Emotional abuse occurs when a partner engages in controlling behaviors such as threats, insults, constant monitoring, excessive texting, humiliation, intimidation, isolation, or stalking. While emotional abuse often occurs alongside physical abuse, partner abuse doesn’t have to be physical to cause long-term harm. In fact, the damage of emotional abuse lasts much longer than that of physical abuse. This is in part because the target of the abuse ruminates or thinks about the emotional abuse, trying to figure out if it really happened, if they are crazy or if they are being overly sensitive. With physical abuse, you can see the cuts, bruises or broken bones. With emotional abuse, the harm and scars are much harder to identify because they are not outwardly visible.
The costs to your well-being of emotional abuse are real and can last long after the abuse has stopped and/or you’ve left the abusive relationship. Let’s take a look at emotional abuse’s cost to your mind, body, soul and bank account
Physical Costs
Emotional abuse affects survivors’ health in several ways. Survivors experience greater frequency of serious and chronic illnesses. For instance, those who experienced emotional abuse are more likely to subsequently be diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder, as one member of the FinAbility experienced after leaving her abuser. They also struggle with more physical limitations (e.g., climbing several flights of stairs, moving a table, pushing a vacuum cleaner, playing golf), and work limitations (e.g., difficulty performing work and other activities or spending less time on those activities), and experience more cognitive impairment such as confusion about the date or getting lost going to familiar places as another member of the team experienced.
Emotional abuse can lead to other physical challenges due to difficulty engaging in self-care when abuse is ongoing. Survivors often focus on keeping the abuser happy so they are less likely to be abusive (at least in theory). It can be difficult to find time, attention and energy to take care of yourself. This can lead to emotional eating to help mask your pain with food or to keep you occupied. For some it leads to not eating enough, not getting much exercise, or exercising too much. Emotional abuse can even harm those beyond the survivor. For instance, survivors are more likely to give birth to low birth weight babies and are less likely to breastfeed.
Mental Costs
Because emotional abuse is like boiling a frog, it can be hard to detect as it often occurs slowly and over time. The survivor may question whether they are actually being abused. This is the abuser’s intent (regardless of whether it's conscious or subconscious). If the abuser can get you to doubt the reality that you know, they can more easily and effectively control you. Some survivors even contemplate putting hidden video cameras in their home to show to a friend to have an objective third party to tell them they 1) are being abused, or 2) yes, they are indeed crazy. (It’s the former!).
The mental and emotional costs to a survivor’s well-being are genuine. Survivors experience more depression, anxiety and even posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or complex PTSD compared to those who are not emotionally abused. In fact, emotional abuse is much more likely to lead to PTSD than physical abuse.
Emotional abuse survivors often lose touch with themselves or feel disconnected from who they are and what they want. Again, their efforts are focused on keeping the abuser happy and hopefully less abusive. In doing so, survivors may lose confidence and trust in themselves. They may lack self-love and acceptance, and begin speaking negatively to and about themselves.
Social Costs
For many survivors, interacting with others can be challenging. It requires vulnerability, confidence and emotional resources to engage effectively and enjoyably with friends and family. These are often in short supply for survivors. Survivors are often mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted or burned out by trying to navigate the day by day complexity of living with an abuser. Without those social interactions, survivors lose connection with their friends, family and support networks, which further undermines their overall health and ability to remove themselves from the abuser’s reach.
Financial Costs
Emotional or psychological abuse almost always comes with a financial cost to the survivor. Shockingly, 99% of abuse victims also experience financial or economic abuse. The love bombing that often precedes emotional abuse can encourage the survivor to turn over control of financial assets that the abuser may then seize or exploit, as more than one of our team members experiences. Emotional abuse often undermines a survivor’s self-esteem and confidence, which can leave them feeling less capable of making financial decisions and having confidence in the decisions that they make.
The impact of a partner’s financial abuse can include having a hard time getting an apartment or vehicle because of your credit, having to borrow money to pay rent or other bills, needing to stay with friends or family because you cannot find a place to live, or being harassed by a business to pay bills that you owe. The financial cost is anything that undermines your ability to be self-sufficient financially.
Limiting the Costs
Emotional abuse costs can be daunting but healing and recovery are possible! Here are a few tips from other emotional abuse survivors to help you become your most authentic, confident, and healthy self:
- Love yourself. Know yourself. You are a human being and thus worthy of love and respect.
- Be confident as you embark on a safer and happier life. You don’t have to have it all figured out on the front end. You’ll make mistakes - everyone does! Learn from them and remember that almost any mistake is figure-out-able or fixable.
- Go with your gut. Trust that you know what is going on. Trust the reality that you know. Don’t ignore the red flags. The abuser’s goal is to confuse you and encourage you to doubt yourself. Don’t let them bait you. You know what you saw or heard or felt.
- You don’t have the power to change or fix people. Love cannot fix everything. LOVE DOES come at a cost and can come at a cost to YOU. The abuser’s problem is not your problem. They are projecting onto you and you cannot change that for them. You can only control yourself.
- There is embarrassment and shame over being emotionally or psychologically abused. If you feel this way, you are far, far, far from being alone. There are resources that can help. Find a safe person to share with. Hotlines can be useful, especially if you’re finding eye contact difficult or uncomfortable. Visit DomesticShelters.org to find domestic abuse support or shelters near you. There are also support groups who have dealt with the same things - knowing you’re not alone is critical. Also, a victim’s advocate can be a huge help and help you get out FASTER. MyPlan is a helpful guide to support you through decision making processes with suggestions that are specific to your situation. Also, DomesticShelters.org can help connect you with local resources for help and healing.
Emotional abuse IS abuse and you are not alone in experiencing it. Nor are you alone in healing from it. You have resources to improve your mental, emotional, physical and financial well-being. You deserve to thrive, not just survive.
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