Wondering what is the best way to leave an emotionally abusive person who has violent tendencies? Advice about how to leave an emotionally abusive person is different from advice that should be given to anyone leaving an active abuser with a propensity for violence.
Here’s a list of helpful tips and information that can keep you safer from a legal as well as a financial perspective, noting that keeping yourself and your children physically safe from an abuser takes precedence over winning in court or hanging on to any or all personal or marital material possessions.
- Reading all you can about Narcopaths as well as Narcissists should give you a bit more insight.
- Ns can be mild, coverts that are passive-aggressive.
- Most Ns are just verbal and psychological abusers.
- Narcissistic Sociopaths or Psychopaths, on the other hand… they are physically dangerous.
- Reaching out to your local victim’s advocate to make a plan to keep yourself and any children safe is the right decision.
- Resist the urge to minimize your feelings or abuse — set healthy boundaries and release the feeling of guilt most narcissistic people and their Flying Monkey enablers will try to force-feed you.
- Document, document, document — keep those records! Make yourself a calendar of events (honeymoon phase, tension escalating, triggering events, and abuse patterns of the abuser’s cyclical behaviors).
- Screen capture computer info and also make sure you use a camera phone or digital cam to take photos of your screen.
- If he’s lying or she’s lying, blame-shifting, gaslighting and denying responsibility for their chosen actions by habit as part of their personality disorder symptoms encouraged since childhood, having a double set of abuse verification can really throw him off his game on court day.
- Present the paper copies of the printouts of the screen captures, emails, and text strings where he or she has admitted abuse.
- Then, when he and his lawyer try to have them thrown out of court claiming you “fabricated” or altered the text before printing, you will have a backup.
- There are expert witnesses you can call to court and pay to evaluate the photos you provide of the admissions or threats who can verify you did not doctor the photographs.
- Even if they have not lied yet, plan for it and resist the urge to feel shocked when and if they lie under oath, to their closest friends, and family members.
- KEEP ANSWERING MACHINE MESSAGES — like ALL of them.
- Voice tapes that he consented to be recorded — implied by hearing the beep and willingly talking are ADMISSIBLE in court.
- Call the police each time he threatens you directly or indirectly as well as to report suspicious activity. Put copies of all reports in a three-ring binder and have the newest incident on top, oldest to the back.
- Keep making these albums — especially if you have children.
- Tell any Flying Monkeys or “frenemies” to hit the trail who ridicules or tries to shame you for keeping meticulous, fastidious records.
- If you have children, keep a second set of records for each of them that chronicles their moods and evidence of C-PTSD; include school records to document signs of stress, too.
- Reach out to your healthcare provider and express your true dilemma; noting you are living with an abuser, ask them to discuss C-PTSD with you and have them document the conversation in your legally admissible medical records.
- Abuse victims are routinely misdiagnosed with Depression; people with C-PTSD tend to benefit from treatment for anxiety (not depression) with the understanding the depression medications (or ADD/ADHD meds for kids) mask abuse and enable rather than helping with symptoms.
- Journal and DATE things he does/says as well as how you feel (scared, humiliated) etc in a composition notebook — those black and white wide ruled things you can buy at any office supply.
- Bound journals with dated entries listed in INK are also admissible to evidence a longstanding history and pattern of abuse, contempt of court, stalking, etc. Resist the urge to listen to ANY advice offered in mainstream thinking.
- You are dealing with a person who has CLUSTER B; the advice someone gets or gives from some magazine or self-help book for normal people can get you killed, literally and figuratively.
- Learn to speak slowly but think quickly; reveal as little personal information as possible to Flying Monkey spies or your Abuser(s).
- Abusers and Flying Monkeys who are Covert Narcissists derive pleasure equally from seeing you upset and seeing you take bad advice to heart; understand, the more you react, the more satisfaction they get. Seasonal holidays tend to escalate bad behavior as well.
- Stay safe and call 911 if you even remotely feel unsafe; keep paper copies of each report and a list of officer names who you speak with who handle the calls so you are able to subpoena them to court to help provide credible witnesses.
- Photograph any bruises, marks, or scars; photo any personal property destruction as well.
- Make friends NOW with your local domestic violence shelter contacts so you know who to call and where to go should the abuser’s behavior patterns start to show signs of escalation rather than him or her pretending to be in a “honeymoon phase” of sorts in front of your family friends while situationally in private abusing you.
- Keep ready bags packed to go… and move any sentimental items from the home that cannot be replaced.
- Make a plan to take family pets to safety; ask a trusted neighbor to keep them in an emergency (out of sight) and have a backup temporary home lined up just in case you find you cannot take them to a domestic violence shelter or new apartment complex with you.
- Set aside as much CASH as you can but don’t hesitate to leave without it. Safety trumps comfort, period.
- Open a bank account in YOUR NAME ONLY and take the abuser’s name authorization off any lines of credit.
- Set your budget to what you can afford if and when he or she fails to pay alimony or child support; if they are court-ordered to make a payment, consider their income a bonus (even though you know in your heart, gut, and mind that you and your kids are suffering great insult and injustice).
- Resist the urge to turn to them (your abuser) or their spying, lying, and manipulative Flying Monkeys for comfort, material support, financial support, or physical help with anything and everything from child support to mowing the yard.
- Photos, family jewelry, and sentimental items that cannot be replaced should be protected discreetly.
- Walk through your house today if you can and take pictures of each room from all four corners.
- Take pics of items of value as singles. If he splits, this can give you a way to have a record of material goods.
- If he or she steals them all, some judges use photos to establish not only proof of mutual ownership but can help you in a divorce settlement.
- Having photos will also help ease the need to have the goods should they disappear or you have to leave them, if only to keep photos instead of the objects for sentimental reasons.
- Stay away from any person you know who actively speaks with or shows signs of supporting your abuser. This includes any and all friends, family members, stepchildren, in-laws, your own family (quite possibly), and or co-workers.
- Read Narcissistic Abuse recovery advice daily for the rest of your life, literally. Set aside at least 10 minutes a day to research a key term or to look up and read a self-help article.
- Check out Spartan Life Coach — starting with his video that discusses Covert Narcissism (first) and Why Your Family Hates You (second). Listening to them every day in crisis as well as every week or few weeks once you start to emotionally catch the wind back in your sails can help you keep your mind straight.
- Learn all you can about C-PTSD and watch (medically) for signs of abuse in yourself and any children.
Understanding that physically protecting yourself first includes not only getting to safety but looking after yourself matters, we’d like to add a helpful and healthful list of concurrent reminders.
- Take care of your body.
- Take Epsom Salt baths (or at the very least soak your hands or feet) in order to replenish diminished magnesium; research signs of magnesium deficiency from credible sources.
- Take this piece of advice seriously to ease the anxiety pain you feel in your core; it HELPS and can help lower the chances heartbreak will lead to a physical heart attack. Eat as much fresh food with high nutrients as you can.
- Drink water and OJ, noting OJ replenishes lost potassium.
- Don’t forget to replenish electrolytes.
- Sleep or nap to ensure you are getting at least 9-11 hours of sleep a day; if your body has been under emotional stress, adrenal fatigue is medically COMMON.
- Rather than waiting for a drama incident to upset you, plan convenient times for safe meditation, musing, pondering, “feeling the feels” (as Spartan Life Coach Richard Grannon suggests), and crying. Toxic chemicals are released from the body through tears. Bawling your eyes out over some simpy Rom-Com, after watching “The Notebook”. “Titanic”, or “The Time Travelers Wife” can be far more healing in private than having your eyeballs leak out emotional toxicity during court or in a heated confrontation with your abuser.
- Consider packing any object in your view that causes you to feel stuck emotionally or that encourages something called Cognitive Dissonance.
- Pack personal items that belong to the abuser and label the box DO NOT OPEN.
- Let the police chaperon when and if an abusive person wants to come pick up their personal belongings from your home
- Put away photos for a while; the past is the past — focus on the reality of living in the present while planning actively to create a better, more healthy, and stable future.
As always, call 911 anytime you feel you are in danger. Be prepared at any moment to the best of your ability to flee your home. It’s a terrible stress to live with an abusive person, yes… but many victims choose to stay. But understand the gravity of your romantic situation. If the person you are with has a propensity for violence and is emotionally abusive, chances are the law is going to have to be called and you are likely to need to file for a restraining order.
The sooner you learn how to prioritize in a self-protective but non-selfish way, the easier it will be to detach emotionally. Feel the fear and do it anyway if common sense dictated you have to leave. Understand that anyone leaving a narcissistic person is smart to expect narcissistic, financial, legal, psychological, and emotional abuse.
And as always, feel free to reach out to the staff writers of FlyingMonkeysDenied.com via the Facebook Fan page. We routinely have folks email describing scenarios in private messages and our advice articles are based on answering anonymous questions. If they fall under the purview of Narcissistic Abuse, our goal is to provide key terms to research patterns of abuse folks experience.
Just an aside disclosure — no one sharing advice on the page is representing themselves as anything other than an advocate. For personal counseling, finding a therapist in your local area who specializes in working with victims of people with Cluster B personality disorders is the right thing to do. Therapists who have no personal experience dealing with abuse issues tend to offer poor advice with limited insight. Any therapist chosen should be well-versed in working with adults and children who have been pervasively traumatized and suffer from C-PTSD issues.
