Make Your Bed
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When I was deep in my second abusive relationship I needed to regain some sense of control. Towards the end I was stripped of just about all of my freedoms. My partner at the time controlled a lot of the things I did. I was constantly told I was worthless and useless, and that nothing I did was good enough or would ever be good enough. When you loose all sense of self and control things start going numb. I learned about the abuse I was experiencing so I feel that gave me a little strength and motivation to get out and heal. There wasn't much I could do but I found one little thing that helped tremendously and that was simply making my bed every morning.
I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous. You're probably asking, "what can making your bed do to help?" And the answer is simple. Accomplishment! The feeling of accomplishment changes everything. By waking up and completing the task of making your bed in the morning, even if the entire rest of the day goes wrong, at least you made your bed. That's something that no one can take from you. You can't be worthless or useless, you can't be less than good enough, when you've accomplished something in your day. That's just a fact. Then from there it's easy to build off of and continue to do more things to add to the feeling of accomplishment.
Now this isn't a cure all. When you are in a toxic space or involved with abusive people it is a constant battle of maintaining your sense of self and the end goal has to be to get free from it. You can't change it, you'll never "get used to it", you just become less and less yourself and loose all sense of control. You become a shell of a person and that's no way to live. I won't lie to you and say every step forward is as easy as making your bed because that's just not the case. It's hard but it's worth it.
So what is going to be your accomplishment? What routine will you implement to gain that sense of control back into your life? Will you start making your bed every day or will you choose something else like cooking breakfast or going for a run? Whatever you choose just remember that it's something you control and it's and accomplishment no one can take away from you. Use that feeling to motivate you to keep pushing forward because the next step is going to be identifying your joy. This is much easier to do once you've mastered the feeling of routine and accomplishment.
ATB 