- Pay attention to what you tell yourself. If you want to recover from emotional abuse, but you’re telling yourself your emotionally abusive relationship has been so awful, and you’re so damaged you’ll probably never get over it, then you’re not doing yourself any good at all. You MUST learn how to stop that.
- Don’t listen to what your emotionally (ex-)abusive husband tells you. He’s never been slow to offer you his unconsidered opinion, and he’s not going to stop now, is he? He’ll make dark prognostications about your future, he’ll tell you It was all your fault, he’ll say he still loves you and you could still have a good life together. 50 Shades of Garbage! The more you listen, the crazier you’ll start to feel.
- Ignore fair-weather friends and community members. These are the tiresome people who don’t know your emotionally abusive partner the way you know him, but still feel free to tell you what a wonderful person they imagine he is. (Not that they have the dubious delight of waking up every day next to his snarling face.) They may also be the people who take it upon themselves to tell you that your marriage should be sacred. Ultimately, they have their own personal, or religious agenda. It’s very easy for them to tell you what to do. It’s not their happiness and their quality of life that are at stake.
- Ignore the urgings of your hungry heart. You know the ones; those squishy, sinking, “but-I-still-love-him” feelings. An emotionally abusive partner is an A1 creep, and you know it. What you feel is NOT love. It’s co-dependency. That is NOT healthy for you.
- If you must worry, worry about the right things. Worrying about how your children will be affected by relationship break-up is always a worry. But it’s probably not the most important one, in reality. Your children cannot help but witness how destructive the emotionally abusive relationship is between their two parents. They WILL suffer from that: their suffering, when they have to witness – daily – an emotionally abusive relationship is guaranteed. If you separate, sure it won’t be a walk in the park but… they’re in with a much better chance of having a happy mother, and a happy home environment.
- Cut yourself some slack. Your emotionally abusive husband has trained you to worry about everything. Living your life in a state of chronic anxiety does you no good at all. You don’t have to heal yesterday, or even today. But you do have to recover from emotional abuse. Learning how to be kind to yourself will pay dividends in the long run. Punishing yourself never has, and it’s not going to start now.
- Choose to be with people who care about you. Most every emotionally abused woman I’ve ever worked with has an impressive collection of fair-weather friends, hangers-on, and takers. You may regard these people as your dear friends. But they don’t treat you with the love and consideration that a true friend deserves. If they can’t be caring and supportive of you, without trying to foist their own agenda on you, these people are not friends. At best, they are fellow-travellers. Ditch them, so you can make space in your life for better quality people.
- Take more care of yourself. That means do some exercise, make the effort to eat properly, make sure you look and feel good. That’s all good stuff. Above all, nurture the inner woman. I don’t know what does it for you. But I do know that there are many simple things that most women enjoy that can be done on a daily basis, to give you some – necessary – pleasure: like taking time out in a coffee bar, or having a bubble bath, or sitting in the sunlight….
- Celebrate your wins. Every emotionally abused woman I have ever met who was struggling has fixated on her losses and failures. Not helpful. However, they never spent time consciously looking at what they were doing well. But you know what? Even in the most chaotic life, there are always areas where you are doing really well. It does NOT pay to obsess about what’s not working. Instead, celebrate everything that is functioning – starting from the fact that you are still living, to the best of your ability, by your values, of care, love, and respect.
- Get Help. How many drowning people refuse the lifebuoy, or the life raft on the grounds that they shouldn’t be struggling, and shouldn’t be seen to be struggling? It doesn’t happen, does it? SO, what’s with the notion that you should be able to do your recovery on your own? No, you shouldn’t. And more to the point, you can’t. It makes no sense. You can struggle, and get nowhere. Worse, you can slide back into that toxic relationship with your old abuser, or live in fear of ending up in another bad relationship with a Mr Nasty clone. You really don’t want that. Get the problem resolved and get your life back. You can only gain by it.
Annie Kaszina, international Emotional Abuse Recovery specialist and award-winning author of 3 books designed to help women recognise and heal from toxic relationships so that they can build healthy, lasting relationships with the perfect partner for them, blogs about all aspects of abuse, understanding Narcissists and how to avoid them and building strong self-worth. To receive Annie’s blog direct to your Inbox just leave your details here.
The 5 Simple Steps to Healing from Narcissistic Abuse
Over the next 5 days, I'll send you some lessons and tips that I've found have really helped women to heal from narcissistic abuse. Starting with the basics.