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The Reckoning · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, and welcome back to this second episode in the series on dangerous relationships, and we focus now and continue to focus on coercive, abusive, and manipulative relationships.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I want to say before I move into this in more depth that I use examples, and these are for illustrative purposes rather than representative, and they draw upon decades of experience and recognized psychological theory and the recurring patterns that emerge across many different relationships.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, all of those things are underpinned by illustrations that are rooted in experience.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's really important that they should be seen as representative of patterns and not individuals.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And this is important because this stops being about any given individual and roots the things that I describe in patterns which are universal.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think it's very important to think about it from that point of view.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: One of the benefits, of course, of doing that is realizing that the patterns that I'm describing, many will identify with.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: This relates to something that is internal and is a point that you don't go backwards from because the reckoning is the concluding point.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need to revisit the realizations.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Those were the evidence that helped you to conclude the reckoning.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And as I said, we explored recognition in some detail, and we looked at how coercive and controlling relationships really begin with abuse, they begin with connections, trust and hope, and the belief that we've finally found somebody who understands us.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we also explored how those relationships gradually evolve into something else where you know concern becomes monitoring, affection becomes possession, and criticism slowly builds self-doubt, and how another person's emotional world quietly becomes the organizing principle of our own.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: But recognizing the truth about a relationship is not the same as accepting it.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Between those two experiences lies this thing I describe as the reckoning.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: The reckoning is not simply a decision, it becomes an emotional collision with reality.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's the moment where when life, the life we thought we were building, no longer matches the life we were actually living.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's one of the most painful psychological experiences I encounter in my work.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's no going back from it.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: People often imagine that once someone recognizes they're living or have lived in a harmful relationship, living becomes straightforward.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: If only it were that simple.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: In reality, recognition makes life temporarily more painful because the recognition removes the protection of uncertainty.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And whilst we're uncertain, hope kind of survives.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: We tell ourselves, well, perhaps things will change, and you know, perhaps they're under pressure, and perhaps if I was more patient and all that kind of but that's like a kind of negotiating with with the difference between denial and reality.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: It allows us to kind of persevere, to forgive, to remain open and to remain hooked.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: But there does come a point when that changes.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because instead of helping us move forward, it begins keeping us where we are.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the hardest truths that I've learned in this is that sometimes we're not giving, uh, not grieving the relationship we have, we're grieving the relationship we believed was still possible.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that distinction matters enormously because people rarely mourn reality.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: They mourn possibility or the loss of possibility.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: That could be the future they imagined, the family they hoped to build, or the person they believed that might return one day.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: The reckoning begins when that possibility slowly gives way to reality, and that can be heartbreaking.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: However, it is it is necessary.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it is necessary because it is the point where, after for some people, many months and sometimes even years, that reckoning is is a point of arrival.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And without that, it is not possible to move forward.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: And in some ways, I think that's why the reckoning can feel so frightening, because it it is it is not just the loss of another person, it's the loss of the version of yourself that developed in order to survive them.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Many people describe this stage in ways that suggest that they've come into contact with something that they had been trying to avoid.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: That can be feelings of guilt.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: That guilt could feel overwhelming.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: It can be the feelings of guilt for leaving, guilty for protecting themselves, or for guilty for causing pain to the other person, guilt for changing the children's lives, guilt for disappointing family members, even guilt for recognizing that they deserve something different.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that's extraordinary, really.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: The person who's repeatedly carried responsibility for somebody else's behavior now feels guilty for putting down a burden that was never theirs to carry.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's not selfishness, it's evidence of how profoundly the relationship has changed and shaped their thinking.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Another emotion often arrives, and sometimes quite unexpectedly, because I think what happens is when certain emotions subside, they kind of leave room for new ones, and sometimes those are very powerful and, as I said, unexpected.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: That emotion is often anger, and not just simply anger towards the other person, but anger towards ourselves.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Why didn't I see it?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: What was I thinking?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Why did I stay?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Why did I why did I put up with this?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: How could I how could I have allowed this to happen?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes memories of people saying, What are you doing?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is really not good for you.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: You're being used, you're being treated badly.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you don't have to put up with this.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the anger is, why didn't I listen?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe you did, but you couldn't see it.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And those questions are, of course, completely understandable, but they're they're usually based upon one mistaken assumption that we knew then what we know now, but actually we didn't.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't know then.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Or if we did have some kind of knowledge of it, then we couldn't face it.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes people will say, the people who have caused the damage will say, Well, you could have left.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: I never asked you to stay, I never asked you to put up with something if it was that bad.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, that's not how it works.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that that's a kind of cop-out clause, because actually, yes, but you were the same person who continued to do what you did, and you continued to foster hope.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: You can tr you could you continued to treat me at times as if I was significant, all the while doing the other thing too.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very, very confusing picture to be in.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, eventually it breaks down as we know.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: But we made decisions with the understanding we had at that time.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the person sitting in therapy today, for example, is not the same person who entered the relationship years ago.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: They now possess knowledge that only experience could have given them.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: So here's where self-compassion begins, when we recognize the truth, and there is another loss that rarely receives the attention it deserves, and that's the loss of certainty.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: One of the consequences of coercive coercive control is that people gradually lose confidence in their own perceptions, and that and it really is the case that a person's self-confidence can take quite a hammer at how can I trust myself?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: How do I know that what I think is is right anymore?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that question is really quite heartbreaking to hear because it tells me that the relationship has not only affected behavior, it's affected identity.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: So part of the reckoning is discovering or rediscovering that your own judgment deserves to be trusted again.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: If your judgment has taken you to the point of, I can't do this anymore, I have to walk away, then there is something in you that is still intact.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now the the full rediscovery of that takes time.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And there's something else I've noticed over years, and it's that the reckoning is rarely a single moment.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: It comes in waves.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one day there is real clarity that could be followed by doubt.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: One day there's determination, and the next maybe there's a return to longing.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: This doesn't mean that the person is moving backwards, it means they're grieving.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: And grief isn't linear.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: It moves, it returns, it surprises us, and eventually, almost quietly, it begins making something or room for something new.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever children are involved, the reckoning becomes even more complex.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Parents often tell me, I wanted my children to have the family I never had.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that sentence contains profound sadness because part of the reckoning involves accepting that remaining in an unhealthy relationship doesn't preserve a family.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: It may simply preserve the appearance of one.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Children need many things.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: They need love, stability, they need boundaries.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps, above all, they need emotional safety.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Not perfection, but safety.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And emotional safety can't flourish in an environment where fear, manipulation, or control have become normal.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: So perhaps the most important thing I can say today is this the reckoning is not failure, it's courage.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because it takes courage to abandon denial, it takes courage to face psychological reality and to grieve.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: It takes courage to recognize that love cannot heal another person's unwillingness to change.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: It takes courage to face the fact that the hope that we had was based on illusion and deception.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it takes extraordinary courage to begin asking a question that has remained silent for far too long.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that question is, what do I need?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Not what will keep the peace, not what will stop them becoming angry, but simply what do I need?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that question isn't selfishness, it signals the beginning of recovery.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because every journey out of coercive control begins with the rediscovery of the self.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose what recognition does is it opens the door.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: It asks us to really evaluate, to conclude, and to take action.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now that action is really important because sometimes what people do is is they confront in some way the person who has caused the damage.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that action can look like statements.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is the consequence of that.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is the silence that I colluded with.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is how I maintained this, and this this is the outcome.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm not going to be silent anymore.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not having a discussion.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm making statements.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And however that lands with you is not my concern.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Part of my healthy recovery from what you've done and what I was part of means that I will be truthful, I will not collude, I will tell the truth, and I'll tell it in the ways that I think are best to do.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: That is one form of reckoning.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's the voicing.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't all have to be like that.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I think in the next episode we explore recovery, not simply from the relationship, but recovery of ourselves.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: The whole process is recovery.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: But in the final episode, we move into how we how we do that, how we rebuild trust in ourselves, how we recover confidence, how we help children recover, and how we learn that healthy relationships never require us to disappear in order to preserve them.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be back soon.