Healing from PTSD From Emotional Abuse
While any kind of abuse within a relationship is corrosive and damaging, emotional abuse can be a particularly unique and difficult experience with severe, long-lasting consequences.
Emotional abuse is often devastating to an individual’s mental health and overall well-being, frequently developing into either post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), two complex mental health conditions that may require professional help and support to heal from.
What is Emotional Abuse?
Though many would typically define it from a purely-physical standpoint, abuse can in fact take many forms within a relationship, romantic or otherwise. At its core, emotional abuse is a form of abuse that includes all of the non-physical behaviors that are intended to control or otherwise minimize someone’s sense of self, encompassing a severe pattern of behavior that can be either subtle or overt.
Examples of emotional abuse include:
- Verbal threats
- Insults
- Minimization
- Intimidation
- Yelling and name-calling
- Gaslighting, or a form of psychological abuse where someone causes you to question your own reality[1]
- Manipulation
- Attempts to control your behavior
Emotional or verbal abuse is often understood to be at the foundation of other types of abuse within a relationship, including physical and sexual violence. Experiencing psychological abuse can also place individuals at risk for developing the symptoms of PTSD and C-PTSD.
What is PTSD?
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is a mental health condition that can develop after a person has experienced or witnessed a traumatic event or had a traumatic experience, resulting in several complex and potentially long-lasting reactions.
While feeling fear is indeed a normative part of the human condition, PTSD dysregulates the body’s natural “fight-or-flight” response (which helps us to sense potential dangers and act accordingly[2]), causing individuals to experience a sense of frequent and lingering danger as a result of their trauma, disrupting many physical and psychological functions in the process.
Common symptoms of PTSD include intrusive thoughts, flashbacks or reliving the inciting incident over and over, nightmares and difficulty sleeping, emotional numbness, hyper-vigilance, difficulty with emotional regulation, and the avoidance of any potential reminders associated with the traumatic event.
Unfortunately, many individuals in emotionally-abusive relationships go on to develop the symptoms of PTSD as a result of the ongoing and frequent psychological harms, and can occur across all ages and demographics.
What’s the Difference between PTSD and C-PTSD?
While PTSD encompasses the effects of a single traumatic event, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or C-PTSD, results from prolonged exposure to one or more traumatic situations[3]. C-PTSD can be understood as originating from frequent or long-term traumas experienced by an individual, with many of the same symptom characteristics as PTSD.
Once posited to primarily afflict those who have experienced abuse in early childhood, complex PTSD is now better understood to potentially impact children and adults alike experiencing an ongoing pattern of physical and/or psychological harm.
How is Emotional Abuse Linked to PTSD/C-PTSD?
Relationships in which emotional and psychological abuse are present place individuals at a much-higher risk of developing PTSD or C-PTSD. Emotional trauma, be it a one-time experience or an enduring pattern, can result in the development of short and long-term effects seen in both conditions, cultivating an enduring sense of fear, helplessness, and constant stress.
This type of trauma can effectively function as the launching pad to developing these stress-based disorders, along with a host of additional health-related issues, as the human body was not designed to have its “fight-or-flight” system firing at all times—a common experience among living under the threat of emotional abuse.
How Do You Know If You Have PTSD/C-PTSD from Emotional Abuse? [INFOGRAPHIC]
Healing from PTSD as a Result of Emotional Abuse
Recovering from PTSD, C-PTSD, and emotional abuse is a complex journey that requires patience, along with the potential need for professional support.
It’s recommended that you reach out to a qualified therapist who specializes in trauma and relational issues who can assist you, as talk therapy can provide a safe space to process your emotions, gain new insight into your experience, and learn effective coping mechanisms for the symptomatology of trauma-based struggles resulting from emotional abuse.
Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, is an evidence-based treatment modality that can be helpful, along with eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR. EMDR is a structured process by which your therapist will help you engage with traumatic memories while activating the brain to resume its natural healing process.
Additionally, individuals suffering from trauma and emotional abuse can look to:
- Establish a support network
- Surround yourself with understanding, empathetic individuals who can offer emotional support and validation through the process of healing. There are also several organizations who can assist you in establishing new and supportive connections in the community.
- Set boundaries and develop a safety plan
- Learning to establish and enforce healthy boundaries is helpful in rebuilding trust in yourself and others, along with helping to cultivate a sense of safety. It’s critical to cultivate a safety plan as well, as emotional abuse can quickly escalate to physical violence[5].
- Practice self-care
- Prioritize self-care activities that promote relaxation, such as exercise, meditation, journaling, or re-engagement with hobbies.
Zack Ehrmann (MAEd, LMHC, LPC) is a writer and licensed psychotherapist in three states. Employed in the field since 2011, he’s been fortunate to work across demographics and populations in a variety of settings, including community health clinics, state and local governance, major hospitals, and private practice.
