In this video, I am going to explain how to protect yourself and how to recover from emotional
abuse. So, this video is for you if you have been
emotionally abused as a child, or as an adult. Now, in reality, if you have been abused emotionally
as a child, it's very likely that you'll go on to be abused in your adult relationships
because emotional abuse damages our self-esteem, it leads us to believe that we deserve to
be treated badly, so we will be drawn to people who will do that.
So, I'm going to take you through five steps
to protect yourself and to recover from emotional abuse.
Step one. Now, in order to heal, the emotional
abuse needs to have stopped. So, you need to get the support to protect yourself, to
remove yourself from the emotionally abusive relationship. Now, because emotional abuse
is difficult to explain or describe to other people, I would advise that you get help from
someone who is trained to recognise emotional abuse—so, a therapist, a doctor, or a charity—and
I've put some helpful links in the description to guide you in the right direction for this.
Okay, the second step: whilst you are trying to heal from your emotional abuse, I would
advise that you avoid forming new relationships,
especially romantic relationships, until you've healed.
Because, until your belief changes—your belief that you are good enough and that you
deserve to be treated well—you will continue to be drawn into abusive relationships, and
the stronger your feelings are for somebody, the harder you will find it to set healthy
boundaries, to set self-preserving boundaries, so the more likely you are to be abused. And,
keep in your mind, you are always more vulnerable to being emotionally abused by family members
and by your partner. Okay, step three is to help you to resolve
the day-to-day effects of your emotional abuse, so, feelings of anxiety, depression, upsetting
memories, nightmares, flashbacks, guilt, shame, helplessness—these are difficult to overcome,
so it's quite likely that you will need some professional support in the form of therapy
to do this. But, if you don't quite feel ready to do that, I've put some links in the description
to some useful videos that you can watch, and, also, some self-help books that you can
read, to kind of get you going. Okay, the fourth step is to resolve what it
is that's made you vulnerable to being emotionally abused in the first place, and this is likely
to be early experiences of emotional abuse that have damaged your self-esteem, that have
influenced your expectations for how you should be treated. So, you need to untangle yourself
from these. Again, this is difficult to do, but it needs to be done so that you can make
healthy choices, so you can set self-preserving boundaries in your relationships. I would
usually recommend that you do this in therapy, so a professional who's trained can help you
to do this. But, again, if you don't feel ready yet, you can look at some of those videos
and that self-help literature that I've recommended in the description, and this will get you
started on that path. Okay, the fifth and final step is to build
yourself a social network where you are appreciated
—where you feel respected, where you are treated well—
and, also, to look after yourself in an ongoing way, so you build your self-esteem up—
you build your confidence, you build that belief that you deserve to be treated well,
so that you're never emotionally abused again.
I hope this was helpful. Thank you for watching.
And I'll see you soon.