I am a domestic abuse survivor and am working through all my trauma with an amazing therapist. I’ve been with my current partner 2 years, I have 1 son and he has 1 daughter. I’ve recently been through an awful time with my ex husband and his new partner who is a child abuser and recently had her kids removed by social services. I’m just about recovering from that and now my partners ex wife has started trying to change custody arrangements etc with no discussion or negotiation and a new arrangement has been forced on us that impacts our life massively. I’m not going to the ins and outs because it’s not important. This post is more about the impact on me as the situation is making me so incredibly anxious to the point that if I even hear her name my heart starts racing and I start shaking wondering what fresh hell she is going to bring now. With the help of the therapist we’ve worked out that this is affecting me so badly because it’s triggering trauma around the coercive control I experienced previously. It feels like I have no control over my life anymore and someone else can just alter the material of it significantly and there is nothing I can do. She is an absolute chaos merchant and if/when we manage to resolve this problem it will be something else and I don’t know how to keep doing this for another 14 years until she’s grown. I love my partner and my step child and we are going along with it because the most important thing Is seeing her as much as possible. I just wondered if any one had any helpful advice on how I can cope with this type of thing in the future without feeling so broken.