10 Unhelpful Ways to Try to Heal From an Abusive Marriage

I talk with so many women who are wondering how to heal from their abusive marriage. They feel lost, discouraged, exhausted, and sometimes even hopeless. Here are the most common barriers I see to true, deep healing.

Focusing on what’s wrong with you instead of what’s right with you

Unhelpful therapists, books, blogs, and helpers may want us to look at why we’re a “victim” or what was “wrong” with us that “caused” us to be abused. That’s not healing.

We were abused because we were targeted by an abuser who chose to abuse and to use our good qualities against us. We are amazing women with beautiful personality traits like being forgiving, generous, loyal, committed, dependable, and honest.

It’s these beautiful traits that can make us strong for ourselves in our healing process. Think about how many years, decades even, you worked and fought for your marriage. You can put that same determination, commitment, loyalty, and strength into your own healing process.

During abuse we lose the sense that we can depend on ourselves and inner resources, but our real self is still inside us, and our inner resources can be found again. This is the beauty of true healing.

Yes we are wounded and have real trauma to heal from, but we are not fundamentally broken, useless, or damaged. We have a real self that still exists and we can find her again.

Not understanding and dealing with trauma

Many women who are abused end up getting chronic PTSD. This is caused by dysregulation in our bodies and brain and leads to many debilitating symptoms like brain fog, anxiety, joylessness, exhaustion, being easily triggered, feeling overwhelmed and stressed out, feeling disconnected from yourself and God, feeling empty and lost, and feeling helpless and powerless over your emotions and thoughts.

The Christian world is pretty uneducated about trauma and how it affects our physiology. What breaks my heart is that we’re told we can recover with only prayer, or with just changing our beliefs. But if we have trauma symptoms, we need more.

Trauma needs a specific kind of healing that works on our physiology as well as our thoughts. When we don’t have the right tools for healing trauma, we end up spinning in the same symptoms and problems, and blaming ourselves for our pain and lack of healing. That’s the last thing we need after blaming ourselves and being blamed for our marriage. We need the right tools!

When we understand the missing piece- trauma tools and trauma healing– we are set free from the self-blame and shame for our ongoing struggles, and can make forward progress that brings up hope.

Using the same group or resource that helped you figure out you were being abused, and get free, to help you heal

These are two very different processes. For instance, my Confusion to Clarity Facebook Community helps women see the abuse, get strong enough to leave, get support for the difficult divorce process, and get used to their new life. I love that group and love watching the women get stronger with knowledge, support, and clarity. But can women fully heal from the abuse through that group or other groups that help you get free? No.

Healing comes from a trauma-based program, or a skilled trauma therapist, that will help you understand and heal the trauma and damage to your mind, emotions, body and spirit that came from the abuse.

That is where you can learn concrete tools to:
~ develop emotional stability and heal triggers and trauma reactions
~ find peace when you’re overwhelmed
~ heal your broken connection to yourself and how to abuse distorted your view of yourself
~ walk in self-compassion
~ heal from grief, false guilt, self-criticism, and shame
~ find strength, self-empowerment, self-trust ,and self-confidence
~ help you think more clearly and transform disabling lies and false beliefs into truth
~heal from spiritual abuse so you can trust God again

trying to heal on your own with a little bit of this and that which you find all over the internet

It’s very common to expect we will heal by watching videos by various people, by reading all sorts of books and blogs, and by being a part of a FB support group. We may even make some progress here and there.

Yet, in doing this, many of us have still found ourselves struggling and feeling rudderless in our healing. We don’t have a clear path and we don’t know what will help us so we just keep trying different things. This is doing it the hard way!

You’ve already had enough struggle and trauma in your marriage. Healing from abuse on your own is the hard, discouraging, exhausting way. It’s not necessary to feel hopeless because you can’t figure out how to heal.

It’s possible to understand what is keeping you stuck in your healing and how to move forward, step by step along the journey of healing.

There are roadmaps and tools for healing that are much more specific and effective than suggestions of “Learn to love yourself,” “Stop believing the lies about yourself,” or “Let it go.” After all, if we knew HOW to do these things we already would have done them.

You are worth finding a healing path that will work for you, and following a trustworthy guide who can help you heal.

Obsessing about the marriage

The ingrained habit of focusing on the marriage, trying to get him to change, or obsessing over whether he is changing can be hard to stop.

There comes a time for all of us when we feel depressed, discouraged, and powerless as we realize how much energy we wasted trying to get our marriage to work. When we keep trying to do the impossible– help him change– we only increase our sense of powerlessness.

No one can force an abuser to change and no one can heal an abusive marriage if the abuser continues to choose to abuse.

Whether you’re married, separated, waiting to see if he’ll change, or divorcing/divorced, it’s time to focus on yourself and put all that energy you’re so used to putting into the marriage into your own healing. When we make an emotional investment in ourselves – where our efforts won’t just result in depression, powerlessness, and discouragement– real change can happen in our lives.

It’s much easier to heal and create a new life than to fix an abuser’s character disorder. So now is your time– time for you to heal the very real damage the abuse has done to you.

No matter how discouraged and powerless you feel, you do have power over yourself and your own life.

Sorting out the things you can control and making a real plan for healing will help you regain a sense of power.

Your healing is one thing you really do have influence over.

Not working with a therapist or group that does trauma based healing

So many women get revictimized, or end up spinning their wheels, because they are seeing a general therapist to recover from abuse, or a “Biblically based” lay counselor. It’s discouraging to hear some of the things these “helpers” say such as, “You enabled the abuse,” (WRONG) or “What was your part in the marriage problems?” (YOU HAD NO PART). We need to find a therapist who understands abuse dynamics, and the traits that made us targets.

There are also many women who spend years in talk therapy, yet aren’t making much progress. What’s really devastating is that deep down they blame themselves. The problem isn’t the survivor, it’s the therapist who hasn’t been trained in trauma.

If you have cancer you don’t go to a General Practitioner, you go to a doctor that specializes in the type of cancer you have. To heal we need to work with someone who understands trauma, spousal abuse, and spiritual abuse.

talking over and over about what he’s doing and what he did to you (after you leave)

There IS a time for talking about what he’s doing, and that’s when you are trying to understand the abuse, making decisions about staying or leaving, and when you’re in the middle of the divorce battle and need support.

But to heal, your focus needs to shift off of him and onto you. Our healing process isn’t about him, it’s about us.

Ruminating about the past, trying to get others to understand, worrying about whether your husband or ex will keep getting away with their behavior, obsessing about everything you need to heal from and how broken you are, and worrying that you’ll never heal keeps us spinning our wheels. Yet because of our trauma, it can be very hard to break these obsessing thoughts.

There are several things that can help end this emotional nightmare:
~ knowing that you have a plan for your healing
~ understanding why it’s so hard to stop the ruminating and redirect your thoughts
~ having trauma tools that can break the body/brain feedback loop and rewire the neurology that causes these thoughts
~ being involved in trauma therapy or a trauma-based program that keeps your focus on you and your ability to heal
~ healing your relationship with Jesus so you can have hope for your future and feel His love right now.

When we have the support and tools to shift our focus onto ourselves, our life, our future, and the hope we can find in the middle of the wreckage our life has become (instead of trying to do it with our willpower), we can experience the promise of healing and let go of the false self-blame that we must be doing something wrong.

Expecting time (or God) to heal all wounds

We don’t just automatically heal after we leave an abusive marriage. In fact, most of us are pretty overwhelmed by the brokenness in our lives that we have to rebuild, and how emotionally wrung out, overwhelmed, and exhausted we are.

In Isaiah, it says of Jesus: He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners… to comfort all who mourn.

I used to think this meant that if I prayed and waited for Jesus to do it all, I’d be healed and set free from my inner pain. There’s no denying the many, many things that God does for us, and I am so grateful for all He did for me after my divorce, including reducing some of my C-PTSD symptoms, but it wasn’t until I did trauma specific healing that I truly walked into the complete inner freedom and deep healing He wanted for me.

We need to be intentional with our healing after abuse, and God wants us to be an active part of our healing. When we do that, we regain the power and sense of self we lost through abuse.

trying to get worth from another man or anywhere else except from your relationship with yourself and Jesus

Jumping in to another relationship or other distractions won’t help you heal. You’ll just bring all your wounds and brokenness into the next relationship and create a big mess. After you’ve left an abusive marriage, it’s your golden opportunity find your self-worth from the right places, by respecting yourself and by accepting that you’re the beloved of Jesus.

How do you begin to respect yourself and see your worth? By committing to getting help with your healing, by being brave, by taking steps to grow, by being an adult who chooses to take care of herself and fix her life, and by learning how to stop putting yourself down and believe in yourself.

And how do you accept yourself as a beloved daughter of God? By committing to get help to heal the spiritual abuse that separated you from Him, by finding the real Jesus, and by learning to live in His love and rest in Him.

Numbing yourself or just trying to forget it ever happened

There are so many ways for us to numb ourselves beyond the obvious forms of alcohol, drugs, or other addictions. How about being overly busy, shopping, volunteering at church 5 times a week, helping others all the time, watching Netflix all day, or listening to radio all the time to avoid having quiet time?

What we don’t heal will come back to hurt us. It might show up as long term depression, getting into another toxic relationship, living a life that is so much smaller than what God wants for us, or just feeling disconnected from yourself and never getting to enjoy being you. Ever.

Choosing relief from pain for the moment seems like our only option when we don’t have a clear path for our healing. But it backfires. Intentional healing isn’t easy, but it’s so worth it!

If you resonate with the desire to be guided on a true path to healing from emotional and psychological spousal abuse and spiritual abuse, the Arise Healing Community may be exactly what you need. You can learn more here.

Here’s a podcast about healing from abuse that you will find helpful.