Why your boundaries are not welcome in an abusive relationship

Women in (or after) abusive relationships are frequently told ‘you have no boundaries’, ‘you need better boundaries’. This ignores the simple truth; that your boundaries are not welcome in an abusive relationship.

People who abuse others don’t want to hear that they are at fault. They make you believe that it’s your fault they hurt you. Or that you’re over-sensitive, a nag, or too critical. Or a few really sadistic abusers will actually enjoy causing you pain. Either way, the abuser wants to treat you exactly how they want to treat you. They don’t want to be challenged.

So, you either fight, or submit, or a circling combination of the two. This is a normal response to living in a dysfunctional or even dangerous system. It is a trauma adaptation. You are normal.

In this article, I explore what happens to your boundaries in an abusive relationship, and things you can do that will help you heal.

HOW IT HAPPENS

We are habitually treated in ways that hurt or harm us. We are violated. We are repeatedly controlled, critisized, undermined, ridiculed, demeaned, humiliated, or verbally, physcially or sexually assaulted.

These are all boundary ‘violations’. They hurt. We hurt. It is painful to have a boundary that is repeatedly violated.

We are then silenced and blamed when we challenge how we are being treated.

The abuser has created an environment where it is not possible or permissable for us to protest about how we are treated. We are blamed for any painful feelings that we might have in response to their abuse, and then systemically silenced.

This can look like: punishment, name calling, violence, stonewalling, justification, excuses, turning the responsibility back on us, blaming or suggesting that we have done the same / something just as bad / are not so perfect ourselves. It can be dangerous to express our hurt or anger at how we are treated, or even to show it. Conversely some abusers enjoy causing pain, and so we might shut down our hurt in order to deprive them of this satisfaction.

Nothing we do ever seems to have an impact. Whether we say something, say nothing, try and keep the peace, we are told this is ‘wrong’. We cannot ‘win’, whatever we do. Because the only way for the relationship to change is for the abuser to cease their relentless campaign of coercive control.

Turning the blame on us actually helps them to stay in control. If we are always looking inwards, then we are always off balance, busy searching for the solution to their treatment of us inside ourselves. (It may or may not be a conscious strategy on their part, but that doesn’t diminish the impact on us.)

We lose touch with our own boundaries and feelings, and we turn the anger on ourselves.

We might become numb to the abuse, believing that it doesn’t matter, or that we deserve it anyway. We might stop noticing it, or minimise the impact it has on us. We might start to hate ourselves for hurting.

Horrifyingly, we start policing ourselves. The abuser has trained us well.

THE PROCESS OF RECOVERY

STARTING TO LISTEN TO YOURSELF

Because you have had to shut down in order to survive, it will be important to begin listening to yourself. Your inner wisdom is right there, in your body. You. You matter. Your voice, yourself, your feelings; they matter.

Start to listen to your feelings. Practice checking into your body: are you scared, angry, disappointed, sad? Where do you feel it? Can you allow it to be, just as it is, just for a moment?
What choice would you make, if you were free to?
Watch what the abuser does to disempower you. How do they hook you into feeling guilty, ashamed, like you’re doing something wrong rather than the target of abusive, shaming or controlling behaviour?
How can you support yourself in the moment. Sometimes a mantra can help; ‘It’s okay to feel hurt/angry’, ‘I hear you’, ‘I love you’.
How can you diminish the power of their words in the moment. A mantra can help with this too; ‘It’s just a tactic’ (to control me), ‘they’re wrong’, ‘there’s nothing wrong with me’, ‘I’m not the problem’, or whatever helps you feel steadier in yourself.
Practice working out what you think, rather than allowing the story to be defined by the other. Allow yourself the space for your own opinions.
Find ways to be around people who do listen to you. This is immensely important. We ‘take in’ how we are treated. This will make an enormous difference to your experience of yourself.

If you’re finding it hard to get in touch with yourself, feel intensely self-critical, or find yourself overwhelmed, dissociative or it feels too big or frightening, stop, take a breath and allow yourself to do something comforting. It’s fine not to press through. The trick is to find a way to feel without becoming too overwhelmed. If you are struggling, becoming repeatedly overwhelmed or having shame or panic attacks, you might want to seek professional help to support you in your journey of reconnection.

RECOVERING ‘RELATIONALLY’

Firstly, do be thoughtful about becoming more assertive in a relationship that is, or your fear may become, physically or sexually abusive. It can be very unsafe to challenge a dangerous perpetrator, so please do seek specialist help if you are at all worried.

Even if your relationship is emotionally rather than physically/sexually abusive, it is likely that the abuse will escalate if you find more of a voice. This isn’t a reason not to do it, but it is important to be prepared for some push back.

If setting boundaries is likely to put you at risk, you might practice ‘small rebellions’. Create pockets in your life – safely, privately – where you are completely in charge. Practice making decisions yourself, trusting yourself, do the things that you are not ‘allowed’ to do safely out of sight of your abusive relationship.

Always, always prioritise your physical safety. You might find that you want to practice your boundary setting skills outside your abusive relationship.

TIPS FOR SETTING BOUNDARIES

Play around with boundaries in your imagination for a little while, think about what you might like to say, how you might say it and how that might feel.
Plan what you may need to increase your skill at setting boundaries: read books about boundaries, look for people who deal skillfully with other and see what they do. Try on their way of relating, see how it fits.
When you’re ready, start with the easy relationships, the ones that feel safest. Work on this, and increase your levels of difficulty slowly. Even if you need to start by saying ‘no’ in the supermarket, every boundary is a win.
Or, start with what hurts most. Sometimes we need to start at the point of most pain in order to feel our way back to the subtler pains. You’ll know best where you need to start.
When it doesn’t work out how you wanted it to, evaluate what went wrong, learn what you need to learn and move on.
Celebrate your achievements! It takes enormous courage to change old patterns, particularly ones developed in such difficult situations. You are doing amazingly just to engage in the process.

Setting boundaries with people who do not listen can be infuriating, saddening and crazy-making, so it is fine to find this challenging and also to reach out for support if you need it.

Remember that people who use abusive tactics will tend to respond defensively, so don’t judge your boundary by their reaction. They will try every trick they have to dismiss you and your feelings, and are unlikely to concede the point (and will probably punish you afterwards anyway) but what matters is how you feel about yourself.

Again, your safety is paramount, and so please, please keep yourself safe as you first priority. It is completely valid not to speak up if speaking up puts you in danger, or you or your children will be punished for it. Complying is a completely valid response, and an important one to have in your toolbox.

HOW THERAPY CAN HELP

You don’t need to be overwhelmed to seek therapy; it is completely okay to seek support just because you want support. That said, if you are finding that trauma is resurfacing in a way that doesn’t feel manageable, or that you’re finding your feelings big and overwhelming, don’t hesitate to get in touch with a specialist.

Sometimes it helps just to have another set of eyes on the task. It can be hard to change patterns, particularly those that are trauma related (they can have a lot of emotional ‘charge’ to them). A therapist will: be in your corner, know (hopefully) some of the right questions to ask, be non-judgemental as you grapple with your inner experience, help you sort through what it actually is you feel, and help you develop yourself to meet the particular challenges that you face.

REMEMBER

Getting ever closer to our authentic selves is a lifelong journey for most of us. Even situations that don’t go the way that you wanted them to will teach you a lot, about yourself and the other.

There will be missteps, and ‘mistakes’, but there will be life in all it’s messy gloriousness too. You can be in your own corner. Your own best friend. Decide for yourself what you think, and feel.

You’re recovering the most valuable thing; your relationship with yourself.

Good luck, and take care.

RESOURCES

If you’d like to speak to someone, call the 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline for free on 0808 2000 247 and they will be able to direct you to resources in your local area.

Signs of a healthy relationship

We know the importance of healthy relationships intuitively. When we feel connected in our communities and with our friends, we feel happier, experience less depression and anxiety and find greater joy in living, even when we are on our own. We have lower blood pressure, are less likely to develop stress related illnesses and recover better from grief and trauma.

One study, for example, found that lack of close relationships in later life increased the risk of premature death by 50%, a rate comparable with smoking.

Our closest relationships have the biggest effect on our happiness. So how do we know that we are falling in love with someone that is good for us? Or whether our friendships are nourishing and strong?

Here are some signs that you are in a healthy relationship:

You like yourself

Someone very wise once asked me; “But do you like you when you’re with them?” It is easy to focus on what we like about the other person, but how do they make us feel about ourselves?

You feel good (mostly) after you connect with them

Watch how you feel after seeing them; do you feel happy, energised, sad, peaceful, ashamed, depleted?

You have your own space

There is room for you to pursue your own life, interests and relationships outside of the the main relationship. And even more than that, it is actively encouraged; both of you understand that your lives ‘outside’ draw nourishment into the relationship and keep it, and you, healthy.

You both prioritise the relationship

Togetherness is important to you both. You like spending time together and take care of each other’s feelings.

You can say ‘No’

Your partner respects your boundaries. You can say ‘No’ without being coerced, threatened, shamed or manipulated.

You can talk about the difficult stuff

It is ordinary to need to have conversations that are tricky; in a relationship, you are navigating two people’s different experiences, wants and needs. Life can be complicated, with children and parents and finances and work, and all the other various complexities that we experience as we go along. You need to be able to have the difficult conversations in a way that is constructive.

There is room for both of you in the relationship

You both, reasonably speaking, should ‘count’. Although of course there will be times of stress where one partner needs more, there should ordinarily be room for each of you to draw on the supportive presence of the other.

You can argue

This follows on from the last two points; you should be able to argue, or at least disagree, knowing that this will not break your relationship. And you do this (mostly) in a way that is not destructive. And if you do err, there is space for you both to apologise and move on.

You feel/are safe

This is a big one. There is no room for physical, psychological or sexual abuse in a loving relationship. If you are, or you fear you might be experiencing any of these, seek more information and specialist support if necessary. A good relationship is one where you feel safe. Where you feel kindness, rather than contempt, both for and from your partner.

(This is said with the caveat that sometimes, when we have experienced abuse in a previous relationship, we can experience current relationships as more threatening then they are. We become wired for protection rather than connection. It might be appropriate to seek specialist support if you feel that this is the case so you can unpick what is past and what is present.)

To conclude

The above is not to suggest that we should be perfectly happy and perfectly balanced at all times in our relationships. Life can be hard and wearing, and inevitably, these times have an impact on our closest relationships.

But despite that we should know that when the chips are down, those closest to us have our backs.

Learning to trust yourself after an emotionally abusive relationship

One of the hardest things about emotional abuse, I think, is that the campaign of blame, undermining, criticism and gaslighting causes you lose trust in your own self.

This is true even if you are aware of what is happening. I have met many people who were aware of the tactics their other was using, but because of the drip, drip effect of emotional and psychological abuse (and the isolation that often co-exists with an experience of abuse) it affected their relationship with themselves in deep and profound ways.

In this article, I am going to unpick how the power dynamic of an abusive relationship damages our relationship with ourselves. (Of course, it also damages our relationships with others, but that’s a post for another day). I will also look at some ways you can learn to trust yourself again.

Abusers dominate. They control. Often emotional abuse is supported by other kinds of abuse, like physical, or sexual, but it does not need to be to have a profound and disturbing effect on us. Where other kinds of abuse are present, emotional abuse always, always is.

In many ways, emotional abuse can be more complicated to heal from because you can’t see the bruises. I frequently hear people saying; ‘but it seems so petty’. But they are not hurting because their loved one said or did something awful once (which would be enough), emotional abuse is a sustained and relentless campaign of awful things, over and over again, until you can no longer believe that this is not normal. It is a pattern. Not an event.

The pattern of abuse does something profound to us; it alienates us from ourselves; we are social creatures who are excellent at adjusting ourselves in order to relate with lots of different people, in lots of different ways, all of whom will be different in their personality, background, and culture. We need to be good at this to move about in the world with any kind of ease.

In an abusive relationship, we do what we do well; we adjust, but then we adjust again, and again, and again… until we entirely lose ourselves.

You might see this manifest in a few key ways:

You lose trust in your feelings and perceptions, because they have been so frequently invalidated or dismissed. Equally, it may actually have been dangerous (emotionally or physically) to express certain feelings, such as anger.
You feel overly guilty / responsible. This is because you have been blamed so often for things that you couldn’t reasonably be held accountable for.
You internalise the idea that you are ‘less than’ other people, and automatically take the ‘one down’ position in relationships.

Regaining trust in yourself

We move through the world using information from those around us, as well as our own inner sensing. When we’ve been dominated, controlled, belittled and dismissed, this balance can become disrupted, leaving us either overly reliant on others (either other’s perception of us, or we think they know best), or reliant only on ourselves (because it seems that nobody else will ever reliably be there). Or we may switch between the two, stuck between a shame filled rock and a lonely hard place.

In my experience, healing happens in two stages: We learn to hear our inner wisdom, and then we learn to trust it. Below I explore some things that might help. As you go through, I invite you to listen to your body wisdom; which ones speak to you?

Get creative

A private, creative space – however that looks for you – can be the perfect way of learning to trust that wise, inner voice. Draw, write, collage, sew, sing. It doesn’t matter how it looks, what matters is the leap into the unknown. You can’t fail at this.

Get to know what it’s like to be in your body

Feelings are in our bodies, so reconnecting with our bodies can help strengthen and stabilise us. If you’ve learned to disconnect / dissociate this can be enormously challenging.* Therefore, go slowly, ease yourself in.

Start with kindness, good sensations. A hot shower or bath, exercise (however that looks for you), a soft jumper, a good pair of socks, running your hands through your hair, ice cream, the wind on your face, an ice cube on your tongue on a hot day… whatever feels good for you in your body will help you reconnect. And when we reconnect through one avenue, we deepen our whole connection with ourselves.

Experiment! Be playful, and creative.

* A note about trauma; if you find yourself becoming flooded or overwhelmed, or if you begin to dissociate, stop, regroup, and steady yourself as a priority.

Trust yourself in the ‘small things’

Start by making what feel like small decisions, but really listen for what you want. It might be just asking yourself what you would like for dinner, or whether you would like to read a book or watch TV in this next moment. Then, when you think you have an answer, try it out.

Watch your process. Do you feel scared to commit yourself to the decision in case it is ‘wrong’, or that judgement will rain down on you for it? Or does it feel unbearably vulnerable, or do you feel guilty, ashamed, or do you second guess yourself. Practice breathing through the feelings, letting them wash over you. Sometimes it can help to speak reassuringly to yourself as you would a small child; ‘it’s okay sweetheart’, ‘it’s fine to do x or choose y’, ‘whatever you choose will be right’ or ‘you can’t do this wrong’.

Let yourself experiment. It’s about getting to know yourself as a decision maker, how you like to make decisions, and what it brings up for you. And it gets easier with practice, I promise.

Cultivate non-abusive relationships

Wherever you can find them, cultivate relationships with people that listen to you and want to know what you feel and what you like. People who treat you as an equal. We ‘take in’ how we are treated, so if we surround ourselves with people that treat us as an equal, who don’t judge, criticize, undermine or gaslight us, then we internalise – on a deep, implicit level – that we are worth listening to. We heal by osmosis.

This can be where therapy is particularly useful, as it gives us a chance to practice in a safe relationship. One where we are (hopefully) in charge, listened to, where it matters what we think and feel. And we can work through all the feelings, the grief and the anger and the everything, that this brings up, as we go, in the safety of the therapeutic relationship. (For guidance on how to choose a counsellor when dealing with issues of abuse, please see my post here.)

If you can’t afford therapy, there are often low cost services that will be able to help.

Finally

It is important to note that if you are in a dangerous situation or relationship, please act in the way that best ensures your safety. There are places that can offer you specialist support to deal with what you’re experiencing, or help you to find a way out if you want that: please call the National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247.

Self-blame and emotional abuse

person in gray sweater cover face — Photo by Jhonis Martins on Pexels.com

An almost universal response to being abused is to turn the blame inwards.

Sometimes we internalise the abuser’s words, or the names that we are called. Or instead we believe the negative qualities that are attributed to us. Or because we are told ‘it’ is our fault, over and over again, we begin to feel responsible for whatever ‘it’ is.

The results of this play out in two ways; we develop ways of relating with the world and ourselves that cause us problems in our lives, and/or we can develop pockets of trauma or shame. I’ll look at both of these separately, and also look at how you can help your own healing from self-blame if you have been in, or still are in, an abusive relationship.

Relational dynamics

The abuser blames the other; “it’s your fault, you made me do this”. We may hear this either said explicitly or it may be subtler; implied instead of spoken. The look, the sigh, the eye roll. In my experience, even if you can see this happening, it still has an effect on you (although not as big an effect as if you are not aware of it).

The abuser takes our healthy, pro-social process of taking responsibility for ourselves, and turns it into a way of gaining and maintaining control over us.

We then start to believe that we are responsible for the feelings and actions of others; we actually start to relate to other people in the way that we relate to the abuser.

You may not even be conscious of blaming yourself; this is the tricky bit, you may feel that you are actually at fault. It may even feel wrong to not hold yourself responsible in this way.

Healing can be scary, because to do this we probably have to face why we adjusted our behaviour in the first place. It involves beginning to trust people again, to believe that the rules that we learned in our abusive relationship are not, actually, transferable to the ‘real’ world, and that we will need to learn or relearn how to be *vulnerable again in a way that is healthy.

(*Vulnerable means different things to different people, I think. For some, vulnerable means just that, learning to be soft where it is appropriate to be, but for others, to be vulnerable means to be assertive. You’ll know best what you habitually find hard.)

Triggered into shame

Another way that we continue to be hurt by an abusive relationship is when we are ‘triggered’ back into the trauma. Someone says or does something that reminds us of what our original abuser did to us (we may or may not be conscious of being triggered), and we find ourselves flipped right back into those unbearable trauma-feelings of shame, self-hatred and guilt.

If you find yourself triggered in this way, take a look at the list below. Some of this might help. Different things will help at different times, so experiment and see what works for you:

What was the trigger? See if you can separate the past from the present, sometimes this is enough to allow you to respond appropriately in the moment. Saying to yourself ‘it’s a memory’ in a gentle, reassuring tone can help.
Take a moment, breathe deeply, steady yourself if you can, or excuse yourself if you need to. Give yourself some choices about how you respond.
Let yourself be scared/hurt/ashamed. It may not feel appropriate to the present situation, but it’s real that you feel it, and it likely makes sense in the light of your past. When you’ve allowed it, it might help to put your hand on your heart, gently, and say to yourself – either aloud or in your mind – whatever it is you need to hear; ‘it’s not your fault’, ‘you’re safe now, even if you don’t feel it’, ‘I love you’. (Try and come from a gentle, loving place, or imagine a dependable other – real or imagined – saying it to you with great, real compassion.)
Let yourself off the hook if you weren’t able to respond in the moment as you would have wished; being triggered can make it really hard. Your body kicks into a trauma/survival response that is beyond your conscious control (fight / flight / freeze), plus the shame you’re feeling probably was part of the original trauma anyway.
*Write about it / talk it through with a safe friend or therapist. If you’re writing about it, see if you can call to mind a compassionate other and let yourself open to their compassion and understanding. (Even if you feel nothing, or feel sad, or angry, that’s fine; breathe, sit with it, allow it to flow through you. What’s important is that you are allowing yourself to be held in your hurt.)
Imagine how you might successfully respond to being triggered, then let it go. Just imagining yourself navigating it well can begin to strengthen different neural pathways, as the brain doesn’t really differentiate between internal and external experiences. This will give you a better chance at dealing with it differently next time.

*A word about safety; with trauma, sometimes it is far more appropriate to distract and comfort rather than engage with the trauma head on. So if you find yourself getting too dysregulated or overwhelmed when trying to unpick it, drop it and find a way to soothe yourself. Call a (safe) friend, watch or read something comforting, imagine yourself held in a gentle, healing light or by a gentle, healing other – imagined or real. Investigate and experiment with what makes you feel comforted, and under what circumstances.

If you find yourself consistently being triggered and aren’t able to navigate it yourself, therapy can be a useful tool.

Other ways to help yourself heal

Knowledge is power

Read about emotional abuse, how it happens, what it looks like. If you know what is happening, you can at least begin to unpick it. There are lots of amazing resources out there; books, articles, podcasts, internet forums.

When we are in an abusive relationship, their perspective tends to dominate; it is a process similar to that seen in cults, for example. You usually have access to limited information, so as well as researching abuse, you could start talking to safe friends, or a therapist, or a helpline, or an internet support group about what is happening in your relationship. Try and allow yourself to consider these other perspectives, and see if you can figure out what you think too (if you don’t already know).

Give the responsibility for the abuse back

You can give the abuser back the responsibilty for their actions, and you can understand your reactions (at least in part) as a response to living in a confusing, frightening and sometimes dangerous situation.

Humans are wired to respond in certain ways to certain stimuli; there’s nothing wrong with you for responding however you did; whether that was to fight back, to argue, to use emotionally abusive tactics yourself, to dissociate, or however else you protected yourself (physically or emotionally).

Try and access some self-compassion

Watch how you talk to yourself; would you talk to a friend like that? How can you understand your feelings and actions in a gentle, non-blaming, non-shaming way?

Sharing with a safe other can really help. If you are feeling particularly ashamed or churned up, therapy can be really useful as a way of gaining insight into yourself, your responses and your actions. The increased understanding of yourself often aids self-acceptance, if you can allow yourself to take it in.

Set boundaries / take appropriate responsibility for yourself

People who have been bullied, shamed or coerced in abusive relationships often really struggle to stand up for themselves; they either go into fight or people please mode. So you might want to work on becoming more assertive and less passive, aggressive, or passive aggressive. (These are all responses to not being able to state your wishes, feelings, thoughts and needs openly and having to hide or fight for these things.)

If you are still in your abusive relationship, do be thoughtful about setting boundaries in this relationship. Often abusers will escalate their abusive behaviour in order to regain control. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t make changes if you want to, more that you might want to make sure you are prepared for a difficult road if you do, and get enough internal and external resources to support you.

Note: If your relationship is physically abusive – or you fear it might become so – please do seek specialist advice. It can be very dangerous to challenge a violent or potentially violent abuser.

Self-care

I put this at the end, not because it is the least important, but because it is the most important part of your journey. Treat yourself as valuable, use your time wisely or watch terrible TV if that’s what you need. Move your body in a way that makes you feel good, invest in relationships that make you feel good, take care of yourself in relationships that don’t. Follow your dreams, pay your bills, take care of your responsibilities or let go of the responsibilities that you have picked up unnecessarily. Say yes more or say no more, be more present for your loved ones or be more present for yourself. Grieve. Laugh. Take up a hobby, let one drop. Let yourself off the hook, or hold yourself accountable (kindly).

Sometimes simply to survive is all we can do, at others we will feel we can reach the moon. Only you will know what self-care looks like in any given moment for you, and what looks like self-care for one person can be the opposite for another. Find your own way, according to the needs of the moment.

And last but not least: Build yourself a network

Everyone needs a network. As social creatures, I think that we all need to feel rooted in some way, so deepen (or find) your tribe, in person, online, a support group, and connect with them in a way that suits you. It will help you not only feel grounded, but also gives you more opportunity to ‘take in the good’ of other people’s kindness, to allow yourself to feel loved and valued and safe in relationships, and safe and held in the world.

Good luck, and take care. You’ve got this.