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    • #51180
      Serenity
      Participant

      I’ve been divorced a little while now, and I’m rediscovering myself- the old me.

      However, I’ve realised how I am still governed by the feeling that he’s going to take anything that I achieve away.

      You see, I realise now looking back that he was a parasite from the off, using me to get his needs met, using my family, being enraged if I gained anything, even if it was through my own heavy toil. He’d take it away from me, and it was better to have nothing, because I knew he would take it from me if I had anything. He made the kids and I feel greedy for wanting anything at all and ridiculed our hopes and ambitions, trying to keep us ‘less’ than him.

      It’s occurred to me that I am subconsciously scared that the things that I achieve for myself and my boys now, are things that I don’t deserve ( his voice there) and that anything I achieve will be taken away, or enrage him so that he will plot to bring me down if he gets wind of it.

      Is this normal? Does anyone else have this fear, even after being separated for a while?

    • #51183
      Ayanna
      Participant

      You clearly have PTSD.
      You are still in the situation although you have been out for a while.
      Your trauma is so deep that your brain cannot differentiate between then and now. It all merges to one situation.
      Also, due to the child contact problems you could never go zero contact. This enforced the trauma.
      You could not get a break from him.

      I have been zero contact since the last family court hearing a while ago and he still sits in my head. How much worse must it be for you.

      You need to talk about this and take your feelings towards these self doubts and fears apart until you come to the bottom of them where you can disperse them into nothing. It is hard work and best done with a trauma counsellor.

    • #51195
      Tiffany
      Participant

      I spent months identifying what we’re my own fears and what was his voice, and I think I was with my abuser for a much shorter time than you. I think it took me about a month of no contact for every year I had been with his before his voice lost his power. It still rears it’s ugly head occasionally, but it is easier to dispell now. It’s hard because they play on our fears anyway, so separating our own reasonable levels of fear from the heightened terror we feel is hard, but it is possible. Some counselling might help – I am on a waiting list – but reassuring yourself and performing acts of self care which remind you that you are worthy of care help a lot too.

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