Jessica Anne Pressler: Grieving a Toxic Relationship

Grief has stages, and the stages need room to happen. An ex who keeps filing motions, keeps reappearing, and keeps running things through the children is taking that room away. Jessica Anne Pressler calls grief a luxury for people in high-conflict divorces, and it is the sharpest idea in this episode.

Jessica Anne Pressler is a licensed clinical social worker who has worked as a psychotherapist since 1988, with couples, families and individuals, and who spent sixteen-plus years as a hospice social worker before moving to volunteering. She also spent years conducting court-ordered custody and visitation evaluations. She is not currently in practice, and now writes and works publicly on mental health, with a framework she calls the Traitor Within. She is also open that she has lived this: several toxic relationships, a divorce, and the grief that followed.

She begins by widening what grief means, since most people reserve it for death, and then explains why the end of an abusive relationship produces a version of it that is harder to move through. Trauma bonding, and why intermittent good moments create something that behaves like an addiction. Hoovering, and why it happens even when the other person does not want you back, because control and a reaction will do just as well. The cognitive dissonance that has you writing explanations for behavior you would not accept from anyone else. And the secondary losses that come with any divorce, on top of which someone leaving a toxic marriage is also grieving what they believed it was.

The second half is about getting out from under it. Boundaries, and cutting contact including the second-hand kind through social media. Why she insists on a trauma-informed therapist, having been made to feel like the problem by one who was not. Journaling, rebuilding a life that is not organized around managing another person's mood, and stepping away from anyone still carrying messages back and forth. She introduces the traitor within, the self-sabotaging pattern she traces in her own case to what she watched the women in her family do. Jessica and Lisa also talk about children being used as leverage, using an image from Jessica's father that stayed with her, and about preparing for mediation when the other side is actively working to get a reaction out of you. Both are clear on one point: these relationships do not happen to weak people.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• What grief is, and why the end of a toxic relationship gets grieved differently
• Trauma bonding, and why missing someone who hurt you isn't a character problem
• Hoovering: what it looks like, and why it's about control rather than wanting you back
• Why grief becomes a luxury when someone keeps pulling you back into court
• How to break the bond: boundaries, cutting the feeds, and a trauma-informed therapist
• The traitor within: the self-sabotaging pattern, and where it usually comes from
• Why abusers target capable, empathetic people rather than the other way round
• Why an ex keeps coming after you long after they've moved on

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 What grief actually is, and Jessica's background
3:30 Trauma bonding, and the addictive part of it
6:00 Hoovering, and why it isn't about wanting you back
7:30 Why grief is a luxury when someone keeps pulling you back
10:00 Boundaries, and cutting off every feed
10:30 Finding a therapist who gets it, and being re-injured by one who doesn't
13:00 The traitor within, and where it comes from
16:00 Grieving a healthy ending vs grieving a toxic one
19:00 Losing faith in your judgment, and who abusers actually target
25:00 Supply after the split, and children used as leverage
29:30 Mediation, fear, and getting the voice out of your head

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Jessica Anne Pressler, LCSW: https://www.jessicaannepressler.com/
🔗 Traitor Within: https://www.traitorwithin.com/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.