Learning how to establish healthy boundaries with your abusive ex-husband is essential for your emotional safety. Celeste, a member of The BTR.ORG Community, shares strategies in The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop to establish emotional safety and find peace in a difficult situation.

• The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop helps victims navigate boundary-setting in divorce or married scenarios.
• This video simply and clearly breaks down what effective boundaries are, and how women can begin to establish them.

Post-separation abuse is a sad reality for many victims of betrayal and emotional abuse. Even though they have separated themselves from the abuser, the abuser may still try to exert power and control. Often, abusers will use communication, coparenting, and finances to create chaos and distress in victims’ lives. It is essential that victims establish healthy boundaries with their abusive ex.

Transcript: How To Establish Healthy Boundaries With Your Abusive Ex

Anne: A member of our community, we’re going to call her Celeste is on today’s episode. She’s divorced and has been working toward setting healthy boundaries with her abusive ex husband. She was concerned about working through some financial problems that her ex was causing. She implemented some Living Free strategies found in The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. Thanks for coming on today.

Anne: Do you feel like you could use the strategies in Living Free to resolve these financial issues?

Celeste: Yes, I was. It was difficult, but resolved. Retirement funds were transferred and bank accounts were closed. I’m financially disconnected from my ex.

Anne: So talk about how things have gone since you implemented these Living Free strategies and healthy boundaries.

Celeste: I gained some resiliency in dealing with him and in the minimum response possible. And I find that instead of reacting, this magic solution has happened. I don’t know how to articulate it, but it has been a peaceful time in my heart and soul in dealing with him. And I am grateful for it.

Anne: So talk about before you found the Living Free strategies. What was going on?

Celeste: Well, I thought this just doesn’t work for me, I need to do something. I felt very guilty, that I wanted some sort of barrier between communication. As I went back and forth and researched, they didn’t fit my situation. And so I kept looking for something. It didn’t come about.

Transformative Impact Of Living Free & Healthy Boundaries

Anne: And then what about after knowing about The Living Free Strategies?

Celeste: My internal dialogue is different. My internal thought processes about my ex’s behavior, whether present behavior or past behavior, and it creates a space where I can feel safer, settled, and resilient. I realized I had so much pain, so much betrayal, and trauma in my body that I wasn’t able to heal physically. I had to make a boundary for my own physical health and safety.

It became easier for my body to process the betrayal, the trauma, and get rid of pain. And I’ve become healthier and happier, connecting and checking in with my body. Women connected to men who are narcissistic or addicts are very sacrificial. They deny their own needs so much that it became second nature to give up physical boundaries as well as emotional boundaries. And that’s what I have been doing for 35 years.

So I’ve been disconnected with my own self, just knowing myself, knowing my own healthy boundaries for myself, as well as with relationships. So getting in touch with my own body has been revolutionary in my healing process.

Reclaiming Personal Healthy Boundaries

Anne: Do you feel now, like you’re more on your way to getting your needs met? One of your key needs is safety. Do you feel like you’re farther down that path?

Celeste: Yes, I feel like I have grown tremendously. In safety and in being more in touch with my needs.

When my husband and I were in the initial process of the divorce, he came to me several times and said, “I have this list of needs that I want you to consider, if we can consider a reconciliation.” And the healthier I got, I was able to say to him, Well, you know, I’m learning that my needs are important. I’m learning that I’m the best suited person, most qualified person to meet my own needs.

That, whether it’s asking for someone to help me meet a need or just being in charge of it myself. He would get angry when I would say that, because he had this list of demands that he wanted me to automatically meet. Embrace and agree to so that we could stay married. That was a good sign to me that I was doing the right thing, because I knew he was going to continue to assume that I was supposed to meet his needs, and I knew that I needed to meet my own needs.

And be in charge of that, and be in tune enough to know what they were.

Healing Through Writing

Celeste: I found out towards the end that my husband was writing journals of thoughts about me. And he identified me as a monster, and talked about why doesn’t she just leave? Our daughter and I would be better off without her. Why doesn’t she do the right thing and go away?

It was devastating, and the reason it was so devastating. I mean, you can imagine any wife finding volumes of journals like that, but it was so devastating because I’m a writer. Writing to me is an artistic expression, and it’s part of who I am. When I found these words that were harsh and ugly. I realized the time and energy he had put into recording these ugly thoughts about me. It took away my writing voice somehow.

And I was not able to write for a couple of years. I had been writing a blog that was really popular, and it literally shut me down. So, a great barometer of knowing how I’m healing now is that I’m writing again. I’ve found my voice again, and it’s a different voice, definitely, but I’m writing, and it’s a good sign that healing has taken place.

Anne: I love this part about The Living Free Workshop, focusing on what we want to do, our dreams and our talents.

Sharing A Poem: The Road Home

Anne: You sent me a poem. And I’d like you to share it with our audience. If you feel comfortable enough to share it.

Celeste: It’s interesting. As I started to write it, it was about something else. As I finished it, it was the right poem.

The Road Home

I followed the ice crested bear tracks north, ready to face my doomsday fear and dispatch the cruel beast once and for all. But as the tsunami like winds dissipated, hope glimmered desperately under the wreckage of my snow cape. That’s when the thaw began. So as the icicles dripped, grieving tears, I took some hesitant steps toward the sun, even though it was just a distant vacation memory from a trip I never quite took.

As I picked my way through a desolate landscape filled with broken mirrors, rusty bed frames, and shredded books, The splintered forest turned verdant and fresh. My feet fell on moss covered stones as I discovered new territory where all distant paths lead home. Then, as if on cue, the leaf bed below revealed the tiniest of breadcrumbs, leading into the horizon where all maps turned to dust.

So, even though I was no longer lost, I stooped to pick them up, one by one, for nourishment along the way. Yes, I followed the ice crusted bear tracks north, and they led me safely back to myself.

Anne: Thank you for sharing that.

Reflections On The Journey To Healthy Boundaries

Anne: So in that poem, you went on a journey. You thought you were looking for something. But you found out that isn’t what the journey was about. And you came back to yourself. The feeling that the poem gave in the end is so peaceful and calm. What did you learn in the process of writing that poem?

Celeste: I think I learned that I am responding to my own needs and I’m in my own corner for the first time in my life.

When I grew up, I had a narcissistic mother, and I was always on alert about how to behave, so that I wouldn’t get pushed aside or blamed. And so I transferred to my husband, and I had the same dynamic. So I’ve had no practice advocating for myself and my own needs. I realized as I wrote the poem, I was taking a journey, and I thought I was looking for another person in this journey. And yet, I was the person I needed to find, and I am still in the process of doing that.

As I find myself and validate my own needs, and then advocate to get those needs met in some healthy way, I know that I’m becoming a better person. My own best friend and advocate in a world that can sometimes be harsh and disturbing. The relationship I have with myself is the primary relationship in my life now. Not to say I push others out, but to say that I validate who I am and my needs, so that I can bring and embrace other people into my circle and have true connections.

Workshop Invitation

Celeste: And that’s a boundary I have never had in my life. I’ve always felt like I’ve had to sacrifice my own needs to connect intimately with others, whether it’s a friend, a relative or a significant other. And it’s always been a lose, win situation, and for the first time in my life, I can choose relationships according to a win-win.

Anne: That is awesome. I’m so grateful that you’re feeling better. Thank you so much for coming on to share your story. If you’re interested in learning strategies to help you live free from stress, chaos, and trauma, and them taking up so much space in your head. Enroll in The Living Free Workshop today.