What many people often fail to understand about leaving an abusive relationship is that it isn’t the end of the pain. It’s only the beginning of a new kind of pain, as recovery begins and we start to fully recognize everything we’ve lost. We also begin to understand what we’ve gained. Gaining something, however, can be painful too at first because it means something has changed and that we can never go back to the way things once were.
There is a saying about change, that there are two types: change that you initiate yourself and change that is imposed upon you.
Abusive relationships cause us to change in ways we didn’t ask for. However, I didn’t see or recognize how I was changing or needed to change at first because just stabilizing myself from the trauma of what I went through was the first priority.
The turmoil of emotions that accompanied that trauma I endured throughout the relationship was often a crushing weight that threatened to engulf every other belief I held about the world. When the relationship ended, that weight fell, and the emotions pushed me into a new daze that became the most important thing in my life. Still, I was suppressed all of the grief and fear about what it all meant as I started to process everything I had been through.
Only later, came the deeper wisdom about myself and the world. These realizations come from a deeper place of healing that let me know I am moving to a more complete place of recovery. Much of it was knowledge I never would have been ready to accept until now.
Ten Things I Am Ready to Accept about My Recovery from Verbal Abuse
- I have a right to my emotions. It is perfecting understandable to have had overwhelming emotions while I was in the relationship, after it ended, and even now. Being able to let go of the secondary guilt I’ve been experiencing for having those emotions and accept them is a healthy part of my recovery.
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