Do not allow anxiety to interfere with gaining the support you need. The following gives guidance in how to tell someone about abuse. It also bolsters you in not taking personally anyone’s lack of support or disbelief if that occurs.   

Believing you deserve abuse is an injury from coercive control. Abuse damages your belief in your worthiness, leaving you vulnerable to those who want to dominate.

When you say you allowed abuse, you are blaming yourself for something over which you had no control. You probably learned to accept this from your partner's blame and hearing similar media assumptions. Often society makes victims responsible for their abuse, rather than the one who abuses.  

Time Out and Broken Record are the last two conflict management skills. As with any assertive skill, assess your safety if someone has a history of being abusive.

Anger Starvation and Positive Admission are two constructive ways of dealing with another’s anger, disappointment, or frustration.

This fourth blog in my assertive communication series shows why these skills are important and how to be constructive in their use.

Expressing Emotions and Empathy is the second of the Assertive Communication Skills series. They complete the self-defining skills along with requests and refusals covered earlier.

This assertive communication skills series begins with two self-defining skills: assertive request and assertive refusal.

Assertive Beliefs is the seventh blog in my empowerment series for victims of partner abuse. You must believe you have the right to be assertive before using skills: this article builds that foundation. It covers definitions, benefits, beliefs that may interfere, an assertiveness skills list, and steps to work on the belief that you have the right to stand up for yourself.

Noticing and adjusting your thoughts is an important mental health skill for everyone. Change negative thinking and you'll change your life.

This blog is the beginning of a seven-part series regarding therapeutic basics that I found addressed survivors’ concerns and encouraged post-traumatic growth. Each of my next six blogs will go into more depth. I think you will find they help you to empower yourself.

Intimate partner abuse survivors have one or more of the following experiences with their own anger. Actually, all but the first one are common for others as well. This blog will explore each type before talking about anger as a superpower.

We often want to retaliate and give people a dose of what they’ve given us, but this does not maintain our power.

It is often an irony that we fear what we also want. We may want success in some particular way, but we are terrified of achieving it...

In an ideal world, all of our experiences growing up would be positive. Our family members would unfailingly give affirming messages...

Assertiveness is not a personality trait but rather a learned set of behaviors .  Assertive behavior expresses what we think and feel in...