How She Found Herself After Escaping a Narcissistic Marriage: Victoria McCooey #167

Highlights

• Victoria’s early encounters with narcissists (3:51)
• Coping through college (8:46)
• Meeting her husband and the red flags that followed (10:11)
• The shame sets in (12:00) 
• Showing his true colors (14:27)
• The abuse turns physical (24:45)
• Decided she needed to steal her money from him (30:49)
• Finding the courage to break free (37:34)
• The group that helped and inspired her (40:28)
• The healing she’s received from helping others (43:46)
• Changing the future with her three sons (54:09)
• Victoria’s message of hope for listeners (58:18)

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.

Victoria McCooey:

My husband comes down and wants to go get bagels. He’s decided that’s important he’s going to get bagels. So he goes to get the key to the car and it’s not there. So he knows immediately that I’ve taken it because he’s done this to me so many times, and that this is the day. This is like the pimple popped this day. He ransacked the house. He’d done this before, thrown everything everywhere, dumped out my bag looking for the keys, stomped on my cellphone and broke it, took my wallet, breaking things in half. So at one point I go. He has my wallet. I go to grab my wallet back, and now we’re in this tug of war with the wallet, and I came to my senses. It was like, “I’m engaging in this crazy lunatic’s behavior.”

So I let go, which caused him to fall back and I think … I’m walking away. We were in the kitchen. I’m walking away. I think that just sent him over the edge that I had made him fall and he lost his temper and he came up from behind. I don’t even see it happening because I’m walking away, and he grabbed me by the throat and pinned me up against the wall and I blacked out.

Gary Schneeberger:

That violent altercation was just one example, but the last example of the abuse our guest this week, Victoria McCooey, endured in her marriage to her first husband. It left her six-year-old son who was in the room at the time thinking she had been killed, but it also started her down a path of self-discovery and self-care.

Hi. I’m Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. On this week’s episode, McCooey tells Warwick in detail the toll that being married to a narcissist had on her identity as his controlling ways left her feeling unworthy and ashamed, but she also describes how she fought her way back to not only find her value, but to help other abused women find theirs, first through the same nonprofit that aided her, and now as a narcissist divorce coach. She teaches her clients the Reclaim Your Power System she created first for herself to help them find the same freedom she’s living today.

Warwick Fairfax:

Victoria, thank you so much for being on our podcast. I love what you do as a narcissist divorce coach and speaker. I love the program you have, Reclaim Your Power System. What a great name. We have all sorts of crucibles that we discuss with guests, but this whole being married to a narcissist, it seems like it’s an epidemic. I can’t tell you how many friends we have, women that my wife knows who’ve been married to narcissists. It’s almost like it’s this disease that’s just spreading. It’s just crazy. I’ve had personal experience in my family with people who’ve been married to narcissist and some personal experience at some level myself having experienced it from somebody else. So there’s a lot of it out there, but before we get into what you do in your marriage, what was life like for you growing up? What was your family life pre-marriage, pre-trauma, pre-crucible?

Victoria McCooey:

People usually ask for that, but it’s very telling because that was my normal. My parents had a very dysfunctional marriage. There was a lot of control and abusive behavior, and that was my comfort zone. They say you marry your father. I very much married my father.

Warwick Fairfax:

Talk a bit more about that because it just sounds so common, and it’s got to be hard for people to understand. This is obviously very different, but it seems like kids that were abused growing up so often abuse their kids, and I can’t at all understand that. You would think the last thing you would want to do is-

Victoria McCooey:

They would want to be the opposite.

Warwick Fairfax:

I don’t pretend to understand. So just talk about a little bit more about-

Victoria McCooey:

Right. Well, it wasn’t so much abuse of the children as abuse of the whole family dynamic. I’m old. I grew up in the ’60s, so nobody knew about this. We certainly didn’t talk about it. There was no social media or any mainstream information about this. People were private. You didn’t talk about your dirty laundry. I had to assume because I didn’t have anything to tell me otherwise that this is what everybody’s family looked like. I had no idea that mine was so dysfunctional, but there was always yelling, screaming, throwing, not knowing if or when dad was coming home. Just so much dysfunction, so much chaos, so much anxiety.

This is really off the path, but I was diagnosed with a very rare cancer when I was 18 and it’s gone. I’m fine. It was a tumor, it was removed. I was very, very lucky. It was a very rare type of thing, but I have to believe that it was the stress and the anxiety of living in that situation my entire life because our bodies aren’t built to withstand that level of stress.

So as the oldest of two children, I was completely unwanted. My parents were forced to marry because that’s what you … Oh, my gosh. I’ve never said this on any podcast before. I hope my mother’s not ever going to watch this because she’s a very proper Southern woman, but she became pregnant when she was 20 years old and they got married and had a baby, and that was me. It was never what they wanted. My father was a child. He was still in college. I was a burden. I was unwanted. It caused so much … They both thought their lives were ruined because of me. So this enormous amount of anxiety and stress of this child being burdened with feeling like they were never enough, never good enough, could never gain their approval, I honestly believe that that stress caused this crazy, unique cancer to form.

Warwick Fairfax:

That’s about as awful experience as I can imagine to grow up as a child feeling like, “My parents don’t want me. It wasn’t an intentional relationship, it just happened, and I’m a burden, I’m in the way. Maybe I shouldn’t exist,” because how can you have any decent sense of self? It’s going to destroy your self-esteem, your personhood. It almost feels like worse than cancer. What could be worse than cancer, but it feels cancer of a different kind, if you will.

Victoria McCooey:

I am not the only person to have this experience. How many people marry because of this circumstance, and especially way back then? So I’m not alone here. There are millions of me, people who never felt loved or welcomed in their household. So yeah, and these are the women like me that grow up with very low self-esteem. I had to figure out how to people please. It was very different from my two parents. For my father, it was to stay away from him. That was how I could exist with him. For my mother, she was so miserable. She was in this horrible marriage, forced into it, never wanted to be there. She was in her own hell. The way I got affection or attention from her was to entertain her. So I’m entertaining my mother, trying to make her laugh all the time so I get some approval and staying away from the other parent because that’s how I could get approval from him.

Warwick Fairfax:

So talk about school, college. What did you enjoy doing? Did you enjoy academics, sports, the arts? What was it like for you?

Victoria McCooey:

I was an overachiever, and I talk about this freely because all of the people who are attracted to my business, to my coaching are just like me. So we are a very large niche. We are the people who end up in these relationships. As accomplished as I am, I was an overachiever, I made straight As, I got into the best college, I did everything right, but I think it was my coping mechanism. I needed to get away from my parents, so I retreated into my room and I studied just because there wasn’t much else I could do without getting in the way.

That paid off for me in that I became highly educated. I moved away as soon as I could. I went away to college. Then I moved far away. I grew up in the south. I moved to New York for a job and stayed there. Ended up marrying there. So I was athletic, I was on sports teams. Whatever I pursued, I was very competitive. I had to be the best at it.

Warwick Fairfax:

So on the surface, you go to a good college, good job in New York, everything is going great. How did you meet your first husband? How did that all happen?

Victoria McCooey:

In an airport. It was a very chance meeting. We had nothing in common. There was no reason for us to have ever been in the same place at the same time. He was very charming and very handsome and very exciting. He swept me off my feet, wanted to do all kinds of amazing things. We skied, we traveled, we sailed. We had this big life. We did … Things were very, very good for a long time, but the whole time I thought, “Oh, my gosh, he’s going to figure out that I’m not good enough.” So I was people pleasing throughout that entire phase.

There were signs. There were certainly red flags that I chose to ignore because I was so lucky, I thought, to be in this relationship, so I certainly am just going to look the other way, but looking back, the real change happened as soon as I had our first child. We were together. We dated for two or two and a half years, and then we got married and I got pregnant immediately, literally, honeymoon baby. So nine months later, we have our first child. That was when the mask fell. I’m guessing it was because I was in. There was no escaping. I was tied to him forever now.

Warwick Fairfax:

So up until you were pregnant, you said there might have been some little signs, but it sounds like he was a good-looking guy. He’s probably accomplished, charismatic. Were you thinking, “Gosh, I’m pretty lucky. I got a good catch”?

Victoria McCooey:

I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world.

Warwick Fairfax:

That’s amazing. So it didn’t seem obvious. Sometimes, I don’t know, it’s a silly way to put it, but villains, if that’s the right or wrong word, they don’t always come in a black cape, “Hey, I’m a villain. Watch out.” They can be very charming. It’s not that obvious always, if you will.

Victoria McCooey:

Yeah, and I noticed, even back then I was noticing that my friends, people I would introduce him to, either loved him or hated him. There was no middle ground. If they bought into his narrative of who he was, then he charmed them, but if there was any doubt, if they were suspicious of him at all, he turned on them immediately and he was awful to them.

Warwick Fairfax:

That was one red flag when he is awful to some of your friends. It’s like, “What’s that about?” but did you not see the signs that was like, “I feel so bad about myself. I’m lucky to get anyone halfway decent,” kind of thing?

Victoria McCooey:

Exactly. I really thought he was the best thing I could ever have hoped for, that that was way out of my pay grade, I really thought, and he perpetuated that like I was so lucky to have him narrative. I was just always walking on eggshells trying to be perfect, trying to do the right thing, trying to check all of his boxes, and I wanted so badly for him not to leave me. So yeah, I looked away, but that is a product of that low self-esteem and the lack of confidence and the lack of self-worth. I see this as a pattern across the board with all of the people I work with.

Warwick Fairfax:

It seems like you were almost reliving your childhood in a sense. You were thinking, “Mom, dad, I want to be the perfect daughter, the perfect person,” make your mom laugh, entertain her, “How can I entertain boyfriend, fiance, husband?” as you moved on in the relationship because that’s how you grew up with. So were just reliving the same cycle, if you will. Does that make sense?

Victoria McCooey:

You’re right. Absolutely. Then when it became our marriage, it was, “Well, you need to do this. You need to do this. Well, in order to prove yourself to him, you need to do this,” and the asks became larger and larger and more difficult and more illegal, and it went off the rails.

Warwick Fairfax:

A bit like that terrible aphorism, like a lobster boiling, it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s one step, one step, one step and, “I’ve got to please him because he might leave me and it’s a miracle anybody would have me. He’s good-looking. He’s charming. Okay, he has his bad days, but I’m so fortunate to have him,” and the self delusion cycle just keeps going because when humans are broken and damaged as we all are to a degree, it just stops a smart person thinking straight, if that makes sense.

Victoria McCooey:

You’re so good. This is the quickest anyone has gotten to the root of this.

Warwick Fairfax:

Wow. Yeah, as we said off air, I grew up … As listeners know very well, I grew up in a very wealthy family business in Australia, and power and money produce a lot of dysfunction. So I’ve had family members in relationship with narcissists. I’ve had some degree of, a lot, I guess, of personal experience myself. I guess because I have some experience with … I’m no expert, but I have some personal knowledge, put it that way, maybe that’s why. Sorry.

Victoria McCooey:

It does. It’s a textbook. It makes perfect sense. You can totally … I really feel vindicated when you said about the lobster. That is exactly what it’s like. Back then, I was so ashamed of where it had gotten to that I was too embarrassed to confide in anyone. It’s like, “How could someone as smart as I am allow myself to get into this situation?”

Warwick Fairfax:

Well, it’s as simple as saying you were hurt and damaged as a child and that’s why. It’s that simple. It’s not your fault. You put anybody in your situation, 99% of people are going to really struggle. It’s just it’s not your fault. Does that make sense?

Victoria McCooey:

It does to me now, but when you don’t see it, when you’re in it in the forest, you can’t see the trees, right? It was just humiliating. I remember being at … This is when I’m going to cry, being at a parade at this local little town we lived in, and my college roommate was there. She didn’t live there. I guess she was visiting. It was like a resort town. I saw her in the crowd far away, and I went the other way. I went away from her. I haven’t seen her in 10 years because I was too ashamed.

Gary Schneeberger:

I’ll jump in at this point and say I’m part of the team too. I know people who I’m close to who have experienced some of the things that you coach about, Victoria. One of the things that I’ve heard from some of them is on that point that you mentioned of people close to you, the narcissist doesn’t interact well with them. They then come to the woman share some things about that trying to defend their loved one, and that is not usually met with acceptance. That’s not usually met with … It doesn’t necessarily cause problems in the relationship per se or really bombastic ones.

I remember one woman I’m close to saying that at some point her mom kept coming to her and saying, “This isn’t right. That’s not right. You shouldn’t put up with that. You shouldn’t have to put up with that.” Eventually, her mother met with her rebuffs just finally said, “Okay. I’m done talking,” not in an angry way but, “I’m going to let you be.” Is that a common experience? I would think it is.

Victoria McCooey:

Yes, it absolutely is, but more importantly, I think, is that it’s really hard for the victim here to verbalize what it is that’s happening because it happened insidiously over so much time. There wasn’t a day when it just started. It just snowballed in such a slow way that you can’t really put your finger on what the problem is.

Gary Schneeberger:

Right, and that’s the insidiousness of it going back to the lobster in the pot, right? If you ask the lobster in the pot on Tuesday, “Are you hot? Are you being boiled?” he’s going to go, “No. I don’t even know that it’s hot in here,” but over the course-

Victoria McCooey:

“No, it feels warm and comfortable.”

Gary Schneeberger:

Right. Exactly. Exactly, but wait two years, three years, four years, the lobster’s going to have a different point of view as you indeed had a different point of view and your clients do as well.

Victoria McCooey:

I think the great thing is that because I lived this, I didn’t study it, I lived it, I lived it, then I studied it, and then I understood the dynamics of it. Now, I have a unique position to help people who don’t see just like I didn’t see where they are and what’s going on.

Warwick Fairfax:

So I want to get to that, but just so that listeners get, I guess, the full lock of the story. So-

Victoria McCooey:

You’re going to make me do this more?

Warwick Fairfax:

I’m sorry, but it’ll help the listener, I think, understand, I’m afraid, what’s going on and then how you cope with that. So it felt like pretty good in a sense. He was charming, handsome, there were red flags, then you became pregnant. So what happened in the months and years after that when those warning signs became not in the peripheral vision, it was front and center?

Victoria McCooey:

So he became very, very cautious about who saw what was going on inside our house. So now, I wasn’t allowed … Over time, it became not allowed to have anyone over, not to allow anyone in. The requests were always about money. So I continued to have babies. I had a plan. I wanted lots and lots of kids, which I do. I had three children in three and a half years. So boom, boom, boom. I thought I was old. Of course now, I know it wasn’t, but when we got married, I was 30. So I was like, “I got to get going.” So boom, boom, boom, three babies. I was in a fog. I had worked at that point as a freelance writer. So if I didn’t work, I didn’t make money. There was no maternity leave. I was working for myself.

So when I wasn’t able to work during the child birthing part, I didn’t have income, but I would take projects in between as I could, but certainly, my income drastically reduced, but it was never a problem because I was led to belief that he made lots of money and there was never a money problem.

Without getting into too much detail, he owned real estate, he owned properties. So he collected rent from these properties. It was all very gray, not transparent, didn’t really let me into what was going on. So while I wasn’t earning, he paid everything, controlled all the money, and if I had a small project, it was like a drop in the bucket compared to what he was paying for. So he would say, “Oh, let me have that.” I’ll just put it toward happily. I’m not really contributing much.

Once that happened when all of my paychecks went directly to him, I could never undo that again. That set the precedent. So now, I was expected to always give him my paychecks, which continued because his reasoning was, “I’m handling everything. I’m juggling things. Only one person can be in charge here. I just need you to let me figure out what to do with the money.”

Then it became his business upside down. It was a family business, a lot of family discord, all kinds of commotion. His buildings going into receivership, so he wasn’t collecting rents. It was like a whole catastrophe. So what I noticed now is whenever I would push back, there would be a drama.

So I don’t know how much of it is true, but whenever I would say, “Well, I’m earning money. I want to …” Oh, but now there’s drama. Now, something would erupt. That’s when he started pressuring me to sign for lines of credit or loans and I would say, “I can’t afford this,” and he would say, “Well, this is what the family needs you to do because my credit is bad and yours is perfect. So this is what the family needs. You’re not working. This is what you owe us, owe the family to do this. You don’t understand. I owe millions of dollars in real estate. This is a drop in the bucket.”

Then if I pushed back harder, it was, “You’re stupid. You don’t understand business. You’re not a risk-taker. You’ll never be successful. You’re just a pawn. You’re just someone who works for someone else. You’re a nerd. You’re too scared of everything,” whatever he could think of. So of course, I would end up doing it, and then the next one would come and I would try harder not to do it. The more I pushed back, the worse the abuse became.

Warwick Fairfax:

It sounds like there was emotional abuse I’m assuming beyond just finances, just in general. Maybe you make the dinner, quote, unquote, “wrong” or you came home five minutes late or silly, stupid stuff. I’m guessing he’d erupt about that. Was he physically abusive too? How bad did all this stuff get?

Victoria McCooey:

He was never physically abusive until the very end, and that was when that was the line, and that was when I left.

Warwick Fairfax:

So what happened?

Victoria McCooey:

So this is a long story. I’m glad we don’t have that … I’m going to try to make it short.

Warwick Fairfax:

Sure.

Victoria McCooey:

This went on now for, I don’t know, six, seven years of that financial abuse mostly, and honestly, the other abuses weren’t as prevalent. Yes, name calling, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, but he didn’t nitpick on things like that. I see a lot of my clients suffering from … It wasn’t that … Yes, “Oh, you’re fat,” or, “You look fat in that,” or physical things like that, but otherwise, nothing like some of my clients who are really struggling have.

It started when I … The debt, the debt was so big. The debt became bigger and bigger. I could never pay this off. It just was so astronomical. Then I found out that we owed a lot of back taxes for years because his business was very difficult to account, do accounting for. It was buildings and depreciation and amortization and all these properties. He had an accountant that he had always worked with that I never met. All I was was I got some 1099s. I was all so transparent. I would just get my little receipts together, add my 1099s and go here and he would take it to the accountant and then the taxes would come back this thick and he goes, “Sign here,” and I would sign because I can’t figure out what is going on with his buildings.

So every year, that would happen, and it turns out those taxes were never filed. So there was no way for me to know. I didn’t know. They weren’t being filed. So we owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes. I had no idea. I’m on the hook for it as much as he is. I didn’t file. The straw that broke the camel’s back though was, like I said, we had three little children, all boys. I filed a claim for one of my kids, whatever happened, doctors, whatever, and it came back and they said, “Oh, you no longer have this insurance. This policy hasn’t been in effect for six months.” I was like, “What are you talking about?”

So this was a health insurance policy that I had had from a previous job and I was grandfathered into this very sweet deal. They didn’t offer it anymore. They had been very clear that if I canceled it, I could never have it back. So the payments came monthly automatically out of an account, his account that I never saw. When I confronted him, he said, “Oh, I needed the money for something else.”

I’m like, “There’s nothing else that’s more important than this,” and he’s like, “Oh, you’re a nerd. You don’t understand. This is for losers.”

I said, “What if something happened?” and you know I had that cancer, and I was like, “I’m the poster child for you never know what could happen. If my parents hadn’t had health insurance, I would be dead. So this is non-negotiable to me.”

He said, “If something happened, I would just sell a building.” That was always his answer, “I would just sell a building.”

So I said, “I’m not taking no for an answer. We’re getting health insurance.”

So he said, “Well, you figure out how to get it and then let me know how much it is.”

So I do all the research. I figure out I have to join an association and pay for the dues and then I can … All this stuff. So I come to him with all of the information for the best case scenario. It’s going to be way more than we were paying and not as good coverage and everything, but this is the best I can do.

He goes, “Okay. We can do that.”

I’m like, “Great. So give me the money so I can pay these things.”

“Well,” he goes, “I can’t do it this month, but ask me again next month.”

So I go, “Okay.” So I come back the next month, “Can’t do it this month, maybe the next month.” So I go, “Okay. He’s never going to give me the money to pay for the insurance.”

Also, if I went to the grocery store … I’m earning six figures. I’m working from home, taking care of three kids and earning a decent amount of money and I don’t have any access to any of it. So if I want to go to the grocery store, I have to make a list of what I’m going to buy, tell him exactly how much each item costs, and then he’ll go through it and he’ll decide, he’ll veto things he doesn’t think we need, and then he’ll give me that exact amount, and I go to the store with three kids in tow because he was never available for what he called babysitting. They were his kids too.

So I’m at the store with all the kids, they’re throwing everything into the bag and having to take it out. Now I see something that wasn’t on the list that I really need that I forgot about. So now I have to recalculate what can I get rid of because I don’t have a credit card, I don’t have a check. I have nothing else except the exact amount he’s given me. So the stress of going grocery shopping, right?

We live in this small, tiny little resort town. I know everybody in the store. I get to the counter, I’m shaking because I’m scared I added wrong in my head while I’m wrangling three little boys and I’m going to have gone over and I’m going to be humiliated. This was my … Now I know he had to do that to me to keep me so off balance that I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t figure out the finances. I couldn’t figure out what was going on with his business. I couldn’t leave. I was just trying to get through the day.

Warwick Fairfax:

This all culminated in a physical incident that caused you to say, “Enough.”

Victoria McCooey:

So I decide I’ve got to figure this out because this isn’t working. I’m going to have to steal my money from him. I actually went to a therapist. Well, I went to a doctor who told me that … I had headaches, I had backaches. It manifests in all these ways. He said, “I think you need to see a therapist, so you need an antidepressant, but I can’t give it to you unless you do it with this therapist that we work with.” So I start going to this therapist too, I don’t think really helped me, but at least the doctor was able to prescribe this antidepressant for this little period of time I’m going through.

So I get a little bit more clearheaded from that, and I decide that I’m going to steal the next check that comes. It was sizeable. I remember it was 6,000 something dollars. That was a lot of money, and I could get the health insurance with that. I could do everything with that, and he knew it was coming. So I had to tell him that the project had been postponed because he knew exactly when my money was coming. So I had to lie, which I’m not good at.

Then I had to live this double life and go … This is another funny story. Go to the post office box to get the mail every day before he could to see if it had come. The reason we had to use a post office box was because he took the numbers off of our house and remove the mailbox because that way, the process servers had a harder time finding him. All day, every day there were process servers. We couldn’t answer the door. We couldn’t answer the phone. He was running from everyone. If you did answer the door, we had to lie and say he wasn’t there. The stress of all this is crazy.

I get the check. I’m shaking like a leaf, but it’s my money. I’m shaking like a leaf because I’m stealing it. I go and I deposit it into another account at a new bank he doesn’t know about. Now, these are the olden days. I had to wait for it to clear. What I don’t know because I had no idea, and this is how I can help my clients now, you just don’t think about these things, but I gave them my address and they sent a letter saying, “Oh, here’s the schedule of when your funds will be available,” and he gets this. I was so close, so close.

He goes into a rage, ransacks the house, tells me, “You want control of the money? Here, you take all the bills,” and he starts throwing all these things at me. “I’m never giving you another penny. I’m never …” Just the drama, drama, drama, drama. So I try to stay calm. I go the distance. Well, the check clears, but then the money in the account is frozen because he’s taken out a cellphone in my name that I don’t even know about and not paid it. So there’s a lien against my Social Security number that I don’t even know that this is happening, and he’s telling it’s my fault because I’m so stupid, “See, you lost all that money because you’re so stupid.”

So that was pretty much … This is all coming to a head. Then this one night, I was coming back … I used to have to travel into New York City on occasion once or twice a week, sometimes not at all for meetings or whatever. So I’m coming back and it was late. He wouldn’t pick me up from the train. I was being punished. I had to walk home. It was raining. I didn’t have an umbrella. Such a sob story. That night I’m like, “I’m never doing this again. I’m never doing this again.” The car, the one car that we had because the second one had been repossessed, which is another story that he sent me out of the middle of the night to deal with the repo man, the car that we did have was in my name, I paid the bills, I paid for the gas, I paid for everything, and I wasn’t allowed to use it though. He used it. If I needed to go somewhere, I had to use a taxi, borrow a car, use a bike, get the kids around another way.

So I said, “I’m never doing that again. I am taking the key.” There was only one key. So I hid the key and he had hidden keys for me many, many times before, but that night, I hid the key and I’m like, “I’m using my car tomorrow. That’s it. I’m drawing the line.” So he gets up in the morning. I’m sitting there. It’s 8:00 in the morning. I’m doing homework with my littlest one because, of course, I was working the night before and didn’t get home until after bedtime and nothing had gotten done. So I’m trying to help him.

My husband comes down and wants to go get bagels. He’s decided that’s important he’s going to get bagels. So he goes to get the key to the car and it’s not there. So he knows immediately that I’ve taken it because he’s done this to me so many times, and that this is the day. This is like the pimple popped this day. He ransacked the house. He’d done this before, thrown everything everywhere, dumped out my bag looking for the keys, stomped on my cellphone and broke it, took my wallet, breaking things in half.

So at one point I go, he has my wallet, I go to grab my wallet back, and now we’re in this tug of war with the wallet and I came to my senses. It was like, “I’m engaging in this crazy lunatic’s behavior.” So I let go, which caused him to fall back, and I’m walking away. We were in the kitchen. I’m walking away. I think that just sent him over the edge that I had made him fall and he lost his temper and he came up from behind. I don’t even see it happening because I’m walking away. He grabbed me by the throat and pinned me up against a wall, and I blacked out.

Our youngest son was standing right there. He was six at the time. He thought I was dead. I think my husband thought I was dead too for a second. When I came to, we were just eye-to-eye because he let go, and I came to first just face to face like that, and I just calmly walked to the phone and I started dialing for the police. He started crying and the tears. He’s like, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t call,” and he said, “You’ll ruin everything,” I’ll ruin everything.”

Warwick Fairfax:

You’re probably thinking, “Everything’s ruined already. What are you talking about?”

Victoria McCooey:

He can’t take any responsibility, no accountability, I was about to ruin everything because I was calling the police.

Warwick Fairfax:

So that was the day that your life changed. So talk about how you were able to move on from that and care for other women because it felt like you were in this, I don’t know what, poisonous soup or whatever, this prison with barbwire and guards and couldn’t get out, and somehow maybe you dug a tunnel, somehow you got out, somehow you escaped.

Victoria McCooey:

It was so hard. You have that Stockholm syndrome thing. You feel responsible for the abuser and you feel guilty. I went through all of that that people go through. So many times I almost backed down, but thank goodness at that point by then I told my mother what was going on and she was very supportive. She came right away and stayed with me. I was able to get a restraining order while he was … This is another typical, really highlights where his mind was … When the police came, I didn’t know, but they saw the hand print around my throat. So when they walked in, they were like, “What’s going on?” The first thing out of his mouth was, “My wife is crazy. She’s on medication.”

So they separate us and I can see that he’s being asked what happened. I guess they told him they saw the hand print and he said, “Yeah, well, I was pushing her because she was attacking me.” He went to reenact it on the policeman and he put his hand on the policeman’s throat and then he reached for his gun and he said, “Don’t ever touch a police officer,” and then he said again, “I’m just trying to show you what I did,” and he did it again. They just put handcuffs on him and took him at that point.

So the one who was with me said, “You need to go right away and get a restraining order because they’re going to let him right out because it’s a first offense and he’ll come right back here and he’ll kill you. So go get your kids in school and then go get a restraining order.” I remember even at that point I said, “I can’t.” They wanted me to sign the police report. I said, “I can’t sign it. He’ll kill me. He’ll kill me if I do that.” So it didn’t matter. They had to make the arrest because they saw the evidence of domestic violence.

So he was arrested, but during his arraignment, the district attorney said, “How much money can he get his hands on?” I was like, “None. None,” and they were like, “Okay.” So they asked for a bail to be sent at $5,000, and he was so arrogant and unhinged to the judge. The judge raised his bail to 50,000.

Warwick Fairfax:

That’s pretty stupid, I got to say.

Victoria McCooey:

Yeah. So I have such a debt of gratitude to this agency called the Coalition Against Domestic Violence here in New York. It’s all over the country. It’s called different things though, but here it’s called the Coalition Against Domestic Violence. So when I went to that court house in that small town, they had an outpost there, and as soon as I said I wanted to get a restraining order against my husband, they were called up, they came swooping in and they guided me through the whole process. They told me things like, “You have to go get temporary custody of your children because as soon as he gets out, he’s going to try to take them,” all these, which is what I do now. I’m doing what they did for me for my clients, but they were so helpful.

So they guided me through the process. It was very long and very hard. Divorce is hard, but divorcing a narcissist is in a category all by itself. It was a long time ago so laws were different. People didn’t know about this as much. He was able to manipulate the system so much more than somebody could do now, but it was a long hard battle. Our divorce wasn’t final for six years.

Warwick Fairfax:

It took six years from that night when he could have killed you till the divorce.

Victoria McCooey:

I almost lost custody. I almost lost custody of my children.

Warwick Fairfax:

Because he was-

Victoria McCooey:

Because they said, “They’re boys and they need their father.”

Warwick Fairfax:

Well, not this kind of father. What kind of role model is this for … The last role model you need for your boys.

Victoria McCooey:

Right, but on the outside, the community loved him. He was the soccer coach and the lacrosse coach and he did all this wonderful stuff, but it was all for his ego. He was like the athlete and everyone thought he was so terrific. So he was able to convince them that I was crazy, I was the problem, I was unhinged. At that point in my life, I had been compromised, and this is horrible. Part of this is that these women, typically women, are abused and they’re compromised and they’re at their lowest point and they are not presenting in a good way because they haven’t had a chance to heal. This is when they have to persuade a court that they’re the better parent.

Warwick Fairfax:

Right, and they don’t have that capacity at that point. So how did you find a way to heal and use that to heal others because you had a lifetime of, well, in some ways abuse of damaged self-esteem? It’s like, how do you grow a rainforest in a desert? It feels like impossible. It feels like it’ll take hundreds of years of a positive climate change if that’s possible. It felt like almost climbing Mount Everest to have a sense of self-esteem. If you don’t have any sense of self-esteem yourself, how in the world can you have enough capacity to help anybody else? It’s like when you’re in a plane, you got to breathe oxygen before you can stick it on your kids. So how did you manage to come back and have enough self-esteem to care for others?

Victoria McCooey:

It took a really long time for me to heal because I didn’t know about the resources. It was a different time. Things weren’t available like they are today. I was just still trying to get through the day, struggling to raise these three kids with a person who’s not co-parenting but counter-parenting, trying to sabotage everything I tried to do. The divorce took six years, but we were still in and out of court for another nine years after that because he was trying to change the child support commitment constantly or change custody constantly or I was having to go chase him down for child support constantly. So we were always in court. I was in court for 15 or 16 years nonstop. So I couldn’t heal until really that was over.

Then I went on a journey, and then I really just decided that I wanted to do all the things that I had never had a chance to do before. My children were in a good place. He was out of our lives. I was remarried. I had a wonderful new husband and stepdaughters and everything was falling into place. I just started consuming so much information about transformation, about healing, about spiritual journeys.

I did it all. I did everything. I had a job at that point where I was commuting in and out of the city. So at one point, I actually moved out of our bedroom, my new husband’s and my bedroom because I was up all night. I was listening to things, I was writing journals, I was reading, and I didn’t want to keep him up anymore. So for two or three months, I just did anything I could get my hands on until I found the things that really worked. I crafted this process for me. It wasn’t to start a business, it was doing it for me. I had this huge metamorphosis. I became a stronger, wiser, more capable, confident person. It didn’t happen overnight. It took a long time.

That was when I started doing work for the Coalition Against Domestic Violence. So I wanted to give back. So I had been talking on stages for them, telling my story, showing teacher groups or PTA meet groups or whatever I was a victim of domestic violence, “It’s not always who you think it’s going to be. It could be anybody here,” to open their minds to that, and that was great, but I told them I really want to be in the trenches. I want to help victims.

So there was this program where they trained people who had a social work background to go to the hospital when somebody presented with a domestic violence incident, and I begged them to let me do it and they said I didn’t have the background, I would have to go get all this certification. So finally, I bugged them enough they let me do it for years. I bugged them. So I finally was able to go into this training and it was a year long training. So this was during my whole new transformational period.

I was allowed to finally go to the hospital to coach victims who presented from a domestic violence incident and help open their minds to how they might be able to leave or that they might not want to stay. Some of them didn’t think they could leave. Most of them don’t think they can leave. So telling them about resources available, but also changing their mindset.

Gary Schneeberger:

You have described in this conversation what it felt like, in arduous detail sometimes, what it felt like to be manipulated, controlled, the toll that took on you both as you were growing up and in your marriage. You’ve pivoted now. You’ve transformed to use your word where you are helping people who have experienced the same thing. We have heard you talk about what it felt like to be on the other side of that transformation. Talk a little bit about when you got that chance, when you counseled your first woman, when she got it, when she realized she could leave, she could survive if she did. How did that transform your heart? How did that feel when you received that gift?

Victoria McCooey:

The first time that happened and the first few times was in the hospital when I was doing this volunteer work, where I had people often see a light bulb go off in them, that there’s somebody who understands. It’s so specific, this abuse, and so insidious, like we said, that you can’t really describe it. So for them to be able to hear from a person in the hospital that, “I know. I was on the receiving end of that. I get it. I know how you got here. I know what that feels like. I know you’re ashamed and you don’t need to be. It’s not your fault,” so the connection I was able to make was everything. It wasn’t just some nurse or some person who didn’t really … I was a victim too, and they could really open up to me and talk to me and relax about telling me these specific things. They didn’t feel judged. They didn’t feel ashamed. I was able to be totally vulnerable, which feels good when you’re opening yourself up so somebody else can heal.

Warwick Fairfax:

So as you were helping that first woman and women afterwards, did you feel that there was almost drops of healing in you that as you use your pain to help others? I sometimes use the phrase drops of grace. Did you feel that didn’t make all the pain disappear, but it felt a little better that day?

Victoria McCooey:

Absolutely because when I start telling them what happened to me, they were like, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that happened to you.” I’m like, “I’m not.” I’m not sorry at all because look at the gift it gave me. It gave me a purpose. It gave me a reason to be here. It gave me the ability to help on a level that almost nobody else can. How awesome for me? So during this, I would say year long process of me just holding up in that office sleeping, well, not sleeping, being up all night going to work every day, I was like, “Okay.” I was on call because you could be on call whenever. I was on call all weekend, every weekend and some nights during the week even. So I’m in the hospital or reading or doing whatever nonstop and I’m going to this job that is not lighting me up anymore, my writing job. This is not for me anymore. So I had to figure out how to pivot, how to make a career out of doing what I was passionate about.

Warwick Fairfax:

That’s what you’re doing now with your coaching and Reclaim Your Power System. As the years have gone by, do you feel like you’ve been able to, I don’t want to say rebuild your self-esteem because you probably never had it, it was eradicated from birth pretty much. There was no foundation, but do you feel like you’ve come to a point where you can say, “I am worthy. I’m not perfect because none of us are perfect. We have our flaws, but from my spiritual power, I believe everybody’s a child of God and is worth loving depending on your religious and spiritual paradigm”? I think most would agree with that concept. Have you got to the point where you can say, “Vic McCooey is worthy, not perfect, but is worthy. I deserve to be loved and I’m a worthwhile human being”? Have you got to that point would you say?

Victoria McCooey:

If you ask my family, they will tell you I’ve gone to the other extreme. Yes, and it feels great. I have great boundaries in place, maybe sometimes to a fault, but the pendulum goes all the way to the other side before you can figure out where the middle is. I’m very confident. Even my husband, my new husband was one of the first to notice. He’s like, “You’re like a different person.”

When I came out of that year long experience, he’s like, “You hold yourself taller, straighter. You’ve always got this smile on your face. You’re happy to be alive.” Just like I came out of my shell. I just was able to feel really, really good that I was really contributing in such a worthwhile way. I felt so good about myself and I still do, and I’m not sorry about what happened in the least because I really see it as a gift.

Warwick Fairfax:

It’s almost like who you were designed to be came out. I don’t believe there’s some grand plan that we should all suffer. One can debate about good versus evil and spiritual warfare and a lot of religions do, but you became the person you were always designed to be, which I think is a wonderful thing.

Victoria McCooey:

What a fun experience, this journey. I found the person … Some people never find out who they’re supposed to be. So I’m so thankful that I got here. However it took to get here, I got here and lucky me.

Warwick Fairfax:

Let me ask you one maybe final question. With your three boys, I’m guessing your husband may have grown up in some abusive background and maybe it went on the generations beforehand. We don’t need to get into the details, but with your boys, you have a chance to change history, and I’m sure you think about that. “I want to raise my boys to be good husbands, partners, to be different,” has to be on your mind. Do you feel like you’re in a position where that cycle can be broken?

Victoria McCooey:

Absolutely. They’re adults now. None of them are married yet, but they have had serious relationships, and yes, I’m very proud of the difference that this generation has made.

Warwick Fairfax:

That means a lot. I know, obviously, we grow extremely differently, but growing up in a very wealthy family business, power and money causes lots of dysfunctions, “Am I worth something or is it just the money and the dynasty and all that?” My kids are all adults too, 31 into 20s, and they’re all hardworking, humble, contributors, have a faith, and they’re not damaged by the whole money and various other things that I grew up with. They have no idea how blessed they are to have a mother like they have. She’s not a saint, but close. She’s so giving and kind. I won the lottery. They won the lottery having a mother like that. So I feel like in some cycles of dysfunction have been broken and they’re not perfect, but I just take immense pleasure out of generations of dysfunction has been broken in a sense, and you’ve got to feel some of that with your boys. So anyway, that probably makes some degree of sense, I guess.

Victoria McCooey:

I am so blessed and now I have two daughters. So we’re like a Brady Bunch family. So I got all those kids I always wanted.

Gary Schneeberger:

This is the time in the show where I customarily say something about the captain turning on the fasten seatbelt. I’m not going to say that this time. Here’s why. About 40 minutes ago in this conversation, Victoria, you mentioned that you met your first husband, the narcissist, in an airport. I’m going to avoid the entire area of air travel-

Warwick Fairfax:

There you go.

Gary Schneeberger:

… out of respect for you and your truly moving story. We’re just going to say we’re getting to the point where we’re going to wrap up this episode. Before we do that though, I would be extraordinarily remiss if I did not give you the opportunity to tell listeners who’ve heard you unpack this very moving and meaningful story, if I didn’t give you the chance to tell them where they can find you online and how they can engage your services if they do indeed need to. How can they do that?

Victoria McCooey:

Yes, victoriamccooey.com is my website, and on that website, you can book a strategy session with me. There’s also a free gift. So right on the homepage, you’ll see, you can read a little bit about me, you can relive a little bit of that story. You can also download a free gift, a PDF about five things every woman needs to know in divorcing a narcissist. So if you’re interested in working with me, I have several different coaching programs depending on what your needs are. So the only way really to figure out what is best for you and how we should work together is to book an initial strategy session with me. So this is a call where I will coach you on the call, but also, we’ll figure out if we’re a good fit and where in my programs you would fit best.

Gary Schneeberger:

Warwick, as always, the founder of this whole thing, you get the last question or two or however many you want.

Warwick Fairfax:

So Victoria, thank you again. It’s an honor to hear your story. The question, believe it or not, we do often ask at the end is going to sound, unfortunately, too familiar with what you do, but there could well be people, there could well be women who today may feel like their worst day. They may feel like they’re in the bottom of the pit, that there is no hope, they’re worth nothing, it’s all their fault, all of the crazy paradigms that you are all too familiar with. What would a word of hope be for a woman that’s in that position today may feel about as bad as any day they can remember? What would a word of hope be for that woman?

Victoria McCooey:

This is a tough one. The trick is to, of course, reclaim your power, build back your self-esteem, but it’s easier said than done. When you are in that place where the abuse is just coming at you and you’re at your lowest point like that, it’s about getting in your head, about putting up a shield even if you can imagine that there’s a shield around you where it’s really hard to heal when you’re under attack. So if you can find a way to shut that out even temporarily so that you can start this healing process.

Yes, everybody gets very caught up in going into these Facebook groups or chats or about the abuse and the narcissism. That is going to validate you that, yes, that’s a thing, but it’s not going to heal you. Start consuming more positive content. Start consuming more positive, inspirational, aspirational things, motivational messaging so that you get the willpower and the ambition and the hope that you can get through this. So I think that’s the biggest message I would have, to get out of the negative messaging and into more positive messaging.

Gary Schneeberger:

I’ve been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word on an important subject has been spoken, and that last word was just spoken by our guest, Victoria McCooey.

Thank you, listener, for spending this time with us, and remember, we understand, you heard Warwick talk a little bit about his crucible, you heard Victoria really unpack her crucible and how she moved beyond it, we know it’s tough, but we also know the truth that Victoria talked about. She’s the third guest in a row who’s used this word gift to talk about the most trying times she went through. If she can do that, if Warwick can do that, if other guests can do that, you can do that too because what happens is as you learn the lessons of your crucible and you apply them and you walk forward in them, the destination that it leads you to is the most rewarding of your life because that destination is a life of significance.

If you enjoyed this episode, learned something from it, we invite you to engage more deeply with those of us at Beyond the Crucible. Visit our website, beyondthecrucible.com, to explore a plethora of offerings to help you transform what’s been broken into breakthrough. A great place to start, our free online assessment, which will help you pinpoint where you are on your journey beyond your crucible and to chart a course forward. See you next week.