It’s difficult to speak up for what’s right. Usually we just stay silent and hope our silence will keep us under the radar of the person who in the wrong. If we speak up, we will be noticed, and noticed people are targets.
Actually, all people are targets to an emotionally abusive person. It’s a myth that you will be able to avoid abuse if you are compliant or perfect or quiet. The abuse doesn’t stop; it can intensify. That is why it is so important to take a stand against abuse wherever it is found. The commonality of emotional abuse has been used as an excuse for silence far too long. To heal from emotional abuse, you need to begin to call attention to it, especially as it relates to your own life.
1. What is the first age you remember emotional abuse taking place? What was the pattern and who was doing it?
2. How did you cope with the emotional abuse? Do you remember what you told yourself about it?
3. How did the abuser’s words and actions make you feel about yourself?
4. Was this type of behavior pretty common in your extended family? Did you grow up in a household and family where “everyone” spoke and acted this way, from aunts and uncles to cousins and grandparents?
5. In your family, how were people in general treated – visitors to your home, salespeople and clerks in stores, servers at restaurants, callers on the phone? What did this teach you about the worth and value of other people?
6. As you look over the signs of emotional abuse in the last chapter, what behaviors have you come to accept as normal, as just the way life is?
7. Take a look at your present words and actions toward others. What are some areas of personal improvement?
8. In thinking about emotional abuse, how does ignoring it, denying it, or accepting it lead to perpetuating it in your own life?
9. As you think about emotional abuse you’ve experienced in the past, what reasons have the abusers – or you – used to explain way hurtful behavior? Write down each reason.
10. For each reason above, ask yourself, is this a legitimate reason, or is this an excuse to explain away or minimize the hurtfulness?
11. Is it easier for you to think that someone else has only an excuse, while you have a legitimate reason for the same behavior?
12. Have you ever considered that a family pattern of speech or behavior you’ve adopted is hurtful to other people?
13. If there are hurtful patterns you’re perpetuating, are you ready to let go of them, apologize for them, and change?
14. If you find you’re not ready to do that, what needs to happen for you to be ready?
15. Please read aloud the following statement of affirmation:
I am committed to raising my self-esteem and not allowing others to abuse me. I will change my own patterns of behavior in order to break the cycle of emotional abuse.
Emotional abuse is so common because we have allowed it to continue. Affirm today to do everything you can to make it an anomaly in your relationships, not a constant.
The above is excerpted from Chapter 2 in Healing the Scars of Emotional Abuse by Dr. Gregory Jantz.