Left a 7 year DV relationship in 2009, took my four week old newborn and 2 year old toddler and moved hundreds of miles away nearer family for support.
I turned down support from the police affiliated DV unit when I resettled as I had a personal sense of achievement, that I'd overcome this massive thing by myself and must have some fortitude to have come through it so unscathed (as I thought then).
A few years later I settled into a normal relationship with someone our family has known for years, amd for the past two years it has all been good with him.
I have noticed however -since my youngest started school September just gone- that as I'm now due to return to work, that combined with my being naturally shy and self conscious around people anyway, is starting to cause anxiety which is manifesting in some very odd ways indeed.
Although it was a physically violent relationship (to the point of him wanting to kill me) it was primarily his intent to make me feel like I couldn't trust my own mind, so I spent those years not knowing if I was 'normal', that people could see I was weird or a psycho. His method was quite deliberating and he intellectualised the process rather than bullied his way about it, so almost convinced me.
I'm now wondering if I'm experiencing something similar to 'post traumatic stress disorder' as I'm about to return to work and leave the 'bubble' of myself amd my children that kept me going for all those years. I'm feeling especially at night, a conscious effort not to slip into a panic attack, feeling like my pulse is slowing, or I'm dying, dizzy or faint, and worrying how I'll cope in the workplace after such a long absence, mostly if people can tell that I've been under DV. I suppose, if they think I'm a bit odd.
When talking to people, whilst I'm listening to them, I'm also intently concentrating on their actions, reactions, wondering why they don't smile at me, to ascertain if they think I'm loony and stuff, or just strange. The lady at the Careers Advice appointment, my Jobcentre lone paremt advisor. All this time I've thought I've come through it all unscathed, but I now think perhaps I should have processed it, perhaps got counselling, as nothing else in my life is worrying me, everything's rosy really I feel happy, hopeful and content.
I have no personal history of depression or mental health issues either.
Perhaps you might advise me to have counselling now, years later, but although I don't think I have unresolved issues with that time, I understand the reasons behind it now,-helped enormously by support fromMumsnet forums over the years and other reading on the matter- as I'm about to embark on a huge new change in my life, am I going into it unprepared?
I don't really want to talk about it again anyway with a counsellor. It makes me feel weak and stupid and not of the strength of spirit required to cope with returning to the workplace, to have to relive my unbelievable naievety and impressionability during that time. I know I will also be more concerned that the counsellor is checking to see if I really might have been mentally damaged and is trying to suss me out, rather than concentrating on her good advice! I'm not paranoid about what others think of me, I don't worry about it constantly, but it can't be right to think I got through it all unscathed, can it? He Lmost killed me twice, I was losing consciousness and starting to black out one of the times and thinking, 'this is it, I'm about to die!'
This is going to be a huge post isn't it, sorry! 
Summarily, has anyone else who's recently come out of a long term DV relationship thinking they'd coped fine, now wondering if post trauma symptoms are creeping in, and whether they have or might benefit from counselling years after?