Episode Details

Emotional abuse affects your body in a variety of ways. Many women in The BTR.ORG Community have experienced devastating emotional, physical, and mental symptoms. Here’s Joyce’s story.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions are here for you if you’re experiencing negative health affects of emotional abuse.

Transcript: Emotional Abuse Affects Your Body

Anne: I have a special friend who came to my house today. She is in my basement recording with me. We’re gonna call her Joyce. She’s a member of The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Community, and I know her in real life. The story takes a dramatic turn.

We’ll start with her story and then near the end we’ll talk about how all how emotional abuse affects your body and your health. When you met your husband, soon to be ex, Joyce how would you define his behavior?

Joyce: We met on Tinder and I had actually canceled our first date because I was getting very exhausted by dating.

But when I got home from my first date, I thought he was so nice because he told me that he had picked a smoothie place because it was public and it was short and there were cameras. He thought that would make women feel safe. In my mind, I thought, oh that is so considerate. This guy is looking out for women’s needs. Awesome.

Anne: Man

Joyce: Within a month, we were dating, and within three months, we were engaged.

Anne: I, too, had a very quick engagement. Ah.

Even First Time Emotional Abuse Affects Your Body

Anne: When did you start recognizing that some of his behaviors weren’t what you were looking for?

Joyce: You know, I struggle with ignoring my first instincts. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Even while we were dating, there were times where I was like, that’s a little odd. I am better at doubting myself than doubting other people. I remember he got really angry at a bill on one of our dates. He thought they had overcharged us and he apologized to them after. It was not something I was comfortable with and didn’t really know how to address.

If I’d known better or was more comfortable with accepting that something is a red flag, I would have made different choices. Even first time emotional abuse affects your body.

Anne: We’ve all been there. You just don’t know what you don’t know, right? Right. Yeah. You get married and when you start recognizing things are really kind of strange, what reasons do you give for this behavior?

Joyce: Yeah, it happened really fast.

Honeymoon R