Relational Injury Recovery

Something shifts the day you stop wondering if you imagined it and start trusting what you saw, felt, and endured. I’m Kim Lee, child and adolescent psychotherapist, and I close the Relational Injury series by laying out a grounded path from recognition to reckoning to recovery, with a focus on what actually helps when you’re trying to come back to yourself after an injurious relationship.

We talk about why the urge to confront the person who hurt you is so common, and why it can pull you back into the same relational field where minimization and justification live. I offer a different frame: the most important confrontation is internal, and silence can be a powerful boundary. From there, we move into the hard emotions that come with clarity, including shame and self-blame, and how forward motion begins when you stop seeking validation from the very person who made you doubt yourself.

Recovery, as I describe it, isn’t a return to the old you. It’s rebuilding self-trust, reclaiming disowned parts of the self, and learning new terms for relationships: boundaries as a clear line, consistency over intensity, and the skill of naming when someone’s words and actions don’t match. We also bring the body into the center of trauma recovery through nervous system regulation, gentle movement, and breath work, because hypervigilance doesn’t live only in the mind. I also share practical guidance on removing reminders and objects that retrigger, especially when contact is unavoidable due to children.

If this conversation helps you feel clearer and steadier, subscribe, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more people searching for relational injury recovery, emotional abuse healing, boundaries, and nervous system regulation can find it.

Transcript

Series Finale And Three Stages

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is Kim Lee, child and adolescent psychotherapist. Now, this is the final episode in the series Relational Injury. And as you'll recall, this is made up of, or the recovery is made up of two parts. And in the first episode, we looked at something that I've called the recognition, which is a point at which there is a very real sense of emerging clarity. These things which have been tolerated and adapted to and somehow become normalized were actually injurious. And that clarity is is slow in forming, but it comes. And this then gives way to stage two, which I call the reckoning. And the reckoning is a kind of the beginning the beginning of change because you're no longer stuck. You have an understanding, which is an understanding that you don't question in terms of its validity of things actually happened. You weren't imagining them. And that then puts you in the next in the next phase of the reckoning, which is a kind of what you do. Now, very often people will want to confront the person who has caused them to suffer. And this is an entirely understandable uh reaction, but at the same time, what that does is to keep you in the relational field, and it carries with it the possibility of regression, stepping back, particularly if the other person tries to justify or or rationalise what's happened. And so, in some ways, I think that confrontation is an internal one. The other thing I would say is that silence is powerful. Not stepping forward, but stepping back is powerful. Even though a part of you will understandably want to say to the other person, this is what you've done, almost seeking validation. What I would say is if the person has damaged you in the first place, then it's pretty unlikely that they're going to be open and receptive to taking responsibility. And in truth, you don't need their validation. The thing about the the recognition is that you're self-validating. You're saying, no, it did happen. I'm not wrong. This this is this is what was done. And you're joining the pieces of those experiences and putting them together to make a picture. With that, of course, comes a lot of different feelings, and not just towards the other person, but about yourself. Why did I do this? How can I let this happen? Shame, humiliation, you know, all manner of things. But I think that's okay because those are feelings. But in order not to get stuck with them, we have to move forward. And the moving forward can happen naturally, but I think that's facilitated by some kind of some kind of action in yourself, which then precedes recovery. In the in the reckoning, there sometimes people find themselves wanting to take action but feeling like they can't. Particularly if if you've decided not to confront the person who has caused the injury, or for for reasons which make confrontation impossible, like if the if the the other person has died. And then what do you do? So I think I come back to this notion of the the reckoning is an internal process. But I think part of that has to do with the idea that what you're experiencing is survivable and it will get better. Sometimes people talk about time being a great healer. Well, I'm not entirely sure that I would automatically agree with that. I think time helps in terms of softening the impact, but you need something else as well. And and that is the recognition and the reckoning, because sense has to be made of the experiences that you've had so that you can move forward differently. Some people talk about returning to how they were before. Actually, I don't think that's what happens. I think you you who you were before, parts of who you were before, you really don't want to return to. So I think it's about moving forward. So recovery isn't really a return to who you were, it's the development of someone who now knows differently. And I think the first task of recovery, as I've said, really is internal. To begin to rebuild a relationship with yourself, the one that was compromised. And this involves trusting your perceptions, validating your your own emotional experience, because you you don't you don't need the validation of others. I think it kind of helps when friends, family, whoever else say, yes, you're right, this did happen. And I do this quite a lot in my work, helping people to say, yeah, yes, it it was real. You know, your instincts and your perceptions are accurate. Then this something that's like reclaiming the disowned parts of the self. Sometimes people will think they, where's my integrity gone? Where's my self-esteem gone? My self-respect. Well, they're still there, but I think sometimes we get seduced into letting go of those things because we're adapting to the other person's dysfunctional behavior. So what we're really trying to do is to move more towards an integrated real self. And what that means is bringing back and reclaiming those bits which we lived by before the injurious experience. And if those things we don't feel that they were necessarily there, then we have to build them. Another part of this, I think, is a sort of recalibrating of the nervous system. Because once when we've been injured and we've been injured repeatedly, we can get locked into a state where we anticipate more, where thinking about the injurious events keeps us hyper-vigilant, a sense of loss of the other person and loss of what wasn't there, all of these things keep us in a stress arousal state that can be quite high. So although although it it might not be obvious that recovery must include the body, not as an afterthought, but as central, really, because this includes things like showing the body that everything's okay, things like gentle movement and focusing on movement, just for short periods, doing breath work, because this isn't just about relaxing, it's about recalibrating. We're telling the central nervous system it's okay. A huge amount of work has been done on how the body speaks when it's carrying, well, it speaks full stop, but where stress is concerned. Where where are you feeling that? Are you feeling it with chronic muscular tension that you're holding? And is that where is that located? Chest, neck, shoulders, jaw. Because in a way, this is like a self-maintaining system. If this if if the the mind and the central nervous system are experiencing stress, that will definitely manifest in the body. And once the body is in that state, it maintains, so it becomes cyclical. So what we have to do is to endeavor to induce the restoration of safety within the nervous system. Now, you know, healing remotional, uh healing relational injury requires new relational experiences. Now, I'm always a bit cautious with this one because I think sometimes what happens is people move too quickly into a new relationship, project expectation and hope into that into that relationship. But then what emerges is the pain of the untreated injuries. That then, that that combination inside a relationship is not great and risks another breakdown, which then can be turned into I can't do relationships. But also I think about the types of relationships. Relationships with people, connections with people who are safe, people you already know, to bring you back into a state of I'm okay. And I think you don't need many of those, but you need enough. Sometimes this occurs through therapy, certainly in my experience, I do a lot of that work because that's the nature of therapy. Often through family and friends, and sometimes a new intimate relationship. And I think what's important here is that I think the seeking of a new intimate relationship is probably it's a bit precarious, and it depends on where you are sort of uh along the recovery path. But the key here is about consistency over intensity. I think we're looking at not entering into an almost compensatory state where everything becomes idealized, but something that's steady and slow and built. Now, I talk a lot, as do many people, about boundaries. And sometimes this is a word that's used to cover a number of different actions, and I think all of them are relevant, but essentially to me, a boundary is a line that is defined either by yourself or the other. And and and you'll remember in in episode two I talked about this rather remarkable young man who we talked about the line and not crossing it and not letting the other person cross it, you stay behind the line. And that it's not a wall, it's uh it's a it's an agreement. I'm not going to go beyond this line because behind this line, where I am, is where the recovery happens. If I step across the line, I risk injury. If I allow the other person to step across the line, it's almost guaranteed that there will be injury. There is a real need to say, no, I'm done. Part of recovery means letting go of the things that you help. And these can be physical things as well. These can be objects, things that have accrued over time. But all of these things are a representation of what was. People who've been injured, and I want to make a distinction here. Sometimes relationships come to an end, not because of injury, but for other reasons. And sometimes we be the the recovery process there is more to do with adaptation and change. And in that we sometimes hold on to those objects that have been part of the relationship because those reminders are sort of they're symbolic, they're meaningful. But when we're looking at injury, I think it's different because those representations re-trigger us. And so what I think is perfectly legitimate to do is to discard and to remove any reminders. It's it I think it's perfectly okay to do. Sometimes I think we it it sort of people want to gather everything up and get rid of it as quickly as possible. If that works, that's fine. I think sometimes what's better is to collect all those things and put them in a place and wait. And when you're ready, then get rid of them. Because there needs to be a kind of pause between the collection of reminders and their removal. Because that that then those reminders are contained. Those reminders all live in that black bag in the garage. And there will come a time when I take that black bag in the garage and I'll either leave it on the other person's doorstep or I'll take it to the tip. I think that's perfectly legitimate. I mean, you you you could also say, well, you know, I'll do something else, I'll give things away, or whatever, but I think the objects become emotionally charged because they're representations. So I think what we do is we we do we we do the discharging or we do the removal of reminders. That in itself is a powerful boundary. It's saying I don't want any part of this person's existence within my world. I don't want to have contact with them, and for that reason I will exclude them from every point of contact that there was. Now, this is harder to do when you have children with that person, because you have to have contact. Nonetheless, the internal removal of that person and what they represent is what's important, and therefore we come back to the line. Because even if you have children, you can and you have to have contact, you still have that line, and that line says, I'm not doing what used to happen with you anymore. And boundaries as some people think of a boundary as as being punitive. Well, I guess it can be experienced that way, but boundaries are there for a good reason. They are they're protective, and what they do is they they are a protection of the self that's been reclaimed. Now, as a consequence of these things, meaning begins to occur. Over time, something begins to shift. Now the injury doesn't disappear, but it becomes integrated into a broader narrative. Not this is what broke me, but this is something that happened and I've understood and I've lived through. So it's almost as if the noise is still there, but it's much, much quieter. Recovery isn't loud, it it it doesn't sort of announce itself. It happens in small increments. And you notice uh maybe particular thoughts or sensations, and you you notice them, you don't investigate them, you just notice them and you just release them. That was then, this is now. When you recognize that something doesn't feel right and and you respond rather than react, you no longer override yourself to preserve connection. And perhaps most importantly, you no longer say, Was it me? Because now you know the answer. And perhaps the in understanding what's been done to us, we begin quietly to understand what it means to come back to ourselves. Now, sometimes people say to me, I don't know that I can trust myself. What do I do if it happens again? Part of the process of recovery is to do with the developing of new terms. Now, new terms doesn't mean I'll never let this happen again. There has to be an understanding of how it happened, and it's that reclaiming of you of the parts of yourself that say, I have rules, I have terms, I have boundaries. And that means in new relationships, we we become more discerning and maybe more explicit. And maybe what we say is when a person starts to behave in a way that resonates with our experience, rather than say either it's happening again or I'm getting it wrong again, we might say, stop a second, when you do that, it's telling me something that I don't understand, and it's not something I like. Or whatever language you use that that works for you, but you're sort of conveying something. No, I I don't I don't do that. Very often, it's interesting in relationships, people don't people learn about the other person's boundaries if they are mind-minded and if they read the signs. But I think sometimes these things have to be explicit, sometimes not. Sometimes it's more a question of saying something simple like, I'm I'm going to do something for myself, I'm going to see friends, or I'm doing it it's to do with preserving yourself rather than asking yourself, how would the other person feel? What would the other person think? What will the other person tell me to do, etc.? It's much more about no, I can just be me. And that shows something, that signals something. And it says that we may be in a relationship, but we are not one person. We are two people, and you are you and I am me, and if that works, great. If it doesn't, well, these things happen. These are terms, these are ways of you honouring and being congruent with yourself. It's also about calling out behaviors, it's also about saying I did this for you, I do this for you, and you haven't acknowledged it, you haven't appreciated it. You haven't you may have appreciated it, but you certainly didn't say so. It's it it is at times being able to say, well, actually, yeah, that's happening, whatever it might be, for you, but in my life, I've got so it's not an either or. We have to balance things out. I think saying no is good. No, I don't want to, or no, I can't, or won't, I won't do that. This sense of developing self, it's about asserting without being aggressive and and and being alert to what is essentially manipulation. The words and actions have to match. People will make the most amazing proclamations of love, of intention, and and what happens. Over time, the words become quieter and the actions don't match. And if they do, then that's absolutely great. But if they don't, ask yourself this question what what meaning did the words actually have? And saying to people, your words and your actions don't match. And listening to how they handle that. These are all all of these things are about protecting yourself rather than just. Just accepting the things that happen and they then become normalized, which is how you got injured in the first place. What you're saying is, no, I'm not doing it that way because it doesn't work. And if as a consequence this new relationship ends, well, that's what happens. But you leave with your integrity intact, you haven't failed. Now I'm quite sure, judging by uh the number of downloads of this series, that there are plenty of people who can say, Yeah, this is me, I've had this. And I I really and if you're somebody who's been I'm trying to find an alternative to the world word accused, but I can't. So if you are if you or somebody you've been who's been accused of being injurious in a relationship, if people if you've been the person who who just somehow always manages to have people walk away from you, or people describe that they've been hurt by you, then this this series isn't specifically for you, because I think that's a that's something separate, and I'm not sure that I feel inclined to do a series on that. But I do think you have to ask yourself some questions, and you have to take some responsibility because if you are somebody who repeatedly experiences relationships ending abruptly, people walking away from you, people claiming uh staging they feel hurt by you, you've got to take some responsibility, and it may be too late to put it right with those people, but you've you've got some careful looking at yourself to do because you you have to take responsibility, you can't simply write it off because you just keep doing it. There is something in you that you may not be able to see, but which other people experience, and it clearly doesn't work. So on that note re-listen to this series if it helps, and remind yourself there are three steps. There's the the recognition, then there's the reckoning, and then the recovery. Don't rush. These things happen best when they happen naturally. Thank you for listening.