Emotional Abuse Breakthrough Course: Why It Matters and How It Can Help

I’m doing something a little different — I’m walking you through my Emotional Abuse Breakthrough Course: what it is, why it matters, and how it can help if you’re stuck questioning your reality.

I share the story of how I realized I was in an emotionally abusive relationship, how confusing and stuck I felt inside the trauma bond, and the turning points that helped me start to break free. I also talk about why simply recognizing abuse isn’t enough — and how you need validation, boundaries, and clarity to start reclaiming your life.

If you’re Googling things like "Is this abuse?" or "Why does nothing I do seem to work?" — this episode is for you.

I’ll also talk about some of the tools that helped me, like Paul Colaianni’s M.E.A.N. Workbook, and how my course is designed to give you something I wish I had: a clear foundation, validation, and steps you can actually take — even if you’re still stuck inside the relationship.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How emotional abuse rewires your reality
• Why trauma bonds keep you stuck (even when you can see the harm)
• How to set boundaries for yourself — even when they won’t respect them
• How to start validating your own experience (and stop feeling crazy)

Resources Mentioned:

• Emotional Abuse Breakthrough Course
• Paul Colaianni’s M.E.A.N. Workbook (link to workbook if available)

Transcript

Welcome to the You Are Not Crazy Podcast hosted by Jessica Knight, a certified life coach who specializes. And 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@emotionalabusecoach.com. Hello, and thank you for being here. Today, I am doing a bit of a different episode today, and it's because I get a lot of the same question about the emotional abuse breakthrough course, what it is and why it matters. And so if you know you're a consistent client, if. You've already purchased it, if you know what it is. You know, some of this stuff may just not be what you're looking for, but I think it's important, especially if you're still wondering what is going on is this abuse, all of that. And so actually before I dive into the episode, I should go over the fine print and so you can find me my work, my courses@emotionalabusecoach.com. If you are looking for my divorce coaching, it's at hi divorce coaching.com, on instagram@emotionalabusecoach.com and on substack at substack. And then you just search for Jessica and night coaching. I do one-on-one coaching and I also do one off coaching. So if you just are looking for one session and not to be a consistent client, that is available. So today, like I said, I wanna talk through the emotional abuse breakthrough course and what that looks like. And if you have ever wondered, is this abuse, which is what I did, you know, at the beginning of like, my journey is, I was like, this feels awful. This looks awful. I feel awful. Nothing I'm doing is working. And then I remember. I Googled, my boyfriend blames his anger on me, and the first link that popped up was the domestic violence hotline. And I remember that moment actually of just like really sitting back and just being like, oh, because at that time, many years ago, I thought I was actually Googling it, looking for an answer. I typed in my boyfriend, blames his anger on me thinking I'm gonna get resources on what to do to make this stop. I. And that's not what I got, right. I got a journey into abuse, which is for me, especially at that time, I was like, well, I have always, like, I grew up in emotional and physical abuse actually. So like I thought in a way I understood it, but I didn't understand it when it was happening to me. Which is frightening, but I knew I didn't feel okay and that is what I needed to start a journey down, like these things of not feeling okay. And then I proceeded to make a bunch of mistakes, such as telling that person that he's emotionally abusive. I. That didn't work obviously, and I ended on this. I kind of set off on this path of like trying to understand what was happening because there was so much happening all at once and I was getting all these downloads of information, but I couldn't make sense of my reality and I also couldn't leave 'cause of the trauma bond. I felt so stuck. I was seeing it and I was living it, but it was so hard to be conscious and seeing it. I was living an emotionally in the relationship. And so when I designed this course, I really wanted to focus on what can you do if you've identified emotional abuse, not just is it emotional abuse or not, because that is a great thing to recognize and realize, and I certainly was down that path for a long time, but I got really stuck on what to do because. For a while, I just felt like I was like just in the hotbed of realizing I was in an emotionally abusive relationship and not really being able to do much about it, and I was spending a lot of time on Reddit and reading various like Reddit feeds and typing things in and getting answers and validation, and then was seeing myself in so many other people's stories, but it still wasn't answering. So what do we do? Like what do you do? And so. When I created this course, that's what I was thinking of. I was thinking about that version of me that once existed and didn't understand what I was experiencing, needed validation needed to understand the basics of a trauma bond because I wasn't ready to like fully get it what it meant. Because I mean, you hear trauma bond and a lot of us think it means shared trauma. It's trauma bond, it's different. It's not shared trauma. It's a betrayal bond. And so that's the background. That's what led to this, and I wanted a course that gave you clarity and validation and a few steps forward. That's what is in my emotional abuse breakthrough course. When you are in an emotionally abusive situation, we're often told to that we're sensitive, we're overreacting, that you're imagining things, and that's what keeps us stuck because we don't have clear proof. We wonder if we could be sure we can feel this way. Other people can describe their stories and we feel the same way and, but we don't feel certain. And I wanted something that you could go through that would help you feel certain. The thing I went through in this process, like, I mean, it took some time and I went through a lot of things, but one of the amazing tools that helped me was Paul Kalani's mean Workbook, MEAN. There's a link in the show notes, so if you are interested in that, you can go find it. There are about, I think it's 200 examples of emotionally abusive behavior and then he gives you a rating at the end. And I remember out of 200 I had 1 67, which is like highly abusive. I. That was the validation at the time I needed, I didn't know what to do about it. It was the validation at the time that I needed that. All right. I got, and I mean, and I'm sure when I was going through that list, I was going through it and being like, you know, oh, he does this sometimes. Oh, this isn't all the time. You know? And then you get to the end, you count it up and you're like, oh my God. I remember I did it twice 'cause I didn't believe the number and the second time I did it when I was really being honest with myself. I wasn't going down the list of like, well, he does this but not this. Or like, oh, but sometimes I do that. It's like, no, just like, what behaviors am I seeing from this partner? Like, let's take my shit and put it aside. If I wanna go through this later and identify all the shit I do, I can do that. But that's not what this is about. Right? That's what emotional abuse does to us. It makes us want to question how we are causing the issues in anything, like in the relationship when a lot of times it's self-defense, not reactive abuse. I. Self-defense, right? When we finally block them after like lash out number 10, during our workday self-defense, we are protecting ourselves. So that's like the biggest thing is like go through either if it's my course, another resource. Paul's workbook only. Look at the other person. You need to see what's going on in your relationship. You cannot fix anything without getting that full picture. And I guarantee you, if you're the one that's here, you may have some behaviors you're not proud of, but you're, I, I, I believe you're acting in self-defense or it's the only thing that you can do to survive this relationship. When you're in emotional abuse, you second guess everything. People tell you you're too sensitive or that you're overreacting, or that you're crazy, and you believe they're right. You believe they're right. It's real. What you're experiencing is real. It's not okay and you're not crazy. And so in this course, I walk you through exactly what emotional abuse is, how to recognize it, and whether you're in a trauma bond, I then bring you into. A unit on boundaries and what that looks like in an abusive relationship. Often we hear bound. You cannot set boundaries with a narcissist or an abuser, and you can sometimes they're only for us. Sometimes we're the only ones that knows we're setting a boundary, and so I walk through what that looks like with you and try and help you get a sense of what you could do by providing some examples and also saying what a boundary is and what a boundary isn't. I'll give you an example of one. So I remember that my ex used to yell at me all the time. Uh, this is an ex from years and years ago, but he used to yell and like he would get mad quickly, very mad, like my daughter is in. Elementary school. And so like when she was in kindergarten, they gave out this thing about like green zone is like when you're calm and happy, and red zone is like madness and orange and yellow are in between. And then she created blues on, which is sad. And so he would literally go from like green to red in an instant. It's like a kid without impulse control. And so when he would do that, like. I mean, I was just sort of stuck in the crossfire when it's happening and I don't know what's even going on. I'm having trouble identifying it. I'm either taken by surprise, I think I really did something wrong, and you just feel so stuck. You just feel like I. I can't get out of this. Well, that was one of the situations, one of the few I identified that I couldn't do anymore, and that if I was gonna lead this relationship, I had to get out of that situation. Or basically I had taught him that when he gets angry, I'm going to like, wait until he's not angry or like basically try and care, take or, you know, the series of behaviors I did that I'm not proud of, but. For example, one of the boundaries I set was, if you yell at me, I am leaving. And we didn't live together, so this was possible. But I remember the first time I implemented it, I said, if you yell at me, I'm leaving. And he continued to yell and I didn't even do anything like this. He was mad over something else and then was like trying to blame me because if I didn't do X, Y, Z, then he would've been able to focus. And I was like, I had nothing to do with like any of those things. And. As I explained the story, I should tell you a later example is when I stopped rationalizing anything or defending myself, but that came later. Right now it was, if you yell at me, I'm gonna leave. And I will be honest. It was so hard to leave. I remember he started to yell and get like really inflamed over something that I truly like, I really had nothing to do with, and then he goes. You know, like he like made this like, like, ah. And I just was like, if you continue to yell, I am leaving. It was the second time I said it, and then he said, you just wanna leave so you can look like the fucking victim. And I'd got my bag. I walked to the door and I left. I was shaking. I walked to my car a block away, and as I got in my car, I could still hear him yelling. We live in a city. I was shaking, and I just remember thinking, I could not imagine if I stayed, like, you know, the quote, if you have seen made, there's a quote, like, first they'll throw things next to you before they throw things at you. That's what I was afraid of in this relationship, like it was getting to that level and I was like, I, I cannot do this. And I began to set boundaries that removed myself from the harm. After that, that was one. And because I was trauma bonded, I didn't just leave after that because that's just not how this shit works. It's not, but it really helped me begin to separate myself. I. From the immediate blast that I was feeling all the time so that I could regulate myself enough to begin to continue to come up with strategies and even just sort of like get the support I needed because I knew I needed support. If I was gonna leave, I was gonna need someone to remind me what happened in the relationship I was gonna need them to talk me out of, you know, kind of help me work through the trauma bond and all of that. So as I was getting like those, that support in place for myself, you know, therapist, you know, getting some items out of the home, like making sure you know that I was setting boundaries so that I wasn't getting to this escalated place all the time, where my nervous system was calmer, I was getting more consistent workouts, I was eating, I was identifying signs of abuse and trying to make sense of my reality. Like I knew that once it was over, it was gonna be over. But I did not know how to get myself there, and so that's what the course kind of works you through how to recognize it. Noticing the trauma bond, giving you validation, giving you enough signs of abuse and of trauma bonding so that you can see what emotional abuse is and how to recognize it. How trauma bonds form, and whether or not you're in one, what the cycle of abuse looks like, and how to identify where you are in it and how to validate your own experience so you're not dependent on someone to tell you what's real. Basically, how to un gaslight yourself. And when people start researching emotional abuse, they usually fall into a rabbit hole. They'll Google trauma, bond gaslighting, narcissistic abuse. They see pieces of their experience reflected back at them, but they don't always know what to do with that information. And that's why I created this. It gives a foundation and a place to start, a way to begin to think differently about your experience. So you can start to take some steps. So you can have like something, hold on to. Like I said, I really recommend Paul Kalani's mean workbook. It's a great resource. I created this course 'cause I needed something more to come after that, not only something that identified abuse, but helped me figure out what to do next. But I will say that course has so many signs of emotional abuse that if you are experiencing it, it's like it will help you see what is going on because he makes it impossible to not see it. And so if you're stuck in confusion, wondering. What you're experiencing, wondering if it's abuse. This course might be helpful. The link is going to be in the show notes. It's the Emotional Abuse Breakthrough course, and I also have some other resources in there too. And again, it's like I, I created the course I needed when I was going through it, and so if. You're in that place and you need just something to help you make sense of your reality, I highly recommend it. And of course, you know, I'm always creating new things and wanting to create new things and wanting to create time to create new things. And so if there's ever something that you're like, oh my God. It would be so helpful to hear, you know, somebody talk about this or that. Feel free to send me a message. You can Instagram me at Emotional Abuse Coach and send me a message on a topic. I think people that listen to my older episodes sometimes message me at Jessica Knight Coaching Instagram. I don't check those that often just because like my primary one is at emotional abuse Coach. So find me there. I'll see it. And I know how hard this is, and so if you feel like, you know, reality doesn't make sense, I just want you to know you really are not alone. I really promise you that. I really promise you that. I think this is one of the most lonely battles that we can walk down. I. And it's amazing in how many areas of life emotional abuse comes up. So you're not alone. I'm always happy to help. You can find me at Emotional Abuse Coach on Instagram emotional abuse coach.com, and on Substack, if you search Jessica and I coaching where I talk a lot about this. A lot of various topics. Thank you so much for listening, and I hopefully will talk to you soon.