End of Friendships & Navigating Post-Trauma Relationships

I've been receiving a lot of positive feedback recently on the podcast and on the type of episodes that are really helping and what you're needing , and so if you are listening to this and an idea pops into mind of something that you would really like to hear , please always feel free to reach out Jessica at JessicaKnightCoachingcom .

The reason I use that email , which is from another branch of my business , one that I don't talk about much on this podcast , but that of Millennial Life Crisis is because I want to keep you safe , and so if you are emailing somebody with emotionalabusecoachcom as their email and somebody sees that , that might be a red flag , whereas JessicaKnightCoachingcom is usually

not . That said , before we dive in to this topic today , I want to share that . This work that I do is extremely meaningful to me , and I do take one-on-one clients . I love working with one-on-one clients .

I've had a few people reach out recently that were looking for complimentary or free coaching , and , as much as I would love to do that , I can't anymore because I have a set number of pro bono spots that are currently taken , and I'm a single parent and I do this podcast for free . I make $0 off the podcast . I do it because I want to .

I do it because I think it helps . I do it because I care . I do it because this is an outlet For some of these issues to be discussed . I do it because I'm not afraid to talk about hard things , and I do it because I want to help you and I know how much books and podcasts helped me .

That said , I try my best to be as flexible as possible with people , as I can be , but I just want , even if it's not me , that you go to just remember that this is someone's job . So when you choose to work one-on-one if it's not me , if it's somebody else this is how they make the income .

This is how I pay to keep my kid taken care of , and so , that said , I feel like there's no graceful way to say that , but it's just almost like a reminder to put value in the help that you need . Now to take a turn , I want to talk about friendships Today .

I want to talk about friendships and what happens when we lose friendships , because I've been thinking about this topic a lot and I've also experienced a lot of loss around friendships , especially from people who didn't understand . This morning , I had an experience that was very on par with this topic .

I woke up at like I don't know 5.30 in the morning and leaned over to check my phone and I had a suggested friend notification like hey , you should have this person as a friend from a friend that I thought was a friend . It's not like . I was like , oh , we're not friends anymore .

This is absolutely just Facebook and honestly , I could care less about Facebook . If you follow me on Instagram and TikTok , you know I barely ever use Facebook . But I went down this interesting mental rabbit hole and I thought that it was important to talk about , because I was sitting there thinking why did this person go through their friend and unfriend me ?

Why didn't they talk to me about this ? I know we've been distant , we haven't seen each other . Oh , we didn't have a falling out . I just don't think we connected anymore . We definitely had some misunderstandings , especially around abuse , what abuse is ending abuse and what I was specifically going through .

And also there are ability to be flexible with the fact that I'm a single mom and that I'm not only a single mom , but I'm a single mom who works for herself and doesn't have any family support here , and so we've had a lot of issues within our friendship around just the basic understanding of our each individual lives , because , just as much as I just said

all those things about my life , they absolutely have one too . But I would say that this hit me hard and I went back and I was like this person really go through all their friends and unfriend me ? The answer is yes , and so , while I'm in my late 30s , I don't think that this is an important thing .

It just reminded me the feeling of how often this happens and how many friends I lost in my life due to them not understanding and trying to make sense of my life through the lens of a healthy relationship or through the lens of a healthy upbringing , and this is so true for high school friends too .

I fought for a really long time to maintain and keep those friendships before I realized I was the one doing all the work in the friendship .

I was the one who was showing up and going there and going out and rallying the troops , making all these changes , sending all the texts , responding to all the texts , making plans over and over , and it wasn't reciprocated .

It was one of those things that once I stopped , it stopped , and while I'm also the single mom going through this high conflict divorce , I was also healing and so , when I thought about it , I was the only person that got divorced .

I was the only person who had a kid in this particular group , and there's a part of me at the time when I look back that there were so many things that I didn't understand , like there were so many things I didn't understand before I was a mom , and there were even more things that I didn't personally understand about the effects of emotional abuse and my

personal capacity until I was going through it . And I think a lot of us lose friendships due to the fact that other people do not understand the terror of what we go through .

They don't understand that when we say we can't do something , we probably truly emotionally and physically can't , and that leads us to feel really crappy about ourselves because we couldn't be the person that that other person needed us to be .

And when we are in this process of healing , we need to be selfish Not selfish in the way of I don't care about you , but selfish in the way of we need to take care of ourselves , and we are learning to do that , especially after an abusive relationship .

I once had a friend say that at any very time I was around , I was anxious , and then I would go home . When the anxiety got too bad and he was right , I said yeah , I know .

And when I remember like waiting for him to be mad at me , and while it certainly wasn't pleasant for him to continuously like have plans with me , and then I would get to a point where I felt like I needed to leave , I really valued his ability to bend and flex for me and to know that he wanted me to get to the other side and that he could see the

good in me and that I was really going through a tough time . I think that's also because I have the ability to self reflect and be able to see my own shortcomings . And so for that particular friend , I realized over time that since he was helping me so much , it was my turn to fill his bucket .

And if my bucket has been filled constantly , I realize it's now time for me to fill their bucket a little bit .

There's a way in which I can stretch a bit more when I have that capacity , but that is absolutely not true for everybody that we call friends and when you are in an abusive relationship or healing from one , I think you really start to realize who are friends and who are not .

I think a lot of people don't want to understand what they're going through and maybe in some cases don't believe what we're going through . But when you're addicted to a narcissist or if you're a trauma bonded , if you are in an abusive situation , you are dealing with so much shame and I like to take the Bernay Brown definition of shame of .

It's not that their embarrassment would mean I did something bad , and shame is I am bad .

At my core I am bad and I know I was not really okay when I was in that and if people wanted me to do a certain thing , like show up to a certain birthday party , I wasn't always capable of that because what was most important for me was waking up the next day for my kid and for being able to be fully present for that child .

I knew that the battles that may have been going on in my head were so different than what other people were experiencing .

I also knew that I didn't even understand what was going on for me , so I tried my best to explain it , but I didn't really change how hurt or depressed I felt and more often than not I felt more like an alien , especially around people that were seemingly healthy .

I felt like nobody understood what I was thinking and I was in such a shame spiral because I couldn't even explain what I was going through .

I had to create a life that was allowing me space and time to heal , that I needed to give to myself , which was often at night when my kid went to bed and I was able to process my feelings and journal and release what I covered up all day . And of course there's a balance . Of course there is a balance .

There's a balance between being able to be a person and being a parent . But I think a lot of the times when we're healing from abusive situations , we don't really feel like a person and we need the space to be able to just breathe .

Because I think what hurts even more is when we try and show up and go out and we're disappointed and not to say that our friends are disappointing , but we're going out with people who don't understand the battles that we're fighting in our head and in our lives .

We're going out with people that they're biggest issue is that somebody in front of them on Facebook when our biggest issue is we don't know how to get our belongings out of a house that isn't safe to go back into , or we don't know how to break the cycle of somebody continuously calling us and making promises that they can't keep .

We don't know how to ever feel heard in a relationship that is supposed to be loving . We don't know how to come up with $40,000 to defend ourselves and family court . We don't know how to explain that emotional abuse is abuse to people that care about us , that are telling us that well , they didn't hit you , so it can't be that bad .

We can't be in a place where we're consistently gaslit , subconsciously and consciously , by people when we're working to feel like ourselves again . And so if you are taking a step back from friendship , I get it . If you are feeling like you have no friends , I get it .

I remember my current partner said to me early on in our relationship you don't vote , how do you not vote ? I live in the Northeast , so regardless if I vote or not on major issues , they're gonna go the same . They're gonna go the democratic way , just to be clear .

But I remember saying like I have been on survival mode for years , and so some things need to fall away . When we're on survival mode like going to people's birthday parties , voting , sometimes recycling when you're in survival mode , you can't care about these things . You don't care about the real housewives .

When you're in survival mode , you feel a tremendous amount of shame for not being able to keep everything together all at once all of the time , and so that's the idea I kind of wanna come back to is that there are times where we need to do things that are best for ourselves and protect ourselves .

And taking care of ourselves , especially in a world that doesn't understand , is going to feel like a significant loss , and I feel a significant loss . I feel a significant loss . I miss my friends . They're our friends .

I sincerely miss , but the effort it took to keep that friendship was far more on my end than theirs , and I went through so many things that they don't even understand I'm not the person I was when we were quote unquote friends , and truthfully , they're not wondering how I'm doing .

If they were , they'd reach out , and I trust that the more that I stay in my integrity , the more I show up for myself and my child , the more that I do the best work that I can do . The people I'm going to attract are going to be people that are part of my tribe . I actually met a single mother a few months ago , kind of out of nowhere .

She asked me what I did for work and when I told her she was like oh my God , how did you get into that ? I gave her the cliff notes , totally thinking that she was gonna think I'm an alien and I'm all , and I am not used to having these conversations with people in my kid's community , and we formed a friendship . She goes I need your help .

And now we can laugh about some of these things that we go through that are just utterly ridiculous . And I just wanna be clear that when we talk about losing friends or friendship change , it's not like a sob story , a victim or getting into EO mode . It's about realizing that the friends that we called friends are not really friends .

And the growth and change we go to when healing from a trauma , bond or emotionally abusive situation are different , because we're finding ourselves again , and a lot of times we're creating a new self .

We're recreating the self that once existed , that can't exist anymore , a self that did people please and was codependent and had severe anxiety , unconsciously or subconsciously normalized abuse , and we can't do that anymore .

And because we can't do that anymore , we don't fit in the same box that other people put us in and we need to create new boxes , and those need to form from a place of really taking care of ourselves and having boundaries that keep people in our lives that are supposed to be and that are helpful and that are healing .

I think this topic is really important . I don't think it's talked about and I really do want you to know that you're not alone and that if you're feeling like friendships are just MIA and nobody understands , there's a good chance that they don't understand , and those who want to understand will , and those that don't , you really need to think about .

Are they truly a friend ? How would you treat a friend in this way ? I hope that this was helpful to you and , as you know , if you've been here before , you could reach out to me at emotionalabusecoachcom . You can follow me at emotionalabusecoach and you could always email me , jessica , at JessicaNightCoachingcom , and I really hope to hear from you .

And , like I said , I'm here to help . I am here to help . I want to help Listen .