I Wanted Him to Hit Me Instead: The Physical Trauma of Emotional Abuse.

I had always been a healthy girl. I never struggled with any major illness, and the only time I was in a hospital outside of childbirth was to accompany my parents when my little brother needed stitches or had an asthma attack. I rarely took medication because I rarely needed it, and the only knowledge I had about remedies other than baby aspirin and Mercurochrome was from reading the expired boxes of Alka-Seltzer in my dad’s medicine cabinet.

But that was then, before I turned thirty and fell hard and fast in love with a man who would later be diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It wouldn’t be until sixteen years later that I would escape, and with only a shred of my spirit intact due to the emotional injuries I suffered silently from, injuries that weren’t visible like bruises or broken bones and therefore left me nothing to show in demonstration of my pain. Even today these wounds remind me of their presence if only in muscle memory, remaining as deep scars on my soul that trigger flashbacks and a physical response without warning. These “aftershocks” are a shared characteristic of abuse survivors, as is Complex PTSD, which I was diagnosed with two years after I escaped.

My physical pain began slowly, methodically, and in such direct contrast to my healthy lifestyle that I was…