Signs that You Have Experienced Emotional Abuse in the Past

Hello. In my previous relationship rambling, I talked about signs that you could be in a toxic relationship right now, or that you may have experienced toxic relationships in the past. One of the reasons why we might find ourselves in a cycle of unhealthy relationships as adults is because of the emotional abuse that we would experience. In our childhood and then subsequent relationships we may have had moving forwards. Now, one reason for this is that we can repress what we went through as a way of coping, and by noticing and understanding the signs of how it might still be affecting you to this day, you are able to move on. So what's a definition of emotional abuse? Well, it uses verbal and emotional manipulation in an effort to control another person. So some examples of this may include humiliation, manipulation, verbal aggression, belittling, and intimidation. Repression of negative emotions is a very natural response because we either need to minimize the effects of the emotional abuse Or we need to be able to avoid how they make us feel altogether. It is important though, however, to recognize the impacts that this might have had on us. So today I'm going to talk about signs that you might be repressing emotional abuse from past relationships and have a list of signs and things to look out for. So number 1 is that you aren't very good at making decisions for yourself. If you struggle to know what to do with your free time and often rely on others to make decisions for you, it may be a sign of repressed emotional abuse. This is often the case for people who are highly focused on the needs of others— people pleasing— which is often the case in emotionally abusive relationships. Over time, such expectations can cause you to lose touch with who you are, what you want, and what you need. So number 2 is you are a people pleaser. Do you want to be seen as a person that helps and have to get it right or perfect for others? You might believe that you need to be perfect in every way for your relationship to work or for you to be accepted and loved by your partners. It's important to remember that toxic people are going to be toxic regardless of your behavior because it's always about them. On the other side to this, being a people pleaser is all about you and what you are trying to achieve, and these needs can come from a toxic past. Think about what you might be trying to get out of making other people happy. Number 3 is that you minimize toxic moments. Many people have been emotionally abused in the past, developed a habit of minimizing bad behavior by excusing it or looking the other way. You could be thinking to yourself that it could always be worse, as you have probably experienced worse before, or you could be denying that it is actually that bad, that they don't really mean it, as you've tried to rationalize your past experiences to yourself. But bad behavior is just bad. It isn't something that you need to laugh off or explain away, even if you feel the need to do so. It can be hard to stop as you are used to it, but this is not normal, and you can learn to stop accepting it as so. So number 4 is you can get angry or frustrated easily because you're doing a certain thing— people pleasing, for example— as a reaction to the toxic situation that you're in and not because you want to, resentment can catch up with you. You will eventually ask, if you don't say out loud, subconsciously, what about me? And this can lead to frustrations and anger. You are also unlikely to aim this at the true source of your issues, and you might find that different small or unrelated things will trigger you instead. You may find you'll take it out on others that are closer to you because you feel like you can, but not on the person that actually leads you to feeling this way. Number 5 is you often feel defensive. People who have experienced emotional abuse, especially those who have experienced continued exposure to abuse, tend to have low self-worth and self-esteem. It's not uncommon for someone to become defensive when they receive any feedback that they can seem as attacking. In a toxic relationship, you probably find that you couldn't sustain doing the right thing, either because it didn't fit with the needs of the other person, or that it just didn't matter what you did, it was never going to be enough. You can do 99 good things, and then number 100 is the only thing that gets picked up on as not being right. Number 6 is you tend to view yourself negatively. As I mentioned, slow— low self-worth and low self-esteem are quite common with people that have struggled with abuse in the past and can cause you to be thinking in a negative way. If you were with a toxic person, they were likely chipping away at your self-esteem and implanting negative messages and suggestions by telling you things that led you to believe that you're not good enough Or that you need to do better to please them and to make them okay. Emotionally abusive people will do this on purpose to get into your head, make you feel bad about yourself, as a way of meeting their own needs. You may have seen me talk about a window of comfort before. These people have a very narrow window of comfort and do whatever they can to try and draw you back into their comfortable space, and making you feel bad about yourself is one of the things that they could do. Number 7 is you find it hard to cope when people are upset. So while nobody really enjoys having an argument, even though people may seem to as they engage with them all of the time, if you find yourself feeling particularly tense whenever your person, people around you erupt. It may be because you used to deal with a lot of that in the past, and emotional abuse can make you very susceptible to certain triggers, such as changes in the tone of voice, uh, slight behavior or emotional differences, someone going quiet, not talking to you, for example. You're going to pick up on these quite easily If you have learned to manage them a lot in the past. Number 8, you keep choosing toxic partners. Now, this isn't a blame game, so I can hear you probably saying, I don't choose them on purpose. Um, and no, you're right, you don't consciously choose them on purpose. But many people who have been in emotionally abusive relationships find themselves gravitating towards the same types of people over and over again. This can be because maybe you're looking for closure from the original relationship and you've never had that in the past, or because you have learned that relationships are just normal this way, and so they become very familiar. And I use the word safe here because your brain likes to feel the same. It doesn't like really do change and different. So therefore, it can feel safe doing the same types of relationships over and over again, even though they may cause you an immense amount of problems. Number 9 is you're constantly questioning whether you are loved. Even if you've moved on to a new and healthier relationship, you may still catch yourself wondering if your partner really loves you, um, or if they'll end up treating you just like your ex or your exes And these things are likely because you believe that you are unlovable, and that probably comes from your childhood experiences where you felt unloved, and so you carry this forward into your adult relationships. Number 10, you have trouble accepting affection. You may find that you struggle to accept love or even simple compliments. It could be from your partners, your friends, or even colleagues or just people that you meet in the street. And this indicates that you have some kind of attachment issue which results, which has resulted from the abuse that you've had, likely a learned childhood coping mechanism. And lastly, you have nightmares about relationships. If you have bad dreams about a family member or an ex, this can be a sign that you are repressing emotions. Nightmares can be a symptom of PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, and a way that your subconscious is trying to process your emotions. If there are repressed negatives that you don't consciously allow yourself to think about, then your subconscious will want to do that for you whilst you sleep. These are just a few signs that you could be harboring issues from an emotional or even physically abusive past. That you've not faced up to, you've not been able to process or allowed yourself to move on from them. The problem is though, is until you do this, you'll find that your experiences continue to loop back into your life time and time again. I hope that you found these useful. Please do contact me if these are things that you want to talk about at a deeper level. Um, thank you for listening. I'll speak to you again soon.