In order to keep yourself (and your children) safe emotionally and physically safe, you’ve had to pay a great deal of attention to your partner. You probably carefully monitor your partner’s moods and behaviours. You may not have had much opportunity to see how his abuse affects you. Here a partial list of Impacts generated by a group of women in one of our women’s groups.
- Fatigue
- Feel like I’m going crazy
- Feel isolated
- Suffer depression
- Have a lack of interest
- Feel distracted
- Feel overwhelmed
- Judge myself
- Have lost all my friends
- Doubt myself
- Feel rage
- Women also experience many health problems:
- Heart palpitations
- High blood pressure
- Stomach problems
- Weight problems
- Sleep problems
- Muscle pain
Most women are shocked to see the many ways in which the abuse has affected their lives and their health. This list can be very affirming, because it helps to explain concerns that you may have had over feeling forgetful, confused, dizzy, sad or angry. It may also help you to understand why you’re so exhausted – look at all the things you’ve been coping with!
The lists in this book were what opened my eyes to the reality of my abusive relationship – there was nothing I could do to make things better. As I read through the lists I was able to tick off so many things – it was quite a shock to me. Before I left 4 years ago I checked off 15 items on the above list. Now I can only check off 5 – I share joint custody so I don’t expect to get down to 0 until my children are much older.
I am living with all of this. It is so mind-numbing and disheartening to know the truth. Why can’t I just realize once and for all, that this isn’t going to work? And what is worse (or better) is that I have a journal of our entire relationship that I can’t even bear to read. I don’t want to know that somehow I knew the sad, sad truth.
This book saved my life, I really think so. I have never read anything that comes close to explaining things as well as this book about abuse, about “When Love Hurts”.
Looking back, now that I’ve been out of the situation for a few years, I do not know how I made it out. Prior to the abusive relationship, I was always very level headed, cool under pressure, and good at making decisions. But, being in the middle of the abusive relationship turned my mind to mush. I honestly couldn’t remember anything important from one minute to the next.
When I left, I left too many things behind just because of being so scattered. I don’t really know even how I made it out. I tried making lists, and that helped, but I forgot the lists and forgot to put important things on the list.
I wish I had followed the suggestions in the book more closely, also, because I still thought our relationship was “different”, somehow not as bad as it really was, and I told him when I was leaving. That was a HUGE MISTAKE. If I had not told him when I was leaving or even that I was leaving a lot of things would have been much better. But I put that down to how muddled my thinking was and how my judgement was so compromised.
After leaving it took quite a while to start to recover, because the abuse affected me so badly. I had almost everything on the list, except maybe high blood pressure.
I’m just so glad I got myself and my child out when I did, and there is no way I would have had the strength to do it without the knowledge from this book, and the help of a very special counselor who is the one who gave me the book, and was supportive as I got away.
I’m much healthier now that I am away, and there is no comparison as to how much better I feel and function.