I Didn’t Consent to the Abuse: A Survivor’s Journey Through Reactive Abuse, Mislabeling, and the Truth About Healing.

For those of us who have survived a lifetime of narcissistic abuse, the journey to healing isn’t a straight line. It’s a spiral – through pain, through truth, through guilt, through the heavy fog of confusion and shame, and sometimes… through the heartbreaking judgments of those we love most.

I am a survivor of long-term narcissistic abuse.
Not just one toxic relationship. A lifetime’s worth.

For me, it began in early childhood when my once obscenely wealthy, powerful, malignantly narcissistic uncle scapegoated both his younger brother, (my dad), and then me when I came along. As this was all I knew, the vibration of abuse embedded in the very foundation of my emotional wiring. I then spent decades in friendships, relationships, and marriages that mirrored that familiar dynamic – one of them lasting over 36 years. If you’ve been there, you know how those relationships work: They don’t start as storms. They start as sunshine and promises. And they end with you questioning your own sanity, your own memory, your own worth, and sometimes running for your life.

Let me say this as clearly as I can:
I did not consent to the abuse I experienced.
Not as a child. Not as a partner. Not as a parent. Not as a friend. Not once, not ever.

But like so many survivors of covert abuse, I eventually snapped from the emotional pressure I was being put through by people who lacked even a glimmer of empathy for the pain I was telling them I was in (Caused directly by their actions). I lost my composure. I lashed out. I cried, screamed, fought, begged, and I admit it, utterly collapsed. The only reason I didn’t hit anyone was because of my own experience of having survived an extremely physically abusive childhood and marriage, I am an avowed pacifist – and apparently a master at the “Scary face”, a thing that happens when I’m holding myself back from going nuclear with every fiber of my being. I still maintain that ‘scary face’ is better than ‘fist in the face’ and that’s a hill I’ll die on! No one ever got arrested for assault for making a ‘scary face’. But now, because of those trauma responses, despite my heroic control NOT to punch any faces, I carry the label of being an “emotional abuser”, victimizing those I come in contact with. But believe me when I tell you this wasn’t born out of a vacuum of some invented dangerous mental illness I’d been portrayed as having, or some imagined moralistic failing on my part alone.

What They Don’t Understand About Reactive Abuse

If you’ve never been covertly abused—gaslit, emotionally isolated, slowly dismantled one boundary at a time – it’s easy to mistake a survivor’s breaking point as evidence of the “abusive monster they really are.”

But reactive abuse is not the same as being an abuser.

Reactive abuse is what happens when someone pushed to their edge over and over again, and breaks. It’s your nervous system in a pressure cooker. It’s the survival instinct of someone who’s been made invisible and been dismissed for too long, finally screaming “SEE ME.”

Do innocent family members become collateral damage? Sadly yes.
Is it ideal? No.
Is it abuse? Also no.

It’s a wounded person, reacting to being repeatedly harmed—and often then shamed for not staying quiet while it happened. And another thing no one else sees? When the dust settles, you’re left feeling remorse for your actions, and you apologize for being hurt.

The Narrative They Want Me to Accept

My adult child tells me I’m refusing accountability. That I blame others for the “bad things” in my life. That I won’t admit my part. But in her eyes, the only acceptable admission on my part is that I’m the source of all that is wrong in our family. Unilaterally. “I should have seen this coming”, “He’s wanted to leave you for 10 years” and other hurtful words flung at me, intended only to hurt me, when he’s telling me the polar opposite. Weeks before our breakup claiming that “he can’t imagine life without me in it” and more love bombing breadcrumbs to keep me in place. .

It stings and is confusing and bewildering. Not just because it hurts to feel misunderstood by someone I love unconditionally, but because I have tried to hold my own reflection, and I’m told that it’s just not enough.

I have owned my pain. I have faced my shadow. I have sat in rooms with therapists and cried over who I became in the worst of it. I have whispered in meditations asking, Was it me? Did I cause this? What do I need to change about myself to be tolerable to my family?

But here’s what I’ve realized:

I can admit I’ve been toxic.
I can own the times I reacted poorly.
But that doesn’t mean I’m culpable for being abused.

Covert Abuse is Invisible – Even to the One Living It

Covert narcissistic abuse doesn’t come with bruises. It comes with chronic self-doubt. It’s silent conditioning. Sometimes it’s “I love you, but you’re not enough” or, “I love you, but I don’t want you around”, and sometimes you’re not always told you’re the problem – you’re led to believe it over time, until you so fully internalize it, you willingly silence yourself. You literally become complicit in your own erasure. Your boundaries have been eroded into non-existence. That’s not consent. That’s psychological captivity.

I have to admit, I still couldn’t see the abuse for what it was. I believed I was staying out of love, loyalty, devotion, and family, even though I felt like I was ‘an obligation’ to my husband. I only now understand through my own ongoing healing, that was my own projection. I felt obligated to stay, and I couldn’t recognize that either. It took a very skilled, qualified trauma informed therapist to help me identify that it had even happened at all. It wasn’t until I was out, so buried in guilt, shame, isolation, self-blame, and learned helplessness that I understood why escape felt impossible when I was still in my marriage. Giving voice to an unpleasant reality when you once stayed silent is not the same as “rewriting history”. There comes a point where you can no longer give the other party the benefit of the doubt.

The Scapegoat’s Curse

When a family system is built on dysfunction, there is always someone cast as the villain. The “over-emotional” one. The one who is “too much.” while somehow simultaneously “Not enough”. The one who “ruins everything”. Who is “Delusional” and “Believes their own lies”. That role often falls to the person who is simply trying to tell the painful truth. The truth that was hurting them.

In my family, that person was me, and I still maintain: If material facts hurt you, maybe you’re not on the right side of the facts. Not anyone else’s ‘truth’ but material, undeniable facts. No one deserves to be dismissed, discarded, ignored, abused, lied to, gaslit, and worse. No one. Not even me.

And now that I’m healing, now that I’m REFUSING to be silenced by anyone any longer. I’m naming what happened in my life with clarity, and I’ve been recast as “the abusive one, rewriting history” for doing so.

What I’m Actually Accountable For

Let’s talk about what accountability really means.

I am not accountable for the abuse I endured.
I am not accountable for the way trauma hijacked my brain and body.
I am not accountable for being trauma-bonded, gaslit, lied to, and emotionally and financially trapped.

What I am accountable for is my healing now.

I’m responsible for how I show up from here. For how I unlearn those survival patterns. For how I speak to myself and allow others to speak to me. For how I protect my energy. For how I move forward. If the people I love can’t accept me for me, then so be it. It is what it is. That’s radical acceptance. That’s what healing from this kind of abuse requires. Some people just aren’t who you believed they are. This isn’t feel good toxic positivity. This is real pain, and healing requires us to sit with it.

Here’s a truth I rarely say out loud:

There is no deeper wound than being labeled as emotionally abusive when you’ve spent your life being emotionally abused.
When someone calls you what you were trying so desperately not to become, it cuts deeper than words can explain. It’s downright bewildering. It echoes every moment you tried to hold yourself together. Every time you bit your tongue, swallowed your pain, stayed when you should’ve run. To then be told you’re the one who caused the damage? It’s soul-breaking. Because you know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of real emotional abuse -and the idea that you could become that is a grief all its own.

Here’s the line that so many people miss:
Intent is what separates a trauma response from intentional harm. Yes, toxic reactions—shouting, snapping, shutting down, acting out—can absolutely hurt and traumatize others. No argument from me there, but they come from a place of injury, not malice. Abuse, on the other hand, is premeditated. It’s used to dominate, silence, manipulate, or control. The two are not the same. One requires healing. The other requires accountability and often, separation. A toxic reaction is a wound screaming out loud. Abuse is a hand that creates the wound on purpose.

You’re allowed to hold both truths:
That you lost control sometimes… and that you were never the monster they claim you were.

If You’re Walking This Road Too…

You are not alone.
You are not crazy.
You are not beyond repair.

If someone has weaponized your pain against you, or painted your trauma response as your personality, please hear me: That’s not your truth. That’s their projection.

You are allowed to grieve who you had to be to survive.

You are allowed to reject the roles others have assigned you.

You are allowed to heal—even if it means stepping away from the very people who you love most if their behavior is toxic or abusive towards you.

You didn’t consent to abuse. You were conditioned to normalize it.

You didn’t “choose to stay.” You were trauma-bonded, isolated, worn down, and gaslit into believing you had no other option.

And now? You’re choosing yourself.

That’s not refusal of accountability. That’s the very definition of reclaiming your life.

I am choosing my healing.
I am building a life that feels safe.
I am rewriting my story, not to erase what happened or absolve myself of accountability, but to reclaim the truth of who I really am beneath all the damage that was done by the twisted truths, and outright lies told about me:
A deeply feeling, beautifully human (read: flawed), powerful survivor—who finally knows she has had, and is enough.

If this post resonates with you, please share it with someone else who’s been scapegoated, misunderstood, alienated, or labeled as the problem. We are not the problem. We are the ones breaking the cycle. 💗

If you’re ready to manifest healing, enroll in my trauma informed course: Manifestation the QHE way
https://qhe.podia.com/manifestation-the-qhe-way-change-the-vibration-change-the-universe

#TraumaHealing #ReactiveAbuse #CovertNarcissism #ScapegoatSurvivor #AccountabilityVsShame #BreakTheCycle #QHEHealing #YouAreNotAlone