This week, I won.
I walked into court and secured something huge: permission for my daughter to travel internationally in just a few days’ time, despite my ex-husband’s refusal and my lawyer’s betrayal. The judge not only granted the emergency travel order — he also adjourned my ex’s motion for visitation with our son until all reports are back. That means more time to protect my son’s safety before any decisions are made.
On top of that, I finally got my “new to me” car. It’s beautiful, reliable, and mine — even if I’ll be making payments on it for the next 84 months. These are big wins. Tangible wins.
So why am I awake in the middle of the night, my chest tight, stomach knotted, and his voice — the one that told me I was worthless for years — whispering that I’m still a failure?
Why does my mind swing from a soaring high to a spiral that feels like I’ve crashed headfirst into a wall?
The Truth About Post-Victory Lows
If you’ve survived abuse, trauma, or years of legal battles, you might already know this truth:
Winning doesn’t always feel like winning.
Here’s why.
1. The Adrenaline Drop
When you’re in the middle of a fight — whether it’s a courtroom battle, a confrontation, or an urgent push to meet a deadline — your body switches into full survival mode. Adrenaline, cortisol, and other stress hormones flood your system, sharpening your focus and giving you the energy to push through.
This is what allows you to keep standing even when you’ve barely eaten, barely slept, and have been carrying the weight of your children’s safety, your financial stability, and your future on your shoulders. In those moments, you don’t get to feel everything — you just act. You survive.
For survivors of abuse, this state can feel strangely familiar. Many of us have spent years living in high-alert mode, scanning for danger, calculating risks, ready to react. In the courtroom, that old survival wiring kicks in, and it works for us in the short term — we’re focused, sharp, and unshakable because we have no other option.
But once the immediate danger is over and the fight is done, your body slams on the brakes. The adrenaline drains out of your system, leaving you with exhaustion so deep it feels like it lives in your bones. Your muscles can ache, your head can pound, and your emotions — the ones you had to put on hold to win — come rushing in all at once.
And here’s the kicker: the drop doesn’t care if you won. Victory doesn’t cancel out the fact that your body just went through an intense, high-stakes survival event. Physically, your body still registers that it was in danger, and now it’s trying to recover. That crash can feel like weakness, failure, or “losing your edge,” but it’s really your system begging for rest after running on overdrive.
This is also the moment when the old doubts and the abuser’s voice can sneak back in. When you’re tired, depleted, and your nervous system is recalibrating, your mental defenses are lower. That’s when the whispers of “You’re not good enough” can hit hardest — not because they’re true, but because you’re too drained to argue back as fiercely as you did in court.
As Nelson Mandela once said, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
2. Echoes of the Abuser’s Voice
Even after you’ve left, your abuser’s words can live in your head like an unwelcome ghost. For years, they trained you to doubt yourself, often so subtly that it became second nature. Every insult, every criticism, every moment they made you feel small left an imprint. Over time, those messages became so familiar that your own inner voice started repeating them without needing any prompting from the outside.
Abusers are skilled at weaving their voice into your identity. They tell you you’re nothing without them, you can’t survive on your own, you’re a bad parent, you’ll never win in court. They hammer it in during your weakest moments, then reinforce it every time you show strength by finding a way to tear you back down.
These aren’t just words — they become a psychological reflex. Even when you’re physically safe and legally gaining ground, your brain still holds the “script” they wrote for you. Victories, ironically, can trigger these echoes. You win in court, and somewhere deep down that internalized voice whispers: Don’t get too confident. You’re going to pay for this.
It’s not because you believe them anymore — it’s because your nervous system learned to associate achievement with danger, and their voice is the soundtrack to that danger.
That’s why the post-victory crash can feel so brutal: in your mind, you’ve just proven them wrong, but in your body, those echoes are as loud as ever.
The work of healing is learning to recognize that voice for what it is — a remnant of their control, not the truth. Every time you answer back, you weaken its grip. That might look like:
- Saying their words out loud and then countering them with evidence of your strength.
- Writing down the exact opposite of what they told you and reading it until it feels natural.
- Surrounding yourself with voices that affirm your reality, so theirs gets drowned out.
One day, those echoes will fade. But for now, it’s enough to know they’re not your thoughts — they’re his. And you get to decide which voice you believe.
3. Success Can Feel Unsafe
With a healthy, reasonable person, winning can be celebrated without fear. But with an abuser, success often comes at a cost.
Abusers thrive on control, and when you win — especially in court — it challenges the power they believe they have over you. That loss of control can trigger retaliation. For survivors, this isn’t paranoia; it’s lived experience. We’ve seen what happens when they feel “shown up” or “defeated.”
Punishments can be subtle — financial sabotage, emotional manipulation of the children, silent treatments that shift into smear campaigns — or they can be overt, with verbal attacks, harassment, or escalation of legal pressure.
Even when you know you’ve done nothing wrong, your body remembers the fear of those punishments. Winning can trigger a primal survival response: brace yourself, here it comes.
That’s why, for many of us, a victory doesn’t automatically bring relief. It can bring a wave of tension, as our nervous system prepares for the backlash. This is part of why the post-victory crash feels so heavy — you’re not only coming down from the fight, you’re subconsciously preparing for another one.
4. Your Body Needs Time to Catch Up
Your mind knows you’re moving forward. You can list the wins, the proof that life is shifting in your favour — the court orders, the new car, the upcoming beach day with your daughter. Logically, you understand that you’re safer now than you’ve been in years.
But your body doesn’t run on logic. It runs on memory.
The body of a trauma survivor stores years of hypervigilance, stress responses, and physical readiness for the next attack — whether that attack is verbal, emotional, financial, or physical. Even after the external danger has lessened, your nervous system is still scanning the horizon for threats. It doesn’t immediately believe it’s safe, because safety hasn’t been consistent enough to be trusted.
That’s why your mind can be celebrating a victory while your body is still braced for impact. The tension in your shoulders, the knot in your chest, the shallow breaths — these are signs that your survival system hasn’t received enough repeated evidence that the war is truly over.
It’s a bit like teaching a guard dog that it no longer has to bark at every noise. You can’t explain it once and expect the dog to stop — you have to retrain it through repetition, consistency, and time. Your body is that guard dog.
The challenge is that in the early stages of healing, victories themselves can confuse the system. Your body may associate achievement with retaliation, because in the past, every moment of strength or independence was met with punishment from the abuser. So when you win in court, your mind says, This is good, but your body whispers, Be careful — this is when it gets dangerous.
This is why rest after a win can feel unnatural, even unsafe. Your system is wired for constant readiness, not relaxation. It needs time — and consistent experiences of safety — to learn that the danger has passed.
As Maya Angelou reminded us, “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” Deciding not to be reduced is the work of your mind. Teaching your body not to be reduced is the work of slow, intentional healing.
Right Now: How I’m Fighting Back
Tonight, I’m countering the spiral with the small, grounding things that remind me I’m safe and loved.
I have a herbal tea beside me and a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. At my feet, my two faithful dogs are sleeping, their gentle snoring a kind of lullaby. My hands are shaking and there’s a knot of anxiety in my chest, but I’m surrounded by comfort.
A scented candle from my emergency “You Are Awesome” box — a gift from a friend who knows I need reminders on the hard days — flickers on the table. In that same box is a stash of proper British candy she brought back from a recent trip home, hidden from my kids for when I need it (which is totally different from them thinking they need it). And I am texting with someone who reminds me daily that I am an amazing person who is brave and celebrates each victory with me.
Planning Tomorrow
One of my daughters has a shift at work tomorrow, so I’m making plans for another daughter who has been deeply depressed lately — more trauma from not being able to get a restraining order against her dad. My lawyer told me it couldn’t be done because I had “weakened my strategic position” by refusing to barter my son’s safety for my daughter’s travel consent.
Well, seeing as I blew him out of the water in court this week, I’m going to see if I can do something about that too — with a new lawyer, a new legal opinion, and hopefully a new solution for her mental health.
Either way, I’m taking her to the beach. Just the two of us. We’ll swim, float in the lake, eat ice cream, and make some good memories — the kind that are just for us, untouched by him, rooted in joy.
My Ongoing Plan to Counter the Crash
- Name It — This is my body recalibrating, not my worth disappearing.
- Talk Back — I answer his voice with my own: I won for my children. I got my car. I am building a life he can’t touch.
- Ground in the Present — Candle, blanket, tea, my dogs breathing beside me.
- Small Actions — A beach day. Ice cream. Laughter with my daughter.
- Keep Pushing Forward — New lawyer, new options, new hope.
As Brené Brown wrote, “Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.” I am learning to do exactly that — one hard-earned win at a time.
My Emergency Script for Nights Like This
When the knot in my chest tightens and the old voice tells me I’m nothing, I will read this — out loud if I can, in my head if I must:
I am not the woman he broke down. I am the woman who stood in court and won.
I fought for my children’s safety, and I am winning.
I have built a life where my daughters can have beach days, ice cream, and laughter.
I have a home filled with love, the gentle snore of my dogs, the scent of a candle chosen by someone who believes in me.
I am capable of legal victories, financial progress, and finding joy in small, ordinary moments.
I am allowed to rest without guilt.
I am building something he cannot touch.
His voice is a ghost. Mine is alive.
I will wake tomorrow and keep going, because I have already proven — in court, in life, and to myself — that I can.
💬 Your Turn: If you’ve been through the post-victory crash, write your own version of this script. Keep it where you can find it at 2 a.m., and let it be louder than the old lies.
