I think it's also important to note that most psychologists agree, the effects of emotional abuse on a victim when compared with the effects experienced by victims of any other type of abuse (e.g. physical) are usually the most severe. This is largely because emotional abuse is a type of brainwashing, where the victim begins to internalize what is happening or has happened to them and define themselves by those negative experiences over time.
Victims of emotional abuse tend to display:
- low self-esteem
- low self-confidence
- a negative self-concept
- deep-rooted feeling of worthlessness, believing that no one could love them
- tendency to minimize the seriousness of their experiences, or its effects, to themselves and others
Furthermore, from http://eqi.org/eabuse1.htm, is this list:
- Can only guess at what healthy behavior is.
- Have trouble completing things
- Lie when they don't need to. Lying might have been a survival tactic in the home.
- Judge themselves without mercy.
- Have trouble accepting compliments.
- Often take responsibility for problems, but not successes. Or they go to the other extreme and refuse to take any responsibility for mistakes while trying to take credit for the work of others.
- Have trouble having fun since their childhoods were lost, stolen, repressed.
- Take themselves very seriously or not seriously at all.
- Have difficulty with intimate relationships.
- Expect others to just "know what they want." (They can't express it because they were so often disappointed as children that they learned to stop asking for things.)
- Over-react to things beyond their control.
- Constantly seek approval & affirmation.
- Feel different from others.
- Are extremely loyal, even when facing overwhelming evidence that their loyalty is undeserved.
- Are either super responsible or super irresponsible.
- Tend to lock themselves into a course of action without giving serious consideration to alternative behaviors or possible consequences. (This impulsiveness leads to confusion, self-loathing, and loss of control over their environment. The result is they spend much energy blaming others, feeling victimized and cleaning up messes.)
These lists aren't exhaustive, and also don't describe the situation of every emotional abuse survivor - but I think they're a good starting place, if only just to try and understand the extent to which a person can be damaged by this type of treatment.
"tendency to minimize the seriousness of their experiences, or its effects, to themselves and others"
ReplyDeleteI can so relate to this sentence, and believe it's the reasong that I kept going back.
I can relate to all of this article. I have never been hit in my life, but have been torn to pieces by the emotional abuse. I know you have also. Thanks for speaking out!
Thank you for visiting! Hearing from other survivors just makes my day. And I agree with you on the idea that it's why many of us tend to go back to the abuse. It's like, "well, he/she doesn't hit me, so maybe it's not that bad..."
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