It is often easier to recognize physical abuse than emotional abuse because emotional abuse is often hidden and goes unnoticed. And although it doesn’t leave visible bruises on you, emotional abuse absolutely affects people in significant and long-lasting ways. In this article, we shall discuss the destructive after-effects of emotional abuse in a relationship.
Emotional abuse is defined as any kind of abuse that isn’t physical, including verbal abuse such as yelling, name-calling, blaming, and shaming; isolation; intimidation; and controlling behavior. It can also come in the form of toying with someone’s emotions.
There are significant psychological effects of being yelled at in a relationship such as depression, anxiety, and interpersonal problems. Being yelled at lowers a person’s self-esteem, contributes to sleep issues, makes them feel on edge, and increases their body’s autonomic arousal system. Many people experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms such as feeling the need to be on guard, a fragile startle response, hypervigilance, feeling like they are walking on eggshells, and always being in a state of alertness.
A Canadian study involving 1,000 women aged 15 and up resulted in the following statistics:
- 35% of the women had experienced emotional abuse growing up
- 43% had suffered some form of abuse as children or adolescents
- 39% had experienced emotional abuse in a relationship within the past five years
Whatever you’ve been through with an abusive spouse, partner, relative, or friend, you have a right to call the abuse what it is, to fight for your independence, and to experience peace again.
And your awareness is the first step toward learning how to recover from emotional abuse.
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What Does Narcissistic Abuse Do to You?
You may not even realize that what you suffered in your relationship amounts to emotional abuse. The word “abuse” usually brings to mind images of bruised and battered women and children, too scared or still too attached to the abuser to leave.
But emotional abusers don’t have to touch you to leave scars. Their words and other behaviors can become your mental prison, and it’s not an easy one to escape. It’s equally hard to recover from the years of psychological abuse.
If someone in your life is (or was) doing the following to you on a regular basis, you probably have intimate knowledge of the effects of emotional abuse:
- Criticizing you constantly (your behavior, performance, appearance, etc.)
- Humiliating you at home and in public
- Blaming you when you bring up something they’ve done to hurt you
- Stonewalling or using the silent treatment
- Threatening to hurt you or someone you love (or themselves) if you don’t do what they want
- Controlling your finances and using money to control and manipulate you
- Discouraging you from going out — to spend time with others or to go to work, school, or other commitments — so you’ll stay home and do what they want
This isn’t an exhaustive list. Simply put, if there is a consistent imbalance of power in your relationship — in favor of the other person — when you should be treating each other with mutual respect and consideration, there’s a problem.
Just because you don’t have bruises or scars to hide doesn’t mean you’re not suffering from abuse.
The effects of mental abuse aren’t obvious, especially in the early stages, but they go deep. And they affect every relationship you have.
Spousal Emotional Abuse Effects
There’s another thing to consider when addressing emotional abuse: abusers don’t usually start out that way.
In the case of spousal emotional abuse, they may take an unusual interest in “keeping you safe” and making sure you don’t make mistakes or take unnecessary risks.
They take on a parental role that, at first, may seem caring and committed to your best interests. They see threats that you don’t, and if you didn’t feel protected enough (or interesting enough) to the people you trusted while growing up, their protectiveness might make you feel loved.
But once they’ve got you, they seize more and more control, eroding your self-confidence and expecting your compliance in every decision they make — and punishing you when you try to reclaim your independence.
The effects of this kind of abuse in your marriage change the entire dynamic of the relationship. You are no longer real partners who share in decision-making and are equal in all aspects of the marriage.
You’ve become a supporting character in the abuser’s one-star drama — there to take the blame, handle the commands, and suck it up no matter how much it hurts.
Here Are Some Destructive After-Effects of Emotional Abuse
You may not experience all the effects of covert abuse listed here, but at least some of them should sound familiar.
We’ve broken these down into short-term and long-term effects of emotional abuse so you can identify where you are in the process of recovery.
Short-Term Effects Of Emotional Abuse
1. Confusion and Uncertainty
You may have recently ended a relationship with an emotional abuser, and at the time it seemed like the best option. But now you’re not so sure.
You might wonder, “Was it really such severe emotional abuse that I needed to leave?” You question your judgment and think that it all might have been your fault, just as your partner always said.
You have no idea what a “normal” or healthy relationship looks like. Maybe yours was normal after all. It’s all so confusing and upsetting, and you feel like you’re the bad person who has just blown up your family life.
2. Fear and Anxiety
You lived under the shadow of emotional abuse for so long that leaving your abuser doesn’t make the fear go away.
You’re filled with anxiety, always waiting for the next shoe to drop or for someone to yell at you or criticize you. Even though the abuser isn’t living with you, you still walk on eggshells and constantly analyze every decision you make or action you take.
You were trained to believe that you couldn’t do anything right, but at least you had your abusive partner telling you what to do. Now you don’t have anyone, and that’s terrifying.
You’re having physical symptoms of your anxiety like random aches and pains, a racing heart, and muscle tension.
3. Embarrassment and Shame
As it begins to dawn on you what you put up with for so long and how demeaning it all was, you feel deeply embarrassed and ashamed.
How could you have allowed someone to treat you that way? What were you thinking? Where was the strong woman (or man) you were before you got involved with your abuser?
Friends and family tried to tell you for years, but you blew them off or made excuses. Now you realize they were right, and you were utterly brainwashed. The shame of being your partner’s emotional punching bag is eating you up.
4. Hopelessness and Despair
Your life was so entwined with your abuser, and the pain of his or her bad treatment is still so profound, you wonder if you’ll ever get over it.
You have little hope that you can live a happy life, much less ever find a partner who is kind and loving and treats you with dignity.
You feel despair over all of the wasted years and everything you gave in the relationship, only to be met with manipulation, control, and criticism. Your regret and feelings of failure feel all-consuming.
Long-Term Effects Of Emotional Abuse
5. Emotional Numbness
This is your body’s way of protecting you from the pain inflicted by long-term emotional abuse. You don’t feel good, but you don’t feel bad, either; you feel nothing because it’s safer.
Underneath it all, though, the trauma is still there. Once you face that and acknowledge that you’re suffering — and that your pain is a reasonable response to abusive language and behavior — you can begin to work toward your liberation and healing.
You need a safe space to acknowledge those buried feelings, to honor yourself by deciding on necessary action (i.e., to get away from the abuser), and to allow yourself to feel the pain of loss: the loss of what you thought you had or what you wanted to have with the abuser.
That pain can still be there in the midst of the relief that comes from finally freeing yourself from the abusive relationship. It may take some time before you feel safe enough to feel anything.
6. Resentment and Aggression
What often goes with the buried pain of loss is resentment. The anger builds, and it may overtake the numbness and provoke you to angry outbursts or passive-aggressive behavior.
You’ll say and do things you wouldn’t if you were satisfied with your relationship. Though you never before have considered leaving the abuser, you find yourself ready to not only escape but to burn the bridges behind you.
You don’t want a slow burn, either; you want an inferno. You want an explosion because everything in you has built up to that. And until you let it out, it burns you on the inside.