The things abusers say and do put you on the defensive, make you feel crazy, and to wonder if you are the abuser in the relationship. Your best ammunition against the things abusers say and do is knowing the answer to What Is Verbal Abuse? If you can say to yourself, “Hey! That’s abuse!” then you’ll more easily detach from the abuse emotionally and find a psychologically or physically safe place. Safety planning can help protect you against things abusers say and do (Hurtful Words Don’t Define You).
The things abusers say and do are designed to control you. Whether abusers say and do these things knowingly or unconsciously, the result is the same: you feel lower than dirt, afraid, and intimidated. In your weakened state, your abuser finds it much easier to gain power over you.
The following statements and actions are common things abusers say and do. Contribute your comments and take a look at everyone else’s comments too.
Name Calling
- Idiot, Stupid Cunt, Go sit in the corner where you belong (dunce)
- Crazy Bitch, Psycho
- Whore, Slut
- Heartless Ho
- Stupid
- Worthless
- Lazy
- Says “woman” or “man” in a sarcastic tone or demeaning tone.
- On the flip side, they may refuse to say your name at all to deny your existence
Intimacy Breakers
- “It is none of your fucking business.”
- “Why don’t you fucking leave?” or “Get the fuck out of my house.”
- “Shut up”
- Says “I don’t care about your feelings.”
- Often leaves you hanging when they promised to do something with you.
- Consistently puts their desires and schedule above yours.
- Breaks up often then comes running back, begging for forgiveness.
- Interrupts you when you’re talking.
Tells You What You’re Doing
- “Yes, why don’t you stuff your feelings inside.”
- “You’ve got your priorities screwed up.”
- “Stop being a drama queen!”
- “Stop crying – we both know you’re faking it to get your way!”
- Tells you what your intentions are, what you intend to do, and what you really meant when you said/did something.
Plays Word Games
- Interrupts you when you’re talking.
- Repeats “your exact words” but takes them out of context or makes up something that you did not say or mean.
- Challenges you to remember “exact words” but you can’t (or tells you you’re wrong) because the conversation is so confusing you don’t know exactly what they’re talking about anymore.
- Changes the subject to divert your attention.
- Tells you what you really mean to say.
- Drones on for hours, repeating the same points, getting nowhere, until you’re so exhausted you want to agree just to get them to be quiet (brainwashing).
- Re-defines words to mean what they want them to mean.
- Denies saying what they said (even if you’re playing it back to them from a digital recorder, they may deny meaning what they obviously meant).
- Uses tricks like abusive anger to get you to be quiet or listen.
Tries to Appear Better Than You
- “You have no money; without me, you’d be lost.”
- “At least I have a job.”
- “You know nothing about the real world!”
- “At least I know how to make friends that matter.”
Insults People And Pets You Love
- “Why don’t you leave, and take your geriatric dog too? I hope he falls dead.”
- “I hope your dog gets killed in the road right in front of you!”
- Uses threatening gestures toward your pets.
- “Your kid is such a sissy!”
- “Your mother left your dad to chase cock and you’re going to do the same to me!”
- “I’m really concerned that your sister will influence you to be a bitch like she is.”
Sexual Insults And Injuries
- Rapes you (it is possible to rape you even if you are married to the abuser).
- Makes you wear clothing that makes you feel uncomfortable.
- “You were just a good fuck.”
- Turns their back to you while laying in bed to show a withdrawal of affection.
- Lies incessantly about porn or cheating, even when faced with proof.
- Makes you feel “dirty” during or after sex with comments they know you don’t like.
- Uses sexual or racial slurs because they know you don’t like them.
- Tells you to go to a party alone and then insults you, withdraws, or sexually assaults you when you come home.
- Knows the meaning and value that you tie with having sex, but breaks up with you right after sex saying they lied about their feelings to get you into bed.
- Uses crude names for your body parts and knows you do not like them.
Insults Your Ideas and Dreams
- The churches, restaurants, movies, etc. that you choose are not good enough.
- Your career interests are “fluffy” or not real jobs.
- Insults the gifts you give or acts disinterested.
- “That is never going to work.”
- Mocks and makes fun of you.
A private place to write it down
If you already know why you’re here, there’s a private log built for exactly this: the Verbal Abuse Incident and Pattern Log. Write things down before you second-guess them, in a document made to stay yours.
Purchase “Recipes Digital Download” $8.99There is also a bundle offer at the end of this article.
They Do Not Care About Your Medical Issues
- You’re hurt after a fight with them and say you should go to the emergency room…the abuser’s response is “Quit your whining and crying and leave”.
- Major medical issue comes up and the abuser unavailable to comfort you or just disappears.
- Acts like a $10 co-pay for your doctor visit is going to break the bank.
- Makes fun of your medications (happy pills, crazy pills, etc.)
- Tells you that depression is in your head and if you appreciated them like you should you wouldn’t be such a sad sack.
Thoughtless of Your Needs
- Makes lunch for themselves without asking if you want any (on purpose).
- Doesn’t help with the kids or household chores.
- Does not ask you about your day.
- Does not start and/or engage in thoughtful communication.
- Keeps you up all night “talking” or raging. Interrupts your sleep for tiny things they could handle alone.
Gifts Are Not From the Heart or Used As Tools
- Gives gifts that did NOT come from the heart, isn’t wrapped, has a price tag on it, tossed at you with no emotion but scorn, etc.
- Gifts given after fights to gain your forgiveness.
- Ignores (“forgets”) your birthday or holidays that are special to you.
Disrespects Your Belongings
- Destroys things that are important to you.
- Destroys or makes you destroy pictures, diaries, letters, or anything else of sentimental value from before the relationship with you.
- Throws away your clothes that either you love or the abuser hates.
- Gaslighting (purposely moves your things or changes your environment and then denies doing it).
- Hides your personal belongings and denies knowing where they are.
- Steals your jewelry, pawns it, then brings another piece home to place in your jewelry box and pretends it is the missing piece.
- Insists you promised to do something that you know you didn’t promise.
- Engages in crazy making behaviors at your expense.
Withholds Financial Information or Money
- Demands that you shop for the household but doesn’t give you enough money to cover necessities.
- Makes you give them your paycheck.
- Doesn’t give you access to the bank accounts.
- Makes you believe that you cannot budget or save, that you waste money, or generally cannot figure out how to handle your financial matters.
- Gives you complete access to the bank accounts and allows you to make financial decisions, but uses your decisions as a tool to verbally and mentally abuse you.
- Closes joint bank accounts with no notice.
- Finds a way to close your bank accounts using your passwords and security information.
Threatens Or Intimidates You
- “Maybe I should just do pot, porn and date other women so you will leave me.”
- “I should run you through the wood chipper out there!”
- “If you don’t shut your ever-runnin’ mouth,…”
- Says “This is YOU!” and hits something or says nothing but you know they’re hitting things to scare you.
- Jerks the steering wheel from you when you’re driving or drives like a crazy person with you in the car.
- Spits on you.
- Threatens to take you to court over issues they know they will lose, but be able to waste your time anyway.
- Seeks attention by threatening suicide. Intimidates you into doing things by threatening suicide.
Abandons and/or Threatens to Abandon You Physically
- Pushes you out of the car and leaves you in a strange place without your personal effects (i.e. cell phone, purse, wallet).
- Takes you to their family’s home far away and then leaves you at their mother’s house for two days while partying with cousins.
- “Maybe I just won’t come home tonight!”
- “I’ll take our kids and leave you on the street!”
Physically Insults or Assaults You
- Spits on you.
- Blocks your exit.
- Drags you.
- Grabs you and makes you stay in one place.
- Hits, punches, or slaps you.
- Kicks you.
- Makes you hold pillows so they can “practice” fighting/self-defense.
- Pinches you
- Squeezes you too tightly.
- Chokes you or puts you in a position where they could easily choke you.
You just read what’s been happening to you.
Here’s somewhere to put it.
Reading a list like this is one thing. Writing down what’s actually happening in your own relationship, in your own words, is another.
That’s what the Verbal Abuse Incident and Pattern Log is for: a private, structured place to record what’s said and done to you, so there’s a record you can trust, even when your memory feels less certain.
What’s inside:
- Quick Capture pages for when you only have thirty seconds and need to get it down before you forget, or before someone’s back in the room.
- Detailed Record pages for later, when you have more time to write.
- Pattern Review pages that help you see what’s repeating, not just what happened once.
- A Summary page, built to hand to an advocate, counselor, doctor, or attorney, without having to explain everything from scratch every time.
It’s not a diagnosis, and it’s not a legal document. It’s a way to keep your own record straight, whether you’re still deciding what this is, still living with it, or getting ready to talk to someone about it.
Privacy. Not everyone needs to hide that they bought this, but every download works the same way regardless. Needing that privacy, or not needing it, has nothing to do with how much what’s happening to you matters.
The download opens with a couple of pages made to look like a recipe file before the real Log begins. PayPal will send you a purchase confirmation email, but even that uses a discreet product name, not the title of what you bought.
Getting it. After you pay through PayPal, you’re brought right back here to a download page where your file is ready and waiting.
Price. $8.99 on its own.
Purchase “Recipes Digital Download” $8.99If you also want the Domestic Violence Safety Plan Workbook, the two together are $18.99, or $3 less than buying them separately. The Safety Plan Workbook covers what to do before, during, and after leaving; the Log covers what to write down along the way. Get one or both, whichever is useful to you right now.
Purchase “Recipes from Mama's Kitchen Bundle” $18.99The file name for the Verbal Abuse Incident and Pattern Log is recipes-mamas-kitchen.pdf and the cover of your downloaded document will say “Recipes from Mama’s Kitchen”. It’s the same for the Domestic Violence Safety Plan Workbook, except the file name is more-recipes-from-mamas-kitchen.pdf and the title showing is “More Recipes from Mama’s Kitchen”.
Written by Kellie Jo Holly Close, who has worked in domestic violence advocacy since founding VerbalAbuseJournals.com in 2008.
I recognize many of these behaviors in my immediate family, with the exception of the sexual and injury-causing physical-abuse behaviors. Since we were raised in church, few cuss-words have been used; but cumulatively, the behavior of almost my entire family — particularly my three sisters — towards me from the time I was a small child has served to demean me and make me feel worthless, hopeless, incompetent and alone. The word-games and insinuated insults are all too familiar. Yet as shown above, it’s extremely difficult to bring any of this up with them, particularly in group form, since they have and will immediately begin to shout over me all at once, confusing me and causing me to forget the things I wanted to say, telling me to stop feeling sorry for myself. By the end of the conversation, they have minimized their end of the blame and convinced those present (even me, a little) that I “bring it on myself”.
Let me say before I continue that I don’t pretend to be strictly a victim. I am not a perfect sister or daughter. Nor do I mean to suggest that my life is in danger, or put my situation in the exact same category as those above. But I will not be denied the right to hold them responsible for certain behaviors that have been unhealthy, hurtful, damaging, and in some ways devastating and debilitating — behaviors that they could’ve decided against, but didn’t.
From the time I was little, loud noises (ex: lawn mower, motorcycles, fireworks — or later on, yelling, sudden aggressive movements) have been very frightening/upsetting and damaging to my emotional well-being, yet whether intentionally or not, my family has ignored this and at times even used it against me.
I am also the smallest of stature in my family. A lot of the physical aspects of the hurtful behavior have died down since my mid-teens, largely, it seems, because I mostly caught up to my mother in size. However, I can say that my parents were excessive in their physical discipline — most often my mother, so there were no broken bones or trips to the ER. But I can recount several occasions as a child where my mom kept me home from school or swimming lessons because there were marks on my body, somewhere that showed. It hasn’t been unusual for my mother to slap me, often repeatedly, when she was angry — whether I was the cause or because I happened to say or do something that normally wouldn’t merit such a reaction, but while she was angry over something else. Both my parents had quick tempers and my father “ruled with an iron fist”; when he dealt with us when we misbehaved, he often underestimated his physical strength (or in anger, didn’t bother to restrain it). I remember being kicked in the head/buttocks/elsewhere on several occasions, being dragged by the arm, neck or ear — with a grip that left bruises — and shoved against the wall on many occasions, and general manhandling. The more major things have pretty much stopped since my mid-teens, but my father still threatens with his words and occasionally manhandles. He has been threatening to kick me out of the house (for whatever reason) since I was about seven years old, even going so far on occasion as to shove me out the front door and toss out some of my things after me.
The most harmful overall, however — although exacerbated by the physical things — have been the words and attitudes. Particularly among my siblings, there has been a continual mindset, which comes out clearly in interactions, of “Joy is weak”; “Joy is stupid”; “Joy is retarded”; “Joy doesn’t belong”; “Joy isn’t like the rest of us”; “Joy will never amount to much”; “Joy brings all her problems on herself”; “Joy is incompetent”; “Joy is awkward”; “Joy is embarrassing to be around”. Some of these things have been stated out loud, others frequently implied. I used to sit at the dinner table with my family and listen to my sisters bring up, analyze, and laugh at all the silly, awkward, or embarrassing things I had pretty much ever done, and generally criticize and insult me, with total disregard for my feelings — all with my parents sitting there, rarely saying a word. It felt like the attitude was, “It’s not too far until she cries” but if I ever showed myself even close to tears (which I never did if I could help it), then it was “Oh, she’s feeling sorry for herself” or “She’s being overly sensitive”.
This was almost every night — for years. They especially loved to break out their best lines in front of a group of strangers or their friends for their amusement, like shredding my self-esteem was some party trick. Some of this may seem like pretty normal sibling teasing, and some of it is, but a lot of it isn’t. And imagine hearing this kind of criticism about yourself continually, during some of the most impressionable years of your life.
The criticism made me feel hurt, angry and worthless; part of me believes it in spite of my efforts to convince myself otherwise. Yet to show any reaction or outburst (crying, yelling) that boils up inside me would seem to confirm the things that they say. Any attempt to defend myself or retaliate has been overwhelmed by sheer numbers and volume. The collective weight of it all has left me feeling unable to trust or make friends, making it even more difficult for me to find worth in myself as a person.
While all these things have lessened in the last couple of years, they have never been resolved, and I cannot tell you the devastation they have caused. And maybe I am feeling sorry for myself. I don’t have other people’s experiences to compare to, for the most part. From what I can tell, it doesn’t seem like this happens in other people’s families. Having only one person that does this in your family, most people could probably deal with. When it’s your entire family and it’s continually directed at you — not so much.
But I’m not just here to tell a sob story. What I want to know is how I can deal with it. The details just seemed to come out.
I am almost 20 years old, live at home with my parents and two of my sisters, and while I have some money, am not in a financial position to move out. I am socially isolated, depressed, and feel generally powerless to change my situation. I haven’t told many people about it, much less in detail, and I don’t know who can help.
(I apologize for how long this is haha! It all just started coming out. I really hope I’m not offending anyone by posting this here.)
It’s hard coming out of denial and facing the truth knowing someone can be so cruel. I live with a narcissist that is brutal with his mouth. Mine is a long story and at the moment I’m trying to stay positive but it is hard. I am broke in every way and scared. Right now I just want to go to sleep.
Worried about my daughter…shes 19, married to a 43 year old, and pregnant. The last time she called it was her broken jaw…geeeese…how could someone do that to her? How come she forgave him? The time before that was a broken finger.She’s only a hundred pounds for crying out loud! Oh..yeah..and he doesn’t want her to be around me!!! And shes falling for it! The whole thing just disturbs me in every way!!! I can’t hardly even think about it or it just ruins my whole day! I gotta go…I shouldn’t have even brought it up! BYE!!!
He has trapped me finacially so that I cant go anywhere, Is making everything out to be everyones fault but his. Is aleinating my family from me, and I can only talk to his family. Tries to make me see what horrible people my family is and what great people his family is. I know the truth my mom lived this for 16 years. She said one day he just hit her thought of her as an item (his)to do with as he pleases. I am getting away, but it is a slow go, he monitors my every move, calls me constantly telling me he loves me…. but when he is angry he tells me I wont make it on my own, we have two big purchases in my name on my credit that he pays, he will take one of the items and wont pay me he has already said he would. I am withdrawing and he knows it. I have secretly got an apartment for the 20th of this month where my son and I will live away from him and his family. (son is safe with his father) I am taking precausions, notes at work my mother knows about all the things he has done. (none bad yet but there is defenetly potentional)
Does it always start so nice and normal? Once all your time is spent with them they slowly change, and then you are traped. I am crazy for wanting to leave, what about the kids? (Not his but very attached to him only known him for 9months)5 months of steady dating and introduced to kids. He has done many things that this has talked about, I dont know how I didnt see it. When the turning point was I don’t know but I sure see it now. The last draw was he is manipulating my children to see that I am wrong and that their father is to blame for his acting out. Worried because he has traped me by holding my money up, by having me purchase expensive things on my credit and being out money if he chooses not to help me pay like we verbally agreed. My family has turned their back on him and his family is after me because he was done wrong or they were by some slight. He is not to be blamed.