When Survival Doesn’t Look Like You: Releasing the Shame of Reactive Abuse and Finding Yourself Again

There was a time in my life when I became someone I no longer recognized.

If you had met me before that season, you would have known someone who was social, creative, confident, and driven. I loved connecting with people, building meaningful work, and dreaming about the future. I had a vision for my life and believed I was walking toward it with purpose. I filled up my schedule with all kinds of jobs, classes, and volunteer activities. I was winning awards, and determined to excel in my interior design career.

But somewhere along the way, that woman seemed to disappear.

Instead, I became anxious. I struggled to communicate during conflict. I questioned my own thoughts, my emotions, and eventually my worth. There were moments when I reacted with tears, frustration, or anger in ways that left me feeling deeply ashamed. Afterward, I would replay every conversation in my mind, criticizing myself for everything I should have said differently or handled better.

I convinced myself those moments revealed who I truly was.

Maybe I was too emotional.

Maybe I was unstable.

Maybe I was the difficult one.

Maybe I was the problem.

For years, I carried those questions without realizing that I was trying to understand myself apart from the environment I was living in. I didn't yet have the language to describe what I was experiencing. I only knew that I no longer recognized the woman looking back at me.

Looking back now, I realize that one of the deepest wounds wasn't simply the relationship itself. It was the loss of my identity, and the years that I lost due to not being able to fully function in life in the process.

When You Begin to Mistake Survival for Your Personality

One of the most painful things about living in a chronically unhealthy environment is that survival responses can slowly begin to feel like personality traits.

When we spend long periods of time feeling criticized, dismissed, blamed, confused, or emotionally unsafe, our nervous system adapts. We become hypervigilant. We may struggle to communicate clearly, become overwhelmed during conflict, or react from a place of fear rather than peace.

That was certainly true for me.

I remember feeling desperate to explain myself while simultaneously feeling as though my words had disappeared. There were times when I would sit staring at the wall during conversations with my husband, trying to gather my thoughts because I knew what I wanted to say but simply couldn't seem to find the words.

Other times I cried.

Sometimes I became angry.

Sometimes I apologized for things that weren't mine to carry.

Many days I was moody and irritated.

Every one of those moments became another piece of evidence in the case I was building against myself, and reinforced by the person I was with.

"I am broken."

"I'll never have healthy relationships."

"Nobody could truly love someone like me."

Those beliefs became far more damaging than I realized at the time.

The Weight of Shame

When I eventually left my marriage, I thought the hardest part would be grieving the relationship.

In many ways it was.

I grieved someone I had genuinely loved. I grieved the future I thought we were building together. I wrestled with guilt, questioned my decisions, and struggled to understand how someone I cared for could move on so quickly while I was still trying to make sense of everything that had happened.

At the same time, I was carrying an entirely different grief.

I had experienced a significant mental health crisis in the years before that left me feeling embarrassed, confused, and convinced that my life had been permanently derailed. I shut down my business, withdrew from people I cared about, and lost nearly all sense of direction. The woman who had once dreamed boldly about the future was now simply trying to make it through each day.

What I didn't realize then was that shame had become its own prison.

I wasn't just grieving what I had lost.

I was grieving the person I believed I had become.

The Day Everything Began to Make Sense

It wasn't until after my divorce that I first learned about reactive abuse.

I remember reading about it and feeling an overwhelming sense of relief.

Not because it excused every reaction I had, but because it finally gave me language for something I had never been able to explain.

Reactive abuse is a term often used to describe a pattern where a person who has been experiencing ongoing emotional distress, manipulation, criticism, or mistreatment eventually reacts in a way that they are not proud of. The reaction may include anger, yelling, crying, defensiveness, or other emotional responses that feel out of character.

The painful part is that those reactions are often taken out of context and used as evidence that the person reacting is the problem, while the circumstances that led to that reaction are ignored.

It is important to understand that reactive abuse does not mean every reaction is healthy or that we do not take responsibility for our own behavior. We are still responsible for how we treat others.

However, understanding reactive abuse can help someone recognize the difference between, “I responded in a way I regret,” and “I am a terrible person.”

That distinction can be the beginning of healing.

For the first time, I understood that my reactions had happened within a much larger context. They were not occurring in isolation. They were taking place during a season of prolonged emotional stress, confusion, and pain; and with a person, whether consciously or not, who used gaslighting, emotional abuse, and other manipulative behaviors towards me.

Again, that realization did not remove my responsibility.

There are still moments I wish I had handled differently, and healing has required me to honestly acknowledge those places. Understanding the context of my reactions has never meant pretending they were ideal.

Instead, it allowed me to separate two very different statements.

"I reacted in ways I regret."

"I am a bad person."

Those are not the same thing.

For years, I believed they were.

Learning the difference was one of the greatest gifts I could have received.

Learning to Trust Myself Again

Healing was not only about learning to trust other people.

It was about learning to trust myself.

For so long I had questioned my own judgment, my own memories, and even my own ability to understand reality. Rebuilding that trust didn't happen overnight. It happened slowly, through hundreds of small moments that seemed almost insignificant at first.

The fog began to lift.

I laughed more.

I started noticing joy again.

Then one day I found myself having a disagreement with someone, and instead of the conversation ending in anger or confusion, we simply talked.

We listened to one another.

We worked through the issue together.

We ended the conversation with understanding.

I remember walking away with such a deep sense of gratitude because I realized something that had never occurred to me before.

This is who I am.

I am capable of healthy communication.

I am capable of working through conflict without losing myself.

The woman I thought I had lost was still there. She had simply been buried beneath fear, shame, grief, and survival, and she had been in an environment with someone who was convinced he was never the issue and didn’t need to change.

What Safety Taught Me

As I continued healing, I also experienced relationships that felt different.

I was encouraged instead of criticized.

I was believed instead of dismissed.

Communication became consistent instead of confusing.

Support replaced constant self-defense.

Those experiences didn't magically heal every wound, but they gave me something I desperately needed.

They gave me space to breathe.

They reminded me that healthy relationships do not require us to constantly prove our worth.

Little by little, pieces of myself returned. My humor. My creativity. My compassion. My confidence.

The dreams I thought I had lost slowly began to take shape again.

Healing didn't turn me into someone new.

It brought me home to the woman God had always created me to be.

If You Are Carrying Shame Today

If you find yourself reading this while wondering whether your worst moments define you, I want you to know something I wish someone had told me years ago.

The situation you are in right now does not define who you are.

You may have reacted in ways you wish you hadn't. You may need to take responsibility for words you spoke or choices you made. That responsibility is part of healing.

But responsibility and shame are not the same thing.

You can acknowledge your mistakes while still recognizing the pain that shaped them.

You can apologize where it is needed while refusing to believe you are beyond redemption.

You can hold yourself accountable without condemning yourself.

Today, when I think about the woman I was during those difficult years, I no longer feel the overwhelming shame that once consumed me.

I feel sadness that she had to endure so much.

But I also feel honored by her.

She kept going when she hit rock bottom and couldn't see a way forward.

She survived long enough for me to become the woman writing these words today.

If I could sit beside her now, I would take her hand and gently remind her that this season would not define the rest of her life.

There would be joy again.

There would be purpose again.

There would be peace again.

And if I could say one thing to you, it would be the very same thing.

No matter what your circumstances have convinced you to believe, you are not defined by the hardest chapter of your story.

Healing is possible.

Wholeness is possible.

Sometimes becoming whole is not about becoming someone entirely new.

Sometimes it is simply about finding your way back to the person you have been all along.

And perhaps that is what becoming Divinely Whole really means - not striving to become someone else, but gently uncovering the person who was there all along beneath the fear, shame, grief, and survival.🩷