Verbal abuse is a kind of battering which doesn’t leave evidence like physical abuse does. However, it can be just as painful, and recovery can take much longer. The victim of abuse lives in a gradually more confusing realm. In public she is with one man, in private he becomes another. Often, for the verbally abused woman (man), there is no witness to her reality and no one to understand her experiences. Friends and family continue to see her ex, the abuser, as a really good guy and, certainly, he agrees with them. The verbal abuser, while maintaining his charm with others, always takes his abuse behind closed doors. It is a means of holding power over his wife( husband) /partner.. Many women and some men leave a marriage and come back into the singles’ world with the diminished self-esteem that comes from a verbally abusive relationship. The fact that many of these women (men) have never even realized that they were being abused, makes it easy for them to enter another abusive relationship. A verbal abuser is an insecure person and immature person who is looking for power and control over another.In order to help you recognize abuse, remember that all forms of verbal abuse are methods of manipulating you for the purpose of establishing power over you. The following are some of the forms of verbal abuse the author helps you recognize.
- Withholding: a purposeful, silent treatment.
- Countering: a countering of your ideas, feelings, and perceptions, even going so far as to refute what he misconstrues you to have said.
- Discounting–a putdown of you or something you hold dear.
- Blocking and diverting–this is a sneaky, covert way of violating your dignity.
- Accusation and blame: generally involves lies about the partner’s intentions, attitudes, and motives. The author states that accusation and blame is present in all verbally abusive relationships.
- Judging and criticizing: lies about your personal qualities and performance.
- Trivializing and undermining: abusive behavior which makes light of your work, your efforts, your interests, or your concerns. The abuser attempts to dilute meaning and value in your life. Undermining might occur when your partner laughs at you, for example, when you burn yourself cooking. It is also jokes at your expense. Undermining is occurring when you feel a “so-called joke” is mean rather than funny.
- Name calling: no one has a right to call you degrading names. Name calling is verbal abuse.
- Ordering: Telling you to do something, rather than asking, or making decisions for you or for the two of you without your input.
- Forgetting and denial: the trickiest form of denial is forgetting. Become aware that forgetting is a form of denial that shifts all responsibility from the abuser to some “weakness of mind.”
- Abusive anger: this seems to be closely linked to the need to “blow up,” to dominate, to control, to go one up, and to put down. Any time you are snapped at or yelled at, you are being abused.
- Threatening: Physical threats and sexual threats aside, verbal threats are an effort at manipulation. For example, a threat to leave, stay out all night, or take you home immediately is a manipulation for power. The threat of “pending disaster” is designed to shatter the partner’s serenity as well as her boundaries.
If you counter the abuser or attempt to explain yourself, you will probably be met with such statements as, “I don’t want to hear it, get out of my face” or “Woman you don’t have the brains“, “B” You shouldn’t have said that to me“.
f you are in a brand-new relationship and see warning signs of verbal abuse, the author suggests you might be wise to let the relationship go. It is not likely that a man (woman) who needs to dominate and control will change easily, if at all. It is also likely that when the newness of the relationship wears off, he will become more abusive. Verbal abuse can become physical in time and physical abuse is always preceded by verbal abuse, according to Evans.If you are in a long-term relationship, you can respond to the abuser as the book suggests and soon discover for yourself whether or not your mate is willing to change and stop his abusive behavior.
“If you have been verbally abused in your relationship, you may have discovered that explaining and trying to understand have not improved your relationship. Therefore, I recommend that you respond in a new way–a way that will make an emotional, psychological, and intellectual impact upon your mate.”
The abuser in your relationship may change when he finds that you do know when you are being abused, that you have set limits, that you mean what you say, and that you will not take behavior you don’t like.
If the man ( or sadly too often now a women) in your relationship remains abusive, it is not only not your fault,” but it is your responsibility to deal with it, make it public, call the police too.
Any person cannot still fight with you of you leave his or her presences, even forever.. and there is still a good life after a failed marriage now too. I practise what I preach and often now too.
SEE ALSO https://thefocusonthefamily.wordpress.com/2008/07/17/the-too-common-abusive-silent-treatment/
Hey if you read my many non conforming posts you will note that I definitely, and loudly, rightfully still do not conform to the false or immoral demands of others..
I was really now fortunate I had great teachers here in Canada, in my public school, in high School and in University in Montreal Quebec, and all of them now had treated me as a real person, respected me, and allowed me to speak. and to be heard as well.
Not one of them no one told me what I can talk about write about or what I cannot as well. At work as a Professional Engineer, or as a Professional Realtor with Re/Max I was allowed continually as a responsible, a mature adult to make my own decisions, and top also carry out my responsibilities in the manner I chose to do them as well.
So I have to admit it came to me as a shock firstly when I started to attend evangelical, Baptist Pentecostal churches in Canada now as an adult that that same right to be respect, top speak, and to be heard, not to be bullied, falsely oppressed. Legal and Human rights that I had before, often now did not exist in the churches surprisingly now of all places. Never saw so many control freaks, human rights abusers in my whole life next to the too often bad cops now too. And perversely many a despotic, crooked elder, pastor had wrongfully tried to shut me up, and even next had resorted next to slander me, to try to discredit me and what I had said, or whatever, now even both in Quebec and in Alberta.
But like I have often said elsewhere the Evangelical church was not the only place where they tried to deny me my right to speak and to be heard now, for too often too and unacceptable the Alberta bullies, rednecks now on the net had wrongfully tried often and falsely to suppress my right of free speech, but next so did not too many a Politician, particularly, ironically again both the professing Christian ones, and the definitely alcoholic ones now too.. what they were falsely deluded that only politicians had the right of free speech and the right to be heard it seems too .
Next too many bad police officers as well did not like me openly, publically complaining about the too often bad cops, bad RCMP had encountered in Alberta, Quebec, and not just the too many bad pastors, elders too, and in other provinces as well.. and what these bad cops, bad watchdogs, forget they are here to serve the good welfare of the citizens? for they are not our despotic slave drivers.. nor are their bosses for that matter now too.
Now what bothered them all now so much that they had tried to shut me up? my transparency, honesty, or it seems the mere exercise of case of my rights . For in reality it seems at least 10 percent of the persons even on the net seem to be control freaks, bullies, human rights abusers.
I often read complaints on the net from some child complaining that that one of their parents is verbally abusing them, or even a spouse complain that their spouse is abusing them. I have heard people tell me how pastors had abused them as well. Children and spouses sometimes are forced to put up with it?? But not me, for I am not a child, rather a matured adult, a retired senior in fact. And I can clearly, rightfully speak for myself and talk on any topic now as I so desire as well as we all can readily see and I do so now too. And for the good of us all now too.
Beware always of men and women, bullies, tormentors, control freaks, persons, civil and public servants, politicians, pastors, leaders, elders, who falsely do, will try to enslave you, oppress you, exploit you even while they claim they are proclaiming the truth, democracy, trying to help you, etc.,
Is 51:23 ..your tormentors {and} oppressors, those who said to you, Bow down, that we may ride {or} tread over you; and you have made your back like the ground and like the street for them to pass over.
In generally in the more liberal society of Canada both the wife and the children tend to have much more freedom, rights, make their own decisions, over many other countries and as a result the culture shock is a very real problem for some new immigrant spouses where the husband was used to being obeyed, and being the sole head of the home thus it’s not altogether uncommon for some of the new immigrant home situations to become unacceptably violent.
Here also is what I know for sure, the older the person is the more extreme, more severe, the more difficult the punishment has to be on them to cause them to personally to change in their own negative ways, for they are too set in them now too.
Focus on the Family 