Ep 224: The Things You Don't Expect After Leaving a Toxic RelationshipEp 224: The Things You Don't Expect After Leaving a Toxic Relationship
The Emotional Abuse Recovery Podcast
Focuses on post-separation abuse and the tactics abusive ex-partners use to maintain control after the relationship ends. Shares practical strategies and mindset shifts to help survivors protect their peace and reclaim their power.
40:19•7 Jul 2026
Life After Leaving: Facing Post-Separation Abuse and Taking Your Power Back
Episode Overview
- Post-separation abuse can intensify once an abuser realises they’ve lost direct control.
- Excessive, triggering communication and fake emergencies are common tactics to regain access.
- Using children, finances, and smear campaigns are strategies aimed at punishment and revenge.
- Grey rock responses, strong boundaries, and careful documentation help protect your peace.
- Healing is measured by how much of your life and energy you reclaim, not by whether the ex stops abusing you.
“Your healing is not measured by whether or not your ex stops hurting you.”
Curious about how others manage the shockwaves after leaving a toxic relationship? This episode of The Emotional Abuse Recovery Podcast focuses on what happens when the relationship ends but the abuse doesn’t. Allison K. Dagney, a survivor of over 20 years of emotional abuse and a Rapid Reprogramming™ coach, talks through the messy, often frightening reality of post-separation abuse.
You’ll hear her break down how abusers ramp up control tactics once their partner finally leaves: excessive, triggering texts; fake emergencies; using children as messengers; financial sabotage; smear campaigns; love bombing and hoovering; direct threats; court manipulation; and a flat-out refusal to cooperate over even simple logistics. She explains, "Post-separation abuse is basically exactly what it sounds like.
It's just this ongoing attempt for an abuser to maintain control over you even after the relationship ends." Allison mixes practical examples with her own experiences, like discovering a secret £40,000 equity line taken out against the family home, or reading ten pages of lies written about her and choosing not to be emotionally destroyed by it.
She keeps things real and relatable, using terms like "grey rock" and the idea of you as their "supply" to help make sense of why their behaviour escalates. A key part of the conversation centres on what healing looks like when the abuse continues from afar.
She stresses that "your healing is not measured by whether or not your ex stops hurting you" and focuses instead on boundaries, documentation, emotional detachment, nervous system regulation, and reclaiming your own life and energy. If you’re wondering whether things getting worse means you made the wrong decision, this episode aims to remind you that you’re not alone, you’re not weak, and there are concrete strategies to take your power back.
Could this be the perspective shift you need to feel less alone in what you’re going through?
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