Tag Archives: Humiliation

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

Am I abusive?

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Need to know if this is true: am I emotionally abusive? I’m in a terrible situation, being accused of being a female abuser!

I have had trouble with my 2 year relationship and have recently discovered I am an emotional abuser. They said to me that I am emotionally abusive…. To my memory I have never been abused in any way. I recently broke up with my boyfriend because I thought I “didn’t feel the same” as I had. Is it possible that the recent diagnosis could be causing me to think this way? I am so confused. Am I emotionally abusive? And, besides is female abusedifferent?

emotional abuse

How can I get abuse help?

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I’ve been victim of emotional abuse. I understood it, read about it and now I’m in my way to freeing myself from the damage received. But, the abuser is my mother and, besides that, I have a sister and I don’t want her to be the next victim. How can I help my mother, so that she can heal from what is moving her to emotionally abuse others? Emotional abuse help is not easy to get by…

abusive behavior, emotional abuse, healing from abuse, healing from emotional abuse, verbal abuse

How to stop emotional abuse in marriage

Too many times in life, there is a friction between us and others, and a deep sense of frustration when our basic emotional needs are not being met.

However, sometimes we deal with a person who surprises us: when we are able to talk with them, express needs, and negotiate positive solutions, we are shocked and think to ourselves, “Why hasn’t this person told me this before? It would have been so easy to satisfy their request, if only I had known it!”

How does that exchange of needs and satisfaction begin? With assertion! Assertion is the art of saying what you need, believe, and deserve in a way that other people can hear you clearly.

This ability is essential for if you want to stop emotional abuse in marriage, and improve an abusive marriage. Unhealthy alternatives to assertion are:

1.    Submission – letting other people’s needs come always before yours, whether just or unjust. This happens if you accept disrespectful treatment from a loved one for some time, and breeds deep resentment;

2.    Aggression – forcing your needs on another person without their agreement.

Both are lose-lose options, meaning that both sides, even the “winning” one will get less from the relationship. These options build anger, hurt and resentment instead of respect and love.

The proper way to assert your needs and desires is this:

1.    Create a clear idea of exactly what behavior is irritating you, and why. If he/she is not speaking to you in front of your friends, that is clearly a hostile behavior that needs addressing. What is the behavior that you want, instead of this? Acceptance, care, attention? Be clear on what you want.

2.    You need to define the behavioral change that you need from this person or to set limits with someone whose behavior is unacceptable or hurtful to you.

3.    Don’t back down on your personal rights as a dignified person; stand firm in your belief that your rights, needs, and dignity are just as valid and important as anyone else’s, regardless of age, power, role, or gender.

How does assertion work?

1.    Begin describing the negative behavior in clear words:

“When you make jokes about my cooking in front of my friends, as you did last night at Alice’s party…”

2.    State the impact on you:

“I feel put down and unappreciated.”

3.    Declare that you want a change and to agree to making the change:

“Remember that we are each other’s support system and we don’t criticize the other in public.”

If you want to stop emotional abuse in marriage in a healthy way, remember that your purpose is not to blame, but to deliver information about the impact of the behavior. Messages centered on the “I” pro noun, delivered calmly and with steady, non-apologetic eye contact have a better chance of being received as information, and not criticism.

The victim of emotional abuse needs to provide the offending person with a steady feedback on the impact of their behavior for two reasons. It is information necessary to change, and to building up self-esteem. Assertion greatly assists an emotionally abused woman, because it gives her the opportunity to express and defend her own needs in an unequivocal way. In this way, you deal with an emotional abuse marriage.

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” please visit http://www.healingemotionalabuse.com