Reconnecting With Your Feelings After Abuse: How Abuse Hijacks Your Emotional Processing and How to Retrain and Reconnect to Your Healthy Feelings

After abuse, emotions can stop making sense.

Sometimes they are too big for the situation you are in. Sometimes they are absent altogether. Sometimes they appear hours or days after the moment that should have sparked them.

You may have tried to tell yourself to "just be in the moment," but the connection still wasn't there. You may have tried to force yourself to feel happy, but the joy remained muted. You may even be smiling on the outside while feeling flat underneath. These efforts often ...