Write Your Own Inner Narrative

By Christine Murray

As I’ve discussed in past Source for Survivors blog posts, abusers use a range of tactics to gain and maintain power and control over their partners. This often includes emotional, verbal, and psychological abuse and manipulation, including gaslighting. 

In abusive relationships gaslighting happens when abusers try to confuse their partners and make them believe their perceptions aren’t real. I often think of this dynamic as abusers trying to write the inner narrative of their partners by trying to manipulate them into thinking how the abuser wants them to think. Typically, the abusers try to write narratives that serve their purposes and further embed their control and power into the relationship.

The manipulative narratives of current or former abusive partners can become all-consuming in survivors’ thoughts and emotions. Survivors may find themselves ruminating over what was said or done in those relationships, even long after they’ve left the presence of the other person. 

Survivors might even start taking on thoughts, ideas, and belief systems about themselves that are false and harmful, but that the abuser planted as a way to manipulate them or convince survivors that they were wrong or to blame. 

Some survivors find that their abusive relationships have hijacked their inner narratives, meaning that what the abuser has said has become an overriding force in the ways they think and feel about themselves.

This is an emotionally vulnerable position for survivors to be in because we risk allowing another person--and specifically, a person who has shown us that they don’t have our best interests at heart--to define us, rather than defining and refining our own identities. 

Be cautious about how much space you let your current or former abuser’s hurtful words and behaviors take up in your thought life. Of course, it is important to take time to reflect on your experiences in an abusive relationship, as well as to process your emotions related to those experiences. You might consider using a journal, such as our Pathway for Survivors Mini-Journal (which you can download for free here), as a tool for this reflection. 

Overall, it is important to be mindful about not allowing an abusive relationship to prevent you from seeing other positive experiences in life, such as your personal strengths, healthy relationships with others, and your personal and professional successes and accomplishments. 

An abusive relationship can be quite hurtful and stressful. However, it does not need to be the dominant force in your life. As you move along your healing journey, strive to reclaim your inner narrative from any lingering effects of your abuser’s harmful words and actions. Remember that you can write the story--including your inner truths--of your own life.