How Abusers Use Therapy Against You

I explore how abusive partners can use therapy to reinforce blame, rewrite reality, and further control their partners. She breaks down red flags to watch for—like when therapy sessions become ammunition, or when your partner suddenly becomes an expert in your trauma but avoids accountability for their own.

Jessica shares the emotional toll of navigating this dynamic and why you’re not wrong—or crazy—for feeling like something is off even when your partner is “doing the work.” This episode is a validating reminder that true healing includes self-reflection, not deflection—and you deserve a relationship where you’re not someone’s emotional cushion or scapegoat.

Transcript

Welcome to the You Are Not Crazy Podcast hosted by Jessica Knight, a certified life coach who specializes. And healing from narcissistic and emotional abuse. This podcast is intended to help you identify manipulative and abusive behavior, set boundaries with yourself and others, and heal the relationship with yourself so you can learn to love in a healthy way. You can connect with Jessica and find additional resources, content, and coaching@emotionalabusecoach.com. Hello, and thank you for being. Here. Here, I'm gonna go through the how to work with me stuff because, well, because that's why I'm here is because this is what I do. But to find me my work and what I do, you can go to emotional abuse coach com. You can also go to hi dash conflict divorce coaching com. You can find me at substack if you search Jessica Knight Coaching all these in. How do I connect with her? It's all there as well as my Instagram at Emotional Abuse Coach, and I have courses, I have. The Substack is a blog, which I treat a bit more like a community. And the theme of March's gaslighting, the theme of February was identifying emotional abuse and toxic breakups and. I'm playing around with a few ideas for April, so I can't tell you what that one's gonna be, but if you are looking for support, I am here. I offer one-off calls. I offer consistent coaching, and I really do care about all of the things that I talk about, and I think people do hear that from me. I think that. You can probably tell that I've been through it too, and I think that the most validating thing that anybody ever says to me, it's like the reason that I keep doing this work. Not that I wanna stop doing this work, but like, you know, we all need that validation is when people say to me, you're the only person who gets it. I don't want to be the only person who gets it. I want you to have 20 people in your life that get it and support you. I also know that if I am the only one who gets it, I'm glad that you have that. I know what it feels like to not, and so I wanna dive into a topic today that I, this actually came after a call with a client. And if I'm being honest, I had a similar call three times this week and recording this a. It's about therapy and it's about people being afraid if their partner goes to therapy. I had this experience. I wasn't afraid of them going to therapy, though. I was afraid that it, this all would continue regardless. I was fully aware that if he went to therapy, that it may not go well and that everything may be turned on me, and that is, I mean, maybe that's because I've been in the world of, you know, this kind of stuff for a while. But I also know that true change comes from actually looking at ourselves and our patterns, and that if it was going be weaponized against me, then he's not actually doing that, which means doesn't. I think this comes up a lot for a lot of people. We think of therapy as like a place of healing or a space of self-reflection, accountability, and growth. But sometimes it can just become another tool of manipulation, and I've lived it and I've seen it, and I know how devastating it is to watch someone twist language of therapy into like a shield of self victimization of, you know. You know, you can't say this because my therapist said this. It's like, if that's what's happening to you, then they're not going to therapy and processing stuff. Right. When my last partner went to therapy, he hadn't been to extensive therapy. He had been to therapy within the last year. That was more like, and he even described it. He said like, she's not pushing me, is what he would say when we met. And so he went to someone that was definitely gonna be, you know, a bit more like hard hitting in a way. Where it gets deep and asks the tough questions, and that is what he ended up using to weaponize it against me. But I think like the core message here is one, if that happens, that's they're showing you who they are and they're showing you their thoughts and you don't need to beg someone to change and to change their perspective. And two. It's also showing you how unhealthy the dynamic is. You know, four sessions into therapy when they've never done it before. Now they have all these ideas about who you are. And so recently this week I've had a couple of clients tell me that they're afraid of their partner going to therapy. Not because they don't believe in it, but because they had watched someone else weaponize it against them. And I knew exactly what they meant when they were saying this because I went through that, like I said. And in that relationship I mentioned, I noticed early on that he had these like really big emotional reactions. They were trauma responses, and I know they're trauma responses because of the work that I do, and he would explode on me every single time it happened. He was absolutely convinced in the moment that it was my fault, and no matter what this situation was, I was the trigger and I was the problem every time. Even when I would be able, or I would try and tell him, look like this is the same exact thing that happened on Tuesday. It's now Thursday. Like it took you to a Wednesday night to be able to realize that I didn't do what you're feeling in this moment. He would double down and be convinced that I was the aggressor in that moment and I did something wrong when really all I was doing was existing or holding a boundary like, oh, you want me to come over right now? I. You know, it was never anything that was like, oh, you barged into my apartment and stole all my stuff. Like, I mean, that's a ridiculous example, but like, it was always these little things where like, I, you responded to that text this way. Those are the kinds of things that he was putting into this. And I remember saying like, look, I get you're struggling. I get this feels outta control, but I need you to explore this. Or I can't do this. I need get help. So he went to found this new therapist, and it was specifically for his childhood trauma. And at first I thought this was a good thing. I thought he was gonna finally impact what was happening inside of him and take responsibility for his actions and have the support that he needed to move through all of that, because I know the amount of support I needed and still need to go through my childhood trauma. But instead of doing that, therapy became his ultimate excuse. It was his Trump card. So instead of I wanna manage this and understand it so I can be a healthy partner, it became Jessica is triggering me. That became the narrative for everything. Every time I was upset about the way he was treating me, he said I was triggering him every time he did something harmful. And I responded in a way of like usually setting a boundary, getting silent, say I'm not okay with it. Apparently that's also triggering him. And the irony of this is that he was triggering me too. A lot, but I knew that that was my job to manage it, because that's what emotional regulation is. It's acknowledging your triggers, sitting with them and not using them as an excuse to lash out on somebody else. He did not see it that way, and his therapist, instead of challenging him, seemed to be reinforcing it. It seemed like he'd go into therapy, and it turned into unpacking my childhood trauma when he had so much of his own. And I've been in therapy for many years at this point, since I was 16, and I've had coaching, I've had therapy. I've had both. I've had one, I've had the other, but I know I have childhood trauma. I'm fully aware of it. I lived it. I'm aware of it, and I'm constantly working through it in various ways and with various levels of intensity. This pattern that he started to. New language of course, because now he's in therapy. But it was never about his own accountability, his actions, how he wanted to change and move forward. He was now psychoanalyzing me and suddenly he wasn't talking about how he needed to control his anger or why he kept lying, or why he refused to share, you know, information freely or just like have honest conversations. He was now talking about my trauma, my reactions, my supposed psychological issues. He had spent entire therapy sessions dissecting me, somebody that his therapist never met, like I never met his therapist, I wasn't in the room, and now he was coming home diagnosing me and I was just sitting back like. The amount of times I sat back and did not diagnose you and did not tell you what you're doing, but basically say, I feel X, Y, Z has been astronomical. So for that person to come back and say, well, in my one um, hour therapy session, I have decided X, Y, Z. When I'm like, no. Right? That's not who I am. Like I remember one time he told me I had to void an attachment and I was like, you have any idea what I did to work through my anxious attachment? You don't, but I certainly am not avoidant. I just have boundaries. I remember asking, did you spend two hours talking about my childhood instead of your own? Because I'm not the one with the explosive reactions. I was not the one blaming him. I was not the one acting out on him. But therapy had turned into a tool for him to deflect all responsibility. And this is a danger when a manipulator goes to therapy and if the therapist doesn't see it, they don't go to heal. They go to gather language that justify their actions. And once I started to see that, I started to realize that this relationship is not going to last. That I don't wanna force somebody to change. I, you know, I led the horse to water, basically, and I was like, here, you can like drink. I want you to, but it was on him to be able to say, wait, wait, wait. Therapist, we're not dissecting her. Let's talk about me. I wanna talk about how this affects me. That's what I would have done in those situations if I was in his place and that I have done. But in this case, he learned the right words. To keep me on edge, and then he turned therapy into a justification machine as to why everything that was going wrong in our relationship was my fault. Why every disagreement was my fault. Every time I felt like, oh my God, that was insane. He'd rewrite the narrative, go to therapy and come back before we even had a chance to talk about it, to tell me how it was my fault. And trust me, when I was talking about these situations with my therapist, at that time, she was basically like waving the red flag. So I wanna share some signs of what you might be seeing if you are, if this pattern is happening, if therapy is becoming more of a tool against you than a tool of their self-reflection, this is not a reason to go to them and say, this isn't working, and I know it's why, because I 'cause Jessica said so, or 'cause I listened to this. What I I'm doing is I'm trying to share this with you so that you can have your own self-reflection on it. So you can ask yourself, is this pattern working or not? Is, are they reflecting on themselves or not? Are things actually changing? One of the hardest things to put our finger on when we're in emotional abuse. And so here are some signs that therapy's actually being weaponized. They always come home from therapy with reasons why you're the problem. Therapy should make a person more self-aware, not more entitled. Their own dysfunction. If every session reinforces their victimhood and you being the villain in their story, something is wrong. 'cause it's really off balance. And if you do self-discovery work, you also know that, you know, we all have roles in these patterns too. You know, we, we don't, and we can look at that and we can understand that. And it doesn't take away. Another sign is that they psychoanalyze you instead of reflecting on themselves. If they spend more time diagnosing your trauma than unpacking their own. They're avoiding real work. They use therapy language as an excuse for their behavior. Saying something like, I yelled because you triggered my abandonment wound. I lied because I was afraid of your reaction. Should be growth, not justification for harm. Um, and in these situations it's not, I lied because I'm afraid of your reaction. And that's a confession. It's, I'm saying it more like, I did it 'cause of this and you should deal with it. Another sign is that therapy seems to be making things worse, not better. The whole point of therapy is progress, which doesn't mean that things are not gonna be rocky along the way, especially if somebody is like starting this journey. It is gonna be tough. It is gonna be uncomfortable. You're sort of signing up for that. But if every session reinforces their dysfunction and they continue to hurt you, then something is off. Something is being misused. They're not being honest with their therapist. Another sign is that they make you feel like they're a therapist. You are not an emotional punching bag. You are not responsible for their healing. If their therapy sessions result in you having to coddle, explain, or validate them even more for their perspective or their way of hurting you, then you're being manipulated and not all therapists enable this behavior. A good therapist challenges a person to sit with that discomfort and their own behavior. Somebody who may be, you know, not the best. They will reinforce the manipulator delusions by validating their narrative without questioning it. And if you hear it all the time, like, oh, the nurses got more narcissistic when they went to therapy. That's what I mean here, is that they go to therapy and now they have all these tools and resources that reinforce why you're the problem. A good therapist asks, how does your behavior affect your partner? Tell me about this pattern. What is going on there? What steps are you taking to manage your trauma? How does your trauma show up in your relationship? Let's explore why you feel entitled to avoid responsibility. Can you take me through the pattern that you're currently experiencing? What are things that your partner has said they're feeling in this relationship? What's the truth in it? So a therapist that. It could be dangerous for this dynamic would say things like, tell me more about how they're triggering you, but that's without looking at the person's internal triggers that they have. Let's talk about your partner's reactions and how they affect you. Maybe your partner doesn't understand your trauma enough. Do you see the difference between them? One forces accountability and the other reinforces blame shifting. This goes, the biggest lesson is, is that you can't make someone refuse to see what they, I'm gonna, I said that wrong. You can't make somebody see what they refuse to acknowledge. Kind of what I said at the beginning. You can't get somebody to work on something that they don't feel like it's theirs to work on. If you are on the receiving end of somebody's trauma, responses that you can tell are so deeply connected to their childhood 'cause maybe that's your experience that when you had those triggers and past relationships or past parts of your life, that's what that was. Then when you look over at. You know them and you're seeing this happening, and you're seeing these behaviors and you're like, oh my God, this person, like this stuff happens everywhere. How am I? Or like, how am I supposed to live in a place that's like I'm triggering this person constantly? I think you have to realize like this is something you can't change no matter how much you love them, no. How much you care about them. Know how much you want them, how much empathy you have for them, and how much empathy you have for that hurt part of them. If they don't want to work on it, this pattern is just gonna continue and it does take a long time to work through it. It is bumpy, and you might be able to be there for the bumps. I was willing to be there for the bumps in the road until it just became like every day felt like a car crash. And my breaking point came when I realized that his therapy turned into a. His worst behaviors. I knew what real progress looked like and I also knew what it was like to be stuck at times, and I knew the moment that therapy was becoming a way for him to control the narrative instead of heal. There were all these situations that happened in episodes and last straws that I would look at, and I. Like, what the, how the hell, like, I would, like, he'd go to his appointment and be like, all right. I, I hope when he comes out of that, it's gonna feel like maybe we'll have a better conversation, we'll have a different perspective. He'd come out with like a laundry list of things that I did wrong, and my therapist at the time was like, you know, like I said, waving the red flag, like, you know, pausing, cutting me off, being like, this is abuse. Whereas he did not. I have that experience. He was having the opposite experience in mine in a lot of ways. Like I am probably a bit self-reflective to a fault, like I'm human. So of course there's times and situations where I'm like, I'm not gonna, I'm not, I'm not self-reflecting, but I kind of always come back. I always come back to it and I knew what was happening and I had to let it be, I had to stop trying to force him to see what he refused to acknowledge. And I had to stop being his emotional cushion. Like he literally was rewriting history. He was rewriting events. He was changing events, and he was now felt amplified because his therapist validated that for him, I don't wanna say the person's name, but he would constantly say, let think of a new name. He would constantly be like, oh, Sarah said that, but Sarah said that. And I'd be like, okay, well I don't give a shit what Sarah says. Go be in a relationship with Sarah then. Like if she's always right and I'm always wrong, but my therapist is also wrong, and like our couple's therapist is now also wrong because Sarah's right then go be with Sarah over me. Which obviously my response that didn't necessarily help, but it was about like, you want me just to absorb your trauma and your therapist is reinforcing that somehow. Like the narrative you're sharing with them is basically like that. That's what I need to do in order to be in this relationship. In my perspective and what I subscribe to is that healing is about learning to process your own trauma, not forcing somebody to absorb it. We can exist and coexist and have empathy and compassion and understanding, but I'm not a sponge and I don't wanna be a sponge. The only person that I'll be a sponge for is my daughter. If you are in a relationship where therapy is being weaponized against you. You do not have to stay and be somebody's collateral damage. You don't have to keep defending yourself against somebody who refuses to grow or to look at themselves, and you don't have to accept therapy as an excuse for harm because therapy is not the problem. A therapist tied with somebody who is refusing to take accountability and that therapist is not trained to see these dynamics, that's the problem. I have seen this work out beautifully for people and couples and that. It does help the dynamic. It does help them be called out. It does help them look at themselves and reflect. But the best thing that you can do is like, realize my partner is manipulative. I can't do this. Let them take that therapy and run circles around themselves, they'll likely will quit therapy. It's, you know, very common that once, you know, if you're like, I'm outta here, you know, they may quit because they were only doing it for a specific reason, but you don't need to be there collateral damage, like you don't have to be in the car crash. You deserve peace and respect and relationship where you're not meant to be. I hope that this was helpful. I hope that it was validating, and I hope that it gives you something to think about, especially if you're in this place. If you need support, you can always find me at emotional abuse coach com, on Instagram at Emotional Abuse Coach, and on substack. If you search Jessica night coaching or go to the show notes, you can find me there. And this is one of those topics that I feel like could be so convoluted or people may have different perspectives. And I just wanna say that it's not about not having empathy for somebody or noticing that they're in like the midst of their own struggles. Because chances are, if you're here, you have been in the midst of their struggles for a long time. But if they're using all of this against you to basically say you are the problem. It's not working.