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A guide
to realizing if
your child is at-risk,
displaying
self-destructive behaviors, and
needs
your help and intervention.
Abuse
Abuse: Help & Support
Abuse: Neglect
Abuse: Physical
Abuse: Sexual
Abuse:
Teen Dating Violence
Alcohol
& Teen Drinking
Anger
Anxiety
Disorders
Attachment
Disorder
Behavior
Problems
Bipolar
Disorder
Bullying
Conduct
Disorder
Counseling &
Therapy
Depression
Eating
Disorders
Emotional
Health
Overweight
Parenting Teens
Peer Influence &
Relationships
Personality
Disorders
Post-Traumatic
Stress
Runaways & Missing
Children
Self-Help & Support
Groups
Self-Injury
Sexual Behaviors
Stress
Substance Abuse
Suicide
Violence
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ABUSE: Emotional
Emotional abuse (psychological abuse, verbal abuse, mental injury)
includes acts or omissions that
have caused, or could cause, serious behavioral, cognitive,
emotional, or mental disorders. In some cases of emotional abuse,
the acts of parents or other caregivers alone, without any harm
evident in the child’s behavior or condition, are sufficient to
warrant child protective services (CPS) intervention. For example,
the parents/caregivers may use extreme or bizarre forms of
punishment, such as confinement of a child in a dark closet.
Examples of verbal abuse include:
Belittling - Disparaging comments;
making what one said as unimportant or contemptibly small
Countering and correcting - Responding in opposition and
pointing out errors and mistakes
Put-downs disguised as jokes
- Making critical, dismissive, or slighting remarks in a
joking, often sarcastic, way
Teasing - Harassing someone
'playfully' and often with sexual connotations, or harassing
maliciously (especially by ridicule); provoking someone with
persistent annoyances NOTE:
If teasing is reciprocal, it can be considered a playful bonding
interaction and is not
abusive. If one or both persons are already in a
relationship, then this type of teasing is flirting and is emotionally abusive in
its betrayal.
Holding out - Refusing to provide emotional support, share
information, or otherwise be intimate in a relationship.
Shutting down - Changing the subject of a discussion
(particularly if it is done rapidly), stopping an
emotionally-uncomfortable discussion down entirely, and "forcing a
discussion off-track"
Blame-shifting - Scape-goating or laying the responsibility
of one's actions on someone else (e.g., "It's your fault," "If only
you were more/less (whatever)," "You're just trying to pick a
fight")
Fault-finding - Relentless criticizing and correcting
Intimidation - Words or actions that threaten or imply harm
or loss of something important; emotional blackmail
Insulting and labeling - Calling someone something
pejorative; name-calling
Selective memory - Remembering only parts of an event or
bringing up only negative aspects of a person; includes 'forgetting'
and altering of
facts to make himself/herself look good
Commanding - Issuing demands in a controlling or dominating
way (as opposed to polite and respectful requests)
Lashing out - Angry attacks, yelling, screaming, raging,
temper tantrums
Some emotional abuse, such as habitual scape-goating,
belittling, or rejecting treatment, is often difficult to prove and,
therefore, child protective services may not
be able to intervene without evidence of harm to the child.
Andrew
Vachss, an attorney who
represents children and youth exclusively, with 30 years experience
in child protective work, says that emotional abuse of children can
lead in adulthood to:
Read Andrew Vachss'
excellent article,
You
Carry The Cure In Your Own Heart.
No abuse - neglect,
physical,
sexual - can
occur without psychological consequences. Therefore all abuse
contains elements of emotional abuse.
Next:
Teen Dating Violence
Learn more
Abuse
- Neglect -
Physical Abuse
Sexual Abuse -
Teen Dating Violence
Help and Support
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More
Information on Emotional Abuse
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Ambient Abuse and Gaslighting ~
Ambient abuse is the
fostering, propagation, and enhancement of an atmosphere of
fear, intimidation, instability, unpredictability and
irritation. It is the outcome of fear
– fear of
violence, fear of the unknown, fear of the unpredictable, the
capricious, and the arbitrary. It is perpetrated by
dropping subtle hints, by disorienting, by constant and
unnecessary lying, by persisting doubting and demeaning.
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Bullying: What
Parents and Teachers Should Know ~
Bullying is abusive behavior by
one or more students against a victim or victims. It can be a
direct attack -- teasing, taunting, threatening, stalking,
name-calling, hitting, making threats, coercion, and stealing --
or more subtle through malicious gossiping, spreading rumors,
and intentional exclusion. Both result in victims becoming
socially rejected and isolated.
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Catch It Low to Prevent It High: Countering Low-Level Verbal
Abuse ~ This article
looks at three types of verbal abuse -- teasing, cursing, and
gossip.
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Emotional
Abuse in Youth Sports (pdf)
~ Emotional abuse in youth sports can come from a parent or
guardian, coach, teacher, sibling, or a friend. It is the
most common form of maltreatment in youth sports, and includes
verbal abuse, forcing a child to participate in sports,
punishing a child for not playing well or losing, and making a
child believe that his or her self-worth relies on winning.
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Irritable
Bowel Syndrome Linked With Emotional Abuse ~
There is an
association between women's experience of emotional abuse and
the digestive disorder known as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
Two psycho-social factors may also play a role: self-silencing
and self-blame.
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Private Prisons: Living with Emotional Abuse
~ Emotional abuse victims speak out on this MSN video.
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The Psychological Maltreatment of Children
~ Psychological
aggression (i.e., parental controlling or correcting
behavior that causes the child to experience psychological pain)
is more pervasive than spanking. One survey cited in
this report revealed that 10% to 20% of toddlers and
50% of teenagers experience severe aggression (e.g.,
cursing, threatening to send the child away, calling the
child 'dumb' or such other belittling names). This
report affirms that psychological scars can last a lifetime.
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Sticks, Stones, and Hurtful Words: Relative Effects of Various
Forms of Childhood Maltreatment
~ This study was designed to delineate the impact of
parental verbal aggression, witnessing domestic
violence, physical abuse, and
sexual abuse, by themselves and
in combination, on psychiatric symptoms. Childhood
verbal abuse had a relatively weak association with
current anxiety, but it had moderate
to strong links with current depression, anger-hostility,
and dissociative symptoms. These links
were stronger than those for being a victim of
physical abuse during childhood and comparable to
those for witnessing domestic violence during childhood
and for being sexually abused by a nonfamily member
during childhood.
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Teasing: A Real Problem and Solutions
~ Even though teasing is considered a type of
bullying, teasing can range from an
enjoyable to a hurtful interaction. Psychologists define
teasing as an ambiguous message containing both humor and
hostility.
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Verbal Abuse
~ Like any area of human action, verbal abuse
begins in the mind and heart. Proverbs 23:7 says, "For as
he thinks within himself, so he is." What a person thinks
in his mind and heart will be reflected in his words and
actions. Verbal abuse and physical abuse result from a
world view that is clearly not biblical or loving.
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Verbal, Religion and Truth
~ The religious person seeks truth. The verbally abusive
person denies truth. In some way, all verbal abuse is a
lie.
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What
is Emotional Abuse? ~ This paper was written
to help suicidal and self-harming teens see how they are being
emotionally abused.
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You Are Not the Cause of Your Husband's Anger or Abuse
~ Angry and controlling husbands are very anxious by
temperament. From the time they were young children,
they've had a more or less constant sense of dread that things
will go badly and they will fail to cope. So they try to
control their environment to avoid that terrible feeling of
failure and inadequacy. But the cause of their anxiety is
with them, not in their environment.
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You Are
Not Crazy ~ Listen to
what verbal abuse sounds like on this interactive site.
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