When Abuse Changes the Way You See Yourself

One of the hardest things I’ve had to heal from isn’t just what happened to me.

It’s what I started believing about myself because of it.

When you spend enough time being criticized, blamed, dismissed, manipulated, or made to feel like you’re always the problem, something starts to happen.

Their voice slowly becomes your voice.

You start questioning yourself before anyone else even has the chance.

Am I being too sensitive?

Am I asking for too much?

Maybe I really am difficult to love.

Maybe I should have handled that differently.

Maybe everything really is my fault.

And eventually, you don’t need someone else to tear you down anymore.

You’ve learned how to do it yourself.

That has been one of the hardest parts of healing for me.

I can leave the environment that made me feel small, but that doesn’t mean I immediately stop feeling small.

I can know intellectually that I deserved better and still struggle to believe that I am worthy of better.

I can look in the mirror and see someone rebuilding her life while simultaneously hearing a voice telling me that I’m not enough.

Not a good enough mom.

Not lovable enough.

Not pretty enough.

Not patient enough.

Not successful enough.

Just… not enough.

And I’m realizing how much of my self-worth became dependent on proving otherwise.

Proving that I’m a good mother.

Proving that I tried hard enough.

Proving that I wasn’t the problem.

But healing has been teaching me something I desperately needed to learn:

I don’t have to spend the rest of my life proving that I deserved to be treated with love.

I did.

Even when I made mistakes.

Even when I wasn’t easy to understand.

Even when I was emotional.

Even when I was imperfect.

Because being imperfect never made me deserving of mistreatment.

And maybe rebuilding my self-worth isn’t about becoming some incredibly confident version of myself who never doubts anything again.

Maybe it starts much smaller.

Catching myself when I speak cruelly to myself.

Trusting my own memories and feelings again.

Allowing myself to have needs without immediately apologizing for them.

Setting a boundary without feeling like I’m a bad person.

Accepting a compliment instead of arguing with it.

Looking at myself with a little more compassion than I did yesterday.

I’m still learning who I am when I’m not seeing myself through someone else’s eyes.

And some days, I still struggle.

But I’m beginning to understand that the version of me who felt worthless was never actually worthless.

She was hurting.

She was surviving.

She was hearing the same messages for so long that eventually she believed them.

Now I get to teach her something different.

That she is worthy of gentleness.

That her voice matters.

That she doesn’t have to earn basic love and respect.

That taking up space doesn’t make her difficult.

And that another person’s inability to see her worth never determined whether it was there.

Maybe that’s what this season is really about.

Not becoming worthy.

Remembering that I always was.

Still we grow.