What Do I Do If I Was Abused?
You’re here because something happened to you. At home, growing up, by someone who was supposed to keep you safe. Physical. Sexual. Maybe both.
And even though it may be over now, it’s still there. In the back of your mind. In the relationships that go wrong in the same way. In the shame that has no name.
This article is for you. Not to tell you what to do. But to answer the questions you’ve been too scared to ask anyone.
Why Do Abuse Victims Stay Silent?
Because staying silent feels safer than the alternative.
When the person who hurt you is someone you live with, someone your family loves, someone who also in other moments took care of you, speaking up feels like pulling a pin out of a grenade. You don’t know what will explode or who will get hurt.
So you stay quiet. You tell yourself it wasn’t that bad. You find ways to make sense of it that let you get through the day.
This is not weakness. It is survival. And it is what almost every person who has been through this does for months, sometimes for years, sometimes for their entire life.
The silence is not the problem. The silence is what you needed to stay intact. But at some point, carrying it alone starts to cost more than it protects you.
Did the Abuse Have Something to Do With Me?
No.
This is the question that lives deepest and hurts the most and the answer is an unconditional no.
Children and young people do not cause adults to hurt them. There is nothing you wore, nothing you said, nothing you did or didn’t do that made what happened your fault. Adults who abuse are responsible for their own actions. Entirely. Always.
The reason this question feels so real is because believing it was somehow your fault gives you a feeling of control. If you caused it, maybe you could have stopped it. Maybe you can prevent it from happening again. The mind sometimes chooses self-blame over helplessness because helplessness is harder to survive.
But the truth is simpler and more painful: it was not about you. It was never about you. It was about the person who did it.
How Should I Tell Someone I Was Abused?
You don’t have to have the perfect words. You don’t have to tell the whole story the first time. You don’t have to be ready.
Most people who finally tell someone start with something small. “Something happened to me when I was younger that I’ve never talked about.” That’s it. That’s enough to begin.
A few things that help:
Choose someone who isn’t connected to the person who hurt you. A friend, a counsellor, a helpline — someone with no stake in protecting the family story.
Write it down first if speaking feels impossible. Many people find that putting it in words privately — in a journal, in an app, anywhere — makes it easier to say out loud later. It shrinks the secret just enough.
Know that you control how much you share. You don’t owe anyone the full story. You can stop whenever you want. You can say “I’m not ready to go further” and that is always okay.
If you’re not ready to tell a person yet and if the words feel stuck and you don’t know where to start, then emme is a private space where you can say it first. No one you know will read it. There’s no judgment, no reaction to manage. Just you, finding your words, at your own pace. Many people find that saying it somewhere safe first makes saying it to a human feel possible for the first time.
If a platform isn’t transparent about these things, that’s your answer.
Will My Family Alienate Me If I Talk About It?
This is one of the most painful parts, and one of the most honest questions to sit with.
The truth is: it depends on your family, and there is no way to know for certain before it happens.
Some families, when confronted with the truth, choose the survivor. They believe them, they support them, they hold the person responsible accountable. It does happen.
Other families choose silence. They protect the family image, they doubt or minimise what happened, they make the person who spoke up feel like the problem. This also happens more often than it should.
What’s important to know is this: your healing cannot be held hostage to how your family might react. You are not responsible for managing their response to something that was done to you.
If and when you decide to tell someone in your family, do it when you feel ready not because someone pressured you, not before you have some support outside the family already in place. Having a counsellor, a trusted friend, or even just a space like Emme where you’ve already processed some of it means you won’t be completely alone with whatever reaction comes.
Will My Parents Have to Suffer If I Speak Out?
If a parent was the one who hurt you, this question is probably the one that has kept you silent the longest.
Because despite everything, despite what they did, you may still love them. You may not want to destroy their life. You may worry about what happens to them, to your siblings, to the family. That love, and that worry, does not make you weak or confused. It makes you human.
Speaking about what happened to you does not automatically mean legal action, public exposure, or family destruction. Most survivors, at least at first, are not looking for punishment. They are looking to be believed. To process. To stop carrying it alone.
You get to decide how far you take it. Talking to a counsellor is confidential. Talking to a friend is private. Writing it down in Emme is seen by no one. None of these things automatically set anything in motion that you haven’t chosen.
Your healing does not require your parents to suffer. It requires you to stop suffering alone.
You’ve Carried This Long Enough
There is no right time to start. There is no version of yourself that needs to be more ready than you are right now.
If you’re not ready to talk to a person yet, start somewhere private. Start with Emme — say the thing you’ve never said, find the words that have been stuck inside you, and see how it feels to have it exist somewhere outside of you for once.
When you’re ready for a real human, these are free or low-cost options in India:
- iCall (TISS Mumbai) — sliding scale from ₹200 per session: 9152987821
- Vandrevala Foundation — free, 24/7 helpline: 1860-2662-345
- iCall chat — if calling feels like too much, chat support is available too
You don’t have to say “I was abused” to call. You can just say “something happened and I’ve never talked about it.” That is enough.
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