When Abuse Gets Inside Your Head

Content warning: This post discusses suicide. Please read with care.

When we talk about the effects of abuse, we often talk about what happened. We don't always talk about what happened inside us because of it.

The anxiety.

The shame.

The constant questioning.

The loss of confidence.

The feeling that you are not good enough, not worthy enough, somehow fundamentally wrong.

The inability to trust your own thoughts.

The exhaustion of constantly trying to work out what is real.

And sometimes, the terrifying feeling that you might actually be losing your mind.

I didn't think of myself as someone with mental health problems

Looking back, I wouldn't say that I had mental health issues when I was very young. But I can see now that my psychological wellbeing had already been affected by what I experienced in childhood.

I didn't feel good enough.

I didn't feel worthy.

I didn't really feel that I belonged.

And perhaps most importantly, I thought those feelings were normal.

They weren't symptoms that I recognised. They were simply things I believed about myself.

I didn't think:

Something happened to me that made me feel this way.

I thought:

This is who I am.

And I carried those beliefs into adulthood.

Then came the relationships

I've had three significant abusive relationships in my life, and each affected my mental health differently.

But looking back, I can also see how they reinforced the beliefs that were already there.

If somewhere inside you already believes you're not good enough, repeated criticism, blame or questioning can reinforce the belief that everything is your fault.

That you're too sensitive.

Too emotional.

Too demanding.

Too difficult.

That you misunderstood.

That you're remembering it incorrectly.

That it didn't happen like that.

That they never said that.

That you're imagining things.

That perhaps you're a little bit crazy.

And when that happens repeatedly, something begins to shift.

You stop questioning them.

You start questioning yourself.

That is what gaslighting did to me...

People sometimes use the word gaslighting casually now. But living inside it is anything but casual.

When someone repeatedly denies, distorts, or rewrites things you experienced, your confidence in your own perception can begin to erode.

I would know something had happened.

Then I would be told it hadn't.

I'd remember something being said.

Then I'd be told I'd misunderstood.

I'd have a completely reasonable emotional response to something.

Then somehow the conversation would turn to what was wrong with me for reacting.

Eventually, I wasn't questioning what they were doing.

I was questioning whether I could trust myself at all.

And that is an incredibly frightening place to live.

There was a point when I couldn't cope anymore..

During one relationship, I attempted to end my life.

That is difficult to write.

But it matters that I explain what was happening inside me.

I didn't want to die.

I wanted the unbearable confusion and emotional pain to stop.

Nothing made sense anymore.

I felt as though I was going crazy.

And when the person who was supposed to love me was suggesting exactly that — perhaps I was mentally unwell, perhaps I had postnatal depression, perhaps something was wrong with me — eventually I began to wonder whether they were right.

That's one of the ways I now understand the impact psychological abuse had on me. I was looking inward for an explanation, questioning what was wrong with me, rather than being able to see clearly what was happening within the relationship.

Years later, it appeared again

In my final relationship, the psychological games were different, but the effect was horribly familiar.

I was told what I should think.

What I shouldn't feel.

How I should interpret things.

What I should and shouldn't say.

Sometimes my reality seemed to be overwritten by somebody else's version of it.

And because I trusted that person, I listened.

One of the most psychologically destabilising moments came when our relationship was ending.

I was told that a diary had been kept about me.

When I asked what was written in it, I was told that the contents were so awful, so disgusting, that I couldn't be told. And my mind filled in the blanks.

For months I genuinely wondered whether I had been doing terrible things that I couldn't remember.

Had I blacked out?

Was I behaving in ways I wasn't aware of?

Had I somehow become this awful person without even knowing?

Could I trust my own memory at all?

That period frightened me enormously.

Eventually I discovered what these terrible things apparently were. It's nowhere near where my mind went...

This diary contained the thing I hadn't done.

I hadn't shown enough affection.

I hadn't opened the door.

I hadn't initiated sex, and on it went.

The worst of it all was that I had called him an "idiot" in front of the children. I can absolutely take responsibility for those words, and it wasn't ok.

But the thing is that there wasn't some secret version of me doing terrible things that I couldn't remember.

I wasn't going crazy.

But by then, I had spent months believing that perhaps I was, because I had repeatedly been told that what I'd done was too awful to disclose, without ever being told what it actually was.

The psychological impact on me was enormous.

That is psychological harm.

You can read more about this in my blog titled "The Idiot" out on 14th September!

When trauma itself became something else to blame me for

During couples counselling, the counsellor suggested that I may be experiencing complex PTSD — CPTSD.

PTSD can develop following traumatic experiences. Complex PTSD is particularly associated with repeated or prolonged trauma, including experiences such as childhood abuse and domestic abuse.

Alongside symptoms associated with PTSD, CPTSD can involve difficulties with emotional regulation, relationships, shame, guilt and deeply negative beliefs about yourself.

For me, suddenly there was another possible way of understanding some of what I had carried for so long.

Not:

What's wrong with me?

But:

What happened to me?

And that is a very different question.

Because one made me the problem.

The other finally allowed me to see the trauma.

At the time, my husband and I were separated, and we were having counselling together and separately. I told him what the counsellor had said. Some part of me expected empathy. Concern. Perhaps even curiosity about what I had experienced and why I might be struggling.

Instead, he told me he'd Googled CPTSD and that now he understood why I was the way I was.

I remember being shocked. Confused.

Because once again, something that could have helped me, us even, understand the effects of trauma had somehow been turned into evidence that I was the problem.

There was no:

I'm sorry you've experienced things that have affected you so deeply.

No:

How can I support you?

And no acknowledgement that some of the trauma I was trying to understand had happened within the relationship I had shared with him.

Instead, the message I heard was:

Now there's an explanation for you.

And that distinction matters enormously.

A trauma response isn't evidence that someone is defective.

PTSD or CPTSD doesn't make someone responsible for being abused.

And recognising trauma should never become another reason to dismiss someone's perception, emotions or experiences.

My trauma wasn't proof that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. It was evidence of what I had survived. And the person telling me that my CPTSD explained me had also been part of a relationship in which I now recognise that I had experienced trauma.

Leaving doesn't necessarily end it

Then came post-separation abuse.

Court proceedings.

Accusations.

Conflict.

The constant need to explain, evidence, defend, and respond.

There were periods when my mental health crashed completely.

I remember sitting on the floor crying because I simply didn't know what else to do.

I remember staring into nothing, utterly overwhelmed by the relentlessness of it all.

I remember desperately wanting to curl up, go to sleep, and somehow wake up when everything was over.

I hit rock bottom more than once.

There were moments of such profound despair when I genuinely didn't know how I could keep going like this. I didn't attempt to end my life during this time, but that doesn't mean I was okay. I was exhausted, overwhelmed and emotionally depleted. I wanted the pain, the conflict, and the constant battle simply to stop.

And somehow, I kept going.

But underneath everything was still that old question:

Is it me?

Have I caused this?

Am I actually the problem?

When your reality has been questioned for long enough, those questions can become almost automatic.

Trauma can affect the way we think

I want to be careful here because there are enormous claims online about abuse "damaging the brain."

The reality is more nuanced.

Research shows that prolonged trauma and chronic stress can affect the way the brain and nervous system function.

Trauma-related difficulties can affect concentration, memory, sleep, emotional regulation and the ability to feel safe. Hypervigilance can leave someone constantly scanning their environment for threat, even when the immediate danger has passed.

I recognise some of that in myself.

My short-term memory isn't what it once was. Sometimes words disappear. Sometimes my concentration goes. Sometimes my brain simply feels tired.

For years, enormous amounts of mental energy went into monitoring other people, anticipating reactions, remembering conversations, analysing inconsistencies and trying to work out whether I was safe.

Perhaps it isn't surprising that my mind became exhausted.

I don't need to call my brain "damaged" to acknowledge that trauma has affected it.

And a traumatised nervous system isn't necessarily a broken one.

Sometimes it is a system that has spent far too long trying to protect us.

Abuse doesn't have to leave a bruise to leave an injury

Psychological abuse can change the way you see yourself.

Gaslighting can undermine confidence in your own perception.

Coercive control can shrink your autonomy.

Trauma can leave you hyper-alert long after the danger has passed.

Childhood abuse can shape beliefs about worth, safety, love and belonging that follow us into adulthood.

Domestic abuse is also associated with depression, anxiety, PTSD, CPTSD and other trauma-related difficulties, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts.

These consequences are real.

Even when nobody else can see them.

And perhaps this is why we need to stop asking survivors:

Why didn't you just leave?

And start understanding what can happen when someone has spent years gradually losing trust in themselves.

Leaving the person and recovering from what happened are two very different things.

But something else happened to my mind too

It healed.

Not instantly.

Not perfectly.

But gradually, I started trusting myself again.

And that might be one of the greatest things I've reclaimed.

Today, if somebody tells me I said something I know I didn't say, I don't immediately collapse into:

Oh God. Did I?

I can say:

No. That's not what I said.

If somebody tells me what I should be feeling, I know that my feelings belong to me.

If somebody interprets an event differently, I don't have to surrender my reality in order to accommodate theirs.

I can say:

That may be how you experienced it. It isn't how I experienced it.

There is room for two perspectives.

What there isn't room for anymore is somebody convincing me that I cannot trust my own mind.

For years I thought healing meant becoming stronger.

Perhaps part of it has actually been something quieter.

Learning to believe myself.

Learning that my thoughts belong to me.

My feelings belong to me.

My memories belong to me.

My voice belongs to me.

And understanding that perhaps I wasn't losing my mind after all.

Perhaps my mind was responding to years of having its reality challenged.

And slowly, patiently, I have given myself back something that years of abuse had eroded.
Trust in myself.

Love Molly x

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