When Abuse Doesn't Leave Bruises: Understanding What's Happening Inside You
You don't always realise you're being harmed.
Not when there's no shouting, no slamming doors, no visible evidence of injury.
What you notice is subtler: a tightening in your chest when they walk into the room. A sinking feeling before a conversation even begins. A version of yourself that has become quieter, smaller, more careful.
Clients often say to me: "I don't know if this counts as abuse. I'm not being hit. But something feels wrong. I don't feel like myself anymore."
This is where emotional and psychological abuse live -not in the dramatic moments, but in the slow, steady erosion of who you are.
If you're reading this, you might not be ready to label what's happening. That's okay. You don't need a label to recognise that something has shifted inside you, something that deserves attention.
Let's start there.
Why You Stopped Trusting Yourself
It didn't happen all at once.
Maybe it started with small corrections. You remembered something one way; they insisted it happened differently. You felt hurt by something they said; they told you that you were overreacting. You raised a concern; they explained why your concern didn't make sense.
Each instance felt minor. Survivable. Maybe even reasonable; after all, everyone misremembers sometimes. Everyone overreacts occasionally.
But over time, something shifted.
You started double-checking your own memory. Replaying conversations to figure out what really happened. Asking yourself, am I being too sensitive? before you'd even finished feeling the feeling.
The questioning became automatic. And at some point, without realising it, you stopped trusting your own perception of reality.
This is what psychological abuse does. It doesn't just hurt your feelings, it dismantles your ability to know what's true. It makes your own mind feel like unreliable territory.
If you've started recording conversations, saving text messages for "proof," or mentally rehearsing events so you won't forget them—this isn't paranoia. It's your psyche trying to hold onto something solid when the ground keeps shifting beneath you.
You're not losing your mind. Someone has been teaching you not to trust it.
Why You Apologise for Existing
You say sorry before you've done anything wrong.
Sorry for asking a question. Sorry for having a need. Sorry for being tired, or upset, or not cheerful enough. Sorry for taking up space in a room you have every right to occupy.
This isn't politeness. It's a survival strategy.
When someone repeatedly communicates—through words, sighs, eye rolls, silence, or explosive reactions—that your needs are burdensome, your emotions are excessive, and your presence is irritating, you learn to make yourself small. You pre-emptively apologise because you've learned that your existence requires justification.
This is what emotional abuse does. It targets your self-worth so consistently that you begin to believe the criticism is simply truth. You stop questioning whether you deserve better because you're no longer sure you deserve anything at all.
The comments might sound like:
"You're so sensitive."
"No one else would put up with you."
"You're lucky I'm still here."
"Why do you always have to make everything about you?"
Said once, these are hurtful. Said hundreds of times, in hundreds of ways, they become the wallpaper of your internal world. You stop noticing them. You just feel their weight—the quiet shame of being fundamentally too much and not nearly enough.
If your first instinct in any conflict is to apologise and make yourself smaller, that instinct was trained into you. It wasn't a choice.
Holding tension that doesn’t have language yet.
Why You Can't Explain It to Anyone
You've tried.
Maybe you told a friend that things have been "hard" at home. Maybe you started a sentence with "sometimes he..." and then trailed off, unsure how to finish. Maybe you've rehearsed the conversation in your head a hundred times, but it never comes out right.
The problem is that emotional and psychological abuse doesn't give you a clear story to tell.
There's no single incident. No defining moment. Just a thousand small cuts that sound trivial when you say them out loud: He sighed when I asked for help. She gave me the silent treatment for two days. He told me I was remembering wrong.
You hear yourself speak and think: That doesn't sound that bad. And so you minimise. You add context. You explain their side. By the end, you've talked yourself out of your own experience.
This is by design.
Abuse that operates through tone, implication, inconsistency, and denial is specifically difficult to name. It doesn't leave evidence. It doesn't fit the cultural script of what abuse looks like. And the abuser often appears perfectly reasonable to everyone else, which makes you question whether the problem is you.
If you've felt gaslit by your own attempts to describe what's happening, you're not failing to communicate. You're trying to describe something designed to be invisible.
Why Calm Doesn't Feel Safe Anymore
They're in a good mood. Things have been peaceful for a few days. Maybe even weeks.
And yet your body won't settle.
You're scanning. Waiting. Watching for the shift. Because you've learned that calm is not safety; calm is the space before the storm. The good days aren't relief; they're tension. You know that eventually, something will set them off. You just don't know what or when.
This is hypervigilance, and it's a trauma response.
When you live with someone whose moods are unpredictable—whose affection, criticism, silence, or rage can arrive without warning—your nervous system adapts. It stops differentiating between actual danger and potential danger. Everything becomes a threat to track.
You might notice:
You can't relax when they're home
You startle easily
You feel exhausted even when nothing "happened"
You monitor their tone, facial expressions, even the way they close a door
You brace before every interaction
Your body is doing exactly what it's supposed to do: protecting you. But it's running a programme built for an unsafe environment, even when the moment itself seems fine.
If you'd like to understand more about what your nervous system is doing, my article on the window of tolerance explains how trauma keeps us stuck in survival mode and what it takes to feel safe again.
Why You Still Defend Them
People ask why you stay. Or they make comments about what they would do in your situation. And part of you wants to explain: it's not that simple.
Because it isn't.
You might still love them. You might remember who they were at the beginning—or who they still are on their good days. You might believe, genuinely, that they don't mean to hurt you. That they're struggling. That they had a hard childhood. That underneath the harm, there's someone worth staying for.
None of this makes you weak or naive. It makes you human.
Trauma bonds form when someone is both the source of pain and the source of relief. The cycle of tension, explosion, and reconciliation creates a powerful neurological hook—the relief of reconnection feels like love, even when it follows harm. This is why leaving feels less like freedom and more like withdrawal.
You might also stay because:
Leaving feels financially impossible
You're afraid of what they'll do
You don't want to break up the family
You're not sure anyone will believe you
You've been told so many times that you're the problem that part of you believes it
These aren't excuses. They're realities. And they don't mean you're trapped forever—they mean you're navigating something genuinely complicated.
If this resonates, my article on trauma bonds explains why leaving abusive relationships is so much harder than people expect—and why it often takes multiple attempts.
The Difference Between Emotional and Psychological Abuse
By now, you might be wondering: which type of abuse is this?
Here's a simple distinction:
Emotional abuse attacks how you feel about yourself. It uses criticism, contempt, humiliation, and belittling to erode your self-worth. It's the eye rolls, the disgusted sighs, the constant message that you're too much or not enough.
Psychological abuse attacks how you think and perceive reality. It uses gaslighting, denial, inconsistency, isolation, and manipulation to make you doubt your own mind. It's the rewritten history, the "that never happened," the rules that change without warning.
They often occur together. Emotional abuse lowers your defences; psychological abuse rewrites the story. The criticism makes you vulnerable; the gaslighting makes you confused. By the time both have taken hold, you don't trust your feelings or your thoughts.
Neither is "less serious." Both change your internal world. And both deserve to be named.
What This Does to You Over Time
Living with this kind of abuse changes you—not because you're weak, but because you're adaptive. Your nervous system, your thoughts, and your sense of self all shift to survive the environment you're in.
Over time, you might notice:
In your body:
Chronic anxiety or a feeling of dread
Exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix
Stomach problems, headaches, tension you can't release
Feeling frozen, numb, or disconnected from yourself
In your mind:
Confusion about what's real
Difficulty making decisions
A harsh inner critic that sounds like them
Obsessive replaying of conversations
In your relationships:
Isolation from friends and family
Difficulty trusting anyone, including yourself
Feeling like no one would understand
Shame that keeps you from reaching out
In your identity:
Not recognising who you've become
Losing touch with your own opinions, preferences and needs
Feeling like a shell of your former self
These aren't character flaws. They're symptoms. And they can heal, but only once you recognise what caused them.
How to Begin Finding Your Way Back
You don't have to leave today. You don't have to make any decisions right now. Healing can begin even while you're still in the situation, and it starts with something small: acknowledging what your body already knows.
Start here:
Name what you're experiencing—to yourself. You don't have to tell anyone else yet. But let yourself think the words: something is wrong here. I am being harmed. That recognition is not betrayal. It's clarity.
Document what's happening. Not to build a legal case (though it may help later), but to anchor your own reality. Write down incidents. Save messages. When you start to doubt yourself, you'll have something to return to.
Find one safe person. This might be a friend, a family member, a therapist, or a helpline. You don't need to tell them everything. Just let one person see a piece of what you're carrying.
Learn the patterns. Understanding coercive control, gaslighting, and trauma bonds can help you see the shape of what you're in. Knowledge is grounding. My articles on coercive control and gaslighting may help.
Be gentle with yourself. You are not stupid for staying. You are not weak for still loving them. You are not broken for struggling to leave. You are a person navigating something incredibly difficult, and you deserve compassion—especially from yourself.
If Threats Are Involved
If your partner threatens to harm themselves, harm you, hurt your pets, or take your children if you leave—this is not love. It is control.
These threats might sound like:
"If you leave, I'll kill myself."
"You'll never see the kids again."
"No one will believe you."
"I'll destroy you."
These are not expressions of desperation. They are tools designed to trap you. And they indicate that safety planning is essential.
If this is your situation, please reach out to a domestic violence service in your area. You don't have to be physically hit to deserve support. And you don't have to have a plan to leave; just having information can help.
A Final Word
If parts of this article made your stomach drop, that's not a coincidence.
Your nervous system recognised something before your mind did.
Emotional and psychological abuse don't leave visible marks, but they change your internal world—your sense of safety, your confidence, your memory, your ability to trust yourself.
These changes are not permanent.
With the right support, your body can learn to feel safe again. Your voice can return. Your clarity can come back. You can remember who you were—and discover who you're becoming.
You are not broken. You are not overreacting. You are not alone.
If You'd Like Support
I work with survivors of emotional, psychological, and coercive abuse using trauma-informed, gentle, paced therapy. If parts of this felt familiar, you're welcome to reach out.
📧 kat@safespacecounsellingservices.com.au
📞 0452 285 526
You deserve safety. You deserve respect. You deserve to feel like yourself again.
