Help for building your support team so you can end a toxic relationship

By Amber Ault, Ph.D., MSW

Starting September 24, 2016, I will be hosting a five-week Roller Coaster Relationship Recovery Seminar & Support Group by teleconference for people in the US and EU. I especially invite readers of Lovefraud.com to join me in this powerful, supportive environment dedicated to cultivating the skills and strategies you need to create your best, happiest, sanest life possible after a difficult relationship with a toxic partner.

In my recent book, The Five Step Exit: Skills You Need to Leave a Narcissist, Psychopath, or Other Toxic Partner and Recover Your Happiness Now, I recommend that anyone who is involved with a toxic partner, preparing to leave a roller coaster relationship, or recovering from a crazy-making situation assemble a support team. Toxic relationships are complicated, confusing, and difficult. Often, an exploitive person’s manipulations result in a partner being isolated from friends and family who serve as important reality anchors and havens of support. When you become more aware of how toxic your relationship is, you become stronger by ending your isolation and increasing your resources.

You might think of your team as a group of advisors, a committee, or a gaggle of guardian angels. Because each situation is different, committees will vary, but committee members must be trustworthy, committed to your health and wellbeing, competent in their role, and able to appropriately keep your confidences. They might include family and friends, an attorney, a therapist or coach, a banker, your landlord, a pet sitter, and the folks at a moving company, to name a few. By assessing your emotional, financial, and social needs, you will be able to determine whom you need to enlist on your team.

Sometimes your team members will be people you interact with frequently; other team members might be the authors of books or online resources to which you can turn any time of day for information and resources. Lovefraud serves as an extraordinary source of education and support for thousands of people annually, and its new continuing education branch has begun to offer courses to both mental health professionals and the general public in a forum that allows people to access expert, specialized educational material on toxic relationships around the clock. All of us involved in creating online workshops for Lovefraud CE have a special commitment to supporting people have their best lives possible, and we hope that you’ll allow the courses and workshops we create to serve as an easy-access resource for you. We want to be members of your team.

And so it is with The Roller Coaster Relationship Recovery Seminar and Support Group. Past members have found that through participating, they begin to end their isolation; and by listening to the stories of others and offering support to someone else, even thousands of miles away, they find renewed strength to address their own situations. By participating in a support group, you acquire new team members who can relate to your unique experience with a disordered partner, and you become a member of your classmates’ support network in the process. At times in our lives when we feel depleted, it’s often uplifting and empowering to discover that we have something of value to give to others.

If you’d like to join The Roller Coaster Relationship Recovery Seminar & Support Group this fall, drop by amberault.com. If you’re looking for specialized educational materials on topics related to recovering from toxic relationships, check out the growing list of courses on Lovefraud CE. Ending your isolation is an important step in moving forward in your life toward greater relationship happiness, and everyone involved in the web of resources connected to Lovefraud.com is delighted to be part of your team.

Rollercoaster Relationship Recovery Group, at amberault.com