It's a bit of an experiment. Here's a first effort, a three episodes of a four-part series plus one extra earlier episode, all on the topic of what constitutes "Emotional Abuse."
From the podcast "Healthy Relationships Rx with Dr. Jennifer Degler"
Episode #035 January 9, 2015 "Emotional Abuse Part 1 - What is Emotional Abuse?" 6 minutes
The words and actions that go along with emotional abuse continue to haunt [survivors] long after the bruises [from physical abuse] have faded.Emotional abuse is a consistent pattern of hurtful, humiliating, and condescending behavior.
Emotional abuse is a type of psychological violence that happens in a relationship. ... It's a consistent pattern that happens over and over again.
Examples of Emotional Abuse
Overt Types of Emotional Abuse:
- Domination: Attempting to control someone else's actions. Or having unreasonable expectations, where you place unreasonable demands on someone else.
- Humiliation: You embarrass or shame someone else.
- Discounting: You devalue someone else or devalue what is important to them. You devalue what they've said.
- Emotional Distancing: This is giving someone the "silent treatment," where you choose not to speak to them or look at them or acknowledge their presence for an extended period of time.
- Verbal Assaults: Constantly criticizing someone, yelling at someone, using cutting sarcasm.
- Withholding: This can be withholding attention or affection.
- Disapproving, dismissive, contemptuous, condescending looks or comments or behavior (rolling your eyes when someone says something or sighing and looking down your nose at them.)
- Sulking or Pouting: As a consistent pattern in a relationship, it's hurtful and can be emotionally abusive.
- Making Accusations
- Subtle Threats of Abandonment: "I'm going to leave you," either as a threat to physically leave or to emotionally leave. "I'm just not going to speak to you anymore" or "I don't ever want to hear from you about that topic again."
- When you define someone in a negative way that causes the other person emotional pain and mental anguish. It's a negative statement or even an insinuation that tells the other person who or what or how they are in an negative way. Examples: "You're just clueless." "You're so high maintenance." "You're holier than thou." "You are too sensitive." "You are impossible to deal with." "You're just immature." "You're just lazy." "You're just mean."
- Telling another person what they're like. Examples: "You're like a child." "You're like a crazy person." "You're like your mother."
- Telling the person how they're behaving. Examples: "You're acting emotional." "You're attacking me." "You're being dramatic." "You're jumping to conclusions." "You're making a big deal out of nothing." "You're just yapping." "You're just trying to start a fight."
- Telling another person what they think or feel or want, as if you can read the other person's mind. Examples: "You think I'm wrong." "You think you know best." "You think you're always right." "You think you're soooo smart." "You think you're better than everyone else." "You think this is all my fault." "You're just confused." "You're just never happy." "You aren't sad!" "You aren't tired!" "You enjoy arguing." "You don't love me." "You don't care." "You don't have anything to cry about." "You feel too much." "You love your parents more than you love me." "You only care about yourself." "You just want to be right." "You want me gone so you can be with someone else." "You want to hurt me on purpose." "You just want to embarrass me." This is acting as though you're inside the other person's brain and can know what the other person is thinking and feeling. You tell the other person this and it's negative and hurtful.
Episode #036 January 27, 2015 "Emotional Abuse Part 2 - Red Flags for Recognizing an Emotionally Abusive Man or Woman" 9 minutes
Emotional abuse is a consistent pattern of hurtful, humiliating, or condescending behavior. Emotional abuse is psychological violence against another person. Some examples are attempting to control someone else's actions or placing unreasonable demands on someone else, embarrassing or shaming someone, discounting or devaluing someone else or what's important to them, giving someone the silent treatment, or verbal abuse where you're criticizing or yelling at someone or using cutting sarcasm or calling someone names. Emotional abuse can also be covert or hidden or more subtle, such as withholding attention or affection, or rolling your eyes or other contemptuous behavior that you communicate non-verbally such as sulking or pouting.
How to recognize an emotional abuser:
In a dating relationship, the typical emotional abuser is looking usually for a younger person. They tend to date someone who is "one down" in the relationship, meaning the person is significantly younger, or are in less authority (maybe a boss dating his employee, or a professor dating a student, or maybe a female supervisor dating a male supervisee). Emotional abusers are looking for someone they are already "one up" over. It could be a parent who is being emotionally abusive toward their child, one down in authority.
In a dating relationship, emotional abusers usually accelerate the dating process; they get things moving very quickly. This is the person who on the first date or in the first few weeks is already saying, "I want to marry you" or "Will you marry me?" They typically have a family history of emotional or verbal abuse and maybe even physical or sexual abuse.
Emotional abusers are typically very charming when you first meet them. They sweep people off their feet. Initially they seem to be everything that you're looking for and they seem to be saying everything that you would like for them to say. But at some point, red flags do appear, but typically the person who is being set up to be emotionally abused will ignore the red flags, to their own detriment.
Some red flags of men who turn out to be emotional abusers:
- Talking quite a bit more than he listens or putting no effort into the conversation and expecting the other person to carry the whole conversation.
- After the initial wooing where they're very very interested in you, the conversation ends up being primarily about them the longer you're in a relationship with them.
- They make critical comments about other people, or jokes at other people's expense. Initially in a dating relationship they don't do this at your expense, but if you stay with them long enough, what you observed them doing against other people, they begin to do against you.
- They laugh at, belittle, or ignore your opinions, ideas, and activities.
- They may be flamboyant and loud in inappropriate settings, but they can also be the quiet type.
- When you try to bring this person's mistakes to their attention, they get angry, they shut down, even if you do the correction appropriately.
- If you share that something good has happened to someone else, they seem to resent that or try to "one up" that person.
- They lie - little lies and big lies. They exaggerate their accomplishments and they fudge the truth if it will benefit them.
- They may encourage you to disagree with or dislike family and friends in an attempt to isolate you.
- They get offended easily.
- They get angry quickly and without much provocation.
- Once they're in a bad mood, they stay there; they sulk and pout.
- They get jealous easily and want to know where you're going, who you're with, what you're planning on doing, and they monitor your activities.
- Typically they're so charming and first and seem so much like the prince or princess of your dreams, that it's hard to believe when they begin to change.
- The relationship starts out 95% amazing and 5% not so amazing. Over time, that ratio beings to shift (more quickly than you could imagine). Suddenly it's 80% amazing and 20% bad. Then it gets to 60% good and 40% bad. If you stay in it long enough, all of a sudden it's more bad than it is good. But people hang in with the relationship because they keep thinking that that time when it was 95% good was the real person and they keep hanging in there hoping that things are going to get back to that. Unfortunately they fail to recognize that this is an emotionally abusive person and that person is only capable of sustaining a relationship where maybe it's 20% good but 80% bad.
Episode #037 January 29, 2015 "Emotional Abuse Part 3 - Warning Signs That You Are In an Emotionally Abusive Relationship" 10 minutes
We define emotional abuse as a consistent pattern of hurtful, humiliating, and condescending behavior that can range from verbal abuse, belittling someone, constantly criticizing someone, calling someone names, to more subtle tactics like intimidation or manipulation or pouting or refusing to be pleased.Warning signs of an emotional abusive relationship:
- The other person often seems irritated and angry with you, and when you try to ask why they are upset they will either deny they are upset or will in some way tell you it is your fault, that you are to blame. Over time you come to believe that you cannot please this other person no matter what you do.
- When you feel hurt by something the other person has said or done, and you try to talk with them about it, the issues never get resolved. The other person refuses to discuss your upset feelings by saying things like, "You're just trying to start an argument." or "I don't even know what you're talking about." Or they just walk out of the room.
- You frequently feel frustrated because you cannot get this other person to understand your intentions. When they are upset with something you've said or done, they act like they know your motives for your choices and they judge your motives as bad. They believe they somehow magically can see into what you're thinking and what you're feeling, like they know your heart.
- They often accuse you of doing what they do but won't acknowledge. For example, they accuse you of trying to control their every move, when in fact they are the ones who are monitoring what you do, criticizing what you do, expecting you to report on expenditures of even the smallest amount of money, expecting you to ask them for permission, in effect, before you make even the smallest of decisions.
- When you look at the relationship, you sense that communication is really really hard with this person. What they think they said or think they did is so different from what you remember them saying or doing. When you try to discuss this with them, the communication never goes well and you always leave the conversation feeling like everything is your fault, and that you're a really bad person and that you can't even remember things accurately anymore.
- The other person seems to take the opposite view from you on almost everything. When they share their opinion, they don't state it as though they simply have a different opinion from you. They state it as though you're wrong and they're right, that they are the adult in the relationship and you're the child, that they are somehow superior and you are inferior.
- You walk on eggshells. You spend a lot of time monitoring your own behavior and watching for the other person's bad moods before you bring up a subject. You find yourself trying to figure out how you can perfectly word something so they won't get upset but you can never come up with the perfect words because no matter what you say, no matter how many eggshells you've walked on, no matter how carefully you've waited until they seem to be in a good mood or seems to be calm, it never goes well when you bring up what you need to bring up.
- You feel worse about yourself now than before the relationship started. You ask yourself, "What is wrong with me? I shouldn't be feeling so terrible. My life is not that bad, and yet I feel really terrible and I don't like myself anymore." You realize that other people seem to like the person and that the person can be charming to other people, but that when it's just you and them, it's like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing happens. Change happens and the result of being in the relationship long-term is that you slowly lose your sense of self and don't feel good about yourself anymore. An emotionally abusive person will communicate disapproval of you. At first it's subtle, maybe just a little dig here or there, a little rolled eyes, a big sigh, a little silent treatment here or there. But then it becomes more and more direct how they communicate their disapproval. They do this whenever you show up in the relationship as a real person, when you show up as a separate person. You are a separate person; you both have two different brains, you have your own thoughts and opinions, your own dreams, your own experiences of things that have happened, your own goals and plans. When those are different from what the emotionally abusive person thinks you should be thinking at the moment or you should be planning or you should want or the way they think you should have experienced something, they communicate disapproval. Over time the disapproval will cause you to doubt yourself and to lose touch with your own voice, because they are so certain they are right, they never question their own experience, they only question yours. You learn to tip-toe around the emotionally abusive person, trying to keep him happy so he won't get angry or give you the silent treatment, so he won't pout or say hurtful things. You walk on eggshells and you're not an equal in the relationship. Over time, this destroys your self-esteem.
Episode #022 March 12, 2014 "Identifying Emotionally Abusive Relationships" 6 minutes
Examples of emotional abuse:
- Domination: Attempting to control someone else's actions on a consistent basis.
- Unreasonable Expectations: When someone places unreasonable demands on you and they aren't willing to make those demands realistic.
- Humiliation: When someone has a pattern of embarrassing and shaming you.
- Discounting: When someone devalues you or devalues what is important to you, what you say, what you choose to do, your opinions.
- Emotional Distancing: This is giving someone the silent treatment or the cold shoulder.
- Verbal Assault: This is when someone is constantly criticizing you or yelling at you or using cutting sarcasm on you.
Covert/Subtle types of emotional abuse:
- Withholding attention or affection.
- Dismissive or disapproving or contemptuous or condescending looks or comments or behavior.
- Sulking or pouting when they don't get their way.
- Making false accusations.
- Subtly threatening to abandon you, that they're going to leave or they make insinuations that they're not going to be in relationship with you anymore if you don't do exactly what they want you to do or be exactly what they want you to be.
