Dealing with abusive messages from an ex

Hi,

I’m fairly new to the Flow Collective and being part of the membership is already shifting my outlook and baseline resilience in a really positive way. I am very grateful for this and excited to be on this journey.

I physically left an abusive long-term relationship (he eventually moved out) 18 months ago. In spite of now having a non-molestation order in place which prevents direct contact after his intimidation continued, my ex is continuing to use the divorce process, child contact and messages to my friends and family to perpetuate narcissistic abuse (defamation, coercive control, intentional disruption, false accusations about my behaviour, etc.). It’s been 18 months and he’s still putting a huge amount of time and energy into his abusive behaviour towards me and those he sees as my ‘gatekeepers’. Having originally assumed he’d lose interest, I have now accepted that I can’t control his behaviour and that it may continue indefinitely.

I joined the Flow Collective after hitting a really low point in May having realised that I can’t leave this abusive relationship – even when the divorce is settled he’ll be able to use child contact to perpetuate his behaviours (our children are currently 6 & 9). At this point all I could think was ‘he’s winning’ – i.e. he’s trying to upset, derail and destabilise me and it’s working – I was exhausted and overwhelmed. This was further complicated by feeling really cross with myself for letting his behaviours affect me in that way (i.e. letting his behaviour have the effect he was intending it to have). It was affecting my ability to work as well as my self-image. My friends pointed out that I’d internalised his narrative around how I fail as a mother, daughter, partner and friend. This was a wake-up call for me and motivated me to join this Collective as a mechanism to ‘reclaim my narrative’ and take control of my emotional well-being among other things.

All this is background. The thing I would value coaching on is this: his two communication channels with me at the moment are indirect (because of the court order) – via my solicitor and via my brother. My issue is that whenever I see I have messages from either of these people I start feeling really anxious and find ways to do whatever I can to delay reading them for as long as possible. Sometimes for several days. During this time I feel anxious, but tell myself I’m less emotional than I would be if I read them. I think the unintentional model I go into is something like this:

C – I receive a message from my solicitor or brother about or from my ex

T – the message will upset me and I won’t be able to cope

F – anxious

A – displacement activities (laundry, work tasks, television, shopping), telling myself ‘I don’t have time to look at and process those messages at the moment’, etc.

R – I continue to feel upset, anxious and vulnerable

Objectively, I know from experience that, while I have to psych myself up to look at the messages, I often feel better and more in control having done so. However, often they do derail me and I have a deep nervous system response – sometimes feeling overwhelmed and going into ‘survival mode’ for a couple of days.

I developed an intentional model, but even though I have this, I still get stuck in the unintentional model more often than not:

C – I receive a message from my solicitor or brother about or from my ex

T – this is difficult, but I can handle this

F – determined

A – read and respond to message if necessary

R – I know what’s happening and can do what I need to safeguard myself and my children

I would like to get to a point where I feel confident looking at messages within 12 hours and responding appropriately if I need to. I would also appreciate coaching around how to prevent his messages affecting me so deeply on an emotional level.

Thank you for your time and guidance.

 

Answer:

Welcome to The Flow Collective. This is the best place to reclaim your narrative. Your models looks great, I would encourage you to think about changing your thought from T: this is difficult, but I can handle this.  to simply T: I can handle this.  In our intentional model, we get to put whatever we want. It may not seem possible now, and you can have other models in between where you are and where you want to be, but it can be very powerful to just stop telling the story of how the situation is hard and instead change it to how amazing you are at handling communication with your ex.

Right now you are looking at your response to the messages like something is going wrong. You are handling this exactly as you are supposed to. If you trusted yourself that you know what to do, that it’s ok to have a nervous system and emotional response and then give yourself 12 hours to reply, what would be different?