Verbal abuse attacks your self-esteem like a bulldozer demolishing a building. The impact is hard and emotionally violent and the fallout is ruinous debris.
Verbal abuse: Verbal abuse includes withholding, bullying, defaming, defining, trivializing, harassing, interrogating, accusing, blaming, blocking, countering, diverting, lying, berating, taunting, putting down, edifying, discounting, threatening, name-calling, yelling and raging. Intentionally inflicting pain.
Self-esteem: A realistic respect for or favorable impression of oneself; self-respect.
Verbal abuse strips away your dignity with each abusive word spoken. Little by little your self-esteem weakens. You begin to buy into the abuser words and lies. You begin to accept their way of thinking. You start to make excuses for the way you are spoken too.
Words hurt. The verbal abuser will use them against you, until you are broken down and have no will of your own. If you are constantly told, ” you’re no good, you’re no use to me, you sound stupid, you’re crazy, you’re sorry, why am I with you, you look like sh* to me, go some where I don’t have to look at you”. Your self esteem has taken a severe beaten. Those are only a few verbal abusive examples. It’s sad to say there is more verbal arsenal in the abuser’s repertoire.
You walk around afraid to speak. You become a mouse in your own habitat, seen but not heard. Your scared the simplest question will turn into a verbal attack against you. Your self-esteem is so trodden down; thoughts of suicide start to form. Isn’t death a better escape, than being abused day in and out?
Second-guessing you, maybe what they are telling me is the truth. They beat you down until there is very little if any of your self-esteem left to fight back with. It’s as if they have taken away your sunshine and left only dark clouds.
Often by the time you realize you are in a verbal abusive relationship, which can occur not only in a marriage, but also at your workplace, at school, with friends and even relatives can be verbally abusive, the damage has already been accomplished.
Physical abuse, the scars can be seen, in verbal abuse there are no scars to be observed, since they are all inside. Emotional wounds don’t heal as easily as physical damage. Bruises can fade away; verbal abuse scars never completely recover.
The effect of verbal abuse on a person is life altering. The mind can only endure so much mental beating before it begins to shut down.
Verbal abuse and its effect on self-esteem, is detrimental to the one the abuse is being heaped on. Taken away is their hope, faith, believing in themselves?
I think of a verbally abusive relationship as being in the ring with a prizefighter, being hit repeatedly over and over again until I’m nearly pummeled to death spiritually.
The Verbal Abuse Site
http://www.verbalabuse.com/
