How Janet Found Healing From Emotional Abuse
In Janet’s family home, she never experienced nor saw the kind of emotional abuse she was now experiencing in her marriage from Eric. His constant criticizing, extreme anger blowups, and insults had destroyed her self-esteem and were a painful example of emotional abuse.
Finally, Janet had enough. She told Eric that if they didn’t go for help, she was going to leave. She told him she was no longer willing to live with his anger outbursts. Reluctantly, Eric agreed to go for marriage therapy. Fortunately, the therapist was good.
The therapist explained to Eric how wrong emotional abuse was and how his extreme anger outbursts were eroding his wife’s natural healthy self-esteem. The therapist also told Janet that if she felt physically unsafe, she should call the police. Janet reassured the therapist that Eric never hit or pushed her.
After Eric got over the embarrassment of his abusive ways having been exposed to another person, he rose to the challenge to be better and committed himself to treating his wife respectfully. He was also afraid that if he didn’t stop his abuse and anger, Janet would leave him. Eric was smart, and upon reflection, he realized how horrible and wrong his behavior had been.
The therapist gave Eric anger management worksheets to help him learn anger management. Several weeks later, Janet reported to their marriage therapist that Eric had transformed himself and was now behaving respectfully, and kindly, and was more patient.
However, she told the therapist she was still fearful of her husband and had a hard time speaking up and letting Eric know what her needs were and how she felt about things.
The marriage therapist was insightful and understood that Janet’s self-esteem had suffered and was now very low after years of abuse. The therapist gave Janet the following four suggestions to help her build her self-esteem, and confidence, and help her be more assertive:
- Make a list of your positive attributes and your achievements, then review them several times each day.
- Each day write a paragraph of what you would like to hear from your husband. At a quiet moment in the evening, hand him the paper and ask him to read the paragraph out loud to you. He should repeat this three times.
- Each day find one small thing to ask Eric to do for you.
- Each day give yourself a special treat. Maybe it is taking some quiet time and reading a book, or calling a friend, or buying something special to eat. Tell yourself the reason you are being good to yourself, is that ‘you are good,’ and you are on the road to achieving many great things
Janet worked on building her self-esteem and being more assertive. She went from being a broken and emotionally abused woman to finding her inner strength. She became much more outgoing, connected with old friends, and felt empowered to set goals and achieve them.
Best of all, she was no longer afraid of Eric. They continued together for many happy years.
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