Grieving Abuse: How To Move On From Emotional Manipulation
By: Abigail Jacqueline
Tags: Abuse, Grief, Emotional Abuse, Empowerment, Emotional Manipulation

Grieving Abuse: How To Move On From Emotional Manipulation

Full disclosure, emotional abuse is tricky.

Source: Zack Blanton, Retrostar

After trying four times over the course of a year, I was finally able to walk away from my emotionally abusive situation.

It didn’t strike me at first that I was being emotionally abused; this conclusion only struck me months after I was officially able to walk away.

Financial entrapment, emotional guilt, and threats of physical abuse all came boiling to the surface in an emotional conversation with my sister months after the official end.

This was when the grieving process started, and then moving on was truly initiated.

It’s been just shy of ten months since I was able to truly leave, but I am only just now coming to conclusions about the process of moving on that I was unable to see at the beginning.

Full disclosure, emotional abuse is tricky — you don’t have physical marks to give proof to your accusations, but the emotional scars you feel are vivid, and in many cases, haunt you on a daily basis. From my experience, these are the key moments I can pull to help you be able to at least start moving on from an emotionally manipulative and abusive situation.

Recognize You’re Being Manipulated

The first step to understanding and grieving your abuse is recognizing it is happening. Some lists like this can help you to understand, but truthfully, talking to a therapist or seeking out mental health support is an incredibly fruitful first step to recognizing you are in a toxic situation.

When my relationship first came to be abusive, I didn’t immediately recognize it. I rationalized every threat of a lifted hand, a moment of degradation, or guilt-trip I was put on. Ultimately, going to therapy with a professional counselor helped me recognize this abuse and the need for action.

I am not a mental health professional — I am just someone who has taken this step already and can write about the steps that followed. If you fear you are being emotionally manipulated or abused, please seek professional help and support.

Removing Yourself From Your Abuser

This next step is incredibly difficult on multiple fronts, and can really only be done after some heavy self-reflection and support from mental health professionals, friends, and family.

It took me seven total months to leave my abuser. Each time I tried to leave, threats of self-harm or suicide would come up. I tried four times to leave my abuser, and ultimately, rationalizing my own well-being ended up being harder than actually walking away.

Truthfully, leaving any negative situation is difficult, even if you aren’t being emotionally abused. You came to be in that situation for a reason, and often times, those susceptible to being emotionally abused are highly empathetic and willing to rationalize staying despite losing their own mental health.

Again, this step takes support on a professional level in many cases and can be as complicated as moving out of your parents’ home, moving out of a shared apartment, or even dropping classes at University or filing for divorce. Understanding that this step is challenging, and in some cases, can be one of the hardest parts of the journey is an important part of healing.

Seeking & Rebuilding Circles Of Support

An unseen product of being emotionally manipulated or abused can oftentimes be losing friends, family members, or connections that are put on the back burner while you are in an abusive situation. For me, I had grown apart from some of my longest and closest friends, and the walk of shame to ask for forgiveness was not easy.

Many of my friends had more clarity on my situation than I did — and before you ask why they didn’t say anything or help me, you have to understand that I was not open about my abuse or manipulation. Countless people told me after I left my abuser that they always knew he was terrible for me — but what they didn’t understand was how truly terrible the situation was.

The journey to healing from emotional manipulation and abuse is a long one, and you should not have to walk that road alone. I was afraid I had lost some of my closest friends, including my sister.

The truth is, people are far more forgiving than you give them credit for. And if they aren’t, then understand that sometimes, losses come from abusive relationships in more ways than one. Not everyone will be forgiving of your resentment of the friendship, even if you were in a dark place when it happened.

We are all allowed our own grievances and boundaries, and if you have resented a friendship because of an abusive relationship, you cannot expect automatic forgiveness (or forgiveness at all) when you finally come to. Understand that just because you are going through an emotionally difficult time does not give you an automatic get-out-of-jail-free card from hurting others.

That being said, do not be afraid to try and reach out. I did lose a few friends because of my behavior while I was being manipulated, but for the most part, I have grown closer and developed stronger relationships since leaving my abusive situation. Have faith in your closest friends, and grieve those relationships lost in this difficult time.

Forgive Yourself

An enormous obstacle I’ve come to find recently is the constant blame on myself forever “being so stupid” to allow this manipulation and abuse to go on for so long. Months and almost an entire year after the end of my relationship, I am kicking myself on an almost daily basis for allowing so much time to go by and be “wasted”.

Unfortunately, this way of thinking is not productive, but also not easy to get away from. You will be angry with yourself — you will be angry with your abuser first and foremost, but eventually, you will find intense anger directed internally. You cannot let this grab hold of you. Instead, you need to be forgiving.

You need to comprehend that leaving an abusive situation is painful and difficult in the first place and that you have already climbed that mountain and stood at its peak.

You need to be grateful for your ability to leave, and also understand that at the time, your feelings were valid. Maybe you really did love your abuser, or maybe you did find joy on a somewhat daily basis — and those feelings are valid. If you invalidate everything you went through during the entirety of your abuse, you will never forgive yourself for losing so much time.

Forgive yourself so you can move on with the grieving process, and understand that it will take time to minimize and move away from these feelings.

Embrace Yourself & Your Identity

After a few years of being in an unbelievably unhealthy place, I recognized that I had no sense of self-identity. I had become an image of the easiest way to live — I did not have my own thoughts, my own sense of style, or even my own taste in music. Now, almost ten months later, I’m still stumbling over myself to find these things.

Taking personality tests, reflecting on what makes me happiest, and shamelessly being myself has helped me to heal from these darker parts of my past. I have been shamelessly engaging in the activities that bring me the most joy, found faith in places I never looked before, and have consequently been living a more truthful version of my life.

Healing from emotionally abusive situations takes an incredible amount of patience, strength, and time. You deserve to live your truest life and form bonds with yourself like you have not understood before. Hindsight is 20/20, but moving forward, act with intention and build the life you want to live.

Recognize Your Boundaries

One huge factor of being abused or manipulated for an extended amount of time is the truth about moving away from it. For me, an enormous fear that his arisen has been my need to disclose the details of my abusive situation to others in my life.

Truthfully, as a victim of emotional abuse and manipulation, it must be understood that you don’t owe anyone anything. You can disclose the parts of your situation that you feel comfortable with, or keep it within yourself until the day you die. Grieving abuse takes many forms — painting, photography, love, cooking, baking, writing, relationships, talking about it — these are all examples of forms in which you can release your grievances and allow them to flow through you.

Moving into new relationships, new friendships, or even rebuilding old friendships, it is important to understand that you can function entirely within the confines of your ability and comfort. You do not need to disclose every detail, air our every piece of laundry, or even unload your emotional baggage on anyone else (that’s what therapy is for). People worth being in your life will understand that abuse is not something meant to be aired out on every level, and the person that you are now is worth love, and worth your boundaries being respected.

Understand That Moving On Is Not Easy

My dad always tells me that the best way to deal with stressful situations is to become comfortable with the worst scenario coming to fruition. This might seem ridiculous, but I think my dad is onto something here.

Recognizing the absolute worst that it could get can be helpful in hard situations. Making yourself comfortable with the negative can make it easier when it is present, and also make the positive parts of life and moving on that much sweeter.

In a very literal sense, imagine all of the worst parts of grieving — the sadness, the feelings of guilt, stupidity, or kicking yourself, the rejection from friends, the inability to get back to the sense of normalcy before the abuse — and understand that they are all very, very real possibilities.

Moving on from abuse is hard, and I will not sugar coat it: you have to understand the hardest parts of moving on may have already come, but the dull, perpetual drift away from this part of your life may never truly go away. But embracing this pain and making something worth having out of it is worth the pain, and hopefully will help the healing.