Healing Your Mind After Abuse

This process is surely an ongoing one. It will and has taken me a great deal of time to even have gotten this far. I have spent many years as a writer and it still has been a battle to get to the point of being able to write about my own abuse. Regardless of the time frame in which the abuse occurred it has not been easy to fully accept that I am not responsible for any of the abuse that I endured. I use the term “endure”, because truly at times I myself was aware of what was happening. That there were no other justifications or explanations to accept things other than to know it was abuse. This I will write more about at another time and address the things that keep us drawn to certain abuse types and how we can break free from those attachments even through the worse of fears.

The first goal for myself mentally was to understand as I said before, that the abuse was not something I was at fault for. When we are told that hurtful actions towards us are to get our attention or to demonstrate how important a relationship is then this is just one more thing that we must work through within our mind. Long after years of abuse I have just started to take hold of the truth that I did not control someone else’s actions and regardless of whether I was not a perfect person the abusive actions were not justified towards me. This topic of Healing Your mind After Abuse will give some helpful things that I myself have been utilizing and I am sure you may have found already on your own. The healing is hopeful, it is real and does take time. Do not give up on days you feel that you are trapped within the emotions you are feeling. Know that you will make it past them and back towards becoming a stronger you.

Self Affirmation After Abuse

It is important to start to realize values within yourself that you either forgot or were forced through repeated actions to forget. Set new boundaries for yourself for the type of people you allow to have within your life and influence you. It will be tempting to go to relationships and emotions that are familiar and these will closely linked to the abuse that occurred. After suffering from any abuse you may feel that having someone who is aggressive, in control or familiar to the past around again could make you feel safe from the ones that have harmed you but in fact this is simply still allowing the past abuser to have control over your mental healing by the diminished feelings of you deserving something stable and calm within your life. It will take some hard work to feel worthy of a higher level of interaction with anyone. After most types of abuse we may feel strong but we can quickly resort back to allowing future relationships to control us and find ourselves justifying others actions once again to gain acceptance or a feeling of safety.

Surround yourself with people who encourage good in your life. If this means finding an entirely different set of social circles, then it is important to do so in order to become truly the great person you are. Those you surround yourself with should give you affirmation of your qualities, personal beauty, creativeness, skills and encourage your greater goals. You can find friends through many of the things that you rarely were able to enjoy and will come to see that a whole new world of people exist that you were not even aware of that encourage these things instead of controlling them. If you feel capable of going into a romantic relationship you should have already done quite a bit of healing already. No one person can take away all the things that have happen to you, the fears and pains will have to be healed internally and this is not something that another human can do for you. I have found that Spiritual connection with God and the infilling of the Holy Ghost has given me great strength to recover in incredible ways. This has been a help for me and I urge you to try to find the understanding of this on your own. If you are not a religious person or have not found a solid faith to believe in then whatever place or connection you may find peace and power within is a good start regardless of the belief system behind it. We however do need to fill our life with truths at this point and this is a great time to find things that will last you for the rest of your life.

Self affirmation can come in many forms, whether it be kind words towards you from others or compliments that remind you of who you are. Accomplishments, finding new skills and hobbies or coming back to things that you felt were dead within yourself. These things are good for you. After many years of any abuse the parts of our minds that have held our own identity has been pretty damaged if not completely destroyed. Be careful not to become careless seeking affirmation though in this stage of your life of healing but there is nothing wrong with taking every bit of what you experience and placing it into rebuilding your self worth and esteem. There are plenty of people that you do not even know who appreciate your abilities, talents and personality that you have been told weren’t good enough or adequate somehow. It may take some time to gain courage to start regrowing to who you were previously or perhaps becoming someone even better. A lot fo these things may sound obvious but I am letting you know personally how I have helped my mind start to heal and even as I battle nightmares of my past relationship and so called love I do these things each day to help get closer to who I know I am.

1. Write – Even if you are not a writer simply putting your words out from your mind regarding your emotions that you have kept inside will give you more power to understand you are getting past them.
2. Try New Things – Not only will this allow you to experience things that you perhaps were afraid to even mention or were kept from but this will allow you to discover perhaps more abilities and things within life you never even knew you would enjoy. Whether it is new food, a hobby, talking to people you otherwise wouldn’t feel accepted by. These things even if you do not always succeed will surprise you as to the power you have within your self as a person who is gaining control back over your own life.
3. Art – Many of these things have been easy for me since they have been the career I have bene in for many years but this goes beyond perhaps what you have been doing or have done. Try to expand your medium or ways you express or create. If you are not good at something then do it to help your mind know that it still has the ability to try and this will still help you within recovering when your mind realizes you have the choice to at least try.
4. Music – This goes beyond just listening to music, but I encourage you to begin to move away from music you listened to previously during abuse as a coping or outlet. What I have done is taken all the playlist and songs and compiled them and then listen to them and realize the emotion that I was relaying upon from it and recognizing that I no longer need to have that emotion in my life. Sure enough as my mind heals it allows me to see that my music choice has also changed and there is no place for sadness, anger, depression to continue to play within my life. If you play an instrument or ever have wanted to, then do this more. Expand your taste and genre, try to collaborate with people who do not even know you, try your skills even at another instrument. Once again this will allow your mind to simply heal further through having the choice to do so. The ability to have people within our healing who do not require to know all about us is a great healing source and will give you almost an instant sense of normalcy and accomplishment regardless of how great whatever you try turns out to be.
5. Talk – Tell people about yourself, include your trauma and this is so you can start to know that there is no longer a reason to keep your abuse a secret. This will break something deep within you that has been forced to stay there for a very long time. Tell strangers, random people, your friends, family and yes even those who may show interest in you regarding relationships. Talking will do many things and you will find that being open is a great power to have in finding those who you need and do not need within your life going further.
6. Relax – This is a very little thing that you may see as wasting time or even have overlooked. Taking time to simply relax, take in good things, take a longer shower than normal, lay in bed a little longer simply for the fact of relaxing. Buy yourself some bath things even from the dollar store if you have little money and tell yourself that this time is yours that you control and are taking. This will give you an incredible sense of self worth and affirmation that you have value to take care of yourself.
7. Contribute – Finally this is a great one for me that has helped a lot. Through helping others either with your own experience or advice from experience you will understand you have a great value and experience. This breaks the damage that has been done and runs it into a resource instead of a regret. When we understand that we are capable as a person to take any experience and learn from it in positive ways this gains back control over every single thing that has been done to us in any way and takes those wrong things and turns them into something great. The scriptures say that “You meant evil against me, but God used it for good.” Take the bad and make it into good for this world. Understand that you may feel you have hurts and secrets but more than ever everyone is looking for honesty and transparency from people.

If any of these things will be a help please drop me a note and let me know so I can put that away for my own self affirmation. Thanks for reading and I hope your day becomes greater from here on out. Remember you hold something in the features of your life, the magnificent moments that you have held and created. The fine lines that have been pushed into your very being and life are gorgeous and the sun truly shines for you. Just go outside on a bright day and I am sure it will be waiting to give you some of it in return. -J