Breaking Up with Isolation

They say Britain is a nation of stiff upper lips. We keep calm, carry on, and maybe have a cheeky cry in the loo at work before reapplying our mascara. But what happens when you’ve been through something that makes “carrying on” feel impossible? When the world tells you to “move on,” but every glance, every whisper, every judgmental look drags you back into silence?

That’s the life of many domestic abuse survivors. And the cruel twist is, even after the abuse ends, the isolation doesn’t.

When the World Turns Away

Abuse already steals your confidence, your trust, your sense of safety. But the aftermath can feel like a second punishment. You leave, you speak up, you tell your truth—and suddenly, people stare. They whisper. They tilt their heads with that pitying look you’d rather avoid. Or worse, they say, “Why didn’t you leave sooner?” as if surviving hell was simply poor time management.

So what do we do? We shrink. We cancel plans. We ghost group chats. We become experts at hiding, not because we want to, but because it feels safer than facing a world that doesn’t always know how to look us in the eye.

Self-Isolation: Not Just for Pandemics

I remember sitting in a café, overhearing two women dissecting a neighbor’s divorce. “She must have done something to set him off,” one of them said, dunking her biscuit like it was the most normal thought in the world. And it hit me: it’s not just the abuser who silences us, it’s the culture of victim-blaming that makes survivors mute themselves.

You learn to pre-empt the judgment. You avoid telling your story because you can’t stand the look that says, Was it really that bad? Eventually, isolation becomes a shield. A lonely, heavy, exhausting shield.

Why Community is the Antidote

And yet—there’s something magical about finding your people. The ones who don’t flinch when you say “abuse,” who don’t quiz you on the timeline, who don’t treat you like you’re fragile glassware about to shatter. In those moments, the shield starts to slip.

Community doesn’t have to mean a grand movement or a hashtag campaign. Sometimes it’s a survivor support group in a slightly draughty church hall. Sometimes it’s your mate who knows you need a night in with pizza and The Real Housewives. Sometimes it’s an online forum where strangers feel closer than family.

Reclaiming Yourself (One Day at a Time)

Bit by bit, community stitches you back together. You laugh again, properly laugh—not the polite “haha” you give in office small talk, but the belly kind that leaves your cheeks aching. You go out, not because you should, but because you want to. You start seeing yourself not as a victim or even just a survivor, but as a whole person again.

Abuse made us small. Community makes us expansive.

The Collective Glow-Up

So here’s my question of the week: if abusers isolate us to control us, why do we keep isolating ourselves after they’re gone?

The reality is, healing isn’t found in silence. It’s found in the messy, imperfect, loving chaos of community. Because when someone looks you in the eye and says, “I believe you,” or simply, “Fancy a coffee?”—that’s when the real recovery begins.

Maybe the British stiff upper lip has its uses, but I’d argue healing is less about keeping calm and more about finding your tribe.

And once we do, we stop just surviving and start living.

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