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 from Mama's Kitchen” $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 from Mama's Kitchen” $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.
My husband fits with many of these posts n comments. Im about to file for divorce. We are going to marriage counseling. He might hav jail time and fines if come march he hasnt complied with our counseling and hos meetings. He is an alcoholic. It hurts. Promises broken. Ive turned into him partially in decending myself or my family. I ended up w 4 staples in my head last sept. Wecwere arguing over hurtful things he had said I went for a walk. Went back to the hotel n still we argued. I followed him outside he went to smoke, I hit him with a pillow n I went to vo to our room I never made it. He pushed me past it. Manager wouldnt let me leave. There was a partial witness. I was bleeding, hands were sore n swollen, my right knee is still sore. I was bruised to the bone. Off work. Had to work on my balance. Still dont feel 100%. Should I have my head examined. He says mean n cruel things. I could go on for hours. Breaks my things. Hes 44 im 52 I feel i have an rebelus teen. None of my kids were this hard at all. He cant drive cause of dwi’s. Very emotional this has left me.
I have been married to my husband for 8 years, we have been together for almost 11 years. Previously I was in a four year relationship with another man who was everything mentioned above. He physically abused me, tried to kill me in my sleep one night by slamming a mans work boot on my face while I was sleeping. Except I woke up gagging on the blood running down my throat, in confusion, ran to the bathroom only to have him show up and pretend to care, apologizing. He choked me on many occasions, holding me, feet kicking up against walls. Sexually abused me, mentally drained me, and cheated on me in real life and with internet relationships (these happened while I was laying in bed next to him sleeping/not sleeping). Giving me sexually transmitted diseases, which ultimately led to my infertility. It took my mother lots of courage and bravery to set me free. Without her love and persistence in getting me to leave that situation, because believe me i was so brainwashed I thought it was all my fault.
Now it seems I’m noticing the same things are starting to happen to me again. He has always been a bit high strung and “my way or the highway” , but in the past two years we can’t even get through one day without him flipping out on me for something. Even as small as trying to talk to him while he is watching jeopardy or when he is zoning out on social media. I think My current husband is addicted to social media. He comes home from work and spends the entire night ignoring me and zoning out on his phone. He snaps at me in public places & out of the blue in private. Always using condescending tones of authority to talk to me. Even if I whisper and talk quietly to him. I am walking on glass with everything I say. He has pushed me down twice. Screamed at me telling me he knows why my former used to beat me and that I make him want to beat me too.
He told me a few months back that he is starting to resent me for my infertility. I also suffer from a condition known as pcos. Which hinders my fertility even more than the scarring which occurred from infections from my abusive boyfriend. I’m pretty sure I had a miscarriage last week, & I am dreading the thought of him resenting me more. He is aware of this.
Every week just about we get into a huge arguement over some of the verbal abuse he gives me & he tells me he can’t take me anymore and he’s sick of my shit, but he never leaves. I’ve got to admit, I am very insecure with his addiction to social media from the things that have happened to me in the past. Last year I did a very bad thing, but our sex lives had changed a lot, so j snooped on his phone and noticed a ton of porn sites. When I confronted him about it he said he had to do this to arouse himself to have sex with me. I explained how I felt about it. I lost 20lbs more, still a plump girl at size 14. He told me he would stop. Our sex lives have changed.
I am jealous of how much time he spends on his device. I get maybe 30 minutes of quality time with him a night, usually marred by him shouting at me and conversation stops. He will then be in his device or ignoring me watching tv until bed, all the while laughing and having a jolly time likening FB friends statuses creeping on girls he went to school with, etc. if I try to get any attention he shouts at me to shit the fuck up and to leave him alone.
Sigh… He told me tonight he is sick of feeling like I’m always accusing him of trying to cheat on me. Which is not really to issue. I want his attention yes, I am his spouse. I do corner him and ask him uncomfortable questions on occasions. Tonight came after we were watching tv and I tried talking to him and he screamed in my ear to shut the duck up. The tv had just turned to talking about superwoman. With sexy cartoon images. So I upset blamed it on the tv topic. Bad move, but true.
About two months ago our dog became sick one night at dinner time. I was worried as he was acting strangely. My media addicted husband refused to observe the dog with me. Telling me I was crazy, that the dog was fine. When I was more convinced my dog was not fine, he told me he would go put a bullet in his head if I didn’t shut up about the dog. When I kept interrupting his tv shows and internet time he started his own tantrum screaming at me, scaring my sick dog more, slamming doors, telling me he wanted a divorce. He hated the dog, etc. I was crying begging him on my knees not to leave me, he shut me out. i let it go, because I had to bring my dog into the er. I didn’t listen to him. He came along for the ride telling me that if we had to put him down we could never have another dog again. & I had to put my beloved pet down as he had flipped his stomach. I laid on the floor crying with my live dead in my arms. My husband shed a few tears sitting up in his chair. I think my husband really thought they were going to tell me the dog was fine so that he could hang the $ it cost us on a vet bill over my head as usual. Which he has told all of our families about how expensive it was. But when I had to put my baby (no children ) down he realized he was an ass. He had been nice to me from then until about last week. It’s been 6 weeks. Then he has reverted back to the verbal abuse and pretending like I don’t exist. It’s been so terrible, especially without my dog who used to give me the love I wasn’t getting from my husband.
Is it me folks? I do like to push issues until he is sick of hearing about it. That one is true, but I don’t call him names and I treat him like a king. I get ignored and verbally accosted when I disrupt his “me time”. Am I crazy?! Will this work?! Should I kick him out? I learned to fight for my rights after my last relationship so part of me wonders if my fight/flight instincts are causing me grief. I’ve asked him to go to therapy with me, and he told me I could go since I was the crazy one, but he didn’t need to. I’m starting to feel depressed, as I’ve wasted 11 years of my life & I truly do love this man… What are your thoughts?
Yes my abuser yelled at me a lot telling me to Shut Up. Squeezed Me Tight letting me know he was Stronger Than Me, played mind games like switching up my words so that he could stay mad at me.
My husband does at Least one thing in each Category. He’s the best man in the world. Everyone hates me and threatens to come kick my ass. Everyone loves him wants him as a best friend or lover!!! I AM SO HAPPY TO READ THIS! Almost verbatim.
I’m 22 years old with 1 child and my sons father fits right into this profile. My son is now 11 months old and from the time I decided to give up everything and move in with him he’s displayed EVERY single one of these signs. Even while pregnant he had attacked me and I’ve continually felt like there is nothing I can do about it I have just been stuck here praying and hoping I can just survive this relationship long enough to get out he refuses to let me get a job and the money I do get is assistance from the state for me and my son and he takes it and he’ll but a big box of diapers and a box of wipes for my son and then take and spend the rest he won’t by me or my son new clothes ( I’m a lot bigger than I was when I got pregnant and am forced to wear clothes that no longer fit that he complains about constantly or asks where I think we are going to get the money for it?) He knows he has me trapped into a corner and I’m fighting like hell just to keep my head above water with this man. I’m so terrified that I have put my foot down to leave and said I want to go on a few occasions and he always figures out just how to guilt me into staying he threatens suicide or to take my son from me through courts. He makes me have my address at a different one from where we live and then threatens to screw me over by telling about it. I have a potential opportunity to leave and once I know it is a for sure thing I’d like to. This nice older lady is willing to help me by watching my child and even going so far as to give me her car so long as I take her to her Dr’s appointments and surgery’s for her cancer. My biggest question is how do I plan it to where I can leave safely without him trying to hurt me or the people who will be helping me move? Should I wait for him to leave and fill up the trucks and just go (no note or anything?) Or should I have him there and call a police officer or 2 to come sit there? What do I do if he trys to follow me to my new place? He also has his friends convinced that I’m a terrible person and wanting to cause harm to me my family and my best friends (basically anyone who has helped me while in this horrid nightmare I’ve called a relationship for 2 years) should I out him to his friends and show them the pictures and video proof of the abuse I suffered at his hands (through Facebook or something I wouldn’t dare approach in person about it)? I wanted to leave today and he was able to smooth it over in that way he does to make it seem like everything is going to be ok but as much as my heart tells me to believe him I have that tiny voice in my head telling me its just gonna happen again and it’ll be even worse than the last time