Is your relationship with another healthy or abusive?

Have you ever wondered why victims rarely report being abused?

Or why they stay in abusive relationships?

Or why they seem to allow someone to beat them and verbally abuse them without being able to stand up for themselves?

In reality, Emotional Abuse is more convoluted than just yelling and bullying. And, sadly, it is a daily reality for millions.

And given the opportunity, it is about what happens to people before offenders are able to take it to another level or kind of abuse like Spousal Abuse, Physical Abuse, Financial Abuse, Elder Abuse, Verbal Abuse, Negligence, etc. that renders them helpless to help themselves from abuse.

​It’s about your personal boundaries being crossed and your not being able to defend yourself. It’s about feeling helpless and vulnerable as someone intentionally sets out to hurt you in ways that leave no obvious scars.

​Which is worse: emotional abuse or physical abuse?
Actually Emotional Abuse is the foundation to all other types of abuses. Before you can be physically abused, someone has to have already tampered with your emotions to be able to take the abuse to another level without your being able to defend yourself.

Not only, over time, does allowing someone to affect your state of mind in this manner affect you detrimentally but it also, in time, affects everyone else around you who is close to you, as the offender is allowed to continue in their ways.

There are certain people in our daily lives who are determined to create a toxic environment for others. It is within this environment that they feel that they have control over their lives if they can gain control and maintain power of other people’s lives. And it is the detrimental effects the abuse has on others that empowers these types of people and further motivates them to continue to unduly influence others to their detriment, without any remorse, and solely for the benefit of themselves. It is the actions of these people that leads to the corruption of others, unaware of how they are being unduly influenced, to become just as toxically abusive to others as their mentor is.

​This is how the cycle of abuse becomes perpetual.

Given the opportunity, offenders know how to attack people’s vulnerabilities. And it can happen anywhere: at home, at work, within a group of friends, or in public as you stand in line at the check out. How often have you walked away from a situation regretting some action you took against another or regretting not saying something to someone who was being offensive to you? In all likelihood, they were very aware of what they were doing to you and, most certainly, they were aware that they were not just being rude, but abusive.

Even something so simple as hearing someone accuse you of “being needy” will do it. How does that make anyone feel hearing that from a loved one? In truth, it makes them feel vulnerable to more abuse actually and offenders are very aware of that.

Being aware of someone’s influence over your own actions is where one can start to learn how to manage such situations.

Allowing it to be taken to other levels of abuse is where the behavior of the offender should be treated as acts of crime against another.

Is everything you say or do end up being criticized, twisted around or constantly misunderstood and then turned into a fight where you are having to constantly apologize for something? Are you being told you can’t communicate?

In your relationship with your sibling, does everything turn into issue about you and how wrong or difficult you’ve been again?

​In your relationship with your spouse do you wonder: Why can’t he ever apologize to me? Why is it that I always end up feeling guilty and have to apologize to him?”

In your relationship with your son/daughter, do you feel pressure to stay quiet and comply in order to keep things good?

In your relationship, do you feel like you’re being watched very carefully? And are you constantly afraid of doing something that will upset him/her? And nothing you say or do makes it any better between the two of you?

​In your relationship, are conflicts between you two on the rise? Do you feel like you’re being brainwashed? Are you exhausted and just give in most of the time just to get some peace?

​If you see yourself here, you may be in an abusive relationship.

It may be helpful to learn how to read the signs and become aware of how you or a loved one can get trapped in an abusive relationship.