Gaslighting In Divorce: How To Protect Your Child

Episode Description - Gaslighting In Divorce: How To Protect Your Child

In this episode of Breakthrough Divorce Coaching, Anne, a divorcing mom caught in a three-year court battle, opens up about what it’s really like to navigate a high-conflict divorce when abuse, manipulation, and gaslighting don’t end just because your marriage does. 

Despite restraining orders and years of separation, Anne still finds herself fighting to protect her child’s safety and emotional well-being while trying to keep her own head above water. Her story exposes the toll that prolonged litigation and co-parenting with a toxic ex can take. It also illustrates the heartbreaking reality that the legal system isn’t built to solve these deeply human problems. 

Anne’s breakthrough comes when she starts to shift her focus from battling her ex to building her child’s resilience. Instead of pouring more money into a court system that can’t fix what’s broken, Anne explores how to empower her child with coping skills, emotional awareness, and a sense of safety that no court order can provide. 

What begins as a story about legal frustration turns into one of strength, insight, and breaking the cycle of abuse, showing that sometimes, the most powerful victory is raising a child who knows their own worth.

Key Takeaways From This Episode with Anne

Background:

• Anne is in a three-year, high-conflict divorce after an eight-year marriage and ten-year relationship.
• She shares one child with her ex, who has limited unsupervised visitation.
• The restrictions stem from distance and past alleged abuse.

Current Challenges:

• Anne feels emotionally exhausted and frustrated by ongoing litigation and her ex’s gaslighting behavior.
• The legal process has been slow, and communication with her ex is tense and unproductive.

Primary Issue Discussed:

• Her child’s recent medical diagnosis requires avoiding smoke exposure.
• Despite a court order, her ex continues to smoke in his vehicle and denies wrongdoing.
• Anne struggles with how to protect her child without escalating legal battles.

Coach Karen’s Guidance:

• Courts are not designed to solve emotional or behavioral issues within families.
• Legal enforcement is difficult and costly—especially for small but recurring issues.
• Instead of focusing on court action, Anne should prioritize strengthening her child’s coping skills.

Empowerment and Emotional Tools:

• Teach the child simple, safe ways to manage uncomfortable situations (e.g., opening a window, speaking up).
• Work closely with the child’s therapist to build confidence, resilience, and emotional safety.
• Encourage open communication so the child learns it’s okay to express feelings and opinions.

Main Takeaway:

• The best path forward is through emotional healing, empowerment, and stability—rather than continued court conflict.
• By modeling strength and compassion, Anne can help her child break the cycle of dysfunction and grow into a confident, emotionally healthy adult.

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Transcript

Gaslighting In Divorce: How To Protect Your Child

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

 narcissistic abuse, self-empowerment, coping skills

SPEAKERS

Karen Covy,  Anne

Karen Covy: 1:39

Welcome to Breakthrough Divorce Coaching. I'm your host, Karen Covy, and this is a very special series of the Off The Fence podcast where you get a front row seat to live coaching sessions with real people facing real challenges in divorce. There's no script, no theory, just raw, powerful conversations that lead to real breakthroughs. Because one breakthrough can change everything. If you've ever wondered what divorce coaching looks like behind the scenes, this is your chance to find out. So without any further ado, let's go witness the breakthrough.

Hi, welcome to Breakthrough Divorce Coaching. Tell me what's your name and what can I do for you?

Anne: 2:25

My name is Anne, and I'm going through an active divorce with litigation right now. So I've got a lot going on. I'd love any advice for going through the process and trying to keep my head above water.

Karen Covy: 2:39

I can understand completely. So, but let's start here. Let's narrow this down a little bit. You are, how long were you married? Do you have children? And how long have you been in the divorce process?

Anne: 2:52

The relationship was 10 years. I was married for, I think, just bordering on eight. Uh there's one child who is old enough to understand definitely what's going on. And I've been in the process now for three years.

Karen Covy: 3:10

Wow. So you've been in the court system for three years? That tells me a couple of things. In terms of the conflict level in your um marriage and divorce, can you tell me about that?

Anne: 3:23

High conflict, uh, alleged abuse, because the criminal code requires it to be alleged at this point, uh, even though it was definitely uh present in the relationship through verbal, physical, mental, and financial. And uh now it's higher conflict, but with a good buffer in place because of the distance and the not existing in the same space anymore.

Karen Covy: 3:53

Okay, so if I understand you correctly, you and your still husband, but hopefully ex soon, are not living together anymore.

Anne: 4:02

No.

Karen Covy: 4:03

What's happening with your child?

Anne: 4:05

So they live with me 100% of the time with limited visitation.

Karen Covy: 4:12

What do you mean by limited? Tell me about that.

Anne: 4:14

So it's only uh for six hours on one day of the week and two and a half hours for another day of the week following school hours. We do them back to back just to make kind of easier for planning life in general. And uh originally the ex-spouse wanted uh more time on just one day, but thankfully the judges in the court system figured that what they were asking for was much too long of a day for a child to be going through. It was longer than an average work day. So it's very limited because of even though it's alleged um abuse, it's still there's documentation of an emergency protection order, a restraining order, all of that stuff still on file.

Karen Covy: 4:58

Okay. And the emergency protection order, is that for you and your child or just you?

Anne: 5:05

The EPO was just for me. And then I engaged with a lawyer probably within about two weeks of calling the authorities because there was a huge incident of domestic violence. And so I enacted a restraining order for both me and my child. Both have actually since lapsed, but that's only because um everything has calmed down and there's nothing uh prevalent to keep the order going forward.

Karen Covy: 5:33

Okay, I'm what concerns me, what makes my radar group go up, is the fact that your soon-to-be ex has a very limited parenting time schedule with your child. Courts don't do that unless they have a reason to, right? So what's like what's going on? Is your ex a danger to your child? Is the is the visitation that he has supervised, or he just gets straight up, you know, some hours in a day? Tell me more about what that is.

Anne: 6:08

So it was supervised for eight weeks and then it transitioned after no incidents were reported during that supervision. It did transition to what it is now, which is unsupervised access for those time frames. Uh, because it's so limited in one, it's because they live in a different city. There's a big distance factor to it as well, and they work, and their work schedule just doesn't allow for that. So they were asking for only one day initially, and then what the judge handed down was like one day for so many hours and another day for so many hours, because um, that's what they decided was the best course of action. But yeah, it's one logistics and two because of the past incidents that they did take that into account and consideration, even though it was alleged.

Karen Covy: 6:56

Okay. So tell me how I can help you. What is the problem that you're struggling with? I know it has something to do with your child, but tell me more about how I can help you.

Anne: 7:08

I think it's just that balance of yes, I understand what I'm not allowed legally to say or share and all that kind of stuff too, but just trying to keep your head among above water when you've got three years under your belt now, which is where I'm at. And I'm just like, I'm so tired of it all. And I don't want to say I'm burnt out, but I'm getting to that point where I'm just like, I just want it done. And I don't know a way to move it forward. I mean, we've got the lawyers in place and all that stuff, but it just seems like it's so dragged out. And um, the other side of it is like anytime I bring up a concern, um, and we only do email or text, um, we do in-person exchange, but it's very cut and dry. Not a lot of conversations go on. Um, it's  that frustration factor where anytime I bring up a concern or request, I'm instantly gaslit. Instantly. And it's not like I'm writing these heinous, emotionally charged emails or requests. It's just basic like, hey, can you do this? Or can you help with the care more? Or can you um consider changing this pattern so that it's a little bit more emotionally supportive for our mutual child? And it's just like every turn, it's gaslighting. And I know I am I'm in therapy actively, so is my child, but it's um when you even though you know you were married to a narcissist, it still doesn't make you feel um any less crazy for feeling like you're asking for the world when you're just asking for basic human decency.

Karen Covy: 8:43

Yeah. Uh first of all, know that you're not crazy. And this happens to everybody, but when you everyone who is genuinely in a relationship with a narcissist, I mean, you can be legally divorced, but when you have a child together, you're still tied to that person. So you said you were being gaslit. Give me an example, tell me what's going on.

Anne: 9:12

Um, so my child was recently given a medical diagnosis, and one of the things that were recommended was hey, um, if there's any smoking at all, any smoke exposure, make sure your vehicles are detailed, make sure they're not exposed and stuff. And so I said, Hey, I know, I know that you've smoked in your vehicle. My kid comes home smelling like it, I've seen you do it when we drive up, like kind of deal. Immediately they went on the offensive or defensive story, saying, you know, this is um frivolous, you can't keep him from me. I pay and I barely see him. Like, it was horrendous, honestly. And I kind of laughed too, because I was just like, you realize this is all in writing, right? Like it's this is all in writing. This is making you look absolutely terrible when I'm asking just for a little bit of backup and support, not asking you to drive to any of the medical appointments to pay for any of the uh medications, um, to do anything else except for detail your vehicle. And it was just not a pleasant experience. I honestly at the by the time I finished reading the email a couple times, I just was laughing. I was just like, this is absolutely nuts. Yeah. Like, what?

Karen Covy: 10:23

Yeah, and it's gonna be. So here's the challenge, right? You can set this up to go through the court system and get a resolution of the issue. But the problem is the court isn't with your husband 24-7, and they're not with him whenever he's with your child. So if you let's say he says, Oh, yeah, I'm totally um, you know, I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do. I'm not smoking in the car with our child. Great. And you, but you pick up your kid and your kid smells like smoke. You know, well, how are you going to prove that? You're gonna say the child smells like smoke. He's gonna say, no, the child doesn't. And then the only person who can testify is your child. And there's not a court on the planet that's gonna put your kid in the middle that way. Now, can you get an attorney or a guardian appointed for the kid? And then, you know, the the the child talks to the attorney, and the attorney talks to the judge, and yeah, you can do this, but you are just you're looking at tens of thousands of dollars just for that one thing. And the problem is when you've got somebody who's high conflict like that, there's going to be the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, and ultimately it ends up breaking you because you've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in a court system that still didn't solve the problem.

Anne: 11:58

No, just begging for somebody to basically show up. Well, I also know realistically, they didn't show up in the relationship. Why are they gonna show up outside of it, right? And that's I'm three years out and I'm feeling much better about that side of it. But it's just that frustration of I even say it all the time, like it's not about me, it is not about you, it is only about our kid. Can we just please focus on that and their well-being? But it's just, it's just, yeah, it's not worth the financial burden, right? Because on the other side of it, I'm also dealing with divorce litigation still and trying to settle assets and liabilities and all that stuff. And that's been dragging out because they can't get their stuff together, their lawyer can't get their stuff together, and I'm just like shaking my head because the only time we hear from his lawyer, it's when he wants something. And so I'm like, what?

Karen Covy: 12:46

Yeah, no, but know this much. You are not crazy. This is your child, everything you're asking for is common sense and reasonable. But the problem that you're having is that the legal system was not designed to solve what is a family and social problem, right? It does it really poorly. So you can put in like even if you got a court order, you your next step if you want to go through the legal process is to say court order saying my child has, I don't know what the medical condition is. I'm gonna make it up. Asthma. Okay, kids got asthma, can't be around smoke. It's bad for him. Great. So you put it in a court order that says dad can't smoke around the child, but now how do you enforce that? You the only way is by putting the child in the middle to testify what's going on with dad, which by the way, makes your child's life and relationship with dad really bad. Like if it isn't already bad, and I suspect it's not great, this is not gonna help.

Anne: 13:52

But I don't want them to resent me either.

Karen Covy: 13:56

Right? Mom, you're making things worse. And what happens often is that the child will take out their frustration on the more stable parent because they can, because you're the one who's safe, you're the one who the child can act out in front of because they know you're still gonna love them.

Anne: 14:18

Yeah, and by it all that happens way too much already.

Karen Covy: 14:22

Yeah. So what you want to do, I mean, can you go through the legal system? Yes, and it might be worth having a conversation with your lawyer about okay, if we if I do this, what does that look like? What can what can we do? At least if we have it in a court order, you have something to enforce. If you don't even have it in the court order to begin with, that's you know, the judge is gonna say, so what he was smoking, you know, so what? So now you've got to amend the court order and then get that and then have him violate. So, like it's a process, right?

Anne: 14:57

Well, you know, the ironic thing is it's in the court order about not smoking around the child, but how do you enforce them not smoking in the vehicle before or after? That's the problem now. And I'm just shaking my head. It just seems like you have to think of every possible scenario and somehow put it in there and somehow have them sign off on all of that too, which they don't want to.

Karen Covy: 15:19

Right. And he look, he's not gonna do if he's a if he's a smoker, he's gonna smoke in his car, period, full stop, and he's not gonna detail the car every single time your child right before your child is in it. It like it's not gonna happen. So the better or the more productive way to deal with this is to start teaching your child how they can cope. Like, okay, you're in the car. If there's smoke in the car, can you roll down the window? Do you, you know, can you be, you know, give the child coping skills, hopefully that are unobtrusive enough, because the kid doesn't want to, no child wants to live in conflict. They've done study after study about kids going through a divorce. And what they found is that it's not necessarily the divorce that hurts the kids, it's the conflict. Whether the couple is still married or divorced or going through a divorce, right? It's the conflict. Children don't like it. They don't thrive when their environment is unstable. And when they're when the parents are fighting or the parents are fighting with them, it's unstable. So what can your child do? For example, maybe you know they've they can roll down the window. Maybe they've got, you know, does your child have an inhaler or something that in case they can't breathe, there's an option, right? So they've got an inhaler. They've got, I don't know exactly how old your child is or whether they had a cell phone, but to be able to, you know, to know that if there was an emergency, if they started having real problems breathing, the child can call 911. You're empowering your child to start to make decisions for themselves. And it also starts with empowering your child to care about themselves, to know that that's okay. Because if if you and your kid both were living in an abusive situation, it wears you down bit by bit, little by little. And after a while, you start to think, well, I it's not that bad. I can do this. It's not that hard. Maybe I'm not worth it. Maybe I'm being too picky, maybe I'm, you know, and you think that way, and you're thinking that and you're an adult. Imagine what a child is thinking. And so the best thing that you can do for your child is to start empowering them by having them know they are worth it, they can speak up. It's okay if daddy or even mommy doesn't agree with what you said. You're entitled to have an opinion. Now, obviously, they don't get to run the show, they're still a kid. But you know, it's like, I want to have ice cream for dinner, mom. No, you're not. Um, but that they can say what they feel. And it in order to do this and give your child the confidence to be able to do it with their father, who they're probably afraid of. Um you've got to, they've got to be able to do it with you first, which means you're gonna put up with some some stuff from the kid as they're trying this on. And because your child isn't gonna know where the line is, and you're gonna have to say, yeah, this is okay, this is too much, and this is you know, this is what you can do. And is your child in therapy?

Anne: 18:59

Yes, yeah.

Karen Covy: 19:00

Work with your child's therapist to say, how can we create coping skills for you know, my child, um, that will enable them to survive the next decade, 12 years, whatever it is, survive the rest of their childhood.

Anne: 19:22

Right.

Karen Covy: 19:23

Um, and coping skills that will keep them safe, keep them, and I mean emotionally and physically safe with the least amount of friction with your spouse soon-to-be ex. Does that make sense?

Anne: 19:44

Yeah, it does make sense because at the end he comes home all the time and says, well, he doesn't listen to me, or he gets weird about stuff, or argues with me. And some of it's just regular kid wanting too many things, but a lot of it is he just gets shut down before he can speak up at all.

Karen Covy: 20:02

And he's gotta understand that that's not because he's doing something wrong. He's got to, and and this is the thing that will actually serve him moving forward in life. You can, you know, it's okay to speak up. And yeah, if daddy isn't listening to you, if he's shutting you down, you know what? It's not because there's something wrong with you. That's just the way daddy is. Now, you don't want to throw your ex under the bus either. I mean, it's got to be age-appropriate what you're saying to your child, right? Um, but your kid's got to get tools. Your kid is going to have to live with that person as a father for the rest of their life. The sooner they can start to understand how to deal with that reality and not internalize it because that's what children do. They internalize what you know daddy is saying to them as meaning they're bad or they're wrong or they did something they shouldn't have or what have you, and they keep it inside. And so your job is to help your child understand that it's not their problem and that daddy just has his own stuff, his own issues. And you want to encourage that relationship because the child is children love their parents, even when their parents do horrible things to them.

Anne:

Yeah, I've noticed that.

Karen Covy:

It's  unbelievable. I mean, I for a very brief time in my legal career did some cases in abuse and neglect court, and it's just it just sucks the soul right out of you when you see what parents, some parents do to kids and hurt people hurt people. And when a hurt parent hurts a child, that child grows up to hurt their child. So think about what you're trying to do is stop the chain. Stop the chain in you and stop the chain in your child. And the way to do that is to keep them in therapy and start empowering them now with the tools they need to differentiate between this is daddy's issue, and this is something that like I can't do because I'm a kid and I don't get to make the rules. Like I don't get to have dinner at midnight or whatever it is that they want to do. Um, but that's honestly the best thing that you can do. And they're not mutually exclusive. You can go the court system route if you choose. And maybe the smoking in the car, you know, isn't the issue you, it's not the hill you want to die on.

Anne: 22:49

No.

Karen Covy: 22:49

Because maybe your child, I mean your child's still going to be okay, maybe a little uncomfortable, but they're not now. If your child had such huge respiratory problems that this was going to impact their health, well then yeah, maybe this is, you know, the fight you want to take to through the court system. But it's about figuring out what's the most important thing for your kid and then doing that. Does that make sense?

Anne: 23:16

It makes so much sense because I've struggled for like the last three years, even before that, of towing the line between being honest with them and also trying to not bias, right? I've had so many friends who have gone through this before as kids and said, like, well, I resented one parent because they always bad mouthed the other parent, or I resented the other parent because they um always were putting me down. And then my other parent never spoke up for me. So then I was mad at them too. And I'm like, I don't think there's any way you can fully win.

Karen Covy: 23:46

No, no, you're not going to. And part of that is realizing that and understand giving yourself some grace. You're doing the best you can, right? You're trying to get this divorce over, you're trying to heal yourself from the abuse you experienced and protect your child. So it's give yourself grace and know that no matter what, your kid is going to blame you for something. I mean, because they all it  always comes down to mother. Whatever the mother did, screwed up the kid somehow. That's just the way it is. But it's about at some point, if you do, if you really do the best you can and you really give your child these tools, at some point, usually after the teenage years, they start to figure out that what you did was really a good thing, right? But you're 100% right. Do not throw your ex under the bus. You don't have to badmouth them, but you also don't have to make excuses for them and say, oh, well, you know, he's the dad, so he can do whatever it was that he did. No, you can say, you know, daddy has a different opinion. Daddy thinks that, you know, daddy thinks that this is the way to do things, and I disagree. And two adults can disagree about things, and that's why we're not married anymore. But you, you're the lucky one. You get to see how things work in two different houses and decide, you know, when you're an adult, how you want to live.

Anne: 25:19

That's actually a really awesome way to frame it for a kid too, because you know, a lot of the, let's say, the 90s kids' movies were about, well, you get two Christmases and two birthdays and stuff, but I've never heard it as you get to decide what you like and don't like because you get two different perspectives.

Karen Covy: 25:39

Yeah. And it when they look at all of this is about shifting the way your child looks at it and giving them, like I said, the tools they need to cope with whatever it is they're dealing with. And then as they grow, those skills will expand. I mean, if you've got to be age appropriate, but the skills will expand and expand. And so by the time they're 18 years old and they do get to decide what they want to do, they not only have different perspectives of how they want to live their life and what kind of relationship they want to have with each parent, but they've also got a skill set that will follow them for the rest of their life so that they don't have to act out of frustration and continue patterns that that aren't productive for anybody. Make sense?

Anne: 26:37

100% it does, yeah.

Karen Covy: 26:40

Awesome. Well, any other questions or are you good with this?

Anne: 26:45

I'm good with this. This feels really good about a better pathway forward to helping support my child better, which is, you know, the crux of everything with my divorce.

Karen Covy: 26:54

Yeah, it is. And like I said, remember the legal system isn't designed to solve every problem. So you've got to really take a look at is this the kind of problem that I'm likely to get a resolution with in court, or am I better off just trying to bolster my child as much as I can so that my child can deal better? So Okay, that's it. And thank you very much.

Anne: 27:23

Thanks for having me.

Karen Covy: 27:26

If you enjoyed today's episode, if you'd like to see more live divorce coaching, do me a big favor. Give this episode a thumbs up and drop the word MORE in the comments below. And if you'd like to be a guest on the show and apply to get your own free live divorce coaching, just go to KarenCovy.com/freecoaching to apply. That's KarenCovy.com/freecoaching. All one word and apply now.