Living With Verbal and Emotional Abuse

Verbal and emotional abuse is often overlooked in many instances and given numerous excuses unlike physical abuse which is more often never tolerated for long periods of time. Verbal and emotional abuse may not leave a physical mark like someone who has been beaten, but it certainly does leave its own mark. One that is more difficult to detect and less likely to be admitted usually because the person being verbally and emotionally abused doesn't recognize the abuse for what it is. Not recognizing or not acknowledging verbal and emotional abuse has deadly consequences often lasting throughout the generations.

Fear

Fear can certainly be another reason for not acknowledging abuse especially if you already feel helpless in the situation that you find yourself in and that is exactly how your abuser wants you to feel afraid and powerless while they are the ones in control. As long as you are in fear they can feel secure. Love in a relationship like this has become warped and barely recognizable since the abuser can only feel safe and loved when they are the ones in complete control of the situation and you are doing everything exactly as you're told which you can never achieve to their satisfaction. Oftentimes the abuser may only be abusive towards you and those close to them and usually behaves abusive only in private while the rest of the time and to the rest of the world they are the most wonderful person to be around; although sometimes the abusers do show their true colors to others.

Common Forms of Verbal and Emotional Abuse

As catagorized by" Patricia Evans" forms of verbal abuse can include the following: withholding, bullying, defaming, defining, trivializing, harassing, interrogating, accusing, blaming, blocking, countering, diverting, lying, berating, taunting, putting down, edifying, discounting, threatening, name-calling, yelling and raging while emotional abuse can inclue the following: a lack of empathy, withholding affection and withdrawing, acting like the victim, disregarding another's feelings and opinions, being competitive, sarcastic come-backs, or joking put-downs, being kind to others but not to a partner, defining another with seeming kindness.

Most people have encountered some form of these types of abuse at some point in their lives and that's what can make verbal and emotional abuse so difficult to define ,but the question to ask yourself is '' is this happening as a common occurrence and does the person causing the verbal abuse feel significantly better after having hurt you?''

Short and Long Term Effects Of Abuse

Some short and long term symptoms of being exposed to verbal and emotional abuse can include having low self-esteem and self-worth, often your overall emotional well-being and physical state can be affected and because of this victims may fall into clinical depression and post traumatic stress disorder. The victims themselves in later life may also exhibit behaviors of an abuser such as having an inferiority complex, machismo attitudes, and many other negative behaviors.

Abusers

Men are most often the abusers while women are most often their victims. Many women in abusive relationships believe that they are being abused by some fault of their own. Of course that is not to say that men are never verbally and emotionally abused. I have personally witnessed men being verbally and emotionally abused by their wives, although undoubtedly children are hurt the most by verbal and emotional abuse whether it's directed at them or if it's directed at some one close to them such as a parent.

A Child's Story

I grew up in an emotionally and verbally abusive home where the verbal insults and bullying were never directed at me ,but at my mother, yet I still felt as though they were for me as well since my mother was a woman and so was I no matter how young I may have been so whenever he discounted her virtues as a woman, wife, and mother I felt that he also discounted me. I grew up very afraid that something bad was going to happen; that I would mess up once again and I would be in trouble.

Two instances of abuse are still very clear in my mind the one time when my mother's name was written with an expletive after it. I don't know if he thought that I couldn't read or understand or maybe he just didn't care. The other memory is of my mother crying in her bedroom on Christmas eve not being allowed to come out of the bedroom while the rest of us were making cookies for Santa.

Generations of Abuse

Abuse does travel through the generations. Children learn from their parents what a healthy or unhealthy relationship is supposed to look like. Young men who grew up with an abusive mother may most likely unless the aftereffects of the abuse are dealt with either become abusive themselves since they are afraid of being controlled and abused by a woman or they may allow themselves to be abused.

Women like my mother who grew up in an abusive environment often expect to be abused. My father also grew up in a home where his father was abusive towards his wife and children so he learned how to act from his father and the cycle will just repeat itself unless it is recognized for what it is, abuse and that it is unacceptable. After recognizing that the abuse is present the next step to break the cycle of abuse is for both the victims and abusers to receive the necessary healing in their lives.