A short story about a women I once knew...
She is sharing her story to raise awareness because she knows she isn't the only one this has happened to. She lost years of her life believing she had a lifelong mental illnesses. Which have now vanished since being free.
She lost years of motherhood because she was living in survival mode instead of truly living.
Looking back, she can't help but wonder how many other survivors are still living this reality—believing they are mentally ill when they may actually be living with the effects of prolonged trauma and taking life-changing medication.
Many survivors of prolonged abuse are silenced through fear, threats, coercive control, and gaslighting. They are often too frightened, ashamed, or traumatised to tell anyone what is happening behind closed doors. Some are even convinced by their abuser that they are the problem and are encouraged or pressured to seek mental health treatment. As a result, professionals may only see the symptoms, not the abuse that caused them. If the abuse isn't identified or explored, normal trauma responses can easily be mistaken for mental illness.
By 2020, after five years of starting the realationship, she genuinely believed everything was her fault. She had been gaslit into believing she was "mental" and was pushed towards mental health services, with doctors believing she was the problem rather than recognising she was living in an abusive environment. The abuse wasn't constant—there were periods of good times, which she now recognises as love bombing. There was a clear pattern, and a deep trauma bond was formed. Alcohol became another issue, and she was bullied into drinking it, She no longer drinks at all. Infact the smell of alcohol makes her feel sick..
One Christmas Day, after years of this cycle, she was choked unconscious and choked twice more on the same day. She became suicidal that day and went to A&E. She was referred to the crisis team and diagnosed with cyclothymia (a mood disorder sometimes referred to as bipolar 3), anxiety, depression, and suicidal tendencies. A few years later, she would also be diagnosed with ADHD.
Weeks after that crisis at Christmas, she was prescribed quetiapine, which was eventually increased to 300mg. Looking back, she now sees this medication was like a silencer on a fire alarm while the house was still burning. Anti physcotics for living with a phyco, must of softened the blow.. The abuse was still happening, but the focus became her mental health rather than the environment causing it. Her mental health was used against her and became the main focus. Her diagnosis became something her abuser could use against her, reinforcing the belief that she was the problem instead of the abuse itself. Again, she blamed herself and was blamed for everything that happened, leaving her feeling even more silenced and making it even harder to recognise what was really happening.
Two years after leaving for good in 2024, she started researching trauma, coercive control, and C-PTSD. She did deep dives into learning about all aspects of mental health, and one subject that fundamentally changed her life was pathologisation. Learning about pathologisation was the breakthrough that had her questioning her mental health diagnoses. She realised that, for her, what had been diagnosed as a mood disorder was actually a normal human response to prolonged abuse.
She gradually reduced her quetiapine from 300mg down to 50mg. Since then, she has not experienced a relapse of the mental health symptoms she displayed at the time. She hasn't had the high highs, the weeks of crying, the extreme mood swings, or any thoughts of ending her life.
Her mood disorder diagnosis has now been officially dismissed, leaving a diagnosis of complex trauma. While ADHD is another diagnosis she received, ADHD and complex trauma share many overlapping symptoms and can mimic C-PTSD. Hypervigilance anxiety sits in the CPSTD frame. Her symptoms associated with ADHD have also calmed significantly since.
As she reduced the medication, physical symptoms that had previously been less apparent became much more noticeable, including symptoms consistent with POTS (a dysregulated autonomic nervous system) and blood vessel dysregulation. Her physical body has suffered simply from her nervous system being in survival mode for so long. There are now studies and links to autoimmune diseases, fibromyalgia, and nervous system dysregulation in people who have endured prolonged abuse because their nervous system has been so affected by living in these environments.
She has had further medical investigations, including an MRI, which identified abnormalities in her neck. Given her history of repeated strangulation, it is now being questioned whether these physical issues are directly related to injuries sustained during the abuse, and whether the medication had simply been masking the symptoms.
She is not blaming mental health services, as she never told anyone what was happening. Survivors (she hates the word victim; she prefers survivor) are often too frightened or traumatised to disclose what occurs behind closed doors, or they have been so gaslit that they genuinely believe they are the problem. Professionals can only work with the information they have, which is why trauma-informed assessment is so vital.
She isn't saying every mental health diagnosis is wrong. Some people have mental health conditions, some have trauma, and some have both. But if you were diagnosed during an abusive relationship, or shortly after leaving one, ask yourself whether your symptoms could have been a psychiatric illness or a normal human response to prolonged trauma: ADHD, mood disorders, BPD, anxiety, depression, isolation, suicidal thoughts.
Is it the real you, or is it an environment you have been conditioned to survive? Or if you have come out of that situation, is it your body and your nervous system trying to step out of survival mode?
People can become suicidal in these situations because they believe they are the problem and see no other escape. Sometimes people do take their own lives because of it. She is so glad she is still here.
Although she reached a crisis point in 2020, she stayed for four more years. There were times they separated and got back together, and during those times, her child continued spending time with his father.
About a year after all contact had finally ended, her son shared a significant amount of abuse that he had experienced while he was there. He had never felt able to tell anyone before. It wasn't until he finally felt safe that he found the courage to speak.
This is another painful, guilty reminder of how abuse operates. It doesn't just silence adults—it silences children too. They often carry what they've experienced in complete isolation until they finally feel safe enough to speak.
If you're staying because you think you're protecting your children by keeping the family together, she understands. She thought that too, until things became unbearable and the escalation of incidents became frightening and incidents has left her son and herself with PTSD still two years on and caused significant seperation anxietys and claustrophobia.
2024 she was threatened to be shot, buried in a hole they were digging, thrown in a van and kidnapped, beaten up by women, all the names u can think of whilst her and the child stood in silence frozen in the middle of a street amd followed as we tried to walk away. That was the last time she would ever allow him to speak to her like that.
The same reality applies to children growing up in toxic and abusive environments: trauma affects every single part of their development. They may become anxious, withdrawn, hypervigilant, or emotionally dysregulated. They may struggle at school, have difficulty trusting others, experience nightmares or stutters, or display behaviours that look similar to—or exist alongside—conditions such as ADHD, anxiety, or depression.
Many children simply don't feel safe enough to talk about what they're experiencing because it becomes part of their normality and they will naturally copy the behaviours. Even if you are trying to hide it and they will see how to treat a women or how to be treated. Children will naturally copy behaviours too and unfortunately stand with the bully.
Looking back, she knows that environment affected not only her sons, but her as a mother. Living in survival mode impacted her parenting and her relationship with one of her children. That is a weight of guilt she will always carry—that she didn't leave sooner and that she allowed it. But she didn't know how bad things truly were; she can see now that she was a puppet on a string, a shell of her former self.
Then they left.
When you take a child out of a toxic environment, surround them with safety, love, and consistency, you get to watch what happens next. You watch them begin to smile again. You watch them grow in confidence. You watch them find their voice. You watch them become free to be who they really are.
Healing hasn't happened overnight, and her son still lives with complex trauma, but the transformation has been incredible.
Today, they have been free for two years.
Over those two years, she has watched her son slowly become the child he was always meant to be: happy, confident, and free to express himself how he wants to without being mocked or punished. He is free to show his emotions without being belittled or told to man up.
Watching him heal has been one of the greatest gifts of her life.
That is the child abuse tried to silence—and the child healing has allowed to shine.
Breaking that cycle is the achievement she is most proud of. She can't change what happened to them, and she can't change the past, but she can change what happens next, and they will continue to heal together.
Her hope is that her son grows up knowing what love, safety, and respect really look like, instead of believing abuse is normal.
For the first time, she stopped asking, "What's wrong with me?" and started asking, "What happened to me?"
If sharing a small part of this helps just one person understand what they're going through, ask questions, seek the right support, or realise that healing is possible—that there is a way out and you can do it—then sharing her story has been entirely worth it.
Learn about trauma, coercive control, mental health, pathologisation, and how trauma physically affects not only the mind but the body as well. It could change your life, just as it changed hers.
That's why she and her son are now in private therapy—to give him the opportunity to heal now, so he doesn't have to carry the heavy weight of his trauma into adulthood.
Her hope is that one day she can help other children find that same safety, healing, and hope so they dont carry the burden of childhood truma.
She will continue learning and educating her self to gain to qualifications to do so.
It hasn't stopped since leaving either; stalking and intimidation has continued, breaches of no contact and non-molestation orders have continues and a smear campaign, still 2 years later and failure of justice system and they are still being intimidated, But they will never get a reaction because they will never control life again and silence and peace is golden..The justice system is another story.
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This incredible testimony was shared with me and it’s in her own words. It brings light to so much, and I’m honoured to be able to share such a brave persons story! Thankyou to her for trusting me because There are so many of us healing, becoming who we are meant to be after abuse and the more we talk and speak our truths the easier it gets for someone else.
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