When Connection Requires Hiding: Understanding Emotional Abuse

I'm a 38-year-old therapist, a group practice owner, and someone who still has work to do. I have a younger part of me that's still building up the courage to just be who I am. To say the damn thing. To show up imperfectly and sometimes actually quite horrible at something. (Pool, for instance. Why is pool so hard?)

But here's what's interesting: I could not care less if someone else is good at pool. That's not what counts for me in a good friend. So why do I hold myself to standards I'd never dream of applying to the people I love?

Recently, I found myself stress-cleaning before people I trust most in the world came over. These are people who would remind me, and have reminded me, that it's not possible to give 100% to your kids, your house, and your job. I wasn't cleaning because I thought they'd judge me. I know they wouldn't. I was cleaning because I grew up in a home where being tired wasn't a reason- it was an excuse. Where struggling meant you weren't trying hard enough, which meant you were fundamentally lacking. Where behavior wasn't information about what you needed; it was a moral verdict on who you were.

That younger part of me is still trying to maintain a reputation, still trying to stay ahead of the shame that might come if I'm caught being human. Even though the threat isn't real anymore, my body hasn't caught up to what my mind knows.

It Is Not Supposed to Be Confusing

Here's something I want you to understand: it is not supposed to be confusing. In healthy relationships, when there's a misunderstanding, clarification brings relief. Context helps. Conversation repairs.

In emotionally abusive relationships, clarification brings more confusion. You try to address a concern and suddenly you're not sure what you're even talking about anymore. You remember something clearly and are told it didn't happen that way, or didn't happen at all. You express hurt and are told you're too sensitive, too anxious, too something. The message becomes clear: your perception of reality is the problem, not the behavior itself.

A family member once told me I was "tearing the family apart" by asking for accountability. Years later, that same person denied ever saying it. Complete gaslighting. And when I questioned my own memory, I realized that was exactly the point. The abuse is in the act itself, and then the erasure of the act, and then the implicit message that you're the problem for remembering.

What This Does to Your Brain and Body

When you can't trust your reality, your nervous system stays activated. You're simultaneously in fight-or-flight AND trying to maintain connection with the source of danger. This is the profound cruelty of emotional abuse from attachment figures: as humans, we need connection more than authenticity. So if we can never present authentically without risking abandonment, we learn to hide.

So many people are hiding.

This disconnection from our own signals becomes a survival mechanism. It's like learning to use your abs again after abdominal surgery; you've been guarding for so long that you forget what it feels like to engage those muscles. After my c-section, I had to relearn how to connect with that part of my body. Emotional abuse creates a similar disconnection from our internal guidance system.

Your body develops protective mechanisms so strong that even when someone offers you genuine compassion, your nervous system won't let you feel it. You can intellectually agree that you deserve grace and still be unable to receive it. Because your body remembers that the last time you were vulnerable, it wasn't safe.

I see this constantly in my practice. Clients want to be able to receive compassion, but their nervous system literally won't allow it. While this isn't a permanent state, and we can heal from this, we can also revert back to it when hit with a flashback or triggered by something that reminds us of the original trauma.

The Protection Racket: Why We Defend Our Abusers

It breaks my heart and pisses me off so deeply when I meet clients, and myself, in moments of fearing to tell the truth about what happened, choosing instead to protect the perpetrator of abuse or harm.

Why do we do this?

Because we've been trained that truth-telling equals family destruction. "In the name of family" becomes the weapon used against accountability. We learn to accept mistreatment and not even call it out, for fear that we will become the one "tearing the family apart." The double bind is brutal: you can have connection OR honesty, not both.

When we finally dare to turn blame away from ourselves and say that someone else behaved in a way that ultimately impacted us, we can feel guilty, as if we're saying it's entirely the other person's fault that we are the way we are, and here's where it gets complicated.

The Forgiveness Trap: Context Without Accountability

Things are not black and white. Emotionally mature people know this. They understand nuance and complexity and can hold space for seemingly contradictory truths at the same time. Context matters.

Yet, here's what I've observed: emotionally immature people also know that things aren't black and white. They just decide when they want to apply that logic and when they want to go all-or-nothing. Some people will use the full context to excuse the inexcusable and accept the unacceptable.

Yes, context matters. Yes, people are complex. Yes, hurt people hurt people. However, understanding someone's pain does not mean accepting ongoing harm.

The gaslighting happens when we're told we must choose: either we're compassionate and stay silent, or we're cruel and speak truth. Either we forgive and forget, or we're holding grudges and destroying relationships. This is a false choice designed to keep us compliant.

I'm not saying people aren't redeemable, so why does it feel like that's what I'm saying when I suggest someone should be held accountable? Maybe because in abusive systems, any boundary is treated as condemnation. Any limit is seen as a lack of love. Any "no" becomes evidence that you're the unreasonable one.

We see this pattern everywhere - some people's context excuses everything while others' context excuses nothing. Right now we have beautiful, good people being treated as if it's their own fault for circumstances beyond their control, while people with proven track records of harm are being protected and pardoned when guilt was proven. We're not confused about who gets forgiveness and who gets accountability. The inconsistency reveals the agenda.

Learning to Trust Your Body Again

Healing from emotional abuse is a bit like learning to identify with your own body signals after having been disconnected from them for a long time. It's relearning what safety actually feels like, not what performance of safety looks like.

It's being terrible at pool and having that be okay. Being seen in your mess and not being abandoned. Telling the truth about what happened and not being told you're the problem. Receiving compassion and allowing your nervous system to gradually learn that vulnerability doesn't always equal danger.

It's recognizing when you're seeking safety through performance and trying to earn through achievement what should be freely given in relationship. It's catching yourself stress-cleaning for people who love you exactly as you are, and asking that younger part what she's afraid of. It's noticing when you want to tell someone about your accomplishments not from joy, but from a deeper need to prove you're worthy of taking up space.

Performance might be part of work, but it should never be what relationships are built on.

Moving Forward

If you're reading this and recognizing yourself, I want you to know: you're not crazy. You're not too sensitive. You're not overreacting. You're finally listening to what your body has been trying to tell you all along.

The confusion itself was the abuse. The gaslighting, the denial, the insistence that your reality was wrong - that was the harm. And now you're doing the hard work of trusting yourself again.

This is work I do with clients every day. It's also work I continue to do myself. Healing isn't linear. We make progress and can flash back into old protective states. That's not failure—that's just how nervous systems work after prolonged relational trauma.

If you're struggling with the aftermath of emotional abuse, please know that support is available. You don't have to navigate this alone. Learning to recognize the signs of emotional abuse, to trust your own perceptions again, and to build relationships where authenticity and connection can coexist is possible.

You deserve relationships where it's not confusing. Where clarification brings relief. Where you can show up as you are and be met with genuine care. Where being tired is information about what you need, not evidence of moral deficiency.

You deserve to stop hiding.

If you're interested in therapy support for processing emotional abuse or relational trauma, please reach out. Sometimes the bravest thing we can do is ask for help in learning to trust ourselves again.