Emotional abuse is an often-hidden, insidious form of abuse which can cause lasting damage to the victim.
Unlike physical forms of abuse, emotional abuse can operate in a covert fashion, targeting the core of the victim’s sense of self and emotional well-being with manipulation, deception, and threats. Because both the actions of emotional abuse and the wounds it inflicts are not always easily identified it’s therefore essential to increase awareness around this heinous practice in order to better understand the outsized impact it can have upon an individual’s life, as well as plan for taking steps toward beginning the healing process.
What Makes Emotional Abuse So Hard to Recognize?
Many emotionally, verbally, or psychologically-abusive relationships rarely begin with glaring red flags. Rather, the abuser begins to shift the dynamics in the relationship over time, making controlling and manipulating behavior far more difficult to spot, for the victim and for their loved ones.
However, abusive relationships aren’t in turmoil all the time. Instead, most abusive relationships are dotted with periods of calm and happiness, leading the victim to believe that things have changed and are back to the way things were at the beginning of the relationship—when in fact such periods of calm and happiness are often planned by the abuser to obscure their behavior.
As such, victims of emotional abuse are sometimes led to question the very nature of their experience, making it difficult to recognize the signs of an unhealthy dynamic. Many victims become isolated by the abuser from their family, friends, and support networks, leaving them without the critical counsel of their loved ones that may help to identify the abuse.
The Warning Signs of Emotional Abuse
While there is no “official” emotional abuse checklist of behaviors that can signify an abusive relationship, the following includes 25 of the most common experiences to help you identify abusive behavior and prepare to begin the healing process. Abusive relationships may display one, several, or all the items on the list.
1. They Constantly Criticize You
A constant stream of criticism allows an abuser to keep the focus off of themselves and their behavior and keep the victim off-balance, making it difficult to to recognize the abusive behaviors on display within the relationship.
2. They Belittle Your Thoughts, Opinions, Hobbies, or Interests
Abusers will often belittle and devalue things that are important to you. Such actions are meant to erode your self-worth and confidence, exerting control over the relationship and removing the critical components of your self-worth.
3. You’re the Target of Verbal Insults or Name-Calling
Abusers often resort to verbal insults and name-calling as a means of exerting power and are meant to make you feel inferior. Sometimes, the abuser will minimize such verbal abuse by telling you it’s “just a joke,” and that you need to not be so sensitive.
4. Your Accomplishments are Minimized
An abuser likely doesn’t want you to feel capable, as this would be problematic to their sense of control. Minimizing you and your accomplishments increases their own self-importance and helps to keep you under control, further ingratiating the inherent imbalance of power within the relationship.
5. The Abuser Attempts to Undermine Your Self-Esteem And Confidence
Anything that makes you feel good about yourself is a threat to an abuser and their sense of control. As such, undercutting your sense of self helps them to maintain their dominance and keep you from questioning the reality of an abusive relationship.
6. Gaslighting
Gaslighting is a manipulation tactic meant to distort your perception of reality and make you doubt your own memory (and even your sanity). Gaslighting can involve denying events that you’ve personally experienced, twisting the truth, or shifting undue blame for an event onto you.
7. Blaming You For Their Abusive Behavior
Abusers will frequently attempt to shift the blame for their behaviors onto the victim, noting that they wouldn’t have to engage in such harmful actions if the victim themselves weren’t so difficult.
8. Using Guilt to Manipulate You
While guilt is a productive emotion—and can be utilized to elevate our behavior when we’ve done something wrong—-it can also be manipulated and wielded against you in an abusive relationship, creating a false sense of duty towards the abuser.
9. Isolating You From Your Support Network
Normal, healthy relationships are supportive of your wider network—but abusive relationships thrive on removing your access to trusted family, friends, and other connections, as these can often be the supporters who would point out the abuser’s behavior. Being cut off from your larger network makes it easier for the abuser to distort the reality of the situation and gain an upper hand, often by utilizing many of the other tactics on this list.
10. Monitoring Your Whereabouts and Using Excessive Surveillance
By constantly monitoring your whereabouts—which can also include snooping on your devices or utilizing technology—the abuser further isolates your right to privacy and autonomy, creating a constant state of fear and mistrust which can be further manipulated to their gain.
11. Restricting Your Access to Finances
An abuser strives to both eliminate autonomy and tie the victim to depend on them, both of which are the end results of restricting your access to finances (be they shared or individual). Without the proper resources a victim of abuse is far likelier to remain in the relationship, tethering them to ongoing dependence upon the abuser.
12. Threatening Violence and Making Threats
The threat of physical violence is particularly heinous, creating an atmosphere of powerlessness and submission. No healthy relationship ever includes a threat to the integrity of your being, and an abuser will often wield the threat of violence as a tactic to induce passivity and control over your actions.
13. Damaging Your Personal Belongings
Another violent act, the destruction of personal property is a serious red flag in any relationship. The damaging of possessions simultaneously fosters an air of potential violence toward the victim and devalues their
14. Withholding Affection, Love, or Emotional Support
Healthy relationships thrive on the currency of affection and support, drawing each party closer together and strengthening their shared bonds. Abusive relationships, however, will tend to mete out these vital actions in order to distort and manipulate the relationship to the abuser’s purposes, often only providing them after negative behavior has damaged the victim.
15. Giving You the ‘Silent Treatment’
The ‘silent treatment’ provides a way for the abuser to cultivate feelings of worthlessness and rejection in the victim, both of which are important ingredients for the abuser to further manipulate and isolate you from critical support.
16. Constantly Changing Expectations
Chaos thrives in an abusive relationship, and keeping the ground beneath you unsteady with ever-changing expectations helps to keep an abuser in control and a victim uncertain of their place and value, making it all the more difficult to leave.
17. Spreading Rumors or Engaging in Character Assassination
Making false or misleading statements to others allows an abuser to increase a victim’s sense of isolation from others, using embarrassment and shame to keep you tethered to the relationship and unable to access vital outside support.
18. Using Your Vulnerabilities Against You
We all have insecurities. However, within an abusive relationship, an abuser will look to wield these against you in order to foster more dependence and control.
19. Minimizing or Denying the Impact of Their Behavior
Many abusers will attempt to turn the tables on their behavior, insisting that any hurt feelings as a result of their actions are merely the victim being too sensitive.
20. Exerting Control Over All Decisions
Relationships have an inherent give and take—yet abusive relationships will strip away your autonomy to make decisions, be they concerning yourself or the general direction and dynamics of the relationship.
21. Refusing To Take Responsibility or Apologize
Apologizing means that we’re becoming vulnerable and admitting our mistakes, actions that an abuser is likely to avoid. Alternatively, abusers may also attempt to use a heartfelt apology when things have gone too far in an effort to avoid the victim developing the wherewithal to question them or potentially leave the relationship.
22. Making Threats of Self-Harm to Exert Control
An omnipresent threat of self-harm or suicide shifts responsibility to the victim in an abusive relationship, making them feel tasked with maintaining their partner’s well-being and to become more-compliant with their wishes to avoid a catastrophic outcome.
23. Undermining Your Relationship With Children
Children and parenting can become weaponized in an abusive relationship, with the abuser threatening to restrict access and criticizing the actions of the victim in order to exert their dominance and raise the stakes of potentially leaving.
24. Ignoring Your Boundaries and Personal Space
We all have a right to our boundaries and personal space, but an abuser will often seek to remove your bodily autonomy by keeping in close proximity and/or engaging in unwanted physical action, sexually or otherwise.
25. Making Derogatory or Demeaning Comments About Your Appearance or Body
Abusers aim to minimize your sense of self, and making frequent derogatory comments about your body can cultivate a sense of shame which can be manipulated (e.g., “Who else would want you?”), strengthening your ties to them for fear that you are somehow unacceptable to others.
What Can I Do If I Suspect My Partner Is Abusive?
It’s important to remember that escalation is always possible in an abusive relationship—just because your abuser is verbally or psychologically abusive doesn’t mean they can’t become physically violent. As such, it’s important to keep safety at the forefront of any planning, including the re-establishment of social supports, engaging in therapy, or outlining a potential plan to leave. Healing from the effects of emotional abuse is possible, but care must always be taken to ensure your safety to begin.
Elizabeth McDade-Montez, PhD, is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, writer and teacher in Santa Cruz, CA. She writes about mental health, impacts of social media use, and sustainable living. She’s had articles published in leading psychology journals including Health Psychology, Assessment, and Psychology and Aging.
