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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