thatwe had two versions of a story
(24:24):
and neither were right norwrong, and I had to respect his
version, and I had to hold backon telling my version if I
wanted to reconnect with him.
And so his request, I couldsimply meet it because I let go
of my narrative, my version ofreality, and I just accepted
(24:49):
his.
And that opened the door to usreconnecting.
So now we were communicating ontext, and I was keeping it very
light and fun and really askinghim, how are you?
What do you need?
What's going on in your life?
How can I support you?
(25:10):
And I really became histherapist.
And I think this is the key toreconnecting with your kids, is
you do not parent the way thatyou thought you should parent,
you become a therapist for yourchild.
And when I reconnected with him,I was just starting graduate
(25:31):
school working on my master's incounseling psychology.
And what I didn't realize isthat all the skills they were
teaching us about how to be areally good therapist were also
the same for like how to be areally good parent that is
attuned to their child and canvalidate and repair any ruptures
(25:58):
in the relationship as theyhappen.
That's a really hard skill whenyou're a parent because you have
to let go of the parent so much,right?
Of so much.
Like you have to relinquishcontrol as a parent and parent
from a different perspective.
Graduate school has solidifiedit, and now I parent like a
(26:22):
therapist.
And those skills have beenreally helpful in helping me
reconnect with my son and stayconnected with my younger son as
well.
So you've been through it alland we've heard your personal
perspective, right?
Like your own story of abuse,how you went through the system,
(26:44):
how you walked out of thesystem, because you knew that
the system was not going besupporting you and your family
the way that it needed to, andfor you to actually live.
You were going to continue to beabused.
The system was gonna beweaponized against you and your
boys.
Now can we talk a little bitabout this wonderful document
that you sent to me and that I'mstill reading.
(27:04):
Because I think this is alsoreally helpful for protective
parents and I don't know whatyou plan on doing with this if
you're gonna publish it, if it'sgonna be expanded.
But I think these are alsoreally important tools that pair
beautifully with what you'vejust spoken about.
With how you actually parentyour boys.
Even though you don't have thephysical proximity, you're still
parenting in a different way.
(27:25):
And I think that's for everyprotective parent.
I always tell my clients, we'renot parenting the way normal
parents parent.
We have a different set of rulesof engagement.
Why?
Because there's coercivecontrol.
And so we don't approach ourchildren the way an average
parent would, approach theirchildren when there's issues
when they act out.
Because we're not simply dealingwith children's emotions and
(27:47):
their lack of, maturity andhormones as they, work through
teenage years.
We're dealing with so much morecomplex.
So do you wanna talk a littlebit about this document that you
have?
Yeah, so I started writing thisdocument on how to reconnect
with your children.
And going step by step.
It was based off a lot of myself study around estrangement.
(28:09):
And estrangement is defined asseparation from a family member,
a loved one when you're anadult, so it's not when you're a
child.
But there's a lot of lessonsaround estrangement and how to
reconnect.
And so I took those lessons.
And so I took the lessons onestrangement and how families
(28:31):
reconnected to build thefoundation of this document.
I also took a lot aboutattachment theory.
And how our kids are attached tous and how they're compromised.
A lot of it had to deal withinformed care around trauma
survivors and how we approachtrauma survivors'cause a lot of
(28:53):
us are dealing with complextrauma and it's actually still
occurring.
So the idea of PTSD where it'spost-traumatic doesn't really
work for us because we're allstill living.
Yeah.
Like we're living in the trauma.
When you are tethered to yourabuser with children, you're
still living the trauma.
The trauma doesn't go away.
You're still being forced into atrauma situation by this person.
(29:16):
What I really like about this Ithink people are better able to
understand it from thisviewpoint, which is more of a
macro.
Which is the cult.
When you have a cult it's allabout brainwashing and in like
indoctrination and isolation andmanipulation and control about
outside sources.
It's us versus them.
And if you view an abusiverelationship in the same, be it
(29:38):
partner or parent, in the samelens, when you have a person
who's so indoctrinated and isenmeshed with the cult leader
and the cult itself trying toforce them out with logic
doesn't work, they become somuch more defensive and they're
more likely to withdraw fromyou.
Even though it makes sense toyou from the outside looking
(29:59):
into them, they've had their,like their minds have been
worked on, they've beenmanipulated.
It's active brainwashing andthat's what happens with adults
and children who are, in arelationship with a coercive
controller.
It's the same sort of premise.
We just have the micro levelthat's more of the macro level.
So that was my second area ofstudy.
Cults.
Yeah.
And deprogramming.
(30:20):
And the strategies that theyused that families had used to
pull their children out of thecult, their adult children,
typically out of a cult and backto them.
And in the idea of working withfamilies that are suffering
through estrangement as well ascults, the idea is not to use
(30:43):
force.
Force has been used on survivorsand our children from day one.
That's how the coercivecontroller operates.
They use force coercion.
And so it means that whatevertactics we use, whatever tools
we use, you can never use force.
(31:03):
And that goes back to thetherapeutic skills that I'm
learning.
There never.
Never can it, it's nevereffective if you've used force
to make it happen.
Kids, people have to comewillingly to therapy.
So this was my next idea, thatreunification therapy, it falls
(31:26):
flat on the very premise becausereunification therapy uses
force.
It uses a court order by a judgethat says to a kid, you are
complied.
You are you must comply, and youare compelled to come to this
therapy session and sit with aparent that you don't wanna be
with.
(31:46):
It doesn't it?
It never works.
No, because again, you are thenit's.
Even though the intention istotally different, it's the same
premise.
Your child is being coerced,they're being forced to do
something against their will.
Even if their will is built on afoundation of lies and a
narrative that is false, it'swhat your children are currently
experiencing.
It's how they feel right now.
(32:08):
Doesn't matter why they feelthat way, it's how they feel.
And that's part of thevalidation and the respecting of
their feelings and theiremotions, even though you know
why they have those feelings andemotions and it's not truly how
they really feel.
If you were to, pair back and goall the way down to the basics,
that's how your child feelsright now.
Correct?
(32:28):
Correct.
So I took a playbook fromdeprogramming in a way.
And estrangement stories fromfamilies that were estranged.
And it's hard because Iunderstand that parents.
Think they have very few optionsand that even if they're using
(32:54):
the courts to get a child tocomply with the orders and sit
in an office with them, it just,it's never gonna work.
It just doesn't.
But I also, in this documentoutline strategies for what to
do if your kid is sitting acrossfrom you in reunification
(33:16):
therapy, and a lot of it comesfrom giving your child the say
and the control and the power.
They haven't ever had that.
They're very beautiful.
That is critical, right?
Just like us, just as the adultwho was abused, our children
have never had the power toadvocate for themselves.
(33:36):
To express themselves withoutfear of criticism or shame or
mockery or judgment or, wrath.
And so that's a huge, and it'scounterintuitive and it's really
hard for a lot of protectiveparents who are desperate.
If your child's attachment andthe relationship with you has
been severed or is beingfractured, you're desperate to
cling on, you're desperate tograb onto your child because
(33:57):
it's, you are so upset by thisall and understandably.
This is exactly why abusers dothis.
Correct, correct.
Because it's the ultimate painpoint for any parent.
You're grieving a child who'sstill alive.
We grasp at desperate measures,hoping to find the results we
(34:19):
want.
And there's a lot of injusticebehind what we experience, and
so we have to let go of that,right?
It's fair, we clinging to thatinjustice, right?
This is not right, this is notfair and correct.
It is not right.
It is not fair.
But if we hope to find justicethrough using force or even the
(34:39):
courts, it's the wrong place tolook for justice really.
So that's like the firstpremise, giving your kids some
control and some say more thanyou would in a normal parenting
situation.
That's the hard part.
So we're definitely parentingdifferently and this is really
important because a lot of myclients and even just a lot of
(35:01):
my followers get really up andarm.
No, I parent the way that Iparent.
I'm like, and I totallyunderstand where you're coming
from.
However, you can't parent theway an average parent parents.
All those books that we haveread on parenting really don't
apply when you have coerce somecoercive control in the mix.
It just, you have to, all thatgoes off to the wayside and
you're parenting from a verydifferent place.
(35:23):
This document that I created.
It was created for my attorneybecause she had said, because of
her, because of the issue shehad to deal with, in my case,
she became aware that the familycourts were no place to take
these custody battles, justice.
(35:44):
There's not gonna be any justicefound there very rarely.
So she decided that she would nolonger engage in custody
disputes for her clients.
She would keep the divorces thatshe was handling to just the
finances.
But at the same time, she alsofelt really bad because she
didn't have a solution for theseparents.
Because when you're divorcing,it's not just about the
(36:04):
finances, it's a lot about thecustody.
And so she asked me if I could.
Help with the clients she hadand help them find another way
that didn't use the courts, andthis document was created from
that.
And so I'm still working on itto fine tune it, but it's very
(36:27):
much a work in progress and Ihope to use it to help her
clients.
But beyond that, it made methink that, look, I wrote a
series of essays a few years agoon how to separate a mother and
child.
Now would maybe be a good timeto write a series of essays on
(36:47):
how to reconnect a mother andchild.
And I use mother because I'm amother.
'cause you are a mother andthat's your own personal
perspective.
You're not saying this is verykey because there's a lot of
people come out of the woodworkand they get defensive.
She's not saying that men don'tget abused, but this is her own
personal perspective.
She is a woman, she's a mom.
So that's where this is from.
(37:08):
But you can easily say, how aparent can reconnect with their
child.
Yep.
Can change the pronoun to suityour own specific it's
interchangeable.
Yeah.
But I feel like I need to bringit from my perspective, but
that's genuine and authentic.
It's your perspective.
So maybe a series of essaysneeds to be written on how to
(37:29):
reconnect a mother and child aparent and child.
And so I'm working on those thatcould be put out on Instagram,
because I think it would justbring back the idea that there's
hope and reconnection and also areal time diary on how I'm
reconnecting.
(37:49):
So that people could see thatit's not linear.
That if you do make contact withyour kid, it's likely to have
highs and lows.
You're likely to experiencetimes when there's no connection
and they've just gone silent.
You feel like all is lost.
(38:11):
Then there's moments wherethere's lots of connection and
you might feel a littleoverwhelmed by that amount of
connection as well.
And so it will maybe offer areal time diary on.
I love that.
Connect honestly, like yourfirst essay, which is what I
think somebody posted it in,like their stories and I started
(38:31):
and it was like a rabbit hole.
I went down and the way youwrite, you are an exceptional,
I'm an English psychology major,so English is I love good
writing and you are anexceptional writer and the way
you word it is so authentic andgenuine, and it's so relatable.
And so even if you don'tunderstand, like even if you've
(38:52):
never experienced abuse, I thinkit, it really helps people from
the outside go, oh, this is howthis happened.
This is why he or she stayed andthey didn't leave.
This is why it looks this way.
This is why there's reactive,emotional messages and,
breakdowns.
This is how this happens.
So I think you're not onlyhelping survivors who are living
(39:13):
it and experiencing it or have,escaped and have moved on, but
also for society at large tosay, okay.
And I think the more we havethese types of real life
experiences that are brought tothe forefront, the better off
everybody is, because knowledgetruly is power not only for
survivors, but also to get thesupportive community.
(39:34):
Because if you haven'texperienced this, it's really
hard to understand.
The nuanced complexities ofabuse and how seemingly smart
people, fall for this.
But you have to remember,abusers are expert con people.
They've spent their entire liveslearning how to con people.
And abusers aren't alwayshorrible.
If they were horrible all thetime, we would be more than
(39:55):
likely to leave.
But they give you just enoughgood stuff that you feel hopeful
and you feel like you have totry harder.
And it's also important for usto realize what we experienced
is also what our children areexperiencing.
It's very similar.
There's differences, but how wewere confused and we were adults
who understood that abuseactually happens they're just
children and it's their parent.
(40:16):
Correct.
I spent a lot of time explainingmy abuse to people who were not
familiar with this style ofabuse.
And that helped me get reallyclear on, on what I had
experienced.
And so every time I told mystory, I felt it was a, an
attempt to get people outside ofthis world to understand and if
(40:41):
they could just come away with alittle bit of understanding, I
had succeeded.
And so it helps you get reallyclear with your story, but you
mentioned something about yourchildren are in the same
situation and I think we forgetabout that because, in abuse,
the focus is so much on whathappened to us.
(41:02):
And we have to understand thatthe same thing that happened to
us is happening to our children.
And so that's why we're the bestexperts because abusers
typically tend to abuse and thesame manner and fashion across
the board with anyone they comein contact with.
They have their own playbook.
(41:24):
And tried and tested techniques.
They like literally have beendoing this for a long time and
they've come up with their besttechniques.
That, that actually have beenproven to work.
It's fascinating because when Ihelp other parents, the, one of
the first things I do is I askto read their text messages or
their email correspondence withtheir ex.
(41:46):
And the thing, I just see apattern that becomes very clear
in the way that abuserscommunicate it is mind-boggling
because it really feels likethey all read the same document
on, it's like they all went tothe same school, right?
Like, how, and that's what'struly fascinating from like a
psychological perspective, ishow do people from different
(42:10):
cultures, religions,backgrounds, genders, how do
they adapt in this way, in thismaladaptive way, and how do they
learn the same techniques?
That is what's truly sofascinating from a purely,
educational perspective.
Unfortunately this fascinationalso comes with a lot of
devastation.
'Cause they just cause so muchdevastation for anybody that
(42:31):
they come in contact with thatthey have a prolonged
relationship with.
And I can say from my schoolingspeaking with professors what,
how can you help abusers seewhat they're doing?
And most of the time theiranswer is, we can't.
It's really in these situations,it is a little humorous because
(42:51):
the way you treat it is youtreat everyone that had to deal
with it.
You help them heal and recoverfrom the abuse It's very rare
that you can treat the abuser.
And that's also how you find,it's all the people who are in
therapy, are, there's always acommon denominator, and it's the
person in the middle, andeverybody around is doing all
(43:12):
the work to heal themselves.
And this person who's like thecatalyst for all this
introspection and deep divesand, undoing like all the things
that have happened they'reincapable of the introspection
needed and the vulnerability,because this is hard work, which
is why so many people, like infamilies that are dysfunctional,
continue, the same dysfunctionthat they grew up in is because
(43:32):
it's hard to undo, it's hard tobe vulnerable, it's hard to do
the work.
So our kids, we will see, we'llwatch them, and a lot of the
things that they do will feelvery familiar to how the abuser
acts.
And I've had a lot of parentssay to me, oh my goodness, my
kid is just like the abuser.
(43:52):
They have all the same traits.
And I'm like, yeah, but no.
They're not the story has notbeen written for them yet.
Yeah.
They aren't an abuser.
But they are being weaponized.
They are being trained.
They are being, and you're beingabused by proxy.
So where your ex let off yourchild now comes back to you and
they're mimicking theintonations, the same wording,
(44:13):
the verbiage, the body posturelike rolls of the eyes.
And it's so triggering for somany people, because it's the
person, it's the people that youlove the most, more than anybody
else in the world.
And they're treating you the waythat your ex treated you.
So that has to be the shift inyour thinking.
You can't start saying, my kidslike the abuser.
(44:34):
No, they're not.
They have behaviors that aresimilar to the abuser because
they've had to, they've had toin order to survive those,
they're adapting hope, right?
Yep.
And so we have an opportunity asthe parents, if we have done our
own work and we've startedhealing, we have an opportunity
(44:54):
to heal with our children.
And so a lot of the study I'vedone is on co-regulation and how
we can build capacity in ourchildren by healing alongside
with them.
Children need our nervoussystem.
They borrow it from us.
And this can be up to the agesof, I don't even know, let's
(45:17):
just say into early adulthood.
Because a lot of these kids havea diminished capacity.
So much of their development hasbeen stalled because of the
abuse.
And so we have to remember thatthe kid we see in front of us at
age let's say 15, should not becompared to another 15-year-old.
(45:40):
So don't compare your children.
That 15-year-old that you havebefore you has developed in a
completely different way.
And so you need to really beable to hold space for who they
are at that moment and parentthem in a way that maybe feels a
(46:02):
little odd.
You might have to treat themlike a toddler.
Extreme patience.
But at the same time, givingthem a lot of control and say.
And that's very scary.
That's a weird world to be in.
So many people are like, but I'mgonna create a narcissist.
I'm gonna create an abuser if Idon't have rigid boundaries and
there aren't consequences tobehavior.
(46:23):
And I get a lot of backlashonline with this, a lot of
people are like, no, you'reabsolutely wrong.
And it's not my job to try topersuade you to do it.
This is the work that I do withmy clients.
But it's, and it'scounterintuitive, which it is.
Why we've talked about you arenot going to be parenting the
way the average parent parents.
You're just not.
Those same tools are not goingto work with your child who's an
active victim of abuse.
(46:45):
So let's say your kid is yellingat you and they're angry, or
they decide to give you thesilent treatment, and these are
behaviors that your abuser used.
The difference is that your kidis using'em to survive in an
impossible situation.
And so what you have to do islook beneath that behavior and
(47:05):
try to meet their primary needs.
Which for all of us, it's thesame.
It really is.
It's safety and being allowed tobe vulnerable with someone
that's what our children need.
They need to know that no matterwhat they say to us, they're
(47:26):
gonna be safe and we're notgonna use it against them.
That's the definition ofunconditional love.
Exactly right.
No matter, and I've told mychildren and it's a harsh way to
look at it, but this is what Imean when I tell you that I love
you unconditionally, it doesn'tmean that I always, like your
behavior.
Your behavior is not who youare.
(47:46):
You are different from yourbehavior.
Your behavior comes from a,trauma.
What you've experienced in theday.
I always love you.
I don't always like yourbehavior so much so that if you
were to kill a person, I wouldstill love you.
I wouldn't like your behavior,but I would still love you.
My love is not conditional.
It's not based on what you do orwhat you don't do or how you
show up in the world.
It's based.
'cause I actually love youunconditionally no matter what.
(48:09):
You'd obviously have to faceyour consequences to your
actions, but I would be there tosupport you.
You wouldn't get like a freecard.
I wouldn't try to cover it up,but I would be there to support
you as your mom Correct.
Yeah.
That's exactly what we need todo.
We need to give them theunconditional love that they're
not getting, much of the lovethey get from their other parent
is conditional.
(48:30):
Yeah.
And we don't even, it's not evenlove.
Like honestly.
Yeah.
If you define love, what they'reexperiencing isn't love.
And that's why I always usebrackets, right?
Quotes, like we can call itlove, but that's not really what
we show.
What we model is what real lovelooks like, what genuine love
looks like.
And it's not conditional, it'snot transactional.
It's not based on, if you dothis for me that I'm gonna give
(48:52):
you some affection and someattention today.
It's all the time, it's allencompassing.
It doesn't mean that we'reperfect parents, that we show up
perfectly for our children.
We make mistakes, but then weapologize and we repair.
Which is also something they'llnever get with their abuser.
Correct.
There's very little chance forrepair.
Yeah.
It always does come with acondition, but once you realize
(49:14):
that your child is not anabuser, you separate them from
their other parent, you canstart to look at their behaviors
with a different perspective andmake sense of them.
And this is when, this is whatthey call like attunement,
right?
When you are actually inattunement with your child, you
(49:39):
can look from their perspectiveand see the world through their
eyes for a moment and reallyfeel what they're feeling apart
from your experiences.
And kids feel that.
If you've ever had therapy,you'll know that feeling when a
(50:04):
therapist is really connectedwith you in a way that shows
you, they understand, theyauthentically understand.
That's attunement, that's whatwe want with our children.
We want that attunement.
And so that's a big part ofconnecting with your kids, but
you have to release this ideathat they're just like their
(50:27):
abuser.
Yeah.
And divest yourself from thatbelief or that fear.
That's a, so many protectiveparents have two fears, I think,
that their children are gonnabecome just like their abuser or
that they're gonna partner withan abuser.
'Cause it's what they know.
And we can't live in fear.
It doesn't mean that you don'teducate yourself.
It doesn't mean that we're notreal.
(50:47):
Like when I coach I am frank.
But you live with.
Knowledge.
Real knowledge.
And that's continuous.
You're continuously educatingyourself.
It's not unlike a one-stop shopwhere you just take one course,
it's constantly reading andinvestigating and doing deep
dives.
So you educate yourself becauseknowledge is always power and
empowering.
And then you take action and youtake action and you also couple
(51:09):
that with hope.
And I think when you have thosethree things those three
elements, and also support, beit expert support, community
support, or preferably both,right?
You're more likely to be able tonavigate this with more clarity
and more confidence and lesschaos.
They love to create chaos.
They love to create exhaustionon every level.
Because then you're far easierto manipulate person who's
exhausted mentally, emotionally,physically, spiritually, is more
(51:32):
likely to be like a keycandidate.
To be manipulated and to becontrolled.
Yeah, exactly.
And that's your kid, right?
And that was you at that time.
And that's what co-regulation iswhen I talk about like they
borrow your nervous system.
Yeah.
These kids borrow your nervoussystem,'cause theirs is not
fully developed yet to be ableto handle the emotions that come
(51:56):
with being a victim.
Really.
Yep.
And sustaining this abuse.
'Cause the system couldn'tprotect'em from it.
So they borrow your nervoussystem.
You don't want your kidsborrowing a traumatized nervous
system.
So you have to, you're stillparenting when you are healing
yourself.
(52:17):
That's the best gift you cangive your kid is a parent that
is in the process of healing.
On some journey.
Yeah.
Towards, some sort of healingjourney, right?
It's like you are a work inprogress, right?
So it doesn't mean that weexpect perfection because what
you're actually doing as aprotective parent who is still
being abused, it doesn't matterif you've laid down the road,
(52:37):
there's still abuse in thesystem, right?
There's still abuse happening,there's still trauma and there's
still all this sort of stuff.
But you do the best that you canand you move forward, right?
You embark on a journey that youmake for yourself and also for
your children, right?
Again, you cannot, just likewhen you're in an airplane, they
always say, put it on your ownoxygen mask first before you put
(52:58):
it on your children.
That feels selfish, but it'snot.
If you put it on your childrenfirst, you might expire before
you're able to actually helpyour children.
So you have to invest back intoyourself.
And I think this is alsosomething that so many people
who have, experienced abuse havea hard time with, is putting
themselves first.
It feels selfish, it feelsuncomfortable.
You've been conditioned to notput yourself first.
(53:19):
But if you don't take care ofyourself, then you certainly
can't show up as the parent thatyour children actually need and
deserve.
Correct.
Yep.
And that's, putting yourselffirst is gonna be different for
Yep.
For everybody.
Everyone's journey is going tobe different.
We are giving you like anoverview.
It doesn't mean you have tofollow exactly in this, these
footsteps, and do exactly whatAmanda did or what I'm talking
(53:40):
about.
But it's, you adapt, we'regiving you a playbook and you
use what works for you and putdown what doesn't work for you.
I learned early on that one ofthe best ways to help someone
leave a cult is to show them acult member that left and
survived and thrived.
And so I was like, oh, that'sme.
(54:02):
I'm the first member to leaveour little family cult.
Yeah.
And I knew that if I wanted myboys to leave, I'd have to show
them how to leave.
Yeah.
And how to leave in a way thatthey could not only survive, but
thrive.
And so a part of that was goingto school and I made it very
public.
Yeah.
(54:22):
That's why I posted everythingon Instagram.
Literally laying the foundationfor the steps for them to leave.
Yeah.
And I've talked about that.
But you are literally yourchild's model for how to escape.
And if escaping comes at toohigh of a cost, if you're
broken, if you are, in this andyou're stuck in this, place
where you, there's no forwardmovement, you're not healing,
(54:42):
you're not growing, you're notliving, your child is gonna be
like, why the heck would Ileave?
It's just, it's safer to staywith the abuse that I know than
venture out on the outside.
You would literally, and this isnot to place more shame and
guilt and pressure on protectiveparents, but you also have to
understand that how you'reliving your life post escaping
is also what your children arelooking for and towards.
(55:03):
And if you are thriving, it'sgiving them like a modicum of
hope.
Hey, there's life on the otherside.
Yes, this is gonna be hard, butI can actually still live a
great life on the other side andmy mom or my dad is showing me
how to do that.
Exactly.
Kids are smart.
They're gonna choose the personthat they think will help them
(55:24):
survive.
And unfortunately, becauseabusers diminish their spouses
in such a way, kids don't seetheir other parent as someone
that can protect them.
And this is again, nothing to dowith how wonderful and powerful
and capable you are as asurvivor, but when children,
(55:46):
it's survival.
Who is going to be the bestleader?
We are our children's leaders.
We have to be confident, we haveto be, capable.
We don't want leaders of ourcountries, of our organizations
who are lacking confidence, whoare feeling hopeless, helpless,
and powerless.
That is not attractive.
We don't gravitate towards them.
No.
You like, you gravitate towardspeople who are confident that
(56:07):
they can, help you.
That they are going to be, andour children are the same.
They're looking to you going, isthis person gonna be able to
keep me safe?
Correct.
Which is why the system fails ustoo.
'Cause the system, keepsenabling abusers.
Yeah.
And they don't understand howsurvivors present.
It's they're like, yeah that's awhole nother rabbit hole.
(56:28):
Yeah.
And we, yeah.
I am just so thankful that youwere able to take the time to
come on and be my first guest onmy first episode of my podcast.
I wanna have you on more'cause Ifeel like we could talk for
hours and hours.
So much of what you do is notonly remarkable, but it's also
(56:49):
exactly the kind of playbookthat people, survivors should be
looking at.
Again, not exactly what you'redoing, but taking parts, the key
parts.
How to get up from down, likeyou are at the bottom.
And you're living a great life.
It doesn't mean that you stilldon't have grief, doesn't mean
that you still don't havesadness.
It doesn't mean that you stilldon't have trauma that you're
working through, but it meansthat you've been able to live a
(57:11):
life that you actually love andyou've done a lot of great
things despite the great painthat you've had to experience as
well.
And those two things can liveside by side.
You can have pain and you canalso have pleasure.
Exactly.
You have to give yourselfpermission to enjoy life because
that is really what empowersyou.
When your kids see you livingthat life they're not jealous,
(57:34):
they're looking at you andsaying, I want that.
Maybe this is a parent that Ican come to for help.
Yeah.
If I do decide to leave, maybeI'm going to be safe.
You show them that safe way out.
And you only do that by modelingit.
Of course.
And so while it feels selfish,it's really not.
But it's the first, it's likeone of the first steps you have
(57:55):
to take is helping yourself.
Yes.
And that's a playbook out oflike cult survivors.
That's cult psychology 1 0 1right there.
Yep.
Exactly.
So thank you so much for beingon.
I wanna have you on again andagain, and probably again,
because I feel like this is,we've just scratched the
surface.
There's so much more that wecould talk about.
(58:15):
And next time I talk to you,you're probably gonna have more,
updates and more, intel forpeople to be able to read
through and listen to.
And thank you.
You're amazing.
As I always tell you, and everytime I meet you, I love you just
a little bit more.
Thank you.
I love being your first, and Ithink you were also the first
person in my membership too.
(58:36):
You're the first expert guestspeaker was inside of The
Collective.
Yeah.
You were.
Wow.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
And I think also my first live,is that possible?
I think that's possible.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How?
But that's how much you resonatewith people though, right?
Because you're authentic andyou're genuine, and you don't
pretend to be perfect and youdon't pretend to have all the
answers.
You are still learning, you'restill a work in progress.
(58:56):
And so learning means thatyou're not perfect all the time.
This is really important tounderstand this, right?
You're gonna make mistakes, butthat's how you learn.
Yep.
Yeah.
Thanks.
Thank you so much for having me.
I really thank you so much.
Thank you for listening to TheSurvivor's Playbook.
If today's episode help you feelless alone, more clear, more
confident, more educated andempowered, share it with
(59:18):
somebody else who you thinkmight also need to feel more
empowered and educated.
And if you're ready for deepersupport, you can join my monthly
membership or grab free tools atchantalcontorinescoaching.com,
the link is in my show notes.
Remember, your clarity is yourpower.
Your calm is your resistance.
You are not crazy.
(59:39):
You are not alone, and you arenot powerless.
Until next time, keep going.
I see you.
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