Healing is Your Power
by Teresa Smith
Victims of abuse may struggle to heal for a long time. Healing is different for each person and so is the time frame. Often, when victims reach out for support from friends and family, they are met with advice such as “Just move on.” “Stop living in the past.”
“Try to be more positive.” For many, these phrases echo louder than the abuse itself. They reflect a series of false beliefs about what healing should look like.
These beliefs that can leave survivors feeling misunderstood and ashamed that the trauma still holds them captive.
But the truth is that abuse does not define you. Healing is not about erasing what happened or pretending it didn’t happen.
It is about reclaiming who you are outside of the abuse and learning to thrive again.
One of the most common misconceptions that survivors face is the accusation that they are stuck in the past. However, in reality, trauma doesn’t live in the past; it lives in your nervous system.
Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, explains that trauma resides not just in the memory of the event, but in the body’s ongoing response to it. The danger may be over, but the body has not yet learned that.
The false beliefs surrounding recovery often stem from society’s discomfort with pain, anger, complexity, and accountability.
It is easier to label someone stuck, too sensitive, or dramatic than to sit with the reality of trauma. But healing isn’t about shrinking yourself so other people feel comfortable.
It’s about learning to feel comfortable in your own skin again.
It’s about holding your space, using your voice, and letting yourself feel what you actually feel, without constantly second-guessing it to fit someone else’s idea.
Healing isn’t about becoming less. It’s about finding yourself again.
Healing often begins with telling the truth. First admitting to yourself all that you have survived. Abuse may be a chapter in your life, but it is not the title of the book and not the end of your story.
Trauma is not defined solely by what happened. It is also defined by what happened inside you afterward.
You may experience hypervigilance, self-doubt, startle responses, be triggered by certain smells, noises, places, or people.
Addressing these is not living in the past. It is tending to the present. Survivors are often told they are overreacting.
But heightened awareness and strong emotional responses are not character flaws; they are adaptations that your body has made to survive.
Often, others may say what you experienced wasn’t that bad. Minimization is one of the most damaging myths.
Abuse does not need to be the worst imaginable to qualify as harmful. If it hurt you, confused you, or destabilized you, it was bad enough.
You must put up healthy boundaries to protect your mental health from those who refuse to recognize what you have experienced.
Boundaries are not bitterness. Protecting yourself is not immaturity. It is wisdom earned through experience.
Sensitivity, in many cases, is simply the nervous system learning to recognize danger more quickly.
Everyone must realize that healing is not linear. It can look contradictory such as continuing to love someone who hurt you, missing what was actually toxic, grieving the loss while feeling relieved.
These are all normal emotions. Emotions are not failure. Feeling anger does not make you cruel. Feeling grief does not make you weak.
Feeling confused does not make you broken. Even when the relationship was harmful, there were likely moments of attachment, hope, or love. Grieving those does not invalidate the harm. It acknowledges your humanity.
Working through the pain to heal is so important for your long-term recovery. Avoidance can feel protective in the short term.
But suppressed experiences don’t disappear. They wait. The emotions from lived trauma will come to the surface at some point.
You may feel pressure to turn your pain into inspiration as quickly as possible. Social media rewards resilience stories with neat endings.
But forcing fake positivity can impede healing from the grief and pretending won’t work. Healing is not always pretty.
It is not a constant upward move. There will be setbacks, numb days, angry days, days where you thought you were over it and suddenly you realize that you aren’t. That is not failure.
That is just part of the healing process.
Responsibility lies with the person who chose to abuse, not the victim.
Psychologist Marsha M. Linehan, founder of Dialectical Behavior Therapy, introduced the concept of radical acceptance; acknowledging reality as it is, without approving of it.
Acceptance does not mean the abuse was okay. It means you stop fighting the fact that it happened, so you can begin to decide what happens next.
Abuse may have shaped parts of your story. It may have influenced your nervous system, your relationships, your sense of trust.
But it does not define your worth, your identity, or your future. You are not stuck. You are not too sensitive.
You are not too complicated. And it was never your fault. Healing is evidence that you are still here and still standing. And that, in itself, is your power.
Crisis Services of North Alabama offers free and confidential services to victims of sexual assault and intimate partner violence.
Our Jackson County office can be reached at 256.716.1000 for an appointment.
You may also reach our 24/7 HELPline at 256.716.1000 to speak with a trained crisis counselor. We offer advocacy, referrals, crisis counseling and support groups. You are not alone.
