Danielle Lloyd opens up about damage caused by abusive relationships

REALITY TV star Danielle Lloyd has spoken about being subjected to violence when she was locked in an abusive relationship.

She told GB News: “It shaped my whole life massively, and it’s made me the person who I am today. I went through hell and back as a teenager. I was smashed over the head with chairs, had plates thrown at me, I was spat at on a daily basis.

“It’s obviously not just the physical abuse. What scarred me was the mental abuse as well. I think that scarred me, more so, because the abuser feels like they can make you so dependent on them that you lose all of yourself. You feel like you’re nothing, basically all you can do is depend on them.”

In an interview with Nana Akua on GB News, she said: “Being in that controlling relationship, I had no friends because they were taken away from me because I wasn’t allowed to see anybody. I was separated from seeing my family.

“And I believed that that person loved me that much and I loved them back and I depended on them.

“It was just horrendous. It wasn’t easy to leave. Eventually, I had to have counselling just to get a little bit of strength to say no. Eventually when I did say no, enough, I’m leaving, I even got punched.

“I got punched so badly in the face. I was knocked out and I fractured my eye socket.”

She said: “I feel like I’ve gone from one sort of bad relationship to another and as somebody who was so fragile, I made bad choices. And it isn’t until now that I feel so much stronger. And it’s taken me a lot of time to heal, to learn self love, and actually respect myself enough to realise that I am my own person.

“Now I’ve found somebody that I can trust and we have a normal stable relationship because I actually know what that is.”

Asked what the turning point was, she said: “I think for me just talking about it. I’ve battled so much in and tried to bury it as far as possible down but it was just making me more and more ill. It was making me anxious. I was scared of people. I literally jumped at anything.

“Being able to talk openly about what happened to me has helped me massively and it’s helped so many other people as well. I’ve had messages from women and men who have read my story or seen my story and they’ve said thank you so much for speaking out. They’ve said it’s actually helped me get out of my abusive relationship.

Danielle said being a mum to five children has also helped her: “I think for me, the most important thing in life is just to teach them, especially my four older boys, how to treat a woman and that’s the main thing.

“They’ve just given me strength to carry on on a daily basis. I’ve had highs and I’ve had lows and it’s not nice for them to see their mum cry and stuff.

“They give me the strength to carry on each day and I feel like everything that happens in your life makes you a stronger person. I’m so strong. I can get through anything.

“I think my kids see me as a strong independent woman, which I think is so important.”