Life After Trauma: The Fallout from Emotional Abuse

Trigger warning: Discussion of abuse, suicidal ideation

This is not going to be an easy discussion. But my horoscope today says "Describe your heart" and I tend to take things literally. So today we are going to talk about life after trauma, and the fallout no one prepared me for.

I am a cult survivor, a survivor of domestic and emotional abuse, and I have been silenced for too long. I met the man who would irrevocably change my life when I was just 24 years old. This year I turn 39. That is 15 years of my life that I will never get back, and there is nothing that I can do to change that.

But I can change my future, and maybe someone else's, by talking about it.

So let's dive in, shall we?

No more hiding

(For all my metaphysical baddies out there: someone from the cult just messaged me out of the blue for the first time in 4 years as soon as I typed those words. Tell me I'm not doing the right thing, I dare you.)

How Did I End Up Here?

I am not a scientist or a psychiatrist, this article is not about stats or science. I am a survivor. And I have done my fair share of research these last few years, trying to sort out what was "wrong" with me. These are my lived experiences, and what I have noted among my fellow survivors.

Nobody ends up in an abusive relationship on purpose. There will be more posts where I deep dive into the specifics of love bombing and red flags, but basically you're duped into it. The days of victim blaming and "just choose better men" are over.

We are not attracted to these people because they appear dark and evil. In fact, they are typically the first safe person in the victim's life.

Oh, you think I have a lovely neck? That is just the sweetest thing!

For me personally, I didn't know that I was neurodivergent growing up. I knew that I was different. I had zero clue how to interact with the other children on the playground, and in the '80s, '90s and early aughts, it was not okay to be different. This leads to masking, which can present itself as mirroring those around you, coming up with entirely new personas, emulating people on TV, you name it I have acted it out in a desperate attempt to appear as a functioning human being.

Spoiler alert: It doesn't work.

And in an even crueler twist of fate, there are people out there who know how to look for this in others, gain their trust, and then exploit this weakness to their benefit.

When I met him, I was working in a coffee shop with no idea where my life was going. I'd finished Community College with a diploma in Tourism Management, I liked being around people and had dreams of opening an Irish pub, but I was barely making ends meet. I was lost, floating, with no idea of who I was or what I truly stood for.

It's true what they say: when you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything.

He'd been watching me at work for a few weeks, from his job at a tattoo shop across the street. Whenever I would read and smoke on my breaks he could see me from his window. He was 6 years older than me, he had world and life experience, and acted like he had it all figured out. He was interested, but not too interested. When we did speak, he saw me. He understood what I was talking about, he would laugh with me and ask follow up questions. He took a real interest in me and genuinely cared about my happiness.

Sounds great, doesn't it? Do you know who else it sounds like?

Hello, you.

This phase only lasts until they know they have you under their thumb. Then, they test the waters. A little disrespect here, a sprinkle of crossed-boundaries there, and before you know it, you're apologizing for being hurt when they hurt you.

Slowly and systematically, they will cut you off from the outside world. Your friends, your family, your co-workers. Then your job, they take control of your finances, manipulate and abuse you into making decisions that go against your better judgement, and doing things that you would never do. Until one day you find yourself utterly and absolutely alone. A shell of yourself, just a puppet being controlled by their hand. They don't need to lay a hand on you to completely control you, the trauma from emotional abuse can be even worse.

Now, what do you think happens if they're already involved in a cult?

Eventually, you stop recognizing yourself.

Living With Abuse

Something happens to your brain when you live in an abusive environment with no perceived escape. Similar to how we pass out when we experience overwhelming physical pain, you dissociate from reality and start to believe the lies to protect yourself from the truth.

They would never hurt me on purpose, they LOVE me.

Your entire reality gets warped, shaped by the lies and inconsistencies you're constantly faced with. They love gaslighting, convincing you after the fact that something didn't happen or wasn't said, you're just crazy or remembering it wrong. You fight back, at first, because you know you deserve to be treated better. You just need to convince them.

But slowly, over time, they erode everything you know about yourself. Those friends you've had forever? Terrible influences. Your family? Evil. That hobby that used to give you so much life? Silly, pointless, and a waste of time. I would have a comfort show on in the background while working during the day, "trad wife" duties as I wasn't allowed to have a paying job anymore. At the time, Netflix allowed you to monitor what was being watched, so he quickly shut that down. Podcasts were becoming a thing, so I was to listen to podcasts or audio books while I worked. Kevin Smith was big on his podcast game at the time, so I had a wide variety to chose from. But then I was having too much fun with the podcasts, so they had to be educational podcasts only. Enter NPR and finance podcasts. I learned way more about the gold standard than I had ever intended to.

Are you seeing the trend yet? It was never about the actual activity at hand, it was about controlling my actions, my mood, and my thoughts.

Oh yes darling, I just love to clean up after you.

Which brings us to the cult. For my own safety, I will not be revealing its name.* But you've heard of it, and my ex had already been involved in it for over a decade when I met him. Like all cults, it relies on manipulation tactics to keep it's members in line. If you're an evil person, you figure out these control methods and use them to control those around you. If you're a good person, especially a lost one, you don't stand a chance.

At first, the cult was like a savior. It was a religion for the non-religious, it was all about being a good person and helping others. And things would only go wrong in our relationship when he stopped following their rules. When he did follow the rules, we would almost be happy. It seemed so simple. To a traumatized mind, any semblance of happy becomes a beacon of grace and salvation.

But, as with most things that promise to fix everything in your life, it proved to do the opposite. When things don't go right, they sell you solutions. When the solutions don't work, well clearly you just need this better solution. Oh, that still didn't work? Obviously you're doing something wrong, time to confess every horrible thing you've ever done and be punished for it. That will be one million dollars, please and thank you.

I will deep dive into the (many) stories I have over time. For today, what you need to know is that he used their tactics to control my life, my mind, to convince me that I was worthless, that anything he did to me was my fault, that I was just a burden to everyone in my life, and that without him I would be a lost little lamb alone in the streets.

It takes the survivor of domestic violence an average of seven attempts to leave an abusive relationship. The abuser is typically surrounded by enablers, and the victim has no one they can turn to. If you are able to get out, never doubt how strong you are. It doesn't matter how long you stayed, it matters that you got out. If you're still in it, you have my support, and you can get help.

But unfortunately, even after you've physically left the situation, you're never prepared for the mental and physical fallout that follows.

Longing for brighter days

Life After Trauma: The Fallout from Emotional Abuse

It's always different in the movies. We see our Final Girl stand up, wipe the blood off of her forehead, somehow stop the unstoppable monster, and then walk off into the sunset.

No one shows us what happens to her after the adrenaline wears off. After her bones have healed, and the cuts have turned to faded scars. Who is she now? She can never go back to the innocent girl she was before she met this monster. She knows what goes bump in the night now. She knows about the monsters hiding behind the faces of men.

I escaped my original monster in 2015. I escaped the cult in 2020. As I write this, we are over halfway through 2024 and I have just begun to heal.

When I first got home, I thought that I had managed to walk away more or less unscathed. This is the adrenaline phase. You're flying high off of the freedom. For the first time in as long as you can remember, no one is monitoring your every move. You want to sleep in? Do it. Dishes in the sink? Forget about it. Ice cream for dinner and cake for dessert? You know it. Think Kevin McCallister in Home Alone, when he first realizes he can do whatever he wants. The freedom is intoxicating and you have literally never felt better.

This is fleeting.

For me, it lasted a while. I pride myself on my ability to run from a problem. But I could only run for so long.

By the December of 2022, I was throwing up all the time. I was trying to start a small business by working craft fairs, Christmas was not the time for this to start. But start, it most certainly did. For over a year I was throwing up all night, every night. I would wake up any time between midnight and 2am, and would throw up non-stop until my body passed out from exhaustion after 5am. Sometimes I would sleep through a single night, but that didn't happen for months. Eventually a week or two would go by. My stomach still hasn't fully corrected itself, but I'm lucky enough to have a family doctor who is constantly sending me for new tests, and I'm cautiously optimistic.

While this was happening, I was spiraling under the weight of my thoughts. If you don't have a basic understanding of depression and anxiety, it is very easy to mistake your thoughts for facts. When your thoughts are swirling about how awful a person you are, how worthless you are, how you don't deserve to live... the mere thought of existing becomes exhausting. It is the oddest feeling to not wish yourself harm, but to wish that you could just blink out of existence, at least for a little while.

Nobody prepared me for the fallout of not hating my abuser, but of hating myself. When you start to unravel everything that was done to you, that you allowed to happen to yourself, the anger becomes blinding. Please remember, this is not your fault. But when you're in the throes of it, I know how it feels to direct all of that anger inwards. Give yourself the time and space to see things clearly.

There are two major lessons I got from therapy that helped me through this phase. Thoughts are not facts, and two truths can exist at once. Make these your mantras. Your thoughts can not be trusted right now. You have been through something unbelievably traumatic, and your mind is going to be all over the place. Just because you think it, that does not make it true.

And two truths can exist at once. For me, it was acknowledging that yes, I did things while in the cult, and in those relationships, that I am not proud of and would never do again. Yes, they were wrong things to do. But also yes, I am a good person. And yes, I was doing what I thought was right at the time with the information that I had available to me. Be kind to yourself, you were acting under horrible circumstances, and you would act differently today. That's called growth.

We do not judge a seed for becoming a flower

In Conclusion...

Honestly, there is no conclusion yet. That chapter, those chapters, they're mostly behind me now. But my book is still being written. Those chapters still exist, I can not re-write them, I can not burn the pages, as hard as I've tried. They are forever going to be a part of me. But that version of me is concluded. I will never again be that naive little girl, mistaking love bombing for "love," and red flags for "character." The secret is to know yourself, and know your worth. Once you know what you bring to the table, you no longer fear eating alone.

Creating my own happily ever after, one extra plant at a time

*yet (: