Here is a list of things that I've located on the internet that pertain to emotional abuse, specifically how to reconginize it and begin coping with it. The list is by no means comprehensive, and isn't meant to diagnose any problems, but it might help with coming to terms with exactly what is happening to you or someone close to you.
Emotional Abuse can include:
~destructive criticism
~humiliation in public, or private
~threatening to "out" you, aka disown you, leave you, kick you out etc.
~making you feel ashamed
~using the silent treatment against you
~demoting your opinions, beliefs or feelings, or disreagarding them entirely.
~making fun of you, or bullying you
~threatening to harm your property including your belongings, pets etc.
~oversteping personal boundaries, unecessary prying etc.
~Deliberately using a "hot to button" of yours to try and get a rise out of you, or beat you into submission verbally.
~brainwashing
~making you feel crazy
~insult of your friends, significant other, or parents
~unwillingness to compromise
~extreme emotional reactions to things that don't warrant them.
~unwillingness to do anything that isn't on their terms
~making you feel guilty when you didn't do anything
Emtional Abusers Include:
~parents/children
~sinificant others
~caregivers
~dating relationships as well as married couples
You have to remember that the abuse is not your fault. The abuser's primary reason for being abusive is not clear either, and you shouldn't try to reason it out in some way. The ony thing you can tell yourself that will help is that NO ONE deservesto be abused emotionally (or in any other way for that matter) and what is happening to you is WRONG by any and all accounts. You are not to blame, you couldn't have h elped the matter any, thinking like "If only I..." or "Well it's because she/he..." doesn't help you, and just because the ansswer may seem valid, it still doesn't make abuse right.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
1.)
Hi everyone, my name is Jackie, I'm 21 years old, and I'm being emotionally abused by my parents.
I have a tough time pinpointing exactly what days are going to be bad and what days are going to be good because they change all the time, and I never know what will set them off. My biggest concern through this whole thing is that I still desperately seek the attention and love and support of my parents, and I seem to be denied that when it comes to basic human things, namely who I choose to love, and a lot of the abuse comes in the form of verbal attacks on my relationship with my boyfriend and the dynamic of said relationship. My father does things like acuse me of "changing" and tells me that he doesn't know me anymore as a sort of way to guilt trip me, and my mother, she just says flat out crazy things. She sarcastically calls him names, tells me that he's no good for me, and that the relationship isn't right and in extreme circumstances accuses him and his family of things they aren't guilty of, especially because she doesn't know his family, she's never met them.
To give you a concrete example, around easter his mother had sent some bread over as a gift to our family and she procedded to get very disturbed by it. When we had an argument about my boyfriend, she threw the bread on the ground and screamed at the top of her lungs "why does this woman keep trying to push her son on me?" She also seems to think that I drive him around all the timee, and accuses me of being "desperate" and "whipped" just to try and get me out of the relationship when in realtiy the relationship is doing very well on it's own, without the added stress of my familial matters.
I'm at the point now where I'm 21 and I still have a curfew. I still have to ask when I can and can't go out, and when I do go out I'm followed sometimes. My mother is so worried about my money that she opens up my bills and my bank statements. I've had to go paperless on them because she would open them and see where I spend money. She even wanted to know why I bought something on a trip to Newport with my boyfriend and texted me at work about it becaus eshe couldn't wait.
When I was younger, it was a different form of abuse, abuse I didn't recongnize unti now. going through old diary entries showed me exactly what was so wrong about what was happening at my home. Some subjects of the entries included my father making fun of me for likeing anime, and wanting to play the guitar, and my mother caling me an airhead, and compring me to my aunts who are nearly homeless and screwed up beyond any and all reasoning. She would also say things to me like "cheerleaders aren't supposed to dress that way" and I wondered why I coudn't just be me. There wasa even a chunk of entreis where I vowed things would be better in college, because then my parents couldn't do anything or keep me down, but I was so wrong, now it'w even worse, because with the added freedom of a car, a job, a love life, and a different schedule comes a lot of mistrust, and prying.
The bottom line is children whouldn't be made to feel the way the chid in my journal entries describes feeling..." like she wished she was in a video game and could just start from her last save point" , and parents shouldn't oppress their grown children in some sick attempt to eact their last vestages of control over them. I started this blog to chronicle my own struggle with this abuse, and to hleop others like myself escape it.
It's very difficult to say, and een more difficult to do, but standing up to this abuse is the only way it will end, or the only way to see if I need to get away from it. I encourage everyone to post their own stories, send them to me at xjackiexknits@yahoo.com or jkmurray@cc.abertus.edu in order for me to post them, or answer them. I'm no expert, and this isn't about getting professional help, because god knows I'm not even out of the woods myself yet, but I'm trying to help people who are going through this lesser know form of abuse in their own lives, and I want to help us heal together.
I have a tough time pinpointing exactly what days are going to be bad and what days are going to be good because they change all the time, and I never know what will set them off. My biggest concern through this whole thing is that I still desperately seek the attention and love and support of my parents, and I seem to be denied that when it comes to basic human things, namely who I choose to love, and a lot of the abuse comes in the form of verbal attacks on my relationship with my boyfriend and the dynamic of said relationship. My father does things like acuse me of "changing" and tells me that he doesn't know me anymore as a sort of way to guilt trip me, and my mother, she just says flat out crazy things. She sarcastically calls him names, tells me that he's no good for me, and that the relationship isn't right and in extreme circumstances accuses him and his family of things they aren't guilty of, especially because she doesn't know his family, she's never met them.
To give you a concrete example, around easter his mother had sent some bread over as a gift to our family and she procedded to get very disturbed by it. When we had an argument about my boyfriend, she threw the bread on the ground and screamed at the top of her lungs "why does this woman keep trying to push her son on me?" She also seems to think that I drive him around all the timee, and accuses me of being "desperate" and "whipped" just to try and get me out of the relationship when in realtiy the relationship is doing very well on it's own, without the added stress of my familial matters.
I'm at the point now where I'm 21 and I still have a curfew. I still have to ask when I can and can't go out, and when I do go out I'm followed sometimes. My mother is so worried about my money that she opens up my bills and my bank statements. I've had to go paperless on them because she would open them and see where I spend money. She even wanted to know why I bought something on a trip to Newport with my boyfriend and texted me at work about it becaus eshe couldn't wait.
When I was younger, it was a different form of abuse, abuse I didn't recongnize unti now. going through old diary entries showed me exactly what was so wrong about what was happening at my home. Some subjects of the entries included my father making fun of me for likeing anime, and wanting to play the guitar, and my mother caling me an airhead, and compring me to my aunts who are nearly homeless and screwed up beyond any and all reasoning. She would also say things to me like "cheerleaders aren't supposed to dress that way" and I wondered why I coudn't just be me. There wasa even a chunk of entreis where I vowed things would be better in college, because then my parents couldn't do anything or keep me down, but I was so wrong, now it'w even worse, because with the added freedom of a car, a job, a love life, and a different schedule comes a lot of mistrust, and prying.
The bottom line is children whouldn't be made to feel the way the chid in my journal entries describes feeling..." like she wished she was in a video game and could just start from her last save point" , and parents shouldn't oppress their grown children in some sick attempt to eact their last vestages of control over them. I started this blog to chronicle my own struggle with this abuse, and to hleop others like myself escape it.
It's very difficult to say, and een more difficult to do, but standing up to this abuse is the only way it will end, or the only way to see if I need to get away from it. I encourage everyone to post their own stories, send them to me at xjackiexknits@yahoo.com or jkmurray@cc.abertus.edu in order for me to post them, or answer them. I'm no expert, and this isn't about getting professional help, because god knows I'm not even out of the woods myself yet, but I'm trying to help people who are going through this lesser know form of abuse in their own lives, and I want to help us heal together.
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