Lindsay, a member of the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Community shares her experience doing an in-home separation, Lindsey offers valuable insight to empower listeners. If you need support, learn about Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions.

Why Choose In-Home Separation?

Sometimes women want to separate themselves from their abusive husband’s behaviors, but for one reason or another can’t physically move to another space.

In-home separations offer temporary safety (if your husband respects the separation agreement), while not causing financial strain on the family.

Further, in-home separations can preserve the current family dynamic if children are struggling to adapt to a more intense separation.

An in-home separation is rarely a situation that a couple can/wants to maintain long-term. Eventually, the abusive husband will choose to change and become non-abusive and honest, or will simply continue on the destructive path of betrayal and abuse. When your in-home separation isn’t providing you with the safety that you deserve, it may be time to ask your husband to move out, for you to move out, and/or consider filing for divorce.

It’s important for victims to understand that abusive men hitting benchmarks (going to therapy, attending support groups, etc.) does NOT mean that they are changing. As women become empowered, they are better able to understand what real change looks like.

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Transcript: In-Home Separation

Anne: I have my friend with me today, Lindsey, not her real name. She’s actually here in my basement where I record. I was talking to a woman at a conference and she said, I wasn’t meant to live one day at a time. And I thought that’s so true. Like I want to be able to plan. I want to be able to have peace. I want to be able to have emotional safety. There are obviously painful things that happen. No matter how hard we try, we can’t avoid them.

The Concept of Betrayal Trauma

Lindsay: Because whether it’s betrayal trauma or whether it’s a child dying, whatever your trial is, that is way too hard. It’s not fair.

Anne: Yeah. What about your situation left you feeling hopeless

Lindsay: When I discovered that there’s this thing called betrayal trauma. On top of that, not just betrayal trauma, but also there is secondary trauma and it’s real. You can have secondary trauma from ecclesiastical leaders, from therapists, therapists out there, resources out there that claim we help with betrayal trauma and yet they don’t.

Lindsay: It’s real and yet I have nowhere to turn because I don’t know who is safe.

Anne: That’s why I created Betrayal Trauma Recovery.

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Trusting Your Gut & Finding Safety

Anne: Since then, have you developed a system where you can feel like, this is how I would know if someone’s safe or not?

Lindsay: Mainly trusting my gut. I mean, learning to trust myself and to trust God. When I feel safe, I feel peace. And if there’s something that isn’t safe or that feels off, it’s almost like a little flag goes off in my brain that says, wait, this is either totally unsafe or I just need to learn more. Ask some more questions and figure out what’s going on. Because sometimes people say things in a way that is unsafe, but they didn’t intend to say it that way.

Anne: Like me! I did all the time. In fact, right when Lindsay got here, she was like, look at this new pamphlet! And I was like, ah! They took the word abuse off! And I went on a, what, how long was it? Maybe four minute rant about how mad I was that they removed the word abuse. And then I was like, I gotta calm down. I said a prayer, and I’m feeling fine now. And do you feel safe now?

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Anne: But I bet while I was on the rant, you were like, Oh, this can’t be good. Right? You were kind of like, Oh, no, we can’t record with her like this. And I was recognizing it.

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Triggers & Emotional Reactions

Anne: It’s funny, it’s funny when I get triggered. I don’t know if you think it’s funny when you get triggered. When I get triggered, I think it’s funny because I can see it. I’m like oh, I know I’m doing this and I have to make that mental shift to say what would be the most helpful thing to do right now? So I apologize that I went on my rant.

Lindsay: It’s been helpful for me to reevaluate my perspective on life. It’s really a hard process to do, that is to say, I am questioning everything. Thinking about what I understand about my world, my higher power, relationships with my family and with my friends. Yet that process of questioning has been, in a lot of ways, very healing for me. I can feel the growth that I’ve had over the last two years.

Anne: Yeah, that’s what I experienced too. And I loved that. Looking back, I didn’t so much like it when I was going through it.

Lindsay: Absolutely not. It’s so hard.

Anne: It was miserable.

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Growth Through Hardship

Anne: But looking back, I’m like, wow, I have changed and I have grown so much, and I’m still growing.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Anne: It’s almost like the growth happens in this other place, and then you look back. You’re like, whoa, I changed. How did that happen?

Lindsay: It happens in a way that I didn’t expect. I don’t see it coming and and then it happens and it’s this beautiful amazing thing. Yeah, it’s pretty cool. One thing that I love about this process is you talk about sweeping my side of the street. It’s totally not about that because that can be a really dangerous metaphor to use. If you take that out and you just say this isn’t about my side of the street it’s taking the situation that is already happening.

About awful, terrible, ugly, hard, painful and saying, I can either sit here and live in the unmanageable. Live in it, and that’s okay to do, or I can take it and give it purpose. I can take my suffering and give it something meaningful.

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Pain With Purpose

Lindsay:<