My term for the “morning after” an abusive episode
You wake up every day exhausted – not “your life is busy and you don’t get enough rest” exhausted – something deeper; a soul-level exhaustion that sets in when you can never let your guard down.
Last night you and your partner fought… again – but do you remember – really remember – all of what happened this time?
There was shouting. And snarling. Pushing. Punching. Crying. Stuff probably got thrown or broken. He said things. You said things back – or maybe you didn’t because you learned a long time ago that sometimes keeping your mouth shut is your best move.
You know the drill. New day. Same drama.
Or maybe today is different. Maybe today he’s just… quiet. That particular kind of quiet that sits heavily in the room like the calm before a storm. You know what it means and what it might become. So you move carefully. You measure every word, every step, every breath. You’ve become an expert at reading his moods so you can be as prepared as possible for the inevitable eruption – whatever form it takes today.
With all of that on your mind and heart, you have to get up and start the day – just like you do every day. Get dressed. Make coffee. Maybe get kids to school. Smile at someone. Function like everything’s fine, like you’re not dying on the inside, like you’re just having a day like everyone else.
You’re really good at pretending and keeping up the facade – and one way you do that day in and day out is by managing your yesterday. “Managing” entails stashing all the emotions and memories away in a mental file cabinet, closing the drawer and forgetting about it. Then you put one foot in front of the other and get through today – because today is the only thing you can deal with right now.
I call this coping mechanism “abuse amnesia” and it works miraculously well – in the short term at least. It gets you through the morning. It gets you through the week. It makes the impossible job of moving forward with some semblance of “normalcy” somehow possible.
But there’s a cost – you forget all those yesterdays, just to get through today – so you never really confront the totality of the situation you’re in. It’s perfectly natural to forget because your mind is doing exactly what minds do under sustained stress: it protects you from what it calculates you cannot afford to feel right now.
And so the details slip. The specific words he used that time. The look on his face. The exact sequence of what happened and how it started and how it escalated. The fact that this same fight – or one indistinguishable from it – happened last week, the week before that, and the month before that… completely escapes your notice.
You don’t see the pattern because your mind can’t bear to look at all the facts at once. Each incident gets filed separately, experienced in isolation, and never laid alongside the others where the picture of what’s really happening might become undeniable.
This is what living in survival mode is like.
Survival mode keeps you able to function in the here and now because it doesn’t let you remember – or even catch a glimpse of – the big picture. A mind in the chaos of survival mode doesn’t think clearly or see beyond the here and now. When you can’t remember clearly – when the details are soft and the timeline is fuzzy and you’re genuinely uncertain about what happened and how often and how bad, it’s shockingly easy to minimize it; to lie to yourself that it’s not that bad.
You might even become dependent on someone else’s version of events. And if that someone else has a vested interest in a particular version of how things went down, you are in serious danger of gaslighting. You might fall victim to his rhetoric that can sound like:
“That’s not what happened.” “You’re exaggerating.” “You always do this.” “I never said that.” “You’re too sensitive.” “You’re crazy.”
Without your own clear record – something to return to that holds what actually happened exactly as it happened – his version fills the vacuum. And over time, his version becomes the one you believe. Even when something in you knows it isn’t right. Even when your body remembers what your mind has filed away. Even when you wake up exhausted from a night you can barely recall and wonder, for just a moment, how you got here.
That wondering – that moment of something is wrong and I can’t quite name it – is not confusion.
It’s your truth trying to surface.
I know this phenomena well because I lived it. I’m acutely familiar with the exhaustion of mornings that feel like you’re on an out-of-control train dragging you along the rails. I am intimately acquainted with the file cabinet. I know the forgetting all too well. I know what it feels like to reach a point where you genuinely cannot trust your own memory of your own life.
And I know what changed that.
I reached for a notebook because, as a lifelong writer, it felt natural for me to try to make sense of things by putting them on the page where I could see everything laid out in my own words. I knew the page was the one place my truth would stay exactly as I left it. Unchanged, unargued with – and 100% mine.
The memories, the feelings, the self-discovery that happened on those pages – over months, then years – became the foundation of something I now call Story Mining. You can read those very journal entries as I add them to my other blog, Once a Time a Time, under, My Domestic Abuse Survival Journal.
Story Mining is a guided process for women who have lost their grip on their own reality inside abusive relationships. Through conversation and intentional reflection, it gives back what the forgetting took. It creates a place where your truth lands – witnessed, held, and all yours. Patterns become visible and the noise of someone else’s narrative begins to lose its grip.
Through the process, you’ll discover something you thought was gone beginning to surface: A freer, more vibrant you who has been waiting. Quieted, maybe. Dimmed.
But not gone.
Learn more about Story Mining here.
If any of this sounds like where you are right now – if you read these words and felt something shift in recognition – I’d love to talk. No agenda, no pressure, just a conversation. You can reach me at the button below or learn more about Story Mining on my About Page.
The first conversation is always free. Because the first step should never cost you anything except the courage to take it.
A note before you go:
If what you read here touched something that feels bigger than a blog post – if you’re in a situation right now that feels unsafe, frightening, or out of your control – please don’t navigate that alone.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week: call 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, or chat privately at thehotline.org. The Crisis Text Line is also available anytime: text HOME to 741741.
You don’t have to have it figured out to reach out. You don’t have to be ready to leave. You don’t have to know exactly what you need. You just have to make one move toward something safer – and these resources will meet you exactly where you are.
Story Mining is here for when you’re ready to go deeper. But your safety comes first. Always.
Regina Blitstein — Story Mining Guide
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