Transcending an Abusive Relationship

Katherine Phelps

I am not a psychologist or a trained helper. I am, however, a survivor of abuse and more than that someone who feels she has transcended the experience. I wish to share with you the steps I took and the lessons I learned in order to become the more whole person that I am today. If I have forgotten something or something ought to be added or changed, please write me and let me know. Today so many women are found to have been abused at one time or another in their lives. It's time we pool our experiences such that we can all transcend this cycle of pain.

Abuse is blind. All sorts of people are its victims: male and female, young and old, rich and poor. And no one's pain is more important than another's. I had experienced abuse as a child from the older boys at a small town school where grade school children to high school young adults were mixed in a few close set buildings. From this experience I developed strategies which helped me to pretend nothing was going wrong. These same strategies kept me from seeing before too late that I had married an abusive man. This is my experience, so it is for those in similar situations that I write. Below are my recommended steps, but please do not take my word for them. If you need help concerning an abusive relationship, seek professional assistance immediately.

The first step to freeing yourself from an abusive relationship is in ways the hardest and can seem the cruellest. So please bear with me so that you can understand why it is important. The first step is to acknowledge responsibility for creating the situation. I am not talking about blaming. I am not saying that it is your fault for being abused. Nonetheless, it is important to recognise that you made the choices which brought you to this point in your life, therefore you can make the choices to get yourself back out. What I am getting at here is that you must take responsibility in order to be empowered to realise that you do have a choice. I have seen too many women who because they believe they have no choice go back to an abusive man or end up in one abusive relationship after another. You have a choice and you deserve better.
It is true to say that no one can save you, but yourself. However, once you have decided to save yourself, plenty of people are available to help. Seek help immediately. Remember this is the best thing for both you and your partner. Help comes in the forms of crisis lines, police, counsellors, friends and family. Feel free to make use of all of these as seems right to you.
Be ready to leave your partner in an instant. Just because you love someone, just because you are married, does not mean it would be healthy for you to remain with him.
Do not worry about how things will seem and what other people may think. Be more concerned about how you are feeling and your well being. You deserve to care about yourself. Know that your life can become better than it is.
Once out of the situation allow yourself to get good and angry, even to hate for a while. Find some way to physically express it by yelling, hitting pillows, shredding old newspapers, whatever. These feelings are valid. Pretending they don't exist doesn't help them go away. I know that I had difficulty with this one. I felt that by having these feelings I was too like the man I was condemning. So even the mildest feelings of upset were suppressed. This is an emotionally and physically destructive state to put yourself in. You have to acknowledge that you have it in you to be an angry and violent person so that you can stop being afraid of it. You have to drop judgement of anger and violence so that you know you have a choice concerning your own violence. You may say that you would never hurt anyone, but what about yourself? When you consciously allow yourself to be abused, you are committing violence against yourself. Some aspects of anger are important to your well being. It's only when anger is out of balance that you get into trouble. When you suppress your feelings you become a victim, when they break free uncontrollably after having been suppressed, you become an abuser.
Examine your beliefs. You made the choices that you did because you believed you deserved no better or maybe you believed from childhood that abuse is how two married people relate to one another. Whatever those beliefs are it is important to become aware of them so you can change them. This is where a counsellor is of immense value. Feel free to shop around for one. Not every mental health professional is for you. I would strongly suggest avoiding any doctors, psychiatrists or anyone who suggests using anti-depressants unless you have a genuine brain chemical imbalance. Now is a time for you to start feeling self-empowered and to make peace with your emotions, not to deaden your experience of life.
Forgive yourself. You have always done the very best you know how and that is fine. All you have done is completely valid. You can learn from these experiences, grow and change your life as you wish. You deserve it.
Here's another tricky one. Forgive your abusive partner. I am not saying to go back to him. I am not saying to stop prosecution if you have begun proceedings against him. I am not even saying to do this because that's what good people do. You will need to forgive him for your own peace of mind. This is really the measure of whether you have transcended the situation or not. If you do not forgive him, you will forever carry within you the bad feelings from the situation, you will always have a difficult time carrying on a healthy relationship with a man and you will be unable to completely forgive yourself. Be gentle with yourself if you are unable to forgive him right away. As I said in the beginning, there is a time to let yourself get angry and hate. However, one day you will want to release yourself and this is the way to do it. He was what he was. If you had grown up under the same conditions, you might have been like him as well. Let him be and move on. We can all afford to learn more discernment and compassion.
Learn to be good to yourself. Find friends who are supportive of you as you are. Take up activities that give you a sense of fulfillment. Spoil yourself now and again with little niceties like a long soaky bath or a bowl of your favourite ice cream. Learning to love yourself is the beginning of finding more love in the world. You deserve it.

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