Healing From Emotional Abuse: Stages of Emotional Healing

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Can you heal from abuse?  What do I do after leaving my narcissist? What does a healthy relationship look like? These concerns cross the minds of over 20 people every minute; over 28,800 people every day.  And the sad fact is, we still don’t talk about it enough.  Healing from Emotional Abuse isn’t a bandaid situation.  But it doesn’t have to take years either. The lives of millions of other survivors around the worlds have been impacted by their narcissist.  Yours doesn’t have to.  To show you how to live a free, confident and peaceful life, your host and Founder of the Healing From Emotional Abuse Philosophy, Marissa F. Cohen.

Welcome back to Healing From Emotional Abuse. I wanted to tell you guys the story of how I created my signature coaching course, the Healing From Emotional Abuse Philosophy. At the very beginning of 2020, I was driving from Chicago to Northwestern Wisconsin to visit a dear friend of mine.  On road trips, especially solo ones, I really enjoy listening to audiobooks. specifically of the self-development genre.  By recommendation from a friend, I purchased and listened to The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks (link to the book in the description).  It was an incredibly eye-opening book, and I kept having to pause to leave myself voice notes.  What I didn’t realize at the time, was that I was formulating and basically tracking all the tactics and techniques I used to help myself heal from my abuse, while also, etching out exactly how I had helped other survivors and champions heal from theirs.

It quickly became the foundation for my signature coaching program, The Healing From Emotional Abuse Philosophy. The Healing From Emotional Abuse Philosophy is a simple 3-step method to healing from abuse from beginning to end.  It follows you through each phase of your healing journey, with understanding and self esteem activities to help accelerate and supplement your healing.  Starting with breaking your silence. 

Breaking your silence, which is a  step I’ve focused on and encouraged thousands of people to do through my Breaking Through the Silence book series and (appropriately named) Breaking Through Our Silence, the podcast (Now named Healing From Emotional Abuse); allows you to take your voice back.  The thing with abuse is, it hurts us so deeply that we lose ourselves.  We lose who we are, our voice and our identity.  And our narcissists hold us captive even after the abuse is over or we leave because we feel isolated and alone.  But we aren’t alone.  None of us are.  And I learned from sharing my story that the more people I shared with, the more people shared with me.  And that is when I started to realize that I wasn’t alone.  We will always have people who we can relate to.

Thats the beauty of sharing your story.  You never know who you’re helping to break their silence.  We are a community because we all are rebuilding our lives together.

The second step in the Ruhe Approach is to drop your victim mentality.  This step seems to stir a lot of peoples nerves, but only because it’s a tough pill to swallow.  Think about it.  Who is the strongest person you know, or the most inspirational.  How do they act?  How do they perceive the world?  Do they allow what happens to them to define them and stop their lives, or do they take a moment, get back on their feet and continue on with their lives?  The problem with having a victim mentality is, you’re not taking accountability for your life, therefore, everything happens TO you and you’re not in control of it. 

Don’t let your abuser keep their hold on you and control you.  And when you do that, and you stop looking at yourself like a victim, you’re empowering yourself to start working towards healing.  You’ll feel better the moment you drop your victimhood and become a survivor.

The third step in the Ruhe approach is to build your confidence.  After abuse or assault, like I said before, we lose ourselves.  We learn to dislike things about ourselves and beat ourselves up.  My abuser told me that I was useless, and nobody in their right mind would ever love me, besides him.  And when you’re told that enough by a person you love and respect, you believe it.  And after my sexual assaults, I started to learn that my body was an object for other people to use and take advantage of.  All of that contributed to my low self-esteem and confidence, which was arguably the most difficult repair I had to make.  But healing your confidence is a huge part of healing from your abuse.

What is a word or action your abuser said that contributed to hurting your confidence?  Make that word your new superpower.  The Ruhe Approach teaches you how to do that. Useless?  I took the negativity that my abuser unloaded on me and became the most useful person I could be, or I’m at least working on it.  The horrible things he said and used to hurt me, I’ve turned into my biggest strengths.  The weakness I felt after the things he did to me, empower me to be the strongest person and advocate I can be.  What is your new superpower?

Step four is finding resources that work for you.  Therapy is amazing, but it’s not for everyone.  There are hundreds of other resources that might work for you.  It’s about finding the things that empower you and make you feel stronger.  That’s what resources are for abuse champions. Something to help you express your feelings and work through your trauma. 

A lot of people tend to turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms after abuse or assault, like self-harm, drugs and alcohol, eating disorders, or destructive and risky behaviors.  They are great for numbing, quick fixes.  But they aren’t healthy or sustainable.  They also don’t solve any issues, but build them up and make it harder to heal. Let’s find you a healthy alternative to coping.

The last step is to rebuild your routine.  To surround yourself with the people and things that make you the happiest, and cut out the toxic crap. Changing your routine to be doing the things that make you feel good, change your overall perspective.  It’s time to re-evaluate the people and things that you keep close to you. 

Who in your life, makes you happiest to be around?  Who encourages you to be your best?  Who inspires you to succeed?  Those are the people you should spend your time with.

Simple changes like the people who you surround yourself with make a huge impact on your perception of reality.  So spend your time with the people who inspire you and who make you the person you want to be.

And that’s all she wrote.  Literally.  Changing your life, and healing from your abuse can be that simple.  It takes work, patience, self care and determination.  But the payoff is worth the work.

You can work your way through the Ruhe Approach four different ways, although a combination of all four is always best.

The first way is through personal or group coaching with me directly.  I have two different programs.  One is a masterclass with no more than 20 people at a time.  In this format, we work together as a group to support each other’s healing journeys.  Everyone follows the program at the same speed, empowering and motivating each other.  For more information about this option, email me directly at [email protected] with the subject line Healing Master Class.

The other coaching option is one-on-one coaching, where we meet twice per month and work through the Ruhe Approach, just us.  We move at your pace, and you receive 100% of my attention.  For more information about this, send me an email with the subject line One on One Coaching

I also have a Self-Study course available of the Ruhe Approach.  It comes with guidance and worksheets already built in.  You can move at your own pace and heal in your time.  This is available on my website under Courses.

The final option is reading my best selling book, the Healing From Emotional Abuse Philosophy, available on my website MarissaFayeCohen.com/the-books or on Amazon. 

I hope this episode has intrigued you to learn more about the Ruhe Approach, but more than anything, I hope it inspired you to start living your best life, peacefully and fully.  We only have this one life, and it really makes me sad to see so many people giving up on enjoying it because of something that happened to them.  We are so much more resilient than we give ourselves credit for.  Take your power back.  Take your life back.

I’m proud of you.

If you enjoyed this podcast, you have to check out www.MarissaFayeCohen.com/Private-Coaching. Marissa would love to develop a made-for-you healing plan to heal from emotional abuse. She does all the work, and you just show up. Stop feeling stuck, alone, and hurt, and live a free, confident, and peaceful life.  Don’t forget to subscribe to the Healing From Emotional Abuse podcast, and follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/marissafcohen, and instagram @Marissa.Faye.Cohen. We’d love to see you there!

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