Part 8: What Nobody Tells You About Healing After Leaving

A night that changed everything

The sharp deep pain begins shooting down my leg, “The pain is too much! Oh my God!”
(He speaks in a calm flat tone of voice, no emotion except contempt and irritation.)
Him: “It always hurts.”
Me: “Not like this! The doctor said you need to stop if it hurts this bad.”
(He’s ignoring me as I’m crying, but I can’t move, the needle is all the way in me.)
Me: “Is it in the right spot!? Maybe you need to try a different spot?” (I continue crying)
(He’s getting more sharp in his responses to me, as if this is a huge favor he is doing me that he doesn’t have time for.)
Him: “I’m doing the injection just like you told me. If you don’t stop complaining, I’m not going to help you with the injections anymore.”
(I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut, suddenly empty inside, like I’m unworthy of his care, like I’m completely alone. I am a problem he tolerates. I’m still crying as he finishes the injection.)
Me: Why were you so cold with me just now?
Him: I’m going to get a lot colder, a lot faster, if you don’t stop talking right now.
(He is staring in my eyes for maybe 5 seconds as I stare back. He doesn’t blink, he doesn’t move, he just stares at me with dead eyes as if daring me to say something else. I don’t. I freeze. He walks away and doesn’t talk to me the rest of the night.)

The setup: how I ended up here

I was doing IVF because HE wanted me to. I didn’t think it was going to work because of my health conditions, but he didn’t care, he wanted another child and I wanted to give him another one, if I could.

So I agreed to go through with all the daily injections, medications, vitamins, and rules for months regarding what I ate, what I didn’t eat, and what I did physically.

I felt like a tool. His means to an end.

It took me a long time to separate his behaviors from my worthiness. Death by a thousand cuts is more like it. Every cold act, comment, stare — even when he would walk right past me and go right to the baby, acting like I didn’t exist — each one felt like a dagger being pushed, slowly, into my heart.

Nobody likes to tell you the whole truth, that leaving doesn’t end it.

They tell you that you’re brave. That you did the right thing. That you’re free now. And you want so badly to feel those words land — to have them actually mean something in your body, not just in your head.

But freedom, it turns out, doesn’t always feel like freedom at first. Sometimes it feels like emptiness. Sometimes it feels like grief. Sometimes it feels like fear wearing a different outfit.

This is Part 8 of the No Small Talk series. If you’re new here, you can start from the beginning with Part 1. If you are in immediate danger, please call 911. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788.

What everyone gets wrong about healing

The word “healing” has a shape to it — a before, a wound, an after. It implies a direction. Progress. And so when healing doesn’t feel like progress, many survivors conclude that something is wrong with them.

They’re not healing fast enough. They’re too stuck. They should be over this by now.

None of that is true. But it’s almost impossible not to believe it when you’re living inside it.

Here is what’s actually true: healing from psychological trauma — especially long-term relationship trauma — is not linear. It is not a progression from broken to fixed. It is not a to-do list. It is not something you can complete by being disciplined enough or positive enough or determined enough.

It is, instead, something that happens in spirals. You come back to the same pain from different angles. You have a week where you feel genuinely okay, and then something small — a smell, a tone of voice, a phrase — pulls you back into the middle of it. That is not a setback. That is how trauma actually works.

(I bring coffee, with just the right amount of cream, and a snack. I think it is better if I continue to go through the motions, as if everything is fine, in every way that I can manage to. Even if those ways make me feel worse for a little while, or dirty.

Best not to set off any alarms. I place the items on the table in front of him, along with his vitamins, and he thanks me. That was strange. He doesn’t normally thank me when I bring him things. I wonder if he’s noticing me pulling away emotionally? Maybe. Only time will tell. Hopefully he doesn’t notice too much until I have everything ready to leave safely. I begin to walk away.)

Him: “Hey! I was thinking, I should take you out on a date. I was just telling my coworker at the office today, that I think it’s been too long since I did that. What do you think?”
Me: “Yeah. That could be fun.”
Him: “Alright, I know where I want to take you. We just have to figure out when, because of the baby you know.”
(I smile and nod my head.)
Me: “Ok, sounds good. (I pause) Do you want anything to drink?”
Him: “Nah, I’m ok right now. Thanks though.”
(He has to have noticed that I’ve stopped caring, I smile and turn to walk away.)

An hour goes by. Now, he comes into the room and plays with the baby for like 10 minutes and then tells me, “I love him so much. (he pauses for several seconds as he just stares at our child.) I’m going to make us dinner.”
Me: Ok, thank you.
(An hour passes and he brings me a plate of food)
Me: This looks great. (I smile) It smells great too!
Him: No problem! (He turns and walks away)
(I feel guilty. Maybe I’m exaggerating some things? Maybe I’m being too selfish in thinking about leaving? I feel a heaviness in my chest. I feel like a traitor. Am I just being selfish? Maybe a lot of what happened is my fault?)

What healing actually looks like (in real life, not in Instagram captions)

It looks like making breakfast and feeling okay. It looks like the same breakfast the next morning and feeling like the walls are closing in. It looks like not knowing which version of yourself is going to wake up that day.

It looks like sleep that doesn’t come, or sleep that comes too hard and for too long. It looks like flinching when someone raises their voice and then hating yourself for flinching.

It looks like good weeks that genuinely surprise you. It looks like bad days that show up right in the middle of the good weeks and convince you it was all fake.

It looks like feeling like a horrible person some days, for hiding things, for not being honest regularly.

It looks like loving your child fiercely and then collapsing in the bathroom when they’re in bed because you feel dirty and have no idea how you are going to keep doing this.

It looks like progress. And it looks like going backward. And sometimes it looks like both of those things on the same afternoon.

And some days it can look like you hate yourself for subjecting yourself to things that traumatize you in other ways, so that you can buy more time for the plan.

The nervous system is not dramatic — it’s just honest

One of the most disorienting things about healing from relationship trauma is that your body keeps responding to things that are no longer happening.

Your nervous system was trained. Over months or years, it learned that certain tones of voice meant danger was coming. It learned that a particular kind of silence was not peace but threat. It learned to stay alert, to monitor, to scan for signs. That learning doesn’t disappear the day the relationship ends. It was never in your head — it was in your body — and bodies take longer.

This is not weakness. This is biology. It is your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do: protect you.

The work of healing, in part, is teaching your body that the threat has changed — and that is slow, patient, non-linear work that cannot be rushed by willpower alone.

I go to work and after about an hour, I suddenly feel my anxiety rising. I get a feeling of impending doom, another panic attack, and immediately, I feel the urge to call and check on the baby, ask my family member to go check on them, or leave immediately to go home and see them. Then I remind myself, “My baby is safe, they are with my friend I’ve known since I was a child. I know exactly how she is when taking care of kids. I know she loves them to pieces and would protect them from harm in any way she could.” I calm down almost immediately and am able to continue working the rest of my shift without having that little panic attack again.

Even though it’s been a while since my husband was left to babysit our child by himself, I still get little panic attacks like that, when I haven’t checked in in a while. I’ve seen what things can happen when I’m not home watching the baby. I often had flashes of panic before when I was away from the baby too long. Now, I try not to work for very long when my husband is the babysitter. I will try to work so that he is only alone with the baby maybe a couple of hours, less is better, and I try to get long shifts when my childhood friend can babysit for me.

It feels amazing when I drop off my baby and can leave without feeling fear. It feels amazing when I can work for practically a full long shift without having more than one little incident where I panic for just a few moments. Then that incident passes quickly when I remind myself who I left them with. It feels like such a weight off my shoulders when I re-realize the baby is not with my husband and is getting lots of attention, not being ignored by their dad.

Things that helped (not a prescription — just what’s true for me)

Before trying for my first baby, I stopped taking my depression medication. I didn’t want to harm my future little love. So, I stopped taking them — and stayed off them — while I was trying to get pregnant the first time, while I was breastfeeding, and while trying to get pregnant the second time. Well, things changed didn’t they? I would LOVE another baby, don’t get me wrong, but I would not want another with him, unfortunately.

So! I’m going to list a bunch of things that I did, that you might possibly like to entertain in your mind. If not, no worries, there are lots of things out there to try! Maybe my examples could help you come up with different ideas that are more personal to you, in order to calm your nervous system. After all nobody knows you, like you, right?

The first thing I did, that really helped me, personally, was deciding to make an appointment with my old psychiatrist.
– There is a lot of controversy about anti-depressants but they really seem to help me when horribly traumatic things happen in my life. So do some anti-anxiety meds.
I slowly started trying to think about him a little bit less and tried shifting that energy, I was spending on him, towards myself.
– It’s funny, it hurt for a long time, me trying to pull my energy away from him, even a little bit. I felt like I was being mean to him by doing that. That’s how deep his talons were in me. They still have a bit of a grip on me… but, I feel like I’m slowly building closer to being able to safely free myself.

Slowly, over time, I began making other changes:

I spoke to an old therapist I used to go to when other traumatic things had happened to me in the past.
– That seemed to help calm my nervous system in additional ways, on top of the relief I got when the medications started kicking in. I was pretty isolated, so having someone to talk things out with helped me so much. But, if you have a close friend, that you really really can trust, that could maybe help you? or you could find a reddit community or facebook group for survivors of trauma or abuse. You could make up a proxy name and start a dummy account that you link to your secret email account. That’s an option.
I decided to stop tracking and watching my diet, my period, taking the hormone test that tells you when that hormone spikes, the one that says you’re about to ovulate. Thus, I stopped telling him when I was about to ovulate so that we could “try to get pregnant.” I stopped taking all the vitamins and supplements at different specific times during the days, that are supposed to help raise your chances of getting pregnant in one way or another. This gave me several things that I no longer had to worry about, which was nice in a way and depressing in another… it felt like giving up.
I decided to stop trying to talk to him about deep things, since I could only safely discuss surface level stuff with him.
– In the past, I would try to insist on him listening to me talk about something important to me, and ask him questions. He generally would end up getting irritated or angry with me if the conversation went on too long. “Don’t you understand? I just want to be left alone!”
I decided to shift to just doing what I thought was best for the baby, based on research, without consulting him anymore. I am the primary caregiver 99% of the time so that part was kind of easy to carry out without argument. He seemed happier with me not trying to have any kind of deep conversations with him anymore.
I decided to stop arguing with him about almost everything. Unless it was about the baby and it was important to safety or health.
– I just learned to try and treat my husband as a simple roommate in most ways. I still loved him, but I didn’t like him for me, or the baby, anymore. That feeling/belief is hard to hold onto in a steadfast way when he does decide to love bomb me.
I decided to try to come to terms with the idea that my husband was toxic and probably Narcissistic to a degree, he didn’t seem to have real empathy.
– He sure knew how to love bomb me when he seemed to become aware of my pulling away from him.
I decided to start hiding money in a secret account.
I decided to start writing a daily journal.
– I made sure to include how much time he actually spent with the baby, how he would interact with them, what he would do to/with them, and show the contrast in the fact that almost every single day I did all of the care tasks for the baby, in addition to learning activities and play time, one-on-one, with them. I also wrote down negative/toxic/abusive behaviors/actions that came from my husband.

As time moved forward, these things gradually helped return my sense of self. I stopped feeling so hopeless and dependent on him and started realizing I am a little smart, I am a little talented, and I am a little attractive. I survived without him for most of my life and I’ve survived men that were abusive in similar ways in the past. I talked with my friend about everything. It felt amazing to talk to someone else, that I trusted, about most everything that had been going on between me and my husband.

You are more than he lets you believe you are.

What it means when you have a good day

This is the part nobody talks about: sometimes the good days are confusing too.

You have a genuinely okay day. Maybe a good one. You laughed. You felt present. You went to bed that night and thought — maybe this is the turning point.

And then the next day is harder. And you don’t know if the good day was real or whether you just briefly forgot to feel what you feel.

Here is what I want you to know: the good day was real. It counted. It was not a fluke or a mask or a lie your brain told you. It was a real moment of real life, and it belongs to you the same way the hard days do.

You are not “better” or “not better.” You are a person, healing in the only way healing actually happens — slowly, messily, non-linearly, in the direction of more of those real moments and fewer of the ones that pull you under.

Nothing worth having is easy to acquire and keep, right?

It can be so difficult to be consistently resolute. Maybe it’s harder for me because I seem to have so much empathy for others. Maybe it’s harder because he has made me doubt myself and my worth for so long that I feel weak, like I won’t be able to survive and take care of my baby as well as I can with him providing financially as much as he does.

I feel like I never became a truly mature and complete adult, until after I had my baby. This is the first time in my entire life where someone else is TRULY and utterly more important than I am, to myself. I want to rise to the occasion for my baby. I want to use all of the pain and trauma I have experienced across my entire life and childhood, to make their childhood a happy and love filled one. I want to do whatever I can to make sure they grow up feeling loved and truly seen and heard.

I’m one step closer to my goal tonight. I’ll get one step closer tomorrow.

God, please walk with me in this. Help me to see clearly and make the right choices for my baby.

Continue to Part 9: Rebuilding Your Identity After a Controlling Relationship

Resources

National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 | thehotline.org
Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741
Psychology Today therapist finder (filter by trauma): psychologytoday.com/us/therapists
SAMHSA National Helpline: 1-800-662-4357

If this post reached you, please share it. You never know who’s carrying this quietly. And if you’re the one carrying it — I see you.