Abuse Hides in the Dark. Turn on Your Light.

Quick Self-Care Tips for People in Abusive Relationships

Quick Self-Care Tips for People in Abusive Relationships

Quick self-care tips for people in abusive relationships must help you redirect your thinking away from the abuser and onto yourself. This is important because we’re conditioned to think only of the abuser’s behavior. Whether the abuser is being nice or horrible, our lives center on what he or she is doing, thinking or feeling. That isn’t healthy for us (see the Codependency Archive).

Sure, it’s natural to be empathetic toward someone you love, but spending all of your days trying to please or manipulate that person into behaving well does nothing for you.

You will never please your abuser for long, and manipulating someone, no matter what your intention, is futile.

So, let’s put some attention back on ourselves: Quick self-care tips that focus on at we want, need, deserve and can create. To that end, here is a collection of mind hacks and quick self-care tips I’ve used over the years to disentangle myself from my abuser’s behavior.

Quick Self-Care Tips for Journaling

Journaling can be a quick self-care tip when you don’t tie in rules on how to journal. You can grab a piece of paper and get started. File those papers in a manila folder if you like. You don’t have to have a fancy journal or use the bullet journal system or anything like that. Journaling is the best way to make sense of how you’re feeling.

Quick Self-Care for When You Need to Move Your Body

Anxiety fills not only your mind but your body too. That nervous energy you feel needs somewhere to go. Exercise of any kind is great, but you don’t have to exercise to get rid of anxiety.

Self-Care for Communication

We know that when an abuser talks, he or she isn’t really trying to communicate. They’re trying to force you into submission. However, learning communication skills can help you talk yourself out of the stickiest of situations, defusing the abuser and giving you a chance to get to a safer space.

Quick Self-Care for Inner Work

Quick self-care for inner work can take 10 minutes or less. Or inner work can take entire days. But it’s the quick self-care that will help you most in your day-to-day living with an abuser. Take time every day to connect with your Self. It will remind you that you’re important and renew your inner voice which makes you stronger and more resilient.

Reach Out to Others for Quick Self-Care

Call a friend. Call a hotline. Call someone who can either help you emotionally or just be a voice on the phone that keeps your abuser from yelling at you.

Abusers don’t like other people to hear them go off — it doesn’t fit their public persona. So call someone. Reach out. Communicating with others will help you to feel supported or help to get the abuser off your back for a few minutes so you can think.

Featured photo by Lesly Juarez