Healing from Emotional Abuse

The first step to healing from emotional abuse is, in my experience, validating it. This is particularly important because unlike physical forms of abuse, emotional abuse can be subtle and easily disguised. We can’t heal what we don’t validate. Once we’ve validated our pain, there are many ways to approach our healing journey. The important thing is to take our healing seriously. Our pain is no less than from any other trauma.

(articles listed in alphabetical order)

Can an Emotionally Abusive Parent Change?: When emotional abuse involves parents, we may be reluctant to break contact altogether. Whether we can change an abuser’s behavior depends on a number of factors.

Protecting Yourself from Emotional Abusers: We have a right to protect ourselves from abusive parents so that they don’t interfere with our healing.

Self-Forgiveness: Self-forgiveness is important to learn because it’s very difficult to heal when you’re constantly beating yourself up for giving into your abusers.

Therapy for Emotional Abuse: Many emotional abuse survivors feel therapy isn’t necessary, but emotional abuse is no less damaging than any other kind of abuse.

Validating Your Pain: This is the first step to healing, and I believe, a crucial one for all emotional abuse survivors.