Contributing Editor:
Reviewed and Approved by:
For those of us who have endured childhood abuse, the work of healing is long and, at times, genuinely hard. It asks a great deal: strength, patience, and the willingness to keep going even when progress is not obvious. I speak with survivors regularly, and over time I have noticed patterns in the people who do go on to build fulfilling lives — habits and ways of approaching things that seem to support the process. These sixteen are what I see most often. They are not a formula. Not everyone can work on all of them, and the order matters far less than starting somewhere.
Caring for Yourself
1. Letting yourself be vulnerable
I spent years believing that showing any vulnerability meant inviting more harm. What I found, slowly, was the opposite — that letting people see what I was carrying opened up connections that would have been impossible otherwise. Sharing my experience with the right people has not made me less; it has helped me feel less alone in it.
2. Taking care of the basics
For a long time I did not feel I deserved to take care of myself — that was something other people got to do. Learning to treat my body and mind as worth tending has been slow work. I go for walks. I try to sleep. I keep a journal when I can manage it. None of these things fix anything on their own, but together they create a kind of scaffolding that makes the rest of it more bearable.
3. Setting boundaries — and keeping them
Being clear about what I can and cannot do in a given situation — with people, with commitments, with environments — has been one of the more important changes I have made. After years of having my limits ignored or overridden, learning to name them and hold them has taken practice. It is still not always easy. But it has changed the texture of my relationships in ways I notice.
4. Asking for professional help
I resisted therapy for a long time — partly from pride, partly because I did not think I was worth the time or money. When I eventually went, I found that being able to say things out loud to someone who understood and did not flinch changed something for me. Individual therapy, group sessions, and peer support have all played a part at different stages. Asking for help is not a sign that you are not coping; it is a sign that you are taking the work seriously.
Shifting Your Perspective
5. Working on self-forgiveness
Self-forgiveness — for the ways I survived, for the choices I made when I had no better options, for the time this has taken — has been one of the harder and more valuable things I have worked on. It did not come quickly, and I could not manufacture it on a timeline. What helped was recognising that I had done what I could with what I had at the time.
The question of whether to forgive the person who harmed me is separate, personal, and entirely mine to answer. I have known survivors who found it lifted a weight. Others have got there without going anywhere near that question at all. Neither is the right path for everyone.
6. Noticing what is good
I started keeping a short list of things I was grateful for — not to force positivity, but to give my attention something to grip onto other than the past. Some days the list was very small: the fact that it was quiet, or that I had eaten a proper meal. Over time I noticed the practice was shifting something, not dramatically, but consistently.
7. Staying curious
Reading has been important to me throughout this — not always about trauma, often just about things that interest me. I have found that keeping my mind engaged with ideas and new information gives me a sense of moving forward, even on days when emotionally I feel stuck. Courses, workshops, and conversations with people who know things I do not have all played a part.
8. Learning to say what I need
Learning to say what I need clearly — without apologising for having needs in the first place — has been a long process. I used to either stay silent or, when I did speak, couch everything in so many qualifications that the message got lost. Practising this has meant learning to be honest about what works for me and what does not, even when it feels uncomfortable.
Connecting and Creating
9. Being deliberate about relationships
I have become more deliberate about who I spend time with. After years of accepting whatever relationships came my way — partly because I did not believe I could expect better — I started to notice the difference between the people who left me feeling steadier and those who left me feeling worse. Building connections with people who are honest, caring, and respectful has made a real difference to how I feel day to day.
10. Finding a creative outlet
I have found that creative work — for me it is writing, though for others it might be painting, music, or something else entirely — gives experiences somewhere to go. The things I could not say directly I have sometimes been able to work through in a piece of writing. It is not therapy, and it is not a substitute for it. But it has been its own kind of process.
11. Giving something back
At some point in my recovery I began to feel I wanted to do something with what I had been through — not because I felt obliged to, but because I had things that might be useful to others. Being part of advocacy work and having conversations with people going through similar experiences has given me a sense of purpose that little else has matched.
12. Sitting with the present moment
I came to mindfulness and meditation reluctantly — both felt like things other people did, not me. What I found was that even brief, imperfect attempts at being present rather than running from the moment made a difference to my anxiety levels. I am not consistent with it. But when I do it, it helps.
Building Your Future
13. Building the capacity to keep going
Resilience, for me, is not about becoming unaffected by hard things. It is about building a set of responses — people I can call, things I can do, ways I can think — that help me move through difficult periods without falling completely. This has come gradually, through experience and through trial and error.
14. Marking progress
I have had to learn to notice progress, because my default has always been to focus on how far I still have to go. Marking milestones — even quietly, even just by acknowledging to myself that something feels different than it did — has been more useful than I expected. Progress in this work is often invisible until you look back.
15. Thinking about what I actually want
For a long time I could not think much past the immediate present — the past was too large and the future felt too uncertain. Slowly I have started to think about what I actually want from my life: not in a grand sense, but specifically. What would I like to do more of? What does a good week look like? Having some sense of where I am heading gives me something to move toward.
16. Making room for change
Change used to frighten me — even positive change, because it felt destabilising. What I have learned is that staying still is not the same as staying safe, and that the ability to move with change, even when it is uncomfortable, has been important to my recovery. I am more open to new possibilities now than I was, and that in itself feels like something.
The work of healing after childhood abuse is deeply personal and moves at its own pace. The sixteen things above are not a formula and they do not guarantee any particular outcome. Some will be more useful than others. Some may not be right for where you are now. But starting somewhere, and building slowly, is its own kind of progress.
