#recognizing abuse

What is it?

Emotional abuse is "any act including confinement, isolation, verbal assault, humiliation, intimidation, infantilization, or any other treatment which may diminish the sense of identity, dignity, and self-worth." This is also known as psychological abuse.

Signs and Examples

Humiliation, negating, and criticizing

Name-calling and derogatory nicknames. Blatantly calls you “stupid”, “a loser”, or other insults. Maybe they use terms of “endearment” that actually highlight things you’re sensitive about and ignore you when asked to stop.

Character assassination. Includes the word “always” (always wrong, always late, etc.).

Yelling, screaming, and swearing in order to make you feel small.

Patronizing. Belittling you with mock pity.

Public embarrassment. Picking fights, sharing your secrets, making fun of you in public.

Dismissiveness. Can include snarky replies (e.g., “Who cares about that?”) and/or dismissive gestures (e.g., eye rolling, smirking).

“Joking”. Reacting strongly to your discomfort with something they’ve said with phrases like “It was just a joke”.

Insulting your appearance. Phrases like “You’re wearing that?”, or saying that they’re lucky they chose you because no one else would have.

Belittling your accomplishments. They may shrug them off, say they don’t matter, or claim personal responsibility for your success.

Putting down your interests. Suggesting your hobby is a waste of time, feeling offended that you’d do something without them involved.

Pushing your buttons. Repeatedly doing something that they know annoys you, ignoring your requests to stop.

Control and shame

Making threats.

Monitoring your whereabouts. Always needing to know where you are, maybe even showing up without notice to the place you said you’d be at.

Spying on you digitally. Demanding to have all of your passwords or making you have no passwords. Repeatedly checking your email, social media, texts, etc.

Gaslighting. Denying that specific events, arguments, or agreements happened. This can leave you questioning your own memory.

Making all the decisions or insisting that they make all the decisions. Controlling as much of your life as they possibly can.

Controlling your access to finances. Financial abuse. Making you have to ask them for money. Making you account for every bit of money you spend.

Emotional blackmailing. Attempting to get you to do things by manipulating your feelings. They may play the victim or guilt-trip you.

Lecturing you constantly. Making it clear they consider you inferior by listing out your mistakes and dragging it out as long as possible.

Giving direct orders. They expect you to do everything they say with no question.

Having frequent outbursts. Getting enraged that you didn’t or did do something, no matter if you knew to do it or not.

Feigning helplessness. Making you think they don’t know how to do something so you do it instead of them.

Unpredictability. Getting enraged one minute and taking you on a romantic dinner the next.

Walking out. This is a control tactic that leaves you absolutely helpless. Parent/partner leaving an outing without you. Employer walking out in the middle of a meeting.

Stonewalling you. During an argument or disagreement, they shut down and refuse to respond to you.

Accusing, blaming, and denial

Jealousy. Accusing you of flirting/cheating or insisting that if you loved them you would spend all your time with them.

Using guilt. Guilt-tripping you into doing things.

Unrealistic expectations. They expect you to meet every expectation they have set, no matter how unreachable they are.

Goading and blaming. Making you upset on purpose and then twisting the blame back to you.

Denying the abuse. On par with the gaslighting, will deny any inclination that they could do any harm to you.

Trivializing. Accusing you of overreacting or misunderstanding when you tell them they’ve hurt your feelings.

Blaming you for their problems. When things go wrong, they always blame you.

Destroying and denying. Destroying your belongings and then denying that they did it.

Emotional neglect and isolation

Dehumanizing you. Making you feel inferior or subhuman.

Keeping you from socializing. Changing plans or begging you not to go out with friends.

Invalidating you. Not caring about your needs, boundaries, and desires, and making you feel bad for having these things.

Trying to come between you and your family. Telling family you don’t want to see them, making excuses as to why you can’t make it to family functions, telling you your family doesn’t care.

Using the silent treatment. Ignoring your attempts at conversation.

Withholding affection. Refusing to have contact with you if you offend them.

Shutting down communication. Waving you off, changing the subject, or ignoring you when you want to talk about something.

Actively working to turn others against you. May tell others that you’re lying, having a psychotic break, or having an emotional breakdown.

Denying support. When you need emotional support they shut you down, tell you to deal with it, and/or insult you.

Interrupting. Getting in your face and/or taking away whatever you’re doing to make you acutely aware that your attention should be on them.

Disputing your feelings. Whatever emotion you’re feeling, they insist you shouldn’t be feeling like that.

This is not a comprehensive list.

These signs of abuse are the same as the signs of “narcissistic abuse” which are paraded around the internet. “Narc abuse” people fuck off.

SOURCE

they steer the topic to talk about themselves almost all the time. The attention they give you will be always less than what they give to themselves in a conversation. Every topic you start will serve as an excuse to talk about their life.

they will switch between bragging and telling you stories in which they are the victims. Details of these stories will be vague, and if you ask for details, they will worm out of telling you

Their words and actions will not match. They could be telling you they care for you, like you, flirt with you, tell you they love you, and right afterwards start ignoring you, forgetting about you, be too busy to talk, give you less and less attention and time (devalue-discard phase)

There will be phases to your relationship with them, it will usually start with a lot of warmth, adoration, potential, praise, admiration, mirroring (they act like someone perfect for you), only for you to then be discarded, neglected, devalued, and accused of being annoying or overbearing if you try to be close to them like before

They will eventually blame you for something so outlandish and untrue it might feel like it's coming out of nowhere and completely stun you; this is projection, they're actually doing the thing they accuse you of, they're diverting the attention from themselves by accusing you

If you stick by them and patiently await for them when they neglect you, they will play by neglecting you more and more, just to see how far they can get away with it; they love to experiment with this and test the limits, you waiting for them feeds their ego

Even if they manage to get you to praise all their accomplishments and devalue yours, they will still be competitive and try to compete with you in every area, nothing will ever be enough for them to maintain superiority

They will make you feel like you have to keep following 'the script' they made for you, you will feel uneasy coming out with how they hurt you because you feel that you're breaking the role they had created for you in their life

Once you do come out with your pain and ask them to stop, they will either play it nice the first time, to establish their reputation as a kind person, but afterwards they can get cold, vicious, lash out, discard you, focus on how this makes them feel to the point where your initial pain feels irrelevant

They will take your support for granted and always want more, if they get used to it, it will be the 'minimal requirement' expected of you

You will be able to tell that this person lives in a personal bubble where they decide the value and importance of everything, and if you want to be in their life, you have to make yourself not only small but perfectly molded to fit inside of that bubble, and they will act like they absolutely want you there, but once inside, your value will plummet in their eyes, and you will become a toy to be picked up or discarded as they please.