Kate Anthony: [00:00:00] Hey everyone, welcome back. So there is this particular kind of exhaustion that comes from trying to create peace inside of a home or relationship that is constantly taking it away from You might have spent years trying to manage it. You bought the lavender sprays, you took baths, you booked massages, you went for walks, you listened to podcasts about regulating your nervous system.

You went to therapy. Maybe you drank wine at the end of the day because it was the only thing that softened the edges enough for you to get through the evening. And you kept trying to find the thing that would make you feel better. And some of those things probably did. They did help for an hour, for an evening, maybe even for a weekend.

But then you walked back into the house, or [00:01:00] he walked through the door, and your body started to tense up again. And you heard the tone of his voice, and you felt the shift in the room. You started scanning his face, measuring his mood, reviewing the day in your head to figure out what might become a problem tonight, and then the peace disappeared because it was never fully yours to keep inside of that environment.

You cannot find peace, true peace, when you’re living with that level of hypervigilance. If you have been engaging in all of these self-care modalities or what have you I want… In this episode, I wanna talk about, like, why maybe they m- might have helped you survive your marriage without ever being able to make your marriage feel safe.

And I want you to pay attention to what happens when you’re away from [00:02:00] him, because the changes that you notice might tell you more than another year of trying to think your way through the relationship. So let me back up here. So on our r- recent Phoenix Rising call, one of the women talked about how much money she used to spend trying to take care of herself while she was living with her abusive ex-husband.

She was, almost massages almost every week. All the lavender products. The sprays, the bed spray, the room spray, the essential oils, the diffuser. She said she was drinking about a bottle of wine ev- every couple of nights, right? She would consume a bottle of wine. Totally relate.

So they were the little things that would give her some comfort and helped her get through. And interestingly, she moved out several months ago, and as she was organizing and straightening up her office the other day, [00:03:00] she realized that she found the diffuser that she used to rely on like crack, and she realized she hadn’t used it at all And she started noticing that oh, she wasn’t getting mani-pedis.

She was doing her nails herself. It hadn’t even occurred to her to get a massage recently. It hadn’t occurred to her to use all the lavender sprays and the face masks and the eye masks and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because she wasn’t desperately reaching for relief all of the time. Because the massage hadn’t been the source of the peace, and the lavender hadn’t been the source of the peace.

Even the wine, which, offered a way to numb what she was feeling, hadn’t addressed the source of her distress. Her peace came from no longer living with him. And on that same call, another woman had literally moved out. She was sitting there on the call with boxes in the background, right? She was– She got on the call.

She had clearly just [00:04:00] woken up. She had her bathrobe on. She’s like, “I look like a hot mess,” and she did not. She looked like a woman who was, like, moving. Boxes in the background, and she said despite how exhausted she was, that she felt this profound peace In her new space for the first time in years. And I, I love that phrase, like profound peace.

It’s not exhilaration, it’s not triumph, it’s not some dramatic sense that oh, everything is solved now. P- it’s just peace. It is profound peace. That’s what opens up for us when our bodies are no longer, like, being asked to monitor another adult all day long, along with children . When you realize that you can make basic decisions without preparing for an interrogation, you can put something down on the counter [00:05:00] without wondering whether it’s gonna become evidence that you’re lazy or careless or selfish or irresponsible.

You can clean your counter without being activated by his mess. You can have, sit in your own living room without managing someone else’s emotional temperature. For years, women have been sold the idea that self-care is the answer to conditions that self-care was never designed to solve. We have been told that we need to become more resilient inside of systems that are draining us.

We’ve been told to regulate ourselves while someone else continues to create instability constantly. We’ve been told that we need to communicate more calmly with people who use communication as a weapon. We have to make time for ourselves while carrying the emotional, domestic, relational, and often financial weight of the entire family.

So then when the bath doesn’t work, we assume that we’re [00:06:00] doing self-care wrong. Maybe we aren’t meditating consistently enough. Maybe we’re doing meditation wrong. Maybe we need a better morning routine. Maybe we need to drink more water or go to bed earlier or take magnesium, do breathwork, stop looking at our phones, learn to release resentment, right?

I’m not dismissing any of those things. I solidly believe in caring for yourself. I believe in sleep, in movement, in therapy, recovery, friendship, water , right? Anything else that helps you reconnect with yourself. I also believe that we have to tell the truth about the limits of those tools, because self-care can’t cure coercive control.

It can’t make emotional abuse less abusive. It can’t turn chronic criticism into intimacy. We can’t self-care our way into repairing a relationship in which one person is expected to absorb all of the discomfort so that the other [00:07:00] person never has to change. We cannot self-care our way into equality inside of a system built around entitlement.

So while a massage might release the tension in your shoulders, it can’t make a deceptive or volatile partner become trustworthy. The larger system remains intact, and then we’re, like, trying to Whac-A-Mole our way into some sense of peace, right? And when I talk about the larger system, the structure of the relationship.

I also mean the structure of the patriarchy and society as a whole. But inside the structure of this relationship who gets to have needs? Who’s allowed to be angry? Who has to apologize? Whose rest is protected? Whose career matters most? Who carries the children’s schedules, the medical appointments, the family logistics, the emotional labor, the household management, the responsibility for keeping everyone connected?

Who gets to spend money without [00:08:00] explanation? Who’s required to provide a receipt, a reason, or a defense? Who gets the benefit of the doubt? Who is permanently on trial? Because in many harmful marriages, the woman’s coping becomes the focus because it’s far more convenient than examining the actual system.

So now your anxiety is the problem. Your depression is the problem. Your drinking is the problem. Your anger is the problem. Never mind what you’re fucking angry about or that it’s actually completely and utterly valid. Your lack of desire is the problem. Never mind the fact that there has been no safe container for sex in years.

Y- and while so– Look, some of those things might be valid issues in a relationship that, might be addressed in couples therapy. B- but when you ask the underlying question what have those things developed in response to? [00:09:00] What were you trying to endure? W- what were you trying not to feel?

What happened in the house before you started to drink that bottle of wine? What happened in the marriage before your body started shutting down around sex? All of those things, right? Then we isolate these symptoms from the environment that produced them And then we send her, send you back into the same environment with a journal and a breathing exercise, and then we think that somehow that’s gonna solve the problem.

I’ve talked about before that, when I got out of my marriage, I had no idea who I was. I had been stripped bare of every ounce of my sense of self. I didn’t know what I liked, I didn’t know what I wanted, I didn’t know what my favorite color was because I wasn’t allowed to feel those things. I wasn’t allowed to want.

I wasn’t allowed to… the music I liked was diminished [00:10:00] or, criticiz- everything was criticized. And then when I got out, the trauma of the marriage began pushing its way back to the surface ’cause I had to push it down for so long, and then I turned to alcohol. And I didn’t know at the time that I was trying to numb something.

I didn’t have the language of, for coercive control. We weren’t having these conversations. I didn’t understand trauma the way I do now. I did not know how years of living in a harmful dynamic had shaped all of me, my choices, my identity, my body, my ability to feel safe in my whole life. I knew I was in pain.

I knew I wanted relief, and alcohol gave me relief until it didn’t, until 3:00 the next morning, until it became another problem that I had to face, right? And then I eventually did. And I can look back now with a much deeper understanding of what I was trying to escape. I wasn’t just someone who needed [00:11:00] healthier habits.

Oh my God, you guys, the number of morning routines that I tried because it was like, it must’ve been my morning routine that was not setting my day up for success if I was, like, depressed or whatever, right? Oh my God. So I wasn’t someone who needed healthier habits ’cause none of those things worked. I was someone whose system had been overwhelmed for years and who had completely lost herself inside of a marriage and who had no map for what came after.

One of my favorite things about the work that I do is that I g- I get to watch women in that same pla– I feel like I’m saving them 10 years because they’re coming out of their marriages already halfway through this work, and then they are getting out, and then they are ready to embrace dismantling the systems.

Or when they push up against these walls, they can identify them faster. They know what they are, and that makes me so happy. [00:12:00] Because when we understand the function of a coping mechanism, we can then address the coping mechanism and the injury behind it. And my clients and the women who join me in, on Phoenix Rising or those of you listening, you are skipping, without understanding the systemic issues- We will often move from one method of survival to another while believing that we’re just like failing at wellness.

What I get to see and witness in all of you Is that you get, you’re, like, skipping that whole dance, and I fucking love it. If your coping mech- mechanism, m- if it was during the marriage was, like, alcohol or shopping or food or work or exercise, scrolling, whatever it is, right? Constantly staying busy so you never have to sit long enough to feel what’s happening.

You working on your attachment style, [00:13:00] learning better communication skills, right? All of those things, right? If that was you, then you now have the opportunity to recognize that it’s the, the constant redirection of your attention back onto yourself while the relationship remains unchanged is not…

That’s not it. That’s not it. And this is one of the systemic harms that self-care can’t cure. You can become highly skilled at managing your response to mistreatment, and you stop asking why the mistreatment continues. And let’s look at this from a again, a more cultural perspective a social perspective.

Women, we are told that, women in midlife are suffering all of these chronic illnesses, chronic diseases, chronic this, chronic that, chronic pain, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We’re not looking at okay, why are women so fucking sick all the time? [00:14:00] Or it’s only been in the last few years that we’re recognizing that, oh, HRT is a thing, and it’s really important, and it’s actually something that can keep us alive longer.

But you think they would keep up with manufacturing the HRT in the, the numbers in which it’s being, like, requested and demanded at this point? No, of course not. Menopause is just one of those things that we have to suffer. Oh, turns out, no, it’s not. Turns out there’s meds for that. Changed my fucking life.

But we’re not looking at the system that’s supporting this notion that women just have to suffer. That’s just, that’s just the way it is. Nobody cares. It’s the gaslighting, the medical gaslighting. And look, some self-care practices genuinely help you feel stronger, and they can help you climb out enough to be able to get out.

And so I am not saying don’t do them. And sometimes they can extend your ability to re-remain in a damaging [00:15:00] situation because you’re, like, minute to minute self-caring your way into to- continuing to tolerate the intolerable. Finding that inner strength is a good thing, right? Therapy is a very good thing.

Anything that gives you enough steadiness to make thoughtful decisions is good. But we also want to recognize that coping better Doesn’t always mean that the situation is improving. Sometimes it means that you have to be- that you’ve become more efficient at surviving it. You can withstand more. From the outside, you might look healthier, but if inside the marriage, the essential dynamic has not changed, that’s not doing you the good that it f- might feel like it is.

So that’s why the peace that appears when he’s gone matters so much

A woman was [00:16:00] talking about on our call today about how like she had to travel for work and she had an apartment in another city where she would go for work, and that every time she was there, she felt that peace And she felt that calm. And it’s oh, if he tr- if he travels or you travel for work and you notice that you sleep really fucking well.

Maybe he takes the kids for the weekend, and your whole body just relaxes. Or you visit your sister, and you realize that you can finish a sentence without being interrupted or corrected or mocked, and you’re in an experience, you’re in a, an environment where people l- like you. That was the last moment of my marriage was…

I think I’ve told you. We’ve talked before about how I ended my marriage on Christmas Eve of 2008, and it was because we were over at my friend’s house, and we were surrounded by all of my best friends from college, and I spent the whole night with [00:17:00] them. And I was talking to them, and I was having fun with them, and I was ignoring my husband ’cause I was fucking pissed at him, and I was so done with this marriage, but I hadn’t ended it yet.

I was so done that I just didn’t wanna be around him, and I was hanging out with my best friends of, at that point, 20 years, who knew me and loved me. We get home, and he was like, “I just you didn’t talk to me all night. You spent the whole night talking to your friends.” And I was just so fucking done that I was like, “Yeah.

You know why? Because they like me, and they make me feel good, and you make me feel bad, and I’m done.” And that was it. Sometimes that contrast is ah, that’s it. If you have those moments of contrast when you’re around people that like you, that love you, that support you, where you don’t have to be hypervigilant all the time, notice that.

Notice if when he moves out or when you move out, [00:18:00] you will notice, I guarantee it, ’cause I can all but guarantee because of how often, how long I’ve been doing this, you stop drinking as much. My client who used to drink, a couple bottles, two, three bottle- a bottle of w- wine a night every two or three day, she like barely drinks anymore now that she’s out.

All of my clients are better mothers. They are more patient with their children. Their… Your, your brain comes back online. You start to remember things. You can actually focus. You don’t feel the same pressure to escape your life. When you leave I want you to look at what comes back online, or if you’re gone for the weekend what comes back online?

And then look what comes back when he returns or when you… if you’re on vacation and you come back, and it’s like, “Oh, look, all of my brain fog came back. All of my anxiety came back,” right? Your body is giving you data that your mind may have spent years debating This is important ’cause peace [00:19:00] after separation can also create its own confusion, right?

You might feel calmer and then feel really fucking guilty about that, about being calmer. And maybe he’s really miserable right now, and he’s struggling with the consequences of the separation, and then you’re able to breathe and “What does that say about me? What does it say about me that he’s struggling and I’m feeling better?”

And then you wanna rescue him, or you wanna make it better for him. This can reactivate you very quickly. He has discomfort caused by his own actions usually, and then you feel responsible. He’s unhappy, and then your peace feels selfish, and this is how we s- we give our peace away, right?

We finally get enough distance to feel the truth of the relationship, and then we interpret his distress as evidence that we’ve done something wrong. If your marriage depended on [00:20:00] your labor and your accommodation and your emotional management and your willingness to absorb the impact of his choices, of course he’s gonna feel a loss of that system.

He’s gonna feel that when you take all of that padding and cushioning away from him. You’re gonna notice that system was costing you more than it was costing him. And I wanna challenge you or invite you to stop paying for the difference. Peace can exist alongside grief, right? These two things can coexist You can miss him and still sleep better without him in the house.

You will mourn the family that you wanted, the dream that you had, and still know that this was the right decision. I want you to start to take note of these things. There are some questions maybe that you might wanna ask yourself and journal about. What becomes possible when you’re no longer immersed in the dynamics every single day [00:21:00] of this toxicity?

What is opening up for you, right? Can you hear your own thoughts? Can you make decisions? Can you feel your preferences? What you wanna eat for dinner re- coming back. You might have a moment, a period of frozenness “I don’t know what I like.” Oh, that’s information.

You actually don’t know what you want for dinner because you have never– no one’s ever asked you what you want. And then you get this moment of “Oh, I get to choose.” You might have access to your own judgment. You know what? I don’t fucking like that show. We’ve been watching this show for, I don’t like it.

Are your children less tense? Are you less reactive ’cause you’re no longer repeatedly provoked or going against your own parenting instincts? So these are really important observations to make in this space. Track your sleep. Track your drinking w- before and after. If you’re still in the house, [00:22:00] track it, your anxiety, your ability to focus, and then later on, I want you to also track it again.

You can bring this information into therapy, into c- coaching. It doesn’t need to change anything right now. Observing sometimes and just noticing these things is helping you understand that what’s happening so that you can make better choices. You can understand what the relationship is doing to you, what it’s costing you.

This is for you, and then when you see it maybe you make choices based on that. But first, there’s the space, right? There’s awareness before there’s any action. There’s awareness, then there’s space. In 12-step programs, in Al-Anon in particular, they talk about awareness, acceptance, and then action.

We don’t go from awareness to action. We sit in that space of acceptance, of “Oh, fuck. That’s the consequence of what this [00:23:00] relationship is doing to me.” Okay. And we sit in that acceptance. Not that we have to accept what it is, right? But we have to accept that it is. That’s the radical acceptance piece.

Oh, this is what the relationship is. I don’t… It’s not that I accept what the relationship is, but I accept that this is what it is, and before I move into action, I need to really sit with that. So on the other side of that we can start to move into action because we have a clearer head, right?

It’s not reactive. It’s, oh, okay. So maybe the next choice after that is creating more physical space from this person. Maybe it’s consulting an attorney, reducing unnecessary communication. One of the women in Phoenix Rising, in part of this conversation, was talking about how, recognizing now the need to put structures in place so that there is [00:24:00] no crossover during custody exchanges.

They’re gonna have to be aftercare programs so that there is no direct communication, right? You- these are the structures that you put in place, the actions that you take once you can really see the whole picture. Joining a community where other w- women can hear what you’re describing and help you recognize all these things that you might have normalized and to help point them out.

This is one of the reasons Phoenix Rising is so beautiful, is that women come into that room carrying experiences that they have been explaining away for years, and then another woman says, “You know what? When I… When he moved out, I stopped needing all the things I used to need to calm myself.” And someone else says, “I feel peaceful for the first time in years.”

And suddenly a woman who thought she was uniquely failing begins to see the larger structure. She sees that her distress developed [00:25:00] in context, in a system, that the quiet in her house is doing something that no amount of lavender could have done. You deserve forms of care that support your healing. You also deserve an honest assessment of what you are being asked to heal from while it is still happening.

So keep taking the walks and go to therapy. Get sober if alcohol has become a problem. Rest, move your body, spend time with people who help you remember who you are Join us in Phoenix Rising. Oh my God, we’d love to have you. We really would. It’s like this beautiful community of women who are just waiting for you to join us so that we can validate your experience.

If you listen to this podcast and you’re like, “Oh God, yes, that’s totally makes sense. I hear that,” you want more of that? You want that times a bunch? That’s in Phoenix Rising. Keep [00:26:00] asking yourself the deeper questions. Am I using self-care to build a life that supports me, or am I using it to recover just enough to return to a system that keeps hurting me?

And you might already know the answer, right? It might be there in the way your shoulders drop when the door closes behind him, when you’re listening to me talk about this. It might be there in the first full night of sleep you have had in years. It might be there in the fact that you no longer need to escape the room or your house.

That peace matters, that profound peace. It is information. It is profound information. So I invite you to listen to it. Listen to how you feel when you’re no longer having to escape this system that you’re living inside of, and know that you’re not alone. [00:27:00] I’m doing a fucking podcast episode on it for a reason, and there’s nothing wrong with you other than the fact that you might need to address something deeper and bigger and more systemic.

All right, my loves, that’s it for today. I love you. I love and adore you. I’ll see you next time. Bye.