After enduring emotional abuse, especially for a prolonged period of time, you are not the same person you were before it began. You feel completely different. You lack confidence, you’re quieter, and you overthink everything. If you can relate, you are not alone.

It took me months to realize that I was being emotionally abused. It was so weird, why was someone intentionally trying to hurt me like this? Maybe it isn’t intentional… maybe it is all a misunderstanding. Yet, when I tried to clear the air with the person treating me this way, it only made them treat me worse. It didn’t make sense to me. I started therapy and I also began to research what I was experiencing. The more I read and the more I learned, the more I was able to understand, process, and eventually protect myself.

After removing myself from the situation and toxic person, I began my healing process. Nothing prepared me for the strange effects of emotional abuse that I experienced. I had read about plenty of symptoms and ways that a person may be feeling after going through something like I had. I could relate with many of them. I also experienced things that I wish I had been warned about or had felt that someone out in the world could relate to. If you have experienced similar weird effects, first of all, I am so sorry. Secondly, hi, I can relate and you are not alone!

Triggers and Anger

During my beginning of healing and while trying to get outside to walk everyday, I started to notice something unusual about myself. I found myself getting easily angered over trivial things. The stroller I used to walk my baby would get caught on the edge of the sidewalk so I hated having to leave the sidewalk to avoid an obstacle and then try to get back up on it. When the wheel would jam and I would have to work it back up onto the flat pavement, I would feel so angry. So when people in my neighborhood would set their trash bins in the sidewalk or park their car in the sidewalk, I would feel a tight, bubbling heat in my chest. Why can’t you put the trash bin in the oversized road? Ugh.

As I groaned while dramatically walking around a car parked in the middle of the sidewalk rather than in their open driveway, I began to realize that I was not being reasonable. Healthy people do not let tiny annoyances like this frustrate them or change their mood. As I noticed more tiny inconveniences causing me irrational anger, I started to question it and look into it. I began to realize that I wasn’t actually insane, I was experiencing a symptom of having been emotionally abused. I began noticing when these triggers and feelings of anger would pop up within me. I would calmly take deep breaths, address my thoughts, and give myself grace to get through the moment. Being able to understand and being aware of this has helped me work through it. I can now walk around a trash can in the sidewalk, let someone cut me in line at the grocery store, or spill food all over the kitchen floor without feeling red hot anger spark inside of me. Anger and triggers after emotional abuse are normal. Calmness will return.

Hypersensitive and Questioning

My brain was so distorted from what I went through. I pretty much lost my sense of what is normal. I became so hypersensitive to any and everything. I kept questioning everything. Did that really happen? Why would someone act like that? Did I deserve this? Am I a really a horrible person like they said? Maybe this is happening because of that time in college where I wasn’t a good friend to someone who deserved better… or maybe because of that time when I was twelve and I was mean to my sister.

I could not get my brain to settle down and be quiet. I felt like I deserved what happened to me and how I was feeling. Yet, I knew that wasn’t true. I also kept questioning and was so sensitive to how others may be perceiving me. Were they shaking their heads, were they embarrassed for me? Man, I am embarrassed for me. Thoughts raced and looped in my head. I felt crazy.

I would feel lightning bolts of anxiety any time a comment or text would pop up from someone in connection with my abuser. Although, most of the time those feelings were valid. I was sensitive to things that even my family would say, their tones, and their body language. I was still worried that I was being unfair with how much I talked to my family or how much they got to see my baby. I still felt this way even after going no contact with the toxic family members. It took me awhile to settle into the truth, the toxic people did this to themselves. They cut themselves out of our lives with their toxic and abusive behavior. I am allowed to share my life and my child’s life with healthy, loving people.

I feel incredibly relieved to be out of this brain fog, hypersensitive, questioning phase that I went through during and after being emotionally abused. If you are going through this, keep listening to your heart. You are not crazy. Take deep breaths and trust yourself. Give yourself breaks and let your mind settle. Show yourself compassion.

Physical Effects

I was able to read about some of this on the internet, although there were still strange ways this showed up for me. I felt physically sick, almost constantly nauseous, unable to eat, headaches, and body aches. I also would lose a bunch of weight and then gain weight back rapidly. Yet, the strangest thing that showed up physically were the bruises. Suddenly, I bruised ridiculously easy. I would wake up with like three bruises on my thigh. Or have a couple spotted on my arm. I have never experienced prolonged bruising like this before being emotionally abused. After healing, I once again no longer bruise easily. Maybe there is a medical explanation that I am not privy to, but I thought that this effect was really perplexing.

The physical effects felt torturous to me. The high anxiety I felt constantly made my stomach ache and made me feel nauseous, which was unbearable. It would get worse when I had to interact with, hear about, or be around the person that was treating me so badly. My body would break out in cold sweats, I could feel my skin prickling, my head would feel dizzy, and I would feel on the verge of vomiting. I couldn’t control these miserable feelings. My entire body was literally screaming for me to stay far away from this person. Even after removing the person from my life and being “safe,” I still felt physically ill for weeks.

Suffering physical effects from emotional abuse is weird. The abuse was not physical, so why was my body suffering so much? This is above my understanding, but basically the brain is in control of the body. When the brain is suffering, that must mean that the body will feel some effects of the brains pain. It is tough because when you break a bone, you can see where the break is and heal it properly. When your brain is injured, you can’t see it and you can’t pinpoint where the injury is to fix it. Emotional abuse adds another layer of complexity because it can be hard to notice until some damage has already been done. The longer that you experience emotional abuse, the more havoc it may wreck.

Weakened Socialization Skills

Somewhere along the line in enduring the emotional abuse, I started having a really hard time interacting with other people. I was constantly on edge, unsure of how I was coming across to others, and not really having any words to say. I felt self-conscious and as if I was being judged in every conversation I would have. It was a really off-putting and strange way to feel. I wanted to try to avoid communicating with people because it became too stressful.

I struggled with basic communication skills. You know, the things that you typically don’t have to think about in a usual conversation such as when to speak, what to say next, when to stop talking, and my body language. It was like a fuse went haywire in my head. I felt hopelessly awkward. To make things worse, I also was suddenly unnaturally forgetful. I would completely forget something another person had just said or I had just said. That made conversations even more uncomfortable and difficult.

My weakened socialization skills made me feel really embarrassed and defeated. I had usually been pretty good at communicating with others. Before enduring emotional abuse, I could talk to anyone. I could communicate effectively and clearly with confidence. Feeling like I had lost that skill was disheartening. It made me feel even more alone. Luckily, as I began to focus on healing, my communication skills gradually returned. I now worry less about what other people may think of me and I focus on just being myself.

Not Feeling Like A Person

One of the strangest feelings I have ever experienced in my life was not feeling like a person. It is almost difficult for me to now relate back to this feeling since I have come so far from it. I can, but it is mind-blowing to me that I had felt that badly. After over half of a year of enduring emotional abuse, I began to lose sense of myself. As time and the abuse went on, this feeling intensified. I felt like a shell, like a body with nothing inside. It was a scary feeling. I wondered if I would ever feel like myself or even just like a living person again.

Feeling this empty made it challenging to simply get through each day. Feeling like I wasn’t a person anymore made me feel like I was crazy. I couldn’t fathom how I had gotten to this point. How could another person’s behavior and treatment towards me tear me down like this? How did I let this happen to me? Why couldn’t I climb out of this dark hole I found myself in? And that is the crazy thing about emotional abuse. It sneaks up on you. It is tricky to realize what is happening until you feel lost. Once you feel depleted, empty, and depressed, you realize that all of this stuff that has been happening has been slowly beating you down.

Returning to yourself and feeling human again takes time. It takes determination and perseverance. It takes a lot of small, positive actions done consistently and continually. It is striving to heal and learning what that looks like for you. Whether it is exercising, eating healthy, therapy, self-help books, writing, or anything else. In the same way that I woke up one day not feeling like a person, I woke up one day feeling my soul shining intensely within me. If you are feeling empty, I want you to know that you have the power to feel whole again. It will probably be really taxing and take more time than you think, yet I promise that it is worth it.

PTSD

Saying that you have post-traumatic stress disorder typically results in looks of disbelief. Especially when you add in that it is from being emotionally abused. Contrary to what many people think, you do not have to go to war to have symptoms of PTSD. I do want to say that PTSD from war would be absolutely horrific. In my case, I essentially was re-living my trauma for a few months after it ended. I was scared even after I went no contact. I was scared even though my husband was protecting me and supporting me, completely. I was scared because it had felt like my life was being ripped from my hands. I felt like everything was falling apart with the lies told about me, the way that family members were subtly goading my husband to leave me, and the way that so many people that had once been in my life, had left.

I realized I was struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder after about three months of being “safe,” yet still feeling as if something bad could happen at any moment. As I researched PTSD, I noticed that I had most of the symptoms for it. I suffered terribly with insomnia. It took me hours to fall asleep and while trying to shut my brain off, I would feel overwhelming anxiety. Then, when I would fall asleep I would have nightmares and would typically wake up sometime between one and two in the morning. I would be so freaked out that I would have to spend at least an hour distracting myself on my phone before trying to go back to sleep. Since I wasn’t sleeping well, I had low energy and felt very tired during the day. As I begun to heal more, naps became imperative.

I struggled with overthinking and being unable to silence or distract my thoughts. For a few months, all I could think about was what had happened or what I was scared would happen next. The miserable thoughts ran through my head like a bad song on repeat. It was frustrating and defeating being unable to rid my brain of them. Not only did these thoughts control my life at the time, but I was also on high alert. I felt like I couldn’t trust anyone. I didn’t want anyone to know where I was, what I was doing, or anything about my life. I wanted to hide. I had stopped sharing anything on social media and I became very private.

My PTSD symptoms dissipated on their own with time and my dedicated healing work. Some of them still do pop up occasionally and I still can’t sleep like I used to, although they are much more manageable now. PTSD is very intense, exhausting, frustrating, and defeating. I have so much sympathy and compassion for anyone struggling with this. If you are struggling with PTSD, take care of yourself. Do what you need to do to work through it. Take the time you need, keep your circle small, and heal. If you feel guilty or embarrassed for struggling with these symptoms because you don’t think that what you went through was bad enough, please don’t. I felt ashamed for having these symptoms because others have it worse. Although, that may be true, we still went through something that really shook us up. We don’t need to shrink ourselves or our feelings down because they may not be justified in the eyes of others.

Looking Back on Every Mistake You’ve Ever Made in Life

Overthinking and constantly questioning myself led me to looking back on every mistake I’ve ever made in my life. I was constantly thinking back on some of my most unhealthy moments and feeling immense amounts of guilt over them. Why did I shove little random items under my sister’s bedroom door and laugh while she got upset? Why did I prank call my cousin like fifty times? Why did I have to act so grumpy and miserable when my friend was kind enough to drive me to school? Why did I flirt with that guy that my best friend liked? As I ran through these mistakes, I started to think, what is wrong with me? I felt like I was truly an awful person. I started to not like myself.

I had felt guilt at the time that I had done those things. I still feel guilt when I think about them. Yet, the amount of guilt I felt while being emotionally abused was multiplied. I wanted to apologize again to every person I had ever wronged. I felt like in a sense, I deserved the way that I was being treated. It is still taking me time to let these past mistakes go. I have learned from them and I have worked really hard to get to a better place. I was not healthy when I was unkind. Not that it is any excuse, but I was going through a lot during my pre-teen and teenage years. Life was not easy. I have been really hard on myself and I think that I deserve to show myself grace.

No one on this planet is perfect. We have all made mistakes and have been unkind at some point. We learn, we grow, and life goes on. Obsessing over the past doesn’t do anyone any good. The important thing is how we choose to go forward. We must acknowledge that we messed up, we must take accountability, we must learn from it, and we must work to be better.

Emotional abuse is not only strange itself, but it comes with a variety of strange effects. It can be tumultuous to go through all of these things after going through the initial hardship. Go easy on yourself and show yourself love while healing. It gets easier as time goes on and while implementing positive practices. I hope that this brings light and awareness to some of the unusual effects you may also be experiencing after enduring emotional abuse. You are not alone. I hope that it also brings hope that you can heal and recover. With healing, your life can flourish after emotional abuse!

I wish you all healing and healthy recovery!