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October 8 - October 8, 2018
It seems that being ridiculed is not as damaging as being ignored… .The most damaging form of behavior is withholding your attention. — Masaru Emoto, The Hidden Messages in Water
in The Verbally Abusive Man, Can He Change?, I list nearly 400 examples of ways that verbally abusive people may tell you not only what you are and what you think, but also what you want, feel, are doing, are like, and so forth.
Trivializing, diverting, discounting, blaming, abusive forgetting, countering, or claiming it was just a joke: these are all behaviors based on denial. They are all dishonest, cowardly
Denial — Or Dissociative Disorder?
Level Two — Anger Addiction and Name-Calling
It was as if he were a puppeteer who couldn’t pull the strings that would make her perform according to his plan.
Level Three — Orders and Threats
“my way or you’ll pay”
Level Four — Attacks That Undermine
accusing is a negative lie told to or about the partner.
when this silent treatment persists over time, it demonstrates that the perpetrator has no relationship with the partner.
Withholding seems to be the most toxic form of verbal abuse.
and loneliness of the partner.
two explanations for this kind of withholding:
Asperger’s syndrome. The person who withholds, and who also seems uncomfortable in conversations
Projection. In other cases, the withholder is so merged into his partner through the projection of his “feminine side” he cannot speak to her as if she were an actual person.
The toxicity of enduring a “relationship” with a person who withholds communication is so great that it leaves the partner depressed, unsure, and often ill.
The impact on the partner cannot be overemphasized. The social-emotional deprivation itself can create depression, anxiety, and other mental and physical symptoms
having “the last say” about who they are.
looking for therapeutic support,
would reject:
respecting, and protecting your child from the emotional and mental harm of verbal abuse.
treat their child with goodwill and respect,
ways to impart confidence is to allow the child to meet his or her own needs as soon as the child shows an ability to do so.
Children respond to appreciation.
present your child with the opportunity to make choices:
If your child is yelled at or put down in any way, she or he needs your support.
“Is there anything in what I’ve said that minimizes the abuse?”
you are the all-important sympathetic witness.
your child needs to learn appropriate responses to verbal abuse
One of the most effective responses a child can make to a peer who puts him [her] down is to say, “That’s what YOU say,”
“That kind of talk is not okay.”
children can be better off in a nonabusive single-parent home
Saying “I hate you” is not verbal abuse. It is an intense expression of feeling.
An appropriate response would be, “It sounds like you’re angry and you feel bad. I don’t blame you. I wish things were different too. I love you.”
the courts will give a man like this exactly what he wants. And
The system allows this. Every day it turns children over to sexually perpetrating, drug addicted or emotionally violent abusers.
re-traumatized each time they see their former mate. Each time their child is picked up or left off,
gain power over his partner through his child.
When Your Parents Live Apart Your relationship to each of your parents is separate and special. It is okay to say, “I don’t want to talk about it,” if one of your parents asks you about your other parent. It is important to tell your parent, counselor, or an adult you trust about anything that hurts, confuses, or bothers you, even when it is dad or mom you have to talk about. It is not a parent’s business to know anything about the other parent’s life when they are no longer together.
A power struggle involves two people or groups trying to “win” over or have power over each other.
a challenge to his “authority”
a chance to have a better relationship.
victim or as a survivor
find a way to gain freedom from abuse. As she does so, the feeling of being victimized fades
when people are “brainwashed” by constant verbal abuse, they are victimized.
When they realize that in all cases of verbal abuse, they are being lied to, the negative statement...
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does not mean that you need to build your identity around having been victimized or having survived. It simply means that in surviving a difficult situation, you may also have discovered how you did it and you may have something to teach others
Love doesn’t create problems. Dominance does.
held the confused belief that she should have been more “accepting.”
