Regaining Control in Toxic Relationships

When they say toxic , they typically mean emotionally abusive , narcissistic , borderline , whatever that might mean , and a while back I created a resource that has been a huge help to clients because , at the very least , it helps them frame how they can respond , and it's a PDF of canned responses .

I created this when I was juggling to deal with the next partner , mostly in relationship to my kid , and I was trying to think about how can I respond in a non-emotional , indifferent way , because whatever I was doing wasn't working and whatever advice I was getting wasn't working , and I started to feel like nothing will work .

We were leading into these long drawn out conversations , conflicts , emails , and it was just not helpful . It was also not really focused on the issue .

If you've ever been in an argument with a narcissist or a toxic person , an emotionally abusive person , it's completely focused on blame , it's never stays focused on the actual issue and you'll go around , around in circles , never actually get to the point .

And so I realized that I need to start changing my response so that I don't get stuck in this cycle , and in doing this , I learned a lot , but I also learned how to hold boundaries within myself . I started to look at how I show up and how I act when I am activated . So today I want to talk through the resource that I created . It's free .

You can get it at EmotionalAbuseCoachcom . A pop-up comes up and you can just put in your email and it'll be emailed to you . And , overall , the purpose of having this is to help you with boundaries . It's one of the first steps in healing from emotional abuse .

Boundaries allow you to draw the line with what you will and will not tolerate , and sometimes this line is simply within yourself . Other times it's with your partner . But when you're in an abusive relationship , setting boundaries can almost feel impossible .

You'll find yourselves getting endless texts , threads and emails with no way out , having the same conversation again and again , explaining the same things over and over , again and again and getting absolutely nowhere .

And this often happens because this is just words and this is something I talk about a lot in my relationship Recovery course , as well as the boundaries deep dive Words that work . With a healthy person , someone who cares about you and loves you and doesn't want to hurt you , might work .

But when you don't do anything to stop the harm with an abusive or toxic partner , it's just going to contribute to the abuse because they're not going to hear you . If they heard you and respected you , you wouldn't be in an abusive relationship , and I talked about this topic in depth on a podcast that I did around boundaries .

Like I said , it's a lot of this , but more detail , more actions around it are in my boundaries , deep dive . Course . I'll link it below if you're interested . But the premise is this If you want to set an effective boundary , you need to have a boundary that stops the harm .

So if you say I just don't want to be treated this way , they're not going to listen .

And that's actually where canned responses can start to come in , because it allows us to reframe the way that we are communicating with these people so that we are not getting ourselves more wrapped up in the conversation , but we're finding a way to step outside of it so that we can actually think clearly for ourselves .

Our overall goal with this is to limit the back and forth disagreement and limit the engagement that they are craving . A narcissist gets supply from any type of engagement , not just negative , and I know for myself . I used to get extremely anxious in challenging situations , so I would shut down and I would lose my cool , and that's exactly what they wanted .

But since using a technique of canned responses , I am able to remain calm even when I'm under attack , and I'm going to talk through a few examples on how they work in situations . And now say that we are co-parenting with a narcissist and your personal life is brought into the email Right , it might be about dance class and splitting the payment for dance .

And then somehow in their response they touch on the fact that you are dating somebody new and they haven't met them and they want to meet them because you wanted to meet their partner , and we can go down . This entire rabbit hole of this actually has nothing to do with dance and I'm not getting the answer about dance .

This happens a lot and usually it's to manipulate us and so usually we would probably respond . Please stop asking about that . That has nothing to do with what we're saying . We may even get defensive , but in a canned response you're leaning into canned responses .

What you can do is just say can you please respond to the question that was asked , and you would repeat the question . This helps you just as much as it helps them , and actually we don't really care if it helps them , but it almost shows like , look , I'm not getting into this , this is the issue , let's go .

If a phone call is escalating and you're being yelled at , being screamed at , I would say , if you continue , yell at me , I'm going to hang up the phone . And then , if they do continue to yell , I would actually hang up the phone and then you would lean into no contact for the rest of the day .

So the wording is I'm going to hang up the phone because it's not a threat , it's not , maybe it's not . I can't do this , it's not , I'm thinking about that . It's like I'm going to hang up the phone .

And so a common thing that comes up in abusive dynamics is that they will tell you what you think , they will tell you what your perspective is , and so they might even say no , you won't . And now they're challenging you . And then , when you do it , then they fight even more .

So just saying , if you continue to yell and hang up the phone , they continue to yell . You hang up the phone If they say I can't believe you hung up on me . I told you . If you continue to yell and hang up , I'm not going to be contacting you for the rest of the day . Very gray rock , very simple .

If you're in a situation where somebody is telling you what your perspective is , you know , if you say I don't feel that , I don't know why you're saying that it's not what I think , you're telling me a completely different perspective of what I think and I you haven't even asked me .

Instead of getting defensive or trying to explain how you actually feel or what you thought or what you felt , you would just say my truth is different from your perspective . Do you want to hear my perspective ? That allows you to not get into the long drawn out explanation of what it typically would be .

If they then respond to that and say something that would challenge that perspective . Well , one , if they say yes , I want to hear it , and then you share it and they're like that's not . No , it's not what you think You're like , doesn't seem like you want to hear my perspective .

It takes you out of that argument and that's the purpose , because when you're in that argument , you're not thinking clearly , you can't think clearly . So in this PDF of 18 canned responses which can be used in a variety of situations . I always recommend and I work with clients on this to define what responses work for you in your life .

This is really important , because if you do share children , you do need to make sure that the response is aligned with your situation and that they are still friendly in some way . If you want to hear more about that , listen to my episode on Yellow Rock Communication , which I will link in the show notes .

While this can be difficult and you will be feeling feelings about all of this , it's actually really essential if you want to be on the road to healing , and so I want to end this episode with one of my favorite quotes , and this by Lundy Bancroft from his book the Mind of Angry and Controlling Men , and the quote goes like this the people who get upset about

you setting boundaries are the ones who benefited from you having none . The people who get upset about you setting boundaries are the ones who benefited from you having none . You can receive a free copy of the PDF on canned responses on my website , emotionalabusecoachcom . You can also find it on my Instagram at emotionalabusecoach .

There's a link in my link in bio where I'll bring you right to it , and if you need support , as always . Please feel free to reach out to me , jessica , at JessicaNightCoachingcom . Thank you .