Emotional abuse recovery was never intended to be easy.  That was the master-plan of the person – who took you into that mess in the first place. In reality, a weird unspoken contract occurred.  Your emotionally abusive partner may well have promised to rescue, love and make you feel good about yourself. In reality, all the deal was really about was making him feel better about himself.

Emotional abuse recovery hinges on breaking the patterns of belief and behavior that an abuser taught you. Until you can do that, nothing really changes. For as long as you continue to play the game by your abuser’s rules, you will continue to lose out.

So, here are the 10 tips I wish that I had known when I was starting my journey of emotional abuse recovery.  

1      Stop blaming yourself for everything.

It can’t possibly all be your fault. Make it a rule to only ever blame yourself for one thing per day – and preferably choose something small and ‘fluffy’ while you’re about it: e.g. “I just smudged my lipstick!” Everything else will just have to be put in a queue for the next available day.

   2     Laugh a bit.

If you’re an emotionally abused woman, you have a massive laughter deficit from your time in an emotionally abusive relationship. In the interests of your health, you need to laugh more. Laughter is pretty close to being ‘the best revenge’.

   3     Start looking for what you like about yourself.

Your mind is a funny old thing; just because it’s yours, it doesn’t mean it knows everything. You feed it a lot of horrible, negative stuff; show it a good time for a change. Tell it a few good things about you. Surprise it.

   4     Do some research; find out what YOU like doing –

that is, doing for yourself. It’s not just enough to like watching your children laugh. Yes, that’s nice, and may warm the cockles of your heart, but it doesn’t help you know who you are as a person.

   5     Give your emotionally abusive partner a silly name.

Don’t bother trying to do that to his face – Mr Toxic-Temper-Tantrums probably won’t take it too kindly. But, inside your own head, find a name for him that makes you smile. If you’re struggling, start with Mr I’m-So-Wonderful, or Mr Full-Diaper, of Herr Humorless, and find out what works for you. Hint: it beats referring to him as “my husband/partner”, or whatever his first name is.

   6     Rehashing the past serves no useful purpose, so DON’T.

If your emotionally abusive partner hadn’t been an out and out horror, you wouldn’t be reading this now; you’d probably still be massaging his ego. But he’s in training for the World Nastiness Championship 2017. You might as well accept it. Pretty much anything you can do, including unblocking a sink, or pairing socks, will be a lot more useful than rehashing the past.

   7     Practise saying “No”.

Being an emotionally abused woman means you’ve said a lot of “Yeses” in your time, either to keep the peace, or because you were worried that people wouldn’t like you otherwise. This means you have amassed a LOT of proof that “Yes” is not a magic wand to make your life better. “No” is a much more useful word. You’ll soon see who only ever hung around you for your “Yeses” and you’ll start to attract a better class of person.

   8     Do NOT dive headlong into dating or the next relationship.

Until you know who you are, and you have done a fair bit of your emotional abuse recovery work, you will be a relationship liability. You need to know that for as long as you are still listening to “Radio Regret” you’ll be transmitting a message, on a very high frequency, that will attract creeps, bad boys, abusers, philanderers, addicts and other nightmares to you. Don’t. Just, DON’T.

   9     Don’t expect other people to understand what you’ve been through.

Most people have this weird thing about them that means that you only have to try to enlist their compassion for them to turn dismissive on you.  You only have to try to get them to understand where you’re coming from on your emotional abuse recovery journey for them to go into incomprehension and superiority. (Phrases they might use, include,“How could you be so stupid?” “Can’t you just pull yourself together and get on with it?” It’s been 3 days/weeks/months now.”  “What is wrong with you?” “I could have told you it wouldn’t work. In fact, I did tell you. But you just had to know better.  See where that has got you.”) They’ll use your vulnerability as an opportunity to hold forth on their judgmental opinion. Do you really want to hear about how they think you should live your life? I didn’t think so.

   10   Will you please stop “forever-ing”?

You’ve forgotten that Life – and that includes yours – unfolds with endless, unforeseeable twists and turns. So, you can’t stand on the vantage point of your shattered relationship today and see for miles, and miles, and miles, to what your life will look like, say, 10 years from now. It just can’t be done. Stop worrying about 10 years down the line, and start focusing on what you can do to enjoy this moment.

Emotional abuse recovery requires you to stop seeing the partner that happened to you as a judgement on your worth. An emotional abuser is vile in their own right.  End of. Do not make it about you. Equally, be sure not to make your emotional abuse recovery about him. The person that matters in all of this is you.  That is what you need to remember.