• Know the phone number to your local battered women's shelter.They're not just shelter and have valuable legal, financial and counseling resources available
• Let a trusted family member, friend, coworker or neighbors know your situation. Develop a plan for when you need help; code words you can text if in trouble, a visual signal like a porch light: on equals no danger, off equals trouble.
• If you are injured, go to a doctor or an emergency room and report what happened to you. Ask that they document your visit.
• Keep a journal of all violent incidences, noting dates, events and threats made.
• Keep any evidence of physical abuse, such as pictures.
• Plan with your children and identify a safe place for them. Reassure them that their job is to stay safe, not to protect you.
• If you need to sneak away, be prepared. Make a plan for how and where you will escape.
• Back your car into the driveway, and keep it fueled. Keep your driver's door unlocked and other doors locked for a quick escape.
• Hide an extra set of car keys.
• Set money aside. Ask friends or family members to hold money for you.
• Pack a bag. Include an extra set of keys, IDs, car title, birth certificates, social security cards, credit cards, marriage license, clothes for yourself and your children, shoes, medications, banking information, money & anything that is important to you. Store them at a trusted friend or neighbor's house. Try to avoid using the homes of next-door neighbors, close family members and mutual friends.
• Take important phone numbers of friends, relatives, doctors, schools, etc.  
• If time is available, also take:
  Citizenship documents (such as your passport, green card, etc.)
  Titles, deeds and other property information
  Medical records
  Children's school and immunization records
  Insurance information
  Verification of social security numbers
  Welfare identification
  Valued pictures, jewelry or personal possessions
• Know abuser's schedule and safe times to leave.
• Be careful when reaching out for help via Internet or telephone. Erase your Internet browsing history, websites visited for resources, e-mails sent to friends/family asking for help. If you called for help, dial another number immediately after in case abuser hits redial.
• Create a false trail. Call motels, real estate agencies and schools in a town at least six hours away from where you plan to relocate. 

• Change your locks and phone number.
• Change your work hours and route taken to work.
• Change the route taken to transport children to school.
• Keep a certified copy of your restraining order with you at all times.
• Inform friends, neighbors and employers that you have a restraining order in effect.
• Give copies of the restraining order to employers, neighbors and schools along with a picture of the offender.
• Call law enforcement to enforce the order.

• Consider renting a post office box or using the address of a friend for your mail. Be aware that addresses are on restraining orders and police reports. Be careful to whom you give your new address and phone number.
• Change your work hours, if possible.
• Alert school authorities of the situation.
• Consider changing your children's schools.
• Reschedule appointments if the offender is aware of them.
• Use different stores and frequent different social spots.
• Alert neighbors, and request that they call the police if they feel you may be in danger.
• Talk to trusted people about the violence.
• Replace wooden doors with steel or metal doors. Install security systems if possible. Install a motion sensitive lighting system.
• Tell people you work with about the situation and have your calls screened by one receptionist if possible.
• Tell people who take care of your children who can pick up your children. Explain your situation to them and provide them with a copy of the restraining order.
• Call the telephone company to request caller ID. Ask that your phone number be blocked so that if you call anyone, neither your partner nor anyone else will be able to get your new, unlisted phone number.

Labels: abuse, abuser, abusive fathers, children, documentation, emotional abuse, exit strategy, financial abuse, getting help, getting out, journal, leaving, shelters, verbal abuse

1. Contemplation — If you are uncertain about leaving, the exercises in this section will clarify your thinking.

2. Preparation —Set priorities, seek assistance and anticipate blowback, so that you can make an effective action plan.

3. Execution — Skillful goodbye strategies, tailored to the type of toxic person that you are dealing with.

4. Improvisation — How to handle unpleasant, and perhaps even dangerous, reactions from your ex-partner.

5. Recovery — A multitude of suggestions for rebuilding your life through “exquisite self-care,” many of which are free.

Toxic relationships have common dynamics but a wide range of circumstances. In extreme situations, people face physical violence or restrictions on their freedom to leave their homes or contact friends, family, and police. Exiting other situations may involve financial risk, downward mobility, threats of retaliation, and drama that will drag on for awhile. Sometimes, when we’re fortunate, ending a toxic relationship simply does come down to telling the other person that things are over. If you don’t live together, don’t have financial involvements or kids, and the person will be offended enough by your rejection that they won’t contact you again, consider yourself fortunate. Ultimately, only you know the details and dynamics of your particular situation, so you are in the best position to determine what kind of exit plan to make and how to set it in motion when the time comes.

What are your priorities? What is at risk? What are you willing to sacrifice? What needs to be protected?

Your ex may try to re-engage with you. What are the goals of your toxic ex in these efforts?

What if you get Hoovered, and you fall hook, line and sinker for one of your ex’s ploys to suck you in?

Labels: abuse, execution, getting help, getting out, hoovering, leaving, manipulation, narcissist, preparation, psychopath, recovery, sociopath

•  He minimizes the abuse or denies how serious it really was. 
• He continues to blame others for his behavior. 
• He claims that you’re the one who is abusive. 
•  He pressures you to go to couple’s counseling. 
•  He tells you that you owe him another chance. 
• You have to push him to stay in treatment. 
• He says that he can’t change unless you stay with him and support him. 
• He tries to get sympathy from you, your children, or your family and friends. 
•  He expects something from you in exchange for getting help. 
• He pressures you to make decisions about the relationship. 

• Know your abuser’s red flags. 
• Be on alert for signs and clues that your abuser is getting upset and may explode in anger or violence. 
• Come up with several believable reasons you can use to leave the house (both during the day and at night) if you sense trouble brewing. 
•  Identify safe areas of the house. 
• Know where to go if your abuser attacks or an argument starts. Avoid small, enclosed spaces without exits (such as closets or bathrooms) or rooms with weapons (such as the kitchen). If possible, head for a room with a phone and an outside door or window. 
• Come up with a code word. Establish a word, phrase, or signal you can use to let your children, friends, neighbors, or co-workers know that you’re in danger and the police should be called. 

• Be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. 
• Keep the car fueled up and facing the driveway exit, with the driver’s door unlocked. 
• Hide a spare car key where you can get it quickly. 
• Have emergency cash, clothing, and important phone numbers and documents stashed in a safe place (at a friend’s house, for example). 
•  Practice escaping quickly and safely. 
• Rehearse your escape plan so you know exactly what to do if under attack from your abuser. 
• If you have children, have them practice the escape plan also. 
• Make and memorize a list of emergency contacts. 
• Ask several trusted individuals if you can contact them if you need a ride, a place to stay, or help contacting the police. 
• Memorize the numbers of your emergency contacts, local shelter, and domestic violence hotline. 

• If you decide at this time to stay with your abusive partner, there are some things you can try to make your situation better and to protect yourself and your children. Contact the domestic violence/sexual assault program in your area. They can provide emotional support, peer counseling, safe emergency housing, information, and other services while you are in the relationship, as well as if you decide to leave. 
•  Build as strong a support system as your partner will allow. Whenever possible, get involved with people and activities outside your home and encourage your children to do so. 
•  Be kind to yourself! Develop a positive way of looking at yourself and talking to yourself. 
• Use affirmations to counter the negative comments you get from the abuser. 
• Allow yourself time for doing things you enjoy. 

• When seeking help for domestic violence, call from a public pay phone or another phone outside the house if possible. In the U.S., you can call 911 for free on most public phones, so know where the closest one is in case of emergency. 
• Avoid cordless telephones. If you’re calling from your home, use a corded phone if you have one, rather than a cordless phone or cell phone. A corded phone is more private, and less easy to tap. Call collect or use a prepaid phone card. 
• Remember that if you use your own home phone or telephone charge card, the phone numbers that you call will be listed on the monthly bill that is sent to your home. Even if you’ve already left by the time the bill arrives, your abuser may be able to track you down by the phone numbers you’ve called for help. 
• Check your cell phone settings. There are cell phone technologies your abuser can use to listen in on your calls or track your location. Your abuser can use your cell phone as a tracking device if it has GPS, is in “silent mode,” or is set to “auto answer.” So consider turning it off when not in use or leaving it behind when fleeing your abuser. 
• Get your own cell phone. Consider purchasing a prepaid cell phone or another cell phone that your abuser doesn’t know about. Some domestic violence shelters offer free cell phones to battered women. Call your local hotline to find out more. 

•  Legal help 
•  Counseling
•  Support groups 
• Services for your children 
• Employment programs 
•  Health-related services 
•  Educational opportunities 
•  Financial assistance 

• Get an unlisted phone number. 
• Use a post office box rather than your home address. Apply to your state’s address confidentiality program, a service that confidentially forwards your mail to your home.
•  Cancel your old bank accounts and credit cards, especially if you shared them with your abuser. 
• When you open new accounts, be sure to use a different bank. 
•  If you’re remaining in the same area, change up your routine. Take a new route to work, avoid places where your abuser might think to locate you, change any appointments he knows about, and find new places to shop and run errands. 
• You should also keep a cell phone on you at all times and be ready to call 911 if you spot your former abuser. 

Labels: abuse, emotional abuse, escaping abuse, gaslighting, getting help, getting out, invalidation, leaving, narcissist, psychological abuse, psychopath, sociopath, verbal abuse