“Turn down the volume of your negative inner voice and create a nurturing inner voice to take its place.” ~Beverly Engel
After the abuse ends, people think the pain ends too. But what no one tells you is that sometimes the loudest voice isn’t the abuser’s anymore—it’s the one that settles inside you.
It whispers:
“You’re broken.”
“You’re used.”
“You don’t deserve better.”
And over time, that voice doesn’t just whisper. It becomes the rhythm of your thoughts, the lens through which you see yourself.
That’s what I mean when I say the trauma keeps talking.
Living with the Echo
“Turn down the volume of your negative inner voice and create a nurturing inner voice to take its place.” ~Beverly Engel
After the abuse ends, people think the pain ends too. But what no one tells you is that sometimes the loudest voice isn’t the abuser’s anymore—it’s the one that settles inside you.
It whispers:
“You’re broken.”
“You’re used.”
“You don’t deserve better.”
And over time, that voice doesn’t just whisper. It becomes the rhythm of your thoughts, the lens through which you see yourself.
That’s what I mean when I say the trauma keeps talking.
Living with the Echo
In the months after my assault, I didn’t have words for what I was feeling. I just knew that every choice I made seemed to come from a place of damage.
I found myself in situations that felt eerily familiar—letting people use me, letting hands roam without question. I wasn’t saying “yes” because I wanted to; I was saying it because a voice inside had already decided I wasn’t worth more.
And to anyone watching from the outside, it might have looked like I was reckless. But inside, I was just tired. Tired of fighting a voice that seemed louder than mine.
Why We Stay Stuck
Trauma has this way of rewriting the script in our heads.
It convinces us that we’re not the same person anymore, that we’re tainted beyond repair. And because we believe that, we keep choosing situations that prove the voice right.
It’s not that we want to keep hurting ourselves. It’s that the part of us that knows we deserve better gets buried under layers of pain and self-blame.
I remember once thinking, “What’s the point of saying no?” I felt like I’d already lost the right to draw boundaries.
Looking back now, I realize that wasn’t me speaking. That was trauma—still in control.
The Turning Point
For me, things didn’t change overnight. There wasn’t a single moment when I woke up healed. But there was a moment when I got tired of losing to that voice.
I remember looking in the mirror and realizing, “If I keep going like this, the abuse wins forever—even without him here.”
That realization didn’t silence the trauma, but it gave me a reason to fight back.
I started doing small, almost invisible things to reclaim myself:
Saying “no” even when my voice shook.
