What Emotional Abuse Teaches You

 

What do you really learn from emotional abuse?  Usually the first thing you learn is the wrong thing; specifically that it’s all your fault.  While there are vitally important things that you are much slower to learn – not least that the reason why your partner behaves so badly because he is emotionally abusive. It […]

Are You Worried About This, Too?

Are you someone who worries – a LOT?  If you do, it’s not helping you.  On the other hand, for anyone who’s ever been in an emotionally abusive relationship worrying goes with the territory.
In my time I could out-worry pretty well anyone on the planet – except perhaps another emotionally abused woman.  We’ve all earned […]

The 7 Signs Of An Abusive Relationship

How do you know when you’re in an emotionally abusive relationship?  Most likely, you don’t,- for the longest long time.  All you do know is that something is terribly wrong.  Unfortunately, nobody has ever taught you to recognise the 7 tell-tale signs of an abusive relationship.
Over time you become more confused , hurt and unhappy  […]

Verbal Abuse – do you even recognise it?

Verbal abuse does untold harm – and yet it largely passes unnoticed: you only have to think of that old saying: “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” That was something my father – who was no slouch when it came to using words that, allegedly, never hurt – […]

How To Defuse Emotionally Abusive People

How to defuse emotionally abusive people is one of the questions I get asked a lot. If you have an emotionally abusive partner, the likelihood is that you have been trained to take responsibility for his behavior.  Of course, this doesn’t just apply to an emotionally abusive partner, it is the pattern of all emotional […]

What are you telling them?

 
The woman I was talking with was strong, vocal, out there. She was, she said, a BIG personality, absolutely NOT a push-over for an emotionally abusive partner.  Rather, she was someone ‘who intimidated the crap out of men’.  That was a problem for her.  It wasn’t so much that men ran for the hills when she […]

“What was he thinking?”

 
They both asked the same question, within minutes of meeting me – two women who had never met me, or each other before:  “What was he thinking?”
The man in question was not their emotionally abusive partner, but my lovely partner and his response to my kitchen fire of a couple of weeks ago.
What they actually […]

My Victory Over Emotional Abuse

 

It’s been another week of celebrating how far I’ve come along my recovery journey from being an archetypal emotional abuse sufferer. I’d like to share it with you because, as ever, it’s not just about me. It’s about you, too.
Anything I can do, I know you can do. In your own way, certainly, but every […]

The Olive Leaf Stopping You Recover From Emotional Abuse

Did you know, it’s often small things that are stopping you recover from emotional abuse?
Today I finally said, “No more.” Not to my emotionally abusive ex-husband.  That stopped many years ago.  But to my emotionally abusive sibling.
You see, like a lot of women, I had been well trained in emotional abuse long before I married […]

How Hard Can It Be To Recover From Emotional Abuse?

How hard can it be to recover from emotional abuse?  If you listen to all the people standing in the wings – friends, family, counsellors, therapists, and even casual acquaintances  – it shouldn’t be that hard. If you just do what they tell you to do, and feel the way they tell you to feel, […]