The 6 Stages Of Healing From Hidden Abuse

Betrayal Trauma Recovery - BTR.ORG

Healing from your husband’s hidden abuse is possible. Anne Blythe, M.Ed. host of The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast shares the 6 stages of healing from hidden abuse.

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What Is Hidden Abuse?

Hidden abuse is invisible. It includes financial, emotional, psychological, sexual, and spiritual abuse.

Will I Ever Heal From Hidden Abuse?

The short answer is, yes.

You can and will heal from hidden abuse. As women resist hidden abuse, they usually go through six stages on their journey:

1. Confusion
2. Going For Help (Over and Over)
3. The Wrong “Diagnosis” (Several Times)
4. Despair
5. Abuse Education
6. Making Their Way To Emotional Safety

Transcript: The 6 Stages Of Healing From Hidden Abuse

Anne: Today I’m going to talk about hidden abuse. Hidden abuse is any abuse that you can’t see. All the abuse I talk about Betrayal Trauma Recovery is hidden.

That includes emotional and psychological abuse and sexual coercion. Hidden abuse doesn’t leave bruises or physical injuries. There’s no way to “prove” it with pictures, but it does leave emotional and psychological injuries.

Cultural Perception of Hidden Abuse

In our culture, hidden abuse doesn’t really count.

You can sue someone in civil court for fraud. But fraud does not come into account. With civil divorce cases, because people don’t classify hidden abuse as domestic violence.

For some reason, if a husband defrauds his wife, that’s not really fraud. He’s not a great guy, but he still shouldn’t have any consequences in divorce, cases apparently. But hidden abuse is 100% domestic abuse.

Invisible abuse includes financial, emotional, psychological, sexual, as well as spiritual abuse.

I mentioned sexual coercion. Sexual coercion in marriage is invisible. It can happen in various ways. What I talk about on this podcast often is when a man uses pornography or has an affair. Or has a secret sexual life. He obstructs his wife from having the knowledge she needs to have a mutual relationship. So he uses psychological abuse, emotional abuse, gas-lighting, lying deceit to purposefully obstruct his wife from finding out who he really is.

This is sexual coercion, because if she knew who he was, the likelihood of her consenting to sex is extremely low, and he knows that he’s well aware. So he obstructs her from gaining that knowledge, so she will continue to either have sex with him or continue to be in a relationship with him.

Here’s an example of abuse that the public wouldn’t necessarily recognize as the abuse. But once you’re educated about it, you can clearly see it’s abusive.

Financial Abuse Example: Rose and Tom

This one is under the category of financial abuse. Let’s say there’s a woman named Rose. She’s lived a seemingly ordinary suburban life. She’s married to Tom, a well-respected local entrepreneur. To the outside world. They’re the picture of success, nice cars, a beautiful home, frequent vacations.

To their family and friends, Tom meticulously crafted a narrative that paints Rose as financially irresponsible. Insisting that he needs to take full control of their finances to protect her from her own poor spending habits. This seems reasonable to Rose at first.

She’s thinking, “Since I don’t know a lot about our finances, maybe I’m spending too much, so yeah. Help me rein it in.” As the months turned into years, decisions about money evolved into a series of overpowering restrictions that Tom imposes on Rose. Because she’s “irresponsible”.”

The Abuser’s Real Goal Is Control

The thing is she’s not, and she never has been. They had a ton of money, so she could have gone out to lunch with her friends. She could buy clothes online. It wasn’t the lack of money that was the problem. The problem for Tom was that he found Rose’s independence and happiness, and all her friends, to be very threatening. He wants to control her.

If he controlled her finances, he could start shutting things down. So as Rose’s access to money became limited, and discussions about budgeting were often framed as her “lack of understanding of their financial goals.” Which he never laid out for her, because he didn’t give her all the financial information.

When he did say we have this much money, it was a lie. He was lying to her. So whenever she would question the restrictions, he would gently remind her of all the times she’s failed to manage the money wisely. Which by the way, she wasn’t allowed to manage. Highlighting her mistakes, which weren’t actually mistakes.

In Rose’s case, it begins to take a toll. She starts to think she’s stupid, and finds herself increasingly isolated and unable to make financial decisions. This is just a downward spiral for Rose.

Here’s another example.

Financial Abuse Example: Eliza and the Engineer

Eliza is a successful attorney. Who’s targeted by a financial abuser for her money. He lies to her about being a successful engineer. He’s like, Hey. I’m super successful, too. Awesome. We’d make a good pair. He covers up the fact that he had a low wage job with mountains of credit debt.

So she doesn’t know this. Then once they get married, he tells her that he lost his job because of cuts. She doesn’t know that this job never existed. Then he begins opening up new joint credit cards without her knowledge, and racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt that Eliza is on the hook for.

No one else finds out that he lied about being a successful engineer. No one would approach this as financial abuse or fraud, since they’re married.

Psychological Abuse and Gaslighting

When it comes to psychological abuse, gaslighting and other tactics intended to alter a victim’s reality.

Psychological abusers are willing to lie and also deny truth to your face to purposely deceive you. They want to live that double life, and their willingness to deconstruct their victim’s identity through lying and gaslighting is shocking. Psychological abusers get a kick out of the harm and chaos they cause.

They’re happy they got away with it. There’s never a time when they feel bad they’re hurting you. In fact, they like it.

If you watch for it, you can see the smirk on their face, and you can see that they’re gaining some energy from the dysfunction.

Emotional abuse is intended to exploit and manipulate a victim’s emotions for gain. Trying to make someone depressed, sad, feel bad about themselves undermines their self-confidence.

All forms of abuse, stem from an inability to have empathy for other people. Abusers have a core belief that other people were created for them to exploit.

https://youtube.com/shorts/tfDqyzHOKLI

Community of Betrayal Trauma Recovery

The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Community is a community of wives and ex-wives of porn users, psychological abusers, emotional abusers who went down the porn addiction route usually, or who did couple therapy. These women sought help, and no one helped them identify that they were abuse victims and their husband was abusive.

All listeners to this podcast suffered hidden emotional, psychological, and even sexual abuse in the form of sexual coercion. Healing from hidden abuse is a process. During all six stages, victims actively resist abuse and try to figure out what’s going on.

There’s never a time when a victim of hidden abuse isn’t actively resisting the abuse and trying to get to safety.

Here Are The Six Stages To Heal From Hidden Abuse:

Healing From Hidden Abuse: Stage 1 – Confusion

All victims who are abused by this invisible type of abuse are confused. That confusion signals they’re resisting the abuse. They know something is wrong. They just don’t know what it is. They’re resisting abuse by trying to figure out what’s going on. Most victims blame themselves during this stage.

They try to improve their safety, thinking that the cause has something to do with them, especially because the abuser usually tells them that. Because during this stage, we don’t have any reason to distrust him. Yet. We think if I was a better wife, if only I could be more patient, if only if only. We feel like if we could do something different, things would improve.

Because we lack education or terminology to describe what’s happening. When we talk to our friends, our friends might be like, oh, did you hear about the personality types? Giving us basic relationship advice, or even just healthy living advice. When you’re healing from hidden abuse, stage one is confusion. Remember that confusion resists the abuse.

Healing From Hidden Abuse: Stage 2 – Going For Help

The second stage of healing from hidden abuse is seeking help. Victims are smart. We can tell when we need help. And we can tell when we’re over our heads.

So consider this analogy. Let’s pretend like you’re in college and in a writing class. You write what you think is an incredible paper. Like it feels good to you. You’re so excited to turn it in. You turn it in and you get a C.

If you’re a smart person, you might say to yourself. I thought my paper was genius, because I felt good about it. But obviously. There’s more for me to know. Then you’ll take the paper into the professor and ask for help.

Of course, you’ll be worried, because you like your writing style and think your paper is good. But you’re willing to suspend that and figure out why they think your writing was bad. And trust them more than yourself at this moment, because they’re the writing expert. In this situation, a smart person would say to themselves, I understand that my perception of my own writing may not be accurate. I’m actually not an expert writer, and my professor is.

Analogy of the Writing Class

Contrast that with a student who gets a C on a paper and thinks my writing professor is dumb. I know more than her. Their writing isn’t going to improve much, and people probably think they’re delusional. I was a writing teacher for a time, and I had those two different types of students.

Some students thought their writing was incredible. But it was just bad, and I was thinking, wow, no, their perception and reality are two different things. The smart students were like, “Oh, I can see what you’re saying. I will add some paragraphs and they would improve over time.”

So when a smart victim of abuse, which is all of us. When we realize we’re in over our heads, we go to couple therapy, or we go to clergy, or we talk to family and friends.

Because we’re smart and humble, we think. Even though this doesn’t feel right to me. Maybe I’m not seeing it accurately.

Victims Are Willing To Try And Learn

They’re willing to try it differently, or they’re willing to do it the way the couple’s therapist says. Then things get worse and worse, and they can’t figure out why. The reason why things are getting worse is because when victims go for help to a couple therapy or clergy, or even pornography addiction, recovery.

They’re not getting help from the abuse professor. In this case, it’s like getting writing help from an expert acrobat who knows nothing about writing. Sure, they’re an expert Acrobat, but you don’t need help with your acrobatics.

You need help with your writing skills. So in this case, you’re not delusional when you go to a therapist. They are like, oh, well, do you understand his needs? Can you be safer with him? Because maybe he feels unsafe. So how could you make him feel safer? Or maybe it’s using porn because you’re not meeting his sexual needs.

Because abuse victims are smart, capable, and resourced, they’re constantly asking who can help me figure this out. You did your part, you’re a victim of abuse. You went for help. The problem is, the professionals who were supposed to help don’t know about abuse.

Don’t. They’re not abuse experts. Which leads us straight into stage three.

Healing From Hidden Abuse: Stage 3 – Getting Thrown Off By The Wrong “Diagnosis”

Stage three is when you receive an incorrect diagnosis after an incorrect diagnosis, so we’re searching for help. We’re going to receive a “diagnosis”, a common one is that he’s a pornography addict. Another one is that he has a personality disorder or is “struggling from his traumatic childhood.”

Maybe he has “anger management issues.”

So once you get this “diagnosis” from a therapist who is not an expert in abuse. Then you’re going to get treatment for that particular “diagnosis.” So then you do a year or two of treatment, maybe it’s pornography addiction treatment, or treatment for his traumatic childhood.

A year or two down the line, the most likely thing that so many women in our community have experienced. It doesn’t improve things. So maybe you try a different therapist, and then you get a new “diagnosis” and you’re like, “oh, that’s what it is.” And then you get “treatment” for that for a few years.

So for me, I did this for seven years. First it was anger management, from his traumatic childhood. Then he was a porn addict. Then one of the therapists we went to suggested he had bipolar disorder.

Marriage and Family Therapy Limitations

The reason abusers get an incorrect diagnosis after an incorrect diagnosis is that marriage and family therapists professional code of conduct or ethics restricts them from taking a side. The foundational theory for marriage and family therapy is family systems. In family systems, everybody has a part to play. That everyone has to shift a little bit to improve the situation. So it’s a it takes two to tango model.

It does not take two to ruin the tango. It only takes one person to ruin the tango. There’s also no official diagnosis of “abuser” in the DSM. So, if anybody goes into a therapist, they won’t get diagnosed as an abuser. Being an abuse victim or suffering from abuse, many times the victims will get diagnosed. Maybe as codependent.

Instead of realizing that she’s resisting abuse, which is self-defense. They might say, well, you’re abusive too, because you yelled at him. And you shouldn’t have done that.

Instead of saying, “Hey, you were trying to get to safety any way you could. Way to go. Resisting abuse is always good. How can I help you do it more effectively?” But they’re never going to do that in front of the abuser. They shouldn’t. So you can see, this is just a cocktail of problems.

It Is Really Difficult To Identify Hidden Abuse

I have a master’s degree, and I tried so hard to figure out what was going on.

Stage one; because I was confused. Then I knew I needed help. So I went for help. Stage two; my ex went to Pornography Addiction Recovery Therapy for seven years. I’d been trying to get help the entire time, and no one ever mentioned abuse, but so many other victims have the same experience.

I found myself in stage three for a long time, chasing down incorrect diagnosis after incorrect diagnosis. You wouldn’t necessarily have to go to therapy to be in these stages. It could be that you go to family and friends and they say, “Oh, he’s just really stressed.” And that’s the “diagnosis.”

So maybe if you reduced his stress, then he’d be doing better. That is considered the treatment in stage three. It doesn’t have to necessarily be coming from therapy. I probably went to over seven therapists. Five or six bishops, which is the clergy in my faith.

It’s shocking. That people can be going for help, wanting help. Perfectly willing to see the truth. They still can’t figure out what’s going on.

Couple Therapy Usually Makes Hidden Abuse Worse

So many women in our community have been a couple therapy for years, 5 years, 10 years, pornography addiction recovery for years. Some other type of therapy and the word abuse never came up. That is a serious, serious problem. Instead, they have an incorrect diagnosis and started an incorrect treatment.

When I started podcasting, my goal was to help women avoid this. If I can get to them sooner and let them know. Then they won’t have to spend years and years in couple therapy or pornography addiction, recovery, they can just start making their way to safety right now.

But I often think if I were somehow split into two different people, I had my current self now, podcasting. And I had myself back then. Finding my own podcast. I know I would not listen to myself back then. I would be like, “Wow, that’s extreme. He’s not abusive.” This therapist tells me that he “just has a pornography addiction” and our marriage will be better than ever. If we do his treatment program.

I’m not going to listen to her podcast, because that seems too extreme. Then I do a couple therapy, pornography addiction, recovery therapy, or whatever else for a few years. Before I came to the conclusion that I already came to, and then I’d be like, “That Anne at BTR.ORG knows what she’s talking about. If I’d only listened to her.”

Be Patient With Yourself As You Move Through Healing From Hidden Abuse

I don’t think I could have circumvented. Stage two and stage three. I just don’t think I could have circumvented seeking help and getting those incorrect diagnosis stages. I don’t know if anyone can, because other people offer an alternative. Then wouldn’t you want to try that first?

That’s what I thought back then. Now I’m like, because you’re going to go through a lot more pain and you won’t have the strategies to use. The sooner you start using strategies that I teach in The Living Free Workshop. and The Message Workshop here at BTR, the sooner women start using these strategies. The quicker things will improve for them.

Also, if he’s the type of abuser who responds to the strategy by realizing he needs to change, that’s the best case scenario. Some men have realized that. It’s the best bet for your safety.

But in terms of pornography addiction recovery or couple therapy. It’s stunning to me that this entire industry asks abuse victims to calm down and work with an emotional and psychological abuser.

And that’s industry standard for a couple therapy. It’s industry standard for sex addiction therapy. And it should never happen in an abuse situation. It’s unethical. And that they don’t. See it for the actual abuse situation that it is, is shocking to me.

If you described these behaviors to any domestic violence shelter. They would say, “This is abuse.” And so the whole therapeutic process or treatment process ends up terrorizing the victim, and they’re way more traumatized than they would have been otherwise.

Suggesting A Victim Stays In Proximity To An Abuser Is Unethical

Any therapist or clergy who suggests that a victim needs to be in proximity to an abuser in order to heal. Is doing something that is unethical.

It happens a lot with pornography addiction. Recovery therapy. It happens a ton in the faith-based community. Where divorce is the worst case scenario. They don’t realize that a woman being abused is the worst case scenario.

Then also in couple therapy or pornography addiction recovery, the abuser lies throughout the whole thing to gain sympathy to have a rapport with the therapist or clergy. So they can’t see him clearly either, because he manipulates the therapist, the clergy and people around him.

Healing From Hidden Abuse: Stage 4 – Despair

Next, we get to stage four, which you’re probably feeling after listening to this and it is despair. Stage four of healing from hidden abuse is when you’ve tried to solve the problem for years, you’ve gone for help. You’ve tried to do everything you can to resist the abuse.

You don’t know what it is yet though, at this point at stage four, despair, you still don’t know it’s abuse. You feel trapped and many victims feel like giving up. Because they’ve tried and tried to get help and they just can’t get help.

They think maybe it is me, maybe I am the terrible one, maybe I am too controlling or I don’t respect him. Or I expect too much from him. This despair sets in when they didn’t go to the right experts and they were led astray and this is not their fault because they were smart and they were amazing. They went for help because that’s what smart people do. They were resisting abuse the best way they can.

So this despair. Is like the dark before the dawn.

Healing From Hidden Abuse: Stage 5 – Abuse Education

Because then they get to stage five and stage five is abuse education. This is where a victim starts learning about abuse, maybe from my podcast, maybe from somewhere else.

She starts learning that the cause of his abuse doesn’t matter. At the beginning of this phase, when women are first learning about abuse, they often resist the abuse by confronting the abuser. Telling him. “you’re abusive” and trying to educate him about abuse.

Confronting the Abuser

Thinking that if he’s educated about abuse, he’ll stop being abusive. The problem with confronting the abuser or trying to educate him that he’s abusive. His, he already knows. He chooses to do it. He’s perfectly capable of not acting like this because you’ve seen him do it when he’s grooming .

He knows what he’s doing. He loves stages. 1, 2, 3, and four. Because you don’t know what he’s doing and the therapists don’t know what he’s doing. I don’t recommend any men’s programs anymore because I found that the abuser just uses all the words that they learn to continue to manipulate.

So many men’s program therapists are manipulated by the abuser. So stage five, getting educated about abuse. It can be bittersweet.

Realizing the Extent of Abuse

You’re like more traumatized because you realize that you’ve been abused. So we put on a new set of glasses and it’s really traumatizing to realize that you’ve been going for help. You’ve been doing what you were supposed to do.

You did your job, you were thwarted every step of the way. It’s also more traumatizing when you’re like, now I know it’s abuse. Okay, I’m going to tell him it’s abuse, I’m going to tell the clergy it’s abuse. I’m going to tell the therapist it’s abuse. And you tell them, and then it doesn’t. Help either.

When Things Start To Make Sense

The good part about this stage is you finally know 100% in your heart and in your soul that it’s not you. Things really start to make sense. You can face reality head on because you can see it. This happens quite a bit. When I meet a woman who’s not quite in stage five.

This happened to me. When the domestic violence shelter suggested that I educate myself about abuse. I was like, I’m not going to read that book because. I kinda don’t want to know. Because I was there, I assume that many other women are there because there’s no silver lining to abuse. It’s all bad. There’s no good news when it comes to abuse.

However, I do feel confident that abuse education does not create abuse out of nowhere. If you’re in a healthy marriage and your husband is not emotionally abusive, when you learn about abuse, you’re not going to think that he’s emotionally abusive.

A few times where I said to a woman, oh, that sounds like abuse. Read this book and she read it. And she listened to the podcast and she was like, I didn’t relate to any of those stories. That’s not my experience. I’m like, congratulations. It’s not abuse.

If You Are In A Safe Relationship Learning About Hidden Abuse Won’t Create It

Most women listen and say, “oh, story after story after story, it sounded exactly like my story.” So just like getting your blood drawn Is not going to give you cancer. If your situation doesn’t fit, it’s going to be very obvious. It just doesn’t fit.

Reading a book or listening to a podcast and educating yourself about abuse. It’s like getting lab work for cancer. you don’t have it. Great or, you know, you have it.

Abuse looks a certain way. Abuse has very defining characteristics. If you get educated about abuse, and he’s not abusive, then you also know that he’s not abusive. I wish everyone would start with abuse education so that you can determine that right from the beginning.

Part of abuse education is coming to understand on a soul level, the intense harm that we’ve suffered. It’s so painful to recognize. My trauma wasn’t so bad. Learning about his lies and deceit and pornography addiction, but it got really bad when I learned about abuse because I realized all the harm and suffering.

The trauma was really intense for a long time, even though he was not around, but he was still abusing me post divorce. Through manipulating and undermining the kids. So even when you’re in this stage five, I do think we still cycled back through the self-blame.

Finding Out About Abuse Can Cause More Fear

The abuser is still doing his thing, especially if we have children and we’re still in contact. So stage five is a lot of deprogramming when it comes to hidden abuse, like you believed that he was capable of love.

You believed that he cared. Now finding out it’s all been exploitation is so painful and hard. It’s intensely, frightening to realize that because it’s not your fault. You also are not able to stop it from happening. To fix him and that is so terrifying.

Since I started podcasting about emotional and psychological abuse, I often get labeled as a man hater. Or that I’m just like so traumatized because of my divorce that I don’t know what I’m talking about. Stuff like that.

It’s really interesting that when you start educating people about abuse, the abusers come out of the woodwork to say that you’re crazy. Then that’s what happens when you’re an abuse victim too. I just want to educate women about abuse so women can make informed choices. The abuse education I teach here at Betrayal Trauma Recovery. All of our coaches use is industry standard abuse education. There isn’t anything that’s outside the norm of domestic abuse.

Healing From Hidden Abuse: Stage 6 – Getting To Emotional Safety

The legal system does not recognize hidden abuse, abusers manipulate the legal system to keep her abused for years and years in divorce, being aware of that, knowing what strategies to use. Our coaches at BTR, many of them are trained divorce coaches.

You can check out their bio on our website to find out which ones are certified divorce coaches. They can help you through that process. Being educated about what an emotional and psychological abuser is most likely going to do in a divorce case is very important.

If this is what you’re facing, even if you don’t file when you start to begin to make your way to safety the likelihood of him filing it goes up. Because he’s abusive, so if you’re starting to make your way to safety and he can’t control you anymore. He’s going to try to, it’s really terrifying.

Stage 6 is when you know that you can get to emotional safety. Once safety becomes the absolute top priority. We begin to figure out what safety is and answer the questions, what am I going to do now that I know what I’m dealing with? How do I establish a peaceful, emotionally and psychologically safe home?

These are the questions we’re asking in stage six.

Sharing Stories of Hidden Abuse

I’m so grateful for women all over the world who are sharing their stories of hidden abuse. They share how they unknowingly suffered from betrayal and emotional and psychological abuse.

If you’re interested in sharing your story, I would be honored to hear it. Email [e-mail] to set up an interview with me. At Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we approach pornography use as a domestic abuse issue.

So I always speak gender segregated ways, because our services are for women victims of male perpetrators. I recognize that some really unhealthy women are out there. There are women who use pornography, but podcasts specifically to women abused by men.

Because of misogyny, we see the serious added burden society puts on women to repair the relationship or keep things together. Women are under intense scrutiny and stress. Women in stage six are starting to focus on their own emotional safety.

Misogyny in Various Institutions

Women start seeing patterns of misogyny in therapy and religion, and the court system and other institutions. They see the misogyny in medical treatment for women, and all the ways we’ve been oppressed.

Time and time again, we hear about women finding out about her husband’s lies, betrayal, deceit. Just after she has a baby. Or during a holiday and she’s hosting. Or right after her children go to college. Women’s identity and their bodies shift drastically throughout their lifetimes. Women are dealing with perimenopause symptoms.

So as we focus on building a life of safety for ourselves, mentally and emotionally, that is when our healing can begin.

Strategies for Interacting with an Abuser

Part of that healing is learning strategies for interacting with an abuser that are effective, that create an emotional and psychological safety barrier between you and the abuser. Some trauma therapists will tell you that once you’ve processed, all of it. None of that pain will ever come back.

I don’t believe that, I believe we can heal. I know we can heal, I feel so much better now. But I still have good days and bad days, some days where things really hurt. Knowing that healing is a process, and giving ourselves permission to say.

Hidden Abuse is Real

I’m still hurting. If you have a bad day, it doesn’t mean you haven’t “done the work” or need to forgive. It means that injury that healed years ago is sensitive today. because hidden abuse is real. It causes emotional and psychological injuries. We can heal from them, especially through strategy and getting the right kind of help.

Stage six is a journey for all of the reasons I just described.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Support

At Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we will walk with you every step of that journey. So if any of these stages feel familiar to you, if you felt despair, if you’ve gone for help and haven’t received it. If you try to figure out what’s going on, and you keep hitting dead ends, we are here for you.

The reason I started podcasting, the reason we started Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions. The reason we started educating women about abuse on social media and through this podcast. It’s because we’ve been through it ourselves.

I confirmed these stages with thousands of women I’ve talked to all over the world. So if you’re in our same boat, we’re just a few steps ahead of you. We can walk with you on that journey. So go to btr.org to see our group session schedule. We would love to see you in a group session today.