What is Emotional Abuse?
Spotting the signs
“I’ve never hit you, have I?”
“I look at you and say to myself, ‘I should go kiss her,’ but the thought of being near you makes me sick.”
“Do you ever wear makeup?”
“Why are you so upset? You’re a man, aren’t you?”
“If you’re going to cry, I’ll give you something to cry about.”
Sound familiar? If so, you may have experienced emotional abuse, and it’s not as uncommon as you’d think. I was abused, too, and I used to think it could never happen to me, but it did. I followed all the “right steps” in looking for a good partner, but a wolf in sheep’s clothing caught me. It took a while to realize. I used to watch how he was with other people and tell myself that was the real him, the man who joked with ease and drew people to him with his charm. I spent years waiting to see that version of him at home before I finally realized that he would always give his best to everyone else because that protects his mask. I experienced the man behind the mask. The man who lies and manipulates his way out of trouble. I watched him go out to dazzle the crowds and wondered why I wasn’t enough. The truth is, I was always good enough. I didn’t need to prove that I was worth spending time with, but that’s life with an emotionally abusive person.
In the United States, 48.4% of women and 48.8% of men have experienced psychological aggression from an intimate partner in their lifetime. However, emotional abuse does tend to be prevalent in women aged 18 to 34.
Emotional abuse is any behavior intended to control, manipulate, threaten, or belittle another person, and it can happen within any relationship. Parents can be emotionally abusive to their children. Teachers can be abusive toward their students. Spouses can abuse each other, as can friends.
Abuse doesn’t know a gender. It’s a power dynamic, and the result is the same: the victim is left with a diminished sense of self-worth and long-lasting psychological trauma. Unlike physical abuse, emotional abuse can be subtle and, therefore, difficult to spot.
Think of emotional abuse as a slow drip of water in your ceiling. A small trickle of water that often isn’t picked up on until, over time, an incredible amount of damage has been done. Often, the extent of the damage isn’t even realized until repairs are made.
Abusers don’t always start out abusive. Otherwise, the victims would turn and run. Instead, they test the water, pushing a boundary here or there to see what they can get away with. It’s like being the frog in a slowly boiling pot of water, not realizing it’s being boiled alive because it’s happening so gradually.
Abusers know exactly how to engage in a kind of psychological chess game and are incredibly skilled at choosing behaviors that are hard to prove. You can be sure they know how to play both you and the people around them to protect their image. They know exactly what to say to get you to forgive them or make you feel like you were the problem all along.
At times, abusers might dance right up to the line of outright horrible treatment before backing off. They know how to pick and choose behaviors that stay in the grey so that they can always explain away or deny their actions. When called out for their behavior, they twist or rewrite history to avoid accountability for a problem they caused.
Abusers often love to portray themselves as the perfect spouse, parent, or boss to the outside world. They hide behind their mask so effectively that when the victim is trying to make sense of the chaos surrounding them, the abusers' supporters will often aid the abuser in explaining things away.
“They’re under a lot of stress right now.”
“I’m sure they didn’t mean it that way.”
Victims of abuse begin to feel like they are walking on eggshells as they attempt to anticipate the moods or triggers of their abuser. Never knowing exactly when they’ll explode, victims live in a constant state of fear, doing everything they can to appease their abuser in advance. Abuse can leave its victims living in a fog of confusion as they try to understand what is happening to them.
When everything around a victim of abuse supports the mask their abuser wears, it’s often difficult for them to even know they are being abused. This is why it is absolutely vital to believe people when they come forward with stories about mistreatment, no matter how “nice” their abuser is.
While the abuser relies on safely hiding behind their mask, the victim is slowly being stripped of their sense of self-worth until they eventually become a shell of the person they used to be as they try to mold themselves into being whatever the abuser wants them to be.
Emotional abuse leaves no visible scars behind, but it does leave a wasteland of psychological scars, and the long-term effects are devastating. Victims are left struggling through a deep void of hopelessness as they attempt to regain their self-worth in the wake of abuse.
It’s my hope that by sharing information about abuse and its impact, we can build safer spaces for victims to process their journeys and heal from their abuse.
**Please note: I am not a mental health professional. I am writing based on my own experiences with emotional abuse. If you are experiencing abuse and need professional help, please seek out a trauma-informed therapist**
