Taking your power back!
After the ''sharing your story'' process with a therapist or others, comes the ''take your power back'' phase. In this phase you probably still lack self-confidence, worth and find it hard to set your boundaries to others. It is very common that you can start to gain your sense of self-worth of of people feeling sorry for what you have been through, or just recognition by others in general.
This is were you have to be very mindful, because you will not have the power over your life back unless it comes from within instead of being based on external factors. It is very important, even though it's painful and confronting, to give yourself the time to process your experiences in a healthy emotional way. You have to sit with yourself and treat all the wounds that your experience has left you. It can absolutely make you feel down and vulnerable for a while but you have to go through this in order to experience that you are worthy of healing and way stronger than you think you are. (It can really help to listen to motivational speeches about self-worth, perserverence and spirituality.)
When you heal yourself with the intentions of coming back stronger than ever before it will keep you motivated during the healing process and prevent you from getting stuck in the dark place of pain, anger and trauma. But honestly, the biggest gift of self-love you can give yourself is healing, a chance to take back full power over your live and live it exactly the way you want to live it. You have to go through a period of pain, but after you will be free and ready to build your life back up with you as the leader!
When you feel alone..
Most of the time when someone has experienced the trauma of domestic violence they have to deal with regaining their self confidence and their worth. Even after, when someone has gotten out of the violent situation, they often feel very alone and misunderstood. It can be that you have tried to talk about your thoughts and experiences with your loved ones, but a lot of times these people stand emotionally to close to you to hear about all the painful moments you have been through when you were all alone in this violent situation.
They try to understand you, but their first response can be bursting into tears or getting too uncomfortable once you start telling your story. Very important, don't blame them but as well don't shut down! It is a very natural response of human beings that as soon as someone close to them was in a lot of pain and now is out of the threatening situation, to not want to hear about it while they try to forget the memories.
When you feel alone and you doubt yourself because of the patterns that have been projected onto you while you were in a violent situation, it is best to talk to someone that has no relation to you. I know it might be too scary and too confronting at first, and thoughts might be occuring to you like "It wasn't bad enough.'' or ''I can fix this myself, I don't need help.'' This is completely normal, just please keep in mind no harm ever should have happend to you in any form, but it did and so you absolutely deserve full attention to be able to get rid of your underlying trauma and move on with your life in peace.
Once you start sharing your story with others: you feel heard, have a third person's view on your experience and you are able to better understand the pattern that you unknowingly took over as a survival mechanism. Patterns and survival mechanisms that you can start to get rid of while you no longer are under control of an abusive person. That's why we highly recommend talking with a therapist that you feel you can trust. Keep in mind we are no certified therapists, but sharing experiencing and ways of healing can get you a long way already!
If you feel the need to ask for advise, just want to reach out or share your story with the world feel free to send us an e-mail. Because honestly, you are such an amazing being that has not been put on earth to keep dragging around emotional trauma, you deserve to be free!