Is Your Relationship Safe?

Do you feel confused all of the time? Are you wondering if they are a safe person? This confusion frequently arises from past trauma resurfacing or the dynamics of the present relationship. This episode provides an honest self-reflection and thorough questioning to help you discern if you are in a healthy, safe relationship.

Transcript

Welcome to the You're not crazy podcast hosted by Jessica Knight, a certified life coach who specializes in healing from narcissistic and emotional abuse. This podcast is intended to help you identify manipulative and abusive behavior, set boundaries with yourself and others. And heal the relationship with yourself, so you can learn to love in a healthy way. You can connect with Jessica and find additional resources, content and coaching, add emotional abuse cook dot com. Hello, and welcome back.

Today, I wanna talk about a topic that is a question that a lot of us coach ask ourselves when we're in a relationship and we're not sure if this person is safe. And so I have a series of questions that I asked myself, and I also have a series of answers, them, but the purpose of this is that a lot of times we're not sure if this is safe if it's our past coming up in our present. And our past triggers can come up in the present. But also our past realities can come up in the present, and that's something that I want to look at today. Because as you go through this.

And as you listen to this, I really just wanna invite you to be honest with yourself. And want you to be honest with yourself about how you're feeling, I wanna be honest with yourself about your relationship. And if you need to pause and listen to this at a later times, you can really ask yourself those questions. I wanna invite you to do that because I know that these questions are questions that I probably would need to ask myself and then answer again and then answer again to really get down to the root here. Because a lot of times, when we start to wonder if this person is safe we go through a period of looking at the behaviors in the relationship and maybe our own past trauma, and we probably gas light ourselves quite a bit because the other person is likely gas us and making us believe that they are safe for that their behaviors are normal or their behaviors are healthy when they're not, because they want us to believe another reality.

They want us to not see that we are actually triggered by something that's happening. And so this podcast is meant to be a series of questions that you can ask yourself if you feel like, I'm just not. I'm not feeling right here. Is it me? Is it them?

This will help you answer some of that. The first question is, do they have empathy for me? Do they seek to put themselves in my shoes? Do they understand my struggles? When you answer this question, ask yourself are there actions showing empathy because the key here is actions not their words.

Their actions tell you if they have empathy. Many abusive of people are wonderful with the words. They are actually amazing ultimate, and they say things, and they say things over and over again and make these elaborate promises. That really do hit on the deepest parts of ourselves that want that promise. But words aren't the problem because saying they have empathy and they're not acting as if they have empathy, acting contrary to empathy shows much more.

Empathy is the ability to understand someone even when you don't agree with it. I disagreed with a lot of what my ex partner said to me. But almost always, I asked myself in the moment or a separate from it. What is he really saying here? And why?

What's the purpose of what he's saying? Sometimes when I got to the bottom of it, it was control. But sometimes it was wow. We are really far apart here in our beliefs. And then if I really truly have empathy, I start to lean into, like, maybe we're not compatible.

Right? Maybe he wants a relationship that's mesh. And maybe I don't. Maybe there's something more for me that I want that is more like a venn diagram of 2 people coming together rather than on top of each other all the time. Know that's just an example, but I can have empathy for why he feels that way.

He may have gone about it in controlling ways to get what he wanted, forcing the narrative down my throat. I can have empathy for how Deep wants that and understanding and stepping outside my he being like, okay, He really seems to me that. While still having empathy for myself of that I really don't. But an abusive person will seek to control that perspective, and that's where the words don't matter because the actions that come with empathy are really them trying to stop trying to change your mind. And, of course, we all fall into pattern of trying to change someone's mind.

That's normal. But a healthy person usually reacts in a way that's like, I won't change your perspective, and I get that. A healthy person tries to understand you, and an abusive person will be you for having different beliefs. They will not seek to understand you. And if someone has empathy, they won't try to define your beliefs.

They will want to understand what it is that you believe, especially when you brought a concern to them in the first place. You know that somebody doesn't have empathy when they're arguing with you about your experience. And if you feel like you're constantly fighting your own experience and they're also fighting your own experience in whatever category it falls into, you know they don't have empathy. Another question to ask yourself is, who are they always looking out for? When there's a disagreement when there are different experiences in life, and they're kind of looking at a perspective, who are they really actually looking out for?

A healthy person will look at a situation like, where there's a disagreement, and they don't want the other person just to, like, be wrong. Right? We want them to, like, be okay. I mean, when in the context of abuse, of course, we want to see them we want them to see there being abusive, but we don't want them to be wrong. Right.

In these situations, are they trying to make you wrong? And while we always want to of course, look out for ourselves. It's concerning they are right or they come first above all us. That's because this is where they try and push their reality onto us. The reality only exists in the context of themselves, and their reality actually changes depending on the gold that they want.

And this is really evident during a breakup. Reality tends to be shifted and changed a lot. I remember the situation where it wasn't. It was, like, there was a... The person kept saying It won't.

It's best for both of us. And I was saying, like, yes, but what you're telling me I need to do is not what's best for me. I'm telling you it's best for me. And then they he kept pushing and he kept pushing, and I was like, and then it turned into, like, well, you just don't understand relationships. I'm like I do understand relationships and that's not what's best for me.

I'm telling you it's best for me. And I'm telling you where I can compromise. I'm telling you I'd, like to learn about your perspective in this way, which was therapy, and you're telling me I need to feel this way or that's that. In that perspective, his perspective only benefited him. It put him in a place of feeling internally safe to Not uncomfortable, not like, oh, god.

Okay. I have abandonment issues, and I might need to work through that to feel safer internally less insecure. That was not his perspective. It was, I feel this way, you need to make me feel a different way. That wasn't okay for me because I'm not in control of how somebody else feels.

And I know that, during that specific breakup, it was really evident how deeply his perspective was always on benefiting him, not benefiting the collective, not having empathy in seeing my side, not trying to find compromise or a mutual agreement, not being able to see where we both need to work. It was on me. I'll give an example. I said something like, I don't agree with you. That's not how I view the reality of the past few days, and I was told, you don't perceive correctly.

That's what he said. I remember thinking, like, he's literally rewriting how the last few days went in the context of me not taking care of him. I was sick. So I have, like, all these things about in my head about, like, I was sick of thrown up constantly. A stomach bug like, this came out of nowhere where he saw me throw up.

He had, like, literally get my kid from school. He saw this. And then the next thing was How could I have shown up for you, And then I was thinking about all the ways I tried to show up for him while still taking space so I didn't get him sick. And the response didn't have any empathy. Right?

You don't perceive correctly. That says, you are wrong, and it denies the experience. In that same conversation, which ended up being the first of the breakup conversations was that he wanted his love to be seen as beautiful. And when I felt his love, a lot of the time it felt clan and felt the mesh felt controlling. And this is just 1 example, but you can see that there's 1 reality.

Right? It's his reality, my love needs to be appreciated and love no matter how you feel about it. He's to be honored without a question. Even and especially if I felt differently, because if I felt differently, it goes back to the other comment. I perceive incorrectly.

That's a problem. It's a problem that I disagree, because it doesn't benefit his perspective. And I'm sure you can see this in your own relationship. It's their perspective, Trump's, your perspective, their perspective keeps them safe while your perspective makes you feel unsafe because it has to be in the context of their perspective. And the reason here only matters if it leads you to bend your perspective to theirs.

If you have a perspective, then you're just wrong and there is no pathway from them to understanding because that doesn't benefit the number 1 in their eyes, them. When you challenge their perspective, your call defensive. All roads lead back to them, And a lot of times they're always searching to have their needs met first. This goes to the third thing that I was gonna say is that question to I ask yourself is what they show and what they tell Is it the same? Is did an episode on this last year an I'll tag it in the show notes.

The core behavior here is in validation, but they show you what they tell you is not the same, And when you call it out when you question it when you feel ic when you're confused, you're told are wrong. What they show what they tell, not the same. You're sick, you're throwing up in the bathroom. They're showing up at empathy in that moment. The next day they're telling you he didn't show up for them.

They tell you, I'm gonna go out with you, you know, was have a nice night. The night ends up them meeting up with their friends. You tag along. There's no time 1 on 1 together. You're upset because it's not what you thought it would be.

You're then invalidate for feeling that way. They tell you they're going to listen to your perspective. They promise it. You take this step to really give it a chance to express how you feel. They start showing you with their body language that they're not listening and they're not going to listen.

They shut down. What they show what they tell is not the same. I really invite you to ask yourself these questions because it could lead to a lot of clarity, even though it's hard, and I know it's hard. I mean, I I think it's clear. I got this feedback all the time from people is that it's so clear that I've been through it, and I understand it, and I had to get myself out of it because I know how hard this is.

I really do. I hope this is an episode you can come back to and ask yourself these questions as you begin to understand your relationship. As always, you can find me at emotional of abuse coach dot com on subs. My name on Subs is jessica at coaching. Night spelled with a k.

You can email me, Jessica, at jessica at coaching dot com, and you can always find me on Instagram at emotional abuse coach. I hope to talk to you soon.