Focus Adolescent Services

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:

• Addiction

• Rage

• A severely damaged sense of self

• An inability to truly bond with others

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

More Information on Emotional Abuse

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Private Prisons: Living with Emotional Abuse ~ Emotional abuse victims speak out on this MSN video.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Verbal, Religion and Truth ~ The religious person seeks truth.  The verbally abusive person denies truth.  In some way, all verbal abuse is a lie.

• What is Emotional Abuse? ~ This paper was written to help suicidal and self-harming teens see how they are being emotionally abused.

• 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.

• You Are Not Crazy ~ Listen to what verbal abuse sounds like on this interactive site.

Healing the Hardware of the Soul

by Daniel Amen

Guided by this book, each of us can learn to balance and optimize the parts of the brain responsible for inner growth, intimacy, and spiritual health.