 How does abuse affect a person? Is the road to healing as unpaved as it seems? The Social Care Institute for Excellence has ranked multiple forms of abuse, including physical, domestic, sexual, emotional, financial, discriminatory, and organizational abuse. Healing for abuse survivors of all kinds is a highly relative process. While it is possible to move towards healing the trauma to become whole and healthy individuals, at times it may have lingering effects throughout your life experiences, and you may even blame yourself for the way you are. Acknowledging all forms of possible abuse helps bring awareness. If you've experienced abuse of any form, check in with yourself to see if you can relate to any of the following signs of lingering effects due to your trauma. Number one, you have difficulty in navigating social situations. Do you exercise extreme caution in introducing new faces into your life? As an abuse survivor, your basic need for safety was constantly endangered. This conditioned your brain to be consistently on alert for future dangers. Your sudden reactions to certain people or settings show it reminds you of one of the mental or emotional abuses that you've experienced. Using body language cues is one way to self-soothe when experiencing social anxiety due to abuse trauma. Using open body language, which includes keeping your legs uncrossed or maintaining comfortable eye contact, can help communicate your willingness to be open with others. Number two, physical health problems. Does your stomach, head, or other body pain seem to have no identifiable cause? Maltreatment or abuse can cause physical health problems too. Abuse triggers extreme stress levels, which causes your immune system to be negatively impacted. A study concluded that childhood abuse impairs regions of the brain related to function or growth. Reaching out for support can help you check in with the aspect of you that felt most hurt due to the abuse. Notice if you treat your body, mind, or heart kindly and supportively. Number three, body language comprehension. How observant would you call yourself? Are you a pro at reading the micro expressions flickering across someone's face? As an abuse survivor, you grow to become excellent readers of body language and non-verbal cues. This skill originates from your need to protect yourself from a young age. Your hypervigilance allowed you to identify those who feel safe in opposition to those that felt dangerous to your well-being. When you're able to read a person, the room or situation, there's a greater chance of feeling secure in your standings and maintaining a control over your surroundings. Number four, chronic anxiety and depression. Research found that abuse survivors were two and a half times more likely to have major depression and are also more susceptible to emotional dysregulation. Your tendency to self-protect from early on can translate into anxiety later. While depression may emerge from a deep sadness within the abuse survivor, your struggle with mental health issues due to abuse trauma may lead to having intrusive thoughts, feeling stuck in a mental loop or not having the motivation to complete tasks throughout your day. Their presence points towards an unloged wound in need of tending, which might help to dissipate frustration towards yourself. Number five, emotional numbness. Do you dread opening up to the notion of moving forward emotionally and mentally? In your moments of duress, your body's immediate reaction was to protect you from harm as much as it possibly could. Your mind helped you detach from the experience to shield you from going into shock. This represses the trauma from a conscious view, allowing you to continue functioning normally even after experiencing the danger you've endured. But repressed trauma can cause a multitude of side effects, one of which being emotional numbness. While it may feel safe to detach emotionally, healing and allowing for emotions to come through is also the key to pushing the negative emotions out. It's okay to feel sad about what happened to you. You have every right to feel that, but you also have every right to feel proud of how far you've come since then. And number six, low self-esteem. Do you put yourself down first to avoid conflict or confrontation? If you can relate, you've likely maintained low self-esteem as a result of the trauma you've experienced earlier on. And you surely aren't at fault for this mistaken understanding of self. You're prone to feeling unworthy, undeserving due to the dysfunction within your early environment. Self-esteem can be greatly impacted by your environment. Relabeling upsetting thoughts helps to focus on the positive. Spend time with your feel-good squad. Indeed, the past can't be rewritten in physical terms, but that doesn't mean you're not allowed to rewrite the character you play in your own story. Allow yourself to recast yourself as your own hero. Abuse has an uncanny way of blurring one's vision. What you experienced was never your fault. It can be a difficult task to evade its clutches. It can continue to trickle into your life in the most reticent ways. Abusers are known to use manipulation tactics like gaslighting to entrap their victims to believe on a subconscious level that they've been at fault and have played a role in their trauma. This negatively impacts your sense of self and personal growth. And even while your younger or earlier self may have believed these statements on some level, know that you're allowed to reconsider this thought. What happened to you was never your fault. Do you recognize any of these signs? If so, do you think this video helped you identify them? Feel free to leave a comment down below with your thoughts, experiences, or suggestions. If you found this video helpful, be sure to hit the like button and share it with others too. And don't forget to subscribe to Psych2Go and hit the notification bell for more new videos. Thanks for watching and see you soon.