We can’t just choose happiness, especially after surviving abuse and living with PTSD. But this can be disheartening. If you can’t choose happiness, how do you start to love life? How do you begin to feel good? A love for life is still something you can experience. You can still have wonderful days and great relationships. There are so many ways you can find joy. All without needing the ability to choose happiness. Let’s first...
How do you improve yourself after going through so much hardship? What does it even mean to be a better person, especially after surviving abuse? Trauma impacts us. It causes us to place judgements on others. We’ve become slow to trust. And when we think of being the best person we can be—it’s often nonjudgemental and believing everyone has pure intentions. That’s not how we came to see the world, though. After abuse, we saw the...
Are you ruled by self-hatred immediately after noticing some flaw? It’s natural for us survivors of abuse to notice our imperfections the most—since our abusers trained us to do this. But, I’ve gotta say, this is not fun (and that’s an understatement). I’m here to remind you that you are so much more than your imperfections. In fact, I don’t even think these traits are flaws. There were times in your trauma where your abuser has...
Feel like your world is shrouded in a grey filter? Like you’re detached from both the good and bad—not connected to life at all? Emotional numbness is common for us survivors of abuse, but that doesn’t make it any less painful. It makes us feel like we’re not really living. We can’t embrace happiness. Sometimes we can’t even feel pain. For many of us, we’d rather feel something—anything—other than numbness. Emotional numbness has played an important...
Distress tolerance is the most valuable skill you can learn. There’s nothing more capable of helping you survive the painful parts of abuse recovery. It will stabilize you like nothing else. It will transform your life. I had a major crisis happen a couple weeks ago where a huge amount of insights into childhood trauma came up. If this happened a few years ago, I would have felt suicidal. But I was fine while facing it. It...
Always finding yourself in toxic relationships? Almost like you’re a magnet for abusers? It’s never your fault that ill-intentioned people come into your life, but there are ways you can empower yourself to get out of and prevent these relationships. You just have to understand why your mind keeps making you trust those not-so-nice people. And why, when you do stumble upon someone truly loving, you feel terrified to get close. You’re not alone in...
When you are going through a tough time, you have less energy. The healthy habits you’ve spent weeks, months, maybe even years forming sometimes fall apart in front of you. And this can cause despair and guilt and shame. But, this is normal. It’s okay to break new and good habits during tough times. Healthy habits aren’t a once and done thing. Trauma recovery is exhausting—and sometimes we go back to our defaults. Healing from abuse...
I don’t think there is anything that plagues us survivors more than the question, “Am I enough?” Our abusers, day after day, told us something was wrong with us. That we were bad and unworthy. That our purpose in this world was to be hurt. Your abuser kept their control over you by convincing you that you deserved to be hurt. And they did this by making you think something was wrong with you—without ever...
Reclaiming a self loving perspective after abuse is one of the greatest challenges us survivors face. Our abusers made us hate ourselves. That’s how they kept control over us. But now that you’re free from them, you can start to reclaim self compassion. Although having a self loving view of yourself can sound incredibly challenging, it truly isn’t out of reach. Even though your abuser worked for months or years to convince you to hate...
How do you embrace life after abuse? How can you feel joyous, living with the after effects of such horrible trauma? Embracing life isn’t about having a perfect life. It’s about finding joy and happiness and love even in the midst of hardship—something that us survivors of abuse have faced plenty of. Despite the unique struggles we have all faced, there are some key things that create a foundation from which joy can grow. The first...