Healing New Year: Choosing Peace After Toxic Love

Holiday noise can feel like pressure when your body is begging for quiet. We open up about why a low-key New Year can be the bravest choice after a toxic or narcissistically abusive relationship, and how choosing safety over spectacle is not only valid—it’s smart nervous system care. If crowds feel risky, there’s nothing wrong with spending the night with a journal, a puzzle, and a warm mug while your breath slowly evens out.

We dig into the difference between true rest and dissociation, then share simple anchors that keep you present at home: coloring, sketching, and five-minute free-writes that pull you out of rumination. You’ll also get a straightforward 30-day gratitude routine—one honest line a day—that trains your attention to notice small wins, builds a positive bias, and restores trust in your own perceptions after gaslighting and hypervigilance.

Looking ahead, we announce the Mental Well-Being Club, an in-person community built for connection and recovery. Expect theme-based meetings like men’s mental health, parenting, and women’s mental health, with plans to stream sessions for those who can’t attend. We share details on the first meetup, why face-to-face support speeds healing, and how somatic coaching, brainspotting, and hypnotherapy can deepen the work. If you’ve been waiting for a practical way to start fresh, this conversation offers tools you can use tonight and a community to grow with in the months ahead.

Subscribe for more grounded insights, share this with someone who needs a gentle New Year, and leave a review to help others find the show. Ready to try the one-line-a-day gratitude practice and join us at the first club meeting?

Transcript

New Year Check-In And Context

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Coffee Talks. My name is Russ. Here's my coffee. Um, wanted to jump on today because it's New Year's Eve. Um, New Year's Eve is a fun time of year, right? It's supposed to be joyful and celebratory, and you're supposed to spend time with friends and family and the people that you love. But when you're coming out of a toxic or narcissistically abusive relationship, it can feel a lot safer just to be by yourself. So don't be too hard on yourself this holiday season. If it just feels safer and better for you to be alone and have some solitude with yourself, there's nothing wrong with that. That's your nervous system doing exactly what it was meant to do. So when you're when your nervous system and your mind has been on high alert for so long with that toxic partner, where you're constantly waiting for the next attack coming around the corner, it can it can feel really, really good once you're by yourself and you no longer have that threat. And your brain, your, your limbic system can calm down and allow yourself to become present. Um, now the only thing I want you guys to be careful of if you're just hanging out by yourself this holiday season and just spending some quality time by yourself. That could be just spending time at home, and that could be just spending time with your kids, whatever that may be. Excuse me. The only thing that I ask that you do is make an attempt to be present while you're alone. Don't dissociate. What you don't want to do is sit on the couch and ruminate. What you want to do is sit down and do a puzzle, or you know, draw, or get a coloring book and color, or um try journaling. Journaling is a fantastic way to spend time alone and and and look inward. Um, the one thing that you guys could start today that is very simple, almost free, uh is just get yourself a notebook or a piece of paper or a stack of paper and just write down today one thing that you're grateful for, one thing that you um can show gratitude for. That could just be breathing today, if that's all that there is. That's all that there is. But find something today that you can write down that you're grateful for. And then tomorrow do the same thing. And then you when you wake up on Friday, do it again and try doing that every day for 30 days. And what you might start to see is a slight shift in your mindset, and you might start developing a positive bias. So, anyway, guys, uh, happy new year. Um, I hope that 2026 is absolutely amazing for you guys. I've got a lot of stuff coming down the pipe this year uh to include the mental well-being club. If you guys have not checked that out yet, just go under my groups um and look for the link for the mental well-being club on Facebook. You can join it there virtually. This is meant to be an in-person group, though. So, this this is meant to be a group where people can connect, people can lean on each other, and people can heal. The mission of this group or this club is to help elevate the mental well-being of our entire community. So uh first meeting is March 7th down at Mount Carl Veteran Service Center at 10 o'clock. Breakfast will be there. I'll be providing breakfast for free. Um, if you or someone you know owns a restaurant locally and you are interested in donating uh for that meal, I would love to talk to you. If you'd like to donate some money to help pay for that meal, I'd love to talk to you as well. Um yeah, so uh every month or every I'm sorry, every meeting will be a different theme. So this first theme um is men's mental health. The next theme might be parenting or women's mental health. Um, I can relate a little bit more to men's, so we might bring in a different coach to help with that that particular meeting. But um, all those will get announced on Facebook in that group. So and I think what I may do is also stream the meeting live uh so that if you can't make the meeting in person, you can join virtually. Uh eventually these meet eventually, these meetings will cost about$20 to$25 a piece uh just to help cover the cost of the food and bringing speakers in and stuff like that. Um and you can attend the ones that you want and attend not attend the ones that you don't. Uh but we'll have to work something out for the virtual side of that to make sure that that we can we're able to collect that virtually as well. Otherwise, guys, have a great 2026, man. 2025 was pretty damn good for me. I I gotta admit, man, 2025 has treated me pretty well. You know, it's been it's been a struggle with the the economy being the way it is. Um, and I've definitely had some hits, but I've met a wonderful woman, an Allie. She's she's just fantastic. Um, she's very kind, very gentle, very giving, very loving. She's a she's a good woman. Um I I've got to spend some really good quality time with some friends. I've made it through the holidays without trying to murder anyone or up off a bridge. So yeah, so things have been pretty good. But 2026 is gonna be freaking huge, man. I cannot wait. The economy's kind of on the mend. So hopefully by springtime we'll be back rocking, rocking and rolling, and people will be making money again. And and um if that if that's one of you guys and you wanna you want to start 2026 a little bit better off, a little bit more support, you got today. Today's the last day for that 50% off sale. So if you guys are interested in coaching program or coaching package, we're doing 50% off of everything that includes the mental uh I'm sorry, the trauma, the trauma unlocking workbook, VIP days, the six uh six session packages for uh somatic coaching, which includes brain spotting and hypnotherapy. Uh, and then one off. One off uh if you just want to try one session, you know, instead of$160, that's$80. So it's gonna save you some money if you just want to try one out and see if somatic coaching is for you. But today is the deadline for that. And we may do another one in March since we're gonna have a mental health uh we're gonna have the the launch of that mental well being club. So we may do it again then. But uh all right, guys. Have a great year and we will talk to you in 2026. Have a good one today.