This seemed to really help me focus in and start healing:

Emotional Abuse Recovery NOW


Written and published by Annie Kaszina
Women's Self-Discovery Coach
www.EmotionalAbuseRecoveryNow.com


Remember when you were thankful for someone forwarding you an email? Well, who do you know who would love to receive this one? Feel free to pass it on.

This newsletter is for women everywhere who have tried, in vain, to be the woman other people wanted them to be and are now ready to discover and become the woman they truly want to be.


To sign up to this ezine, go to www.EmotionalAbuseRecoveryNow.com




My name is Annie Kaszina and I spent over twenty years in an abusive marriage, before I learned how I could become the woman I want to be. Now I work with women who have been in controlling and abusive relationships, to facilitate their journey into joy and self-realisation.


"All of the things that I have read that you've offered have been miraculously good for me. I read what you write and I feel myself identifying, relating, and even beginning to heal after a verbally abusive marriage of 18 years. I'm happy to discover that I'm not dirt after all. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. And bless you, bless you, bless you!" Marianne K


"I just wanted to say thank you for your support. Whether you know it or not, you are a blessing to me with your words of true wisdom. I know you are soaring like a eagle and I can see you fly and I am still the bird in the cage on the ground, waiting for the moment to fly myself. Thank you once again, because I feel myself getting braver reading your newsletters." S.C.


1. Are You Between A Rock And A Hard Place?
2. When You "Don't Know"
3. "The Woman You Want To Be"

1. Are You Between A Rock And A Hard Place?

Have you ever told yourself - and quite possibly friends and family also - that you know your abusive partner better than anyone else does?

In some ways you would be right; you would know far more about his quirks and habits and frailties than anyone else. And in some ways you would be wrong; because the temptation is to assume that knowing as much about him as you do, somehow means that he really feels and will ultimately behave the way you hope he will.

How does that work?

Obviously it doesn't. Yet we have all been there at some point. You launch into the abused woman's anthem: "No, no, it's not like that. You don't understand. He wouldn't..." and people look at you open-mouthed in utter disbelief. But you are convinced you know better.

How do you know better? Therein lies a mystery, the potentially fatal mystery of denial.

This week an abused woman wrote about her partner: "I know him better than anyone and I don't believe he'd go that far." In her case 'that far' meant murdering her. He has a gun, he has threatened her repeatedly and he has behaved violently towards her and people connected to her.

Viewed from the outside she is tragically misguided. Unfortunately for her she has spent more time with him than anyone else has and she chooses to disregard his threats and past behaviours, because of what she thinks he won't do. Why? Because she can't bear to face the enormity of the situation.

It's agonizing to have to face the fact that someone in whom you have invested your whole life is hell bent on destroying you, in order to get their own needs met. It's devastating to think that you couldn't make yourself truly matter to them.

Anyone who has lived with an abuser knows how hard it is to face that ultimate ugly truth. It is easier to slip into the kind of misguided thinking that minimizes the threat to your wellbeing, whether that threat to is physical and immediate or emotional. The awfulness of the reality is too difficult to acknowledge. Addressing it requires a degree of energy that may seem impossibly hard to find.

It may seem easier to give up the struggle and put your trust in - of all people - the abusive partner, or maybe just give up caring whether you live or die.

How tragic is that?
How tragic is it when you stop envisaging a worthwhile future for yourself? When you feel you will never be more than a beggar at the feast of life? When you are so drained that you feel almost ready to consign your children also to emotional beggary?
We've all been there.

It is the hardest time to do anything at all to change your situation, the time when you feel absolutely crushed by life. A woman I know told me that she once spent a whole day spread-eagled on the floor, too terrified by the thought of having to manage without her partner even to lift her head. Whether or not we have actually done that, most of us who have left an abusive relationship have certainly felt like it, and not just for one day either.

Still it is the time when whatever tiny steps you can take will bear the most fruit.

Sadly, those tiny steps probably won't produce instant results. Wouldn't it be great if you only had to take one tiny step and guardian angels or banners of support would appear right in front of your nose? But you know that that is most unlikely to happen.

The pace of recovery is way too slow at the start. Besides, you feel too weary to work through the process; you just want to hurtle through the recovery tunnel, like some kind of emotional time traveller, and arrive instantly at the other end. Healed. Whole. Of course it doesn't happen.

But let's look for a moment at what does. You take the first few small steps towards emotional healing and you feel like you are neck deep in molasses (UK treacle), trying hopelessly to wade through it. You focus on the molasses (treacle) and the sheer difficulty of the thing. That's only human nature.

You are not aware of the chain of change you set in motion. Nor are you programmed to look for tiny shifts and changes. Having lived with misery and negativity of epic proportions, it's hard to grasp how focusing on micro-shifts will speed the arrival of massive results. Yet that is what happens.

As regards the woman who wrote to me, she is clearly between a rock and a very hard place. There are no easy solutions for her. She barely has the strength to stay away from her violent partner. (Not that she will be much safer, over time, if she goes back to him, than if she keeps away from him. Either way, the very real threat to her safety, must be managed with great care.) But she has taken a few steps, one of which is contacting me.

I cannot always do this, but on this occasion I am able to offer her an hour of my time. Will this magically solve her problems? Of course not. What I am hoping - and believe - it will do, is speed up the chain reaction that will result in her healing. What she does not yet see is that she has almost nothing more to lose.

She has everything to gain.

2. When you "don't know"

A few days ago a colleague challenged me about a longstanding fear I had. She asked me what it was about. I answered as honestly as I could and she, very properly, kept probing until I came up with an "I don't know".

One thing I do know is that we all have all the answers. An "I don't know" simply means that either we don't want to go there, or else we can't access the information at that point in time. To say I was displeased with myself is putting it mildly. Because I know that lurking behind that "I don't know" is a juicy realization that can bring about a radical change in the way we think.

Later on that day I pottered off and did some washing up and ironing, the kind of mechanical activity that allows you to go into a trance. There may be music in the background, but much as you focus on what you are doing your mind drifts off. Mine drifted off happily, and presented me with an answer.

During my childhood one of my father's refrains had been: "What do you know?" Then he'd pause, waiting for my lower lip to quiver and add: "Nothing. That's what you know." I soon knew the answer so well that he didn't need to say it.

I grew up, moved away and made it my business to learn a lot of information about a lot of things - I wonder why. Still that primitive fear pattern remained with me. It caused me a disproportionate degree of anguish in seemingly unimportant situations until last week. Then I finally understood.

My father had his own feelings of inadequacy and needed to be in control. He achieved that by diminishing his near and dear ones. Like all bullies, he preferred a soft target.

The system worked better than he could ever have planned. 10 years after his death it still worked. In fact it worked so well that other people who he had never met could also trigger it unawares. It only took a random comment in a random situation to go back into that old anguish. Until last week.

That was when I finally became aware. I realized that every time I went back into evaluating myself according to my father's criteria I would come up smelling of dung. That was how his criteria were designed to work. No matter that if he had been assessed by his own criteria, he would have been found sorely lacking. Nobody would ever have accused him of being particularly well informed about anything.

But with awareness came peace. I like knowledge, but not knowing is not a crime. In turn that revelation has freed me up to recognise another daft and destructive belief it had previously supported.

Maybe your programming wasn't like mine and you are wondering what on earth I am going on about. Or maybe some of the negative programming you took for granted, and still do take for granted, is similarly past its sell-by date.

Just today I was working with a woman who felt it was 'stupid' to feel the pain she has spent her whole life repressing. Now she understands that acknowledging past pain is a useful part of recovery. Wallowing, like running away from the pain perpetuates it, but acknowledging it allows it to dissolve.

What don't you know at the moment? Allowing it to come to the surface will not open a Pandora's box. Rather it will allow a fragile old fear to disintegrate in the air and the sunlight.

Once upon a time "I don't know" may have been the best strategy you had to protect yourself, but not any more.

"I don't know" is what stops you becoming aware of how extraordinary you are to have come as far as you have, in the face of the difficulties you have confronted. "I don't know" stops you seeing yourself through your own eyes and showing yourself the respect and compassion you deserve.

3. THE WOMAN YOU WANT TO BE, HOW TO RISE FROM THE ASHES OF AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP, the eBook $37.00

"This is the most valuable recovery tool I have used. I am beginning to believe recovery is possible. Thanks." KAF
When I finally ended my marriage, the question that obsessed me was: "How do I heal from this?" After 20+ years in an abusive marriage, I didn't want to waste any more of my precious life struggling with despair, sorrow, anger and pain.

I wanted to be emotionally whole and healthy. But I didn't know where to start. So I did everything I could thing of. I tried psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, group counselling. I read about abuse and talked about abuse. It all helped and I'm grateful to everyone and everything that helped move me along.

The knowledge I acquired was, undoubtedly, valuable. But the one thing that enabled me to make the shift out of my world of fearfulness and limiting self-beliefs, into serenity and self-worth was learning how I could transform my thinking.

Learning how you can successfully change your thinking is the most powerful tool for personal growth you can possibly access. Your world starts to change the moment the moment your about it start to change.

Everything I know about how to make that journey has gone into my ebook "The Woman You Want To Be". It's not intended to be a "quick fix". It's a structured programme that shows you how to get back to your inner joy, your gifts and a strong sense of your unique worth.

Over the course of nearly a year, "The Woman You Want To Be" will guide you out of your limiting, negative thinking and into a new perspective on yourself and your world. You'll learn how you can access your strengths, your trust in yourself and your joy so that you won't have to live any more amid the rubble of broken dreams. Instead you can build the world for yourself in which you can enjoy happiness, true connection with others and thesuccess you want for yourself.

This 10 step workbook is a vital resource for women who want to discover their true potential in all areas of their life. It will teach you how you can believe in and value yourself as never before.

To purchase Annie's ebook, go to www.EmotionalAbuseRecoveryNow.com

About the Author

Are you willing to stop living with the lack he saidyou deserved and start creating the joyous life you are entitled to? Are you willing to break free from the shackles of low self-worth and abusive relationships to become The Woman You Want To Be?

Annie Kaszina is a specialist Empowerment Coach who can work with you through "The Woman You Want To Be" programme, workshops and one to one coaching. You'll learn to root out self-limiting beliefs, tap into your inner joy and attract the relationships you want.

Find out more by visiting our website www.joyfulcoaching.com and subscribe to our newsletter. Your email address will be treasured and kept totally private. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Author: Annie Kaszina Women's Self-Discovery Coach.
Further information: www.EmotionalAbuseRecoveryNow.com

You may copy or distribute 'The Woman You Want To Be' providing this copyright notice and full information about contacting the author are attached.
Contact her at: www.EmotionalAbuseRecoveryNow.com

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