Not many people really understand survivors of emotional abuse. Even trained professionals. In this article, I am going to debunk some generic advice: the harmless, good-on-paper advice for overall mental health that may disorient survivors even further. As both a researcher and survivor, to be straightforward, if you don’t understand the nuances, you can not recognize whether your therapists are qualified or even abusers behind a perfect facade. This is not to denigrate the entire therapist community, but the more you go through it, the more you protect yourself. Like any business, some therapists’ goal is simply to keep you on the couch.
Insidiously, standardized advice assumes you have the mental clarity to distinguish general knowledge from individual effectiveness. Then, it can serve as an excuse to flip the script when you question their practice. But in fact, emotional abuse survivors are often deeply confused and conditioned to self-blame. When standardized advice doesn’t work, we may automatically assume that we are the problem and become even more disoriented.
But the last thing we want and need to recover from is more self-doubt. Before I even get started: trauma (and mental health crisis) is subjective; your reality matters the most.
Self-compassion
This is a legitimate strategy that has helped me a lot, but many survivors find it too evasive at first. For those of us who grew up in dysfunctional families, self-compassion was rarely, if ever, spoken of and taught to us. This is incredibly sad, but true, and not a dry humor. The problem is that only when we’ve made significant progress in healing can we recognize how harsh and cruel we’ve been treating ourselves. And that internalized voice of shame and criticism is not even ours.
But do you know why we can not distinguish it? Because we never had a chance to develop our own voice. So, before we reach that baseline clarity, we immerse ourselves in toxicity without question. Yes, that compassionate inner voice is the goal, but we’re simply too unfamiliar with how it sounds.
Self-compassionate self-talk for survivors might sound like this: “Today, I learned the mechanism. I have been brave and resilient, and I’ve made progress. Even though it’s small, I still deserve a reward.”
Yet, you don’t have to force yourself into it. To counter those negative voices looping in the brain, we need the truth as a reference for self-compassion: “What I did was driven by an automatic, biologically conditioned response. I couldn’t consciously control it. There is nothing wrong with being a human.”
The good news is that in adulthood, most people are not abusers who punish you for having boundaries. Even when they do, that is their problem, not ours. We are just still responding with our traumatized inner child, not the powerful adult that we are.
Exercise
This one is almost certainly the most misleading one. The problem is not that exercise has absolutely no health benefits or contributions to the trauma, but that the non-negotiable should be individualized, trauma-informed exercise.
A 2024 qualitative study interviewed 12 UK trauma specialists and reached this very conclusion. While theories of emotion vary, two are widely accepted. First, emotions are both psychological and physical. Second, how we experience emotions ultimately depends on how we interpret physiological responses. For example, a racing or pounding heart, sweaty palms, elevated blood pressure, knots in the stomach, light nausea, and short, heavy breathing can be interpreted as nervousness, fear, anger, or excitement. Emotions are highly personal; there is no correct answer or gold star awarded for getting it right.
While it remains neutrally different for healthy adults, trauma survivors tend to associate specific physical patterns with past danger. That means even a harmless, abrupt spike in heart rate can become a powerful interoceptive anchor and transport us back to the original scene where the traumatic events happened!
Furthermore, standard workout culture usually promotes “no excuses” methods. While this mentality can train endurance in healthy adults, it may further invalidate survivors’ autonomy, trigger a sense of dissociation, or replicate abusive power dynamics. Those are the last things survivors need to experience over and over again. And the trigger itself offers no clarity or other benefits for healing unless it has progressed to a much safer stage through emotional processing and somatic therapies first.
Manage anger and resentment
Yes, ultimately, this is the goal. But despite being well-meaning, the misguided mandate assumes that a survivor has the psychological safety and clarity to regulate their emotions and understand the difference between management and suppression. Yet in reality, survivors of chronic emotional abuse are often deeply confused, having had their reality systematically distorted.
How can you ask someone to manage their pain and anger before they even feel safe and allowed to fully experience it? This simulates physical trauma processing: not letting survivors express their anger, analogous to wrapping a wound up without cleaning it first. You’ll leave it infected while managing the symptom. This will do more harm than good.
The behavior itself is a form of control and dismissal, which mimics abusers’. To a survivor’s brain, you are telling them to “manage” the very boundary-setting emotion needed for survival, that their anger is inappropriate and dangerous. You are reinforcing the narrative their abusers try to ingrain: they are wrong to have those feelings and their needs don’t matter. Over time, they feel they don’t deserve to be taken seriously, and the only way to survive is to ignore their own needs and provide convenience or value for others.
Again, managing and processing those feelings is the goal, not the first piece of advice you can just jump in and give to any survivor! And how to proceed will need to be evaluated case by case, based on the circumstances.
Self-affirmation
This one feels similar to self-compassion, but the reasons it might not work for survivors differ.
That level of self-doubt and disorientation makes us hyper-vigilant to minor threat signals, and many can gaslight themselves further (because they feel more familiar with that pattern than with clarity based on self-trust and affirmation). They are second-guessing themselves when you ask them to self-affirm. Normally, we practice self-assurance and affirmation: “I accept that the recovery may take a long time. But I am safe now; I can begin healing.”
However, for a deeply dysregulated system, this is so much easier said than done without a “wait, what? Is that even true? Can I trust myself again?” Because if the core belief is”I don’t deserve it,” “I am wrong.” Or “I am stupid,” surface-level self-affirmation would reinforce deep doubt rather than help build self-esteem.
Emotional assurance
Eventually, we need clarity. And the generic advice on “emotional assurance” is what I meant at the beginning: it sounds right from any angle, but it should start with “depending on individual thinking style.”
What many people don’t understand is that abusers (especially we former narcissistic supply) are so incredibly mediocre parasite who wants others to believe their own illusion. They’re usually hyper-concrete thinkers obsessed with controlling their image in immediate, real-time interactions with their supply. That means they are not able to engage in higher-order cognitive activities such as metacognition, strategic thinking, or systematic logical coherence.
To put it simply, they are idiotic toddlers who live in an adult body and survive on make-believe by emotional manipulation of someone who has what they want. And we, the survivors, are people whose mental power is being exploited with a flipped script. Many survivors are gaslighted so brutally that we believe we are the inferior, incapable one, or the abuser in the relationship. In fact, we are often empathetic, intelligent, and competent. And what intelligent people need is truth, logic, and systematic justice! Not soft assurance. Not just emotional validation.
My trauma healed when I stepped back from fear and resentment and made two full lists of everyone’s objective merits. That included talents, skills, intelligence, agency, appearance, background, etc. And I realized their intimidation and sense of superiority are nowhere near true by any standards.
So logically, I would invite you, fellow survivors, to look at your own truth. Believe in your power, build your future. You don’t need abusers to tell you what to do when they parasitize you (not the other way around).
The non-conclusion
If you don’t know how to advise people, just validate them; be there. There is no pressure to be “helpful” all the time. Besides, your generic advice might hurt the survivor even more.
As for therapists, good ones certainly exist and practice with goodwill, but their role is to help you develop your own clarity and strategies, not to preach in generalities and bluff credentials. If someone becomes emotionally unstable when you disagree with their opinions (framed as facts or standards), run far, run fast.
*What is the Feature? Medium-length analyses, information, investigations, or explorations, rotating across topical pillars.
*Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to give advice. If you are in crisis, please seek professional help. Always prioritize your well-being.*
