In fact, if his words make you feel small, worthless or humiliated, and he doesn’t respect or consider how you feel, that is abusive. More important, it is unacceptable. Hurting your feelings, or being careless of your feelings, however you choose to see it, is unacceptable. Period.

Until you become adept at recognising verbal and emotional

Emotional abuse is any judgement, from any source, humiliates, undermines and paralyses you. People have a right to pass comment on errors you have made. They are never justified in suggesting that the errors you have made undermines your human worth.

Emotional abuse keeps you focused on the past; and seeing the future only through the negative perspective of the abusive relationship. When you’re in an emotionally abusive relationship, your partner will always remind you of everything you have ever done wrong – and visit on you their prediction that you will never change for the better.

How does your partner know this? Actually, they don’t. It’s only their opinion.

Emotional abuse brainwashes you into taking whatever bad things your partner says about you as gospel. If they can be so sure, when you are feeling so confused and undermined, then they must be right. In fact, they sound so certain because they are heavily invested in what they’re saying. They need you to believe it so they can maintain their power over you.

You can’t be sure whether what your partner says ‘counts’ as abuse or not. After all, he doesn’t hit you; he’s just telling it like it is. Maybe, it’s just you being too sensitive, or too demanding, or too unreasonable. That’s what he tells you. So you end up worrying: “Is it? Isn’t it?” Because you’ll only feel 100% justified in taking a firm stand, if you are absolutely sure, and it’s so hard to be sure with words.

In fact, if his words make you feel small, worthless or humiliated, and he doesn’t respect or consider how you feel, that is abusive. More important, it is unacceptable. Hurting your feelings, or being careless of your feelings, however you choose to see it, is unacceptable. Period.

Until you become adept at recognising verbal and emotional a

Emotional abuse keeps you focused on the past; and seeing the future only through the negative perspective of the abusive relationship. When you’re in an emotionally abusive relationship, your partner will always remind you of everything you have ever done wrong – and visit on you their prediction that you will never change for the better.

How does your partner know this? Actually, they don’t. It’s only their opinion.

Emotional abuse brainwashes you into taking whatever bad things your partner says about you as gospel. If they can be so sure, when you are feeling so confused and undermined, then they must be right. In fact, they sound so certain because they are heavily invested in what they’re saying. They need you to believe it so they can maintain their power over you.

You can’t be sure whether what your partner says ‘counts’ as abuse or not. After all, he doesn’t hit you; he’s just telling it like it is. Maybe, it’s just you being too sensitive, or too demanding, or too unreasonable. That’s what he tells you. So you end up worrying: “Is it? Isn’t it?” Because you’ll only feel 100% justified in taking a firm stand, if you are absolutely sure, and it’s so hard to be sure with words.

In fact, if his words make you feel small, worthless or humiliated, and he doesn’t respect or consider how you feel, that is abusive. More important, it is unacceptable. Hurting your feelings, or being careless of your feelings, however you choose to see it, is unacceptable. Period.

Until you become adept at recognising verbal and emotional

How does your partner know this? Actually, they don’t. It’s only their opinion.

Emotional abuse brainwashes you into taking whatever bad things your partner says about you as gospel. If they can be so sure, when you are feeling so confused and undermined, then they must be right. In fact, they sound so certain because they are heavily invested in what they’re saying. They need you to believe it so they can maintain their power over you.

You can’t be sure whether what your partner says ‘counts’ as abuse or not. After all, he doesn’t hit you; he’s just telling it like it is. Maybe, it’s just you being too sensitive, or too demanding, or too unreasonable. That’s what he tells you. So you end up worrying: “Is it? Isn’t it?” Because you’ll only feel 100% justified in taking a firm stand, if you are absolutely sure, and it’s so hard to be sure with words.

In fact, if his words make you feel small, worthless or humiliated, and he doesn’t respect or consider how you feel, that is abusive. More important, it is unacceptable. Hurting your feelings, or being careless of your feelings, however you choose to see it, is unacceptable. Period.

Until you become adept at recognising verbal and emotional

You can’t be sure whether what your partner says ‘counts’ as abuse or not. After all, he doesn’t hit you; he’s just telling it like it is. Maybe, it’s just you being too sensitive, or too demanding, or too unreasonable. That’s what he tells you. So you end up worrying: “Is it? Isn’t it?” Because you’ll only feel 100% justified in taking a firm stand, if you are absolutely sure, and it’s so hard to be sure with words.

In fact, if his words make you feel small, worthless or humiliated, and he doesn’t respect or consider how you feel, that is abusive. More important, it is unacceptable. Hurting your feelings, or being careless of your feelings, however you choose to see it, is unacceptable. Period.

Until you become adept at recognising verbal and emotional

In fact, if his words make you feel small, worthless or humiliated, and he doesn’t respect or consider how you feel, that is abusive. More important, it is unacceptable. Hurting your feelings, or being careless of your feelings, however you choose to see it, is unacceptable. Period.

Until you become adept at recognising verbal and emotional abuse you will continue to suffer it in your life. Because you will continue to let friends, acquaintances and even strangers behave in ways that are either hurtful or careless of your feelings.

You will visit other people’s abusive judgements on yourself, until you discover how to identify them and get rid of them once and for all. Worse still, you’ll confuse abuse with ‘being realistic’. If ever you find yourself thinking: “They can do things, because it’s different for them, they’re not as hopeless and useless as I am”, that is an abusive judgement. Any assessment you make about yourself that denies your ability to create good relationships and a good life for yourself is abusive – and wrong.

How can you possibly know what the future holds? After all, if you had had the gift of foresight, you wouldn’t have got involved with your abusive partner in the first place, would you?

So how do you ‘do’ emotional abuse recovery?

1) Understand that change is inevitable and that you have the power to make all the changes you want and need. Sure, you may not be able to make them right now, because you may not even know exactly what you want and need. What you can do, is start making one or two small changes and maybe add a few others as you go along; maybe adding a little self-care into your daily routine.

The psychological burden of an abusive relationship is actually like a massive boulder. You can’t push it away, but a few small changes act like putting a plank under it. The leverage you’ll gain will allow you to roll that boulder away, faster than you might think possible.

2) Start to reprogram your mind. You can wait until things get bet