Emotional Abuse in a Family

Conversely, emotional abuse can have far more negative influence on your life than a physical abuse. Abuse that is physical in nature will leave only external scars. Emotional abuse, on the other hand, can have far-reaching effects on your mind that can affect your self-esteem and self-confidence. Not many people take the issue of emotional abuse very seriously. Therefore, the victim may find it very hard to explain the nature of his or her suffering or to get any kind of support from people around. Due to this, not many victims report out incidents of emotional abuse and continue to withstand the worst of the abuse. Furthermore, some victims do not even know that they are being emotionally abused, which makes it even harder to seek any help. Let us understand the types of emotional abuse to better comprehend the impact it can have on a person’s well-being as well as to understand what constitutes an emotional abuse.

Types of Emotional Abuse

Constantly finding fault in your behaviour and checking up on your movements
Falsely accusing you of unfaithfulness
Trying to restrict your mobility and communication with other people
Punishing you for petty reasons such as coming home a few minutes late from office
Preventing you from working or constantly criticizing your work to undermine your worth
Publicly humiliating you and encouraging others to do so
Disallowing any activity that does not include the abuser
Pass derogatory comments about you, your family and your friends to hurt you intentionally
Change homes frequently so that you cannot build a social network of your own
Disallowing you to leave the house on your own
Asking for detailed information about your actions and your conversations with other people
Blaming you for no apparent reason for any petty issue
Refusing to acknowledge your worth and constantly telling you that you are useless or inferior and devaluing your thoughts and opinions
Inducing extreme fear in you by threatening you or intimidating you
Insulting, ridiculing, belittling, screaming, and name-calling you
Denying any form of misbehaviour while questioning your sanity
Use your weaknesses to control you

From the above-mentioned scenarios, one can understand why incidents of emotional abuse are capable of tearing apart a person’s self-esteem and damaging a person’s psychological development. When children are exposed to such forms of emotional abuse, even if they are not the victims of such abuse, they are likely to develop several problems such as suffering from attention deficit disorder, lacking intelligence, becoming unable to effectively interact with other people, and turning out to be deficient in expressing their emotions coherently. Research indicates that when children are exposed to such form of abuse, they are ten times more likely to become an abuser or a victim of abuse. In addition, when these children grow up, they face an increased risk of alcoholism, mental health problems, criminality, and poverty. Therefore, emotional abuse can affect children as well as adults. The victims of emotional abuse tend to withdraw themselves socially, face severe depression and anxiety, develop an unknown fear, tend to have physical complaints, and might resort to self-blame out of helplessness. It becomes very important for the victims to understand that emotional abuse is a serious problem and can eventually even lead to physical abuse. Therefore, it is important that you consider the issue of your as well as your children’s security. In addition, as a victim, you need to stop blaming yourself for your spouse’s unreasonable behaviour. Many times people opt for a divorce in such cases. It is important to analyse if you are facing a major or minor emotional abuse before proceeding with this decision. Minor forms of emotional abuse are not very serious such as not allowing you to watch TV or read your book when you want to, complaining about lack of attention, or wanting you to exclusively spend time with him or her. These can be described as stubborn or childish behaviour, which can be treated if the behaviour is still in the early stage. In such cases, counselling can help. Minor emotional abuse is usually a result of an unhappy childhood. Research indicates that 25% of the minor emotional abusers come from broken homes. Major forms of emotional abuse include all the points that we have discussed before. This form of emotional abuse is usually more serious and counselling may or may not help. What a victim experiences in cases of severe emotional abuse can be very subjective. While some people may have the patience and mental energy to take the help of a counsellor, others might feel completely drained out and would want to opt out of the marriage to curb any further damage.

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