In this video, Dr. Jameca Cooper frames her discussion within Women’s History Month’s theme of Providing Healing, Promoting Hope. She emphasizes her commitment to "radical healing" and explains that many women experience emotional damage from toxic relationships. Dr. Cooper defines various forms of abuse—verbal, emotional, psychological, physical, and sexual—illustrating how each can leave lasting psychological scars. She highlights that the most pervasive long‑term consequences are disruptions to a survivor’s sense of safety and trust, which can manifest as hyper‑vigilance, difficulty trusting others, and feeling unsafe in everyday environments. Drawing from her own middle‑aged experience and observations in therapy, she argues that recognizing these patterns is essential for shifting narratives, changing behaviors, and moving toward healing and hope.
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Hi, this is Dr. Jameca Cooper. Thank you for joining. Like the video, subscribe to the channel, share the video, and make sure you sign up for notifications of new videos. Today we are talking specifically about women. This month is Women's History Month, and the theme of Women's History Month this year is Providing Healing, Promoting Hope. And if you've watched any of my other videos, you know that I'm really big on healing, have lots of videos on radical healing. It's very important to me, and hope is a very big part of it. So today we're talking specifically about how to do that in the wake of emotional damage that you have suffered from toxic relationships. As women, we have all suffered from toxic relationships at some point in our lives. And as a middle-aged woman, I can say that I've been through plenty of them. Them at some point in my life. Luckily, I found a way to change the narrative and change my behaviors and my thinking to get me in a better place. So emotional damage is big with women. I see it in therapy all of the time. But it's Women's History Month, so the one thing I can tell you is that Rosa Parks did not refuse to give up her seat on the bus so that we can keep doing the same dumb things over and over. It's time for us to get some insight so that we get some healing. So today we're talking about emotional damage. A lot of times when I see women in therapy, they don't connect the dots. So they think that, yeah, I've been in these bad relationships before, but they don't connect the dots as to what does that mean for me now? What are the behaviors and the lasting results that I have now from being in these bad relationships? So I'm going to talk about a few different things that might have happened to some of you watching and what the lasting impacts of that will be on your life and on your thinking. One of those things is abuse, of course, whether it's verbal abuse in a relationship, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, any type of issues with abuse will create some problems later. So let's just say right now it's psychological abuse and the person is constantly putting you down or telling you that your family doesn't love you. That will be psychological abuse. Verbal abuse, if they're calling you names, calling you anything other than the name that your mother gave you when you were born. So those type of things. So yes, it hurts in the moment, especially if it's physical, right? It could leave scars, it could leave lasting neurological or medical health effects, but it also leaves other things that I need people to really start thinking about. So if you've been in a relationship with any type of abuse, the thing that's going to be impacted in your life more than anything is going to be your sense of safety and your sense of trust. If you've been in any type of abusive relationship long term, you're going to have issues with safety and trust. Why? You're not going to trust a lot of people. You're maybe not trust most people because one of the people that you decided to trust the most abused you in that way. So safety— so feeling safe in your skin is one part of it. Feeling safe, whether you're in different parts, neighborhoods, cars, out in public, that is also going to be a concern for you. Because 9 times out of 10, when people suffer from abuse in a relationship, it gets to a point where it is unpredictable. You don't know when and where it's going to happen. So that really makes people feel unsafe in a lot of ways.
