Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Healing from Assault & Abuse in a Relationship

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

TRIGGER WARNING: This episode includes references to sexual assault and abuse.  This week’s Language of Love Session is with a listener facing a devastating situation in her marriage. After recently sustaining sexual abuse by her husband, this listener and I sit in this heartbreaking situation together as she considers her next move in this marriage. We also discuss trauma she has not yet healed from and how she carries it with her every day.  If you’ve experienced assault or abuse, please know that those experiences are not your fault. You are deserving of safety, respect, and solid boundaries.  In this Session, we break down: What assault is at its core  The ways narcissistic partners hurt us  How trauma in childhood informs our romantic choices  How to begin moving forward with somatic therapy  If you’re interested in finding a somatic therapist in your area, visit Somatic Experiencing International or The Hakomi Institute. For information and resources regarding sexual assault, visit RAINN.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman, and for the last 30 years, I've been helping people learn to love and be loved better. Welcome to the Language of Love Sessions. This is where I get to work with you one-on-one, on air. You, my listeners, my goal in these sessions is to empower you to enjoy better relationships, both with others and with yourself, and to help you embrace how precious and sacred your body, your love life, and your sexuality really is. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. Sylvia, welcome to the language of love, my friend. What's on your mind?

Hi, thanks for taking my call. I've got a situation I'm not sure how to handle with my husband. Yeah, it's hard. We've been married 31 years, got married really young. And I've been taking medication at night to help me sleep better. So I have some complex PTSD from a bunch of stuff, but mainly the past couple of years, it's been from contracting COVID and almost passing away. And it's been over two years of trying to get back to normal. I've got a long COVID situation where everything's changed. So I noticed a couple of nights that things weren't right with my body. I could tell that I had had sex that night, but I don't remember it. I just brushed it off at first because I was thinking, what if I did something and I just

don't remember it? And what if, you know, what if this is just nothing, right? But it happened probably a dozen more times. And I asked my husband, you know, did something happen last night? What did I do? Because I have a history of sleepwalking and sleep talking and the medication makes it worse yeah do you let me just ask you are you take what are you taking is it like one of the ambient type yeah yeah so that does cause a lot of night activity okay go ahead right but at the time I needed it yeah yeah no I understand but okay so so when you asked him what did he say he said no he said nothing went on nothing happened and then I started telling him at night, I said, please, I'm taking my pills. Don't let me do anything. Don't do anything to

me because I thought that's what was going on. Yeah. It was going on and he continued to lie about it. I'm so sorry. How did you find out the truth? I started cutting down my pills and things get a little bit clearer. I started taking them a little bit later and I started remembering a little bit more. And then I finally just confronted him and I said, I think this is going on and I don't want you to lie to me

because I'm pretty sure about this now and I'm really upset. It's a violation. It's rape. Even if you're married, it's rape. And that's what it went to. That's where the conversation went. And he was angry with me because I called him, you know, he said, basically, I was calling

him a rapist. He is. And I didn't know what to say about that. And I felt, I felt bad. So I have a lot of thoughts running through my mind and heart right now. Most of all, just so much compassion. And I feel your pain so deeply. But before I even weigh in here, let me ask you, I mean, there could be a million questions here, right?

What are your key questions or question for me about this very painful situation you're in right now? I think my biggest question that I've been just chewing on and chewing on over and over again is that, do I forget about this and keep going or do I leave? Is it too much? Yeah. Is it enough to leave? Oh, that's a big question that I can just start by saying, I cannot answer that question for you, but I can maybe help you get some clarity to answer it for yourself. Because my sense of you, and I felt this as soon as I heard your voice. I mean, I'm assuming you've listened to the show

before. You've heard me speak to people before. I get lots of visions when I'm talking to people. I don't always articulate them that way, but I saw immediately before I even heard, before you even talked about the COVID, long COVID you were having, or alluded to what might be happening at night with your husband, I just saw this trail of trauma and lots of abuse in your childhood, lots of terror, lots of extreme terror. So my sense is that you were raised in an environment that was very emotionally and physically unsafe and that there's a lot of trauma in your childhood and in your history way before the horrible COVID experience you went through. And of course, every trauma compounds on top of the other one, right? So all of the trauma,

all of the PTS that you feel around your COVID scare or near-death experience that is even greater because of all the past trauma, right? And my sense is, and you can just tell me yes or no, or I don't want to answer, but my sense is there's a good bit of sexual trauma in your history as well yeah yeah so have you ever been in any kind of trauma therapy or general therapy oh yeah you have okay okay good I've been working on it really hard yeah is it talk therapy or is it somatic experiencing what kind of therapy have you been doing it's mostly talk therapy but we've also done a bit of the EMDR as well. Okay. Yeah. All right. So, okay. Oh boy, your pain is, it's like, it's hard for me not to cry, not just with empathy. I mean, I empathize with people all

the time and don't cry, but I can just feel how deep your history of violation goes and what your husband did to you was rape, period. It was rape, okay? You were not conscious to give your consent. And by the way, if you were conscious and you gave consent, and this is true for any one of us who's in a love relationship, a married relationship, we've been having sex with that person happily for years, decades, whatever. If at any point in the middle, beginning, end of any sexual scenario, you say no or stop, or I'm not into it, that person has to stop or it's rape. Okay. Now add to that, that you are unconscious. What that tells me about him is that, you know, let's just put you aside for a moment and only a moment for an individual man, woman, or in between,

right? To do that to a partner, whatever the reason, you know, he could make up any justification. Well, you've been so sick. You never wanted to have sex with me. And I was so horny and you're so beautiful. You know, I've heard all of these excuses. You're certainly not the first person who has told me a story like this, but there is no reason that could possibly justify raping you, which is what he did. You were not conscious. You were not able to give consent. And then he compounded that, obviously, by lying about it and gaslighting you and making you feel like you were insane, right, on top of it. But we can almost even understand that because he probably was struggling with his own degree of shame and humiliation that he was doing that in the

first place, right? But it shows me when someone behaves that way and even wants to have sex with someone who's unconscious and unable to give consent, much less does it, much less does it multiple, multiple, multiple times, there is something seriously wrong with that person, okay? That is a person who has their own sexual trauma unresolved. That is a person who struggles my sense is that he that he's a narcissist, basically. And listen, there are many wonderful people who are on the narcissistic spectrum. I'm not one of those people or clinicians who demonizes all narcissists, you know, because there's lots of high functioning narcissists, I know. But he is a low functioning narcissist. And my guess is there are a million and one ways

in your relationship, that he hasn't respected your boundaries, that he hasn't respected your needs, that he has gaslit you, that he has controlled you, that he has intimidated you. And you got together with him when you were really young and probably escaping an abusive home. And he seemed safe because he's a narcissist. So he love bombed you in the beginning, which is what many low functioning and even high functioning narcissists do. Right. And then once you're there and you're dependent on them emotionally or physically or financially, then the gloves start to come off, right? And the control starts and the humiliation, and it can be very subtle, right? And for someone like you, who has a history of being treated that way, you didn't have

a litmus or a perspective on what's normal and how you can really, you had no model for how you should expect to be treated in love. So you went from a really painful, traumatic childhood where you were minimized and diminished and humiliated and hurt and unprotected into a marriage with someone who wasn't probably nearly as overtly bad as your family of origin, but certainly he has not treated you the way that you deserve or desired for most of your relationship. I mean, this is a horrific situation and a horrific violation. But my guess is it's not the first time he has violated you in some way. I'm not saying that he's been doing this to you for years. Maybe he has. But he certainly is someone who has not been treating you the way that you really desire. And I would

say deserve. I don't know that you would say deserve, but I will say it for you in the way that you deserve, because I don't think you're really at a place where you can claim and are able to claim your worth, which is why you're still in this situation. Right. I mean, my guess is that you've struggled a lot in this relationship over the past 30 something years. Yeah. And it's been more so the last several years after retirement for him. It's been a big change, But it's just been a very old-fashioned, unequal type of relationship. And after going through everything a couple years ago with COVID, I just don't want to put up with that anymore. No, no.

And that's what happens sometimes at some point. And this is the way that the universe, God, Jesus, Allah, you know, pick your name, holy oneness, as I call it. This is the way it often works, right? Is that you're supposed to be standing for yourself, claiming your worth, claiming your power, remembering who you are and the beautiful soul you are and what you deserve. And you're being nudged and pushed to stand for yourself, to claim that for yourself. And when we don't do that, you know, the universe kind of scratches at the door a little bit. And if we still don't do it, knocks us around. If we still don't do it, then it blows the whole house down. Right.

And so COVID was that for you. And then that is kind of wakes you up. Right. And all of a sudden, call those things AFGEs, another freaking growth experience, because all of a sudden your whole perspective changes and the things you could tolerate before you can no longer tolerate and the things you could ignore before you can no longer ignore and the fear that you had of the upheaval in your life now that your whole life has been turned upside down who the hell cares about upheaval right so a lot of the barriers to you really claiming what you

deserve and desire covid has taken right and so those barriers aren't there anymore and yet you still weren't leaving right and now this has happened yeah it has stopped happening now but we're also in counseling together good i was gonna say that that and if there's any chance if there's any thought to staying with him you must be in couples counseling and he needs to be in individual counseling yeah is that something he would agree to do he's been doing it but just kind of, you know, halfway doing it. He's not, I don't think he's being totally honest when he's there. Yeah. Well, that's, that's pretty typical, but hopefully the couples therapist, you can hold his feet to the fire and hold him accountable. And what I would say to you, if you're my best

friend or my sister or whoever, just you, right. Is I can't make this decision. You know, there's a part of me that wants to say, hell freaking yeah, leave this relation, you know, but that's not my job to do that. Right. And that's not going to serve you in the long run, because this is a decision that has to come from you. But what I would say is that I would not under any circumstances stay with him if he doesn't commit fully to couples and individual therapy. And I would start quietly wrapping your head around an exit plan, because what's going to keep you there beyond when you should be there, whatever that is, right, is fear of what it would look like, how I would do it, what's going to happen, right? So if you start wrapping your head around that

and even taking some quiet steps to make a plan for your exit, if it comes to that, But then if and when you decide that you do want to exit this relationship, you'll be in a better position to do so more easily. And so having an exit plan, having a friend or a colleague or somebody who you can trust, who would support you in that exit, who would help you, who would come, you know, I feel like if you were to do that, it should be at a time where he's not home or you have someone with you. because my guess is he can be threatening, if not violent, but certainly threatening. And narcissists, when they are confronted or when they are abandoned, can act unpredictably. So just make sure you're doing that in a safe way. As most of you know, for the past several years, I've been on a pretty intense grief journey. And it's been a path of healing. I've shared lots of that healing with you and lots of the healing resources that I found.

And I am so thrilled to announce that I am doing my first ever retreat for grieving mamas. So if you or someone you love is a mama who has lost a child in any way, at any stage, at any age, I would love for you to come join me at 1440 Multiversity in the Redwoods near Santa Cruz, California for four amazing days of beautiful, uplifting community and healing. We've got David Kessler. We've got Paul Selig. We've got Catherine Woodward Thomas. We've got me. We've got body work. We've got organic food, beautiful rooms. Go to 1440.org. Check it out. It's right there on the homepage. I really hope you can join us. And what I would say for you, if you can and you're willing. You have so much trauma in there, like so much. You signed up for

a doozy of a life, my friend, this life. Lucky me. Yeah. You signed up for a lot and you were a very earnest soul when you were making your plans to come back here. You're like, okay, I'll sign up for that. Yep. I'll do that too. So it's a lot. And I think you need more than talk therapy and more than EMDR, because what is going to really set you free and reset your nervous system? Because it's hard to make conscious, clear decisions when your nervous system is so fried from illness, from uneven and irregular sleep, from stress, from unresolved anger, unresolved fear, unresolved pain, and unresolved trauma, so much unresolved trauma. So you can talk until you're blue in the face, it's not going to get to the core of that, of starting to soothe

and reconfigure your nervous system because your body, and this is also part of, I think, the long COVID, just part of it. I'm certainly not an MD, I'm a PhD, but just from my experience and my understanding is that if you can start doing some somatic experiencing and start releasing some of the anger and the trauma and the violation and the humiliation and the fear and the terror from your body. Because what somatic experiencing does is it kind of bypasses the thinking brain and you really release, it releases the hold that the trauma has on you and you will start to feel better. And the inflammation in your body that is contributing to the long COVID will start to resolve and you will get stronger and clearer. So I really feel like that's super

important to you. And unless you are in danger or unless he really shuts down from therapy, I would give yourself three months of somatic experiencing to fortify yourself before leaving this relationship if that's what you choose. And remember, I'm saying, assuming he doesn't get violent, threatening, does something to you physically again, whether you're awake or asleep or stops therapy, right? If any of those things happen, then you need to get out of there. But if they don't, give yourself three months of weekly regular somatic experiencing in addition to everything else you're doing. And then reach back out to me because I think you'll be feeling very differently and a lot more clear on the decisions you want to make.

The final thing I'll say to you just from my own experience as a trauma survivor and as someone who historically has struggled until I did my own trauma work, struggle with sleep my whole adult life, and also counsel numerous people who have the same problem. One of the godsends that I discovered, once again, speaking as a PhD, not an MD, but you should talk to your doctor about it is trazodone. Trazodone is a very old antidepressant that is, does not work well as an antidepressant at all, mostly because it makes, it makes you so sleepy. But the nice thing is that it doesn't have any of the night walking, night acting out, driving, eating kooky stuff that happens on those, you know, sleep meds that you see advertised,

whether it's Ambien or one of the other ones, you know, I don't mean to demonize one of them, but they mess up your neurochemicals. They have all sorts of side effects. Trazodone has few to no side effects and it is such an effective sleep aid and it won't give you the same risk factors that those other meds will give you. So if you are still struggling with sleep, and I think you are, talk to your doctor about doing that instead of what you've been taking? What I've been doing is I was really concerned about everything going on. So I started cutting back on my sleep nights because I wanted to be alert. Yeah. I'm almost through with them now. And are you able to sleep? I can sleep, but I wake up about six or seven times a night. Yeah.

And so is there a place you can sleep where you can lock the door? Yeah, for sure. Away from him? Yeah, I can. It's just a matter of putting my foot down and saying I'm going into X, Y, and Z room instead. Oh, honey bun. If you can't do that at this point, then you have so much more trauma work to do. I guess so. You have so much more to do and that's okay. This isn't good. But in a way, I'm glad this happened because it is not that I would have ever wished it on you. 98% of me wishes it didn't happen, but there is 2% that is grateful that it happened because it is shaking the trees enough that you are taking action even by calling me, right? And that you have so much codependence in you and so much fear. Part of it is what he's helped instill over the past 30 years,

but you came to the table with that, right? You came to the table primed to be intimidated and to have trouble holding your boundaries. So what I would want for you, the first thing I want you to do is to say to him, listen, I feel very unsafe. You know, I love you. I want to try to work on this relationship. I am so grateful that you are couples counseling and that you're willing to do that individual work because I think that's going to be crucial if we're going to make it through this. But I'm not sleeping well because frankly, and with very good reason, I don't trust you let's just say for the next few weeks okay you don't have to say it's going to be for several months for the next few weeks i need some really good sleep and it is totally reasonable that you

don't trust him right he's not allowed to gaslight you out of not trusting him while you sleep okay because he has demonstrated that you can't that's the part i'm feeling crazy about he's like i should trust him. He's my husband. Right. I know. I know. And he commoditized on that and made you feel well, how could you, you know, I'm sure he gaslit you about it. So you say, I'm going to sleep in the other room. You don't have to say I'm locking the door, but you will. Right. And you lock that door. You take trazodone and you get a peaceful, safe and full night's rest. You need that because my guess is when you wake up six times a night, you're also not falling back to sleep easily because your brain is going. So you're not getting enough REM sleep. You're not getting

enough rest. That affects your health. That affects your nervous system. That affects your ability to think clearly. If you don't have enough food, water, and sleep, nothing else works. So give yourself those two weeks. Start with that boundary. This is like a really clear boundary that you can set with very good justification, not that you need justification for your boundaries, but you still feel like you do, right? Yeah. So this is, you have plenty of justification

and you start with two weeks. And my guess is after two weeks of good rest and starting somatic experiencing, you may feel more comfortable saying, okay, I need another two weeks, right? But there is no way in hell I want you sleeping in the bed with him currently. Like that is not a safe zone.

I'm not saying you need to leave the relationship. I'm not saying you need to dump him. I'm not saying any of that, but I am saying you need some respite where you can be safe and protected in your own home and in your sleep. Okay. Can you do that? Yes, I think I can. I'd really like to, for sure.

If you go to Trauma Healing, traumahealing.org or the Hakomi Institute, I think it's hakomiinstitute.com, H-A-K-O-M-I, you can find a somatic experiencing therapist on both of those sites. There's a way to find a practitioner in your area that's going to really jumpstart, speed up, facilitate your healing physically, but also emotionally. Okay. And if you do that consistently for three months, give us a call back and let me know how you're doing. Okay. And then I think you're going to have your own clarity by that point, because you'll know what's happened in the couple's work and his individual work. You will have gotten some sleep. You will have shifted out of sort of the fight flight freeze of the trauma that's been living in your body for 50 years. And you'll be in, I think a very different place. Thank you very much okay does that answer is there anything else you want to ask before we say goodbye

no i think it really helped me a lot thank you okay i appreciate it you're so welcome you have so much of our love and support we're sending you life and light and fortification and protection for your heart you know i can't protect you physically but i can send you lots of love and light to bolster you and support you so know that that's coming your way thank you very much all right keep us posted okay i will thank you Can't fall asleep without your arms around me I guess I'm falling in love