Lesson 16
Step 4 Doing the work
Last week we began the hard work of telling one of the stories of our resentment or hurt in a narrative. We asked you to write this narrative with no judgement or need to correct yourself. Just let the story unfold. You are not writing the story to hurt or tear anyone down. It is merely a list of facts and feelings. It is how you experienced this person or event.
Sometimes we find abuse in our stories.
We may not have even known to call it abuse, so I am going to give you a brief description of a few common abuse types. Abuse can range from name calling to controlling finances, limiting your outside relationship to punching you. Keep in mind abuse can happen in any relationship. Parent, grandparent, spouse, friend, children. Whether the abuse was intentional or not it is still called abuse. You may find it hard to describe someone you love as abusive because we think of abusers as monsters. Remember they aren’t. No one is all bad or all good, just varying degrees of both. We all act out in abusive ways, what makes an abuser just that is the repeated pattern of behavior.
Before I continue I would like to pause for a moment and talk about safety.
Do you feel physically safe in your relationships? If you do not, please reach out to one of us or another trusted person. Leave if you are ready and seek safety before you decide your next steps. If you are not ready make a safety plan so you can get out quick. Don’t stay silent. The national domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-7233. The Center for Woman and Families has a 24hr. Hotline, 1-844-237-2331.
If you are in a verbally or emotionally abuse relationship I urge you to I tell one of us or a trusted friend. Psychological abuse is confusing, the perpetrator is often very good at manipulating and blaming you. There are a few resources listed below but you will probably need help identifying the extent of your abuse. It is a good idea begin to seek healing so you can respond to the abuse out of a healthy place. Again I will ask, do you feel safe, do you feel sane, do you feel you can continue in this relationship and regain your mental health?
There are a range of responses from doing nothing, setting boundaries up to leaving the relationship.
Some find it very hard to leave their abuser.
If you find that you are unable to leave or disconnect from your abuser you may have what psychologists call a betrayal or trauma bond, sometimes in the church you hear people call this a soul tie. You will most likely need to seek professional help to aid you in leaving your abuser.
Books suggestions
Leslie Vernick , The Emotionally Destructive Marriage. Or The Emotionally Destructive Relationship
Patrick Carnes ,The Betrayal Bond
Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship
There are several types of abuse
Physical
Sexual
Verbal
Emotional
Financial
Sexual
Spiritual
Neglect
I will have 2 articles at the end of this lesson that describe the types of abuse in a marriage and the types of abuse from parents.
Last week we chose the person that we want to take through the steps and began this process of joining God in purifying our hearts. We wrote about the hole we feel in our heart and how it got there. Several feelings might have come up when we were writing about this hole. Let’s take some time to identify those feelings now.
We have talked about fully experiencing as a way to heal. Identifying feelings is an important part of experiencing them. We discussed this earlier in the class. Maybe you weren’t taught to identify your feelings as a child. Now is the time, as an adult, to learn about your feelings and give them the space they need to exist. Denying feelings will only cause suffering - either now or later. Letting them exist, gives us the opportunity to gain more insight into ourselves and learn something. Our feelings are alerts and pathways to what lies deep inside that is sometimes very hard to access without them. When we think of feelings in this way, we no longer behave or act from our feelings; we can learn from them. God gave us feelings, so when we look for their purpose in our life, we can access God and His design for us.
When we take some time to reflect on what we wrote about this person/ this hole, I would like us to move to a one paragraph summary that includes everything that happened to us. If you feel like there is more to get out and explore, please continue to do so. Remember that the extent to which we dig down, is the extent to which we can rise above and be free from this hole. This journey is a very personal one. I can give you some suggestions, but by all means, if you need to change something to better fit your story, please do. I suggest a fill in the blank to create your paragraph that looks like the following:
I hold resentment toward _______ because _____________. This affects ____________. This activates ______________. I feel ________________.
I would suggest working on this paragraph today with your group and having someone else write down what you say. If the paragraph doesn’t totally encompass your hurt/ resentment, then maybe that’s an indication to go back and write some more about what happened to you. Then you can rewrite your paragraph and assess whether it fully represents your hurt/ resentment. You can repeat this process as many times as necessary.
Once your paragraph includes everything or as close to everything as you can get, now is the time to step back and look at it. What feelings come up when you take it all in? Here is another place for grieving and lamenting to be a part of this healing path. This wasn’t fair. This wasn’t right. This is not ok.
Remember lament is pouring out your feelings to God before editing your words. It takes faith and trust to take our true feelings to God rather than push them down and deny them. The result of lament, however, is a renewed sense of freedom and even joy. I would even say a light-ness - meaning you feel lighter and less weighed down than you did before. The freedom and lightness is God comforting you.
What happens when we, Christ- followers, lament is that we come to terms with the reality of a situation. We acknowledge the fire burned down something in our lives - the marriage, the dream, the time in the past that we can’t get back, the hurt that happened that we can’t wish away - yet we hold hope in the ashes. We are finally letting go of the unrealistic hope that things can go back to the way they were, or that we can go back in time and change something, make our lives different in some way, make someone treat us differently. That hope was us still playing God.
Now close your eyes and use your breathe to slow down your thoughts and be present.
Father God, We meet you here again. Bring us to this present moment so we can fully connect to You and Your Holy Spirit. You have taught us so much through Step 1-3 of this class. Your patience with us to come to this point is tremendous and just demonstrates your unconditional love for us. Lord, we acknowledge our powerlessness in our life. We humble ourselves by admitting this to you. Send your Holy Spirit to enter into this process of purifying our hearts.
Help us to see and do your will even when it doesn’t match our own. God help us come to the place of acceptance where we no longer hope that this part of our lives didn’t crash and burn. Instead, help us to hold hope that in the burning, God, that you have something there for us. That the watching it and honoring the burning - that you are there with us and will use that experience. The seeing it lay in ash on the floor - you are there with us and will make beauty from those ashes one day. Knowing that anything is possible because your son who was once dead, was rose to life again.
When we really stop to think about Jesus’ death and resurrection it probably wasn’t what His friends and family and followers wanted… If we talked to Peter or John or Mary or anyone else, they would have wanted things to go back to the way they were - the human Jesus living and loving and eating and drinking with them. This was probably their prayer to you.
Loving and kind Father, We can’t go back and change the past. Help us to grieve it with the hope that you can take the ashes and make it into something new and different and beautiful and wonderful. Something that it could not have been without first becoming ash.
These paragraphs are our ash. We take time to honor, grieve, and acknowledge this ash. Comfort us in this process. Send your loving arms to wrap us in a warm embrace that tells us we are safe and known and loved by you. God sit with us as we lament our hurt and our brokenness before you. We know you aren’t scared by anger, fear, or sadness. Help us to find our words of lament or maybe all we have are moans of lament - help us to bring them to you this week.
Father, I ask for blessing over these ladies as they do the hard work of healing. I ask for you to be in their midst and ever close to their hearts and bring back to us next week to learn and grow in your love. It’s in Jesus’ name that I pray.
Amen.
These descriptions are taken from What Constitutes Abuse? by Leslie Vernick
What Is Abuse?
Physical Abuse
Physical abuse is characterized by hitting, slapping, spitting at, punching, kicking, yanking (such as by the hair or limbs), throwing, banging, biting, restraining, as well as any other acts of physical coercion or violence directed at another person regardless of the person’s age. In addition spanking children could be considered physically abusive if it is done in anger, leaves marks on a child’s body, or is excessive.
Many people who abuse others through physical force or threats of force attempt to control and intimidate others through violence as well as create an atmosphere or environment of anticipated violence. They might punch a wall; wave their fist or gun in someone’s face.
These kinds of behaviors are abusive even if they do not result in visible injury to the victim. Abusive actions demonstrate profound disrespect for the well being of the other person. If someone did these same behaviors to a stranger or in public, his or her conduct would unquestionably be considered abusive and the perpetrator might even be arrested. Sadly many of these actions are done to people in their closest relationships behind closed doors.
Wherever there is physical abuse, there is always verbal and emotional abuse. Often sexual abuse is part of the overall abusive pattern.
Verbal and Emotional Abuse
Words and gestures are often the weapons of choice to hurt, destroy or control and dominate another person. We often underestimate the power of words to harm others and as Christians or people helpers we can be unsympathetic to those trapped in verbally abusive relationships.
We say things like “Don’t let it bother you.” Or “Just let it roll off your back.” We all remember the nursery rhyme, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” But God knows how words affect our emotional, spiritual and physical health.
For example, Proverbs says, “Reckless words pierce like a sword”, and “Wise words bring many benefits”. “Gentle words are a tree of life, a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit”. “Kind words are like honey – sweet to the soul and healthy for the body”.
Most often we think of name calling, cursing, profanity and mocking when we think of verbal abuse. However, verbal abuse can also be more subtle or covert. Constant criticism, blaming, discounting the feelings, thoughts and opinions of another, as well as manipulating words to deceive, mislead or confuse someone are also abusive. Proverbs warns us, “The words of the wicked conceal violent intentions” (b).
Emotional abuse can also be characterized by degrading, embarrassing publicly, or humiliating someone in front of family, friends or work associates.
Nonphysical abuse is more than using words to hurt another. Emotional abusers systematically undermine their victim in order to gain control. Abusers weaken others in order to strengthen themselves. They know what matters most to their target (for example, her children, his work, her appearance, her family, his pet, her friends) and they seek to destroy it.
Sexual Abuse
Sexual abuse occurs whenever a person forces an unwilling party into having sexual relations or perform sexual acts, even within marriage. While teaching a class on domestic violence at a seminary, a student challenged my definition.
The seminary student argued that 1 Corinthians 7 was biblical proof that forcing a wife to have sex with her husband could not be considered abusive because it was biblically wrong for a wife to refuse her husband. From his perspective, it was man’s God-given right to force his wife if she denied him.
It is true that the apostle Paul cautioned husbands and wives not to deprive each other of sexual relations except under special circumstances. However, Paul also wrote that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Paul describes what that kind of love looks like: it is a giving and cherishing love, not a coercing or disrespectful love (Ephesians 5:1, Corinthians 13).
If a wife refuses her husband, whatever her reason may be, a loving husband would never respond to his legitimate disappointment by forcing his wife to have sex against her will. At most he might try to gently change her mind but likely he would accept her decision and try again another time.
If his wife regularly denies him, ideally he would pray for her as well or ask her what the problem is, encourage her to work on the problem herself, or ask her if she is willing to go for help together. Forcing his wife to have sex against her will reduces her to an object for him to use as he sees fit regardless of her feelings. That is not only degrading and disrespectful to his wife, it is abusive and in some circumstances considered to be rape.
Other forms of sexual abuse are touching someone sexually without their permission, pressuring someone to view or participate in pornography, talking to someone in sexually derogatory or humiliating ways, taking sexually explicit pictures without a person’s permission or making uninvited suggestive comments.
Financial Abuse
At the heart of abuse is an inordinate seeking of power over someone else. Money can be used as a powerful weapon to control another person. In marriage, couples ideally decide together on a budget and both parties share power and responsibility for the management of the family funds. When a wife (or a husband) is given no voice or no choice in the family finances, it’s abusive. When a wife (or husband) must be accountable for every penny spent but the other spouse is not, then there is an imbalance of power. The spouse that is accountable is being treated as a child instead of an adult. In addition, financial abuse occurs when one spouse (usually the wife who is staying home with children), has no idea how much money her husband earns, nor does she have any joint access to that money. She is given an allowance, much like a child instead of an equal partner.
Financial abuse serves to keep a spouse overly dependent upon the breadwinner or controlling spouse. If she displeases him, he punishes her by withdrawing financial support. It also can be used to keep her from getting necessary medical attention, counseling support, or educational advancement.
Spiritual Abuse
We read about leaders of cults who brainwash their members into subservience and unquestioning compliance. This brainwashing process creates people who cannot think for themselves or make independent choices without incurring the wrath or rejection from the group. When an individual, whether he be a cult leader, a pastor, or a head of a home requires unquestioning allegiance to his authority as the “voice of God” spiritual abuse is taking place.
In addition, spiritual abuse is misusing scripture to get one’s own way, to shame and judge others, who do not do things your way, or to threaten and intimidate someone into compliance.
The important component of abusive behavior whether it is physical, emotional, sexual, financial or spiritual is control over the mind, will, and feelings of another person.
Abuse treats someone as if he or she were an object to control and use rather than a person to love and value (tweet that).
Abuse of any kind is not only sinful; it is emotionally destructive and negates the personhood of the victim. Having a healthy relationship with another person is impossible when there is any kind of ongoing or unrepentant abuse.
How to tell if you have emotionally abusive parents: 15 signs
For a full copy of this article click here
by Genefe Navilon 9 months ago 6.1k Views
Parenting is no easy task. Raising a child in this day and age is both challenging and intimidating.
Experiencing the occasional mishap and lapse of judgment is normal. Every parent, after all, makes mistakes.
However, to a good parent, one thing is infallible—to love and care for your child as best as you can.
It is only when you regularly and deliberately fail to do so, that it becomes abuse.
Parental abuse is a prevalent thing in the United States. According to statistics,1 in 8 U.S. children experiences neglect, emotional, or physical abuse.
In this article, we’ll discuss one form of child maltreatment—emotional abuse.
What is it? What are the implications of emotional abuse? And what are the signs of an emotionally abusive parent?
Read ahead to know more.
What is emotional abuse?
Emotional abuse is extremely hard to detect. However, it is similar to physical abuse in the sense that it involves control.
According to bullying prevention advocate and author Shelly Gordon:
“Emotional abuse is one of the hardest forms of abuse to recognize. It can be subtle and insidious or overt and manipulative. Either way, it chips away at the victim’s self-esteem and they begin to doubt their perceptions and reality.
“The underlying goal in emotional abuse is to control the victim by discrediting, isolating, and silencing.
“In the end, the victim feels trapped. They are often too wounded to endure the relationship any longer, but also too afraid to leave. So the cycle just repeats itself until something is done.”
Even psychologists confirm that emotional abuse is a real threat to childhood safety.
A recent study by the American Psychological Association suggests:
“Given the prevalence of childhood psychological abuse and the severity of harm to young victims, it should be at the forefront of mental health.”
Bruises and scars are one thing. But the permanent damage of broken trust, hurtful words, neglect and being unloved is something you never fully heal from.
Signs you have emotionally abusive parents
1. Narcissism.
2. A pattern of verbal abuse.
Parenting is a hard and oftentimes frustrating thing. That’s why you can’t really blame parents for occasionally being hard on their children.
However, one sure way to recognize emotional abuse is if it has become a pattern. Specifically, a pattern of verbal abuse.
According to Dean Tong, an expert on child abuse allegations:
“The easiest way to detect if a parent is emotionally abusing a child is listening to their chastisement of him/her and hearing words that are tantamount to denigration, and vilification of the child’s other parent in front of said child.
“It’s a form of brainwashing and poisoning of the child convincing the child the other parent is the bad guy.”
3. Mood swings.
Everyone has mood swings. But it’s a different thing altogether when it affects children psychologically.
Domestic abuse expert Christi Garner of Psychotherapist Online, says:
“If a parent’s mood swings made you feel like you were always walking on eggshells and you were always nervous or scared of what would happen when they were around (even if nothing ‘bad’ ever happened), that’s emotionally abusive behavior.”
This leaves the child in an anxious state of not knowing what’s going to happen next.
4. They withhold compliments.
What child has never wanted to please their parent? And what parent doesn’t like to brag about their children.
Well, emotionally abusive parents don’t like giving their children credit, especially when they deserve it.
In fact, they choose to be critical instead.
Garner explains:
“Determine if your parent was always talking negatively with you, repeatedly stating negative comments about the way you dressed, how you looked, your abilities to accomplish anything, your intelligence, or who you were as a person.”
If you’ve felt like you were never enough to your parents growing up, you might have been emotionally abused.
5. Withholding basic needs.
Perhaps the worst of crimes, emotionally abusive parents may also have a tendency of depriving their children with their basic needs.
It is a parent’s job to provide food and shelter to their children. But some emotionally abusive parents don’t take up this responsibility.
For whatever reason, they just don’t feel the need to give their children even the most basic of necessities.
6. Enmeshment or Parentification
Sometimes, parents can give too much—too much love, too much affection, too much material needs.
This kind of emotional abuse is extremely hard to detect. But one thing is certain, it creates a family dynamic where boundaries are almost non-existent.
According to psychologist Dr. Margaret Rutherford:
“There’s too much sharing, or too much neediness. Children get the message that it’s not okay to be themselves—they need to stay highly involved with their parents.
“It can appear from the outside that everybody is very happy, but on the inside, there’s an expectation of loyalty that doesn’t celebrate individual achievement or identity, but demands control.”
7. They expect you to choose them first.
Do your parents continue to make unreasonable demands from you?
Emotionally abusive parents can display their selfishness by forcing you to meet their expectations and needs first. Even if means disregarding your health or priorities.
They may ask you to drop everything just to satisfy their own needs. They have no regard over your well-being if it means it’s going to hinder their own whims and needs.
8. They invalidate your emotions.
Emotional abuse is a one-way street. Abusive parents control or exercise power on their child’s emotions, but it ends there.
Have you felt like your parents always disregarded your feelings? As if you have no right to be hurt or offended? Did they always call you names like “crybaby” or a “weakling?”
That’s definitely a pattern of emotional abuse.
Good parents ensure their children have a healthy view of emotions.
Psychologist Carrie Disney explains:
“In a good enough upbringing, we learn that feelings can be managed, they may sometimes be scary but they can be thought through.”
9. They deliberately isolate you.
Deliberately isolating you from everyone and everything is another form of emotional manipulation. It’s another way to control you.
Abusive parents will restrict their child’s social activities on the pretense of “knowing what’s good for the child.”
This can mean choosing who the child can be friends with or isolating the child from other family members.
10. They’re just simply terrifying.
Your parents may not have hurt you physically, but they always terrified you enough to think that they could, if they wanted to.
Threatening to hurt, screaming, or physical intimidation are also emotionally abusive behaviors.
11. They tease you all the time.
Humor is a necessity in a healthy family environment. But never mistake excessive teasing for humor or loving behavior.
If you were always the butt of your parent’s joke, you’ve been emotionally abused. They probably made jokes on your expense just to make themselves feel and look better. And they never apologized for it. In fact, they seem to take pleasure in making fun of you.
But here’s another sign you should watch out for: you’re acting the same.
According to psychotherapist Mayra Mendez:
“Individuals exposed to repeated experiences of mockery, humiliation, and demoralizing interactions learn to interact with others in the same way.”
12. Neglect
It might not seem like outright emotional abuse, but neglect is also a classic sign of abusive parenting.
The effects of attention deprivation have immense negative impacts. As a child, you may have felt as if you never mattered. And asking for more attention only resulted in even more neglect.
Mental Health Professional Holly Brown adds:
“This is when you express a need or a viewpoint that’s not endorsed by your parents and you feel discarded as a result. They let you know, through exclusion, that it’s not OK. This can cause you to feel that you are not OK.”
13. Constant comparison to others
Have you always been compared to your other siblings or family members, even other children?
Comparing you to others and making you feel as if you never quite measured up is not good parenting.
Some parents may think that it makes a child more competitive, but the effects are just the opposite.
Brown adds:
“Instead of your parent highlighting your strengths, your weaknesses were brought to the forefront in relation to the supposed virtues of your siblings.
“This is not only painful in terms of self-esteem, but it can also hinder the relationship you could have had with your siblings because it turns it into a rivalry.”
14. Invasion of privacy.
Parents occasionally tend to snoop around their kid’s things or restrict them from locking their doors. But it’s also important to allow children to have their own privacy.
According to licensed marriage and family therapist Lisa Bahar:
“A parent may ‘snoop’ at computers or cell phones or check journals or calendars to find information of the child being ‘sneaky’ or ‘suspicious.'”
“The parent will accuse a child of being sneaky, projecting on the child their own behavior.”
Invasion of privacy is a seriously painful thing to experience. If done constantly, it certainly counts as emotional abuse.
15. Anxious state
Any parent is bound to experience anxiety from time to time. Parenting is a huge and intimidating responsibility.
However, if your parents were always in an anxious state with you, it counts as emotional abuse.
Garner explains:
“If the parent was not able to control their anxiety and leaned on their child to take care of them, they take up space that the child uses for creative play and connection.
“The heightened level of anxiety can also lead to increased levels of cortisol in the child, which has been shown to cause health-related problems later in life.”
After all, it’s a parent’s main responsibility to provide emotional security for their child as well.
The impact of an emotionally abusive parent
Emotional and psychological abuse can have a lasting effect on children.
The American Psychological Associate reports that:
“Children who are emotionally abused and neglected face similar and sometimes worse mental health problems as children who are physically or sexually abused, yet psychological abuse is rarely addressed in prevention programs or in treating victims.”
So what exactly are the impacts of emotional abuse from parents? Read below.
1. Adult anxiety
Uncertain environments like this cause stress and anxiety to children, which tend to stay with them well into adulthood.
Garner says:
“If your parent was overly anxious and always asking for you to help them or take care of them or their needs, the child inherits a piece of that anxiety.
“This higher level of stress while growing up causes changes in the body and brain, and can have long-term effects on health.”
2. Co-dependency
Dr. Mai Stafford, of the Medical Research Council at UCL, says that while good parenting can give you a sense of security, bad parenting can result in being too dependent:
She explains:
“Parents also give us stable base from which to explore the world while warmth and responsiveness has been shown to promote social and emotional development.
“By contrast, psychological control can limit a child’s independence and leave them less able to regulate their own behaviour.”
3. Introversion
Being restricted since childhood can lead to introversion as you grow older. A lack of social experience can lead someone to be scared of social interactions.
As such, children of emotionally abusive children tend to prefer being by themselves. They have few friends if any. And they have trouble forming new relationships.
4. Inability to develop healthy and loving relationships.
Our formative years are important because they shape the social and emotional skills we require in adulthood.
For victims of emotional abuse, a lack of a loving influence, especially a parent, makes a distorted sense of love.
According to parenthood counselor Elly Taylore:
“From a counseling perspective, the way emotional abuse would show up between couples was when one partner would seek comfort from the other, but not be able to trust it, so instead of the comfort being soothing when they got it, it would actually increase the person’s anxiety and they would then push the partner away… and then seek comfort again.
“This is the adult version of the parent/child dynamic that occurs when as a child, a caregiver is also a scary person.”
5. Attention-seeking behavior.
Being ignored throughout your whole childhood can lead you to become an attention-seeker. This is a result of emotional deprivation.
According to research from the University of Toronto:
“Emotions are often expressed as physical symptoms in order to justify suffering or to seek attention.”
“Emotional deprivation is the deprivation suffered by children when their parents fail to provide the normal experiences that would produce feelings of being loved, wanted, secure, and worthy.”
Reasons behind child emotional abuse
According to 2018 statistics, approximately 55,196 children in America were officially counted as victims of child emotional abuse.
And while there is no single definite reason as to why emotionally abusive parents are the way they are, there may be several factors at play:
parents struggling with depression
substance abuse
caring for a child with a disability
partner violence in the household
an absent co-parent
poverty
lack of community support
inadequate legislation and policies supporting childcare
Emotionally abusive parents have their own reason for the way they are. However, it doesn’t justify their behavior.
Mainly, it just comes down to poor parenting skills.
As Laura Endicott Thomas, author of Don’t Feed the Narcissists, says:
“A lot of parents abuse their children physically and emotionally because they have poor parenting skills. They do not know how to get children to behave, and they resort to aggression out of frustration.”
Takeaway
Emotional abuse is something anyone should never experience, especially from a parent. Parents are supposed to love you and care for you.
Emotional abuse coming from such an important person in our lives will never be right and can never be justified.
The truth is, if they want to change, they will seek help. No one can convince them otherwise. And there is nothing you can do to change them if they don’t want to make the steps themselves.
If you are a victim of emotionally abusive parents, it’s important to take a step towards healing.
You can never change the past and it will always stay with you. But you can choose to do better for yourself, build a better life, and forge loving relationships.
Remember: your parents do not define you. You have the complete power to create a good life for yourself.
Additional articles