When Leaving Does Not End the Abuse: Trauma, Neurodiversity and the Cost of Silence
One of the most dangerous misconceptions about domestic abuse is that leaving ends the risk.
For many victims, leaving is not the end of the abuse. It is the beginning of a different form of it.
The physical proximity may stop. The home may change. Legal processes may begin. Police may become involved. But control can continue through other routes: money, debt, data, children, reputation, paperwork, systems, silence, delay and disbelief.
That is why post-separation abuse must be understood properly.
The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 recognises that abuse is not limited to physical harm. It includes economic abuse, controlling or coercive behaviour, emotional abuse and psychological abuse where people are personally connected. Economic abuse can include behaviour that affects a person’s ability to acquire, use or maintain money, property, goods or services.
That matters because victims have been saying this for years.
Abuse can look like a threat. It can also look like a debt. A message. A form. A password alert. A contact detail used without consent. A system that expects the victim to prove, again, why they are concerned.
The impact is not “just admin”. It is safety. It is housing. It is credit. It is parenting. It is employment. It is sleep. It is the constant mental load of checking whether something new is innocent, mistaken, malicious or dangerous.
Many victims do not stay silent because they have nothing to say.
They stay silent because speaking previously resulted in disbelief, minimisation, retraumatisation, procedural exhaustion, or fear that their trauma responses will be used against them.
The question is not always:
“Why didn’t they report?”
Sometimes it is:
“What happened when they did?”
Victim blaming does not always arrive as open hostility. Sometimes it comes through tone, delay, minimisation, poor recording, disbelief, or a failure to join the dots. The victim is left feeling they must present perfectly to be believed: calm enough to be credible, detailed enough to be taken seriously, but not so detailed that they are labelled obsessive.
For neurodivergent victims, this can become even harder.
ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, trauma responses and PTSD can affect processing, recall, communication, emotional regulation and the ability to engage with authority under stress.
Neurodivergent communication styles can be misread within safeguarding and criminal justice settings.
Information dumping may be interpreted as inconsistency. Precision may be labelled fixation. A need for certainty may be mistaken for challenge. Written communication needs may be misunderstood as avoidance.
Without trauma-informed and neurodiversity-informed practice, reasonable adjustments risk being treated as behavioural concerns rather than accessibility needs.
That distinction matters.
A trauma response is not a credibility flaw. A need for written records is not non-cooperation. Detailed documentation is not obsession. Hypervigilance is not hysteria.
Across healthcare, safeguarding and policing, trauma-informed practice is not simply about kindness. It is about safety, accessibility, accurate assessment and reducing avoidable harm.
When professionals misunderstand trauma or neurodivergence, the consequences are not theoretical. They affect credibility assessments, safeguarding responses, engagement, trust and outcomes.
The Victims’ Code requires victims to be treated with respect, dignity, sensitivity, compassion and courtesy. The Equality Act 2010 requires reasonable adjustments where a person is disabled. The College of Policing recognises the importance of risk assessment, safeguarding and victim-focused practice in domestic abuse.
These standards matter most when a victim is distressed, neurodivergent, traumatised or frightened of not being believed.
There is a particular harm when PTSD caused or worsened by abuse, reporting, or system involvement is then treated as a reason to doubt the victim.
That is how people become silent.
Not because nothing happened.
But because speaking up has already cost too much.
Silence is dangerous. It allows patterns to continue unchecked. It leaves victims managing risk alone. It protects poor practice, whether by individuals or institutions. It teaches survivors that the safest thing to do is say nothing, document nothing, challenge nothing.
That cannot be the standard.
Victims should be able to report concerns without being punished for the effects of what they have survived. They should be able to ask for reasonable adjustments without being treated as difficult. They should be able to request email communication, accurate records and trauma-informed handling without that being reframed as unreasonable.
Leaving takes courage.
Reporting takes courage.
Continuing to speak when systems have failed to listen takes something beyond courage. It takes the refusal to let fear become policy.
Post-separation abuse is real. Economic abuse is real. Neurodivergent victims deserve to be understood. PTSD should never be weaponised against the person living with it.
Leaving should not mean carrying lifelong responsibility for proving risk alone.
Trauma should not become evidence against the person carrying it.
Neurodivergence should not reduce access to protection.
And no victim should ever be made to believe that silence is safer than seeking help.
The events that unfolded were directly linked to the abuse my children lived through. I will not expand on those details publicly because some things belong to them, not the internet. Their story is not mine to expose. My role is to protect it, even while telling the truth about what trauma leaves behind.
Friday also marked the anniversary of my ex’s arrest. For a short time, I believed that moment meant safety had finally arrived. The reality that followed was very different. What came afterwards exposed my children and family to risks I never thought possible, not only through one individual, but through systems and institutions that were supposed to protect us.
This weekend was not only about an anniversary.
It was about what resurfaced because of it.
Trauma does not disappear because time passes. It shows up in behaviours, emotions, reactions, fear, anger and overwhelm. Especially in children.
And when it does, the hardest reality is not just managing the moment. It is knowing that, when everything falls apart, me and the kids only truly have me.
There is no reliable safety net arriving. Not in the way people imagine. Not consistently. Not when the damage has already been done and the consequences are still living inside my children.
That is why I went to the rocks.
Not because I had spare time. Not because it was scenic. Because my body knew I needed to reset before I broke under the weight of it.
People often think trauma lives in memory alone. It does not.
The body remembers what the mind tries to forget.
Certain dates pull you backwards. Certain places do too. Sometimes it arrives without warning, tightness in your chest, pressure in your throat, a sudden need to move, drive, breathe, or escape. For years, I did not understand why I instinctively sought out open spaces, music, nature, long drives or silence.
Now I do.
This morning, I drove the children to school and then headed to the rocks, the same place I used to go after leaving. I remember the first few times I went there. I cried most of the drive. At the time, I did not understand why being there mattered so much.
Looking back, I can see that my body was searching for regulation before my mind had fully processed what had happened.
People can dismiss walking, music, fresh air, the sea, nature, or grounding techniques as “airy-fairy”. They are not. The nervous system carries trauma. It also recognises safety, rhythm, space and movement before we always have the words for why they help.
Trauma changes the way you live. I have certain clothes I wear because they make me feel safer. Certain items I keep with me. Certain routines, places and songs that act as anchors. They may look insignificant to anyone else, but to a traumatised nervous system, they are reminders that I have survived before and can survive again.
Today I walked to the top, somewhere I had not climbed since carrying my then three-year-old on my back with the dog beside me.
It was almost comical at times. I avoided the proper path and ended up climbing through brambles instead. At one point, I was practically on my hands and knees dragging myself up the final stretch just to reach the spot I needed to get to.
And the dog never left my side.
She kept stopping and looking back to check where I was. No formal training. No commands. Just instinctively staying close while I crawled through mud, brambles and exhaustion towards somewhere my body had decided mattered.
When I finally got there, I sat.
Headphones on. Music playing. Breathing.
For the first time in a while, everything went quiet.
Walking back down, I did not want to leave. I circled for a while, climbed back through the brambles again, and delayed going home because something about being there made me feel human again.
Maybe that is what healing sometimes is.
Not fixing everything.
Not pretending it never happened.
Just finding a moment where your nervous system stops fighting long enough to let you breathe.
There is a version of me that existed before all of this, and I know now I will never fully be that person again. For a long time, that grief consumed me. I thought being broken meant I had lost myself forever.
But being broken also gave me understanding.
It changed the way I see pain in other people. It taught me to recognise what fear, exhaustion and trauma can look like beneath behaviour. It changed the way I advocate, the way I work, the way I parent, and the way I see injustice.
When you have lived through institutional failure, coercive control and fear, you begin to understand how many people are silently carrying things nobody else can see.
I have spent much of my life giving other people what I never had myself, support, compassion, protection and reassurance. Somewhere along the way, I forgot that self-care is not selfish.
It is necessary.
Because school runs still happen. GCSEs still happen. Parenting still happens. Life still continues.
Today, my 15-year-old came home after his first GCSE exam.
I asked him how it went.
He shrugged and said he did not even understand the question.
And I just told him, “You’re fine, as long as you tried your best.”
Because honestly, after everything he went through last year, I did not know whether he would emotionally make it to this point. Trauma comes out in children in ways people often fail to recognise. Attendance can be resilience. Showing up can be courage. Sitting an exam can be survival.
So I am proud of him.
Not because of grades.
Not because of results.
Because he showed up.
Because despite everything, he walked through those school gates and sat that exam.
Sometimes healing looks like climbing through brambles to sit on the rocks with your headphones on because your body needs reminding that you survived.
Sometimes resilience looks like a child walking into a GCSE exam after a year that nearly broke him.
And sometimes the strongest thing a person can do is keep showing up for their children, while finally learning to show up for themselves too.
Even when healing means accepting that the people and systems you believed would stand beside you were never really there.
It began at a kitchen table, in the middle of a life that felt too dark, too loud, and too fractured for easy answers. It began in conversations with my children, in moments when I needed words that did not seem to exist anywhere else. Words honest enough for pain, but gentle enough to carry hope.
I am a Specialist Nurse Practitioner with postgraduate study in the psychology and neuroscience of mental health. I know the evidence. I know the therapies. I know the clinical frameworks that support healing. But the truth is this: while I was still living through sustained trauma, none of that knowledge could fully reach me.
That is not because those therapies do not work. They do. I believe in them, and I recommend them with confidence. But when the body is still trapped in survival, healing does not always begin with structured processing. Sometimes it begins somewhere quieter. Somewhere instinctive. Somewhere outside language.
For me, one of those places was a lay-by.
For over a year, I returned to the same place again and again. Not because it fixed anything. Not because it was magical. But because it gave me a pocket of stillness when everything else felt unbearable. It gave my body a chance to breathe.
At the time, I did not know the language of grounding, sensory regulation, trauma responses, or nervous system overload. I only knew that something about that space helped me stay here.
Sometimes I slept there. Many times, my little girl slept there with me. We would look up at the stars. She grew up believing that when someone leaves, they become a star. It was her way of holding loss. In time, it became mine too.
That lay-by held more than silence. It held grief, fear, exhaustion, and the desperate effort of trying to stay functional in public while quietly unravelling in private. I have stood in that field in rain, ice, and darkness. I have sat in the grass just to feel something real beneath me. I have gone there in uniform, in the middle of the night, trying to regulate myself enough to return to a life that did not feel safe.
At the time, nobody knew.
It was only later, after more study, training, and reflection, that I understood what I had already been doing. I had been grounding myself. I had been using nature as regulation. I had been using the cold air, the silence, the openness of the sky, and the feel of the earth beneath me to stabilise a body that had been pushed too far for too long.
The body often finds ways to survive before the mind has language for what it is doing.
That truth sits at the heart of Not Broken.
This is not a book built on platitudes or polished clichés. It is not about pretending pain becomes beautiful. It is not about bypassing trauma with positivity. It is about survival, grief, family upheaval, and the slow process of finding words for experiences that once lived only in the body.
Not Broken began as a therapeutic story for children — a way of speaking gently into the confusion trauma leaves behind. Over time, it became something wider: a collection of stories and reflective tools for those trying to make sense of darkness without being consumed by it.
The title itself carries the message I needed most.
The stars do not disappear during the day. They are always there. You just cannot see them until it is dark enough.
That is not a slogan. It is not false comfort. It is the simplest truth I know about recovery. In the darkest periods of life, there are often strengths, capacities, and forms of hope that remain hidden until we need them most.
Almost two years later, I drove that same road again.
This time, I was not driving in panic. I was not bracing for impact. I was not trying to outrun a life that felt unsafe. The place had not changed, but I had. My body no longer responded as if I were still trapped in the same emergency.
That is what recovery can look like.
Not dramatic. Not neat. Not a perfect before-and-after. Just a quiet physiological shift. The road is still the road. The memories are still the memories. But your body no longer believes it is still living there.
That night, all three of my children got out of the car and stood beneath the stars. Quietly. Gently. With the kind of understanding that does not need much explanation. They knew why that place mattered. They had lived through enough to understand.
And that is why this book exists.
It exists for the people who are functioning outwardly while falling apart inwardly. It exists for those who feel frustrated that healing has not yet “worked,” when the truth may be that they are still in survival mode. It exists for anyone who needs language that is compassionate, grounded, and real.
I chose to publish this book under my own name for a reason. I am a nurse, a mother, and a survivor. Trauma does not discriminate. It reaches professionals, carers, clinicians, parents, and people who look as though they are coping from the outside. I believe honesty matters. Not for performance. Not for sympathy. But because silence protects stigma, and truth dismantles it.
Not Broken is not the story of everything that happened to me. It is the story of what I built from it.
If something brought you here, then perhaps this book is meant for you. If you are searching for words, for comfort, for understanding, or simply for proof that survival is possible, this book was written with that in mind.
The stars are already there. Sometimes we just need help finding them.
NAAVoices was not created from certainty, but from lived experience and professional insight. As I migrate earlier work from the original platform, this post has been reviewed and approved for transfer. It remains true to its original context, with only minor clarity edits where needed. Some moments do not require rewriting to remain honest.
27 February 2025
It is only when I look back over the past six months that I realise just how different our reality could have been without acceptance, love, and a willingness to put a child’s needs first.
This post is rooted in reflection, personal growth, and the quiet clarity that sometimes only comes with time. Looking back has brought me a little peace. It has also helped me join the dots.
Although I remember many of the moments that led to my child identifying as female from such a young age, I sometimes wish I had written more down. But in another sense, perhaps what mattered most was not documenting every detail, but allowing freedom, expression, and acceptance to lead the way. That is what allowed her to shine.
I have kept the heart of this post true to how it was originally written. Since then, those around us have worked hard to use the correct pronouns, and we continue to do our best to support her in every way we can. I wrote the original draft four months before my four-year-old was able to fully express the depth of how she felt. It has been a journey. It has not been perfect. At times, I have wondered whether I should have noticed sooner.
To my beautiful little one — you are the brightest star I have ever seen, now that you are free to be yourself.
Draft originally written on 10 August 2024
The post I was too scared of judgement to share
I have a four-year-old who, from quite early on, loved playing with dolls and adored Princess Poppy, just like her older brother once did. What began with small interests gradually became more consistent. It turned into a Frozen dress, and for 18 months she asked for one.
Growing up, there were three of us. I am the middle child, with an older sister and a younger sibling who does not use pronouns. We refer to them as “auncle”.
I have always believed that people should be free to be themselves. I have always recognised that stereotypes around gender, sexuality, and social roles can be restrictive, harmful, and deeply unfair.
As a parent, I have always tried to raise my children with the belief that everyone is equal, that no one is “better” than anyone else, and that kindness costs nothing.
I have never believed boys should only like blue, girls should only like pink, or that children should be boxed into certain toys, clothes, or interests.
That had already been clear with my older son, who once loved Princess Poppy costumes, dance classes, and hairdressing toys.
Although my ex-husband initially found some of it unusual, he never allowed his own views to shape or limit our son. That little boy is now 12 years old, over 5 foot 7, and would be mortified if he knew I had written this about him.
Now he is into rugby, the gym, running, and Xbox. I am incredibly proud of him for being exactly who he is, regardless of anyone’s expectations about gender or interests. He is funny, compassionate, and accepting of everyone.
This weekend, the older two were with their dad, and I took my youngest to a toy sale. Like most four-year-olds, she was full of excitement, pointing at everything she liked. Since she had been allowed to choose her own toys more freely, the house had become increasingly sparkly and pink. We had already bought a Barbie campervan and some Barbies, and that had not bothered me at all.
But when she asked for the Barbie Dreamhouse, I hesitated.
That hesitation was not about her. It was about what had been done to me.
What I realised in that moment was that four years in a toxic relationship had not only affected my identity, but had also changed the way I saw myself as a parent. It had created a version of me I did not recognise — one shaped by anxiety, fear, and the constant pressure of anticipating judgement.
For a split second, I questioned my own instincts. Was it okay to buy it? What would people think?
That was not who I truly was. But the fact those thoughts appeared at all told me just how much damage had been done.
Why should it be wrong for a four-year-old to want a doll’s house?
The man running the stall was with his daughter, whose toys were all pink and glittery. He seemed to notice my discomfort, though it had nothing to do with him or his stock. I had simply frozen.
At that point, I was off work. I had finally admitted I needed help for what I had been through and was trying to learn how to live with PTSD.
I had never had an issue with dolls, dresses, babies, or Frozen. But over time, I had been made to feel that these things were wrong if they did not fit someone else’s beliefs.
That same day, the gentleman at the stall spoke openly about how, when he was younger, he used to dress as a girl and how his family had questioned what that meant. It struck me deeply.
I felt ashamed that I had allowed fear to creep into something that should have been simple.
Just two weeks earlier, I had gone to a solicitor’s office to collect a parcel for my child. She wanted to wear her Elsa dress. Instead of simply letting her, I found myself trying to persuade her to wear “regular” clothes because I was frightened it would somehow be reported back to my ex.
I was scared that allowing her to wear a dress would lead to more accusations, more scrutiny, more control.
And that is what it always came back to: control.
My ex had controlled my life for so long that even after I had left, I still panicked about what he might say, what he might do, and whether I would somehow be punished for allowing my child to be herself.
I had spent so long living under someone else’s judgment that I had started to question my own values.
For four years, I felt as though I had lived with two versions of myself. One was the woman constantly bracing for threats, fear, and fallout. The other was the version of me that still existed at work — the one who was grounded, compassionate, professional, and clear on what was right.
Looking back now, I know that version was the real me all along.
The fear was never my identity. It was the effect of abuse.
When a patient walks through my door, I do not see labels first. I do not assess someone’s worth based on gender, identity, relationship status, work, or appearance. Every person is entitled to dignity, safety, and respect. Nobody has the right to strip that away.
That day, my child and I left the sale with the Barbie Dreamhouse and the biggest smile I had seen in a very long time.
On the way home, I said, “Yes, you are my beautiful little boy.”
And she replied, “No mummy, I’m your beautiful little girl.”
This time, I did not correct her. I did not shut it down. I did not try to control what she was expressing.
Instead, I listened.
I had fought so hard to get control out of my own life. She deserved the same freedom — the freedom to tell me who she was, without fear.
So I said, “Yes, you are my beautiful little girl, if that is what you want to be.”
At the time, neither of us fully understood what that moment would come to mean. We did not yet know that this was more than role-play. There were many moments before and after it, many small signs and snippets that only make sense now when I look back.
Six months later, I had what felt like a completely different child — happier, more carefree, and more confident. She had begun wearing girls’ clothes to school and had been met with wonderful support from family and friends.
We are still finding our way. We are still learning. We are still navigating this path together.
But she is loved for who she is. She is wanted. She is accepted.
And perhaps most importantly of all, she is now confident enough to correct anyone — including me — when we get her pronouns wrong.
Content note: This piece discusses suicidal ideation and trauma. If you’re struggling, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Resources are at the end.
For 34 years, I lived with ADHD, and never once needed mental health services.
I’d worked through the front line during COVID, wards, diabetes clinics, and mental health services. Thirty-hour weeks, raising three children, advocacy work on the side, a mortgage, a routine that worked. No medication. No therapy. No “management plans.”
I exhibited all the familiar traits, including constant energy, rapid processing, big emotions, and the usual executive-function challenges, but I’d built systems that worked for me. Hyperfocus helped me manage multiple critically unwell patients in acute medicine, keep the children organised, and continually take in new information while noticing details others missed. My ability to process information quickly meant I performed at my best in emergencies, where a calmness always settled over me, and my emotional intensity helped patients feel genuinely seen. ADHD wasn’t a weakness; it was often the thing that set me apart.
Then trauma arrived, and everything changed.
It didn’t just add stress. It felt like my brain had been rewired overnight. The mechanisms that sustained me for decades suddenly stopped working, and I had no idea why.
The Day My Superpower Became My Kryptonite
My brain had always processed quickly, scanned constantly, thrived on stimulation. But introduce PTSD into that system, and it accelerated into something I didn’t recognise.
My productive energy turned into agitation, and I couldn’t settle. My hyperfocus became locked onto legal papers and perceived threats, rather than the work I loved. My rapid thinking spiralled into intrusive loops I couldn’t escape. The emotional depth that made me a good nurse now overwhelmed me.
I wasn’t overreacting. My brain was in neurological overload, and I felt utterly destabilised by it.
When Everything I Knew Stopped Working
I’d built a toolkit over 34 years, honing my structure, movement, and ability to thrive in high-pressure environments, where empathy guided me. It had served me well.
Trauma dismantled all of it.
Leaving the house felt unsafe. My routines collapsed under flashbacks that came from nowhere. My hyperfocus became a prison, locking me onto court documents and risk assessments. The empathy that once guided me now overwhelmed my nervous system, leaving me unable to function.
I kept thinking: Why can’t I just cope like I always have?
But this wasn’t about resilience. My brain was prioritising survival at any cost. And my three children were watching me disappear in real time. They didn’t understand why. How could they, when the system couldn’t either?
They watched me lose the ability to live, to take them out, to walk into a shop, to function, even to eat without vomiting. They slowly had to learn what PTSD meant and why I was no longer the person I once was. They saw me retreat, pull down walls, teach myself DIY, and avoid driving the routes we used to sing along. They learned why I needed to stop suddenly, why certain songs grounded me while others didn’t, why I would drop to my knees to stop myself from fainting, why I constantly looked over my shoulder, and why I withdrew from family and friends. I needed the house, them, and work; anything more overwhelmed me.
The worry they tried to hide, the questions they didn’t know how to ask, I saw all of it, and I felt powerless to stop what they were witnessing.
When My Neurodiversity Became a Weapon
The psychological fallout wasn’t the only battle to be fought. The systems around me made everything worse.
In family court, my ADHD, the same neurotype I’d successfully lived with for 34 years, was suddenly reframed as evidence that I was “violent and aggressive because she has ADHD.”
That allegation came from someone with a lengthy criminal history. Yet his behaviour was never questioned. Never scrutinised.
I wasn’t given the chance to respond. My neurodiversity became their weapon. His history became invisible.
At the same time, I lost four stone in seven weeks. I was vomiting constantly, barely eating, and my body was in physiological shock. I could see myself disappearing. Clothes hanging off me. The faces of my children when they looked at me, the worry they tried to hide, the questions they didn’t know how to ask. But instead of recognising trauma, I was told, “It’s mediation stress.”
I had to prove otherwise, while being retraumatised in real time.
ADHD didn’t harm me; it never had in 34 years, and it wasn’t about to start now. What harmed me was bias, ignorance, and procedural failures that couldn’t tell the difference between a neurotype and a threat.
And the emotional cost was devastating.
Watching DARVO Play Out in Real Time
I finally found a name for what I was experiencing: DARVO — Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.
He denied. He attacked my credibility. He recast himself as the victim — and me as the risk.
And instead of identifying the pattern, the agencies reinforced it. I watched it happen in real time — and felt utterly powerless to stop it.
Over and over, I was told: “Focus on your mental health.”
But at that stage, I didn’t have a mental health history. I had ADHD — and a system that couldn’t tell the difference between neurodiversity and pathology.
The cruel irony? It was the retraumatisation — the system’s response to me — that created the PTSD I now live with.
That distinction matters to me.
Shutdown: When Survival Looks Like Withdrawal
When the overload became too much, my life narrowed in ways I’d never experienced.
Messages went unread. Noise became physically intolerable. Engaging with anyone felt unsafe.
From the outside, I know it looked like I was withdrawing. Avoiding. Giving up.
But inside, it felt like my brain had thrown a circuit breaker to prevent complete collapse. I wasn’t checking out, I was trying to survive.
I had to learn to recognise the early signals, because by the time I hit shutdown, it was too late: my thoughts became too loud, sensory overload creeping in, and I avoided my phone and people, experiencing irritability that felt foreign to me, fatigue, and headaches, along with a desperate urge to disappear and decompress.
I learned: respond early, or collapse entirely.
This wasn’t a weakness. It was my brain trying to protect itself.
The Day I Almost Didn’t Survive
April 17th, 2024.
That’s the day my three children almost lost me.
I had planned it in silence, convinced that my pain was too much to share, that my children deserved better than a mother who couldn’t hold herself together under the weight of a system that kept failing us. No one knew. No one saw the signs because I’d become an expert at hiding them. I gave away everything of value, belongings, keepsakes, pieces of myself that meant something. I disguised it as decluttering, but it was actually a form of generosity. No one questioned it because I made it look intentional.
What pulled me back wasn’t strength or sudden clarity. It was someone telling me that in their 38‑year career, they had never met anyone who had done what I had to protect my children, even in the circumstances I was facing. Hearing that forced me to see the reality of what I’d already survived. I booked an urgent GP appointment that day and asked for help. For a few months, I found a small space to begin processing the abuse.
My youngest, an old soul even before turning four, seemed to sense everything. At the strangest moments, when the outside world was being shielded, and my mind felt tortured, she would say something that reminded me why I had fought so hard to keep them safe.
I used to believe that suicide was selfish, and I still understand why people feel that way when they’re the ones left behind. But living inside a mind with no respite, in a world that no longer makes sense, carrying pain no one else can see, can push a person to a place where they feel they can’t survive anymore.
That level of mental pain affects every part of the body and feels endless. People in that state don’t need judgment.
They need reminders of who they are, what they’ve survived, and that they matter. And we all need to check in on the friends who suddenly withdraw, give away belongings, or seem “lighter” in a way that doesn’t match their reality.
I’ve never written about this in such detail before. For a long time, I couldn’t even think about it. I had been threatened with suicide as a form of control for so many years, but I’m not that person anymore. Something shifted. I lost the fear that had ruled me. I let go of a phobia I’d carried for more than twenty years. I became a different person.
When you’re facing someone who has harmed you and your children, and the people meant to protect you don’t, it demands a strength you never knew you had.
I realised that my silence and everything I had been forced to endure could become my children’s future if I didn’t break the cycle.
The system’s failure to protect me couldn’t become my failure to protect them from further harm or from the grief that would follow.
After that, survival became minute‑by‑minute. Getting out of bed. Making breakfast for three children who needed me.
Going to work was the only thing that gave me some living, because it was there that I didn’t have to be the victim, tortured by the life she was being forced to live; I could be the nurse protecting others from feeling the pain.
So I was putting one foot in front of the other, not because I felt strong, but because I had passed the point of survival; I was merely existing.
My children lost part of their mum over the past two years.
But things are better now. Not perfect, I still have hard days, days when the circuit breaker threatens to flip, but I have language for it now. I have strategies that work for an injured brain, not just a neurodivergent one. And my children are getting a mum back who understands that vulnerability isn’t weakness, that asking for help is a sign of strength, and that healing is possible.
They got a different version of me: a stronger one.
Silence almost cost me everything. It nearly took me from my children. I thank the stars not through death, but through a system that couldn’t see the injury for what it was, and through my belief that I had to carry it alone.
Rebuilding Function From Scratch
Living with this meant redesigning everything:
Lower sensory environments. Adjusting to being triggered, Clear boundaries. Simplified routines I could actually maintain. Structured pauses before I hit the breaking point. Learning trauma-informed self-regulation. Knowing when to escalate to support.
It’s disciplined. Pragmatic. Protective.
And it’s kept me functioning, for myself, and for my three children who needed me to survive.
The Moment Everything Shifted
For a long time, I genuinely feared admitting I was suffering to close my eyes at night, that the reliving and symptoms had become so severe, the problem was me. My worry was that I would be viewed differently if others knew I had ptsd, whether it was friends, family, or my colleagues.
Then I attended a lecture on neuroimaging.
They showed scans side-by-side, PTSD compared to traumatic brain injury. Disrupted pathways. Altered regulation systems. Structural stress patterns.
What I’d been experiencing wasn’t weakness. It wasn’t instability. It was a neurological injury.
And in that moment, something clicked: This isn’t my fault. My brain is functioning exactly as a brain with an injury would.
I felt anger. Relief. Grief for the years I’d spent apologising. But mostly — validation.
Understanding the neuroscience gave me language. It gave me dignity. It gave me the confidence to return to work.
The Conversation That Changed Everything
Returning to work after a two-month absence, the longest of my career, was awful. My desk, once a safe space, now held the imprint of police visits and ongoing abuse. Very few people knew what I’d been living through, and I walked back into the surgery carrying all of it, unseen.
I wasn’t meant to be seeing patients that day, but in reception I bumped into one of my regulars trying to book an urgent appointment. I offered to see them the next day.
That night, I spiralled. I worried that everything I’d endured had taken something vital from me. If every system meant to protect my children and me had failed, would it have changed me? Had it damaged the part of me that cared for others? I stayed up late with my neuroscience module, printing brain-scan images and staring at the affected areas, desperate to know whether my compassion, my ability to connect, was still intact.
The next day proved it was.
The patient had been struggling with her Alzheimer’s diagnosis, so I sat with her and her family and explained the neuroscience behind it. I showed them the scans, talked through what was happening in her brain, and what it meant for her memory and future. Her daughter and son, whom I knew well, watched closely. She knew I wasn’t just teaching; I was working something out inside myself.
Then something shifted.
I asked her, with her cardiology background, to talk me through how she’d treat a heart attack. She explained the protocols, interventions, monitoring, and rehabilitation. And then I asked: Why is the brain any different from the heart?
She looked at me and said, “There isn’t one.”
We talked about illness, prevention, acceptance, and the parallels between the organs. And it hit me: We would never expect a heart to heal solely through willpower. We shouldn’t expect a brain to, either. A heart attack needs intervention, monitoring, and rehabilitation. A brain injury, PTSD, deserves the same.
That conversation brought me back. Not just to work, but to myself.
After the appointment, they came back in with gifts, small, thoughtful things they’d chosen with such care. One of them was from a learning‑disability charity, something so specific and meaningful that it stopped me in my tracks.
I hadn’t expected anything; I certainly hadn’t expected to feel seen in that moment.
The kindness of it, the intention behind it, broke through everything I’d been carrying.
I cried, not out of sadness, but because for the first time in a long time, someone’s gesture reminded me that what I do still matters, and that I hadn’t lost the part of me that connects with people.
Why I Refuse to Be Ashamed of Needing Help
I functioned independently for 34 years, and I still needed mental health support after trauma.
That’s not a weakness. That’s an injury that requires treatment.
We wouldn’t tell someone with spinal trauma to “push through.” We wouldn’t tell someone recovering from a heart attack to just “focus on staying positive.”
Brains deserve the same standard.
Where the System Failed Me
Police guidance on supporting neurodivergent victims exists. Across my entire case, one officer seemed aware of it, and that officer’s understanding stood in stark contrast to every other interaction I had. They inquired about my processing style and sensory needs. They didn’t treat my ADHD as evidence; they treated it as context.
One person who recognised neurodivergence for what it actually is.
That’s not a training gap. That’s a safeguarding failure.
My ADHD didn’t cause the harm I experienced. The stigma around it did.
My neurodiversity strengthened my analytical thinking. It accelerated my learning. It heightened my risk awareness. It improved my advocacy.
I thrived with ADHD for 34 years.
The last two years, I’ve had to survive while living with PTSD created by repeated retraumatisation.
ADHD shaped how I process the world. Systemic failures shaped how the world treated me.
Both truths matter.
What I Know Now
Neurodiversity is not pathology. It’s not evidence of risk. And it should never be weaponised in courtrooms or policing.
The harm I experienced wasn’t created by ADHD. It was created by bias, DARVO, and institutional failure to understand neurodivergence.
Yet despite everything, my neurodiversity remains my strength.
It fuels my learning. It drives my purpose. It keeps me engaged, analytical, and compassionate.
I thrived with ADHD for 34 years. For over two years, I’ve lived alongside PTSD, and I’m rebuilding.
Both realities coexist. Neither excuses abuse. And neither should ever be used as a weapon against survivors.
Now I see the pain in others that I felt then, in the families I work with through NAAVoices, in the survivor stories that mirror my own. I recognise it immediately. And I refuse to let them drown in silence the way I nearly did.
What I’d Tell Myself Two Years Ago
If I could go back to before April 17th, 2024, I’d tell myself: This will break you open, but it won’t break you.
You’ll lose six stone, teeth from the stress-induced vomiting. Your hair will fall out. You’ll lose your sense of safety. You’ll temporarily lose yourself. Your children will watch you disappear, and that will be the hardest part to forgive yourself for.
But your ADHD isn’t the problem. The system’s response to it is.
And you’ll survive this, not despite your neurodiversity, but in many ways, because of it.
Your brain isn’t broken. It’s injured. And just like that, a heart you know how to treat can heal.
Your three children will get more of you back. Not the same version, but a stronger one. Someone who spent 34 years believing she understood mental health, only to realise she knew nothing until she survived PTSD and learned how to live openly with a mental health condition. Someone who now knows that honesty isn’t weakness; it’s strength, especially in a world where stigma still exists.
Through lived experience, I see the pain in others’ eyes, the pain no one recognised in mine. And because of that, I ask the questions. I advocate. I remind people that their lives matter, because they do. I know now that the brain deserves the same care, compassion, and rehabilitation as any other organ.
I became someone who survived.
For 34 years, I never needed support for my mental health. For the past two years, I’ve learned to live with PTSD. My therapy came through training, courses, and a deep need to understand my own brain. Everyone heals differently, and for me, giving back to others was the beginning of my healing journey, and there’s no shame in that. My brain, like any other organ, deserved treatment when it was injured. And now, slowly, with the right support, it’s healing.
If you’re in crisis:
Samaritans: 116 123 (UK) – Available 24/7
Crisis text line: Text SHOUT to 85258
NHS 111 (select mental health option)
For neurodivergent survivors: Visit NAAVoices.com for trauma-informed, evidence-based resources created by and for families navigating complex systems.
I’ve just completed the Narcissistic Abuse Recovery training, and it was tougher than expected.
I began to deepen my understanding of supporting others through this. Facing how deeply it resonated with my own experiences required absolute honesty, humility, and resilience.
This process reinforced a critical point: recovery isn’t theoretical. It’s lived, layered, and often confronting, but it’s also where meaningful transformation happens.
If you’re navigating this kind of healing, you’re not “behind.” You’re doing complex work with courage and accountability. And that matters.
The Mother They Created When They Failed My Children
At 34, I lost everything.
Not my job—work remained my only safe haven, the one place that still made sense when nothing else did.
What I lost was far more fundamental.
I lost my belief that people do the right thing.
I lost my trust in the world.
I lost my ability to understand how humanity functions.
Because when my children needed protection most, the world looked away.
The Breaking
My mental health collapsed for the first time in my life.
Not gradually. Not with the warning signs I could have prepared for.
It shattered, completely, devastatingly, in the face of a truth I couldn’t reconcile:
The systems designed to protect children don’t always protect children.
The people who should intervene don’t always intervene.
The world that promises safety doesn’t always deliver.
I stood face to face with the devil himself.
And nobody came.
Nobody protected my babies.
Nobody did the right thing.
And I couldn’t understand why.
How do people fail children? How do they see harm and turn away? How do institutions built for protection become instruments of further trauma?
I still don’t have those answers.
I’m not sure I ever will.
The Underestimation
What made it worse?
They treated me like I knew nothing.
Just another hysterical mother. Just another woman overreacting. Just another parent who didn’t understand “the process.”
I was dismissed. Patronised. Underestimated at every turn.
As if loving my children made me irrational. As if my fear for their safety made me unreliable. As if being a mother meant I couldn’t possibly understand the systems designed to “help” us.
They were wrong.
The Vow
But my three children were still watching.
Through my traumatisation, through my confusion, through my complete loss of faith in humanity, they were watching to see what I would do next.
And in that darkness, broken and alone, I made a vow that changed everything:
I will NEVER be that woman again.
The woman who believed people would do the right thing. The woman who trusted systems to protect her children. The woman who waited for help that never came.
I will NEVER wait for the world to save my kids.
Because I learned the brutal truth: it won’t.
The Rebuilding
So I stopped waiting.
And I rebuilt myself—not as the same person, but as someone entirely new.
I became educated.
If they were going to dismiss me as ignorant, I’d make sure I knew more than they did.
I earned qualifications while my world burned around me. I studied safeguarding frameworks, legal processes, and institutional procedures. I learned every system that had failed us, inside and out.
I became independent.
If I couldn’t trust anyone else to protect my children, I’d learn to do everything myself.
I built Nurse Against Abuse — the foundation that grew into NAAVoices — rising from the ashes of institutional betrayal.I created the resources I wish had existed when I needed them. I turned my shattered faith into actionable expertise.
I became the shield the world refused to be.
The Truth About Trauma
Here’s what they don’t tell you about surviving this kind of betrayal:
The triggers still come.
There are moments when I’m transported back to that version of myself—the one who believed, who trusted, who thought the world was fundamentally good.
I still don’t understand how people fail children.
Even with all my knowledge, training, and experience, I navigate these systems. I cannot comprehend how adults look at vulnerable children and choose inaction.
I remember the woman who believed in humanity.
Sometimes I grieve her. She was softer, more hopeful, easier to be around.
But she’s gone.
And honestly? She had to be.
Because that woman couldn’t protect my children.
This version can.
The Reality No One Wants to Say Out Loud
The world is not always safe.
Not everyone chooses to do what they should.
Not everyone will protect you.
When your children are at stake, trust must be earned, never assumed.;
But YOU—you can become everything your children need.
My 5-year-old needs a mother who will never break like that again.
My 13-year-old needs a warrior who fights without hesitation or fear.
My 15-year-old needs living proof that one person will never, ever give up on them.
That’s who I became.
Not because I’m special or extraordinary.
Because I had no other choice.
The Two Paths
Losing faith in the world at 34 gives you exactly two paths:
Path One: Drown in the grief of what you lost—your innocence, your trust, your belief in human goodness.
Path Two: Rise as something you have never seen in yourself before—forged in fire, built from betrayal, unstoppable in purpose.
I chose fire.
Now I have:
Expertise earned in hell
Knowledge forged from institutional failure
Strength built on broken promises from everyone else
Three souls who will never question whether their mother will give up
Because I always will.
The Problem We Don’t Talk About
Here’s what breaks my heart:
I shouldn’t have to use this knowledge for my own children.
No mother should.
I built expertise in safeguarding failures, legal frameworks, institutional navigation, complaint procedures, and evidence documentation; not because I wanted to, but because I had to.
And I’m not alone.
Too many mothers are being dismissed as hysterical. Too many are treated like we know nothing. Too many have to become experts in systems that should protect our children, just to be heard.
Not just for me.
For every mother who’s been underestimated. For every parent told they’re overreacting. For every family that has failed because of the very systems designed to help them.
Because until those systems change, we become the experts anyway.
We have to.
The Truth About Overcoming Betrayal
You don’t overcome betrayal by learning to trust again.
You overcome it by becoming so educated, so independent, so armed with knowledge that trust becomes irrelevant.
By building integrity so solid that you answer only to yourself.
By gaining expertise so deep that you don’t need anyone’s help.
By developing determination so fierce that other people’s failures can’t touch you anymore.
When you trust your own knowledge above all else— When you become independent enough to act alone— When your expertise makes you undeniable— When they can’t dismiss you anymore because you know more than they do—
Other people’s failures stop mattering.
Their underestimation becomes irrelevant.
Their dismissal loses its power.
Because you’re no longer waiting for the world to protect your children.
You became the protection.
The Promise
The world failed my children once.
I made absolutely certain it was the last time.
And now?.
Until the systems change?
We’ll document everything. We’ll learn every framework. We’ll master every process. We’ll build resources for each other. We’ll refuse to be dismissed.
We’ll protect our children—with or without the world’s help.
The Transformation
My children will never know the naive woman I was at 34.
The one who believed people were fundamentally good. The one who trusted institutions to function as designed. The one who thought loving your children was enough to keep them safe.
They know the fight she took on and the person she became as a result.
The woman who learned that sometimes the only person you can count on is yourself, so you’d better become someone worth counting on.
The Final Truth
At 34, the world broke me.
At 36, I became unbreakable.
Not for me.
For them.
For my 5-year-old, who deserves stability. For my 13-year-old, who deserves fierce advocacy. For my 15-year-old, who deserves unwavering protection.
Always for them.
And for every mother out there who’s been underestimated, dismissed, and forced to become an expert in systems that should have protected her children from the start.
You are not hysterical. You are not overreacting. You are not alone.
And you are far more powerful than they ever gave you credit for.
If this resonates with you, please share it. Because somewhere, another mother is being told she knows nothing, and she needs to know she’s not the only one who has had to become everything.
NAAVoices was not created from certainty, but from lived experience and professional insight. As I migrate earlier work from the original platform, this post has been reviewed and approved for transfer. It remains true to its original context, with only minor clarity edits where needed. Some moments do not require rewriting to remain honest.
This post forms part of my Two Years Forward series
After a Year of Retelling: Losing the One Who Listened
After twelve months of reliving the abuse to nineteen different police officers, I lost the second one who didn’t lie to my face, send misleading emails, or cause further harm.
Jackie from Professional Standards was that officer.
She was a rare exception in a system that too often fails victims, someone who understood how harm is inflicted, how power is misused, and how easily people are broken by processes that claim to protect them.
I will always be grateful to Jackie for raising concerns and speaking up, even when the organisation around her appeared indifferent to the impact on victims.
It is heartbreaking that officers who genuinely understand coercive control, trauma, and accountability are the exception rather than the norm.
The Exhaustion of Recounting Trauma
When you are living inside trauma, isolation becomes suffocating. The emotions are relentless, the weight unmanageable. Confronting abuse is harrowing enough — but being required to retell it again and again to investigators becomes its own form of harm.
That was my reality.
I explained what had happened to my children and me to nineteen different officers in person. Nineteen retellings. Each one required reopening wounds that had never been allowed to close. It was exhausting, destabilising, and dehumanising.
Very few appeared to understand coercive control. Even fewer understood the legislation designed to protect victims and children.
Those rights were meant to protect me and my three children. If they had been applied properly, my children would have been safeguarded. Instead, protection felt like an afterthought.
Incompetence, Bias, and the Cost of Negligence
When I first sought help, I was met with a disheartening mix of incompetence and personal bias. I was given little more than signposting, while the officer who took my initial report failed to correctly record or act on the crimes I disclosed.
That failure caused further harm.
It compounded the trauma I was already carrying and set in motion a cascade of consequences that never should have occurred.
*21/12/23 – PC R + PC ***********
Competent Officer Number 1 Arrested
Each retelling felt like reopening a fresh wound. After the police caused further harm through inaction, the system turned on the one officer who had tried to repair the damage left by a colleague’s failures. I often think about him now, and wonder whether he, too, has been deeply harmed by the same system.
Finding a Haven — Then Losing It
I endured six gruelling months before finding one other officer out of nineteen I could genuinely trust.
Jackie came from an unexpected place: Professional Standards. She was investigating anonymous claims that I had been groomed; a misconduct-in-public-office inquiry. Her involvement felt like a lifeline at a time when everything else had collapsed.
She didn’t pretend to have all the answers. She listened. She cared not just about the process, but also about the impact on the children and on me. For months, she offered a fragile sense of safety.
But that refuge was never secure.
The last officer who acted on what she and others uncovered now faces serious consequences for doing his job. That reality left me afraid, not just for Jackie, but for anyone within the system who dares to speak up, particularly when power and influence sit on the other side.
I remain profoundly thankful to Jackie. Her integrity and humanity stood in stark contrast to so much of what I experienced elsewhere.
Fear, Systemic Failure, and the Fight to Be Heard
The failures I witnessed and lived through have permanently altered my understanding of safety and justice. The trust I once placed in institutions meant to protect victims has been deeply compromised.
I live with the fear that these patterns continue unchecked.
Some days I wonder whether I will ever feel safe again — in my home, the county I grew up in, or the town where my children attend school. That sense of threat does not fade easily.
And yet, I hold onto this: I met two officers who genuinely cared. Two people within a broken system who tried to do the right thing.
Sharing my story is not about revenge. It is about survival.
It is an act of defiance against silence; against the systems that rely on victims becoming so exhausted they can no longer continue.
This was never just about me. It has always been about protecting those who are lost, isolated, and vulnerable.
You Are Not Alone
Your voice matters.
Even in the darkest moments, there are people who care; people who will listen, even when institutions will not. It is okay to seek help. It is okay to trust carefully. It is okay to lean on others when the weight becomes too much.
I will always advocate for my children and for others navigating similar harm. My journey has been shaped by loss, fear, and injustice, but it also carries the possibility of healing, growth, and safety.
If you are reading this and wondering whether anyone will hear you: you are not alone.
