Abusive emotional and verbal behaviors are not trivial problems. They cause major mental health problems that last throughout the lifespan. For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued findings from a survey of adverse childhood experiences such as abuse (verbal, physical or sexual) or family dysfunction (domestic violence, divorce, or a family member who is mentally ill, incarcerated, or abusing drugs) in December 2010. Twenty-five percent of those surveyed reported experiencing verbal abuse as a child, and both women and men were the targets. The CDC suggested that a higher number of these adverse childhood events were associated with premature mortality, noting that up to 20 years of life could be lost due to these childhood experiences. Victims tolerate verbal abuse for a variety of reasons that seem legitimate: they may not recognize that some negative behaviors are abusive. They may think that abuse is inevitable because they were abused in childhood. Or they may believe that they deserve to be treated badly. More often, victims don’t know how to end the abuse or believe they can only end it by ending the relationship. Verbal abuse comes in many varieties. It’s easy to recognize name-calling as abusive, but that’s not the only way abusers operate. They may insult you with criticism, threaten and intimidate you when you try to act independently, and use subtle psychological manipulations. Many victims of verbal abuse believe that the abuser would not say hurtful things unless the abuser believed them, but abusers don’t have to believe an insult to use it. The abuser says hurtful things to achieve control, knowing full well that he doesn’t believe what he’s saying himself. Or a victim believes that the abuser must be saying those unpleasant things because the insults are the truth, but that is not the case either. The abuser’s goal is to control, not truth-telling. If he can make you believe negative things about yourself, however untrue, the abuser has achieved his goal. The abuser is not trying to provide accurate information in a neutral fashion. The abuser presents biased and untrue information to help reach his goal.

If victims try to ignore the abuse, it may accelerate rather than stopping. The abuser does not abuse for attention, but abuses for control. Attention may be only a small part of what he wants, or achieves, with the verbal abuse. Often verbal abuse takes the form of manipulation which means using a hidden agenda or maneuvering to take control while concealing the goal. A common manipulation is to tell the victim that the abuser is just ‘expressing his feelings’ or ‘venting his anger’ as though the victim owes the abuser to tolerate abuse for the psychological good of the abuser! Let me assure you that psychologists and counselors don’t believe that someone who vents anger at someone else is getting psychologically healthier. We don’t believe that having people express their anger at the counselor is good for them, and we don’t tolerate abuse even when we’re being paid to listen because it doesn’t actually do the abuser any good and it does the listener harm! It’s good communication for someone to explain that he is angry, but someone who says he’s angry at you is not abusing you. It is abusive if he repeats it continually and uses the anger to try to achieve the goal of controlling you.If you listen to verbal abuse day in and day out, you can’t help but be affected by it. You would bloom if someone complimented you continuously, day and night, and you will wilt if someone continually tells you that you are wrong, stupid, fat, immature, badly adjusted, crazy, a bad mother, etc. You will feel badly whether you believe those statements or not, but it’s very likely that you will start to believe them if you keep hearing them.