Tag Archives: Abuse Victims

healing from abuse, healing from emotional abuse, relationship repair, relationships, self-esteem

Love Yourself This Valentine’s Day!

© Gratitude Planet

This is a special time of the year, where we are reminded of the value of love connections in our lives. Thanks to giving and receiving love, we can feel supported, connected and appreciated. Our whole life depends on having vital connections with other: we are healthier, more prosperous and more successful when surrounded by others who love us. Science provides lots of research that support the proposition that being alone and sad is not a good thing for your health, your pocket or your life.

However, this Valentine’s Day, you may feel that present or past abuse situation is preventing you from having love. Listen: if your loved one is abusing you, your priority is not to wait around for better love from them!

The first step in healing from abuse and saying “I will take no more” is to receive more love… from yourself!

A common tale we hear from abuse victims is “I’m just incapable of loving myself or anyone else.” This is 100% not true! Every person has the capability – some just don’t have enough strength.

That’s because “all you need is love” is an easy thing to say, but loving yourself in the face of humiliation and disrespect can be a hard mountain to climb. Don’t be afraid of the challenge – its worth every drop of sweat!

“Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we have learned here. The spiritual journey is the relinquishment – or unlearning – of fear and the acceptance of love back into our hearts. Love is…our ultimate reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life.”
Marianne Williamson

Here are some ways to beginning spreading the self-love:

  • Put on your favorite clothes (or costumes!) for a few hours or all day. There doesn’t have to be any occasion except making yourself feel special!

  • Cook for yourself – household duties can be drilled into women as a “duty.” Release yourself from that oppressive mentality by cooking just for yourself. Go all out and put the finest dishes out!

  • Treat yourself to body care – use essential oils to bathe and massage your feet, or make a calming face mask. Pretend you are treating someone you love – because you are!

    “Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.
    Jim Rohn

  • Make a picture of yourself – Using clipping from magazines, art books, cards or just drawings, create a collage of images and words that describe “you.” Keep in a private place, or just somewhere that you’re comfortable with. Look at it each day and soak in the things that you love about yourself. You’re looking at an image of your inner self!

  • Learn to see beauty in everyday life – seeing beauty in the world will help uplift your worldview and see yourself as a beautiful participant in a beautiful world. Nature is a good place to start – and if you don’t have any flowers to smell, plant your own!

  • Forgive yourself – for past mistakes you feel you made. Perhaps it was as a child, perhaps it was as an adult. Abusive behavior can make us internalize our guilt about things we did a long time ago, and make simple mistakes seem like damning ones. Let go the past! (And ask yourself, too – what have I really done, not just what I’ve been told I’ve done?)

    “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”
    Lewis B. Smedes

  • Loving your partner is an optional future activity. Perhaps either a) your partner is your abuser, which makes loving them hard, or b) your partner is new, and you are recovering from abuse, which makes strong love a priority. We’ve posted a case study for those wanting to learn about building love in relationships: How to Start Fresh This Valentine’s Day.

Remember that as you learn to love yourself, you will begin to realize all the resources you have available to you in your friends, family and community. You will begin to trust in the future of your self and of your relationships. Most importantly, your abuser loses the ability to hurt you emotionally – they can no longer convince you that you are worthless, and your self-fulfilling prophecy can end!

emotional abuse

What emotional abuse gains does the abusive person get?

I just don’t understand how my baby-father can make me feel like crap all the time & call me all these names, It really dint seem to get to me a lot but I just wish I can know why hes so mean to me. I just want to find a way to just fight back & make him regret everything he has done to me.

Perhaps he feel so macho, so powerful…I will raise my baby to hate him and his power.what emotional abuse

emotional abuse

A Valentine for a victim of emotional child abuse: yourself!

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Have you been around some abuse victims episode recently? or is there in your memory some past abuse?

This is what happened yesterday: in a general store, getting things for my kitchen, all the decor was full with different kinds of red hearts…Of course! It’s Valentine’s Day!….

Suddenly I found myself grabbing one of the balloons…and my left hand felt curiously small, kind of tiny…it would not let the balloon go as I went through the cashier. She rang everything up and I found myself walking out with a gorgeous red balloon with the “I love you” message screaming across it.

My rational mind asking: what’s going on here? why did you buy this balloon? who is this balloon for?

And the answer was loud and clear:  this balloon is for my inner child abused…Of course! she needs to hear from me, her adult self, that I cherish her!

As I never forgot her completely, the abused child she was, but went through periods in which I could only remember the painful parts of her life I wanted so much to forget, now I have a better picture. I can see all her creativity, her survival skills deploying under extreme duress, emotional child abuse and constant lack of appreciation. I can see her resourcefulness to find small joys in a bleak childhood, which translated into being a smart survivor now…she survived her child abusers with all her heart intact!

And this is a good opportunity to tell her, with all my love, that I recognize her, appreciate her tenacity and ability to resist oppression from her child abuser without denying the joys of life. She was a joyful survivor, never a bitter one. Always founding in a bit of sunshine, a flower, a smile, the energy to keep living, learning and dreaming a better future…Of course you are my Valentine!

To my inner child, the victim of emotional child abuse, but also of physical abuse, now I’m sending this loving Valentine; you deserve it more than anybody else. Wherever the alternative time you are in now, you are in my heart, always…thanks for surviving everything and bringing me here and now!

emotional abuse, healing from abuse, healing from emotional abuse, verbal abuse

Knowing Your Life’s Purpose

Knowing your mission in life – your purpose, your goals, how you will achieve them – can help you greatly if you are trying to stop or heal emotional abuse.

The reasons for this are simple. When you know who you are and what you want, no one else has the power to knock you off your horse. You are firm in your beliefs and cannot be swayed by an abuser’s tactics and attempts to demean you.

However, if you don’t think beyond “my mission is to be with this man,” your emotional state will be forever linked with that of his, and healing emotional abuse will be next to impossible. Loving another person is important, perhaps the most important thing a human can do for themselves. But there must be something more than that; otherwise it is an obsession, a slave driver.

Many people think that when we say “life purpose,” we refer to a pre-destined plan that is out there waiting for us. That is not true – your life is what you make of it, every second of every day. Some people clearly know what their skills and joys are – they choose to devote themselves to those skills, and that it their life purpose.

Don’t think you have any skills worth devoting yourself to? Then don’t look for one. Simply think of what makes you really and truly happy, every time you do it. Whether it is community service, baking, rock climbing… the possibilities are endless. The point, however, is that it is something that it done; an action that moves you beyond yourself to give you sense of fulfillment.

healing from emotional abuse

How to Stop Relationship Abuse

  • In order to stop relationship abuse, you have to be firm and committed to what changes you want to see. If you waver, you lose the asset of believability, and you lose confidence in yourself.
  • Be optimistic. Instead of seeing the relationship as a dead end, you can view yourself and your partner as good people who have simply not learned how to behave in a healthy way. As you are working together to resolve the relationship abuse, progress will be faster if you both have confidence that resolution is possible. If you cannot do it by yourselves, you may need a professional, either alone or with both of you present. Remember that blame is optional – you have the choice to pursue a happy, vibrant relationship without keeping the blame and punishment machine going.
  • Don’t be afraid to confront the other scenario: that sometimes, no matter how optimistic you began, your partner’s heart may not be in it. An unwillingness to change, or an escalation to physical violence as well as emotional abuse, is a sign that it is time for you to take your leave. If you feel you are in danger, it is important to go somewhere you will not be followed, and seek professional protection.
  • It is important that if you do choose to leave, you have somewhere to go. Build your support system in advance, so that you are not lost and alone, going from one bad situation to the other. And if you don’t have to leave, well, now you have friends to fall back on when you need advice.
  • It is also important that, for your emotional sake, you do all you can to severe the relationship on proper terms, so that you don’t leave feeling guilty or blaming yourself for ruining an emotional  relationship that could have been saved.
  • There is never any shame in leaving and asserting your right to stop an emotionally abusive relationship. Unless you are a child under parental care, you are not bound by law or force to stay. However, it is important that whether you leave or not, your immediate family knows of the situation. This is especially important for children, seniors, or others who own limited self-reliance.
  • Although it is hard, you must recognize and own up to your own faults as well. Learn what you may have done (not necessarily what your partner says you did) to contribute to the abuse. For example, if you know that you accept abuse as something normal and expected, address this issue so that you do not come across it in future relationships.

Nora Femenia, Ph.D is passionate about supporting women’s recovery from emotional abuse once and for all. Nora has created a powerful set of tools for helping women break out of the mind-set that keeps them in a toxic relationship by first discovering unconscious beliefs and family blueprints.

To know more about her latest book “Recovering From Emotionally Abusive Relationships” go to: http://www.healingemotionalabuse.com