Sara sat in the restaurant with tears trickling down her cheek, while an abusive partner ranted on about her Making Impossible Demands on him.

When she described the scene, I remembered how the same thing had happened to me (more than once, I’m sorry to say) and how devastated I’d felt.

Have you hung your head, in a restaurant, to hide the tears your partner disregarded?

Sara asked me:

“How could he be so inhuman? How could he watch me cry, and not say something to comfort me?”

I wondered how best to break it to her… CLICK HERE

The question Sara was asking was not a helpful one. It was never going to help her to let go, and move on.

Being nice is NOT part of any abuser’s long-term job description. Showing consideration for your partner’s feelings is definitely not part of an abuser’s long-term job description.

She knew that.

But she didn’t feel it.

She was hurting too much.

It’s easy to be blinded by the pain, and the yearning for love and affection.

A more useful question would have been:

“Why am I sitting here, fighting back this flood of tears, and misery, and frustration?”

Why indeed?

What kept her at that table?

What really keeps all of us bowing our heads and taking an abuser’s heartless treatment?

What is it about us?

What is it about us that allowed the situation to reach that point?

We do it, I believe, because, early on, we acquired the Wound of Invisibility.

Most likely, as children, we learned that we didn’t matter. Our feelings did not count – or did not count enough.

Our needs were unimportant.

Our hopes and desires were considered irrelevant.

We might as well have been screaming from behind a soundproofed glass wall – actually, that’s more or less what we were doing.

But nobody bothered to look and listen…

We learnt that our distress went unseen and unheard.

When we found a partner, we hoped it would be different.

It wasn’t.

We continued to be crippled by the wound of invisibility.

We continued to believe that our feelings, needs, and desires did not matter enough to act on.

We did not see ourselves at the centre of our world.

We certainly did not see ourselves as equal partners in our relationship.

How on earth could we have seen ourselves as equal partners? We were invisible.

In our abusive partner, we found someone who shared that vision of our invisibility.

When you stop to think about it, it was bound to happen.

You see, we get NOT what we desire, but what we’re prepared to accept. If you’ve been programmed to be invisible, that’s all you know.

That’s why you’ll settle for invisibility.

If you are not prepared to settle for misery, bad treatment, and emotional starvation anymore, you have to stop accepting invisibility.

Life changes when you start to see yourself at the centre of your own world. (And, yes, you can be at the centre of your own world. That’s not selfishness, that’s natural justice. Every person has their own world: tthey get to be at the centre of theirs, you get to be at the centre of yours. Simple. Nobody loses out. The only way anyone loses out is when you start saying: “Here’s my world. If you want it, do take it, please. Put yourself at the heart of it. No need to worry about me. Provided I can cling on to the perimeter of my world by one finger nail, I’ll be fine..”)

It’s an incredibly hard way to live.

When you stop being invisible, you’ll be amazed how much fun life becomes.

You can see yourself.

Other people can see you – maybe for the first time.

When you become visible – to yourself – other people have to see you.

When you start to treat yourself with respect, other people will treat you with respect, also.

It only works.

Invisibility may be a wound you have suffered all your life, without even being aware of it – until now.

Now, you have a choice.

If you’re sick and tired of being invisible, I invite you to find out how to heal that wound

as well as the other 6 Wounds all abused women suffer.

Trust me, you’re worth it from the moment you start to believe “I’m Worth It”.

CLICK HERE to find out more