Childhood Emotional Abuse
On this site, and many others, the emphasis when talking about childhood trauma is usually on sexual or physical abuse. However, children also face another type of harm, emotional abuse.
This article shall focus on emotional abuse, what it is, how it affects your life today, and how to cope.
What is Emotional Abuse
Emotional abuse occurs when a perpetrator insults, humiliates and makes their victim afraid of them to control a child. Because children do not have the emotional tools or experience with other people, they may have a distorted sense of reality blaming themselves for what is happening to them.
The child may also have a severe change in that they internalize the abuse, and in the case of children forming dissociative identity disorder, they might splinter off to be able to handle the trauma.
There are many ways a child can experience emotional abuse, including:
- Being criticized
- Being threatened
- Experiencing name calling
- Having their perpetrator making jokes about them or using sarcasm to hurt them
- Being forced to do demeaning things
- Experiencing a lack of recognized individuality
- Not having their limits recognized
- Not having their boundaries, if they have formed any, taken seriously and ignored
- The perpetrator may not allow them to have any friends
- Experiencing lack of care from their caregivers who are absent physically and emotionally
- Being manipulated by the perpetrator
- Experiencing never having someone in the household say anything positive about them
- Experiencing the lack of emotional interactions with their caregivers
The list is even longer as perpetrators of emotional abuse do many horrid things to children.
Why is Emotional Abuse Not Recognized by Mandated Reporters?
If the relationship between a child and their caregiver is complex, it is even more so if the child is experiencing patterns of bullying. These demeaning behaviors wear down a person’s self-esteem which undermines their mental health.
The overall goal of emotional abuse is to control the child through isolating and silencing them.
Because most mandated reporters look for physical or sexual abuse in children, they are blissfully unaware that childhood emotional abuse is going on. Childhood emotional abuse is one of the hardest forms of trauma to see in children because it is insidious and subtle.
The child, now an adult, if they have experienced overt, manipulative behaviors when they were young, may not recognize normal behavior because abnormal behavior is all they have known.
How Childhood Emotional Abuse May Affect Your Life Today
Perhaps you recognize the signs you were emotionally abused as a child but can’t see how it is affecting you today. Below are only a few ways you have been changed by childhood emotional abuse.
Low self-esteem. Because of constant yelling in your childhood, you are experiencing as an adult a lack of adequate self-esteem. You are haunted by feelings that you are not good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, etcetera. Adults who experienced childhood emotional abuse may find it challenging to assert themselves or seek out raises or promotions at work fearing they will fail or be laughed at.
Fear of anger. Most people who experienced emotional abuse in their childhoods equate someone’s anger as a fear filled event. As a result, people who are survivors often avoid conflict at any cost going out of their way to please anyone who they see as superior to themselves. Avoidance tendencies limit the person in their personal lives, and if remain unaddressed, healthy personal relationships will be nearly impossible to keep and maintain.
Reacting badly to criticism. Survivors of childhood emotional abuse are hypersensitive and overreact to feedback seeing it as a slight to their abilities. Even gentle criticism causes the survivor to feel overwhelmed. Since feedback is often used to train or input is given to foster personal growth feel like attacks, survivors of emotional abuse in their childhoods may fail at their workplace.
Anxiety. Experiencing emotional abuse during the formative years often leads to heightened anxiety and a constant state of alertness. This hypervigilance makes the survivor prone to triggers that can set off their anxiety response.
Inability to trust. This is perhaps the most insidious on this list as being continuously yelled at or experiencing other horrid experiences interferes with the development of the ability to trust. Because their homelife felt unstable and dangerous, they learned to be skeptical and wary of other people. The belief that there are no nice people in the world leads to loneliness that is palpable.
Methods That May Help
The first and perhaps the most important tip to healing from emotional abuse is to first recognize it happened, that it is true, that you are forever affected by what your caregivers did to you. This step may be horribly painful, but if you don’t recognize the symptoms in yourself you cannot heal and move forward.
Another step in healing from childhood emotional abuse is to prioritize yourself in your mind and body. Since you were ignored or denigrated as a child, you may not take good care of yourself. Eating well, getting good sleep, and making yourself a priority is vital for overcoming the effects of childhood emotional abuse.
Setting firm boundaries with others that say they can no longer yell at or otherwise harm you is powerful. Once formed, it is vital to revisit with others the fact that their abusive behavior will no longer be tolerated. The enormous shot of positive energy that occurs when you stand up for yourself may feel intimating at first, but once you have practiced it for awhile it will become a great feeling and a habit.
Recognizing the fact that you cannot fix or change someone else allows you to move forward with your dreams and goals. Also, because you see now that you are no longer a helpless child, you will realize that is time to stop blaming yourself for what happened.
Lastly, building a supportive network of people who respect you is imperative if you are to overcome the effects of childhood mental abuse. This might be difficult because of your trust issues, but well-worth it as your support system will show you the respect and dignity you always deserved.
Ending Our Time Together
Most people who suffer from the after-effects of childhood trauma have formed some type of mental health condition. One of these conditions is dissociative identity disorder with other common illnesses such as anxiety disorders, and depression.
I remember well my mother treating me worse than she did our pet cat. She was abusive in many ways and we had a weird relationship as I grew. As a result of my childhood trauma, I avoid other people and isolate as much as possible. I also have deep-seated trust issues.
I have regained much of my self-esteem and hope to completely overcome my fears and feelings of inadequacy.
I hope this article has helped you.
“What happens when people open their hearts? They get better.”
― Haruki Murakami,
“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”
― Cormac McCarthy