How I Actually Healed (And Why It Didn't Look the Way I Expected)

People ask me how I healed all the time, and the honest answer is that there is no clean framework I can hand you. 

In this episode, I share the specific practices that actually made a difference for me — and they are not always the ones you would expect. I talk about why I stopped healing on everyone else's timeline, how I gave myself permission to grieve on a schedule as a single parent, and the journaling practice that helped me separate what was real from what had been distorted. 

I also share why I stopped bringing my situation to my friends, what I did instead, and how I learned to stop outsourcing my recovery to other people's opinions. Your healing does not have to look like mine. 

I hope something here helps you give yourself permission to do it in the way that you actually can.

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.

Before we begin. I just wanna make a quick note at the end of this episode. I spend the last four minutes walking through the way people work with me and where to find resources, my links and my courses. If you are a returning listener or are already a client, you can absolutely skip that part. If you're new or trying to figure out what kind of support you need, it's there for you.

It's the last four minutes. Thank you so much for being here. I have clients who ask me how I healed all the time. And honestly, there is no clean answer to that question. I wish I could hand over a framework and tell people just to do the things that I did in the same order that they'll be okay. But that's not how it happened for me, and I don't think that that's how it happens for most people.

When clients asked me what I did, the short answer is that I did almost everything I needed to do. But when I look back, honestly a few specific things made the biggest difference, and they're not always the things that I expected. One of the first things I had to learn was to stop healing on everybody else's timeline.

In everybody else's way. So for example, everybody would've told me to block the social media. That's the right move, right? Like in theory, cut the cord, do it clean. Why are you still doing this? Rip off the bandaid. That did not work for me. It didn't. I felt addicted to it and I felt like nobody understood why that was so hard.

But it was creating a finality in the relationship and like I was sending a signal. That was terrifying for me. And what actually did work was actually deleting Instagram off my phone entirely. So not by blocking or and following that person, but I just removed the app altogether. That was easier. And it sounds like such a small distinction.

It sounds like it's the same thing. That it's not. It was the difference between something that felt forced and something that I could actually follow through on. And I let myself do what I needed to do, not to give myself an out, but to move at a pace that I could sustain. I didn't force myself into grief that I wasn't ready for and I wasn't ready for it at that time.

I chose not to listen to certain songs. I chose not to go on Instagram, but I had to make these adjustments that were mine, and I kept moving at the pace that I could because I think healing is not a performance and you don't get points for doing it the hardest way possible. I also gave myself permission to fall apart on a schedule.

And when I say that to people, they're like, you set a schedule to cry. Yeah, I did. Because I am a single parent with a full day to get through. I could not collapse in the middle of it. And honestly, I did not want to. I already had lost so much time and space and mental space to the relationship. So instead.

Trying to hold it together all the time or suppressing everything and then finally exploding or telling myself I shouldn't feel these feelings because he did this, this, and this. I gave myself dedicated time to feel at the end of each day because that's when I could, and for a while every night I would just let myself journal to process what has happened to break down.

To sit and look up articles and read things, and to go off of wherever my brain was that day, I'd let it all out and then I'd go to sleep. And over time it did help me shift because some nights I was just too tired to cry. And those nights actually felt really good. It felt good to be like, I am too tired to feel this right now.

And that felt like progress because at the beginning I was never too tired to feel it. I was feeling it all the time and. Sometimes the grief was very big. It was like, it felt like it would take over my entire body, and I think over time I was just healing and not I did, but I didn't know I was doing them in this way at the time.

What mattered was that I made space for it, and so it wasn't just like small grief. The situation had been going on for years and there were so many upbringing. My childhood led me to this and that certain kinds. Closeness with that person we're just gone. They were never gonna happen again. And I think you have to grieve it all at every level and I had to give myself permission to do that.

I also was journaling a lot. Journaling was central to my healing, but not in like a vague write about your feelings kind of way. It was like very intentional and specific. And so one practice I kept coming back to is writing out what this person has said to me. And then writing the truth next to it side by side because the distortion in my thoughts had gotten so deep that I genuinely lost track of what was real.

And so when I put it on paper, it helped me see clearly, and it helped me understand that we were not just in a conflict, we were living in a completely different reality. And no amount of explaining was ever going to close that gap. It felt like I was on Venus and he was on a moon in another Galaxy resurface.

Sometimes weeks later, the quiet felt heavier. I turned to this journaling protocol that my therapist shared with me, and the structure is simple. It's four days. Each session and you start by writing about the thing that you least wanna write about. And each day you pick up roughly where you left off, and the Ries just build on each other and you just let it go.

You let it free flow. Even if it doesn't make sense to where it's going, you let it come out. And I remember the one time I did this, or one of the many times I did this, it started out because I was angry that he blocked me on LinkedIn. I was like. Out of all things in the world to block me on LinkedIn and like, it's actually funny in hindsight because I had like put myself, I was like, I'm gonna go because I needed to find a joint contact, somebody that I was having trouble fi.

I did not know the person's last name. And so when I kept trying to find them otherwise, like the regular search, I couldn't find it. And then I told myself, because this was months later. I just need to find that person. So I'm not gonna let myself go down the rabbit hole. And I actually put a piece of construction paper over the picture on my website so I could just see the search bar when I search for like, in their, that person's, uh, the people they follow or whatever it's called.

And so I went and realized, you know, I did it like three days before. Couldn't find it, decided to come back to it. And I was blocked. And I remember that hit me so hard because one, I didn't know you could block people on LinkedIn. And two, because I was like, really? Am I really that much of the villain in your story that you have to block me on LinkedIn?

Like I'm already the villain in every other part of your story? But it just felt ridiculous and petty. And so that was the thing that I started with because it really bothered me, but it ended up with. A very deep dive into childhood trauma, and I remember sobbing like day two. I was like a mess. Day three a mess.

Day four started to put together some of the pieces and it just allows you to go deeper than it would in a single setting. And I found that every time I've used this practice, it's the writing that changes over the four days that really hits me. It gets rawer. Like raw, raw, raw before it clarifies and you find the thing underneath the thing that you've been trying to heal from.

The last time I used this protocol was a trigger connected to my mom, and by day four, I uncovered a grief that I never fully allowed myself to feel, and like some connections that I never allowed myself to see. It's just been sitting there underneath everything, waiting for me to probably sit long enough to notice it.

Another thing that happened was, and I think sometimes this surprises me, but it was one of the most important decisions I made. I didn't pull away from my friends or shut them out. I kept relationships alive, but I stopped bringing this particular situation up with them because I was exhausted by everybody else's perspective on what I needed to do to heal.

And so the well-meaning advice, the you should just do, do, do. And the have you tried this, it all started to feel like noise that added to my. Burden rather than lightening it. I had a coach during this time and that was a container where I actually did the work. And having that boundaried space for the hard stuff meant that I could be present in my friendships without turning every conversation into me processing, and I just sort of had to like stop outsourcing my recovery to other people and lean into the relationships that we're helping.

There's really no perfect map. There's no order of healing, but worked for me was a combination of radical permission, scheduled grief, journaling, and knowing when to stop letting other people's voices drown out my own, inner knowing, my instinct, and you might need something different, and that is completely okay.

Because whatever your version of healing looks like, it doesn't have to look like anybody else's. It just has to be something that you can actually do at the pace that's real for you and in a way that honors where you actually are not where you think that you should be. The only requirement is that you actually really let yourself do it.

And so I really hope that this was helpful. I will be posting a few more, probably articles on this, on my substack, but if you ever need support. Or if you do need a coach, you can always reach out to me@emotionalabusecoach.com, and you can find all of my courses and other offerings in the links below. If this episode resonated and you're realizing that what you're dealing with isn't just stress or miscommunication, there are ways to get support that don't minimize what you're experiencing.

I'm gonna spend the next couple of minutes telling you about my offerings. At the core of my business is one-on-one coaching. The podcast is something that I do because I do like being able to help a broader audience, but the truth is that the core of my work is really coaching and providing other offerings so that people can begin to heal.

At the center of everything I do is one-on-one coaching. That's where I slow things down, listen closely, and help you make sense of what's happening in your specific situation. It's not a template. It's not just based on theories, but it's really focused on your real life. Some people start with a one-time validation call That is a single focus session where we look at one specific situation or pattern.

You're struggl and the goal isn't to fix your life or push you into decisions. It's to help you name what's happening, put it into context of reality, help you notice where you are in it, and offer some feedback and tools to how to navigate it. I also offer an intro call. The intro call used to be called the Clarity Call, and it's a short call where you can share what's going on for you.

I can explain how I work and whether I'm the right fit for your situation. There's no obligation to continue after that. It's simply a way for us to get on the same page for moving forward. For people who need ongoing support, I offer weekly or biweekly coaching. This is especially helpful if you're navigating emotional abuse, trauma bond, high conflict divorce, or custody and co-parenting with a difficult or controlling person.

Ongoing work allows us to track patterns over time, stay anchored when things escalate, and make decisions in a way that protects your nervous system and your long-term stability. All of my coaching options can be found on my websites emotional abuse coach.com and high conflict divorce coaching com.

Both links are available in the show notes of this episode. In addition to one-on-one coaching, I offer several self-paced courses and programs. They're called Divorcing A Narcissist one-on-One, how to Document for Family Court, the Emotional Abuse Breakthrough Course Setting Boundaries With a Narcissist and Unhooked, which is my program and private podcast that walks you through the full cycle of abuse, helps you map it out in your relationship, and shows you how to begin to break free from the trauma bond.

I also write on Substack. I explore topics like trauma bonding, emotional abuse, course of control, high conflict divorce, and the cluster B dynamics. There's a free option and a paid membership that offers deeper dives, q and As and additional resources. Everything that I do and everything that I build is around one core truth and message that you're not crazy, you shouldn't feel crazy, and that even though I can see patterns in what they're experiencing, it doesn't mean that it's normal.

It's not healthy. My work is really about helping you understand what's happening and begin to trust yourself again. All of the links that I shared are in my show notes, and I really appreciate you being here.