Steps for Healing from Grad School Abuse.

It is important to validate your experience.

When you’re in abuse, your feelings feel wrong. You feel wrong. You feel like your feelings are indications of character defects. You may feel embarrassed at some of your actions you take because of your feelings. But one sign of recovery is treating your emotions as signals, indicators that something is wrong. The judgements, actions, and effects of an emotion may turn out to incorrect, harmful, or overwhelming, but the emotion itself is nothing more or less than a signal from your body and mind.

Your job right now is to find a way to validate yourself. That may take therapy. That may take finding support. You might have to spend a lot of time journaling.