Stop Emotional Abuse With Decision Making: Reclaim Your Voice
Do you often feel like you are a burden? As if your basic needs (which might feel like a luxury) are too much to ask for? As much as we try to not talk about it, it’s hard to deny how common this experience is.
The sad part is – it’s a common sign of emotional abuse which is something many of us face without even realizing it. The cycle is vicious. And the good part? You can break this pattern and stop emotional abuse with decision making.
Is it going to be easy? Nope. Is it worth it? A BIG yes, and you can do it too but only with the right approach. As you start to recognize that you are not a burden – your needs are valid and important – it becomes clear how emotional abuse manipulates our self-perception. Let’s understand how to develop that and break free from this cycle of toxicity!
Recognizing Emotional Abuse
Dealing with the impact of emotional abuse is not easy and it might not always be obvious. It very starts in small and almost noticeable ways that can look normal at first. However, understanding the types and signs of emotional abuse can make it easy to identify these patterns early to protect yourself. It is the first step to stop emotional abuse with proactive decision making. So, let’s understand these in greater detail:
Types of Emotional Abuse
According to the North Somerset Safeguarding Adults Board, “Psychological or emotional abuse is abusive behavior that isn’t physical but rather involves manipulating someone’s emotions. This is done in a way that diminishes a person’s sense of dignity or self-worth.”
Going by this definition, it’s clear that emotional abuse manifests itself in a lot of ways. The worst part is, that it is designed to undermine yourself, a team, and a sense of independence. There are some of its common forms:
- Verbal Insults: Using mean or demeaning language to make you feel bad about yourself. This is one of the most common emotional abuse examples where you are made to feel belittled. Usually, the intention is to keep away from yourself and make you feel worthless and unloved.
You might get to hear constant criticism about your appearance, intelligence, or character, usually in a tone that may be disguised as a joke. Over time, these insults can deeply affect your perception, and make it harder to maintain a positive self-image. Recently on 15th April 2024, most of us encountered the news that Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small and his wife, La’Quetta Small, allegedly physically and emotionally abused their 16-year-old daughter because of her relationship with a boy.[1] Maybe, being the parents, they were desperate to make good for her, but the verbal and physical insults would not do any good for her.
- Threats (Emotional Blackmail): Threats are a serious form of psychological abuse where the abuser uses fear to control you. These might include threats to harm themselves, you, or even your loved ones if you don’t do what they say. Ultimately, the fear of these threads becoming real can keep you in a constant state of anxiety, which will make it hard for you to make independent decisions.
And Yet, The Most Common Ones Include:
- Manipulation: This is a classic one. When someone is manipulating you, they often twist situations or words to bring the focus to themselves, constantly abusing your needs, which is a common type of emotional abuse. The abuser may distort the truth to make you doubt your memory, beliefs, and sanity (gaslighting). This confusion can leave you dependent on them for “reality” checks, which will only deepen the control they have over you.
- Isolation: This is another common tactic where the abuser cuts you off from your support network, to make you more dependent on them. This might start subtly – criticism from your friends and family, or when you are made to choose between your loved ones and abuser. Over time, this can result in a feeling of isolation and make it harder for you to reach out for help and support when you need it.
- Stalking: You might already be familiar with this, but when it comes to emotional abuse, it gets really intense. The abusive person closely monitors your activities and may be keeping track of your texts, emails, or social media without your consent. It’s a form of control that completely invades your privacy and keeps you in constant fear that somebody is going to harm you. It’s as scary as it sounds!
Signs of Emotional Abuse
Understanding the emotional abuse is vital. It can be subtle yet profoundly damaging. Moreover, it occurs in various relationships. Every one of us deserves respect and love. Furthermore, emotional abuse deeply impacts mental well-being. Hurtful words can leave lasting scars. Importantly, support is crucial for healing. Let’s come together with compassion and understanding to learn the signs of emotional abuse. In doing so, we can create safe spaces where everyone feels valued.
Personal Feelings
Having to deal with emotional abuse can leave you feeling like you are always wrong and everything you do is a burden on others. This often starts subtly, where the abuser makes you question your own thoughts and feelings. This makes it hard to trust what you feel is real.
As the manipulation goes on, you start to feel overwhelmingly isolated from everyone. Even enough room full of people, you will feel detached because you have been led to believe that your feelings are not valid. This isolation makes you dependent on the abuser, which makes it harder for you to reach out for the support you desperately need.
Behavioral Signs
When you or someone you know is going through emotional abuse, it’s not just what you feel inside that changes. Your actions and how you interact with the world can also indicate what you are going through. This might include withdrawal from activities that used to make you happy – which is not just about closing interest but more of a response to the abuser’s criticisms.
Physical and Emotional Signs
The physical signs of emotional abuse include feeling constantly tired, no matter how much you rest. This kind of tiredness comes from the ongoing stress and worry that the abuse causes. You might also suffer from headaches or stomach aches more often which is your body’s way of reacting to the stress.
Emotionally, you might feel like you’re always on high alert, especially around the person abusing you. This can make it hard for you to relax or feel safe even in places where you used to feel comfortable. You might also find yourself getting upset or angry more easily, or you may start to cry without any reason. These emotional responses are typical signs of the deep impact abusele is having on your feelings and well-being.
Effects of Emotional Abuse
Emotional abuse causes deep and lasting trauma, which affects every aspect of a person’s life. Understanding the impact – both in the long and short term becomes important here to help us understand the seriousness of the situation.
Short-Term Effects
The impact of experiencing emotional abuse, especially when it involves emotional abuse by parents, is extremely hard to deal with. It comes as a shock to realize that someone you trust and love could hurt you like this, making you feel sad, scared, and nervous all the time. This often leads to changes in appetite and sleep cycle, which is an immediate aftermath.
In such cases, emotional instability is quite common. Such treatment leads to extreme distress, which has a direct impact on your mental health, making it harder to deal with yourself and the people around you.
Long-Term Effects
Over time, the effects of emotional abuse can last much longer. In the long term, you might find yourself struggling with ongoing anxiety and depression which impacts your personality and ability to maintain healthy relationships. It’s also pretty common to struggle with self-esteem for a long time, which often holds you back in your personal life and career.
In more severe cases, this strain can lead to serious mental health issues like PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) or anxiety disorders. This becomes particularly difficult when the abuse comes from a close family member or friend because it shakes the very foundation of trust and safety. Such emotional damage makes it hard to see the world and your place in it, making everything feel a lot harder!
The Role of Decision Making in Combating Emotional Abuse
This gets hard but making your own decisions is actually a powerful way to fight back against emotional abuse. How so? It all starts with taking control of the choices in your life, which can help you to regain your confidence and independence. Let’s take a close look at this process:
Regaining Trust in Yourself
The first step in decision making to deal with emotional abuse is to start trusting yourself again. This means believing in your ability to make good decisions for yourself. As cliche or difficult as it might sound, it’s important to understand that unless you take a stand for yourself, nothing will change.
As you realize that your needs and personal boundaries matter, you will realize your self-worth. Give yourself positive affirmations each day that you deserve good treatment and won’t tolerate bad behavior irrespective of the person. This may sound trivial but it can work wonders for your self-esteem and over time as you trust your own decisions, you will feel stronger and more capable of regulating yourself. To stop emotional abuse it is essential to use informed decision making.
Support Systems and Safety
Building a good support system is important for emotional abuse recovery through decision making. Try to surround yourself with people who generally believe in you and support your growth, without trying to manipulate or hurt you. This can be a friend who listens to you without any judgment or anyone who encourages your independence.
However, as you work on your decision making, it’s important to prioritize your safety. Sometimes, this can mean setting firm boundaries with the abuser or reaching out for help to protect yourself. Always remember, every decision that enhances your safety will make you feel that you deserve to be treated with respect and care!
Empowerment Through Action
Taking charge of your life once again is easier with empowerment through decision making as it makes you choose what aligns best with your true self. Start by setting small and achievable goals that make you feel genuinely good and feel confident. It can be deciding to spend an entire afternoon doing something you love, or meeting up with your best friend.
Each step you take here is no less than an act of courage. It is because the whole thing is not just about the outcome but about the process of how you reclaim your autonomy. So, make sure to. So, celebrate your decisions and understand that these will bring you one step closer to the life you deserve!
Overcoming Decision-Making Challenges
It is quite natural to feel hesitant about making decisions after experiencing emotional abuse. You might start doubting your ability to choose wisely or worry about the consequences. Overcoming manipulation in these situations requires you to start acknowledging your fears and gently challenging them. Ask yourself, “What is the worst that can happen?”
When you start pondering over this question, weigh it against the best possible outcome. This will need practice but it will eventually build your confidence and help you slowly dismantle any fear you have. According to Dedoyin Ajayi, a world-famous Psychotherapist, “Oftentimes, the inability to make a decision can be a response to Emotional Abuse Trauma…”. Here is what she says in a tweet:
Do you find it very difficult to be decisive?
Oftentimes, the inability to make a decision can be a response to Emotional Abuse Trauma. For many victims and survivors, not making a decision at all is potentially safer than making the wrong one.
Get help, heal from that trauma.— The Dedoyin Ajayi (@dedoyinajayi) September 29, 2021
Practical Steps to Reclaim Your Voice
Realizing you need to heal from emotional abuse is important, but taking practical steps to make that possible is just as crucial. As someone who has personally seen people going through these tough times, I can bet on how effective these can be for anyone. In this section, I will share some personal empowerment strategies that feel as real today as when I first experienced them!
1. Acknowledge the Abuse and Validate Your Feelings
The first step towards your healing journey needs you to go back to where it all started. As much as I have experienced, it all starts with the abuser invalidating your feelings and thoughts. This is why acknowledging that you have been through emotional abuse is a deeply personal and powerful step as it completely changes your perspective towards yourself.
Journaling can be a helpful tool here. How? As you write about your experiences and feelings without any external influence since you are not sharing them with anyone, you will feel more comfortable in your skin. It will help you solidify your understanding that what happened was wrong and that your anger and frustration are completely justified. Slowly, you will see yourself taking control of your life one step at a time!
2. Set Clear Boundaries
Once you have acknowledged the abuse, I think it’s important to set boundaries and make sure no one crosses them. These boundaries will help you define what you are comfortable with and how you expect to be treated by others. You can start identifying situations that make you feel extremely comfortable and drain your energy.
Then, once you are sure about these boundaries, communicate them clearly to everyone around you whenever you feel someone is trying to cross them. You might need to tell a family member that you need space or inform a friend that certain topics are quite off-limits for discussions with you. If you are an introvert like me, it will be even harder at first but trust me, it’s important to trust the process of healing from emotional abuse. So, it is time for you to empower yourself to stop emotional abuse with decision making by refusing to tolerate disrespectful behavior.
3. Engage in Self-Care and Reconnection Activities
Speaking from my personal experience, self-care is always a game changer. It’s not just about bubble baths and spa days (though those are great), but it’s more about doing things that make you feel good. It can be as simple as reading a book or taking a long walk every day even if it is for 10 to 15 minutes.
What you are doing here is discovering hobbies and interests that you unknowingly pushed aside while you were going through the abuse. Keeping yourself engaged in these activities is a joyful act and helps you during self-recovery by acting as an affirmation of who you are! Take control of your life and stop emotional abuse through informed decision making by prioritizing self-care.
4. Empower Yourself Through Knowledge and Action
Reclaiming your voice after struggling with emotional abuse is all about empowering yourself, and what better than education can do that? Try to expose yourself to informative materials about emotional abuse and its impact to help you understand your experience and feelings better.
Just like you are reading this blog where we are discussing the same, try to read more books and articles. You can also refer to other resources from reliable organizations specializing in psychological abuse awareness.
The best part about this process is that you won’t feel lonely in this process. Since your brain knows that you are trusting a reliable resource, you will feel validated and that there are so many other people going through the same. This will help you build self-confidence and encourage your decisions if you are thinking of seeking professional help.
Final Words: Stop emotional abuse with decision making
This journey to stop emotional abuse with decision making is challenging but it’s equally rewarding. It will feel tough but you don’t have to work it alone. Acknowledging the problem and understanding its impact is a brave first step towards reclaiming your power and peace. However, if you feel like you need help, I would highly suggest seeking professional help from a certified and experienced mental health specialist. Remember, it’s completely okay to seek help and there’s nothing wrong or shameful about it. You deserve a happy and healthy life, my friend!
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