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Why Do I Keep Going Back?

It's no secret that many victims of domestic violence go back to their abusive partners, or pick new ones that act just the same. This seemingly bizarre pattern causes much confusion in both the victims and their supporters. You wonder "why do I miss him, why do I want to come back to her, why do i keep falling for the wrong guys, I saw it coming yet still signed up for it, what's wrong with me, does it say 'abuse me' on my forehead," etc. Your friends and family question your sanity, attempt to "rescue" you against your will, or simply assume that you must be getting what you deserve and keep asking for. It's not your fault you're getting abused, but understanding why it's happening could help you prevent it from repeating over and over like a broken record.

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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Abuse is a serious psychological trauma, often involving threat to life, so it's not surprising that many of us struggle with PTSD, the same condition that's experienced by many combat veterans. PTSD is not a weakness, and cannot be overcome by willpower, i.e. sucking it up and pretending you're fine till it passes. It's a mental health condition that needs to be diagnosed and treated by a mental health professional. DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) criteria for PTSD include a history of exposure to a traumatic event (that meets specific stipulations), and symptoms of four different types: intrusion, avoidance, negative alterations in cognitions and mood, and alterations in arousal and reactivity. Symptoms of each type need to be present for more than one month, causing significant distress or functional impairment (e.g. loss of employment), and cannot be due to medications, substance abuse, or other illnesses. This page lists and illustrates the four types of PTSD symptoms, so that survivors would seek professional help if they need it, and supporters would better understand what their loved one is going through and why they act the way they do.

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Grounding Techniques

Emotions are a good thing to have: they let us know what feels good (so we know to keep it), and what feels bad (so we know to change it). Without emotions we would be clueless as to where do we want to go with life. That’s how it’s supposed to work anyway. Unfortunately, trauma can shake us up pretty badly, and some things might not fall back into place right away. We end up having emotions that aren’t guiding us towards a better life, but that keep us stuck in pain and misery instead. Moreover, these emotions often flood us at the wrong time: when we are at work, driving, grocery shopping, babysitting, or trying to have a calm evening with a partner. Suddenly, completely out of the blue, anxiety hits us below the belt, or we start replaying old trauma in our head as if it were happening all over again, or we get furious at our perp, or deeply sad about our ruined childhood, or get an irresistible craving to get wasted/high, or an urge to self-injure. Aside from bad timing – these feelings can get quite overwhelming, and thus hard to manage. While technically valid and understandable, they aren’t helping us in the here and now. There’s no reason for us to be relieving that traumatic experience while we are driving to work. If we need to do it – we’ll pick a better timing and surrounding for it, such as our therapist’s office for example. And meanwhile we can’t allow all those old feelings to overwhelm us at random, so we need to distract our mind from...

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How To Deal With A Narcissistic Mother

Mother is supposed to love and support you unconditionally, approve of you as a person, root for you even if you messed up and everyone turned away from you - mom is the one person in the world who will always be there for you. She is also the one who was supposed to teach you right and wrong, and whose judgment you relied on completely. It was her opinion of your character that you based your self-worth on. Nobody likes to be called selfish, ungrateful, disrespectful, rude, cruel, etc, especially by their own mother, so we would go to great lengths to earn our mother's approval, love, and support. That's what causes strained relationships between mothers who suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder and their adult children: this approval, love, and support will never happen. Bashing people with mental health issues is a pointless exercise, but if you aren't ready to cut your mom off - there are things you can do to not let her impairments affect your quality of life.

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Stages Of Healing From Abuse

While every survivor's path is unique, there are some common stages we all go through. It is rarely a straight sequence, as we tend to move on from stage to stage too fast, which results in jumping back and forth - from anger to acceptance only to discover that we missed grief, or to realize we have more anger than we used to think and we need to revisit the anger stage, or to walk through a few of these stages again, regarding another instance of abuse that we didn't think much of at first. This page is by no means a recipe to healing, it's simply sharing our experience. Walking this path can at times feel like it's hopeless, getting worse, or going in circles. Sometimes it truly is. This is why a roadmap might be helpful.

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What to tell your therapist first time you meet them

The thought of seeing a therapist for the first time can be anxiety provoking, even if you saw other therapists before. For many people a big part of this anxiety is wondering what to tell this new therapist during the first session. While obviously this depends on what do you want from them, there are a couple of ideas below - not to use as directions, but simply as an invitation for creativity. Maybe reading what other people discuss with their therapists on first session would help you clarify what is it that YOU want (or don't want) to talk with your new therapist about.

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Growing Up In A DV Environment

I grew up in a violent situation, where the adults around me were not only violent with me, but were also violent with each other. Domestic violence was really confusing for me as a kid. Then I had the fortunate opportunity of living in a completely different situation with my adoptive Mom and Dad, and the contrast between the two situations was drastic. I read something a while back that made me think about the situation. I remember really strongly how I felt as a kid when the adults around me fought with each other, argued and were violent with each other, were disrespectful towards one another, and treated each other as less than a person. Their actions had a huge impact on me--I was afraid the majority of the time, I didn't feel safe, cared about, or stable, my world felt like it was always on the brink of crumbling, and I had no way to get myself out of the situation or to improve it, so I felt really trapped. Considering I didn't have anything to compare this environment to, I figured this was just the way it had to be--that adults argued, fought, were violent, etc.--and I often felt as if these things were my fault. Fortunately, once I got out of the abuse situation and my Mom and Dad adopted me, I found out that relationships and conflict within relationships could be drastically different. My Mom and Dad often disagreed with each other, had arguments about a multitude of things, didn't see eye to eye sometimes, but they never treated each other with anything less...