The hardest thing about recovering from an abusive relationship, particularly the emotionally manipulative and gaslighting kind, is that you can be doing really well and all of a sudden something hits out of the blue and it feels like all the progress is undone and you're rebuilding from scratch again. Its been 2 years of trying to recover from the emotional and physical damage. Just want to be me again, play shows and able to reclaim our confidence and sense of self. Deep breaths. Little steps

@lilyunsub The self-doubt is the kicker. Used to be called character building. I wonder about that.

@JustMe2 yeah, have always worked hard to battle that but he would purposefully undermine confidence and destroyed our reputation here in NZ by constantly pulling us down and causing intense anxiety and then telling people that we didn't want to interact with them and he was the one they needed to talk to. He would constantly compare us to people and tell us that we just needed to do x y z or be this/that/etc and thats why no one wanted to book us or support what we were doing.

@JustMe2 Its been hell trying to combat that immediate loud voice pulling us down when we put ourselves out there. Sometimes it literally grips my throat with tears and I can't breathe. But being able to recognise that its the trauma, its what he did to us, not because those things are true. We've changed our entire house, rebuilding and removing everything he poisoned, finally safe enough to actually start processing it all emotionally and move forwards. Little steps with deep breaths.