This week a couple of women have asked me: Is there any point in trying to move on, when I am still stuck in the relationship?

Its not hard to understand where they are coming from. When a relationship has left you feeling utterly drained and powerless, just dragging yourself through your normal day can be hard enough.

So how can you possibly hope to find the strength to take on all the challenges that ending the relationship will bring? How will you face up to the enormous concerns you have on all possible fronts?

I remember that time in my life well. I remember the questions I asked myself obsessively about a future without him. There were no good answers, only a paralysing fear, and the corrosive hope that maybe, just maybe, it could still work out

That whole cycle is as destructive as it is normal - under the circumstances. It is the abused womans equivalent of pedalling frantically on a hamster wheel and ending up exactly where you started, only increasingly tired and worn. Hamsters may thrive on that kind of workout; human beings do not.

All verbal and emotional abuse is brainwashing. And you cannot overcome that brainwashing without recognising it for what it is.

All abusers reprogram their victims. By dint of constant repetition, they make their partners feel stupid, ugly, fat, powerless, unlovable, pathetic. Even if friends and family are telling them a different story, the abusers words are powerful enough to put them into a negative trance, so that all they register is negatives.

So how and when do you break out?

Thinking about breaking out is actually the first tentative step. Many women stop there, or backtrack, because they cant see where they are going. Thats to be expected when youve been brainwashed; its perfectly normal.

Yet, the thought persists that there can be, must be, something better out there for you - which there undoubtedly is.

Do you really have to see it, before you can pursue it? Because that is the Catch 22. Your abusive partner has erected a smokescreen of negativity in front of your eyes so that have lost sight of whatever visions you once held for yourself.

But does that have to stop you taking one step forward and then another, and another?

When you do so, you will start to find your way through that smokescreen of negativity. You will start to see some of what lies ahead for you.

Certainly, the process is scary. Because he has done his work well so that you continue to hear the old destructive soundtrack still running through your head.

You cant drown it out. Its one of the things that most women try and fail. Nobody has ever told them that its a counter-productive measure. Challenging his rubbishing of you only keeps it in the forefront of your mind. So you cant drown it out. But you can replace it. You replace it when you start to create your own soundtrack that describes you the way you truly are and truly can be. Even if you dont feel like that person at all right now.

You know you were once a pretty good human being with a lot to recommend you. Well, that never dies. His words may submerge it, but they cant destroy it. That person is still there, albeit dormant. Changing your soundtrack will bring her back to life.

Can you do that when you dont believe it? Yes, you can. Did you believe all the negative things he said about you the first time he said them? Did you even believe that he meant them? Or did he drum them into your mind by saying them again and again and again?

You will believe almost anything you tell yourself often enough, whenever you start. So why not start sooner, rather than later?

Your recovery starts the moment you make that choice, whatever the external circumstances. Your thinking, more than anything else gives you the power to change your circumstances, get out of that relationship and rebuild your life.

My ebook The Woman You Want To Be gives you the words and the structure to support that choice and keep you moving forward, step by step, along the path of recovery.

There can be no better time to embark on your recovery than right now.

(C) 2006 Annie Kaszina