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I’ve been out of the relationship for quite a few months now, but was being harassed by him and continuing to live in fear for quite awhile after I left. So ever though I was out, I was still caught in the same cycle of being focused on him and controlled by him. Many months later, I have FINALLY gotten him served with a restraining order, and I can finally start to breathe and focus on what I want for life going forward.
The trouble is, I think I may be suffering from some sort of PTSD. I’ve always been anxious and startle easily (my father was a lot like my abuser, plus anxiety seems to run in my family anyway), but I notice that I am constantly on high alert. Loud, unexpected sounds trigger a reflexive tension, I seem to be perceiving criticism and judgment where there are none, being directed to do things by my boss feels overbearing and controlling, and I am at a total loss in social situations with people who aren’t part of my immediate inner circle. I shrink back and feel that I don’t have anything interesting to say and that people don’t want to talk to me. I find myself feeling like less than everyone else. This situation is even more pronounced when I’m interacting with a man in whom I have interest, it’s like I am constantly bracing myself to be shamed or reprimanded, which makes it impossible not only to interact in the way I want to, but also seems to make my mind cloudy and keep me from really experiencing my life in the moment. Its like I have developed a fear of being fully awake and aware in the world because I’m afraid the real world is going to hurt me. Plus I’m always exhausted because I don’t know how to let my guard down.
The fact that the actual physical violence that my ex perpetrated against me was minimal makes me feel like my current reactions are overdone; the abuse was primarily intimidation, psychological and emotional. I also feel beyond frustrated at how this is interfering with my ability to live my life; I thought that once the order was served I would be able to break free of the chains of this situation, but that has not been the case. I am pretty high-functioning – its not like I’m literally hiding away in my room – but these things are definitely having a serious impact.
Anyone else experience this? How have you worked through it? I have a therapist, but I’m not quite sure how much she is helping me so currently looking for a new one who will hopefully help me develop concrete skills to overcome this.
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Hi Quietgiraff,
I just want to say that I exactly feel the same and I have not got a solution yet. All I know is that my brain and body are conditioned and I live in fear specially if I am in the same city or area as him. I only can say this is what abuse does with our body and mind and is going to take a lot of time and professional help to heal.
It is going to be a process and not eassy but painful for most of it. But lest hope we come out stronger and wised.Be safe
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Psychological manipulation
– ways that manipulators control their victims:[3]Positive reinforcement: includes praise, superficial charm, superficial sympathy (crocodile tears), excessive apologizing, money, approval, gifts, attention, facial expressions such as a forced laugh or smile, and public recognition.
Negative reinforcement: involves removing one from a negative situation as a reward, e.g. “You won’t have to do your homework if you allow me to do this to you.”
Intermittent or partial reinforcement: Partial or intermittent negative reinforcement can create an effective climate of fear and doubt. Partial or intermittent positive reinforcement can encourage the victim to persist.
Punishment: includes nagging, yelling, the silent treatment, intimidation, threats, swearing, emotional blackmail, the guilt trip, sulking, crying, and playing the victim.
Traumatic one-trial learning: using verbal abuse, explosive anger, or other intimidating behavior to establish dominance or superiority; even one incident of such behavior can CONDITION or train victims to avoid upsetting, confronting, or contradicting the manipulator.
Manipulators may have;a strong need to attain feelings of power and superiority in relationships with others
a want and need to feel in control
a desire to gain a feeling of power over others in order to raise their perception of self-esteem. -
its really important to recognise conditioning and know how it works this is why we are hypervigilent. we await an attack and do anything to save ourselves. we have these four responses id say this one the most (fawning) flight freeze or fight. its a primal response the good news is the first step is to understand it and then combat it. the good news is conditioning can eventually be reversed but with lots of work. its important to remind ourselves this is a trigger and were not going to be defined by these triggers theyre not real any more xx it has been along journey but i thot id share x*x love diymum
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Thank you, diymum! It really does put things into perspective to see the actions of the abuser as conditioning, that’s exactly what it is. And I suppose we can’t expect ourselves to snap out of years of conditioning just because the abuser is no longer in our lives. Maintaining hope and a willingness to do the work will get us to the other side 🙂
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Hi Quietgirraffe
You could have been describing me! However, I have always had these feelings of social anxiety, feeling inferior and uninteresting, jumpiness and so on. It’s telling, I think, that you say you say your father and abuser were similar. Also that anxiety runs in your family. It could be that you’ve always felt how you feel now. So, these feelings won’t necessarily disappear along with your abuser.
Many, many people experience social anxiety. It’s also perfectly normal to take time to trust new people. It’s OK to feel on edge in noisy places. Perceiving criticism is also common and not a personality flaw.
I got some answers when I researched Childhood Emotional Neglect. It explained how I came to be hyper-aware of other people’s emotions while ignoring my own. Also why I am susceptible to abusive relationships.
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What I mean is, I’ve had to do lots of work on actually understanding ME. I am also a high-functioning achiever yet despite this have suffered from very low self-esteem. I’ve managed to go through almost a whole lifetime being a people-pleaser, the organiser, the ‘good listening ear’ and so on. I worried entirely about how others perceived me and little about my impression of them. I wasn’t able to talk about my successes or aspirations. I didn’t believe that friends could like me for being me, not for what I did. I rarely told anyone my true feelings as I didn’t believe they were valid.
Maybe this isn’t you. Perhaps it is PTSD. Maybe I just got carried away talking about me… 🙂
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It’s certainly true that these things were already true about me before the relationship – they were getting better for a while but after this relationship I feel that they’ve gotten a whole lot worse. I’ve taken like10 steps back from any of the healing that I did prior to the relationship.
The idea that this is just “me”, that it’s just “how I am” makes me feel horribly hopeless and depressed. I don’t want to be like this. I want to be able to live life, not just survive it. I am trying to maintain hope that if these things were instilled in me by my father and then reinforced again in my relationship, that they are in fact things I can overcome so that I can actually take action instead of standing on the sidelines of my own life and being ruled by fear.
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Hi everyone,
I have been using the forum for a while, but this is my first post 🙂
I also experienced a bad problem with hypervigilance and thought to share some of my strategies. It’s been about (detail removed by Moderator) now and the problem is much reduced, so do believe that it can get better. When I used to think I saw my ex (or actually see him) for example, I would fly into a state and sometimes it would take five days for my emotions to feel “normal” again. But now it probably takes fifteen minutes, and I’m hoping that eventually I will get to the stage where it is no longer a problem.
You probably know the book The Body Knows the Score. I have found that daily meditation in the morning and yoga are both very helpful. I also started qi gong, which helped with some of the psychological blocks. The other thing which really helped me was dance. I experienced a lot of body-shaming from him, and it helped me to feel good in my body again. There is an exercise which I started doing recently that really helps for hypervigilance: if you fly into a panic, just look around and say what you see, describe what you are doing. It is a mindfulness technique and it will re-ground you. Try and keep a regular sleep schedule as this will help heal your brain trauma. My sleep was very disrupted for the entire relationship, and at some point I wasn’t sure whether my memory problems were ptsd related or down to long-term sleep deprivation. But going to bed early, drinking lots of water, reducing your alcohol intake etc, will help.
Regarding socializing… I would recommend doing what you are comfortable with, and maybe pushing yourself ever so slightly. For example, if someone invites you out for their birthday drinks, maybe you arrive at 8pm and leave at 10pm. This way, you see your friends again, but you are not extending your boundaries too much or staying in a situation that makes you anxious. But purely from doing this now and then as a practice, I became more confident. The reason is that my ex told me I was not good socially, was not funny, a bad conversationalist, couldn’t dress well, was embarrassing to be with, and that my friends didn’t like me/were bad friends. So gradually you put yourself in these situations and you relearn that these things are not true. In terms of socializing with people you don’t know, I would say that the answer is just not to do this if you don’t want to. You just have to be very self-oriented and prioritize your own healing, rather than forcing yourself to go through with things because others expect it.
I understand what you are going through. I also felt very frustrated at the beginning, feeling that I wanted my life back – especially after the years lost to this already – and of course the men move on so quickly and it feels very unfair. What I can tell you is that it is tough for a while and then you start to look back and realize how far you’ve come, and how resilient you are, and you feel very strong – stronger than your ex and whatever pathetic thing he is doing now. This is also the point where you start taking a complete no-nonsense approach to your preferences and stop giving a sh*t about what other people think. Or that has been my experience, anyway. For me, it was also primarily verbal, emotional, psychological. You have to accept that this isn’t a milder version of abuse. It was very difficult for me to accept this. But you are absolutely not blowing anything out of proportion.
As for dating, it can boost your self-confidence to have a flirt, but I would wait a while as it’s more complicated than you think. I just started dating someone (detail removed by Moderator) ago and it brought up all kinds of issues, even (detail removed by Moderator) after. Honestly, it may have been a mistake. Of course, we all have our own processes, and your experience are different from mine, but you have to ask yourself whether you can be vulnerable to another person at the moment.
Anyway, I hope this is helpful and not too prescriptive. It is just my own experience, and yours may be different. Feel free to ask me any further questions, though. -
@driedflowers thank you so much for sharing! Your story certainly gives me hope that we can all get through this, its so good to hear that you have been able to start to come out thebother side of these difficulties
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