I felt like I couldn't trust anyone after leaving my abusive husband. I wondered to myself, "Will he abuse me?" whenever I met someone who stirred up my sexual feelings. I shied away from him (or made it impossible to create a true bond) because after living with a monster, the thought of being fooled again made me sick to my stomach. It took about five months of freedom to even consider opening myself to a relationship. When I finally did open up, the butterflies in my stomach opened and closed their wings - like steel traps. I was aflutter about a new romantic interest, but when those butterflies snapped their wings shut hard and fast, I withdrew from him. More than once. I initially thought I didn't trust other people at all, but I learned that trusting myself after that abusive relationship was the thing I needed help to relearn.

A symptom of PTSD is reliving the abuse, the trauma, repeatedly in the form of flashbacks, nightmares and intrusive memories. I believe there's another piece of the PTSD puzzle in reliving abuse by hearing the abuser's voice in your head--repeatedly, intrusively, . . . so ingrained a memory that it speaks in the abuser's voice without us realizing it is only the abuser's voice. It's only a memory. Reliving verbal abuse in the context of PTSD makes me forget that the abusive voice is not my own.

Are you having problems making friends since leaving your abusive relationship? You aren't alone in being alone. Abuse survivors make it out of their abusive relationships often to find they have no friends, or at least no one they can trust to be a friend. And after so much time in an abusive relationship, the effects of the emotional abuse can leaving you feeling like you're not worthy of a friend. Despite the problems, you can make good friends after an abusive relationship and create a life you want to live.

All of us survivors know that our ex will at least verbally and emotionally abuse our children. We survivors also know how hard that type of abuse is to prove, and even proving it doesn't mean your ex will have less time with our children. Proving non-sexual or non-physical abuse typically results in therapy if it results in anything at all. Therapy doesn't work unless the abuser wants to change. They don't want to change which is the reason you left them in the first place.

Children in abusive homes often learn how to abuse without really knowing what they're doing. It's another tragic effect of abuse that can seem hopeless to overcome. But it isn't. Children in abusive homes aren't lost to us parents who have learned about abuse and can recognize abuse when it comes from our children. Granted, it's easier to teach children of abusive homes how to behave appropriately when they're no longer exposed to abuse. But, as that's not usually the case with family court being as it is, it's up to us non-abusive parents to teach children how to behave well. Here are some ideas on how to help children in abusive homes unlearn abuse.

I feel ornery today. Woe to anyone who crosses me. You've been warned! During my marriage, I would have put on my boxing gloves on a day like today. I would check my s%*t-list, which always consisted of only my husband's crap, and remind myself of what he got away with that deserved retaliation. I'd figuratively position myself  smack dab in the center of the door frame and wait for him to come home. POW! Sucker punch. And boy, would it feel good to see that look on his face. I always got the first verbal hit on these kinds of days. The anger inside of me today is the same. Bubbling, festering, the color of sick yellow pus. It needs out, and baby, cleaning this darn house for release just isn't going to cut it. Honestly, I want to write my ex a scathing email. Stir things up, let him know how I feel. Problem is, I don't really feel anything when it comes to him anymore. My ex hasn't been on my list for months because my list doesn't exist anymore. This anxious, angry feeling is mine alone. In the absence of abuse, what in the heck am I supposed to do with all this frustration?

In 1987, our nation observed the first Domestic Violence Awareness Month. I was 16 years old and never saw a poster saying Fight the Violence or Silence Hides Violence. I wouldn't have known what those slogans meant or referred to anyway. When I was young, domestic violence wasn't an issue for me or for my school or the shops at the mall because we didn't know what it was. Thank goodness it was an issue for the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV).

I am struggling in my relationship with Max. He requests more attention from me, and I know his request is rational. Truth is that I find it difficult to connect with him in an intimate way on a regular basis. It seems that "everything else" gets my attention and focus, while I place Max's needs on the back burner.

After the emotional abuse, or rather, after I left my abusive husband, I hoped the effects of abuse would disappear. Magically. Without any work from me. Those hopeful feelings minimized the difficulty of coping with life and relationships after emotional abuse. The intelligent part of me knew that after the emotional abuse it would take time to recover from the emotional trauma and regain my mental health. Alas, the intelligent part of me was correct.

Verbal abuse books helped me discover that my marriage problems were rooted in verbal and emotional abuse. I felt relief because up until I read the library of verbal abuse books available, I thought that I was losing my mind. My abusive husband had almost convinced me that every problem in our marriage was my fault. He said I was inept and out of touch with reality. The verbal abuse books taught me that my husband was wrong. But more importantly, the verbal abuse books taught me the vocabulary of abuse so I could finally describe what was happening to me.