What is Emotional Abuse?

Does the girl in the picture look like she's being abused?

When people talk about abuse, they usually are referring to something that leaves bruises or scars. When people say abuse, others think 'so he was hitting her.' The subject of emotional abuse is one that often gets overlooked because it has no real visible markers-- insults don't leave marks on your skin. At any age, this sort of abuse can be incredibly harmful, but for teenagers going through a time of development, it can be all the more confusing and painful.

The fact is that emotional abuse is one of the most common forms of abuse, often coupled with verbal abuse. The girl in that picture is me, three years into my relationship with my abuser. In my own relationship, emotional abuse was what I endured most often. No one could really see what I was going through, or if they could, it was only glimpsed. Emotional abuse is defined as this on the site Healthy Place: "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 encompasses the abusive relationship which I was in. By the end of it, I was a shell ripped apart by all of this.

Confine: keep or restrict someone or something within certain limits of (space, scope, quantity, or time).

 My abuser and I rarely went out, and often he would fight me on going to things such as dances, only changing his mind when I told him that I would still go with friends if he didn't want to-- I didn't want to miss what I saw as milestones in my high school career, even though I usually ended up in tears at some point during the night. Past that, though, we spent a majority of time at my house, whether I wanted to go out to do something or not. Eventually, I stopped asking, figuring it was just normal, though my mother did show some concern.

This was not always so broadly laid, though. As our relationship grew, my abuser would also at times confine me within his truck. If he had made me cry, he wouldn't let me leave until I looked okay. This meant my eyes had to be dry, and no tears showing. I would have to try to wipe away any smeared makeup-- though at the time, I didn't often wear it due to comments my abuser would make.

Confinement can also be an aspect of physical abuse, which will be discussed in a later post.

Isolate: cause (a person or place) to be or remain alone or apart from others.

This is a common tactic in emotional abuse-- it's easier to control a person if they are alone. My abuser would often try to keep me away from my friends, telling me things about them that weren't at all true. He would also warn my friends away from being friends with me, making them extremely uncomfortable, and at one point was physically violent towards a friend of mine, literally shoving him out of his desk after coming to check up on me in a class that he didn't even take.

As time went on, however, I realized that my friends were drifting away. They hardly spoke to me, nor I to them because if I did and my abuser found out, he would bombard me with questions. Looking back, I am thankful that I was stronger than some are able and remained in a club where I had access to some socialization and met one of the friends who would help me cope with everything when it came crashing down. My abuser often complained about my participation in events for this club, and that leads into another one of the points given by the definition.

Intimidate: frighten or overawe (someone), especially in order to make them do what one wants.

Intimidation was heavily used by my abuser. One of the ways he would do so was telling me how if I left town without him I would be raped.  He would often repeat it, very seriously, trying to convince me how likely it would be should I go away for even an afternoon. It didn't matter if I would be surrounded by people I knew, it didn't matter that teachers would be attending to look after us, he was convinced I would be raped-- or rather, he wanted me to be convinced of that. For a very long time after our relationship ended, this fear stayed ingrained within me, and still, sometimes I feel it when I am alone even in the middle of a Walmart. This was one of his main tactics of intimidation that had me crying several times, but my resolve stayed firm and I went on my school trips (clinging to someone the entire time and refusing to even go to the bathroom alone, even if we were just in another school). 

He also used threats as intimidation, as I have mentioned before. I was often made to stay quiet because if I said anything about my treatment, he would tell my parents about things that I had told him in confidence or else details about our personal relationship. I was terrified of this, and he knew it, even though revealing the things he was threatening would be worse for him than me. All the same, I was young and scared of the reactions my parents might have, and that kept me under his thumb for a time. 

Verbal assault: an assault that is verbal, or spoken, also known as insults or verbal abuse.

I can't name the times that I was subject to verbal abuse by my abuser. The number of times I was degraded was numerous, for numerous reasons, and it was often done during one of his interrogations. Interrogations are another piece of emotional abuse, fueled by jealousy and possessiveness, that can often fall into verbal assault due to their nature. 

Whenever my abuser was upset or angry with me, I was insulted. He would curse profusely, raise his voice, and insult me. Usually, this was kept private so he could keep up appearances, but a few times it was very much public, which easily leads to humiliation. 

Humiliate: make (someone) feel ashamed and foolish by injuring their dignity and self-respect, especially publicly.

There was a time, in high school, where I had agreed to wait somewhere after a 'field day' sort of event. With a friend, we tried to figure out where my abuser was, but after ten minutes, we headed inside to wait there instead. When my abuser found me, he was livid, and in front of my friend (as well as other onlookers) he started yelling about how I was supposed to wait. Having that sort of thing happen in public is very degrading and shameful.

He did something similar at an event known as After Prom. Having yelled at me the entire way there, scaring me to the point I thought he might physically harm me, and then confining me to his truck until I didn't look that bad, he had me go inside. I had wanted to go home, but instead, I stayed in the cafeteria the entire time, trying not to look at anyone and whenever one of his friends asked, he made up some excuse. But he wouldn't let me leave the table either, as long as he was there, and soon I felt very confined to the spot, afraid he would be angrier. The entire time, having people look at me like that, was incredibly embarrassing. Having him lie about it, making it seem like my fault, was awful. 

But humiliation didn't always come in ways of him publically tearing me down or making me feel like I was stupid. And that leads to the last point in the definition.

Infantilize: treat (someone) as a child or in a way that denies their maturity in age or experience.

This one may be the most humiliating of them and something I am fervently aware of now. Whenever I feel someone is trying to infantilize me, I become very withdrawn from them due to my experience. When a child is young, a mother may try to straighten their clothes. My abuser dictated how I looked. If my pockets weren't tucked, he wouldn't tell me so I could fix it, he would fix it himself no matter where we were. He would move the straps of my underclothes if they were showing and would go so far as to tug up my shirt if he felt it was too low. I often would tell him it made me extremely uncomfortable and embarrassed, but he didn't care and told me such. "You won't do it yourself if I don't," were his words once. 

He would also degrade my attitude, often calling me 'childish' if I was happy or optimistic. He would degrade my opinions, saying I needed to grow up and therefore saying that my opinion wasn't mature because it wasn't his. 

In Conclusion... 

There are many aspects of emotional abuse, more than I've named and gone over, but there's only so much I can say at one time. Gaslighting also is emotional abuse, but I plan to give that topic it's own post. For now, it is easy to point out that many of the factors of emotional abuse feed into each other and overlap, and can further seep into physical and sexual abuse. All in all, emotional abuse is a very real thing, even though it is often put aside. In my own experience, I've been told that since I wasn't hit or raped, I wasn't really abused. This is completely false and this explanation of emotional abuse, though it does not at all fully cover the entirety of the subject, will hopefully prove that to those who believe differently. 

Definitions found on of  Dictionary.com