Telling people you are being or have been emotionally abused usually feels daunting. It asks us to recount some of the worst parts of our lives, to tell truths (including about ourselves) we usually wish were not true, to dredge up common feelings of shame, and to risk being disbelieved about something we have probably already been gaslit about by the person who’s abused us, no less. It is a kind of emotional labor that is often exhausting and can take a real toll, even when people we tell handle it well. When we tell people, we also will often face a lot of questions and reactions, so if we tell a whole bunch of people at once, especially at first, it can feel really overwhelming, and much scarier than it needs to be.
Who should you tell?
I suggest you start with just one person you feel very safe with, who you are also as sure as sure can be will believe you and handle what you are telling them well.
The kind of person I’m talking about may be:
- Someone who has already expressed concern about your relationship or the health and safety of other people’s relationships
- Someone who has lived through some form of emotional abuse, or who has talked about knowing someone who has with sympathy and care
- Someone who is well-educated about abuse dynamics for some other reason, like because it’s part of the work they do or because of an awareness about patterns of abuse in their family
- Someone who you have always experienced as loving and caring, and who you feel will always have your back, even if they don’t fully connect with what you’re going through or have any of their own lived experience to match it
If you can’t think of anyone like that in your life (and I promise, if so, you’re not the only one that’s true for, after all, one way you probably wound up in abuse or stuck in it in the first place is isolation), instead of being a friend or family member, that first person might be a therapist, a DV/IPV crisis helper, or someone like one of our staff here in our direct services or other trusted helplines. Someone like that is often a best first person to tell, because all of these people are often very educated about emotional abuse.
In choosing who to tell first, you might also try and think of someone who is not also closely involved with the person who has abused or is abusing you, particularly if you think what you are going to tell them will come as a big surprise. Telling others is mostly for you and your needs, and what you probably need most is someone who you can just tell the truth to and will be able to accept what you are telling them without too much effort. Someone who really won’t want to believe what you are telling you, or who may even fight you or shut you down around it probably isn’t a good choice. This is also some of why choosing someone most likely to be very impartial, like a therapist or crisis worker, can be a good first choice.
What medium should you use to tell them?
There’s no one right way to do any of this, and that includes what medium you use to disclose. You can sit down with someone in person, if that’s an option for you, or you can talk by phone, video call, email or text. Whichever of the communication options you have with the person you want to talk with that feels best for you is the way to go, so you’ll just want to think about what you want and need from a medium: this is about your needs most of all.
If you’re someone who wants or needs eye or physical contact while disclosing this, then in person might be your best bet. If you’re someone who struggles to find your words or talk out loud with loaded conversations, text or email may be the way. Since you also get to have as many conversations about this as you like and whoever you tell is willing to have with you, you also don’t have to pick just one way to talk about this: you get to change things up as wanted or needed.
Bear in mind that things like emails or texts can be easily shared with others, including, potentially, the person or people who abused you. If you’re not 1,000% sure the person you’re telling would never share something like that, it’ll be better to tell them in person, over the phone or on a video call.
What ground rules should you set?
Before you start talking, it’s a good idea to set at least a few boundaries, and make sure the other person understand and agrees to them. You might think of these boundaries or rules as ways you can create the kind of responsive, sensitive environment you need to feel as safe disclosing as you can, and that provides you protection against problematic reactions or responses.
Some I’d strongly suggest are:
- They must accept that you are telling them the truth and they may not voice disbelief of that truth to you: Who you are telling can have whatever thoughts or feelings they have, but as far as their conversation with you goes, it’s not okay for them to voice doubt or disbelief to you, like by asking you if you’re sure something was abuse, or telling you that they just can’t believe the person who abused you is abusive. You can tell them that if they do that, you will need to end the conversation immediately.
- They may not defend the person you abused you in your conversation with them: that includes things like making excuses for them (“but they had a rough childhood” or “I think you misunderstood them”), blaming you for their behavior (like suggesting when you do a given thing, it makes them mad) or trying to suggest that they are otherwise wonderful, despite being abusive to you.
- They must keep anything you ask them to keep in confidence in confidence. If they want you to make an exception, they need to ask and respect it if you say no or have conditions for them sharing what you have shared with someone else. This absolutely should include them sharing anything you have said with the person or people who have abused or are abusing you: that could cause you further harm.
- They agree to listen to you first, without interrupting or asking questions, until and unless you tell them that you’re ready and open for questions. You can also let them know that they may have some questions you don’t want to or don’t feel ready to answer, and you expect them to accept your limits.
- Asking them to agree not to do or say things without you or your permission that they feel should be done about what you’ve disclosed, but instead to only do or say anything you’ve either asked them to do or told them is okay with you. Abuse has already stolen at least some of your agency: you don’t need anyone else to take more of it.
If you want or need more or different ground rules, you get to ask for whatever those are. We don’t all need the same things. Obviously, you’ll want to keep what you’re asking within the realm of human possibility and fairness, but chances are good that whatever boundaries you need are boundaries you can fairly ask for.
What should you say?
That really depends on you, what you want, and what you feel up to.
You get to have as many talks about this as you want. What you share, in general and in a given talk, will probably also depend on who you’re sharing it with, what you want from it, and your capacity at the time.
For example, there may be people you’re comfortable sharing that there was emotional abuse overall with who you’re not — or not yet — comfortable telling about sexual elements of that abuse or about the worst effects the abuse has had on you. You may also want to test the waters with anyone you tell first by telling them about the abuse more broadly, and seeing how they react, before you share specifics. When you share specifics, you may want to start with the things you’re the most certain a given person will handle well, or that you feel the least shame around, and save other things that might feel more risky or scary for another time, once you know someone is good with easier things. You may even want to start with the lightest and lowest-risk lift you can, like by just sharing that you have been emotionally abused — without even saying by whom — and ask if they can find a time when you can talk to them about it.
What you want from a conversation will obviously inform what you say. If you want someone to know what happened to you in a past relationship so that they can understand you better, that’s going to be a pretty different conversation than if you are currently in abuse and want to tell someone so that you can get some help getting out.
Taking baby steps in a conversation to protect your heart — and to give the other person time to take in what you are saying — is a good idea. Rather than telling the whole story of all your abuse or the relationship in one sitting, you can start by just saying something like, “I have something serious and sensitive I want to talk with you about,” let them know about your ground rules, assure they can agree to them, and then start with something simple and direct like, “My relationship with X has not been emotionally healthy or safe for me, and I want to tell you about it and ask for your support.” You can see how they respond to something like that first, and then decide what else you want to share or ask for from there. (If they react poorly to even that, they’re probably showing you they aren’t a safe person to tell, or at least, not at first.)
Sometimes nuggets of conversation where you feel things out tell by tell will feel best, especially if you already feel pretty wiped out for any reason. Other times, if the vibe is right, it can be a big relief to tell a lot of your story in one sitting. How much or how little you say will also be influenced by the other person’s capacity: remember, what you’re telling them may all be brand-new news to them, and they may also be devastated to hear what you’re sharing on several fronts (because their heart is broken for you, because they trusted your abuser, because they wish they had done something to help you or to prevent the abuse, because they are reminded of their own behavior or experiences, etc.) and need to find out more over more than one talk so they can process it and react well.
Making specific asks of the person you’re telling is a good idea. It’s hard to know what to offer when someone is disclosing abuse to you, especially if you aren’t well-versed in the dynamics of abuse or the care of someone who has been abused. Before you have a conversation with someone, take some real time to think about what you want from that conversation. You probably at least want someone to listen and be supportive, but maybe you also want something like help getting out of the relationship, help finding resources for yourself like a trauma-informed therapist, or help talking to someone else in your life who you don’t think will do as good a job with this, but who you need to tell. Asking for those things specifically — and as specifically as possible, like by saying what kind of support or help you want — and setting any limits or boundaries around those things — like that you do not want the person you’re telling to confront or otherwise engage with the person who’s abused you — makes it more likely the other person can know to give them to you or how to best help you with them.
