“Walking on Eggshells”
Living in constant caution—monitoring your words, actions, and even thoughts—because any small misstep could trigger anger or conflict.
I never thought of myself as insecure. In fact, my mom loves to tell this story: when I was a toddler, a neighbor boy was coming over to play. I was upstairs in full dress-up mode—fluffy dress, plastic jewels, a tiara perched on my head (I am a self-proclaimed Persian princess, after all). When he arrived, I made my grand entrance, carefully walking down the stairs with my head held high. He looked at me with wide eyes and said, in the kind of little-kid voice that makes mispronunciations sweet, “Madison, you’re so bootiful.”
That story always makes me smile because it shows how natural confidence once felt for me. I was energetic, stubborn, never shy. But somewhere along the way, the world started teaching me something different. Family, teachers, and other authority figures—really, society as a whole—told me to sit still, be quiet, and earn approval instead of believing I already had it.
By the time I was about seven, anxiety had already crept in. Almost overnight, I began to feel eyes on me everywhere—worrying about what people thought, fearing I wasn’t good enough. My parents and dance teachers were extremely hard on me, and I turned that pressure inward, becoming even harder on myself. I learned to dissociate and escape—losing myself in play, books, or the quiet corners of my own mind. Thoughts like “I can’t get anything right” built a permanent home in my subconscious. By my teenage years, depression had settled in, and looking back now, I can see how perfectly primed I was for an abusive relationship at seventeen.
Because the truth is, the cycle of abuse doesn’t always start with yelling, slammed doors, or broken trust. Often, it begins with something harder to name—a slow tightening of tension, like a storm brewing on the horizon. Survivors often describe this stage as walking on eggshells. Every word, every glance, every silence feels heavy with the possibility of setting something off.
What the Tension-Building Stage Looks and Feels Like
In this stage, abusers often grow irritable, critical, or unpredictable. Sometimes it’s just a sharp look or a sigh, a question that feels more like a test than a conversation. Deep down, you know something’s coming. Your chest tightens, your stomach knots, and your mind races—calculating what to say, what not to say, how to keep the peace. You start suppressing your needs and avoiding anything that might trigger conflict.
It’s exhausting. The fear isn’t only in the explosions of anger themselves—it simmers in the quiet, in the silence before, teaching you to shrink a little at a time just to survive.
My Own “Eggshell” Moments
Some days, I could feel it before he even walked through the door—the shift in the air, the tension that made my chest tighten and my stomach knot. I’d try to talk or move normally, but every word and gesture felt loaded, as if I could trigger his anger at any moment without even knowing how.
One night, I opened his Snapchat while we were already texting. Since we were mid-conversation, I didn’t feel the need to respond. The next morning, he messaged me: “Did you just forget to snapchat me back last night or…what’s the deal on that?” At first, I didn’t give in to the bait, but he wouldn’t let it go, and soon it spiraled into a berating. My throat tightened, my body shrinking under the weight of his words. That’s when I felt it—the familiar weight pressing down, the sense that I had done something “wrong.” It wasn’t about the app—it was about the scrutiny, the unspoken rule that I had to be instantly available, constantly attentive, never taking a single moment for myself.
Over time, it became too taxing. I didn’t need him to tell me to delete Snapchat—he made it impossible to use it without anxiety. Eventually, I deleted the app entirely, not because I wanted to, but because the tension, the fear of setting him off, was too heavy to carry.
That’s what walking on eggshells felt like: living in constant, quiet vigilance, shrinking yourself in real time, and quietly disappearing a little just to survive.
This is a small example, but the same pattern spread into almost every part of my life. I became hyper-aware of everything: whether I answered quickly enough, how much attention I gave him compared to others, even if I seemed distracted when we were together. Slowly but surely, my identity began to dwindle away. I started dressing differently, seeing less of my friends, and spending every waking hour outside of work and school in his presence. I almost never expressed my feelings, and when I did, I was quick to apologize for them—as if having emotions at all was a flaw I had to make up for.
It wasn’t just my behavior that changed—bit by bit, he reshaped my thoughts, my choices, and my sense of who I was allowed to be.
Where Forgiveness Begins
Looking back now, I can see that in that stage I often excused my ex’s behavior and minimized what was happening. It felt safer to convince myself it wasn’t that bad than to face the truth of how deeply it was hurting me. Years later, after finally accepting that what I endured was abuse, forgiveness began—not toward him, but toward myself first. I had to learn to forgive the ways I coped in survival mode: the times I stayed quiet, the nights I made myself small, the moments I believed his words defined my worth.
It took a long time to understand that surviving was not weakness—it was resilience. Forgiveness started when I stopped blaming myself for not being stronger in those moments, and instead recognized that even in silence, I was doing what I had to do to endure.
Some of the hardest moments in that relationship are what’s known as acute explosions. Forgiveness here is more complicated—how can we begin to release the anger and pain toward the person who hurt us without condoning what they did? It’s a tough question, one we’ll tackle in my next post.
Finding Your Worth After Fear
I believe God was always near in those quiet, suffocating moments when I felt unseen—years spent walking on eggshells. Even before the explosion, before the tears, before the breaking point—He saw the weight I was carrying in silence.
God does not dismiss those fragile moments as “less painful” than the obvious ones. He holds them, too. And He whispers, even there: You are not invisible. You are mine.
1 Peter 2:9: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
I can’t help but think of that little girl playing dress-up. She instinctively knew she was royalty—not because of anything she did, but because of who God made her to be: brilliant, bold, and beautiful.
Recognizing that truth became the first step toward forgiving myself for surviving in the ways I had to—and, eventually, toward understanding what it might mean to release the weight of what I endured, without letting it define me.
Even the smallest shift from believing the lies of abuse to embracing God’s truth about you can begin to lighten the weight you’ve carried for so long.
Let’s Talk
Have you ever experienced that feeling of “walking on eggshells”? What did it teach you about yourself—your strength, your resilience, your needs?
Make sure to share your responses in Community Voices.
This post is the first in a series for Domestic Violence Awareness Month, where I’ll be exploring the cycle of abuse and the slow path to healing and forgiveness. My hope is that survivors will feel seen, encouraged, and reminded that their worth is never defined by someone else’s harm.
With love and gentleness,
Madison Taylore
Founder of Taylored Grace