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.


To isis56. Why can’t he wait another year? Are you serious. It sounds like you and your husband’s father were the married couple with all the trips you went on yogether! Be happy your not in jail. I am an abuse victim and the things you are saying trying to put the blame on your husband and not taking responsibility for your actions. Only 6 days off in 28 years!! That is abuse plain and simple!
I have been married 33 years since January 1981, I am married to a man that finds nothing to feel joy about in life, Could not be happy for me finding every three years a way to get uncompressed from his demands of equality, sex, time off, holidays, and weekends. It just always seemed to myself and his father and many friends there were so many other people that had important things to do with the time my husband could supply with his work, and in his life. I was always in a yelling match about why didn’t he consider a vacation between January the second and February the fourteenth, He did not have to take the same as I did when I went to places like Rome, Athens, Ireland, England , Paris, Even if he just stayed home for his vacation it was still out of every ones way. Then in 2001 it started to be please the next time he could go just don’t push his rights this time and hurt any one else,
That was after he took a job bid his father and others felt should go to a much younger man because he had political connections, He sent four men to critical care from our front porch when they were going to put him in his place. I ended up with a broken ankle that morning because I locked him out to a least talk to them, The next thing I knew they jumped my husband and he went combat training on them leaving our porch a blood bath. My husband only had a bruise and the front door and frame exploded into my face and he informed me he would kill me the next time I tried getting him hurt.
Its been 33 years of trying to find an acceptable middle ground. In 2009 he had 5 weeks vacation coming with his 34 years seniority. A new man in my husbands department married in a white shotgun situation but he had less than three years seniority. He needed the trip on the orient express for his honey moon. He also needed the time slot my husband had. I remembered that my husband and I had started out with him being sent to sea for three and a half years and we never had a sex life. the bride was two months gone and w3hen I went to Bavaria in 2006 without my husband to let another couple have the time I had promised on a stack of bibles I would make sure the orient express trip was his even if I had to stand against his father and other wish’s. His father took my husbands boarding pass, reservation confirmation. and passport out of his computer case to let this couple go instead. We called his union minister and steward to come be in the airport when my husband found out he was not getting another vacation his father gave me the cash to hold until January. to prevent another time like the first time in 1987 when I had promised any time any where. and any way I would go as a willing sex partner and travel companion. have a honey moon that was six years over due. I was securing another lower seniority girl to go get married in Rome.
When we returned in 1987 my husband was going to bump every lower seniority back three weeks and take off the day we flew in for Yosemite after we had thought he would accept three weeks in the winter in 1988. He never would take that time frame in the next 29 years. But the scene was in 2009 we went into the TSA office and he demanded his tickets and reservations and passport back< saw the younger man coming into the airport and knew he was going to be told they did not exist any longer I was crying that I was going to talk about how to get him a vacation when I returned and give him the money back in January.
He said he was not waiting one more day for his vacation, I was not going either and wrenched my shoulder bag off my arm sending me across the office with a dislocation I found out about two weeks latter I returned from Europe with my right arm four times the size it should have been. My husband was yelling where was his passport and striping the cash. credit cards and passes out of my bag with me sitting on the floor crying, His father said shut up and settle down he could pick it up after we were gone from TSA For somebody my husband size he can cross fifteen feet in an eye blink and TSA his steward and the union minister spent several minutes prying my husbands fingers of his fathers throat getting his passport back. by ripping all his fathers pockets out, My husband did not go on the orient express. His mother was so mad at his father for taking my husbands reservations she turned hers in and asked my husband to take her home. That ruined other plans In Brussles, for a nice 50th wedding anniversary day his brother and sister set up, they did not blame my husband for being selfish they blamed me and his father for interfering with my husband again denying him a vacation when he wanted after 29 years of constant work.
We got back to no ride home. Barely enough between everyone to get to his fathers. I was hoping on getting home to find something that my husband would accept as a makeup. but found he was not living at home, he had changed the locks and left me a note telling me that he wanted me gone, I was hurting and his father took me to the ER for my torn ACL from two weeks before. It took three weeks to get in to my husbands job just to talk. his inion steward said my husband was in bad back pain and his temper was really nasty, Up to an including telling the plant manager that a new System called Maintenance, repair and operation when he was asked by the man who thought the new system up The new plant manager. He asked my husband if he knew what MRO stood for.
My husbands answer was it stood for mentally retarded organization. Two nights later refusing to turn over a load on direct order from the state governor. he was trying to get a disciplinary lay off. Just to get time out of the plant. Everyone saw the attempt and refused to bite but did say after the first of the year he was retiring. I was let back into my house and he allowed me an allowance He never came home from June 2009 to October 24 2009. When me and his mother received a call he was in the ER. He was running a 102 degree tempo and was passed out on his job. Every move was met with screaming in pain A full body scan revealed an abscess in his spine A blood culture Showed it was MRSA and the scan also showed him with a partially severed and crushed cord. When he came home three years latter.
We have tried to get him to understand that after 33 years he cant drop into traditions he had been excluded from weather it was our fault or not. He has to give us time to let him into them. Now every thing is his way. Right after he came home I was going to an event dinner with his father, mother, and his fathers best friend something I had done several times in the past. because we were making my husband work again. This time he was not going to put up with it.
I was either going with him or I was not going, I tried telling him it was invitation only. I even handed him 100 to pick a place to meet us in four hours after the event, where we could sit and talk through his grievances of three decades Think of ways to allow him his rights over time instead of landing in the middle making everyone angry. he however careered less about taking time any longer he said I had three decades to make things right while stealing his life from him as of that evening he was taking restitution for that stolen life and I was the down payment as he ripped every stich of a new cocktail dress off me. I was begging him that it did not have to become this way, Couldn't we just talk it through I would even cancel the event and go where he decided.
He did not stop with that , his fathers friend came to the door and got into an argument with my husband when he was not let in . My husband through him face first into the driveway right in front of his arriving mother and father. holidays and vacations since have been met with people begging him to back off then trying to force him to back off and when that happens people start bleeding. He broken his fathers jaw and neck in two seperat incidents on a memorial day holiday over his being excluded from accompanying me to a an after dinner club I was on somebody else's reservation ticket, my husband made him run for his life taking the ticket. His father slapped him for being rude to a friend and in return was backhanded across our kitchen his father thought calling the club telling the doorman not to admit my husband Set up the second terror of the evening. The doorman refused entry and started pushing my husband out on the street when he got my husband cane upside his head He woke up telling my husband who had his knee in his back and his pony tail in hand that when he got up my husband was a dead man. My husband said I guess your not getting up then and started slamming the mans face into the pavement in front of everybody that were friends The club manager came out begging my husband to stop and go on in the police just stood there saying the doorman was in the wrong. then over the Cancun vacation cruise his father absolutly did not want my husband along.
This time I was invited to go to a breakfast before our final move west to talk about how to get my husband to stay home in 2013. Two men held my husband at pistol point to let me go for a private talk with them his father and everyone going over breakfast to talk about plans and means. I had just said this time I had already made the offer of waiting and including him on the Hawaii trip in 2018 and was flatly turned down, His father said any chance of getting his pass port And I said That and the double berth reservation were in a safe deposit in Laramie I could not get near it then his sister screamed watch out and his cane ripped the faces of the two that held him at bay a few minutes before open to the bone, The Cancun vacation did not go as I wanted period. His father came to our room with a ball bat and ended up in the hospital for a broken neck
We were sent home before boarding. My husband is in litigation with I think the world, I had a ankle bracelet put on for the next two years for Conspiracy to deny my husbands civil rights and maintaining an Indentured servant by coercion and force as well as conspiracy. The judge said if he could he would have thrown his father me and everyone else in prison for three decades for the abuses committed against my husband for that long. His father said all he had to do was quit his job and vanish then he would have had the freedom he wanted. Why did he stay in that situation if there was something wrong, My husband pointed out the Guardianship the state assigned him because I am bi polar, He said why should he have given up a position with medical, retirement, and the other rights he should have had as well as a job that paid 31.50 an hour when he retired and that did not include the 10 percent shift premium for 3rds. He stood in front of the judge and said why should he have vanished to work fast food, gas station attendant and hobo. He told the judge we took his rights through blackmail from the day he returned from the navy. And force latter. first screaming him into work the day he arrived home then in 2001 when he was supposed to take sixty days to recover from a brain tumor surgery his father and other broke into his bedroom six days latter and pushed him into work. He asked the three judges there if they though he was being unreasonable six days off in 29 years. did not seem reasonable to him. When they came back from deliberation they stood me up told me that a court order trapped my husband in the marriage and along with his father, coworkers and others we worked that to our advantage.
The judge asked why I would even help do that to the man I married. All I could think to answer it was started just to let things stabilize on his return home in 1985 which still feels like yesterday. I said then it was the ho0pe we could make things up to him, but his defiance to the social order was the thing that finished him. That's when I was done. My husband bought me to the loneliest place in the world. An old Range cabin maintained by his family in the mountains Basically one room with a bathroom They flew in and put the ankle tracker on I will be here two years. I am not even going to try and get my husband not to go to Hawaii in 2018. If nobody likes him coming they don't have to.
I am going to just look at the floor and whatever my husband wants now unless its not legal. he's going to be allowed. I wont say a word. I am recommending no one else does either.
I don't know if other wives have to put up with this kind of selfishness out of their husbands where they wont wait another year for what they want. My husband has decided he waited 33 years to long so there for he's not the selfish one we are.
You dumb bitch u whore ur kids are just like u but they learned from the best.tells me i sucked and fucked to get the stuff i have now
Being called stupid, thick, wirthless. Called a prostitute because you have 2 kids from different relationship. Told tgat you n kids mean f**k all too them. Being told if you dont shut up you will have your teeth smashed into the back of your throat.
Being told tgat your a cheap slut tgat sleeps with everyone.
Having all your friends taken away and isolayed from family.
Making you feel you had to wuit your job ad men are there.
Being told you would have nothing wothout them.
Laighing at you about medical issues.
Yea…lifes fun
Just about majority of the list from top to bottom. I have witnessed I haven’t spoken to my ex it’ll be 2 yrs. I miss him after everything and I realized that I will always love him because I have a good heart and I wish him the very best& I pray for him everyday. I think if this is happening to you don’t be scared to move on and leave this person behind abuse is not love, let go and move on it just keeps getting better and better everyday you will see you just have to believe in yourself and be strong xo