12 Oct 2026
Ep 207: Co-Parenting With a Narcissist: When Leaving Isn’t the End w/ Sybil Cummin
Most people assume that once you leave an abusive relationship, the abuse is over. You got out. You did the hard thing. Now you get to start healing.
But what happens when you share children with that person?
What happens when you cannot go no contact? When the courts require you to keep communicating? When parenting schedules, finances and the family court system itself become a brand new avenue for power and control?
For a lot of survivors, leaving is not the end of the abuse. It is the beginning of a very different chapter of it.
I sat down with Sybil Cummin for this week’s episode. Sybil is a licensed professional counselor who started her career as a play therapist, working almost entirely with children. She has testified in court for years. She went into this work believing what most of us believe: that everyone in the room, the judges, the evaluators, the attorneys, the court-appointed professionals, is on Team Kid.
What she learned is that the system is not always on Team Kid.
In most states, she told me, a parent’s rights will trump what is in a child’s best interest almost every time. Even when there is evidence of abuse. Even when there is coercive control in the home. A parent has the right to access their child, and it falls on the protective parent to prove, document and fight for every single protection.
And the person who abused you knows that.
They know a loophole in the parenting plan means another trip back to court. They know a late child support payment, followed by “oh, I didn’t know it was supposed to go through this way,” costs them nothing and costs you a filing fee, an attorney and another week of your nervous system on high alert. They know that joint decision making means they can quietly say no to the dentist, or to therapy, for the kid who needs it most.
I am not sharing this to scare you. I am sharing it because I have watched too many people walk out of a toxic relationship thinking the hard part was over, and then feel like they were losing their minds when it was not. If no one tells you the truth, you will blame yourself for it. You are not crazy. You are not imagining it. This is a pattern, and it has a name: post-separation abuse.
So I asked Sybil the question I most wanted answered. How does someone heal when the thing they are healing from never really ends?
She called it the million dollar question. Then she said something I have not stopped thinking about. So many of the moms she works with carry this belief: it is impossible to heal while I am still stuck in this. My child is four. I have fourteen more years.
Can you heal anyway? Absolutely.
Sybil talks about felt safety: the times, places and people where you are safe to feel safe. Your nervous system has been doing its only job, keeping you alive, and anything connected to that person registers as danger. Healing is not waiting for the danger to end. It is giving your body small moments of proof that right now, in this moment, you are safe. In the shower. Getting dressed. Thirty seconds in the bathroom.
And the piece she says matters most is relational safety. You cannot heal from relationship trauma outside of safe relationships. The survivors she has worked with who had even one safe person healed years faster than the ones who were alone.
Which brings me to you, if you are the friend, the sister, the coworker someone finally opens up to. Please do not say, “Wow, I can’t believe that. He’s always been so nice.” What happens behind closed doors is designed to be unbelievable. Instead, try: “Tell me more. I may not understand, but I want to try.” And: “I believe you.”
We also talked about the kids. Not only the ones whose pain is loud, but the ones Sybil worries about most. The helpful ones. The straight-A ones. The kids with a smile on their face and no problems, who have learned to read every mood in the house and become whatever keeps things calm. Those are the kids we are missing, because those are not the ones getting therapy.
You were not weak for staying, and you are not weak for struggling now. Your body adapted to keep you safe. It just has not gotten the memo yet that it is allowed to rest.
Go listen to this conversation, especially if this is your story or the story of someone you love. Sybil runs an online community for moms walking through exactly this, Rising Beyond Power and Control, at risingbeyondpc.com, and she hosts The Rising Beyond Podcast.
And if someone you used to be close to has slowly disappeared, reach out. It does not have to be about any of this. Just: “Hey, I’ve been thinking about you. Can we grab a coffee?” Isolation is part of the playbook. Connection is part of the way out.
If you want to understand how your own history is still showing up in your body today, my free HURRT Self-Assessment takes about eight minutes: flipyourmindset.com/hurrt.
If you are in danger, please call 911. In the US, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788.
We cannot heal what we do not understand.
Stacey
About this week’s guest
Sybil Cummin, MA, LPC, ACS
Sybil is a licensed professional counselor and approved clinical supervisor based in Arvada, Colorado. She has spent more than a decade working with victims and survivors of coercive control and domestic violence, including the children living inside these family systems. She began her career as a play therapist, has testified in family court for years, and is actively involved in family court reform efforts in Colorado.
She is the founder of Rising Beyond Power and Control, an online community that supports moms navigating post-separation abuse, shared parenting and the family court system, and the host of The Rising Beyond Podcast. She also trains therapists and mental health professionals to recognize and work with domestic violence and coercive control, and is the author of And Then We Do Harm, a book on rethinking clinical interventions for survivors.
Connect with Sybil:
* Community for protective moms: risingbeyondpc.com (https://risingbeyondpc.com/)
* Podcast: The Rising Beyond Podcast, wherever you listen
* Training for mental health professionals: beyondpowerandcontrol.com (https://beyondpowerandcontrol.com/)
* Instagram: @risingbeyondpc (https://www.instagram.com/risingbeyondpc)
* LinkedIn: Sybil Cummin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sybil-cummin-lpc-acs-50537791)
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