Were you in an abusive relationship and still feel affected? Are you trying to move on from your experience but are finding it difficult? Do you want to feel better but aren’t sure how?

Abusive relationships often have long-lasting effects that can impact your opinion of yourself, your trust in yourself and your judgements, and make it difficult to live authentically.

While the effects of abuse may never completely disappear, they can become far less impactful. You can unlearn the harmful – and almost certainly untrue – messages your former partner sent you while rediscovering what there is to like and love about yourself.

This is a challenging process that can take a long time and involve a number of set-backs, but it has the potential to give you a new and positive way of thinking about yourself, how you relate to others, and your potential.

Abuse and poor mental health

Why is it so difficult to recover, potentially even years after leaving an abuser?

The goal of abusers is to control and manipulate their partners so they’ll be less resistant to making the abuser their top priority, doing what they’re told, surrendering their decision-making abilities, having their rights and freedoms limited, and submitting to authority and control.

People are easier to control when they have a poor opinion of themselves, don’t think they can make good decisions, aren’t taking care of themselves, and believe that their boundaries aren’t worth enforcing and they shouldn’t pursue their ambitions.

To achieve this, abusers will tell you painful untrue things about yourself, criticise and demeane the choices you make, emphasise or invent flaws for you to be self-conscious about, mock your interests and ambitions, tell you they’re more reliable because of their better judgement, and much more.

These messages are often the most damaging and longest-lasting of the effects of abuse. Even after leaving an abuser, it’s common for abuse survivors to continue repeating the things they were told while in an abusive relationship; many wish their partners had physically harmed them instead.

The impacts of abuse, including believing what your abuser told you. don’t stop when you leave a relationship. They wanted you to think badly of yourself and knew how to make this happen, so it’s natural to feel the effects even after the end of the relationship. But you can unlearn these messages and improve how you think and feel about yourself.  

Recovering from disconnection

Is it easy and natural for you to be yourself? Do you make time to care for yourself and do things you find satisfying? Are you aware of your beliefs, values, and hopes for the future?

The majority of people who have experienced abuse will need to reconnect with themselves. When you’re connected to yourself, you know who you are, honour your authentic self, practice your beliefs and values, and pursue your ambitions for the future.

Disconnection is losing sight of who you are as an individual: what is important to you, what you enjoy and dislike, your hopes and dreams for the future, your favourite pastimes, your boundaries, and everything else that makes you who you are.

Disconnection is a common and consequential outcome of abuse.

Because abusers want you to have a poor opinion of yourself so you’ll conform to their ideal version of a partner and potentially impose consequences if you act in ways they dislike, the vast majority of people who leave abusive relationships will experience disconnection. They’re likely to struggle to live authentically because they don’t like or respect who they are, think they’re unlovable, have low self-worth, believe they don’t have any useful skills, and don’t take care of themselves or prioritise their needs or emotions.

When you’re disconnected from who you are, you’re sending yourself the message that your authentic self isn’t good enough, your values and interests don’t matter, and that you can’t succeed or earn love and respect from others without being performative. This is a painful pattern of beliefs that can keep you trapped feeling that you aren’t enough and are correct to think poorly of yourself.

Therefore, reconnection is important to improving how you feel about yourself.

Reconnecting involves establishing a respectful friendship with yourself, but you can’t be friends with someone you have a low opinion of, so you need to rebuild your self-worth in order to have this relationship.  

Self-worth comes from the ability to tell yourself you’re a person of value, but rather than being connected to your accomplishments or how others think of you, it’s having a good relationship with yourself because of who you are. You think that – most of the time – you have good intentions, make the right decisions, have respectable values, treat people fairly, and live a life you’re proud of. There can be parts of yourself you’re not fond of, but you do your best to improve while accepting that they don’t make you a bad person.

Rebuilding self-worth requires living authentically. Unless you feel comfortable being yourself and don’t think that you need to change or modify behaviours that come naturally, you’re sending yourself the message that you should dislike yourself because who you are isn’t good enough or capable of pleasing people.

To live authentically, you don’t try to modify your personality to suit others and behave in ways that are natural – but without using authenticity as a justification for being needlessly unkind. You can practice authenticity in small everyday moments where you make a joke you think would be funny, watch a show others might think is cheesy, and respond to others without overthinking how they might react.

But it can also be difficult as it requires honouring your beliefs and values. If someone is treating you in ways you don’t think are acceptable, asks you to do or agree with something you don’t think is right, or expects you to make a compromise you aren’t comfortable with, living authentically requires stating how you feel and/or leaving the situation – as long as it’s safe – instead of acting as if you approve.

Many people aren’t consciously aware of their beliefs and values. If you’re unsure what yours are, there are different ways to identify them, including tests online. Once you’ve identified your primary beliefs and values, consider how you can live in ways that honour them. If you value compassion, how can you be more compassionate, including with yourself? If family is one of your values, how can you best support your family members?

Living disconnected is painful, yet it’s possible to be doing so without even realising. By reconnecting through learning to think well of yourself and honouring who you are and what’s important to you, you can begin the process of reconnecting and living a life that’s more aligned your genuine self, and therefore more satisfying.  

Learning to trust yourself

Do you believe that you can make good decisions? When you tell yourself you’ll do something, do you tend to think you’ll follow through? Do you trust yourself?

People who have experienced abuse often lack trust in themselves.

Abuse impacts your trust in yourself because in addition the messages your abuser likely sent you to make you doubt yourself, you’re put in a position where it’s difficult not to betray yourself in at least some ways, such as tolerating types of behaviour you normally would have found unacceptable, distancing yourself from the people you care about (or even hurting them), and believing that your bad decisions were responsible for your situation.

When you don’t trust yourself, you can’t have a healthy relationship with yourself. You’re likely to second-guess your decisions, doubt your judgement, procrastinate to avoid making commitments, rely on other people’s opinions more than your own, feel regret or ruminate after making a decision, easily believe negative comments about yourself, and have low self-worth because it’s difficult to think highly of someone you don’t trust.

Rebuilding trust in yourself is a highly personal and often unique process, but most people are able to improve their trust in themselves through the following practices:

1. Establish boundaries – boundaries are guidelines for how you behave and how you allow others to treat you. Make a list of your boundaries so you can better understand them. explain your boundaries to others and if they aren’t being respected, hold that person accountable and potentially enforce a consequence.
2. Practice accountability – acknowledge and admit to your mistakes. They don’t devalue you, but it is important to recognise the mistakes you make so you can learn from them and avoid repeating them in the future.
3. Be reliable – if you don’t keep the commitments you make, to yourself and others, it will be difficult to trust yourself. Even if there are reasons why you couldn’t follow through or didn’t feel capable, recognise what you did and, ideally, consider how you can compensate or make amends.  
4. Be non-judgemental – when you judge yourself, you send yourself the message that you’re not good enough and your mistakes are shameful. This doesn’t mean telling yourself that you didn’t do anything wrong, but you also consider the context and are compassionate with yourself by speaking to yourself the same way you would talk to someone you care about who made a mistake.  
5. Use compassionate self-talk – self-compassion isn’t only for when you make mistakes; how you speak to yourself on a regular basis has a strong impact on how you think of yourself. If you’re highly critical of your mistakes and mis-judgements, you’ll likely believe these messages and struggle to think more highly of yourself.  

Rebuilding trust in yourself is often a long process where you will make plenty of mistakes and have times where you’re not certain it’s possible or that you deserve it. But there will also be plenty of opportunities to try again and realise that you can improve, learn to trust yourself, and adopt a new and healthier way of thinking about yourself.

Practice self-care

How much time do you spend doing things you find deeply enjoyable and satisfying? Do you take care of your physical health? What are your hobbies and favourite pastimes?

Self-care is anything you do because you know it will make you feel happier, fulfilled, relaxed, energised, or accomplished afterwards because you know you’ve done something good for yourself.

There are many different ways to practice self-care. Self-care can be something you enjoy doing while you’re doing it – like taking a bath or working on a hobby. It can even be a bit of indulgence, like occasionally treating yourself to a high-calorie meal or an unnecessary purchase. Self-care can also be something you don’t really want to do that takes motivation to get started, but afterwards you’re glad you made the effort, such as cleaning or exercising.

But it has to be intentional. You can’t think of something you enjoyed earlier in the day and then count it as self-care; you have to tell yourself that you’re going to practice self-care before you do it and then pay attention to how it made you feel during and afterwards. Otherwise, it won’t have the same effects.

Practicing self-care is especially valuable for people who have been in abusive relationships because it can help you improve your self-worth by demonstrating that you deserve to spend time on yourself. Abusive partners are highly entitled and believe that your role is to take care of their every need without ever considering your own. Keeping an abuser as happy as possible is often a more than full-time job that takes all of your time, energy and attention so it’s natural to stop paying attention to yourself.

As part of self-care and reconnecting to yourself, you can also rediscover hobbies, interests, and dreams you may have been neglecting, as well as considering new ways to have fun and explore who you are. These pastimes and pursuits are often discouraged by abusive partners, so you may have largely forgotten them, but finding out what you enjoy can be a lot of fun.

Additionally, self-care is a valuable opportunity to build trust in yourself by making personal goals and setting commitments you can honour. You can start small and as your confidence in yourself grows, you can feel capable of taking on increasingly ambitious challenges with even more rewarding results, such as growing a morning jog into running a marathon.

Practicing self-care is necessary to being mentally healthy and appreciating your value. And it can be one of the more enjoyable ways of reconnecting with yourself.

Accepting the past

How honest are you about what you experienced, not just with others but especially yourself? Do you ever downplay or excuse your former partner’s behaviour? What do you tell yourself about your role in your relationship?

When people have been abused, it’s common for them to deny the extent of their experience.

You can tell yourself and others that how you were treated wasn’t that bad, you often ‘gave as good as you got’, had some of it coming, and/or that some things just didn’t happen.

Although down-playing and denial can offer the impression of self-protection, it has harmful consequences. Asking yourself to believe a narrative you know is untrue is very demanding. You may be able to manage some or even most of the time, but this will cost you energy you could put to better use in other ways.

It also asks you to lie to yourself on a regular basis, which undermines building trust in yourself while preventing you from learning from your past. You can repeat harmful beliefs and thought patterns, especially those that claim you played a role and where at least partially responsible for being abused, which is never true.

Denying what you experienced can also contribute to judging and disliking yourself. If you don’t acknowledge what you experienced, you’re sending yourself the message that you should be ashamed because of your partner’s actions.

This is an unhealthy and unfair way to live. You’re taking on responsibility for someone else’s actions while believing they reflect on you. Even if you could have theoretically seen the signs, left earlier, done more to stand up for yourself, etc., you likely did the best you could and made what felt like rational decisions given your circumstances and the insight you had at the time. By recognising what motivated your beliefs and actions, you can be in a better position to improve how you think of yourself and give up any guilt or responsibility you feel because of what you experienced.

People can also feel confused and judge themselves if they still have some positive emotions for their former partner. They can even catch themselves missing the relationship and wondering if they were wrong to leave despite what they experienced.

This too is a common and even logical reaction. There were reasons you began the relationship so by acknowledging the positives, you can be more aware of why you stayed and why you likely had at least some hope that your partner and the relationship could eventually improve.

You can’t heal from challenging, potentially even traumatic experiences you don’t fully acknowledge as this prevents you from processing the emotions it’s causing and moving away from the unhealthy beliefs and symptoms they can cause. Taking ownership of your past can be incredibly painful, confusing, and challenging, but it’s necessary to healing and growth.

Coming to terms with a painful past, as well as changing how you think about yourself, has the potential to be very difficult, frustrating, and possibly create challenges that go beyond recovering from an abusive relationship. You can unintentionally maintain long-held beliefs you aren’t fully aware of, struggle to accept healthy ways of thinking about yourself, and possibly be at risk of developing a mental health condition such as anxiety or depression.

For these reasons, some people prefer to work with a mental health professional after leaving an abusive relationship. Addressing a challenging past and moving away from painful beliefs is often a difficult process involving plenty of days where you feel that you aren’t making any progress or are doing worse. While these challenges are unavoidable, a mental health professional can help reduce their frequency and how impactful they are. Professionals can ask you questions that reveal damaging thought patterns, suggest alternative ways of thinking about yourself and your experiences, and provide support during what is likely to be a very emotional process.

Visualising yourself in the future

An empowering, and often enjoyable, way to practice the skills involved in recovering from an abusive relationship is by visualising your ideal future self.

What type of person would you like to be one, five, ten or more years from now? What have you accomplished? How do you spend your free time? What are you working towards? How do you treat yourself and other people?

Be as detailed as you can so you can understand what makes it possible for your future self to be who they are. What are their goals and when do they work on them? What motivates them to be productive or take on challenges when it isn’t easy? How do they recover from mistakes?

For example, if your future self is well-read, what types of books do you read? When do you make time for reading and for how long? Are there any books you would like to start reading now that would make you feel accomplished and closer to this person? Once you have a clear image of the type of person you would like to become, you can create a roadmap that will help you be more like this version of yourself.

Knowing the type of person you would like to become and having tangible steps you can take to achieve this goal can change healing from abuse and reconnecting to yourself from a largely-theoretical process to one that is action-based.

The more you accomplish, the more you show yourself what you’re capable of, which builds motivation and makes it easier to keep progressing and taking on even more ambitious ideas.

However, don’t feel the need to ask too much of yourself to quickly. Self-improvement typically takes much longer and requires far more energy than you anticipate. Imagining your future self and how you can become that person isn’t meant to give you more to accomplish than you can comfortably manage, but to give you optimism for the future and feel capable of taking control of who you are and your direction. You can have ambitious goals and changes you want to make while still loving and accepting the person you are today.  

Growth and personal development are gradual processes that will be ongoing rather than ever truly finished. But by identifying the changes you want to make and taking action to make them a reality, you can prove to yourself that you have the ability to improve yourself, your thought patterns, and your situation.

Reconnecting to yourself can be challenging as it requires pushing yourself out of your comfort zone to be authentic and stand up for yourself, unlearn harmful beliefs, and engage behaviours that may have been dangerous in the past.

But it’s also highly rewarding, and at times even fun. You give yourself permission to be kind to yourself instead of critical, challenge painful beliefs, indulge your needs and desires rather than putting yourself last, and move towards adopting a positive perspective of yourself and your possibilities for the future.

Building and maintaining a healthy relationship with yourself is an ongoing process. Living authentically, behaving in ways that promote self-trust, honouring your beliefs and values, and practicing self-care are decisions you need to make on a daily basis. But the longer you engage in these behaviours, the more natural they will become and the less effort and intention they will require.

No one leaves an abusive situation without any lingering effects, although these aren’t always obvious, especially if you’ve gotten used to them. But through recognising how you’re still being affected and what you can change to feel reconnected to yourself, you can improve how you feel about yourself and be more optimistic about your future.