Ep 237: The Right and Wrong Ways to Heal After Emotional AbuseEp 237: The Right and Wrong Ways to Heal After Emotional Abuse
The Emotional Abuse Recovery Podcast
Allison K. Dagney explains the difference between coping and genuine healing after emotional abuse, highlighting how both harmful and healthy behaviours can mask deeper pain. She shares practical examples and her own story to show how working with subconscious beliefs can reduce triggers and bring more lasting peace.
36:28•6 Oct 2026
Coping vs Healing: Why Your Recovery Still Feels Stuck After Emotional Abuse
Episode Overview
- Coping strategies are useful short term, but relying on them alone can keep survivors stuck in the same emotional patterns.
- Both “negative” coping tools like alcohol and “positive” ones like exercise or meditation can become avoidance if they’re used to escape feelings.
- True healing starts by asking what meaning is being attached to a trigger and what deeper belief is being activated.
- Working with subconscious beliefs can reduce the power of triggers so that reactions are shorter, milder or no longer present.
- Healing is less about how fast someone calms down after being triggered and more about those triggers gradually losing their hold.
“Coping asks, ‘How do I feel better right now?’ but healing asks, ‘Why does this have so much power over me in the first place?’”
How do people cope with the challenges of staying sober and healing after emotional abuse? This episode of The Emotional Abuse Recovery Podcast zooms in on that exact question, with a sharp focus on the difference between simply coping and actually healing. Host Allison K. Dagney speaks directly to women who’ve left toxic or emotionally abusive relationships and feel stuck in an endless loop of triggers, anxiety and self-doubt.
She shares how so many survivors throw themselves into therapy, journalling, exercise, meditation and self-care, yet still feel like one text or social media post can ruin their entire day.
Allison makes a clear distinction between short-term relief and long-term change: “Coping asks, ‘How do I feel better right now?’ but healing asks, ‘Why does this have so much power over me in the first place?’” She talks through everyday examples, from doom scrolling and nightly wine to over-exercising and even using therapy as a way to manage, rather than resolve, deep-seated beliefs.
Her approach centres on working with subconscious beliefs so that triggers lose their grip, rather than constantly building a bigger ‘toolbox’ to get through each emotional spiral. She uses her own story—20 years of emotional abuse, years of weekly therapy, then finally shifting to subconscious work—to show what it can look like when peace becomes the priority and reactions become shorter, softer, or disappear altogether.
The style is conversational, practical and non-judgemental, with plenty of reassurance that coping isn’t wrong, especially in the thick of abuse or post-separation stress. It’s especially helpful for anyone using alcohol, busyness or even “healthy” habits as a crutch and wondering why healing still feels so far away. If you’re tired of just surviving your triggers and want to understand what might be sitting underneath them, could this be the perspective shift you’ve been waiting for?
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