Domestic Abuse Anxiety: Battle Scar of Domestic Violence

My first memories of overwhelming domestic abuse anxiety occurred after I was apart from my abuser and the reality of all that was happening to my world started sinking in. This new emotion provided a furiously new feeling of incomplete inability to function, think, focus, make decisions, be a single parent or co-worker. The new feeling overpowered me like nothing before. It wasn’t like the anxiety I felt throughout the abuse; the anxiety I experienced during my abuse never kept me from being able to function. The unpredictability of my abuse kept me functioning in a chaotic state to make my abuser happy. This new, post abuse anxiety was significantly different and overwhelmingly debilitating.
​
For the first few years post-abuse, I believed my anxiety provided me with my will to fight. I considered my anxiety a meter that guided me to decide if I should fight or run. In the absence of any other decision-making method, I allowed my level of anxiety dictate how I should handle a situation.

After an Abusive Relationship - Anxiety

I wish someone had talked to me earlier about what:

• This anxiety is
• The unbelievable toll it is taking on my body
• Strategies for controlling it.
  ​
  

I believe continuing to live in my secret world where I wasn’t completely honest with my counselor, definitely not honest with my physician, and still not sharing any of this with anyone caused me to be uneducated about a critical part of myself post-abuse. After over 50 professional counseling sessions, no one ever went over this anxiety and the impact it has on my world.

Battle Scar of Domestic Violence

​Over the years, physical ailments started to cause pain throughout my body, but I never connected them to my anxiety. What I did know, five years after leaving my abuser, my world wasn’t moving forward towards a complete recovery. I was stalled in an anxious holding pattern.
​
What I didn’t realize is that my anxiety is a new body part; a new part of my inner being that is here to stay. My anxiety is a battle wound from my abuse. It isn’t something that is going to go away with time; my anxiety is something that is remaining a part of me for the remainder of my life. What I failed to realize until it was almost too late is that instead of fighting my anxiety demons, I need to be figuring out how to manage it.