Advocates Against Family Violence

Patterns of Emotional Abuse
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Emotional abuse always accompanies, and in most cases precedes, physical battering. Targeted, repeated emotional abuse can severely affect the victims sense of self and of reality. Here is a list of emotionally abuse behaviors abusers use against their partners:
 

·         Abuser makes hostile jokes about the habits and faults of women

·         Ignores the victims feelings

·         Withhold approval as a form of punishment

·         Yells at the victim

·         Labels the victim with generally insulting terms: crazy, bitch, stupid

·         Repeatedly delivers a series of insults specific to the victim and designed to inflict maximum psychological damage

·         Repeatedly humiliates the victim in front of family members and others

·         Isolates the victim socially, perhaps geographically as well (for example, by moving the family to a remote location)

·         Blames the victim for all the abusers troubles and failures

·         Threatens physical violence and retaliation against the victim, children or other family members

·         Puts down the victims abilities as a mother, lover, worker, etc

·         Demands all the victims attention and resents the children

·         Tells the victim about his sexual affairs

·         Constantly accuses her of having affairs, even when she does not have the desire or freedom to have affairs

·         Gives the victim the silent treatment

·         Threatens to abuse the children and/or get custody of them

·         Tells the victim she must stay with him because she needs him and she couldnt make it without him

·         Accuses the victim of being violent if she acts in any way to protect herself

·         Questions her sense of reality

·         Forces economic dependency: He prevents the victim from working either by forbidding her to get a job or by making her life so chaotic that she gets fired and/or he takes her money

·         Puts down or denies the victims history, heritage, faith, values

·         Hits the wall, not her, to display his power

·         Breaks personal items that have sentimental value to her as a message that he can break her too

·         Threatens, tortures or kills her/their pets

·         Threatens suicide if the victim doesnt stay with him or do what he wants

·         Spends hours cleaning guns or knives in front of them victim

·         Threatens to kill her or her children

·         Destroys victims self esteem

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If your in or know someone in an abusive relationship.
 
National Domestic Violence Hotline
1 (800) 799-SAFE (7233)
 
Because Family Violence Knows NO Boundaries!