What is Emotional Abuse

Emotional abuse (also called psychological abuse) is a pattern of using emotions, words, and behaviours to control, manipulate, and hurt another person. It can leave long-term devastating consequences on a person’s mental well-being. However, there are ways to heal the damage left by emotional abuse and rebuild your life.

What is Emotional Abuse?

Emotional abuse is a pattern of using words or behaviours to control, manipulate, hurt or isolate another person. The underlying goal is to control the other person by discrediting, isolating, and silencing them. It can be gradual and subtle or overt and manipulative. It most often happens in intimate (dating and married) and familial (parents, children, siblings) relationships. Still, it can occur in any relationship (friends, co-workers).

Emotional abuse can wear away your self-esteem and undermine your mental well-being. It can be frightening, confusing, embarrassing, and traumatizing to the point where you feel trapped.

How Can You Detect Emotional Abuse?

Emotional abuse is often subtle, and it can be challenging to detect the signs. Sometimes, paying attention to how your interactions with the other person make you feel or if you experience specific somatic symptoms that indicate something is wrong. Your relationship is likely to be emotionally abusive if you often feel wounded, frustrated, confused, misunderstood, depressed, anxious, or worthless when you interact with the other person.

What are Some Examples of Emotional Abuse?

Some examples of emotional abuse include:

• Accusations of cheating or other signs of jealousy and possessiveness of outside relationships, including friendships
• Isolating you from friends and family, preventing you from going places (hiding your car keys), humiliating you in public or private, and demanding all your time
• Criticizing, name-calling, minimizing and dismissing you, your friends and family, your work/career, and your appearance.
• Gaslighting, shaming, blaming
• Silent treatment, withholding affection and attention
• Trivializing your concerns, refusing to acknowledge or accept your opinions or ideas are valid, and doubting everything you say and attempting to prove you wrong
• Monitoring you digitally (GPS, text messages, social media, and email) and demanding to know where you are at all times
• Undermining, distorting, or dismissing your perceptions or your experiences
• Refusing to accept your feelings by trying to define how you should feel, accusing you of being too sensitive or emotional, and that you cannot be trusted
• Dismissing or accusing you of being selfish, needy, or materialistic if you express your wants or needs (the expectation is that you should not have any wants or needs)
• Creates chaos by starting arguments for the sake of arguing, making confusing and contradictory statements, and having drastic mood changes or sudden emotional outbursts
• Using your fears, values, compassion, or other things important to you to control you or the situation
• Talking to you like they are better than you, know what is best, and you should do what they say
• Acting like nothing you do is ever good enough, having unreasonable demands, and their mistakes and shortcomings are your fault.
• Other ways of controlling and manipulating you

Avoid doing what the emotionally abusive person is doing to you by minimizing their behaviour and the effect it has on you. You deserve to be treated with kindness and respect.

What are the Effects of Emotional Abuse?

Emotional abuse can be incredibly damaging yet can be invisible at the same time. The self-doubt, worthlessness, and self-loathing can be hidden, leaving you in this deep, confusing turmoil. When it is severe and ongoing, you can lose your sense of self to the point that you no longer can see yourself realistically. You may start to use your abuser’s words against yourself and feel that you will never be good enough for anyone else. This can affect your friendships and other relationships as you start to isolate and worry about how others see you. The constant stress of emotional abuse can also result in many health concerns, including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, stomach ulcers, headaches, heart palpitations, and insomnia.

What Can Help You Heal from Emotional Abuse?

The first step in healing from an emotionally abusive relationship is to become aware of the abuse and acknowledge it for what it is. When you are honest about what you are experiencing, you can start to turn the page and take back control.

Make Yourself a Priority

When you’ve been emotionally abused, you are often pushed to neglect your own needs. Therefore, it’s important to prioritize your mental and physical well-being, take care of your needs, do something that reflects your values and who you are, and commit to the healing process, knowing you are worth it and deserve a better life.

Establish Boundaries

One of the most important things you can do is to establish boundaries. Establish boundaries that you can enforce, such as ending the conversation if they insult you. Boundaries are only as good as your willingness to reinforce them.

Stop Blaming Yourself

When you’ve been in an emotionally abusive relationship, you may take on their abusive language as an inner critic. This may come in the form of blaming and shaming language. Separate yourself from those words, refusing to continue the abusive cycle. Give yourself compassion and kindness in dealing with all you’ve gone through.

Realize You Can’t Fix Them

It’s not you, and you won’t be able to change an emotionally abusive person by doing something different. Remind yourself that you are not responsible for their actions and your only control is how you respond to their abuse.

Avoid Engaging

Please don’t fall into their trap of engaging with them. You won’t find a way to make things right in their eyes. Walk away if you can.

Build a Support Network

Building a support network is one of the most important things you can do to heal from emotional abuse. By surrounding yourself with people who love and support you, you can start to heal the emotional wounds and counter some of the lies and manipulations of your abuser. Some people who can be part of your support network are friends, family, support groups, healthcare workers, and therapists.

You may need to seek counselling to bring your experiences of your emotionally abusive relationship into perspective and provide tools to help you overcome the abuse.

Work on an Exit Plan

The emotionally abusive person won’t change, and this can take a toll on you both mentally and physically. Emotional abuse can sometimes escalate to physical abuse and violence, and the period around leaving can be the most dangerous. Ensure you have a safety plan in place if things get worse.

Conclusion

Emotional abuse is a pattern of using emotions, words, and behaviours to control, manipulate, and hurt another person. It can leave long-term devastating consequences on a person’s mental well-being. However, there are ways to heal the damage left by emotional abuse and rebuild your life.