How Thoughts Affect Healing After Abuse

The Guilt Was the Hardest Part

After I left, I thought the hardest part was over.

It wasn't.

What followed was something I had not expected. A kind of panic that sat just beneath the surface of every single day.

Hello Beautiful Souls 💜

I remember sitting with four boys, no income, and a court battle that felt like it was never going to end. The questions that filled every single day were survival questions. Where are we going to live? How am I going to feed them? How do I do this alone?

And it was in the middle of all of that exhaustion, that mental and physical and emotional drain, that the critical voice got loudest. When you have nothing left, you have nothing left to push it away with.

And it was in that space that the critical voice moved in. Not gently. It told me I had failed my children. That I should have seen it coming. That I had stayed too long. That a stronger woman would have found a way out sooner, would have protected them better.

I felt guilty. Deeply, heavily guilty. Not in a vague way. In a way that sat in my chest every single day.

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The Book That Appeared When I Needed It

It was during that time that I came across "You Can Heal Your Life" by Louise Hay.

I was not looking for it. It just arrived, the way things sometimes do when you are ready, even before you know you are ready.

What she was saying stopped me. The idea that the critical voice in your head, the one that tells you, you are not enough, you are not worthy, you caused this, is not you. It is a voice built from years of being told things about yourself. And because it was built, it can be changed.

That landed differently than I expected.

Because suddenly I could see what was happening. The voice that was drowning me in guilt was not telling me the truth about who I was. It was repeating, over and over, what years of being in that relationship had made me believe about myself.

There is a difference between the voice in your head and who you actually are.

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How Thoughts Affect Healing After Abuse

Here is what I have come to understand about how thoughts affect healing after abuse.

When you have lived through abuse, the mind does not just record what happened. It builds a story around it. And that story almost always starts with "I"... I was not good enough. I should have done better. I let this happen.

None of those are true. But the mind does not fact-check. It just repeats.

And the more it repeats, the more familiar the story feels. Familiar starts to feel like fact. And when you are already exhausted and stretched to your limit, that voice can pull you further down when you need to be finding your way up.

For me, two things helped interrupt it. The first was becoming aware of the voice, noticing it rather than just believing it. The second was gratitude.

I know that might sound simple. But gratitude genuinely changed something in me. Not the surface kind, not a list of things to be grateful for. I mean a real, daily practice of looking for what was still good. What was still there. What was still possible.

If you read last week's blog about why our bodies still react to old triggers, you will recognise the thread. Noticing is always the beginning. Whether it's the body's reaction or the mind's story, the moment you notice it, something starts to shift.

The voice that tells you it was your fault is not the truth of you. It is a story built from pain. And stories can change.

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One Small Practice to Try This Week

When the self-critical voice speaks, try this.

Instead of arguing with it or pushing it away, just pause and ask:

Is this the truth of who I am? Or is this a story I have been carrying?

That's it. You're not trying to force yourself to think positively. You are not dismissing the feeling. You are just creating one moment of distance between you and the thought.

Some days that will feel easy. Some days it won't. Both are part of it.

What matters is the noticing. Because the moment you notice the voice is there, you are no longer completely inside it. And that small gap is where something can begin to change.

You are not the voice. You never were.

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You Don't Have to Figure This Out Alone

This kind of work is quiet and steady. It doesn't happen in one big moment. It happens in small ordinary ones, over time.

And it is so much easier when you have women around you who understand it from the inside.

If you would like a place where that kind of conversation is welcome, come and join us inside the Inner Freedom Facebook Community. It's a calm, private space for women who are walking this path.

💜 Join us inside the Inner Freedom Facebook Community

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With love and gratitude,

P.S. If you would like a clearer sense of where you are on your healing path right now, the quiz is a gentle place to start. It's free, takes just a few minutes 🌼 Discover Your Healing Path. Take the Quiz.