Guest Author: Dr. Amber Deneén Chapman-Gray, PhD, DBH
When It Returns, We All Recognize It
We have all heard them.
The words that quietly pick at old wounds.
The phrases people think go unnoticed.
“She’ll never be good enough.”
“That stupid bitch.”
“She should be looking for a husband, not working.”
We tell ourselves we let them pass, that they brush by without impact. But they squeeze through
just enough to steal our peace. The rise in misogyny has been swift and unmistakable. What once
sounded like encouragement has curdled into command. The cheers of “you go, girl” have been
replaced with shouts of “get back in your place.”
For women who have survived domestic violence, this shift does not feel abstract. It feels
familiar.
(The following narrative has been anonymized to protect the parties involved)
Bristol, an accomplished therapist, had recently done what she once believed was impossible.
Within a year, she built a strong client base and earned her first six-figure income. Her boyfriend,
Uzoma, was proud of the discipline and perseverance it took for her to establish herself. One
afternoon at work, Bristol overheard two coworkers talking nearby. They were talking about her.
“She’s one of those women who thinks she doesn’t need a man,” one said.
“The only reason she got to the top is that body of hers,” the other replied, laughing.
The laughter landed harder than the words. It sounded too much like Ian, her former boyfriend.
Ian had been cruel in quieter ways. He told her she was incapable. That she was lucky she had a
nice body, because without it she would never get anywhere in life.
The comments did not stop. Week after week, the environment grew more hostile. And with each
passing day, Bristol felt the old unease return. The sense of being watched. Judged. Unsafe.
Cultural misogyny revealed itself not as a theory, but as a lived experience.
During moments like these, the body remembers what the mind would rather forget. The stored
tension. The warning signals. The internal alarm that flares without permission.
Not this again.
1When the Body Hears a Threat
Hostility makes the body anxious. When we hear words or tones that register as a threat, the
nervous system moves instinctively into a fight-or-flight response. Before we can reason through
what we are hearing, the body asks its own questions:
Am I safe?
Could this turn into harm?
For people with a history of trauma, especially survivors of domestic violence, those questions
surface faster and louder. Past trauma heightens the sense of danger. The body, trying to protect
us, pulls old memories forward as warnings. Remember when this happened? Remember how it
felt? Not to punish us, but to help us avoid being hurt again.
Trauma is stored in the limbic system, the part of the brain responsible for survival. It is the
system that says, Be alert. Stay ready. We may need to run. And importantly, the limbic system
does not require a direct threat to activate. Perceived danger is enough.
In situations like Bristol’s, the coworkers were mocking, not overtly threatening. But to the
nervous system, the distinction does not matter. The body registers hostility, judgment, and
dehumanization as risk. Hypervigilance increases. Muscles tense. Breathing changes. The
internal alarm grows louder.
Alongside fear, misogynistic rhetoric often stirs shame. Shame for what has already been
endured, or shame for what might happen again. Survivors may wonder why they are being
targeted, or what they did to invite this attention. To survive the day, some dissociate, mentally
distancing themselves from an environment that feels unsafe. Others try to push forward,
pretending the threat is not there.
But ignoring danger does not calm the nervous system. It intensifies the cycle. Hypervigilance
builds, energy depletes, and eventually the body responds in one of two ways: anger or collapse.
People feel exhausted. Numb. Overwhelmed. The desire to flee the environment becomes
overwhelming.
This is not pathology. There is nothing wrong with the person responding this way. These
reactions are protective. They are the body’s attempt to create distance from hostility and
preserve safety in the only ways it knows how.
Identity Under Pressure: When Old Narratives Return
When people talk about us, especially in dismissive or demeaning ways, it can reinforce false
narratives about who we are. Misogyny has a way of resurrecting the same stories abuse once
told us. It whispers that we are too much. That we talk too much. That we should be quieter,
smaller, more convenient. That our pain is an inconvenience, our voice a nuisance.
These messages are not new. In patriarchal cultures, they are often introduced early. Many of us
are taught, long before we understand what it means, that we are burdens. That being helpful
2means being unseen. As children, these ideas are malformed and confusing. We do not yet have
the language or the context to name them.
It is later, when those same narratives are echoed again and again, that they begin to take root.
The past acts as a reinforcer. What was once confusing becomes familiar. And familiarity can
feel like truth.
Over time, we internalize what has been said about us. We begin to believe we are never quite
good enough. We replay moments in our minds, bargaining with ourselves. If I had done this
differently… if I had been quieter… if I had tried harder… maybe then they would think more
highly of me.
But misogyny is not interested in improvement. It does not care what you do. Its power depends
on holding women to impossible standards, then punishing them for failing to meet them. It
demands that you shrink all the magnificence that is you until you are small enough to soothe the
mediocrity of someone else.
Victims and survivors of abuse often absorb these messages over a lifetime, delivered in
countless ways and forms. Eventually, the belief settles in that they are bad, broken, or deficient.
It is heartbreaking when you really sit with it.
There is the shrunken version of you, created for survival, standing beside the expansive,
magnificent self that has always existed. The part of you that could have flourished long ago,
bursting with brilliance, waiting to be seen. The shrunken self was never a failure. It was a
strategy. It emerged to get you through a season that required endurance, not expansion.
That version of you deserves empathy, not shame. And it does not get the final word. It existed
so that one day, when the season changed, your greatness could finally step forward.
Healing in a World That Has Not Caught Up Yet
Healing does not happen overnight. It is not a single moment or a clean turning point. It is a
process, and more often than not, it is an ongoing one. Healing asks for courage, persistence, and
the quiet endurance to keep going even when the finish line is nowhere in sight.
One of the most frustrating parts of healing is trying to do it while the systems around us remain
hostile. The body is asked to grow stronger while still absorbing stress. To stay present while
exhausted. To regulate fear while being reminded, again and again, why fear once made sense. It
can feel like a vicious cycle, difficult to exit and impossible to explain to anyone who has not
lived it.
There are moments when healing feels less like progress and more like waiting. Waiting for
someone, anyone, to say, You’re not imagining this. Waiting for validation that healing is not
fragile or failing just because it is nonlinear. That it bends, adapts, and recalibrates in response to
the world we are living in.
3Over time, something shifts. We learn to keep moving forward without abandoning ourselves.
We set clearer boundaries. We sharpen our discernment. We begin to trust our own instincts
again. Healing becomes less about pushing through pain and more about listening to the wisdom
the body has been carrying all along.
Endurance, in this way, is not about forcing resilience. It is about honoring what it takes to
survive and choosing, again and again, to stay connected to ourselves in a world that has not yet
learned how to do better.
Healing as Resistance
One of the most transformative acts available to victims, survivors, providers, and communities
is this: healing as a form of resistance. Reclaiming your life is not rebellion for rebellion’s sake.
It is not flippant. It is not performative. It is a deliberate refusal to be shaped by abuse,
oppression, or the systems that benefit from your silence.
When misogyny resurfaces, as it inevitably does, it often calls us back into old patterns:
compliance, complacency, self-erasure. It pressures us to make ourselves smaller, quieter, and
more accommodating than our full capacity allows. Resisting that pull is not selfish. It is
necessary.
People are not born to serve mediocrity. Those who rely on domination, belittlement, or
extraction rarely seek growth themselves. Instead, they attempt to siphon energy, creativity, and
labor from those who are capable of building, leading, and creating meaning. Resisting this
dynamic requires clarity and courage. It requires refusing to accept minimal expectations simply
because someone else cannot imagine more.
It is okay to rebel against systems that demand you are shrinking. It is okay to remain expansive.
It is okay to be magnanimous in your work, your thinking, and your presence. Self-compassion
becomes the doorway to reclamation, allowing you to see yourself as worthy of effort, care, and
protection. From that place, you begin to dismantle the internalized systems that once taught you
to forget who you were.
Whether your grounding comes from spirituality, philosophy, or a sense of personal meaning,
your purpose is not predetermined by those who would benefit from your disappearance. You are
not a puppet for someone else’s ascent. You are not meant to stand in your own shadow while
others climb on your back.
You are held by your core. You are anchored in something older and stronger than misogyny,
trauma, or fear. Bold, capable, and intact, you are allowed to become who you were always
meant to be, even while healing. Especially while healing.
To the Reader
4If you are a survivor reading this, know this first: you are not imagining what you are feeling.
Your reactions make sense. Your body has been paying attention in a world that has often
demanded you ignore yourself.
Your body is not betraying you. It is wise. It learned how to keep you alive when safety was
uncertain, and it continues to signal when something is not right. This is evidence of your ability
to enact self-care.
You are not broken because healing feels slow, uneven, or incomplete. Healing is not a straight
line, and it does not require perfect conditions to continue. It unfolds in the middle of imperfect
systems, unfinished justice, and ongoing stress.
Even here, something is still shifting. Even now, your body is learning, recalibrating,
remembering how to belong to you again. Healing is still happening, even here.
About the Author
Dr. Amber D. Chapman-Gray, PhD, DBH, DirVPVA is a forensic psychologist, lifelong
credentialed victim advocate, and trauma-informed violence prevention specialist. She holds
doctoral degrees in Behavioral Health and in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. She is the
CEO of Gray’s Trauma-Informed Care Services Corp and serves as Director of Violence
Prevention and Victim Advocacy with The Freedom Train Project, where she works to strengthen
trauma-responsive systems and support victims of crime and cultic abuse.
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