How to Recognize Verbal Abuse
I've realized that part of the reason I didn't know I was being abused was because I didn't have the vocabulary to describe what was happening to me.
I hope my explanations of Patricia Evans' list of verbal abuse techniques will help you more clearly define your experience and recognize verbal abuse as it's happening so you can STOP IT by calling it what it is - ABUSE.
How I Hear Verbal Abuse in My Relationship
*The categories listed below are from the book "Verbal Abuse Survivors Speak Out" by Patricia Evans, ISBN 1558503048, Adams Media, February 2003. I wrote the comments beneath the categories only. I highly recommend reading the book "Verbal Abuse Survivors Speak Out" by Patricia Evans.
| Abusive Anger | Accusing & Blaming | Blocking & Diverting | Countering | Denial |
| Deprivation & Withholding | Discounting | Forgetting | Joking | Judging & Criticizing | Name Calling |
| Ordering & Demanding | Threatening Behavior & Words | Trivializing | Undermining |
Abusive Anger
My husband uses abusive anger in an attempt to threaten me emotionally and physically, hoping I'll back down so he can have his way.
When my abuser is abusively angry, he is loud, obscene, and gets in my face with either his face or his finger. He hears nothing I say when he's in this rage, OR he picks up two or three key words and twists them into something I did not mean to say.
Sometimes all he wants if for me to silently listen to his abusive statements. Similarly, he'll ask questions OF me and then answer them FOR me - as if he knows the answers and I don't. Of course, the answers he provides are insulting to me.
Accusing & Blaming
Will constantly turns my pain around on me. I can't remember the last time he took my pain seriously or validated any feeling I claimed. I'm always over-reacting and causing my own hurt. If I didn't do X, then Y wouldn't happen.
In short, my every reaction, my every sad or angry emotion, is a result of some fallacy I've convinced myself to be true. "I'd be pissed too if you were late for no reason, but I have a good reason! He's leaving for Fort Lee tomorrow and I had to go to the farewell party. It's part of my job!" Evidently, it's also part of my husband's job to stay out until two am without so much as a phone call letting me know he would be late for dinner.
Blocking and Diverting
Blocking and diverting is basically changing a conversation to gain control of it. When my husband switches topics, he is really telling me that he doesn't see me as a rational person who would notice that the conversation was changed. And sometimes, he succeeds because he changes the conversation so drastically I forget and try to defend myself instead of stay on topic!
"Will, I'd really like for us to go to dinner with my sister and her husband tomorrow."
"Did you feed the kids? Are you even thinking about them? I can go hungry, but you shouldn't let the kids starve."
Countering
If he can get me to doubt myself, I'm easier to control because I stop having conversation. I stop asking questions. I stop questioning him. It's a lie he's happy to live in because he feels more in control of me.
It doesn't really matter what I say. I could call a color peach and he'd insist it was red. I could agree with him that the light was too bright, and suddenly he wouldn't be bothered by it anymore.
Me: I think I'll work by word of mouth until I earn some money doing this.
Him: No, word of mouth is overrated. You're going to have to put money into some sort of advertising.
Me: Okay, then I'll start with an ad in the paper.
Him: No, no one reads the newspaper for that. I guess there's just no good way to get this going.
Denial
When I told Will that he was verbally abusive and was able to list the ways in which he abused me, he went to the computer and printed out a list of the effects of rape. He said, "Here. This is YOU. This is your problem."
By denying the issues, the abuser can pretend that nothing changes. You don't change, the situation doesn't change, nothing changes unless HE changes it. There are no surprises for him, just for you. He is in control.
Deprivation or Withholding
Will won't talk to me for hours and sometimes days. He pushes me away when I make a sexual advance and then complains that I don't act like I want him. He'll come home drunk if he suspects I want to "talk". He goes to his friend's house instead of spending time with his family. He will work on projects that could wait for a couple of hours (or months!) when I want to do something together.
I'm not talking about occasionally.
By withholding and depriving, Will can say, "Nyah nyah! I've got something you want and you can't have it! I'm in control! I can keep things exactly how they are, and you can't do anything about it!"
Discounting
My husband loves to tell me that I don't understand how the world works. In this way, he's able to dismiss and make fun of my observations and ideas. If he's the only one who knows about the "real world" then anything I say can be discounted as naive or worthless.
Whenever I have had a business idea or pursued my own business, he's found every way to make me believe my ideas couldn't work. He says that by being critical he is only trying to help me avoid problems. But how is, "Are you sure you'll be able to keep up with that?" supposed to make me think constructively?
Or, "I'll tell my friends about your web design thing, but your integrity is going to get me in trouble at work!" It's a long convoluted story about how that could happen, but here he's telling me that something he "admires" in me is going to be my downfall. I guess I need to rethink my integrity...
Forgetting
Let's see, Will used to forget when we were supposed to go out with friends of "mine" or get together with my family for dinner. He'd forget we had family evenings planned at the Y, and he would forget that I had doctor appointments when I was pregnant. He never heard the heartbeat of our first baby.
He also "forgets" entire conversations. Important ones. He'll forget that I have plans and writing our schedules on the family calendar doesn't help because it isn't his job to read the calendar.
When he purposely and regularly forgets things that are important to me, he is in effect telling me that my time, energy and health are unimportant and he cannot be held accountable for wasting it. Only his schedule is important, so that means he is in control of mine, too. Period.
Verbal Abuse Disguised as a Joke
It's funny that he wants to run me through a wood chipper and feed pieces of me to the fish. It must be funny - he used to tell everyone about it when we had a pond.
When my husband says things like this, he's really telling me that he loves putting me down because it makes him feel good. He can say whatever he wants because he is "just being funny" when he says it and I don't know how to take a joke. He is in control. Everyone laughs, don't they? He couldn't really mean it, could he?
Judging and Criticizing
When Will judges and criticizes, it's a power play to put himself in control of the conversation. Evidently, I should think he knows everything and I know nothing. Evidently, I should think I don't have a clue about how to do much of anything and I should think that he always knows better.
"Will, some bills do change from month to month. When we rent movies on cable, the cable bill changes. Sometimes the electric bill isn't what we expected, and - "
"You're just trying to avoid answering my questions. You're hiding money or something. When I did the bills, they never changed. Maybe those people are taking advantage of you because you don't stay on their ass about stuff like this."
Name Calling
My husband calls me names for two reasons, I think. One reason is to humiliate me. The other is to deny my existence to himself. In his mind, the best way to stay in complete control is to annihilate the one questioning him - me. Patricia Evans puts it best. She explains that when abusers engage in name-calling, they're saying, "You do not exist. You are annihilated.... Now that you are wiped out, I'm in control, just like in a war."
I'd like to add that when we are going through a string of arguments or abusive conversations (aka, "bad days"), he doesn't use my name at all. He doesn't call me "Kellie" for days. He'll refer to me as "your daughter-in-law," "your mother," "you," or any other way he can EXCEPT by saying my name. I may be something to someone else, but I am NOTHING to him.
Ordering & Demanding
When my husband orders me around or demands certain behaviors of me, it is his way of directly controlling me. In the past, ordering and demanding worked well for him because his other threatening and scary behaviors had accomplished his goal of scaring the resistance out of me. I was in "shell-shock" much of the time, and it was easier to do as he said than to expose myself to another round of abusive anger, threatening behavior, and all the rest.
He loved to take me to parties when he knew I was in this state of fear. While there, I felt compelled to laugh at the jokes he made about me while fetching his beer and fixing his plate before my own. He would brag, saying things like, "This is how home-training works!" as I brought him another drink.
When the fear effect wore off a little, he wouldn't have to do or say too much to put me right back in the state of being his willing sheep.
Threatening Behavior & Words
My husband uses threatening behavior to let me know that he is in control and to tell me that I had better just shut up or do as he says OR ELSE he MAY hurt me physically.
Threatening behavior includes implying that he's going to harm me physically with behavior such as backing me into a corner, getting right up in my face while yelling and red faced, acting like he's wringing my neck at a distance, or kicking a chair, punching cabinets, etc. while I am in his presence. He has also threatened my pets in order to coerce me to do what he wanted.
Many times when he's in this state, he'll say, "Is this what you want?! Do you want me to lose control like this?! You must want me to be pissed off - why else would you do this to me?!" He wants me to think he's out of control and therefore more threatening - but asking that question of me tells me that he is very much in control of himself. He knows what he's doing. He's acting like this ON PURPOSE.
Trivializing
My husband likes to pretend that my accomplishments are worthless. For quite some time, I believed he was right. I felt very insignificant and diminished - very trivial in comparison to all the "important" people around me. He had a lot of control over me at that time - I thought I was worthless and he was King.
One of the last times Will trivialized me was after returning home from a deployment. You see, when Will was deployed, my son took the van and totaled it. I had to find a way for us to afford another car payment because Will wanted us to have two vehicles.
So I paid off three credit cards with the extra money he was earning while he was deployed. I was able to use what money we had been putting toward minimum payments toward a car payment instead.
When he got home, we could afford the new car and had no credit card debt, but we didn't have as much money saved as he thought we should, and our spending budget was still tight. All he could talk about was how I wasted all the money he had earned.
Undermining
Will seems to be magically able to deflate my enthusiasm over almost anything. He can take away my most hopeful moments in a heartbeat. He can dash my self-confidence while sounding like he really truly cares. I honestly haven't figured out exactly how he does this, but when I feel the crushing blow next time, I will recognize it for what it is - another attempt to make me feel smaller than I am.
Undermining includes the incidents in which he says things to our boys like, "Go to your room so you don't have to see your mother act like a child." He also undermines me as a mother whenever he says "Yes" after I've said "No" or vice-verse.
More Examples in my Journal and Blog Entries
Discovering your abuser's techniques is a first step to recognizing abuse as it occurs. After you recognize abuse, it's easier to stop it (or at least stop participating in your own abuse!). This worksheet, Recognizing Verbal Abuse, may help.
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