Taking back control and rising above
“When I look back now, the signs are so clear. Even from our very first conversation.”
The beginning of a new relationship can be like moving through fog. It’s hard to see too far in front of you, to see just a few details. It feels like floating. But when the clouds blow away, the view is sharp and painfully clear.
From Cherie’s* first hang with Paul, she had doubts but she didn’t listen to her intuition or act on those doubts. Three years later, Paul had taken nearly everything and pushed her nearly as far as she could go.
“I was on the absolute brink and suicidal. I had already accepted that I would die like this.”
In the beginning
Cherie says she’s a people pleaser by nature. A professional woman with a full-time job and career, she lived alone in her flat with her beloved dog. On the outside, her life looked normal and calm. She had just ended a relationship and was living on her own for the first time in awhile when she met Paul.
“He seemed so down on his luck and I wanted to be there to help him. Of course, he was testing me right from the start.”
The second time Cherie and Paul hung out was the first time he started pushing her boundaries. She says he was watching to see how she would react to his behaviour.
“We were out for a long drive and I went into a public bathroom at the beach. When I got back in the car I smelled weed. I was only gone for a minute or two, but when I asked Paul if he had smoked, he said he hadn’t. I knew it was a lie, but I let it go. I don’t handle confrontation well and I felt awkward, it being our second time together. This was a test, I know now. He wanted to see how I handled his lie.”
After that day Paul moved quickly. He shifted into Cherie’s flat and the relationship started its downward spiral into coercive control and onto emotional and mental control and then onto physical and sexual abuse.
“He moved in without much conversation. He told me he had nowhere else to go.”
When he first started to push small boundaries, Cherie didn’t want to challenge him. She had low self-esteem and didn’t want seem pushy. But she let him continue to get away with these behaviours and he started becoming more difficult. First it was about money.
“Because he didn’t work, he started spending my money. I worked full-time at a good job and suddenly my money became our money. From there, he started lying all the time and the gaslighting started.”
Paul used to question how Cherie spent every dollar. The control stopped her going out. Photo: Pexels.
Financial control
Paul’s control of her finances started with questioning how she used her money.
“Anytime I went out I had to come home and explain if I spent any bit of money, even if I bought a $5 coffee. Eventually I started not going out at all to avoid explaining if I’d spent money.”
The couple both used various drugs, Cherie recreationally used marijuana on occasion and less frequently used MDMA. Paul was a more frequent user of marijuana and other intensive substances. Toward the end of their relationship he was using methamphetamine regularly. The drugs were paid for out of Cherie’s money.
“He got mad at me when I didn’t want to give him money for drugs. And then when I gave in, he got mad at me when we ran out of money. He was always mad at me and he found reasons to be mad at me. During this time he was physically angry, though he didn’t harm me bodily. He yelled, threw things, give me the silent treatment, all kinds of emotional blackmail that you know is still going to end in an explosion and him being mad at me. All of these behaviours put so much pressure on me. I started acting differently just to try to not make him mad.”
Cherie says she started becoming isolated from family and friends. Sometimes Paul told her she couldn’t see or talk to them and other times she knew he would be mad if she saw them, so she decided it wasn’t worth it to spend time with them.
“I knew he’d be in such a foul mood if I went out with friends or talk to my family that I often didn’t bother.”
Turn toward violence
Paul’s manipulative and violent behaviour was also part of the couple’s sex life. Cherie says sex with Paul had violent tendencies from the start, including her waking up with him on top of her. She says she often felt pressured and sometimes he used fear to get sex. She says Paul raped her on several occasions after she told him she didn’t want to have sex and once she says he raped her after he drugged her.
And yet Cherie struggled to leave. “He made me feel like I was nothing and no one. I couldn’t trust other people and accept that I deserved more. I was emotionally empty. The feeling of control I had over a situation that was really bad was better, to me at that time, than the unknown. I was terrified of the unknown.”
The violence only grew worse throughout their relationship. Police came to the flat several times after violent incidents and Cherie was also taken to hospital in an ambulance.
During the first half of 2020, Cherie said she found the courage to ‘technically split’ from Paul. That wasn’t the end, however, as far as Paul was concerned.
“We technically weren’t living together,” Cherie says, “but he came and went as he pleased at my flat. He continued to use violence and threats to make me let him in. He used my dog to control my actions. At this time we were still seeing each other regularly.”
Double life
During the day, Cherie went to work and did her job. At night, she’d go home and would “enter back into my nightmare.”
Cherie had started showing up to work with obvious signs of distress. She had bruises on her body and she says she displayed behaviour changes that were noticed.
“One night Paul broke into my house, stole, then lost my dog. I was meant to be at a co-worker’s house for a work event and arrived late, visibly upset, but didn’t explain why. In the days after, people noticed on Facebook that my dog had been found and I had to admit what had happened. Shortly after that night, Matiu, the work colleague at who’s house the event was held, approached me.
“Matiu started to talk me. He got me to open up, slowly and over time, about my situation. He didn’t push me. He never judged me or questioned my choices. He never tried to come and take me out of the situation at my flat when I rang him in distress. Instead, he let me stay at his house or he took me to the hospital if I needed to go. He was just there. It was a long time of being there, but I learned to trust him and that was the start of finding myself again.”
The night Matiu took Cherie to the hospital was the night Paul drugged and raped her. This event gave Cherie the courage to agree to let Matiu confide in a specialised family harm worker, Geoff, whom they both knew.
During the day, Cherie had support from her employer through her boss and Matiu. She would also talk with Geoff during workdays as well. They helped her put safety plans in place and helped her slowly remove herself from the relationship.
“I had tremendous help from work. They accommodated me to work offsite when I had physical injuries to keep them hidden from others. They allowed me to talk to Geoff during work hours. They took me off of face-to-face work with clients so I didn’t have to be involved with people just in case I was triggered. They were amazing how they put their arms around me and cared for me.
“At this time my dual life was at its peak. I was also dissociated, suicidal, and in-and-out of hospital. I was scared, tired, and sad. At work I tried to present as ‘normal’ and I did the same with family and friends. I used drugs to cope because I didn’t know what else to do. I had no identity and I was struggling financially. I was embarrassed, ashamed, and felt so much guilt.”
During the day, Cherie went to work and did her job. At night, she’d go home and would “enter back into my nightmare.” Photo: Pexels.
Learning to RISE up
Eventually, at Geoff’s recommendation, Cherie started meeting with Joelene ‘Jo’ Whitfield at RISE during work hours too.
“When I first met Jo all I remember was being ‘frozen.’ I didn’t have words, I couldn’t talk about my experiences, I was unable to even face the possibility of life being any different. I had already accepted that until I died, this was my life.”
Cherie says when she started seeing Joelene she was still spending time with Paul. “We were broken up as far as I was concerned but that was really the time when he started tightening his grip.”
Paul had no idea that Cherie was talking to Matiu, staying with him sometimes, or getting help from him. He didn’t know about Geoff or Joelene either. What he did know is that Cherie wasn’t home at times and this caused him to act out even more violently.
He started hunting for Cherie more when he couldn’t find her. He spent more time at her flat, sometimes stealing her dog to use as leverage to access her. He followed her when she left for work and when she went home from work. He started sending people to her parents’ home in Christchurch when he couldn’t find her at home.
“That was absolutely terrifying,” Cherie says.
One day when Cherie was at work, Paul was waiting outside for her with a piece of wood with nails hammered into it.
“Paul’s friend called my work to warn me and told the person who answered the phone at my work that he had a weapon. My workplace went into lockdown from this and my boss called the Police. They came, Paul saw them arrive and he drove away. I went to the Police station for awhile afterwards and they told me they knew about him and had reviewed the records of our past incidents. They told me they believed he was the kind of person who would kill me if I didn’t do something.”
Cherie had a friend with her at the Police station who got very upset when she heard the Police say this to Cherie. “I was at a very low point then, ready to die. But I remembered what they said.”
Continuing her work with Joelene and staying up with Geoff and Matiu, Cherie eventually left her flat and moved entirely. That was the time, she says, when she ‘properly cut contact.’
Working with Joelene has been life changing, Cherie says.
“I had never discussed my past abuse with anyone. Jo helped me over a full year learn new coping mechanisms, improve my mental health, and put me on the road toward healing. It was transformative.”
Joelene also helped Cherie end her drug use and work to uncover prior abuse and harm that dated back to her childhood.
RISE’s work in the field of trauma is unique to the region. The organisation has several specialised family violence clinicians who provide long-term therapeutic support to explore past and present traumatic life experiences that affect someone’s wellbeing today. As with all of RISE’s work, the first step is to feel safe and settled and to increase the person’s capacity for emotional regulation. RISE does this through weekly individual sessions that are targeted and move at the client’s pace.
And so Joelene and Cherie worked at Cherie’s pace, which involved less face-to-face meetings and more written dialogue. That’s because Cherie had and still has trouble thinking about or recounting her experiences in a linear way. She is more comfortable writing, and Joelene followed suit.
“Often I would struggle to bring things up during our weekly face-to-face sessions,” Cherie says. “So what I did was to email Jo outside of those meetings when something happened or when I wanted to talk about something specific. That way the information I wanted to share with Jo could be shared even though I couldn’t physically say the words out loud when we met. Jo read and responded to my emails outside of our designated time and she never made anything feel like extra work or a hassle.”
Joelene says that impacts from trauma are as complex as the methods she and her fellow clinicians need to use to support healing and growth.
“Processing our experiences, thoughts and emotions can take many forms and traditional ‘talk therapy’ approaches do not work for everyone,” she says. “The individuals themselves know best what their needs are and it’s important we listen and respond. Cherie knew what approach would work for her and did the work. She is the hero of her own story and it was a privilege to walk alongside her for a small part of her journey.”
Cherie says she cannot say enough about what Joelene has done for her.
“She was not just ‘a worker doing her job.’ I truly believe that this type of work is her purpose. I have never met someone as good at their job (any job) as she is. I don’t think she will ever understand the impact she made on me.”
What Cherie learned at RISE has given her the strength to move forward, even if there are hiccups that bring her back into the painful past. Photo: Pexels.
A new beginning
It’s two years since Cherie finished her time with RISE and Joelene. She now lives outside of Nelson Tasman and has started anew. She is grateful for the time she had with Joelene and knows that she was able to learn to trust again with the slow, patient support of all her friends and colleagues.
“Matiu and Geoff are two of my closest friends, I’m still in touch with them all the time. I visit when I’m in Nelson and I talk regularly to both of them.”
She’s in a new relationship with a man who is “more than I could have ever dreamed.” She says he works with her when triggers arise and he’s patient and kind. “I didn’t know you could be treated this well!”
The first year after she left Nelson Tasman she progressed in her career and was able to pay off the debts Paul left her. It has led her to be able to change careers and pursue her dream job and she couldn’t be happier, she says.
But trauma never fully goes away and Cherie knows this. In fact, she had an incident about a year ago where she felt she had to reach out to Joelene.
“Although I had come a long way, it was a very triggering experience that took me back emotionally,” she says. “I was completely shut down. Before any real danger occurred, I was able to reach out to Jo who immediately responded and helped me reach out to my people, including Geoff. She also made sure that specific day before Geoff could intervene that I had a plan to get home safely.”
What Cherie learned at RISE has given her the strength to move forward, even if there are hiccups that bring her back into the painful past.
“Jo truly saved my life. The things she taught me, her as a person, everything. We are truly blessed to have access to people like Jo in this field. Without her, I can guarantee you, I would not be here to tell my story.”
*All names in this story are pseudonyms to protect the identities of people involved.