Emotional And Verbal Abuse - Signs Of Emotional Abuse

By Leeanne Utiger
Emotional and verbal abuse is not to be tolerated, and yet thousands of women and men all over the world do just that - tolerate emotional and verbal abuse. Why do they do this? you may want to know. There are many reasons why people tolerate emotional and verbal abuse. Often in such a situation there are children involved, so the one being emotionally or verbally abused will stay in the situation thinking they are doing what is right for the child or children. This is a misguided thought, but there is nothing anyone can do about it, until the person being abused asks for help or opts to get out of the emotionally and verbally abusive situation themselves. You can not help those who are not ready to be helped. However if you see signs of such a thing, you can always try to quietly have a word and tell the person you are concerned about the signs you do see. They can then have the choice to talk about the signs you are talking of or simply laugh you off. If they laugh you off, they are obviously not ready to talk about the signs you see of emotional and verbal abuse.

Emotional and Verbal Abuse:
Emotional abuse is when a person, man or woman uses the power of speech and verbalizes put downs and degrading comments to another. If a person is put down enough, told they are ugly, told they are useless repeatedly, that person will start to believe it. There is a saying I have heard: "if you are told or hear something often enough, you will begin to believe it". This is a classic example of emotional and verbal abuse. Verbal abuse is the constant bantering and ranting of untruths and horrible things to another. The verbal abuse then leads to emotional abuse, as the verbal abuse will begin to set the emotional side of the abused on edge. What the verbal abuser is saying when he or she is verbally abusing another will affect how the abused then feels about themselves and they can more often than not get to the point of having very low self esteem, feeling like they can not do anything right and that basically they are useless and more often than not, a waste of space. If the emotional abuse is very serious, the emotional abuse can escalate and become very dangerous to the abused at times. The abused and the abuse’s friend will have to learn how to recognize signs of emotional and verbal abuse.

Below I have covered varying signs of emotional and verbal abuse for you to read and take note on. You just may recognize some of these signs in your own life or that of one of your friends.

Signs of Emotional Abuse:
There are a few signs that you can see from 'looking in' that there could be some form of emotional or/and verbal abuse going on within a house or a relationship. Often a sign of emotional abuse is the abused becoming reserved, or in other words, the abused shutting themselves off from others. Another sign to look for or be aware of is the abused not taking a great deal of pride in themselves. An abused person will often feel there is no point and get to the stage of 'giving up'. And more signs to pick up on are: A person that is constantly on edge or appears to be 'trying' to hard to please a particular person can also be seen as a sign of emotional abuse. Often another sign of emotional abuse is seeing little of the abused. Have you ever asked your friend or a family member out, to have them constantly turn you down, coming up with some excuse as to why they cannot manage to go out with you, even just round to your house for a cup of coffee. This is a very good sign of emotional abuse. An abused person will often want to always be at home and not want to go out, nor want to have visitors. They will do all they can to have what needs to be done around the house done and quite often appear to be doing too much. Another sure sign of emotional abuse is the way the abused acts around the abuser. Watch for strained body language. An emotionally abused person will often seem upset as well, and throw out comments without realizing it about how useless they are. This is a sign of emotional abuse. A very common sign of emotional abuse is when you do manage to get your friend or family member out, the abuser is constantly checking up on the abused, to see when they will be home. This is a form of intimidation and will often cause the abused to head for home immediately.

Some signs of telling whether you yourself are being emotionally abused are:
Feeling like you are the unbalanced one, therefore you are the cause of the way you are being treated.
Emotionally numb - like you just don't care anymore
You always feel like you are over reacting to your abusers words and actions
You no longer have the feelings you have for the abuser

These are just few signs of emotional and verbal abuse. If you feel you know someone who shows these signs, or you yourself recognize some of these signs in your own situation, I suggest you find someone close to you that you can confide and place your trust in to, explain to them the signs you see, and try to get out of such a situation.

See Also:
For more advice on emotional and verbal abuse, refer to:

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