THE BEST SELF CARE BOOKS FOR WOMEN HEALING AFTER BETRAYAL

If you’re searching for self care books for women after discovering your husband’s betrayal, It’s likely you’re overwhelmed and trying to find ways to get through the day, feed your kids, answer one text, or stop ruminating.

After reading over 50 books and interviewing many experts, here are seven things to know about self-care when you’re in the fog of betrayal trauma. If you’re struggling in the fog and need support try our Betrayal Trauma Recovery group sessions.

1. SELF CARE IS BEING UNDERSTANDING WITH YOURSELF

 The most important thing about self-care after betrayal is that you’re understanding with yourself. Trauma doesn’t stay in your thoughts. It moves throughout your whole body. Not all women experiencing betrayal trauma feel it the same way. Some women collapse. Some women leap into problem solving mode, finding self care books. Many do a mix. Some days they can’t get out of bed. Other days they over-function.

So it’s really important to know that your body is responding to the trauma, exactly how it should. There’s nothing wrong with you, and that realization alone can be a form of self-care.

Self-care might be as simple as putting your hand on your heart and saying, “My reaction makes sense. Any woman in my situation would be feeling and acting like this. I’m completely normal.”

Self care books recommendation: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk helps explain why betrayal trauma doesn’t stay neatly in your thoughts. It moves through your entire body.

2. SELF CARE IS TAKING A BREAK FROM EXPLAINING

 Part of self-care after betrayal is knowing you can take a rest from trying to explain it. When betrayed, they’ve often spent days, months, years trying to describe it to their friends and family. Just doing this is exhausting.

Talking to people who understand and you don’t have to like convince is a form of relief.

In fact, I wrote a picture book about this. It’s called Trauma Mama Husband Drama.

Self care books recommendation: Trauma Mama Husband Drama by Anne Blythe helps shift your focus away from whether he or anyone else “gets it” and toward what actually protects you.

3. SELF CARE IS REFUSING TO TAKE THE BLAME FOR HIS BETRAYAL

If your husband’s betrayal has turned your inner voice against you, that matters.

There could have been gaslighting about why he did it, with statements like ‘you are too controlling’ or that ‘you didn’t do this or that’, and that’s why he lied to you. He could have made a hundred million different choices. He could have eaten ice cream every day, or gone bowling.

Choosing to lie to you was a choice that he made that has nothing to do with you. It’s not your fault.

Self care books recommendation: Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff gently interrupts the spiral that his deception creates. This is one of the most important self care books for women to read—because healing gets harder when you’re carrying both his betrayal and self-condemnation.

4. SELF CARE AFTER BETRAYAL IS FINDING WHAT REALLY MATTERS TO YOU

After betrayal, most women describe themselves as being in survival mode. Everything can feel like a priority. What do you even focus on first? His behavior? The kids? The finances? Trying to figure out the truth?

This is where self-care after betrayal becomes less about doing more and finding what actually matters right now.

Self care book recommendation: Essentialism by Greg McKeown helps you sort through all of the things that are vying for your attention, so you can focus on what is essential to support yourself.

5. WHEN PRESSURE TO FORM SELF CARE HABITS IS TOO MUCH, TRY A RITUAL

Creating new habits can be fun and useful. But for women who are carrying the heavy emotional load from their husband’s betrayal, too much pressure to start a new habit can feel like another accusation that they’re not doing enough.

Instead of asking, “What new habit should I force myself to start?” Try creating a new ritual that invites you to be present in your own life.

Try asking, “What state am I in right now?” and “What small, meaningful action could help me move toward peace?”

Like:

• Like wrapping your child in a blanket and singing one little song before bed.
• Sitting quietly in the car for three minutes before walking into the house.
• Before responding to a difficult text, pause and say to yourself, “I don’t have to answer that right now.”
• Listening to a story or podcast episode before bed that helps restore some hope
• Or taking one minute after doing something hard to say, “I’m proud of myself for doing that.”

Hopefully, you’ll find that the action you choose will restore some sense of peace and confidence in yourself.

A NOTE ABOUT SELF CARE BOOKS FOR WOMEN AFTER A HUSBAND’S BETRAYAL

It makes sense that many women experiencing betrayal trauma struggle to focus enough to read full books. If that’s you, know that it’s completely normal to be overwhelmed and you’re not alone.

Our goal isn’t to add another thing to your “plate”to do” list. More than anything, we want to experience moments where your body can feel a little more safe. Try listening to The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast. You can listen while you walk. You might find that the other women’s stories will heal you.

main Takeaways from this interview:

• How Some Self Care Books Misidentify the Problem
• How Creating a Ritual for Yourself is Better than a New Habit
• Finding Ways that Work for You to Take a Break From the Pain
• Taking Steps to Be Present and Create Emotional Safety in Your Life
• Creative Ways to Use Rituals in Healing From Betrayal

TRANSCRIPT: SELF CARE BOOKS FOR WOMEN AFTER BETRAYAL

Anne: I wanna explain a little bit about why self-care for women who’ve been betrayed is different. Than just your run of the mill self-care that people and self care books talk about. To discover if you’re emotionally abused, take our free emotional abuse test.

Years ago, my mom sent me a Wall Street Journal article entitled Standing Against Psychiatry’s Crazies. It was an interview with psychiatrist Paul McHugh. And the basic point that stuck with me was this: Sometimes the psychiatric and therapeutic community misses what’s actually happening with people.

McHugh believed that often practitioners did what he called “DSM checklist psychiatry” matching up symptoms from The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders with the goal of achieving a diagnosis. Rather than figuring out the “true sources and nature of the affliction.”

When I read that, I immediately thought about betrayal trauma, because this is what so many women in our community experience. She might be told she has PTSD. She might be told she’s codependent, that she’s too reactive, that she’s reacting instead of responding. Whatever that means, perhaps she needs to look at herself to see how she contributed to the problem, and she needs self-care.

The problem is that’s still all about her, and it’s not recognizing that she’s a victim of abuse, and there’s nothing she can do about his abusiveness toward her because it’s all his fault. The problem is that’s still all about her, and it’s not recognizing that she’s a victim of abuse,

HOW SOME SELF CARE BOOKS MISIDENTIFY THE PROBLEM

Anne: She doesn’t have a part to play. Many of the women experiencing betrayal trauma have symptoms that would qualify as PTSD or c-P-T-S-D. However, I don’t think women have a syndrome. I think they’re reacting in normal ways to what is happening to them. And if that abuse is not identified, which is frequently the case, then they’re just told they have trauma, but they’re not told what the trauma is actually from.

And in that case, the women are treated like they’re a problem, and they don’t have a problem at all. Their husband is the problem.

On the other side of that, they may not identify him as an abuser. They may say he has an addiction or childhood wounds, and that’s causing this behavior, but that behavior isn’t identified as emotional or psychological abuse or coercion. Some people put her in a position to help resolve his abusiveness.

After reading over 50 self care books, trauma books and interviewing over 200 women about their experience with betrayal trauma, I found most information about self-care in books or from therapists ignores the most important thing. Self-care isn’t gonna do a whole lot for you if you’re still being injured. No doctor would say, “Let’s work on healing this if the injury is still occurring.”

So it doesn’t make any sense that a therapist or psychiatrist would ask her to look at her childhood wounds or heal from her PTSD or anything like that if he’s still lying to her.

In that article, he says the same thing that a lot of times they match the symptoms, but it doesn’t actually explain what’s really happening.

WHY BETRAYAL TRAUMA RECOVERY GROUPS FOR WOMEN WORK

Anne: And the solutions they propose don’t actually work in the real world. So that’s why I created Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions. Because women needed to talk to other women who understand, who didn’t blame them, who didn’t diagnose them. And say, “Yeah, you’re reacting like I did. We’re all totally normal, sane people. Anyone who had this happen would have a hard time sleeping. Anyone who had it happen would have flashbacks. Anyone who had this happen would be upset. This is totally normal.”

The other important thing about Group Sessions that was important to me. I don’t ever recommend you do couple therapy with your husband if he’s betrayed you. I talk about this so much. But in terms of therapy, it’s so expensive, and what women really need is actual daily support that is inexpensive, especially with the financial pressures they’re under. And so Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group is the most inexpensive way to get the most support.

Okay, now my interview with Danielle. She is incredible. We had a really good discussion about the overwhelm women feel and how to reframe self-care so that it can actually be a relief to you.

Welcome to Betrayal Trauma Recovery. This is Anne.

DANIELLE’S ADVICE FOR SUSTAINABLE GROWTH

Anne: I have Danielle McGeough on today’s episode. She is a professor, speaker and transformation strategist, known for her warm grounded approach to change through her signature RISE Ritual Method and her Plan Goal Plan podcast. She helps high performing women and teens reconnect with their core identities, navigate transitions, and create intentional plans that lead to sustainable growth. As a self-proclaimed ritual nerd, Danielle believes planning is more than productivity, and I’m so excited to have her on today to talk to us about how we can create some structure for our healing from betrayal.

Welcome. Danielle

Danielle: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Anne: So Danielle, let’s start with your story. You call yourself a ritual nerd. Can you tell us more about that?

Danielle: Growing up, I was not the smart kid, at least that’s what I told myself. All of my report cards describe me as unique, which is a polite way of saying weird. I was a very quirky kid, and I’m a pretty quirky adult.

When I was probably 20 years old, I decided to get a PhD and become a professor. Going into that, I knew that I was going to be in a doctoral program with all these smartypants, many of whom had been the smart kids their whole lives. So I told myself that the only way I could keep up is if I worked twice as hard as everyone else.

I FELT LOST IN SELF CARE AND HABIT ADVICE

Danielle: If I created all the habits, work habits, life habits, study habits. You have a habit, I’m gonna stack it and that’s how I’m gonna keep up with everyone else. I did it and it worked. And I got the PhD, I got the dream job, and I earned tenure. Fast forward about 15, 20 years later, I found myself absolutely flat, hollow. I had done the thing that honestly, I didn’t really believe that I could do, and I should have felt satisfied.

And I should have felt incredibly proud, elated, and instead I felt pretty lost. I had no idea what I wanted to do next. I had no idea what I actually enjoyed doing. My inclination was, wooh! I guess we better start some new habits, like what else can we stack?

I was fortunate that I was teaching a class at the time where a student actually gave a presentation on decorative planning. She was taking her planner and covering it in stickers, because her therapist had recommended that as a way for her to have positive associations with her time management. She was really avoiding any sort of time management strategies. So put some pretty stickers in it. Doodle, let’s make this into a craft project. I was like, Ooh, that’s fun. So I started to do that. And as I did it, it made me realize that what I did really wasn’t a new habit.

It was actually a ritual, which is something I’ve been researching and teaching about. The biggest difference between a habit and a ritual is that a habit is designed to eventually become unconscious. It is meant to be automatic. You get a habit down, you don’t think about it.

WHAT WILL MY LIFE BE LIKE NOW?

Danielle: And I will say as women. Who carry a lot of mental and invisible loads, not thinking about self care or self care books. Having good habits is wildly important, because we need to offload some of that to automaticity. But if you do that too much, you’re stripping yourself of meaning and intentionality. And what rituals do is actually transition us from one state to another. They invite presence, and they infuse our actions with meaning.

Anne: You just described a similar situation to what all my listeners are going through. In your case, it wasn’t this specifically, but to relate it to all my listeners, when you get married, you have this certain identity. You’re thinking, I’m going to grow old with this person. This is the life that we’re going to have.

We’re going to build this life together. And when you discover he has betrayed you, everything shifts. You wonder who you are, you wonder what my life will be? I wouldn’t say it feels flat, it feels very, very traumatic, but it has the same type of next steps where you have to, well, you don’t have to. I didn’t do this for a while. For a while, I sat on the couch and ate Oreos. But at some point. We try to make steps forward like reading self care books, into, okay, what is my life going to be like now? so a lot of women are trying to decide, do I stay with him? Do I leave? If I stay with him, how am I going to act?

What is my life gonna be like if I leave? What is it gonna be like? It’s just all of this, how do I move forward? In my journey, I knew that my husband had betrayed me and that he had lied to me. And so I went through seven years of sex addiction therapy, trying to help him with his sex addiction.

THINGS WE DO TO SURVIVE, FINDING SELF CARE BOOKS

Anne: And then he was actually arrested. when he was taken from our home, that was when the most trauma hit. And that was the time I just mentioned where I was on the couch quite a bit, watching a lot of television, eating a lot of Oreos, and I wouldn’t say that habits were on my radar.

Anne: This stage is different for everyone. Some women are like, they get up at five o’clock in the morning in their trauma, and they run 10 miles, and that’s how they feel better. It depends on them. I did the couch and the Oreos thing. I always wanna tell women, no matter what you do, don’t feel bad about it. Especially if you’re on the couch, like eating Oreos not reading self care books, because emotionally I felt like a truck had hit me.

There’s no doctor in the world that’s gonna be like, a truck just hit you. Now you need to do all this stuff. They’d be like, lay in bed, heal, watch some TV. I’m a big fan of that. So, I’m not sure if that is a ritual? ’cause it certainly wasn’t a habit, or maybe it was a habit, but what’s the difference between the things we fall into to survive, and it’s totally fine.

And then what helps us transition into something more intentional, and maybe something that we choose? Can you help me sort that out?

Danielle: Yeah, so when you are in that couch and Oreo moment, I’m not sure that’s necessarily a ritual. It might be a habit, maybe that’s what you’ve fallen into as a coping mechanism, and it doesn’t feel super intentional. It’s just what’s cozy and you go to, and I don’t think there should be any shame or guilt around that. I think it’s a very normal human response to grab the Oreos.

HOW DO I INTENTIONALLY REBUILD MEANING?

Danielle: I also think it’s a pretty normal human response to go, Hey, everything feels out of control. My response is a fight response where that looks like me over functioning and getting up at 5:00 AM, going jogging, planning all my meals, and making sure my house is spotless and all those things. I think people can fall into either way of being.

Anne: Or both, they could be falling apart in some ways and over-functioning in other ways, depending on the person.

Danielle: Absolutely, I think it’s common for sometimes people to over-function at work, but then fall apart at home or vice versa. What I think is helpful about a ritual is that it will give you some of the structure that you might need. But without maybe the regimen of a habit, it’s gonna feel a little cozier. And I think it’s going to help you in a moment where you feel like, wow, all this has happened to me, and I don’t feel like I got a lot of say in this.

To go, where are little spaces, cracks, fissures that I have a slice of choice, and how do I claim that as my own? How do I intentionally do it to rebuild the meaning I wanna have in my life? I’ll give you an example. It might be something as simple as feeling like you need to numb out, and catch that and say, if I could choose how I felt and it didn’t need to be numb to feel good, what would that feeling be?

Then you could design a short, small ritual to help transition you to that state.

TAKING A BREAK FROM PAIN

Danielle: So maybe you’re numbing out, but what you wanna do is relax on the couch with your kid, but you still wanna be present with them. So maybe you create a short little ritual that helps you stay present, instead of to numb out in that moment or reading self care books.

Anne: I call it taking a break from the pain, but yes, it’s the same thing. That’s an interesting idea. So you know Dumbo, the movie? I would Baby Mine my kids. I would wrap them in a blanket, hold them, and sing Baby Mine to them. And it was a thing. I’d be like, get over here and I’ll Baby Mine you.

So even my giant son, who is 5’10”, he’s 13. I will still be like, get over here on the couch and wrap him up and sing Baby Mine. And then also if there’s any kids like in the neighborhood, even my ex’s new son, their half brother, if they ever come home and say, “Oh, this thing happened with him.””

Like he wasn’t really behaving. I’m like, “Oh no, he needs to be Baby Mined.” Are you guys Baby Mine-ing him? Like he really needs that.” and it’s very short.

It’s just the four lines. “Baby Mine, don’t you cry. Baby Mine, dry your eyes. You are so precious to me, cute as can be, baby of mine.” That’s it. But I never thought of that as a very mini-ritual where I was very present with my kids in that moment and could focus on them and take a break from the pain.

Danielle: Absolutely, I think it’s something that you do that has a clear beginning, a clear end. You have attached meaning to it. It means something to you.

SELF CARE BOOKS: I WANNA BE “SAFE PLACE SARAH”

Danielle: It means something to your kiddos. It sounds like it transitions you into this break from pain feeling, and that it’s also a way for you all to communicate your care and love for each other.

And so it is absolutely a ritual. You’ve infused it with meaning. And if you did it in a different order, you’d probably be like, “Well, that wasn’t right.” Or like, “Mom, you can’t do it like this. You’ve gotta do it the right way.”

Anne: Yeah, if you don’t have a blanket, it’s not gonna work.

Danielle: Yeah.

Anne: If you don’t sing the whole thing, it’s not gonna work if you don’t sing it in the right order. Yeah, I had never thought about this, but this is all true.

Danielle: So yeah, that was a ritual, and it means something to you all. I’ll give another couple examples like that. So a client of mine came to me and very vulnerably shared with me that her son had these tantrums after school, the witching hours sort of thing that toddlers tend to have.

And she was so exhausted from the day that she’s like, “I would just lose my temper with him. I’d be like, come on, stop. I’d just get so frustrated.” And she’s like, “I was having mom rage.”

I said, “okay, so that’s your current state. What’s the state that you would like to be in? In that moment, what would you like to be?”

And she said, “I wanna be safe place Sarah.”

SELF CARE CAN BE AS SIMPLE AS TAKING A DEEP BREATH

Danielle: And I thought, wow, that’s beautiful. And so we came up with just the moment that she saw her son having a tantrum, she would activate safe place Sarah, by just taking a deep breath. She spread out her arms and then she would invite him because he responded really well to actually physical touch in those moments.

So she would wrap him in a big bear hug. She would say, “Hey, you’re safe. You’re safe with me now.” It was a way for her to transition her state because her response wanted to be mom rage. Like, “Stop it. Why are you throwing this tantrum?” You can use something as quick as that.

A way to say, Hey, it’s almost like putting a pause between you and your reaction, and then saying, how do I wanna respond in this moment? Then like for her, those actions took on a meaning. They helped her transition to the state she wanted. She could be present in that moment instead of just reacting. So that’s a great example. My sister is a chaplain in a hospital, so she sits with people when they die. Sometimes it can be emotionally overwhelming for her.

But she needs to maintain a certain emotional state to care and hold space for other people. She keeps a rock in her pocket, and if she finds herself overwhelmed with emotion, she’ll reach into her pocket and imagine putting all those emotions into the rock. Then she’ll return to present for that person.

And so I love to offer these examples, because I could give you other examples that could be a morning ritual that takes an hour, right?

SELF CARE BOOKS: MANAGING YOUR OWN SAFETY

Danielle: But I want you to know that a ritual could be something as fast as your Dumbo example. It could be as fast as taking a deep breath and spreading out your arms, and then a bear hug, or even just reaching down and grabbing a rock.

Anne: That’s so good. I’m thinking of the women who, at this point, feel safer staying in their relationship.

Danielle: Mm-hmm.

Anne: He’s still abusive emotionally and psychologically, and they’re learning how to observe when this occurs. Because of some of this abuse, he’s gonna seem really nice. He’s gonna seem very kind. He is gonna be lying, but it’s not gonna feel overt, it’s not gonna feel scary necessarily. It might when you realize, oh my word, this is freaky, because he’s totally lying to me right now.

Anne: But when I say this, in my workshop, we have strategies that women can use to realize what’s happening and learn to take steps towards safety in that sense. I don’t give necessarily specific examples. It’s more like the principle of the thing. So you observe it’s unsafe, and without telling the unsafe person, “Hey, you’re unsafe.”

We’re not trying to control them, you’re just trying to manage your own safety. So, “Hey, I’m late for this thing. I forgot about it. So you could make this exit without causing them to know, because when they know you’re onto them, things can get tricky for you. I’ve never thought of using rituals in that way, but that can also be a way to use a ritual.

TAKE STEPS TO CREATE A RITUAL

Anne: Like when you feel unsafe, you don’t have to be with your abusive husband. It could be anywhere. I’m going to do this ritual, I’m going to take a step back. And I’m gonna look at my watch. I’m going to say, oh, I forgot. I have a thing. That might be a habit, I don’t know.

But if you have a thing that you do that has steps, okay, I know what to do. The second I have this feeling in my body. Then I have steps that I can take. That’s the thing I like about my workshop, and it works so well with the strategies you teach. I just teach the principle of safety. Whereas you’re looking at what specific thing can they do and what are the parts of it.

Danielle: Absolutely.

Anne: Okay, so like you would work with someone. And maybe where I would say, “Okay, this is an instance where you need a safety strategy, but whatever you choose is up to you.”

And you would take that further and say, “Okay, let’s actually break this down. Step one, look up your hand. Step two, look at your watch. Step three, say I gotta go.” So as you’re working with people to develop these rituals, how do you help them decide the linear, like step one, step two, step three, and then also work with them to make sure that is working for them?

Danielle: Absolutely, so that’s where my RISE Ritual Method really comes in. And that stands for Reflect, Intentionally Plan, Sensory Activation and Embody the Story. And so the R the reflect part is really important. That’s when we go. What is your current state?

THE DESIRED STATE IS SAFETY

Danielle: So in the situation you were just describing, the current state would be, I feel unsafe. And the desired state is safety. Naming where you are and where you wanna be is really, really important. Because I would say in the example you were giving, like checking the watch and all these things to get yourself to safety, part of what you’re also trying to do is regulate your nervous system in the moment so that you can think clearly.

Anne: I wanna say because he’s doing it on purpose to dysregulate you. So if you’re dysregulated, like good for you you should be. Anyone would be in that circumstance. So like, congratulations, you’re normal. And overcoming that is this Herculean, literally other worldly non-human, like you’re still human, but I mean you’re a super person.

If you can say, okay, any normal person would be dysregulated. I will now make this choice to do this thing that is completely against what any normal person would do to keep myself safe. This is quite the feat. So I want women to feel good about being dysregulated in the first place.

‘Cause yay, you’re normal. And then also give them hope. I say they’re superhuman, and it’s amazing. But I also see women do this every day. I’m so impressed that they do it all the time, when it seems so difficult and it is, but it’s also doable. I’m trying to hold both of those at the same time.

DYSREGULATION IS A SIGNAL TO USE YOUR RITUAL

Danielle: Remind yourself that the dysregulation isn’t something you’re going to try to fix with your ritual. Rather, recognize that it’s a signal that you need to use your ritual. That your ritual’s there to support you in the moment you’re in. From there, that’s when we start to intentionally plan, and that’s like what will be the way you open your ritual?

How do you wanna close it? What are the other activities that you need inside of that ritual? You wanna be clear that every action or practice that happens within the ritual always should move you to that desired state. I’m gonna give an example that’s completely different than what we’ve been talking about.

But like in the morning, I like to have not just a morning routine, but a morning ritual that I’m very present for. That helps me ’cause I wake up and am an anxious waker upper, I wake up and my to-do list is spinning in my head. And I wanna get to work right away, but I need to bring myself down.

I wanna feel grounded. I wanna feel calm as I start my day. And so to get me to that calm spot, I might do things like journal or wear a cozy Snuggy, and do all these different things. My husband, when he wakes up, is groggy and he’s foggy. And so if I put him in a Snuggy and say, “Hey, now I want you to meditate.” He would fall back to sleep. So his morning ritual will have a different current state and a different desired state.

SELF CARE BOOKS: RECOGNIZING PATTERNS

Danielle: Because of that, all the actions that happen to get us from there need to support those things. Does that make sense?

Anne: Yeah, so some women resist the abuse through fighting, for example, some resist through doing what he wants, thinking then this will end. Then he’ll stop yelling at me, for example, if I just do the thing. Women are in that same boat where they’re reacting healthy in healthy ways, trying to resolve it.

It’s not working, because he’s anticipating what they’re gonna do. Oh cool, she’s just done what I wanted, perfect. It worked. Or now we’re in a fight and this fight is fun. I just wanted to put that out there to our listeners. So as they listen to you, think about the way you resist the abuse, and then maybe how you want to resist it or something? Is that what you’re saying? Like where do you wanna go with it?

Danielle: So what I really love about working with people around the ritual is that to create the ritual in a way that it really shifts you from that current state to that desired state, it requires you to first understand your own patterns

It sounds like that’s one thing that you help people recognize, what are your abusive partner’s patterns, and also what are your patterns in responding to that. And how do you want to interrupt the patterns in a way that keeps you safe, that moves you closer to safe?

IT EVOLVES OVER TIME

Danielle: So, absolutely, you’re gonna want to recognize, am I a fight or flight person? Do I fawn, there are all these different things that you might do, and then that might trigger a different reaction from him.

Anne: So determining, it is a lot of planning. It’s a lot of intentional thinking about what are the most common patterns I see? How are the ways I could get to safety?

And then in my workshop, I talk about evolving over time.

So if you find a ritual that works for you, and you’re like, man, I’m feeling safe. This is awesome. I can be safe, he’s doing his thing, and I can do my thing. And then he changes it up, because if he is a coercive controller, he’s like, I can’t control her anymore, and he’s gonna try something else.

Then you evolve over time until you feel that safety. And that’s why some women end up choosing divorce. Or some betrayers choose divorce because they can’t control. That’s what happened with me. We’re not pro or anti-divorce around here, but when I set boundaries and he couldn’t do anything to get me to do what he wanted, he ended up filing.

Can you talk about that evolution process? I’m guessing everybody goes through it, because I always say with boundaries. And I know we’re mixing boundaries and rituals here, but at the same time, your boundary can be a ritual. You can put some steps to it.

SWITCHING UP A RITUAL THAT HAS FADED

Anne: As we’re thinking about how to apply it in the situation that women are listening. I always say you’re never going to do it, “the right way” the first time. As women develop rituals, either in response to abuse, or maybe they’re out of the abuse.

Maybe they’re just feeling sad or lonely. Would you mind sharing with us that evolution process of making sure that our rituals work for us?

Danielle: Yeah, so one of the things that is hard about rituals is that you want them to stay present, like you want to be present, and they want them to feel intentional and infused with meaning. But when we repeat things over and over again. They can eventually fade. They become invisible to us almost through that repetition.

Some of it is, do you have some practices in place that would help you go, Oh, I’m not sure this is working anymore, but I do have this RISE Ritual Method that I can follow. So what would I need to do to switch it up? Do I need to switch up the whole ritual? So the S in the RISE Ritual Method stands for sensory activation, and that’s like how do you invite your senses into the process?

So that might be breath or touch, as in an example of the rock, or it might be smell, or there’s all sorts of ways that you can invite your senses into the process? Well, maybe some of it is like, oh, I’ve gotten used to this sensory experience so much that I don’t notice it anymore. So maybe I just need to switch up how I’m activating my senses.

SELF CARE BOOKS: DETERMINING IF THE RITUAL NEEDS TO CHANGE

Danielle: It’s almost like if you like a good perfume and start using it, and when you first use it, you can smell it on your hair. You can smell it on your clothes, and then like after two weeks, you don’t even smell it on yourself anymore. That can happen to our rituals, and then they can become invisible, we aren’t present to them.

They can also be empty. We’ve heard that staying like an empty ritual, which just basically means you’re going through the motions, but you’ve forgotten to connect it to the meaning.

You might just need to shake things up, wiggle, jiggle yourself out of it, and give yourself permission to know that’s not because you’re doing anything wrong, that’s how human behavior works. And you might find too, that another year down the road, you could come back to that same ritual, and it will work for you again.

Anne: Let’s talk about that for a minute. My sister and I, I love prayer and I love reading scriptures. It brings me a lot of peace. I find answers. She doesn’t, she’s like, I pray and I don’t get answer. I don’t know if God exists. I’d say she’s more agnostic.

There’s no way to know. And so for her, it doesn’t. I might say, well, if you pray and don’t feel it, keep praying. Eventually, you’ll feel it. She is like, no, because I prayed and prayed and never felt it. When we’re thinking about new rituals and how we want to feel, how do we know when we need to keep doing the thing to feel it? Or when that’s just not gonna work for us, and we need to try something else. Does that make sense?

IT MAY TAKE TRIAL AND ERROR

Anne: Because I, I feel like sometimes if we give up too soon, we’re not going to experience it. Or if we do it one time and we’re like distracted, and we say, oh, that’s not gonna work for me.

Kind of like if you would have the perfect health, if all you ate was green beans, that’s it. And you kind of ate green beans, but then you ate a bunch of other stuff, and then you’re like, well, the green bean thing didn’t work for me. And you’re like, well, you didn’t actually do it. So how do we know if we need to try more or if that thing’s not gonna work for us?

Danielle: I love that question. I think that one is, do you feel a transition in your state? If you don’t, let’s keep trying something. I think sometimes we get so stuck on the pathway to the state that we forget that it’s the state that we’re after. I’ll give you an example. I had a client and she came to me and said, “I wanna have a gratitude practice, a gratitude ritual, and I would like to sit down and write thank you cards to my colleagues every Friday.”

And so she tries it, she does it one week, she feels great about it, and then she never does it again. And she’s like, “I don’t know what’s going on. I just can’t get myself to sit down on Fridays and write these thank you cards.” She’s like, “Oh my gosh, am I an ungrateful person? I feel like I care about my colleagues and I’m grateful for them, but like I cannot muster the desire to sit down and do this.”

Remember the goal

Danielle: And so we got to talking and at some point she talked about how much she loved baking bread, and I was like, awesome, you love to bake bread? I said, well, what if you made bread for your colleagues and once a month just gave a few people some loaves of bread?

She was like, what? So I do think that sometimes it might take a period of trial and error experimentation to go, okay, the goal here wasn’t to write the thank you cards. The goal was to be grateful. And to offer a visible expression of gratitude to others, and that there are many pathways there.

So if you’re trying something out and the desired state is to feel safe, calm, or grounded in a moment where everything feels like the ground is moving beneath you. The first thing you try is I would give it a few tries,

Danielle: But if you aren’t feeling it, go well. What are the other paths to getting me to that state?

I actually love the example you gave with your sister in prayer, because religion is a place where we experience a lot of rituals or maybe first learned about rituals. With prayer, for example. I think that was one of the beautiful things, so I grew up in a really religious home, and every single morning we would pray before leaving.

So, I was thinking about that as a ritual that my family did, and I thought what was so beautiful about that was that we were sitting in the morning before we left and saying out loud. I hope Erica does well on her test.

FEELING CONNECTED

Danielle: I hope Nicole has a gentle day, because she’s nervous about all that she has to do, and there’s something so powerful about hearing that other people are thinking about you and caring about you. And they’re expressing it out loud. sometimes it might be like the prayer. In this case, it is just like one avenue to feel connected to God or a higher being. If your sister doesn’t feel connected through prayer, I would say, do you feel that way when you’re out in nature? So maybe walking is your prayer. Do you feel that way if you’re journaling?

Where are the moments that you feel connected to something bigger than you?

Anne: Let’s say you don’t believe in God anymore, for example, and you don’t really wanna pray, but you miss the connection with your kids. Thinking of that and being like, okay, before they leave I can say, I hope you have a great day today.

I know you have this, this, and this, and my wish for you is this. Because I love you so much. Have a great day. You know that kind of a thing where you may not wanna do the one thing, but you realize the thing that you do like that’s working for you. And you take that. And I think that’s really important especially for women who find themselves in the situation that my listeners are in, because everybody has advice for them.

Everybody is like, “Oh, he cheated on you. You gotta leave right now.” Or, oh, never ever get divorced. God hates divorce or something.

SELF CARE BOOKS: FEELING PEACE IN MY HOME

Anne: Everybody has the thing they wanna tell you that you should do. But knowing I just wanna feel peace in my own home.

That’s what I wanna feel. And so how am I going to get there? What am I going to do to make sure that I can feel peace in my own home is so, so important. Because women get really, really creative, and with these amazing ways of finding peace that work for them in their specific situation, that I am always so impressed with.

I bet you see that too, the different creative ways that people are finding too, would we say, to create that feeling that they’re looking for. Is that what you would describe that as?

Danielle: Yeah, absolutely. I had a client who came to me and talked about something that I think so many people experience. Which is, you’ve had a big day and come home from work, and you have a busy brain and can’t shut it off. So as you get your kids’ snacks and preparing dinner, and maybe watching a movie with them, you’re thinking through all your tasks, the emails.

I think that this is so common with people that are in abusive situations too. You are on high alert, your brain is trying to protect you all of the time. So you’re in this constant state of noticing, paying attention, noticing paying attention.

And so how do you calm that? She said, “I’m busy, Betty, and I want to be relaxed Rita.”

WHEN YOU’RE IN A PLACE OF TRAUMA, IT’S HARD TO BE PRESENT

Danielle: And we realized that doing her end of the day ritual at work wasn’t helpful, because people were interrupting. But then doing her end of the day ritual once she got home, she’d get interrupted. So we just created a little ritual box and put it in her van, and she would put her minivan into the garage. It would take five minutes, pull out that little box.

She had her journal. She was also a person of faith. I think she had a scripture that she’d write every day. She’d play music in the car, and she would just take five minutes. It was very short. The idea was I’m not leaving that car until I’m relaxed Rita. Then I’ll go in and do the rest of my evening as relaxed Rita.

I think one of the powerful things is that when you’re in a place of trauma or crisis, it’s so hard to be present fully. Because you are trying to predict everything that could happen and all those things, but you also don’t wanna miss out. And you want the little spaces where life is peaceful, beautiful, and wonderful.

PEACE IS DOABLE FOR 30 SECONDS

Danielle: You don’t wanna miss those little moments, because your brain is going and going and going because it’s been trained to protect you that way. For me, one of the beautiful things about using rituals is that you might have to have a lot of ’em. You might do it and have to do it again, because the realities of your life require a lot of recalibrating.

Anne: I love that you’re talking about this. I love your work. and I love talking to you about it. It’s incredible. Thank you so much.

To learn more about Danielle’s work, her podcast is Plan Goal Plan. And you can find her at plangoalplan.com.

Anne: Danielle, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today. I know that women are gonna love this episode and just have a sense that there are little things they can do and start thinking about.

SELF CARE BOOKS: YOU HAVE THE POSSIBILITY OF CREATING PEACE

Anne: Most of the women who listen to my podcast are planners. They want to know what their next steps are. They want to know what the “solution” is. And there is no one fits all solution. So having at least a framework to develop a way to start with maybe how you’re feeling, and then maybe work toward different goals.

But at least that one small goal is something that everybody can accomplish in that day. Like today, in this moment, I want to feel peace is doable. Compared to I wanna feel peace the rest of my life. To feel peace for 30 seconds might be the only thing they can do that day, but at least with the structure that you’ve given them, they have the opportunity to create that. And that’s so exciting.

Danielle: I love that they have the opportunity, capability, and possibility of creating peace for themselves. And I wish that for them. I wish you all your 30 seconds of peace, and then 30 more seconds, and then 30 more seconds.

Anne: Yeah, and eventually you will have a peaceful life. Eventually they will feel peaceful in their own home. Almost all the time, which is what my goal is for them. It’s just a little farther out than the 30 seconds.

Danielle: Thank you so much Anne.

Anne: Thank you.