The Abuse Ended. The Survival Mode Didn’t.
I am so tired of people telling survivors to move on.
Move on from what, exactly?
From being psychologically broken down so systematically that by the end, you didn’t trust your own memory, judgment, instincts, or perception of reality?
From being lied to, manipulated, gaslit, blamed, intimidated, humiliated, controlled, isolated, threatened, punished, and then told none of it was actually happening?
From having your vulnerabilities studied and used against you?
From having private things you shared in trust thrown back in your face later as weapons?
From being pushed until you finally reacted and then watching that reaction become the evidence used to prove that you were the unstable one?
From being provoked behind closed doors and discredited in front of everyone else?
From watching someone slowly rewrite the story of who you were until other people started seeing you through the version of you they created?
From losing relationships because people were manipulated against you?
From being financially controlled, monitored, sabotaged, or left trying to clean up damage you didn’t create?
From having your children pulled into adult conflict, used as leverage, used to punish you, or used to maintain control long after the relationship ended?
From being threatened with consequences if you spoke, left, fought back, told the truth, set a boundary, or stopped complying?
From living in a reality where the rules constantly changed and somehow you were always wrong?
People hear “emotional abuse” and picture hurt feelings.
They picture yelling.
They picture a toxic relationship where two people just couldn’t get along.
That is not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about psychological warfare inside a relationship.
I’m talking about someone learning exactly where your weak points are and repeatedly pressing on them until you no longer recognize yourself.
I’m talking about being conditioned to doubt your own reality.
Being told something never happened when you know it did.
Being told something was never said when you can still hear it in your head.
Being accused of things you didn’t do until you started defending yourself against a version of you that never existed.
Being punished for speaking.
Punished for being silent.
Punished for asking questions.
Punished for needing reassurance.
Punished for setting boundaries.
Punished for finally breaking under the pressure.
And then being told your reaction was the problem.
That kind of abuse does something to a person.
It changes the way you think.
It changes the way you trust.
It changes the way you respond to conflict, silence, anger, affection, distance, uncertainty, and even kindness.
You start documenting conversations because you need proof that what you remember actually happened.
You save messages.
You take screenshots.
You replay arguments in your head for hours trying to understand what just happened.
You start questioning whether your reactions are reasonable.
You stop trusting your own emotions because every emotion you had was treated like evidence that something was wrong with you.
You become hyperaware of every shift in someone’s voice, every facial expression, every pause, every change in energy because at one point noticing those things helped you survive what came next.
And eventually, you can leave the person and still carry the environment inside your body.
That is the part people do not understand.
The relationship can be over while your nervous system is still living inside it.
You can be safe and still feel unsafe.
You can know logically that you are no longer being controlled and still feel panic when you make a decision for yourself.
You can know nobody is angry with you and still feel your entire body tense when someone gets quiet.
You can know you do not have to explain yourself anymore and still find yourself writing paragraphs defending decisions nobody even questioned.
You can be free and still have to learn how to live like a free person.
So when someone says, “Why can’t you just move on?”
What they are really asking is why the damage did not disappear the moment the person who caused it was gone.
That is not how trauma works.
You do not spend years being psychologically dismantled and then rebuild yourself because enough calendar pages turned.
You rebuild piece by piece.
You relearn your own voice.
You relearn boundaries.
You relearn what safety feels like.
You relearn how to trust your instincts.
You relearn that disagreement does not automatically mean punishment is coming.
You relearn that love is not supposed to require your silence.
You relearn that you are allowed to exist without constantly defending your existence.
And that takes time.
Sometimes a lot of it.
So no, survivors do not need to be told to move on.
They have already been told what to think, what to feel, what happened, what didn’t happen, what they meant, what they remembered wrong, and who they were for long enough.
They need room to tell the truth about what happened to them.
Even when that truth makes other people uncomfortable.
Especially then.
Because healing is not pretending it wasn’t that bad.
Healing is finally being able to admit that it was.
And realizing that surviving it does not mean you have to minimize it.
-Lindsay Michele
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I was recently told not everyone needs to know everything... like sharing my story was wrong in some way. While I know that was said by a person who never experienced abuse like I have, it still came off as though none of it matters. Try telling my body that, I try every day and still have to fight to make it through without hiding myself away. I'm tired of hiding, I'm tired of not being accepted for who I am now while I'm walking through my healing. It's become a lonely world, but that's better than where I was 5 yrs ago. Yes, 5 years and I'm still healing. Next up... the end of the 5 yr no conta…