Most people recognize name-calling as verbal abuse, but name-calling is just one of more than a dozen categories of verbal abuse. Typically, people who are put down in verbally abusive relationships think that somehow, in some way their being treated like that has something to do with them. They have the impression that there is something about themselves that makes their loved one mad at them, apprehensive of them, distant toward them, fed up with them, unbelieving of them, or disdainful of them.

Since verbally abusive relationships have been ignored by our culture for thousands of years and since there are so many forms of verbal abuse – from the most subtle to the most direct – it is not easy for people in abusive relationships to understand what is going on. For this reason, I have written a book that thousands of people say helps them more than anything else they’ve read to recognize verbal abuse right when it’s happening.

Conversely, people who frequently indulge in verbal abuse may have little if any conscious awareness of what they are doing. This idea may seem strange to people looking in on an abusive relationship. But many people have told me that they were frequently abusive and never thought anything about their behavior.

Abusers are Often Blind to Their Abusive Behavior

1. If people in relationships believe that they are entitled to give orders–that it is their right–they don’t necessarily think that ordering their mate around is abusive. They usually think that their assumed rights, prerogatives and privileges make this kind of behavior okay. They are then blind to their abusive behavior.

2. Similarly, they may think that they have a right to put down their partner, or to tell their partner what s/he’s thinking, meaning, and so forth. They might think they are entitled to act the way they do because of their age, because they’ve been around the place longer, are of a superior gender or race, or because they make more money than their mate. Their sense of entitlement blinds them to their abusive behavior.

3. The abuser may think verbal and/or physical abuse—acts against their mate—are justified because their mate “makes them do it.” Many people who batter both verbally and physically and who are jailed as a consequence, believe it is their mate’s fault—as if their mate did the verbal and physical battering. This “crazy” thinking blinds them to their abusive behavior.

4. The abuser may hold a belief in the right of one person to wield power over another person. This belief blinds abusers to their abusive behavior.

5. People who indulge in verbal abuse are also blinded to their abusive behavior when they are lacking in the ability to acknowledge and accept their mate’s feelings, interests, talents, perspectives and opinions.

In these relationships, verbal abuse creates pain and trauma and can even lead to physical illness. Ongoing abuse is stressful, no matter how much one tries to ignore it. Stress compromises the immune system leaving the abused person vulnerable to a host of illnesses. Back pain and exhaustion are often the first symptoms.