it's Lisa from B there got out so today's guest is actually going to be my my partner Chris um who you probably see here has been there or got out too and the topic is going to be the same so we had arranged to talk about the um effects on children of staying in in a relationship where domestic abuse is present I'm not just talking about physical violence talking about psychological abuse verbal abuse Financial blah blah blah you already know a lot of that stuff so um a couple of years ago Chris
and I put together a seminar or a webinar called the top seven dangers of toxic relationships and um Chris I'm inviting you on now and so we figured you know we already have this take today but we're we talked to his office staff and we're going to reschedule but we're still we still want to talk about this topic because it's so important so let's see hey there you go I'm with you today this is different I know I know look at you you Chris with your reading glasses on that's right otherwise I'm
I'm lost so yeah okay so let's talk about those top seven dangers of staying in um a toxic relationship but specifically how it affects the kids and I think you and I will probably sprinkle in a little of our own personal experience yeah absolutely and we you know a lot of the people we deal with are already in the legal system they're already on their way out but we also talk with a lot of people who you know they're struggling to realize whether am I in an abusive relationship or not because
maybe it's not physical violence or even if it is right but one of the reasons that people stay in those relation relationships we hear this all the time is I'm gonna stay until the kids are grown or I'm staying for the kids I G keep the family intact and all that stuff yeah me too that was I felt the exact same way I felt like it's best for you know uh for kids and obviously if a relationship is helping between a mom or two moms or two dads for that matter that is it's impact right but if there
's abuse pres it's really bad for the kids and that was not intuitive as when I learned like years ago at this point as you I heard you doing the intro talking about the top seven dangers uh Workshop that we put together and then of course we M that into other presentations we've done over the years um it it really is bad it's harmful for the kids when when those things are um are happening when they're subject better when the parents are aart and there's a right pause Chris pause for a second b
ecause I want to note that uh staying for the sake of the kids is often a very powerful manipulation to keep someone in the relationship I know in my own situation I was with my ex for 20 years we were married for 18 years and the big thing he used to keep me there especially at the end when I was so ready to go was if you leave this marriage if you divorce me we won't have an intact family and it's going to be your fault and so I was terrified because I thought I'm going to be the one breaking
up the family the kids are going to blame me for this and their lives are going to be destroyed because of our family not staying together and I also thought it would be so confusing for them because my ex and I did not uh have like loud screaming fights we rarely fought and so I thought they just would be like what are you doing to us why is happening so that's a big reason why why I stayed longer than everybody says I stayed longer than I should right yeah I think I think that's true of most p
eople but and and in my case my ex actually left me which you know in hindsight is probably the kindest thing did for me um because you know I talk a lot about this um where I'm a very resilient person I went through a lot of stuff when I was a kid nothing like off the rails or anything but you know I developed this sense of like I can endure anything you know I could be Stow I can get through anything and I think I ever would have found the strength you know so she left me in inight like thank
goodness because I might still be in it if it weren't for that so there's thanks thanks for you and thanks for me and everybody else that's benefiting from our experience of um what it's like to get out of one of these relationships both from that male and female perspective yeah exactly right and to so to start us off by came across you know I was going through our presentation to grab the the information for this um for this uh presentation or whatever um and there's a quote it was in USA Toda
y I don't know ites doesn't have an author but it's a great quote it says merely witnessing abuse carries the same risk of harm to Children's Mental Health and learning as being abused directly right yeah people don't understand that they think well I'm going to hide it from the kids because they only think physical physical is physical is the one that counts and the kids don't realize what's going on but they do realize what's going on and even with physical I mean we talk to people all the tim
e who say well you know we only strangle me a couple of times or you know stuff like that it's like whoa that you know that's serious you know so recognizing it is really a big important first step and a lot of people struggle with that right and I know one thing and I hope I'm not jumping ahead I probably am but is that when we stay in these relationships too we we often assume well I could be the buffer like I'm not here and this is true to some extent and we know we know with loads of our cli
ents like if they're when they're on their own with the kids then I can't protect them that's right yeah absolutely that's that's on our list but let's you want to talk a little bit about some of the the real impacts besides that that can happen to kids in these situations right when so it can actually affect kids brain development it can cause body inflammation even in very young people right and isn't it I remember something about like before a baby is born like a fetus can even sense what's g
oing on when there's lots of screaming and yelling plus the physical stuff yeah and plus the stress I mean we all know that you know bodies and Minds it's all one big thing that ties together and and the stress manifests itself in different ways I mean I remember an old um work relationship there was very high conflict for me and for a while my my jaw wouldn't line up correctly because I was under so much stress that it was affecting it was affecting the way my job F together so it's all all con
nected right and you know you're you're reminding me that at the tail end of my marriage when because I stayed I knew it was over in 2013 but it took me two years to sort of plan my exit and and get out or get him out physically but um during that time I kept getting injured so I did u martial arts I did Taekwondo and it was like I wouldn't even get hit hard and suddenly my back was out for days like it was hard to sit down it was hard to get in the car then then remember Chris when I had met yo
u I had Jarred my facets like all this stuff with neck and back and I didn't even think at the time that so much had to do probably with the stress because it wasn't it wasn't that ACC well maybe a little bit was physically wrong but so much of it was the stress in my head and how it just I think psychosomatically affected my body right and you and I have both had trouble like was sleeping at different times you met I was waking up just every morning like you do now but you do it in a healthy wa
y that's like up at you know 5 or 5:30 in the morning just like ah like what's going on you know because I was right in the thick of it you know at the time we met I was only separated like nine months Oro but so kids also they can suffer a greater risk of depression they get emotional scars and this was a big one for me not kids well kids too but PTSD you know we always talk about being complex PTSD where PTSD is like um you know if there's a single event like you witness B shooting or you're s
oier something blows up and kills your comrade um complex PTSD is called that because it's a series of events like that's by a thousand paper right it's not just one event it's a it's trauma after trauma after trauma and it wears down the sheath covering your amydala which is what controls your fight you know the lizard brain we talk about right the fight ORF flight reflex and it gets physically hard now can recover but it takes but could suffer the same thing dtsd you know well actually I won't
jump ahead because I know it's on your list I'll wait I'll wait but I but let's also talk about I'm sure we will how depression in kids can manifest okay all right so um what you need to do is get one of those little bells like you know Hotel G and when I say the one that you're waiting for ding ding ding ding ding all right but so just to continue to go go down the list I'll get to also some statistics right so this is sort of General stuffff but we also have a lot of statistics and some of th
em are scary so kids social skills are affected by these situations um they have more miss school lower grads a greater chance of dropping out um a greater chance of obesity that's that's yeah that's my B we know I I know many kids that um that gain a lot of weight um especially at the tween age where they they just put on weight and it's like it it seems to have happen around the time there's a lot of problems in the house uh I I won't say overt fighting but when the kids sense that something's
wrong um we've seen that I won't say more but we've seen it directly right then also a greater risk of anxiety disorder the mental illness so that's touching on the depression but it's not just depression it's all kinds of things right yeah yeah and one of our pediatrician who happens to be here was saying there's it's also common to have sensitivity to loud sound yeah I'm thinking like cars backf in the street where kids are terrified I know adults get terrified of that too touch too also righ
t like some kids we we have clients whose kids are like very sensitive to being touched in certain places and they have a reaction to that yeah it's all anxiety yeah she's saying jumpy very jumpy too and adults same thing yep all right so um want to get into into some actual numbers statistics all right so um children in homes where abuse occurs well they're more likely to be violent or delinquent themselves and they're 50% more likely to abuse alcohol or drug right yeah they're 24% more likely
to commit sexual assault themselves yes right so you kind of go both ways right because we you know we have clients who's um you know who's parents were narcissists or some other toxic personality type and they're not they're the opposite they took a different direction but it can also break in terms of that trait being you know passed on so to speak right and in terms of sexual assault you know sexual abuse is really common as a form of domestic violence and when kids see or sense this is going
on this is this becomes their normal so whether it's they they want to take on the traits or not is they're around it and they think this is normal just as this this kind unhealthy relationships when they're around it no matter how much you say to your kid don't act like me and my you know your other parents that's that's what's familiar to them that's that's what they're going to be drawn to right exactly when you stay in the relationship you're modeling for them this is fine this is normal th
is is okay this is what you you know because we're we're role models for our kids whether we want to be or not and one of the greatest gifts you know um my kids are 18 and 15 now and they were 10 and seven when my ex and I split and you and I have been together for more than seven years so my younger son has known has known us as a couple um so he's known us as a couple longer than he's known know his mother and I were a couple and what we were modeling for for him and my other son and your kids
too is what a healthy relationship looks like because we respectfully and all the other good stuff that comes with that yeah I want to keep noting what our pediatrician is saying that which is it's making me think she said that there's often an ADHD misdiagnosis where there's trauma at home and I'm thinking Chris how many people do we talk to that say that they themselves have ADHD their kids have been diagnosed with ADHD I think a a huge number of our clients have children with special needs n
ot even including ADHD but that is really really common in um the domestic violence community and she's also saying uh separation separation anxiety kid is externalizing and focusing and um not focusing defiant and the parents chalk it up to ADHD but it's actually abuse yeah and it's and it's interesting to see once the person is out and the drama's over how the kids can recover because they can be okay I mean that's I can't think of a question we get more often than you know my partner or my fo
rmer partner is an arist or some other toxic personality type and we're sharing custody are I Contin be okay yes question other than how do I get out of the legal system fast that's those two are together exactly most popular you know what we found is that yes the kids can be okay and you got to do double duty you have to be particularly healthy parent really really work hard yes they can be right right right well that's why it's so important for you yourself to uh take care of yourself and kind
of get it together and get a lot of support because they're looking for some kind of rock in the sea of instability you know and it is really really hard I mean we we already know how hard it is to get out of these relationships yeah it kind of touches on something from an interview you did last week where you were talking about um you know the other parent disparaging right when the other the other parent saying bad things about you and how you handle that and the comment who who was that that
um was that uh it was probably was it last week was it Sarah I'm not sure I don't know keep talking yeah so um and the answer was that you you you just show them show them that you a great show them that you really doing a good job that you care about them that you love them and over time they're gonna they're gonna have like this disconnect between what they're being told and what they're observing and what they're observing will carry more weight that was that was a guardian ad Liam who gave
us that advice who is go we're going to interview I think in the beginning of September that's right the pre- interview is the pre yeah I thought that was really important so it's almost like just stay the course do the best you can do and your kids have the best chance I know and this of course like this is very vague right now what we're saying because it's not our big topic but this is It's A Hard topic and it's not easy to just say the course we recognize that right so um there's between fou
r and a half is a wide range so it's really an estimate four and a half and 15 million children in the US are exposed to physical violence that's just physical we know it's a lot more for the other types right because we know that before physical takes place there's always emotional and psychological yeah so usually verbal so yeah and that's that's what's reported and and so the next bullet on the from our presentation was that the effects of verbal and emotional abuse they can be far worse than
physical abuse the imps on the kids there's nothing to see you can't go in and say look here's my bruises right it's happening or it's not happening with it's very clear right I hit you or I didn't you but with emotional like a lot of times narcissists are really good at giving like little they're subtle they're insults that are disguised as jokes for example that's a thing they do all the time right yeah and it's hard to especially for a kid you know who's not mature enough to recognize like s
arcasm that goes too far or that kind of thing well I think there's also a sort of cognitive dissonance where like let's say a parent says something but the kid feels like something's off you know and I feel like that's something that was I struggled with as an adult where I would believe what the person said but my body knew that it wasn't true and it's just and kids we think our parents love us unconditionally so how do we make sense of a parent that's behaving a certain way that doesn't feel
right but they're saying but I let you know I love you yeah yeah so um 50 to 70% of men who frequently assault wives or their you know their spouses also frequently abuse children yeah I mean that's that's a big one we get we get um a lot of our clients the physical abuse is actually um not as common we get a lot of stuff with sex ual abuse right as well and that is so tricky you know and it also makes me think of um a shortcoming of the legal system right I mean looking at this statistic an abu
ser is abuser is an abuser I mean if somebody's abusive they're not going to be just abusive to one person that one person might be their Target right now but if somebody's capable of being abusive they could they could abuse anyone at any time right and the courts don't see that so you know when when there's a domestic violence case for example and and then it becomes custody a person who even if they can prove domestic violence against them it doesn't affect the custody case because the courts
don't recognize that simple fact that an abusers is an abuser if they're abusing the partner they're likely to abuse the kids so you know we don't spend a lot of time you know complaining about the system we're more like let's go in your case but um but it is a true shortcoming and hopefully over time that will change right especially with the states like Connecticut that have coercive control laws so they are especially when determining custody that was the reason why this law was really pushe
d into places you can't just look at physical abuse you can't just look at imminent threat of physical harm towards the children you have to look at the broader picture of what else has been going on with these kids how else they're affected by non-physical abuse but for of control yeah and so hand in hand with that last one is this is just jaw-dropping children are 1,500% more likely to be abused in homes where partner abuse occurs astonishing and I have one more for you that I always for last
because it's it's really scary and you know when when um when there's abuse in the household Ks are six times more likely to commit suicide yeah and I I know we have clients whose kids are very young and have um expressed suicidal ideation it's called like threatening suicide we have clients whose's young children have also been um hospitalized because of suicidal ideation but we also have a number of clients whose kids have gotten better and have survived and and moved on to thrive because they
have gotten a lot of help and you know something I think we should note is that when you're dealing with a toxic uh co-parent or counterar they often will try to block the child from getting therapy and one of the people that we interviewed I think it was Leslie Miller who um used to be a guardian ad Lum and is now a narcissistic abuse therapist and then she we've done some lives together but she I think it was her who said that the courts generally most judges will push for kids therapy especi
ally during some kind of Separation so if one parent is blocking therapy that looks that makes that person look really bad and that could affect legal decision making on medical because it's like why why wouldn't you want your kid to get help but we know a lot of those toxic personalities fear exposure so if the kid is going to a therapist they can't control what that kid says so that's why they'll minimize and say my kid is fine and of course we know they'll Blame You the targeted parent parent
like any problems the kid has it's your fault you caused it right where they'll sabotage the relationship with the therapist they'll not pay or they'll make harassing phone calls or they'll they'll complain that this therapist is a bad one we need to switch anything things to interfere and not get outed themselves right and I I'm seeing another comment from our pediatrician she's saying um uh let's see as a safe safe parent has to reinforce the child real feelings when the other parent is lying
to them or Cuts them down that's true and we've spent um entire interviews talking about the need to validate your children's feelings because the other parent whether they're in the household or out of the household with visitation is gaslighting them just like they did to us that never happened you're not seeing it right you're just a kid you don't see it and often like oh you don't you're not going to understand any of this till you're older you won't understand me and my perspective you're
too young when you're older this is very familiar to me but when you're older that's when you'll get it's all about them and their perspective yeah and it actually like the rules reverse almost the parent acts like the child and the the kids are forced to be the parents in that relationship and I'm thinking of several of our clients with that yeah where where the kids kind of you know this should probably go on our our list of the impacts but the kids are forced to grow up faster yes which it cu
ts both ways right I mean it's good because they get skills like your your kids are so emotionally mature just beyond belief I mean they're more mature than I was at 35 and they in the early 22 and 19 but um but it's sad in a way because some of the childhood innocence is Fast Track yeah yeah I mean I know um when I finally got out my first thing was I need to get I need to get therapy for these kids um and I was so scared because I I really did think their lives were over we had some issues wit
h h abandonments and those first two years after the end of my marriage were really really hard for the kids to sort of make sense of who their father really was and that was between him and them you know that wasn't through the court system luckily I was able to deal with the parenting plan and the custody stuff before you know or sorry outside of court so that that was huge but it was still very very difficult I mean we have situations on the opposite extreme where there's the abandonment the
one toxic parent just leaves the kids and then there's the opposite where they are meddling in everybody's spaces and lives all all the time so speaking of things that sound familiar better over the years got a lot better yeah oh one thing before we continue just because I want to make sure I say this during this this talk is um I was just watching H Bill farious who we is a Massachusetts attorney who we've done interviews with before and literally four minutes before we went on the air I saw he
had um a thing and it was talking about somebody who was saying I can't live with my spouse anymore I want to just get out of the house like I don't know what to do with the kids and so he said so this is legal advice from what I saw on Instagram bill faras in Massachusetts he said the most one of the most important things you need to do is to get a parenting plan in place before you just make some Ras decision to either leave the house without the kids or leave the house with the kids you need
to know your rights you need to know your rights legally um because that can really turn on you so if you're still in the house and you are thinking of leaving please speak to an attorney to learn whether you're male or female know your legal rights before you make that rash decision again that was why I myself took two years not that you should take two years to get out but really it's important to have a safety plan it's important to have an exit plan because what you do before you get into t
he legal system matters also right and now I'm thinking of somebody we talked to just this week who was was I believe in California who couldn't take it anymore left the house and five years later she hardly ever sees the kids because he just you know sideswiped her legally and she had left and he got custody and you know he doesn't even he and he travels all the time and he doesn't even leave the kids with her he leaves them with another relative night nervous situation hopefully she can dig ou
t of that yeah yeah I think so yeah so okay anyway that's my entire list that's your entire list okay good so I think again um what you had said about emotional intelligence like even though there's all these terrible things that can affect the kids by staying in the relationship we know how hard it is to leave you know as a domestic violence advocate you probably heard this line before it takes an average of seven to nine times and that's just just walking out of the house but like seven to nin
e real attempts to get out of a toxic relationship so it's never easy and a lot of people say well why don't you just leave or why don't you just walk away it's really really hard when you have kids um because you are tied to that person basically forever I mean you've got at least 18 years in the legal system in Most states and countries and after that we all know about post separation abuse and how those kids are used as pawns so even though staying in the relationship is dangerous to the kid
leaving the relationship is also dangerous to the kids because then it's up to third parties you have Guardian ad lims and custody evaluators and miners Council and who knows who else starts the piranha like Feeding Frenzy that get in your family business and make decisions and how many calls do we get from people who are absolutely heartbroken over their custody Arrangements that say you know maybe I should have stayed in the relationship because then I could have at least had more time with my
kids we have some clients whose exes work all the time and travel all the time they've gotten divorced and now that the ex is in there face more more than before and they're like I should have just I should have just kept that person away but you know it's never an easy decision yeah yeah you made me think of something else um which um which we've talked a lot about lately and that's how you know the importance of validating what the kids are feeling right how that's walking you have to walk a
fine line because a lot of times when you're under the microscope of Family Court when it's custody whether you've got an active P or not you don't want to disparage the other parent you don't want to do that anyway right I mean that's just bad for kids that talk badly because they love you both even if the other person does have an issue um but so it's It's Tricky and you have to choose your words carefully like to validate their feelings and what they've observe that's real you want to help th
em overcome the gas liting the other side of doing but you got to walk a fine line in terms of saying something negative about parent let out right yeah very Tri yeah really tricky and I was thinking um I I know I started my last sentence somewhere and ended up somewhere else which always happens but I was going to say even though there are these terrible consequences on kids for staying in the relationship as there are sometimes leaving the relationship um like you noted before there are hidden
benefits to people people going through this this experience not that we'd ever want it to happen to anybody um and one of them is that often your kids and I'm speaking from personal experience your kids learn to develop better boundaries because they have to do it with a parent they have to do it at a younger age and so I've seen in my own children um the wisdom that that took me a lot more decades to learn than they did where even not just with their romantic relationships with friendships wh
ere they feel like you know this doesn't feel right like I don't have to tolerate this or I can talk to someone about that you know I re they recognize that someone who texts them all the time and expects an answer that's not flattering that's creepy that's not a good thing where their friends will be like oh the person's jealous like I feel so good they just want to be with me all the time my daughter's like no no no that's not help yeah so they do they do get a lot more mature sooner it is hea
rtbreaking to see it but these are skills that they can carry with them throughout their lives and that's why it is so important to get support for yourself especially get support for your kids often if you are in the legal system it's good to have that third party support because you know your ex is going to try and blame any everything on you so it's good to have that that third party buffer who the kids can talk to also you can't control so many things so when the kids come to you and they ce
rtainly should be able to come to you and talk about things but a lot of times you can't fix it for them and they have to understand that like you're doing the best you can in the confines of a system that's broken and often doesn't care about you or them but you just try to do the best you can and please stop beating yourself up absolutely yeah all right Chris I'm done thanks so much for having me you're welcome and we're going to reschedule with Dennis and see what he has to say about this top
ic but thanks everybody we'll see you next week what with the different guest all right bye bye
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