To mark World Mental Health Day, Nirma Bheero – Counselling Manager at Woman’s Trust – wrote a guest blog exploring the lasting impact of domestic abuse on women’s mental health and why specialist support is so important to recovery.
When ‘Sarah’ first rang Woman’s Trust, she apologised three times in the opening minute. She was sorry for taking up our time. She was sorry she couldn’t explain properly. She was sorry for “making a fuss”, even though she had been living with years of control and fear.
That reflex to apologise is something we hear often. It is one of the quieter legacies of domestic abuse, and it is why mental health support matters so much.
The harm you can’t see
Domestic abuse leaves marks that don’t show up on a medical record. Coercive control teaches a woman to doubt her memory, her instincts and her worth. Isolation shrinks her world until the person harming her is the only voice she hears. Over time she can lose track of what she likes, what she thinks and who she is.
Sarah had left the relationship eighteen months before she contacted us. By every outward measure, she had done the hard part. But she wasn’t sleeping, she flinched when her phone buzzed, and she described feeling like “a guest in my own life”. Being safe, she told us, did not feel the way she had expected.
Safety is the foundation of recovery, but it isn’t the whole of it. Many women only start to feel the full weight of what happened once the danger has passed.
Support that gives control back
At Woman’s Trust, we offer free specialist counselling for women affected by domestic abuse. Our counsellors are trained in trauma and in the specific dynamics of abuse, and they work under regular supervision.
Women can reach us by telephone, online or face to face, because support has to fit around real lives, including work, children and the need for discretion.
Abuse is, at its heart, about taking choices away. So, we start by handing some back. A woman decides what she wants to talk about and how fast to go. Nobody tells her what she should feel or do.
For many women, simply being listened to without judgement, and believed, is a profound experience in itself.
Sarah’s early sessions were quiet. She spoke in short sentences and often apologised. Her counsellor never hurried her.
Over several weeks, something shifted. She began naming what had happened to her as abuse, a word she had avoided for years. She learned to recognise the physical signs of anxiety and to settle herself when they arrived.
One week she mentioned, almost in passing, that she had chosen a paint colour for her kitchen without checking with anyone. “It sounds small,” she said. “It wasn’t.”
Why this matters beyond one story
Without timely help, the effects of abuse can spread into work, parenting, friendships and physical health. Statutory mental health services are often stretched and not always designed around the realities of domestic abuse.
Specialist counselling that is free and flexible closes a gap that many women would otherwise fall through. Cost should never decide whether a woman gets help, particularly when financial abuse may have left her with very little.
Recovery doesn’t follow a straight line. It shows up in small moments: a full night’s sleep, a boundary held, a friendship picked up again, a plan for the future that feels possible. These moments add up to something larger, which is a woman coming back to herself.
What we would ask of others
Our experience points to some clear principles for anyone shaping the response to domestic abuse:
- Treat mental health support as a core part of the response, not an optional extra.
- Make services flexible and accessible, so women can reach help in the way that works for them.
- Invest in specialist training and supervision for practitioners.
- Recognise that recovery continues long after the crisis has passed.
Sarah still comes up in conversation among our team, because her journey reminds us why this work matters.
She stopped apologising long before our sessions ended.