Emotional Abuse
Introduction
Feeling humiliated, degraded and criticized by someone you love is a damaging feeling. Although you care for the person deeply, you may not understand why they're putting you down or why you feel mistaken for acting justifiably. The constant ridicule can cause you to feel stuck between love and playing the victim. Knowing how to handle these circumstances and help yourself at the same time might require outside assistance. If you choose to reach out and confide in a therapist you'll learn how to react to these interactions and overcome insecurities that are taking over your health and happiness.
Being emotionally abused can be elusive. The person who is doing the abusing may not even be aware of their action - which makes it even more difficult to eliminate the behavior. Verbal abuse is harmful as it is damaging toward your self esteem. It has the potential to break down how you perceive yourself and define something about you that is untrue. Emotional abuse can happen between children and parents, spouses, relatives or students and mentors. The abuser projecting these demands may act like the victim unexpectedly and make you feel as if you were the one doing something wrong. Allowing this control in a relationship changes how you envision your own worth. Fortunately, you can learn how to manage your emotions so that they no longer put you in a vulnerable position. Therapy helps eliminate this allowance from your life so that you can protect yourself from dominance and regain security.
When Emotional Abuse Harms Us
Emotional abuse harms us because it reduces our enthusiasm and self-confidence. We might feel uncertain about how we are coming across to others and feel constantly worried about our own responses. The self doubt we have can grow over time if the abuse continues and builds self criticism. If you feel hesitant toward decision making and deal with ongoing anxiety, it's a common symptom of emotional abuse. You might have a greater desire to escape or live in the future. You're likely to have a strong distrust toward other people; even family members and friends you've known for years. If someone close to you is making you feel afraid through words or gestures, it's important that you get help right away. The demands are detrimental to your happiness and therapy will show you how to fix them so that you can find your peace of mind.
How Emotional Abuse Affects a Marriage
Emotional abuse is psychologically harmful in marriage. The incidents occur in cycles as the aggression is followed by affection and compassionate periods from the abuser. In a marriage, the victim starts to blame themselves for everything wrong that has happened. Emotional abuse is a subtle hinting that often makes you feel as if you are the one with the problem. Loving someone who does this to you causes confusion as you want to help yourself and mend the marriage at the same time. Therapy aims toward treating your self-worth and ridding of any devastation that has occurred as the result of verbal abuse.
The continuance of this behavior in marriage leads to an increasing amount of anxiety. A controlling nature has the power to take you away from the things and people you love the most. Therapy for emotional abuse focuses on eliminating a negative standpoint you have toward yourself. As you work with a counselor you'll learn how to manage the aggression and gain your confidence back. You will understand how to use strategies during conflict and learn how to reduce your expression so that you can transform the conflict into valuable problem solving.
How Therapy can Help
During therapy the counselor will assess you to see what your weaknesses and strengths are individually and in a relationship. It will acknowledge your abuse stage and help the therapist gain a thorough understanding of the pain you're feeling. You will soon learn how to overcome internal challenges and target external strategies that work adequately within your response. Therapy is productive as you'll soon come to understand that you have an incorrect perception of yourself. You can regain the confidence you need to fix a sense of security that may have been damaged. Sessions guide you through recovery stages so that you will find a progressive path to follow. It's important that you come to recognize your own strengths, life skills and prevent circumstances that are damaging toward you. Your most important job during recovery is taking a stand and disabling the emotional control. As you work on elimination, your reactions will become constructive instead of enabling. You and the therapist will regain clarification and design strategies that help you cope with these types of interactions. When you build a greater sense of awareness and understanding, you'll learn how to manage your own responses if an emotionally abusive scenario is present.
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