Verbal Abuse is insidious.

Verbal Abuse and its denial are crazy-making.

Verbal Abuse usually occurs in secret.

Verbal abuse takes many forms: from loud rants to quiet comments; from obvious put-downs to not-so-obvious remarks that undermine the partner.  What all the methods have in common is the need to control, to be superior, to avoid taking personal responsibility, and to mask or deny failures.

1. Feel you just can’t win. No matter how carefully or kindly you try to work out a problem, your partner says things that make you feel like you’re in the wrong.
2. Your self-esteem and self-confidence are shot. Your partner isn’t your greatest fan but your greatest critic. He often tells you that his comments are “for your own good.”
3. When you say he has hurt your feelings the other guys tells you that you are too sensitive. When you point out that he has said something inappropriate or hurtful, he accuses you of trying to make him look bad.  You notice that he rarely takes responsibility for his part of a problem.  Somehow he manages to convince himself and even you that anything that goes wrong is your fault.
4. You often are the brunt of jokes that make you feel bad.  The guy who is fun and fun-loving outside the family unleashes a more vicious or undermining humor inside.  Other people don’t believe you that the guy they know is so different from what you experience, thus, you find yourself constantly questioning yourself.  My personal experience over the last 10 years is that my entire extended family didn’t believe that my brother Jim is abusive.  But the truth is, Jim has been physically abusing women since he was a teenager.  One of the first times was when my brother Sonny had to pull Jim off of our mother.

I’d have to walk on eggshells at home and on our family farm.  Being on the farm with my brothers wasn’t always a sanctuary for me.  It would eventually become a place where I was most afraid and embarrassed.  I would stay away from my brothers as much as possible.  When I’m with Jim I do everything I can to make sure nothing happens that could set him off.

No matter how careful I am to not set my brothers off, their verbal abuse will escalate to either physical altercations and/or the damaging of my property.  Even if you are very careful, what starts with words can end up with physical aggression toward you or destroying things, especially things you value.  One example of this was when one or both of my brothers would tamper with my old blue truck.  One of them poured something down the gas tank and disabled it completely.  I was in the middle of my cancer treatments and very much in need of a reliable vehicle to get me to Mt Zion Cancer Center in San Francisco every week.  Distressed over it I went to my mom and for one hour, sobbing through streams of tears, told her of everything Jim and Dennis had been doing in stocking me for some two years, and now this.  She was so concerned for my suffering, she went out that day and bought me a new truck.  Even though Dennis tried to talk her out of it, mom was unrelenting.  She believed me for two reasons.  She knew her sons, and that they were both very capable of treacherous acts like this one, plus, she knew me.  She knew me well enough to know that I won’t lie and make things up, especially when its important.

Except for name-calling, many people don’t recognize verbal abuse—especially when it comes from a person they believe loves them or from a person they perceive as an authority figure or in a position of power, for example; a family provider, one’s parent, or even an older sibling.

Unfortunately, when people don’t recognize verbal abuse for what it is, we try to get the person who is putting us down, giving us orders, or “correcting,” denouncing, yelling at or ignoring us to understand us.  After reading Patricia Evans book on ‘The Verbally Abusive Relationship’ it helped me understand my family, especially my two brothers who speak fluent Verbal Abuse.  I still have a need to have to explain myself, to be understood, a need to be heard.  That is why I have chosen to write about my encounters with abuse in hopes that my story may help other victims of Verbal Abuse.

The circumstances under which verbal abuse takes place makes a real difference in how to respond to it.  In the workplace, for instance, an appropriate response to a very abusive boss might be to prepare a resume or to read the want ads.  On the other hand, a child can’t very well escape from an abusive parent.  In my own situation with my older brothers I needed, and still need, the help and support of others because there was more at stake then just my relationship with them.  I would lose the company of my mother, and her me.  And in the end, my brothers would take my entire inheritance that my mother wanted for me and my children.  So, observers and relatives, must be alert and ready to speak up for the victims.  Keeping a record and letting others know what is going on are often good first steps.

The Verbally Abusive Relationship by Patricia Evans.  Her website:   http://www.verbalabuse.com