6 Tips For Healing From Abuse

After leaving my violent partner, I stood in a therapist’s office and announced, “You have 2 weeks to heal me.” A twitch of a smile showed at the corners of her lips. With compassion in her eyes, she said, “Then we’d better get started.” She understood my drive to get over the pain, fear, and memories so I could begin to live again.

Of course, healing isn’t a 2-week fix, it takes time. There are many knots to untangle, much to unlearn, relearn and newly learn. It requires patience with oneself, determination, and, most often, the guidance of a therapist trained to work with victims of abuse. 

Here are a few important tips I learned on my road to recovery.

1) No Dating Until the Larger Part of Healing Has Occurred

I attended a rebuilding group. At the first meeting, the facilitator announced, “You are a bad date.” He urged us to agree to refrain from dating for one year. That felt like a long time to me. I was looking for a White Knight to ride in and make my life perfect. To heal we must become our own White Knights. Survivors need time to focus on themselves and learn that they can make it on their own.

We should not hurry into a new relationship because the highs and lows of the cycle of abuse (see above tab) have reinforced a deep connection called Trauma Bonding—a biological craving for an intensity that no normal relationship provides. It is hard for a survivor to relate to others because the lack of fervor feels like a lack of interest. Those who have not laid a healthy foundation often unwittingly seek that intensity and find themselves with another violent partner. The good news is, this biological craving fades with time, and a normal relationship will be satisfying. 

2) Develop Ways to Block the Urge to Return

Trauma Bonding triggers an urge to return to the violent partner. To avoid the bungee-bounce back into the relationship, accept the truth of who your partner is. 

Write in your journal:

• Detail your partner’s every violent and unkind behavior. When feeling vulnerable, let this list remind you why you left and should not return.
• Detail what you liked about your partner. Look over the list and ask yourself if he truly is that person or if this is his false persona (the one that he used to entice and hold you into the relationship)? Are the traits listed who you hoped he would become instead of who he is? 

Toss out these false beliefs:

• The devil I know is better than the devil I don’t know.
• No one else will want me.
• I can’t make it on my own.

You can have a new partner who is kind and loving. You can also build a wonderful life for yourself with no partner. 

Be aware of the mind games your controller plays. After you leave, your ex-partner may put on that fake Mr. or Ms. Wonderful mask to lure you back. Develop healthy ways to respond without being caught up in their drama. Some of these games are:

• Making promises they never keep—“I’m going into batterers’ treatment”, “I’ll quit drinking and doing drugs.”
• Professing that they cannot make it without you—“I need your help to heal.”
• Professing to be a new person—“I got religion.”
• Blaming others—“They don’t understand our love.” “It’s us against the world.”

Be prepared for these and many others. Step out of the drama as you watch it play out. Alert the police if your ex makes suicidal threats or threats against you. Contact the police if your ex stalks you. Keep a record of any unwanted contact (text messages, email, phone calls).

3) Replace Your Unhealthy Self-Talk with the Truth

Survivors often say, “I don’t know what healthy thinking sounds like anymore.” After years of abuse, we internalized the negative and twisted messages we received. We learned we could not trust our own opinions or feelings.

Writing But He’ll Change, helped me identify my own and other survivors’ false beliefs and replace them with truths. Statements such as "I am a stupid worthless nothing" are countered with, "I am intelligent. I have gifts and abilities in a variety of different areas. I am alive for a purpose. I am unique and needed by the world."

Write affirmations on cards and read them often to replace false beliefs with the truth.

4) Take Care of Yourself

If you have an addiction, seek specialized help. Addictions served to numb your ability to feel pain. These coping mechanisms will throw up a wall against healing. You have to walk through the pain to get to the other side. A therapist can guide you and stand with you during this process. Support groups are also a blessing.

Move yourself up on the People Who Deserve Happiness list. Treat yourself to a lavender-scented bubble bath. Use your good towels. Nourish your body with healthy foods. Eat off of your best china. Value yourself as you would your dearest friend. Get active. Join a gym or take a yoga class.

Rediscover your gifts and abilities. What makes your heart sing? What activities did you enjoy before this relationship? Get involved in them. Also, try new activities.

Set goals. Start with short-term goals to build your confidence. Set one long-term goal.

Make friends with your gut. It will guide you and help you make good decisions. Remember: Mistakes are not bad, they teach you and redirect you.

5) Surround Yourself With Supportive People

While it is important to talk about what happened, share only with those who have earned the right to hear your story. These are people who know how to listen, will believe you, and respect your privacy. Anyone who tells you to just get over it does not belong in this group.

6) Breathe and Focus on the Good Stuff

Over time, the remnants of this relationship will loosen and fall away leaving only important life lessons. We no longer label ourselves as victims or survivors, we become people who spent a small portion of their lives in a violent relationship. There is much more to us than this one period of time. We are a collection of life experiences—each equally important. 

Becoming who we are meant to be, takes a lifetime. It is up to us to decide who that is and what kind of a life we want. Then go out and make it happen.

Rebuilding Ourselves and Our Lives After Abuse

One Facebook friend asked me if there was a book that would speak to her now that she’s left and accepted the fact that that relationship is over. I couldn’t think of any at the time. Today, as I stood before my office bookcase, scanning the shelf stuffed with books on what abuse is and how to leave, It dawned on me that I should be looking at the shelf above this one. It holds almost all the books that helped me build the skills to have the life I now have. I thought I’d share some of these books and their lessons with you this year. 

One of the first books I read was The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Its author, Stephen Covey, shares how we can develop the skills to move from dependence to independence to interdependence. Each is an important stepping stone to success in our professional and personal lives. 

Having left our abusive relationship, we are now technically independent. But, do we have the skills to take care of ourselves and our families? Possibly not. To survive we had lived in reactive mode, pushed around by someone else’s whim, not allowed to move forward, to grow. We came out with a mangled view of ourselves and obliterated our self-esteem. 

Covey tells us to be proactive. Look ahead. Where do we want to go professionally and personally? He calls it beginning with the end in mind. Even if you aren’t sure what you want to do, pick an end result. (i.e. I want to work in a medical clinic.) You can always adjust it as you move forward, uncovering your passion, developing your skills, and growing stronger. Determine what steps it will take to get to that end. (i.e. Approach friends in that field for advice. Apply for any job in a clinic. Take classes.) Then set your eyes on that future. Recognize the negative self-talk in your head is left over from the controlling people that were in your life. Tell the voice to shut up.

As you take control you will become truly independent - inner-directed and your sense of worth determined by you, not what others think of you or that defeatist voice from your past.

From independence, Covey suggests you work toward interdependence.

“Interdependence is a far more mature, more advanced concept. If I am physically interdependent, I am self-reliant and capable, but I also realize that you and I working together can accomplish far more than, even at my best, I could accomplish alone. If I am emotionally interdependent, I derive a great sense of worth within myself, but I also recognize the need for love, for giving, and for receiving love from others. If I am intellectually interdependent, I realize that I need the best thinking of other people to join with my own.”

Though we join with others in our professional or personal life, we remain strong enough to speak up for what we believe. We cooperate, truly listen to the other's viewpoints and try to understand their positions then negotiate a win/win solution. One that feels like a compromise, not a loss. 

Covey suggests you write a mission statement. I talked about the importance of a mission statement in a previous post (October 2013). If you haven’t done one, this is a perfect time to do it.

Covey’s book is also where I learned about emotional bank accounts (EBAs). If you’ve read my book But He’ll Change, you will be familiar with this term. In every relationship, we have an EBA where we make deposits through kindness, courtesy, honesty, and keeping commitments. Accounts are drained by cruel treatment, thoughtlessness, no regard for commitments, and any kind of abuse. Of course, we now know to let go of relationships that drain our EBA.

Another important lesson for me was to stop hacking at the branches and go to the root of a problem. This is best described by the saying, “give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” Too often we go for the quick-temporary fix and do not deal with the root of a problem. Covey taught me to look beyond the immediate relief choice and deal with the real problem.

The bottom line is to live your life with integrity. Respect yourself and others. Isn’t that the basic lesson of life - Do onto others as you would have them do onto you. Covey gives you steps to get there.

Don't Miss The Good Stuff

The holidays are here. Some of us may have mixed emotions, leftover memories of Christmases past haunting us. Often, it’s a time when single people pine for a relationship that mirrors the romantic movies and TV diamond commercials. It’s easy to go numb and walk through the holiday with blinders on hoping to not feel the pain. But, going numb means we also miss the joy of the season. 

While part of us looks forward to Christmas, another part remembers how our hopes and dreams were shattered in the past. Joyous times ended in violence. Soon, the holidays were something to dread, not anticipate. If any of that dread is still lurking in you, write in your journal, talk to a friend or therapist, and clean out the hurtful feelings that are suffocating your happiness. 

It’s common to have our self-talk convince us to block out joy as if that will prevent us from being disappointed or devastated should things go wrong. It won’t. Both disappointment and happiness come as a part of life. Focusing on the bad does not exempt us from it nor does it lessen the pain. What it does, is keep joy at bay. Should our self-talk warn us to expect the worst, let’s tell it to shut up and replace those thoughts with a list of the blessings in our lives. Rosemary Clooney, in the movie White Christmas, had it right when she sang, “When I’m worried and I can’t sleep, I count my blessings instead of sheep.”  Stay present and see the beauty around you. Make a list of the good things in your life. Count your blessings.

Holidays can make your life seem empty without a partner. You feel that you can’t be happy without that “someone” in your life who makes you feel special. That’s the downer voice, again. It’s not true. Yes, the transition time between relationships often stinks - that voice inside you whispers that you’ll never find anyone who will love you, and you’ll never have a happy life. At this time of year, it’s easy to rush into a relationship hoping that this new person is the right one. Often they aren’t, and you come away devastated and the downer voice inside is reinforced. Right now, accept that you don’t have a partner and that’s okay. There are people around you that love you. Embrace that love and let it fill you. Instead of putting off living, create a wonderful holiday for yourself and others. Revel in your children’s excitement. Invite loved ones over to decorate and make cookies, feed the hungry, ring the bell, join a choir, and go caroling. Get involved in causes that mean something to you. Make each day special -- play. You may feel hollow inside at first but soon Christmas joy will fill you. Don’t put your life on hold. Create a new life that’s filled with the people and things you love. Stay aware and breathe in the holiday spirit.

You are a blessing in my life. Thank you for your notes, comments, and reviews of my book.

Merry Christmas Dear Ones.

Rebuilding Your Self-esteem

Self-esteem -- the element that underpins all the work and decisions you must make as you recover from a controlling relationship. While you’re focusing on getting housing, a job, and meeting the kid’s emotional and physical needs, it’s easy to put off caring for yourself. It feels like there is no energy left to nurture you. Even if you knew how. And you don’t need one more thing to “work” on. Chances are it’s been a long time since you even considered your needs.

You may feel like I did, exhausted, empty, and tired of taking care of everyone and everything. I wanted someone to come to save me for a change. Someone that would hold me, tell me everything would be okay, and fix my life because I didn’t believe I could do it. A knight in shining armor looks really attractive at this time. However, too often those “knights” are abusers in disguise. If we look like a weak target, they swoop right in. We have to get healthy to attract a healthy partner. 

 You have to be the one who repairs your self-esteem. Bummer, right? Others can encourage you and tell you what’s right about you, but you have to internalize it. The process you are, or will be, going through is what is going to make the needed changes. You will be amazed at yourself; how you can stand on your own two feet, fight your own battles and demand to be treated with respect- and get it. 

Most of us start out in the Wuss Section -- feeling weak and helpless. That’s why therapy, with someone trained in DV issues, is important. Group therapy is a great way to go. If you haven’t connected with a group, you should. It helps to be with others who are asking questions you hadn’t thought to ask. Some will be a little ahead of you in the healing process so they will throw some light on your pathway. All will be empathic and can be trusted with your story. Having your feelings validated starts the rebuilding process. You are not crazy. You deserve respect. He was/is a horse’s ass. 

Outside of therapy, you need to learn how to nurture yourself. You deserve time for yourself. Claiming time for yourself among the myriad of chores is difficult but not impossible if you accept that you are worth caring for. If you want to be a good mom, employee, or friend, you have to take care of yourself first. Here are some of the things that I found useful:

Change your attitude about yourself:

• Talk to yourself like you’d talk to your dearest friend. Stop the inner critic in its tracks and change to affirming and encouraging language.
• Stop calling yourself stupid. Mistakes happen, that doesn’t make you stupid it makes you human. See mistakes as “learning experiences.”
• Speak the truth about your good qualities. No more discounting yourself to anyone, especially to yourself. 
• Learn to ask for what you want. If you don’t know what you want, choose something small to start with and ask for it.
• Speak your truth firmly and kindly, even if it makes you uncomfortable. With time it will feel empowering.

Recognize and celebrate what is right in your life. 

• Start a gratitude journal. Write down a few things that you are grateful for each day.
• Pay attention to the things in your life that make you happy. Repeat them as often as possible.
• Celebrate every pocket of joy that comes along. Hold on to it as long as you can. Don’t let the “what ifs” derail your joy -- that negative self-talk saying the rug is about to be pulled out from under you.
• Take a mental picture of the precious moments in life. Savor them and at night when you get into bed run a slide show through your mind.
• Carry a notebook. When someone says something nice about you, write it down. 

Nurture yourself:

• Use your good dishes and towels. You deserve them.
• Take a bubble bath with candles, and a glass of wine or juice in a pretty goblet.
• Let the cleaning wait. Do an activity you enjoy.
• Reread your gratitude journal and the nice comments collected in your notebook.
• Create a spot for your treasures -- Items that have meaning to you -- shells from the beach, cards you’ve received, pictures, and sayings that encourage you. Visit them, and touch them often.
• Learn to meditate/pray. Spend a few minutes a day remembering that some being/something bigger than you deeply loves and values you.
• Look into your own eyes and say, "I love you."

Manage your time so that you are doing most of the things that energize you:

• Say, “I’ll have to get back to you with my response” instead of an immediate “Yes” when someone makes a request. Then take time to decide if you truly want to participate. If you lose a friend because you said no, they weren’t your friend in the beginning.
• “Be fair with others, but then keep after them until they’re fair with you” Alan Alda. If they aren’t fair, let the friendship go.
• Helping someone else should never hurt you. It’s okay to say, “I’ve done all I am able to do. Sorry, I can’t help you any further.” Everyone has their own journey. We have to let them travel it. Carrying them down their pathway will keep them from learning their intended lessons.

Decisions become easier when you've regained your self-confidence which grows from good self-esteem. 

What activities have helped you rebuild your self-esteem?

Tip For Moving On: Write a Mission Statement

When all your boundaries have been violated, it’s hard to set new ones, let alone, know what reasonable boundaries look like. When you’ve lived for a number of years by someone else's rules, it’s hard to know what your own “rules” are. When you’ve jumped to respond to others needs ahead of, or in spite of, your own, you forget that you even matter. These are only a few of the unhealthy things we take with us as we leave a violent relationship.

Writing a mission statement can help you reevaluate and determine the direction you want to go. It can awakened your ability to stop and listen to your inner spirit, that little voice inside that says, “This doesn’t feel right,” or “I’ve always wanted to  _____.”

A mission statement is your personal constitution. An expression of your vision and values. Written down, it becomes you road map and touchstone to what is important to you.  It may start out as a few vague lines, but with time, you will clarify your vision and make adjustments.

It will take some serious thought and time to develop as you think through your priorities and clarify your goals. It’s important that you write them out. Then you can begin aligning your behavior with your statement. Decisions become easier. Does this go along with my mission statement or against it? Acting on your values may feel uncomfortable at first (especially if, like me, people-pleasing has been a problem for you, or you’ve not been allowed to express your true feelings.) However, you will feel a sense of pride that you are taking control of your future. 

As you start, plan to:

• Keep it simple. Go for 3-4 sentences at first. 
• Keep it positive. “I will speak the truth with respect and kindness.” Not “I won’t let people tell me with to think.”
• Include goals for your personal growth. (i.e. spend time reading, in nature, school.)
• Include goals for your family life, and
• Goals for yourself as an employee.

When I began to work on mine, I knew that I wanted to be and kind and confident woman. I was shaky in what kind of a job I wanted, but did know I could keep putting one foot in front of the other and watch for opportunities. 

I asked myself-- what is important to me as a woman, mother, worker, friend, and potential partner? What did I want to change about the way I was living?

Being a people-pleaser caused a myriad of problems. To put and end to this trait, my mission statement started with: Have integrity by speaking my truth firmly and with kindness. This felt very uncomfortable in the beginning. With time it became easier.

At first I wasn’t sure what my truth actually was. So, I pledged that instead of responding with an immediate “Yes” when asked to do something, I would say “I’ll get back to you,” or “Let me think about it.” This allowed me to take time to check my schedule, get quiet and listen to my spirit. No more overloading my schedule or doing something I wasn’t enthused about, then later, feeling angry and resentful.

Another part of speaking my truth was to stop biting my tongue when I didn’t agree with others. I promised myself that I would take a deep breath and express my opinion without criticizing other’s for theirs. It also meant I’d removed myself from situations or relationships that did not align with my values. (Yep, this may cost friendships, but it opens the door for new friends whose values are similar to yours.)

For too long, I had put everyone else ahead of me. I needed to learn how to nurture myself. While I knew that sometimes other’s needs would trump mine (i.e. a child in need of stitches,) this should not be the norm. I included; Take time for myself by nourishing my body and spirit with time alone, healthy food, exercise, yoga, meditation. I blocked off time on my calendar and held to it no matter what request came my way. The most important promises we can keep are those we make to ourselves. To break one of those is a betrayal of self that damages our self-esteem.

When I wrote the original version of my mission statement, I had children at home. The statement included; Keep my children the priority in my life by giving them my time, attention and providing a safe home. This meant I was very careful who I allowed into our lives and apartment.

When it came to being a friend, it was important to me to Laugh with my friends often, meet them where they are emotionally, and do more listening than talking.

Once on paper, you have a starting point. As you grow into your vision you will continue to refine and expand it. Best of all, you will boost your self-esteem and self-confidence by living in alignment with your intentions. Remember to be kind to yourself as you stretch some new and unused muscles.

Search for Mission Statements if you’d like to see an array of templates and suggestions. Or go to www.franklincovey.com/msb where you can build one by filling in the blanks. 

If you are willing to share your experience, click on the comment link below or stop over on my Facebook page and let us know what worked for you as you built your personal mission statement.