I enjoy my life – really I do, but believe me, it wasn’t always this way.

# A guest post by Lisa Phillips as a part of the How Real People Bust Out a series of guest contributors sharing their journey’s.
Ten years ago, the company I was employed by in the UK offered me a position as an auditor working out in Australia and I jumped at the chance.   I had been lucky enough to visit Australia on several occasions and relished the opportunity to set up home and work in Sydney.
I jumped straight into my new role excitedly, loving every minute of being part of a new culture.    However, after 6 months, things started to change.   My previously supportive Manager started to turn against me, questioning every thing I did and undermining me in front of other people.   He would even follow me to the ladies loo and stand outside until I came out!   I often felt intimidated with his constant put downs and blatant lies about me to other people.   He even gave me a written warning one day for being an hour late arriving at the NZ office – even though I could prove that my flight had been delayed.

To be honest, I was stressed up to the eyeballs and did not know which way to turn.   Fortunately, the UK head office discovered what was going on and thankfully sent me home on stress leave while they investigated the situation.   It was during this time that I decided to see a Life Coach to get some support.  I enjoyed the process so much that I decided to change careers and retrain as a Life Coach and NLP Practioner. I needed cash to retrain so ended up asking the UK company to give me a redundancy package – the money all helped in enabling me to set up my own Amazing Coaching business!
Several years after setting up my business, I met Rob. At first, Rob seemed such a great guy.  However, several months in to the relationship, things started to change.  Robs behaviour turned from being romantic and caring to being an angry, jealous and controlling man.  He would openly verbally abuse me and threw me down the stairs several times.  The longer I stayed in this relationship, the more it chipped away at my self esteem and left me feeling insecure, miserable and confused.    I actually left 5 times in total before I stayed away for good – each time he would beg me to come back or stalk me with phone calls and text messages.  He would even turn up outside my office crying out for another chance.
This relationship left me drained and exhausted and despite getting external support – I just couldn’t seem to keep away – I felt like I was going mad!  In the end, I realised that I had to stop focussing on getting Rob to change, and start to focus on my own wellbeing. I set myself daily action steps to build up my shattered self esteem.   Each day, I would do something different such as delving into my negative beliefs about love and relationships, practising positive affirmations and generally following my own coaching advice!   My aim was to love myself enough to walk away from this relationship with my head up high.   Each day I grew stronger and started to care about my own emotional wellbeing more – until finally, one momentous day, I just walked away never to return.  It was really that easy now that I loved myself enough to only settle for healthy relationships.

Thankfully I have learned some valuable lessons in both these experiences and now realise how my negative beliefs about myself were attracting these bullies into my life.  Fortunately, three years later I am far more assertive, have good boundaries in place and would no longer tolerate toxic people in my life.  Life just is so much smoother when you learn to look after yourself.
Using the daily steps I created to escape from my abusive relationship, I now coach other abuse victims and I am also writing a book on the process.    I also have my own radio show (Spiritual and Irritable) and have recently interviewed abuse experts Patricia Evans and Beverly Engel, who have also appeared on Oprah!
I can now look back at my past and be thankful that I have come out the other side with increased self worth and confidence.  I truly believe that had I not endured the bullying etc, I would never have had the opportunity to re-train as a Life Coach and help other people step out of abuse and into love!