Just like physical abuse, emotional abuse is extremely harmful to a victim’s life and personality and oftentimes precedes physical abuse. Emotional abuse is primarily a verbal form of abuse and can sometimes even be used by the abuser in conjunction with physical or other forms of abuse.
What If You Are A Victim of Emotional Abuse?
Regardless of who the abuser is or their “reasons” for dishing out such abuse, nobody deserves to be emotionally abused. If you’re being targeted by abusers, rest assured that it’s not your fault. Such behavior and abuse can lead you to an emotional breakdown and can have a severe impact on your overall quality of life - this means that it’s essential for you to know how to handle the routine abuse without distracting yourself from your day to day life.
What is Emotional Abuse?
Emotional abuse is when someone uses emotions to influence another person by criticizing, shaming, blaming, or otherwise manipulating them. When a person's self-esteem and mental health are eroded by a pattern of harsh words and bullying behaviors, the relationship is considered emotionally abusive. If you often feel insulted, hurt, and become very careful and sensitive over certain matters, then it is possible that you are being emotionally abused.
As a victim of emotional abuse, your abusers will make you feel low and convince you that you’re worthless - despite the fact that you’ve done nothing wrong. The whole point of emotional abuse is to play on a person’s emotions and psychology, verbally tormenting them and manipulating their emotions in a way that makes them feel hopeless and worthless.
Apart from verbal manipulation, abusive behavior may also include verbal humiliation and bullying. An abuser will typically follow a pattern of behavior that demeans the victim’s self-esteem, dignity and self-image. Following the ill-treatment, the victim of emotional abuse descends into a downward spiral, feeling depressed, hopeless, and, in severe situations, suicidal.
How Do You Identify Emotional Abuse?
It's difficult to spot emotional abuse, especially when it's perpetrated by someone close to you. Emotional abuse can be subtle and deceptive, or it can be open and obvious. Emotional abuse, in any form, may erode your self-esteem and leave you feeling afraid and intimidated - it can leave victims sad and psychologically unbalanced for the rest of their lives.
Emotional abuse may occur from anybody, including your spouse/romantic partner, boss, coworker, business partner, carer, or even your parents. Your abuser, whomever they are, will use verbal tactics to isolate and dominate you; their determination and insulting conduct can be seen and felt in their words and actions.
Abusers are often observed fighting with their victims needlessly or becoming agitated over everything they do. An abuser may even make unpleasant remarks about their victim to their friends or family in some situations.
An abuser can emotionally abuse you in a number of different ways such as:
- Humiliating you at home, in public, or even in your workplace
- Making unreasonable demands
- Expecting you to drop everything and do what they demand of you
- Criticizing you for not completing tasks according to their standards
- Mocking your appearance, your style of work, or your personality
- Regularly criticizing you on things like your appearance, the things you talk about, or the way you act
- Constantly shaming you for your habits or personality
- Continuously blaming you for your personal behavior, even if you haven’t done anything wrong
- Verbally abusing you in front of others
- Ridiculing you for the choices you make
- Never appreciating your efforts to please them
- Intimidating you to fulfil their demands
- Mocking you for helping others
- Demeaning your self-respect
- Discouraging you from meeting new people or working
In addition to the aforementioned, they may also monitor your email, phone, and social media accounts without your permission. Furthermore, emotional abusers are not uncommon in controlling your income and threatening to cut you off totally if you simply disagree, or even blame you for their own mistakes, making you feel guilty and embarrassed.
Even if you're completely aware of the indicators of mental and emotional abuse, discovering that you're being abused by a close friend or loved one, someone you never expected to turn into an abuser, may come as a shock - to the point where you overlook even the most obvious signs of emotional abuse.
Hire Professional Help
Emotional abuse, mental trauma, psychological issues, and verbal abuse may all be healed more quickly with the support of professional therapists and counselors.
Solstice Pacific is here to guide you through your recovery process. We understand how difficult this situation is for you and your family so we’re here to assist you. Contact us at (949) 200-7929 and answer this quick assessment.
In cases where physical violence is involved, it’s always advised that you contact 911 or your local emergency services to help diffuse the situation.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline can also help when there’s a threat of physical violence and can put you in contact with shelters and various useful services across the US. The National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached 24/7 at 1-800-799-7233.
