Reverse-Engineering My Breaking Point
Why I Documented the Abuse Like a Lab Report
Welcome! Every post here follows the same rhythm:
đ Cry â A raw reflection on whatâs hurting in me today
đ ď¸ Cope â A grounded reframe with Blip (our emotional support gremlin)
đ Cite â The receipts, because we like our feelings peer-reviewed
Healing from abuse isnât linear, but it is trackable! And if you canât stop the spiral, you can at least meet yourself with kindness and research-backed validation.
Cry
Well. I did it.
This week, I decided to relive the worst week of my marriage⌠on the internet.
I did it for a couple of reasons.
First: I knew this week would haunt me anyway. The first anniversary, I was still too numb. The divorce was fresh, and I couldnât feel the pain of it yet. The second, I tried to pretend I didnât even remember the date⌠while the images played on repeat in my head during work meetings.
So this year, the third year, I thought that if I couldnât stop the pain from coming, maybe I could use it. I decided I would do something. Something that might help someone else recognize what I couldnât see while I was living it.
But I also wanted people who havenât been in abusive relationships to get a small taste of what it feels like. So much of the story of abuse gets lost in the âminorâ incidents. The quiet shame. The creeping sense that youâre doing it wrong just by existing.
Thereâs a particular kind of loneliness in trying to explain it: Why you stayed. Why it didnât seem âthat badâ until it suddenly was.
Why even the scariest moments didnât feel like red flags because they were tangled inside YEARS of rationalization.
Labor day weekend 2022 was my unraveling. It was the week I stopped being able to pretend everything was okay. The week I gave up on the idea that my marriage was fixable.
The entire Breaking Point series was actually based on a very neurotic journal entry I wrote the day after he pointed a knife at me. I wrote it like a lab report, because that is what Iâm good at. I tried to science my way out of the fog: analyzing, categorizing, dissecting:
What exactly did I say?
What did he say?
What time was it?
Was my tone off?
Did I ask for something unreasonable?
I was trying to pinpoint the WHY and find the root cause of the violence like it was a math problem I could solve.
But I couldnât.
Because that kind of violence doesnât have a reason. It doesnât follow the rules of cause and effect. And (I can say this now, though I couldnât then) that was ABUSE, and it wasnât my fault.
Cope
This week, I let myself share that journal entry.
Not to justify it as abuse, but to show that abuse doesnât always come with bruises, and that a breaking point doesnât always mean broken bones or police reports.
Sometimes abuse is mustard on your hand and realizing youâre apologizing for how you picked up your sandwich. Sometimes the breaking point is the knife you just used to make lunch suddenly pointed at your face, by a man you love, who cannot BELIEVE you spoke up, because he thought heâd trained that out of you.
I shared this series so people whoâve lived that kind of fear would feel seen.
So theyâd remember: That kind of violence doesnât follow logic. It doesnât have a reason. And it was NOT your fault.
I also shared it for the people who havenât lived through it. So they might understand, just a little more, what itâs like to have every interaction laced with fear. To always wonder: What will they criticize now? What might happen next?
To stop asking: âWhy didnât she leave?â and start wondering: âHow many little moments did she survive before it broke her?â
Cite
Thereâs a reason itâs so hard to identify the âbreaking pointâ in an abusive relationship, and why survivors so often try to explain the incident like itâs a logic puzzle.
Coercive control, a core component of abuse, often creates a mental environment where a survivor blames themselves, doubts their perceptions, and tries to âsolveâ the relationship rather than recognizing it as a pattern of harm [1].
Trauma bonding can further cloud survivorsâ ability to label whatâs happening, especially when cycles of affection and fear are intertwined [2]. This creates emotional confusion that mirrors addiction pathways in the brain, which helps explain why survivors âstayâ long past the point of safety.
Finally, research on betrayal blindness shows how the brain protects itself by minimizing or obscuring harm from someone it depends on [3]. This strategy is useful for survival in the short term but has devastating impacts on escape and recovery.
Thatâs why I shared the journal entry. Because if youâve ever tried to reverse-engineer the moment things got âbad enoughâ to justify to yourself why you left, youâre not alone. That impulse is a symptom of what was done to you. The confusion, the shame, the self-blame. Thatâs what abuse leaves behind. But you donât have to keep carrying the weight of THEIR choices. You can call it what it was. Abuse.
For You
If youâve ever tried to explain what happened and felt yourself getting lost in the detailsâŚ
If youâve ever rehearsed a moment over and over, asking what you did wrongâŚ
If youâve ever downplayed your pain because you didnât have bruises or broken bonesâŚ
Then I want you to know: THAT is the impact of abuse.
You stop looking for red flags to survive the situation.
You have to see LOVE where there is FEAR, and you learn to call that ânormal.â
But hereâs whatâs also true: You are allowed to grieve what happened. And you are allowed to stop carrying the blame for someone elseâs harm.
Your healing doesnât require permission. But if it helps, let this be yours â¤ď¸
Youâre allowed to Cry. You know how to Cope. And I promise: thereâs always a Cite.
See you next time. â¨
P.S. Catch up with the full story of my breaking point this week on Instagram @HealingbytheNumbers
Sources:
[1] Carnes, P. (2015). The betrayal bond: Breaking free of exploitive relationships (Rev. ed.). Health Communications, Inc.
[2] Freyd, J. J. (1996). Betrayal trauma: The logic of forgetting childhood abuse. Harvard University Press.
[3] Stark, E. (2007). Coercive control: How men entrap women in personal life. Oxford University Press.
Beautifully written. Inspired the heck out of me to make the most of my upcoming one year anniversary of freedom. Thanks pal, sending you all the love!