4 Spiritual Abuse Tactics

Today we’re talking about spiritual abuse. Many people, when they think of spiritual abuse, immediately think of cult leaders, like Charles Manson, David Koresh, Jim Jones etc… people who destroy the lives of their followers. There’s something very destructive about these leaders, but the kind of spiritual abuse I want to talk about today is not quite that obvious. It can be found in all kinds of places. It can be found in religions and new age groups. It can even be found in humanist communities.

I looked for a list of tactics in the professional literature for spiritual abuse and it was not something I could readily find. What I did find was that spiritual abuse tends to occur in communities much like mobbing does. It rarely involves just one person. It’s often supported by a whole bunch of people, who think that this person who is abusive and who claims the authority of God is just wonderful.

Photo by Pedro Lima on Unsplash

If you are devoutly a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, you might not want to listen to this episode. I rely on my personal experience growing up in that church, and I talk a lot about the history of how that church was founded to list 4 tactics which are common when spiritual abuse is taking place. I will list them right now.

1. Claims of Ultimate Authority
2. Ritualized Submission
3. Using Family as Pawns
4. Fear Mongering

I consider Mormonism, which is the lay man’s term for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (and when I say Mormonism, I don’t just mean the mainstream church I grew up in, but also the fundamentalist church and the other sects that came from Joseph Smith) to be founded on a foundation of spiritual abuse. It’s much easier to see when we go back to the beginning. It’s much harder to pinpoint now, which is why I’m going to back to the beginning.

Claims of Ultimate Authority

I was taught that Joseph Smith was a prophet. Why was Joseph Smith a prophet?

Because when he was a boy he went into the woods, and Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him—two personages—and they told him not to join any church, that they were going to reveal their one true church to him.

So I grew up being told that my church was a Christian church, and that it was the only true, pure form of Christianity on the earth. All the other ones might have some truth in them, but our church had the whole gospel, everything.

To further support this claim, in the bible there’s the priesthood from when Christ came. And then he died and was resurrected. Well, in Mormonism, we are taught that Jesus’s disciples Peter, James, and John actually came down from heaven in resurrected bodies and gave that priesthood to those who were leading the Mormon church.

So the Mormons, or Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, claims an unfettered line of authority, a pure and direct line of authority from Jesus to Peter, James, and John to the early prophets Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery—those who established the modern day restored church back in 1830.

Now that priesthood, that authority, means that God communicates directly through the prophets of the church. It means that Heavenly Father and Jesus communicated directly through Joseph Smith and he also communicated directly through Brigham Young, and that today he communicates directly through the current prophet.

So this is supposed to be a revelation that came from God to Joseph Smith. And what it’s saying is that if God commands it, even if it seems like it’s a sin, it’s not a sin.

Now, as touching the law of the the priesthood, there are many things pertaining thereunto. Verily, if a man be called of my Father, as was Aaron, by mine own voice, and by the voice of him that sent me, and I have endowed him with the keys of the power of this priesthood, if he do anything in my name, and according to my law and by my word, he will not commit sin, and I will justify him. (Doctrine and Covenants 132: 58 – 59)

Why is this dangerous?

Well, for starters, this is the section of scripture that buffers the introduction of polygamy. So here Joseph is saying that polygamy is not a sin, because God has told him that polygamy is his will. You could also justify all kinds of other things if you claim to be a prophet. You could justify ritual murder this way, if you’re saying that God is speaking to you and people must do what you say because it’s God’s will.

It completely takes your personal morality out of the equation.

What you think doesn’t matter, because all that matters is what God thinks, and what God thinks is what your leader thinks.

If your leader tells you to do something, you’re going to do it.

That can lead to spiritual abuse; you’re throwing away your own morality and taking on someone else’s.

Ritualized Submission

In the early church, Jackson County, Missouri was considered Zion. All God’s people were to be gathered to Zion, in particular the lost tribes of Israel that we read about in the Bible. Mormons believe that they are the tribe of Ephraim, that it’s their job to gather the lost tribes of Israel, particularly Ephraim.

Joseph Smith taught that Adam, the patriarch, gave his sons binding blessings based on their obedience. And that through the same authority of God, a church patriarch would give each member a blessing. These blessings still exist in the church today. They are called patriarchal blessings because a patriarch gives them.

Patriarchal blessings make it clear Mormons are a chosen people of a royal blood lineage. They often tell Mormons that they have been selected to learn the gospel and hear God’s call because they had likely been so righteous in premortal life. Members call themselves “saints.” And no sacrifice is too much. Certainly, back in the early church, no sacrifice was too much. In fact, any sacrifice they were expected to make meant an opportunity to prove worthiness and devotion to God and thus, to earn greater blessings in the celestial kingdom, which is the highest kingdom that can be attained.

In the first years after the church was organized, members lived what was termed “the law of consecration” through the united order of Enoch. In this system, members would deed their property to the church, which would then deed back to an individual what it deemed appropriate. At the end of every year, any surplus resources were given to the church for redistribution.

So the submission of members is baked into the religion from the very beginning. We have people giving their property to the church and letting the leaders redistribute it. We have people moving and uprooting to a place because the prophet has given the message that the garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri; that this was Zion, and that God wants them to settle there and build a community.”

And people were submissive. They believed their submission made them greater and would bring them closer to God, even earning them a reward.

This practice of deeding property to the church did eventually fall apart, and the church began working on a different system where the saints brought their surplus to the bishop, who then chose where those resources would go. The bishop’s storehouse and the bishop’s power to distribute resources still exists today, but resources accumulated are based on voluntary offerings. Tithing, however, is mandatory to enter the temple and receive salvation.

In the church I grew up in, you cannot receive exaltation into the highest glory of the Celestial Kingdom unless you go to the temple and have certain ordinances done. This is genius on the part of Joseph Smith. Because it isn’t just that he was asking for submission, he actually ritualized submission in the ceremonies in the temple.

So the first time I went through the temple, I was sitting next to my mother and we were making covenants. I didn’t know what I was getting into. One of the covenants we had to make was to harken unto our husbands as he harkened unto the voice of the Father, the Father being God.

Apparently, it used to be obey, but the church changed it from obey to harken, and then recently they have taken it out. But the point is, they put that in the ritual. There was a man standing between me and my Heavenly Father. (I could pray, of course). But it made more sense to communicate with God through my husband, who had more direct access to God.

God would tell him what to tell me.

That submission was in the ritual of the temple itself.

Also, in the temple itself, ritualized in the oaths that members make, is the Law of Consecration. Even though the United Order fell apart years and years ago, the temple ritualizes and canonizes this idea that submission is the only way to be saved. It makes blessings and penalties more concrete in the eyes of church members.

In the temple, people make an oath to consecrate their time, talents, and everything the Lord had blessed them with or which He will bless them with to the building up of the Kingdom of God on earth. Everything. Even if it’s never asked of them, they’re still promising everything.

In the early days of the church, this oath was accompanied by hand signs representing disembowelment and the slitting of one’s own throat as a penalty for revealing it. Today, signs have been softened albeit not completely replaced. The language of submission and obedience is second nature to most of the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and it does not throw up any red flags.

Those of you listening to this that aren’t part of that tradition are probably thinking this is nuts. But the rituals and oaths of submission in the temple don’t throw up any red flags if you were raised in the church.

The temple is particularly problematic because it operates on a model that is the exact opposite of informed consent.

A person going through the temple for the first time is prepared by being told to fast and pray and read their scriptures. There’s a class, but hardly anything that happens in the temple is covered in that class. I can tell you, because I took that class. They just say that if you’re prepared it will be a spiritual experience, but they don’t tell you very much about what happens in the temple.

But that puts a lot of pressure on you, because if you don’t like it when you do go through, then there’s something wrong with you. Which, again, is spiritual abuse.

So when I went through the temple, there was this touching ceremony, where you would go in wearing very little. And you would be in a room of curtains; this matron would stand in front of you and with oil she would actually touch… it was like a naked touching ceremony.

She would bless certain parts of your body. She would touch your body under this shield. And then she would  have you undress, so she could dress you in the sacred undergarments of the priesthood. It felt like being a baby with having someone clothe you, except you were an adult.

It was infantalizing.

I understand why that made people uncomfortable. I was not prepared for that.

So there was this naked touching ceremony, and then you went into this room where you were receiving your endowments, and they told you as you were sitting in the room, that you had to leave now at the beginning of the ceremony or you were forfeiting your right to leave later (which is the complete opposite of informed consent).

Basically, you’re here. You’ve agreed to make this covenant. Now you’re not allowed to back out. It’s binding.

So even though you don’t know what you’re consenting to. You have to either “leave now” or you have to stay through the entire ceremony and make promises to the church.

You can’t change your mind.

This is a form of spiritual abuse. It’s coercive. The church also does this, in a different way, to their children. But the parents raising kids don’t think it’s wrong or weird, because this is how they grew up.

In Mormonism, you’re baptized at the age of 8. Now, in a lot of other religions, children are baptized as babies. When you’re a baby, you don’t make a commitment, because you’re a baby. You’re not going to remember it. Probably, it’s not going to be traumatic for you.

There are other religions where the children have to be older to be baptized. They have to be 12, or they have to be 18. They have to be an age where they understand the doctrines and they know what they’re getting into, so their consent actually means something. I understand that as well.

In my church upbringing, and this is normal for this church, children are baptized at 8. Eight is an interesting age, because the one thing that an eight-year-old wants more than anything else is to please their parents. For me, when I was 8, my parents were god.

My parents were god.

If they told me that the earth was flat, I would have believed it. If they had told me the clouds were made of cotton candy, I would have believed them. I was 8 years old, and I would do anything I could to please them and make them happy, so they would love me and take care of me, because that’s what 8-year-olds do.

So here we take these 8-year-olds, and we tell them they have to make a lifetime commitment to the church. When you get baptized in Mormonism, it isn’t just a symbol of being clean now. It’s a commitment. You’re expected to stay faithful to that religion for the rest of your whole life.

But you don’t know anything that goes on in the temple. You don’t know anything about the messed-up stuff that’s gone on in Mormon history. You’ve just been taught the information that’s palatable to you. And you’re making this lifetime commitment, and if you don’t, your family’s going to be so disappointed in you, but if you do, they go on about how proud they are: They’re so proud of you for making the right decision!

This is spiritual abuse.

Ultimately, the church dictates so much of what their followers do. It’s not healthy. They actually tell people who have gone through the temple what underwear they are supposed to wear and when they are allowed to take it off. My husband never wanted to take his off, because he was worried it was a sin. We would have sex, and he would not take his underwear off. (For those wondering how that’s possible, there’s a convenience hole in men’s garments for urinating among other possible uses.)

As members we were told not to trust any information about church history that didn’t come from the church itself.

That’s a huge red flag.

If a person says, “Follow me. Don’t listen to anyone. Only me. Don’t listen to logic. Or arguments. Or history from anyone else. Only take my side of the story. My side of the story is the only one that’s right, and the only one that matters. All the other sides are from Satan,” that’s a red flag.

Because you’re only being fed one side.

It’s propaganda.

But if you ask a faithful member of this church about that, they won’t think there’s anything wrong with it. For most of them, it’s never occurred to them that there’s anything wrong with that, because the church paints people who don’t believe (those who’ve left) as anti-Mormons. They paint them as being driven by Satan and being very bitter and angry.

Using Family as Pawns

In the LDS church, and this is also in the temples, there’s this belief that families can live happily and in harmony in heaven after they die. Sounds really beautiful, and you’re certainly brought up to believe it’s beautiful, but there are some downsides.

So here’s a song I learned when I was a kid that a lot of Mormon children sing:

I have a fam’ly here on earth.
They are so good to me.
I want to share my life with them through all eternity.
Fam’lies can be together forever
Through Heav’nly Father’s plan.
I always want to be with my own family,
And the Lord has shown me how I can.
The Lord has shown me how I can.

Second verse is a little more sinister to teach to a child:

While I am in my early years,
I’ll prepare most carefully,
So I can marry in God’s temple for eternity.

They’re teaching children to behave according to the precepts of the religion, so they can get married in the temple. Why does this matter?

Well, first of all, you can’t even enter the temple unless you are a member of the church. And in order for your marriage to happen in the temple, both you and your spouse need to be devoted, tithe-paying, members of the church. You need to be following all their rules. And if you happen to marry someone whose family isn’t in the church, they can't come to your wedding.

They’re not allowed to come into the temple and see it.

So this is institutionalized shunning of people who are not in the same belief system.

When I was younger, they had a rule that you weren’t allowed to have a civil ceremony and then have a temple ceremony right after it. So they made it that if you got married civilly, you had to wait a whole year before you could get married in the temple, and temple marriage matters because it’s for forever. Whereas a civil marriage, that’s only until you die.

There was this story they would tell us about this couple that loved each other, and they were both members of the church, but they decided not to get married in the temple first because they wanted family members to be able to come see their wedding.

So they decided to get married in a civil ceremony for their family. And then they got into a terrible car accident afterwards and died.

They made the wrong choice, because obviously they’re not going to be married now. When they go to the other side, they’re not going to be together, and if they’d only gotten married in the temple and shunned their family, they would have that eternal marriage. It’s a scare tactic, and it’s using family as pawns to keep people marrying those who are in the church, to get them to bring their families into the church, and also to keep people from leaving.

You know what my mother said to me when I told her I didn’t believe in the church? She said, “You don’t wanna be together in the afterlife? You don’t wanna be with your family?” And so there’s this great motivation to make sure your children believe so that you can be with them. There’s this great motivation to make sure you’re marrying in the church, and that you’re propagating these beliefs. And this is all spiritually abusive, but if you ask someone in the church who believes this if it’s abusive, they don’t think it’s spiritual abuse.

It is. It very clearly is.

But they’ve grown up with it, so they think it’s normal.

On Reddit there was someone who was talking about how it was used against him as a man. When he started to doubt, or when he was really tired from working long shifts, his wife would say, “You have to come to church. You’re going to ruin our family. You’re going to make it so we can’t be together.”

So using family as pawns, and I don’t want to give the impression that it only happens in Mormonism. It doesn’t. It can happen in other religions too. I know for a fact there are other religions who do this. The Jehovah’s Witnesses shun family members who leave. They won’t talk to them at all. That’s spiritual abuse.

Fear Mongering

Mormons love their founding prophet.

After Joseph Smith was assassinated in 1844, an oath of vengeance was added into the temple ceremony, which stated:

You and each of you do covenant and promise that you will pray and never cease to pray to Almighty God to avenge the blood of the prophets upon this nation, and that you will teach the same to your children and to your children's children unto the third and fourth generation.

Even though the oath of vengeance was removed in the 1930s, Mormon parents continue to pass down stories of persecution to their children. And the temple remains a central part of the religion. So the very idea of leaving it is terrifying. Those questioning their beliefs are often seen as traitors, disloyal to the point of spitting on the legacy of their ancestors. And there’s a very real narrative taught in the church that once a person leaves, they are filled with darkness as Satan has complete power over them.

When I was questioning, I would get very upset when I read anything critical of the church, and I assumed it was Satan. I assumed the feelings I had, the anger at the information I was coming across, meant the information came from Satan and that it was anti-Mormon lies. I really believed that.

And then I learned about cognitive dissonance, which is a scientific term in psychology for when you learn about something that contradicts a deeply held belief and you still can’t accept it, so instead you get angry. That’s what was really happening to me.

It wasn’t Satan. I was just experiencing cognitive dissonance.

When I finally figured that out, I was able to do more research. I was able to really dig into the church history and understand things better. I had bought into the narrative that Satan was real and that he was literal, which is taught in the church—we learned that he’s real, that he’s literal, that he can take over your body.

Oh my goodness, I used to have a hard time sleeping at night as a teenager because I was afraid Satan was going to jump into my body, because I believed in this literal Satan.

It’s fear mongering.

As long as you buy into that, you’re susceptible to being manipulated. So, my husband also believed in a literal Satan back when we were married. When I told him that I was having doubts about the church, he told me I was being controlled by Satan. And he really believed it. He came right out and said there was no more light in my eyes, that Satan was controlling me.

Fear mongering. Spiritual abuse.

13 Emotional Abuse Tactics

Emotional abuse is the subject of today's podcast.

I had written a letter to my father for Father's Day, but I feel like in order for it to ring true to listeners, I would need to give a little more background about that relationship. I'm going to cover some of that today.

Our topic is 13 common emotionally abusive tactics that controlling people use. I'm going to list them, and then I'm going to talk about them individually.

1. Grooming
2. Withholding
3. Catastrophizing
4. Downplaying Accomplishments
5. Undermining
6. Labeling Or Misassessing
7. Passive-aggression
8. Generalizing
9. Guilt Trips
10. Isolating
11. Breadcrumbing (also known as intermittent reinforcement)
12. Gaslighting Or Rewriting History
13. Moving The Goalposts

Grooming

My father has spent a lot of time building a relationship with my oldest son.

My oldest son is autistic and high functioning. His special interests are trains and airplanes, automobiles and anything mechanical. When he was little, he used to stare at the ceiling fan. He could do that forever and be entertained, because he just loved gears and he loved things that would spin.

My son is fairly easy to bond with if you have an interest in those things, and if you talk about those things with him. Since my father wanted to have a relationship with my son, he talked a lot about trains and airplanes with him. My dad listened. Gifts were purchased. Time was spent together, all dedicated around my son’s interests and passions.

This all sounds like healthy territory, right?

Getting to know someone can be healthy if the person doing it is operating in good faith. If they're building rapport to have a reciprocal, healthy relationship where they really care about the other person's feelings, it’s good. But keep in mind, my father isn’t really a safe person.

As a mom, I should have been looking out for my son, and keeping him safe instead of watching as my father groomed the boy to be trusting and close.

But I didn’t.

Back then, I very badly wanted a relationship with my father. And I was unaware of just how unhealthy the man was. So I encouraged the relationship, thinking a grandchild should know his grandparents. I didn't think there was anything wrong with it. I didn’t think there was anything bad or unhealthy about it either. I was still growing and hadn’t realized how dysfunctional my upbringing was, I couldn't see the danger. But here's what ultimately happened in that relationship between my father and my son.

For years, all through Elementary and Middle School, my oldest son believed his grandfather cared for him on a deep level. They remained close until he was in High School, when my son was thrown in the middle of a conflict between my father and I.

When my dad retired, he invited us to this concert at Wolf Trap in the Washington DC area as a way to celebrate. Somehow my arrival at the concert turned into a point of contention. Because, while my parents had originally wanted me to arrive at a certain time--less than a week prior to the event, they changed their minds and decided they wanted me there an hour earlier.

I couldn't come an hour earlier.

So they became very angry, but didn't say they were angry. Instead they took it out on my oldest son when we all arrived at Wolf Trap. See, we went to meet my father first, who had the tickets. My son expected his grandfather to greet him like he always does--with warmth and with humor and with excitement. Instead my dad was very cold and distant, overly formal and ornery with my son. Dad took his anger with me out on his grandson, essentially.

Years of grooming followed by that kind of treatment--where affection has been given and then arbitrarily withdrawn, and where all warmth and good feeling is ripped away suddenly and the recipient doesn't know why, well... that's very destructive and it’s emotional abuse. It’s also a form of withholding, which brings us to number two.

Withholding

The thing about withholding is that it's dishonest.

If you're on the receiving end of withholding, you will feel extremely uneasy and like the ground is shaking beneath you, like you're not sure when you're going to be presented with an unpleasant surprise. Instinctively, you’ll know it's coming, but you won’t know when.

I'm going back to the situation at Wolf Trap, because affection wasn't the only thing withheld. There was also some purposeful withholding of information that was part of this weird and messed up experience. My parents wanted me to come to this concert to celebrate my dad's retirement, and I was very excited to go initially.

I set aside the time and invited my boyfriend and his children. The fact I couldn't move my arrival time to an hour earlier was because my boyfriend’s children were young adults who needed to take off work and carve out time so they could attend. I was arriving with them. As such, it was impractical and also impossible for me to push that time back.

It was also the first time I would bring my boyfriend and his children to a function where they could meet my parents and family. 

I will say, at this point, it was the last time, because of how it went down.

Earlier in the week, my mother sent this text saying she wanted me to arrive at 6:30 instead of 7:30. The message I received was that I needed to come at the new proposed time because it was important to her. But she didn't tell me why everything had been pushed an hour earlier, or why this new time was suddenly so vital. I didn't feel like I could ask, either.

She was withholding something.

I was suspicious, but explaining that wasn’t going to go over well. So I stuck to my clear, simple boundary and stated when I could arrive. I thought she accepted that. Until I got this phone call from my father a few days later. It was a frantic call. He left a voicemail message that sounded very tense and on edge. “It's so important that you come early. I'm really worried about you.”

Why was he worried about me? Why was it suddenly so important I arrive at 6:30 when two weeks ago our plans were fine? Now, all of a sudden, I had to arrive an hour early or he was worried something terrible was going to happen?

I knew they were withholding something, but I couldn't say, “Hey, Mom and Dad, what are you not telling me? What's going on here?” They would deny they were holding anything back. And I would be painted as over-sensitive and irrational.

I know how the pattern works.

So instead I showed up with my children, my boyfriend, and his children at the time we all agreed upon originally. And we got this very cold, calculated, distant welcome from my father. I took the tickets and we went back to meet the rest of my family. Low and behold, with my other brothers and sister who live locally, was my younger brother and his wife who live in the West. They had flown out to attend the big event, which was very sweet.

However, no one told me he was going to be there.

I instantly knew this was the information my parents had been withholding.

They chose not to share it with me, likely because they thought my brother’s presence would make me determined not to arrive early as they requested. They’re not wrong that I don’t have a great relationship with this particular brother. But that’s more reason that I should’ve been honestly communicated with, so that I could prepare. 

Instead they intentionally kept me in the dark.

At the end of the day, all of this was irrelevant, because I couldn’t come when they wanted me to regardless. But that doesn't make it okay for them to just NOT mention to me that my younger brother was going to be in attendance at the event… as if this somehow is going to trick me into spending a bunch of extra time with him.

The withholding of vital information is dishonest. It makes you feel like the other shoe is going to drop and you just never know when. If this is done as a matter of course, it is emotional abuse. And to be fair, they didn’t just withhold vital Information about who I would be spending time with in an effort to manipulate the situation, they made a really big huge deal about how they wanted me to come early because they were worried about traffic and parking.

They made up a fake reason!

Anyone who knows anything about Wolf Trap is aware there is plenty of parking when you go in at the beginning of a concert. The problem is leaving: there's one exit. So people come, they park, they sit for this big concert, and then when it's time to leave there's a bottleneck and it takes forever.

I knew this.

My father knows this.

He has worked that venue for years, and yet he’s calling me all worried about parking before the event, telling me I won’t be able to find a place to park, that I’ll be late and end up locked out, or that I’ll hold everyone up and inconvenience/ruin everyone’s evening?

They knew they were full of crap, and I knew they were full of crap! But I couldn't say, “Mom, Dad, you're full of crap. You're being dishonest and withholding information and catastrophizing to get your way.” 

 That would have been rude.

Catastrophizing

When manipulators catastrophize, they send the message that if you don’t do exactly what they want, something terrible is going to happen.

When I got the job that I have now, working in a school where I teach a subject that excites me, I had to drive a long way initially. The commute was over an hour each way, and when I told my parents, I wanted them to be excited and say congratulations. They knew I had wanted a job like this for years, and it was a big deal that I got it.

Do you know what response I got from my mother?

“Have you thought about your children and how it will affect them for you to work so far away?”

Catastrophizing.

"Have you thought about what will happen if they get sick and you can’t pick them up?" 

"Have you thought about what will happen if you get in an accident on the way with that big long commute?" 

"Have you thought about whether you can be a good mom with this job?"

She didn't go quite that far, but it was all implied. You get my drift. This is catastrophizing. The manipulative person tries to make you believe that if you don't make decisions they approve of, all these bad things are going to happen to you. It's emotional abuse.

Downplaying Accomplishments

After I left my husband, I went back to school. I had to get babysitters to watch my children. I had to study, and worked really hard to get this degree. it was not the easiest thing in the world. As graduation approached, I shared news of the achievement with my parents. This is how the conversation went.

Dad: Wow, Angela you're really educated.

Mom: Oh, I wouldn't say that!

Dad: What do you mean, you wouldn't say that?

Mom: Well, she's definitely not the most educated one in the family. I mean, look at her older brother. He has a Ph.D. I would say he's more educated. Oh, and her younger brother out West, he's a lawyer, and graduated with a law degree from a much more prestigious college. I would say he's more educated too.

They had this conversation right in front of me. 

My accomplishment was no small thing: I had completed this degree as a single mom with four kids, so I could get back into the workforce. For me, it was a big deal, but what did my mother do? She went out of her way to make sure I wasn't given too much credit. She downplayed that accomplishment to the extreme. It’s an emotional abuse tactic my ex-husband also used.

When my first poetry book was published, it was by a small press that paid in copies. But it was still a big deal. I mean, how many times do you get a press to pick up your poetry, right? My poetry book was going to press, and I was really happy and excited.

So I'm talking to him about this and what does he say? “Of course you're only good at stuff people don’t get paid for. You’re a musician. You write poetry. Money matters, and you don't bring in any. You're getting paid in copies, Angela!” 

Again, downplaying my accomplishments. It was no different than what I experienced with my parents.

When I finally did get my first job and I was entering the workforce as a full-time teacher, I hoped maybe the downplaying was over. During a birthday celebration, I was sitting around a table with my extended family. We were supposed to be celebrating Dad's birthday and my own. But my dad spent half an hour telling me that going into education wasn't a big deal, that he had brothers and sisters in education; they have lots of educators in the family, and it's certainly not a pioneering move; it’s certainly nothing unique, because it’s just what people in our family do.

More discounting of my accomplishments. Nothing had changed.

Undermining

Undermining is a form of emotional abuse, because it makes you feel like you can't accomplish anything.

Back when I was married to my ex-husband, I had a freelance musical career. It was part-time but it gave me some feeling of worth and some feeling of accomplishment. I played with lots of orchestras around the DC metropolitan area, and I did some string quartet and trio work. I viewed it as part of my identity.

After my oldest son was born, my husband would talk about how he was supporting me in my freelancing, but his version of support meant he would watch our son while complaining about having to babysit. This is absurd. It isn’t babysitting if you’re taking care of your own child, but that didn’t keep him from thinking it was.

One night, I went out and had a great rehearsal. When I came back and walked through the front door, it had been a long night and a long drive. So I went into the half bathroom next to the entrance and did my business. 

I flushed.

The water immediately began to overflow all over the floor. It leaked down into the basement, creating this mighty flood that had to be cleaned up, and my husband comes running downstairs, “What are you doing?”

“I had to use the bathroom.”

“It's clogged!”

“How would I know that?”

“Our son flushed something down there, and I can't get it unclogged. I already did this earlier tonight. I already had to clean up a big mess in the basement with paper towels. You're gonna have to clean this up now, cause you should've known better. If you hadn't gone to work and left me with him, this never would have happened in the first place.”

Cue the guilt.

I felt so guilty about what had happened while I was gone working that I took full responsibility. Because if I have been there, that wouldn't have happened, right?

I even left church early the next day and bought one of those snaky things for the toilet. I tried to clean out whatever was stuck in there and failed. I remember leaning over the toilet trying to snake out whatever was clogging it up, and then crying because I couldn't get it out.

It was my fault. I had caused this horrible tragedy of the toilet being clogged by not being there to stop it. And my husband at the time totally encouraged that thinking. He said, “Yes, you should fix this. It’s your problem. You weren't there and this is what happens when you go back to work after you've had a child. This is what happens.”

After that incident, I felt so guilty, I actually stopped taking musical gigs. I didn't go out and play my viola anymore in orchestras or string quartet, because I didn't want something like that to happen again.

This is a pretty clear example of undermining. He was undermining any ambitions I had that would take me outside the home. This leads us right into the next emotional abuse tactic.

Labeling Or Misassessing

I'm going to riff off of this story. There was a lot of labeling and misassessing that went along with the undermining here. He told me that I was overly ambitious. He labeled me as emotional. I mean, how else would you label someone who leaves church early so they can try and unclog a toilet?

He labeled me as unreasonable, because how could I possibly think that it was reasonable to go out and work at night and not have bad things happen? He would throw these little labels into our casual conversations. Random. Off the cuff, “Angela, you’re irrational… You’re emotional… overly ambitious... You’re unreasonable.” And when you constantly bombard someone with labels, they start to believe it about themselves.

I was lucky that he never called me crazy or psycho.

But I had some friends whose husbands call them crazy on a regular basis. Some have come to believe that about themselves.

Passive-aggression

I grew up with a mother who was the queen of passive-aggressive behavior. You know someone is passive-aggressive when they tell you that they never get angry. “I don't get angry,” they'll say while behaving in an obviously angry way.

If you pointed this out, they'll say, “Oh no, that's not anger, that's disappointment. I'm not angry.” But the truth is, they are furious and don't want to admit it, even to themselves. These are the most passive-aggressive people you will ever meet.

I went back to school twice. The second time was after the divorce. The first time was while I was still married and had one child. When I went back to school the first time, my mother would occasionally, once a week or so, watch my oldest son during classes.

Well, one day, she was really super angry with me. But unfortunately, I didn't know this until I arrived at her house. See, I had this relationship with my mother back then that I thought was relatively okay. We hung out weekly and she helped me with childcare as I attended school. But on this particular day she was angry and wanted to punish me. So despite our agreement that she would watch her grandson, I was getting ready to leave for school when my mother was like, “You do not appreciate me. And I will not be watching your son.”

This put me in a huge mess, of course. It was very stressful and a big problem, because I had all these college level classes. And I couldn’t bring a toddler with me to these classes. I had no backup person close by. I was screwed. 

My mother, though. She had no remorse. “I'm not going to watch your son today.”

“I can tell you’re angry.”

“I'm not angry.”

I think if you're refusing to watch your grandson because you want to punish your daughter for something that you perceive as bad, and you’re doing it in the most last minute way possible so as to purposely screw her over, then yes… you are angry.

This is one example of passive-aggressive behavior.

My husband used to say biting things that were passive aggressive when he was angry. He would say, “Angela, I love you. I just don't like you.” So essentially he loved me, but against his will? That hurt.

It was really passive-aggressive.

He would also go out with his sister to lunch, and the two of them would spend the whole time bad-mouthing me. The only reason I knew is because he would be perfectly happy with me before the lunch with his sister, then he’d come back from it and all of a sudden, he had all these complaints he didn't have before. All of a sudden the food I cooked wasn't good enough. 

It was fine before.

All of a sudden I wasn't enough of a disciplinarian with the children.

I was fine before.

It became obvious they were getting together so they could gossip and smear campaign. That's passive aggressive, and it's emotionally abusive.

Generalizing

“You always do this…”

That's what my husband used to say. “Angela, you always do this.” It’s a pretty vague statement, but he made it meaningful with context and voice inflection. In his case, the thing that made it especially hurtful was that he would use the phrase whenever I revealed myself to be a human being.

Each time I got pregnant, I would get very very sick in the first trimester. I remember having trouble fixing dinner, because there was raw meat involved. He always had to have meat in every dinner that I cooked him. It was a requirement. So I would try and cook dinner with this raw meat, but it was really difficult.

I was so sick that the smell of the meat would make me vomit. So I’d be in the kitchen trying to make him dinner while throwing up night after night. Sometimes I didn't do a good job of getting dinner on the table like he wanted me to. It would be later than expected, or not as much food as he wanted. Maybe less meat. “I can hardly cook when I feel like this,” I told him.

His response was the same each time, “Angela, you always do this.”

It was his generalization.

After I had the baby, it was only the first day back from the hospital when I had to deal with the generalization. We lived in a townhouse, so even though they tell you not to climb stairs after you leave the hospital that's really hard to do when you live in a three-story townhouse.

I tried to stay on one level as much as I could, but at the end of the day I had to climb a few stairs. There was no way to avoid it, because I was still expected to do laundry. I was still expected to take care of the baby. I was still expected to put meals on the table. My duties had not changed just because I was a new mother. They had only increased.

So on the first night back after having this child I turned off the lights to go to sleep. We were lying in the bed together, but I got up because I felt something going on with my body. Painfully, I walked to the bathroom. Slowly, because I was sore.

I went into the bathroom to check things out, and a blood clot came out of me the size of a fist. Huge. Terrifying. I went back into the room, and I was like, “Honey, I just passed a huge blood clot. Could you take me to the doctor?” And do you know what he said rather than show concern? Do you know what he uttered to keep from getting out of bed and driving me? 

“Angela, you always do this.”

His generalizations made me feel like crap.

Guilt Trips

My parents are the king and queen of guilt trips. They love guilt so much!

When I first got married, they had wanted me to come over to their house every week with my new husband for this thing called Family Home Evening where you play games. You go around the room and say nice things about each other, although that’s not often how it went down. Regardless, it was supposed to be harmonious. There would be a spiritual thought and lesson.

It was family time.

When my wedding was over, I went on a honeymoon with my new husband, and the moment we returned, my mother wanted us to come over to her house every Monday night for Family Home Evening. But my husband refused. He explained that we were our own family now. He put his foot down and said we were not going to attend. No biggy. 

My mother could've been a good sport. She could have extended some understanding and made alternative plans. Instead she said, “I see you don't believe in keeping your commitments anymore, that you don't believe in keeping your promises. Family isn't important to you now.”

What she did (alongside giving me the silent treatment for a solid week) was use a guilt trip. She used my father to pour on the shame. It would have been just as easy for her to be graceful, but she couldn't be understanding. Instead she put me in this situation where I was in a tug-of-war between her and my new husband. Her message was all, “You don't think family is important anymore, and if you cared about us, you would make him come. You would make him do this.”

Listeners, I dare you to make an emotionally and verbally abusive man come to a family gathering against his will. It ain’t happening. If people like this don't want to do something, it is not going to be a thing. He was no better than my mother with the guilt trips, they were just a different kind.

This went on all through my marriage. When I failed to bring my husband to a family activity, my mom would lay on the guilt, “Does your husband not like us anymore? Do you not like us anymore? This really hurts our feelings. We're people too. We have feelings too.”

I'm not arguing that my parents don't have feelings. Absolutely they have feelings and they have a right to those feelings, but guess what? They're adults. As adults, they can handle their own feelings, and they should not be using them to manipulate other people. 

That's bullshit.

It's also emotionally abusive.

Isolating

This is where the tug-of-war between my mother and my husband got really ugly.

In the beginning my husband was willing to do more with my family, but as time went on, he was willing to do less and less. If I wanted to see them, I would have to load my baby into the car and drive over there. And then, as I continually had more children, I would have to load a toddler and infant into my car and bring them over there myself, or I would have to load a toddler and an infant and a three-year-old into the car and bring them over.

It’s a lot of work to do all of that parenting and drive that far with little kids, then visit your parents and they expect you to also give them 100% of your attention. And your husband doesn't help, because he doesn’t even want you going to see your family. 

To make matters worse, you're only getting criticism.

Your mother criticizes you because your husband's not coming over. And your husband criticizes you because you're seeing your parents and attending family gatherings he doesn’t appreciate. He wants you to himself. Or at the very least, to be left alone while you’re doing all the work toting children around. He wants to stay home all the time. If it were up to him, you would also stay home all day. He doesn't want you to have any non-church friends. He doesn't want you to spend time with your family. He hates your mother with a passion. 

The isolation was gradual. It didn't start out as such an extreme thing, but the longer I was married to this man the more he wanted to limit my time outside the home. He would set a curfew for me. If I couldn't be home by that curfew, he would expect a phone call at 10 pm on the dot. 

If I couldn't make a phone call, I would get reprimanded, and that happened several times. Needless to say, I was not treated like an adult. His line was always, “How do I know you're not dead by the side of the road unless you call me at exactly 10 p.m. and tell me you're going to be late.”

It was fine when I had a phone.

I didn't always have a phone, and sometimes I would be stuck in traffic in the middle of a freeway with no phone anywhere nearby. Then I would get home and immediately he would reprimand me. That was a big part of him isolating me.

It got to the point where I was only encouraged to hang out with friends he approved of. So friends from the church of my same sex, friends that he knew and that he liked. I had one friend that he really didn't like, and that friendship lasted about two years. At the end of that two years my husband (now ex) gave me an ultimatum, “ It’s her or me.”

He didn't want me to have any resources outside the home. 

On some level, I think he knew that isolating me would keep me stuck longer. It’s harder to leave if you don’t have outside resources. This isolation is a form of emotional abuse.

Breadcrumbing

Breadcrumbing (also called intermittent reinforcement) is akin to subsisting off crumbs that fall off a table. This person you’re in a relationship with has a feast up there in front of them, but only gives you little crumbs of affection here and there.

It's random.

You never know when you're going to get a crumb.

Because it's so random and you never know when you're going to get that affection or that need met, you work really hard for it. You remember this person is capable of giving you the attention you need, or the love you need, or the help you need, but you never know when they're going to deliver. So you keep working for it.

When I was first dating my ex-husband, he used to make these amazing meals.. He made curry, a delicious dish with rice and potatoes and beef and carrots. And he had this delicious melty curry sauce that he put over it. He cooked for my entire family, and then he cleaned up after himself. I mean, he really cleaned. He did all the dishes, wiped the counters and the oven down spotless. And I thought this was the man that I was marrying.

Except after I married him, he didn't help with meals anymore. Occasionally, at the beginning, he would make curry, or he would make a nice meal, but the longer we were married, the less and less frequent those contributions became, until I felt grateful if he would wash one pan after dinner. “Wow,” I’d say. “He's washing a pan.”

I would feel grateful if he would fold the towels when we were putting the laundry away. “Wow, he's helping by folding laundry.” After a decade or so, I would feel grateful if he ordered pizza for my birthday, because that was a breadcrumb that meant he was trying.

I would love to say the breadcrumbing ended with my ex-husband, but after the divorce, my parents were breadcrumbing me like crazy.

I was craving support. I really needed their support. I needed financial support for my lawyer's fees. I needed help with the kids, because I had gone back to school, but they refused to watch the children at this point. They refused to help me in any way financially. They did not offer shelter. They did not offer anything substantive that would have actually provided relief. They didn't even give me any emotional support. Just a lot of judgment.

They thought it was a mistake that I was getting divorced and had so much unending sympathy for my ex-husband, they were unable to say anything kind to me. But they did take me out every other week with the children to get food at IHOP or Friendly's or some other local restaurant.

For that I was grateful.

I was so grateful for those breadcrumbs that I was okay breaking bread with my parents regularly even with them ripping on me throughout the meal. It happened at least 50% of the time. It was a big gossip session where they just ripped on me and felt sorry for my ex to the point that even my kids noticed my parents were mean.

But it was something, right? The closest thing to support they were ever going to provide.

Gaslighting Or Rewriting History

This happened at my prior workplace a lot.

I had this mentor who would give me instructions on how to do things like fill out paperwork. And I would fill out the paperwork exactly like she said. I would follow the rules exactly like she said.

Then, a few months later, she would come to me and tell me I had done something wrong with this paperwork. I would remind her of what she told me to begin with, outlining the direct instructions she gave me. I would point out how the paperwork exactly matched her directions. “You told me to do it this way.” And do you know what she would come back with?

“I never said that.”

Well, how do you argue with that? I basically did things the way I did them because she told me to do them that way, and she comes back a few months later and says, “I never said that.”

This is gaslighting.

Here’s another example: There was one day at my prior workplace, when I was gone but had left my teaching supplies out for the sub to use. When I came back the next day, my dry erase markers were dried up but the caps were all on. So you know that someone did that out of spite. You know that someone went through and took all the caps off of the dry erase markers on purpose so they would dry out, and then put all the caps back on on purpose. But I couldn’t say anything, because I knew if I said something, my coworkers would say, “Nobody touched your dry erase markers. You're just crazy.” 

That’s gaslighting.

Another example of gaslighting occurred when I was trying to leave that job and was explaining to one of the people who have driven me out exactly what it felt like to be in my shoes. When I told her that I was receiving one set of instructions from her and a completely opposite set of directions from my mentor, explaining that this put me in a place where nothing I did was acceptable or right. She said, “I'm so sorry for trying to help you.”

Gaslighting. That is a perfect example of gaslighting.

My mother also gaslights. She is an expert at rewriting history. She will take what actually, truthfully happened and twist it into a lie after the fact. She writes public blog posts where all she does is recount history, twisting things to make herself look good and make you look bad.

When I first had trouble maintaining a relationship with my mother and my husband at the same time, I got to this point in the tug-of-war where I couldn't do it anymore. And I cut things off with her. It was a month or so before Christmas, and my parents were wanting to come by and interact, talk, and drop off presents and stuff.

That would’ve been fine if we were all on good terms and if I hadn't just asked them to give me space, but that wasn’t reality. Instead of completely backing off, my dad pressured me and pressured me, and pressured me to let him come over and just drop off gifts. “No chit chat, no visiting, I promise,” he said. “Just let me drop them off. I'll put them on the porch and leave.” I felt so bad for how everything had gone down and for the fact they'd gotten these gifts that I caved. 

I was like, “Yeah, okay, you can do that.” 

So my dad comes over and he drops off these gifts on the front porch. Then, several years later, after my parents and I are on speaking terms again, my mother writes a blog post where she details how her husband was brutally rejected by her daughter the day he drove to her house and put the gifts on the porch, then dejectedly turned around and walked back down to his car.

It was an indictment.

I didn't even want them to come and drop off gifts in the first place! I caved and she rewrote the narrative, leaving out over half the story to make it look like she was a victim. And she put it on her public blog… with my picture.

Moving The Goalposts

This happens all the time with my parents and it's one reason why I can't interact with them anymore. I don't have the ability to deal with the goalposts constantly moving. I know no matter what I do, it's never going to be good enough and they're always going to criticize it.

When I was pregnant and tired, I didn't necessarily want to go over to my mother's every week. Occasionally, I would tell her this by saying, “I don't feel good right now. I’m tired and morning sick. Not sure coming over is a good idea.”

And Mom would say, “Come over. Just come over. You should be with your family. You can take a nap. We can watch the kids. We can take care of you.” I took her at face value. So I would drive over there, sick and pregnant with a toddler. Or, when I got a little bit older and was still having babies, sick and pregnant with two or three little kids.

Of course I was tired.

I would maybe fall asleep on the couch, or I would let my dad play with the kids. They would go downstairs and play in the play area that had been designed with the grand kids in mind, because my mother had said, “Come over. Just come.”

Well, several years later, after my kids were a little bit older, my mom wrote a blog post about how I would only come to their house so I could fall asleep and they could babysit. It was really mean, and it made me feel terrible.

That’s one example of moving the goalposts.

I could go on for a while about the goal posts that have been moved by my parents over the years, but I think if I do, I'll just sound bitter and start feeling depressed. I don't want to do that. I want this podcast to be helpful to those who are experiencing these particular emotional abuse tactics.

Just know that you are good enough, and if you're in a relationship, any relationship--whether it be a friendship or workplace, a significant other or with your parents--where these kinds of tactics are used regularly to make you feel less than, that it's not good for you.

You have every right to put some boundaries into place

10 Verbal Abuse Tactics

Today's topic is verbal abuse.

I’m going to cover these 10 verbal abuse tactics.

1. Countering
2. Minimizing
3. Excessive Criticism
4. Mocking
5. Censoring
6. Blaming
7. Name Calling
8. Ordering Around
9. Threatening
10. Playing the Martyr

If you look up a list of verbal abuse tactics online or in a widely respected book like The Verbally Abusive Relationship by Patricia Evans, you’ll likely run across “withholding” as a verbal abuse tactic. Based on my personal experience, I would place it more under the umbrella of emotional abuse, but there's a lot of overlap between verbal and emotional abuse.

Still... withholding is a big deal. It is such a big deal, I plan to cover it at a later time, just like I covered the silent treatment two weeks ago more in depth.

With everything going on in the world right now, there's a lot of talk about physical violence. That said, what I talk about in this podcast is primarily verbal and emotional violence. A few weeks ago, I started watching this new show, which isn't really new so much as it’s new to me. It's called: Married at First Sight. I started at season 9.

In the beginning, I thought it was pretty cool that they had these experts matching people up, but by the end of the season I felt differently. It was clear the experts had failed a number of these couples by putting them in bad situations. It was pretty obvious that the Matt and Amber pairing was bad in every way, and I've yet to meet anyone who thinks that was a good idea, or that it turned out well.

But the pairing between Beth and Jamie is one I will be referencing today, as it's a textbook example of what many verbally abusive relationships look like.

1. Countering

Countering happens when one person in a couple brings up a legitimate issue, and the other person counters with something else to avoid dealing with that issue.

This happened a lot between Beth and Jamie. One example occurred after the TV show put together a photo album of the wedding as an anniversary gift for the couple. They were looking at this photo album, and Beth remarked what a beautiful bride she was.

She gushed about her vibrant hair color and about how beautiful the pictures were, how beautiful she was--a natural reaction for her. After all, what bride doesn't want to look beautiful on her wedding day? Instead of understanding this, Jamie decided his wife’s reactions were materialistic and self-absorbed. He didn't voice this right away, however. 

Rather, he became sullen and withdrawn the rest of the evening until he blew up at her later that night.

The show showed footage of their argument in a dark apartment. Jamie was calling her materialistic. He then called her another name that was bleeped out, and I don't remember if he stormed out at that point, but he may have. 

There was no reason for Jamie to be so unreasonably critical and for him to sour the mood as he did. But each time Beth said, “Why can't I just react to the pictures. Why can't you just be happy and say ‘yeah, it's a beautiful picture.’” He countered by labeling her materialistic and by picking a fight.

With Jamie and Beth this was only the tip of the iceberg.  

2. Minimizing

I'm going to talk about my own father here. He grew up in a family where the children were close in age. There were nine of them and my dad was the oldest. Some of his younger siblings, when they were in elementary school, didn't have enough supervision. 

There was some experimentation between a small group of them--sexual experimentation that left a mark on one of his younger sisters in a very negative way, to the point she had to see a therapist after she was married and had grown. 

She had this very real trauma to deal with, and her therapist told her she didn't have to bring this up with her family, but it was up to her. My aunt thought her family was loving and would be understanding, that the family would listen. So she wrote them letters. She called the siblings that she had this experience with to explain the impact it had on her, but their response was to tell her she had to get over it and it wasn't a big deal. They told her she was the one with the problem. That Satan had a hold of her, and that she must forgive and move on.

After this, the siblings didn’t talk to her for a long time.

So, in short, when my aunt had very legitimate pain and trauma to work through, her siblings were verbally abusive. They minimized her pain.

3. Excessive Criticism 

I will go back to Jamie and Beth for this example. It was very painful to watch this particular couple on Married at First Sight, because they started out in what looked like a pretty normal relationship. I mean, there were some highs and lows. They were both pretty passionate and pretty loud, but each of them seemed to respect each other in the beginning.

Then their families came for a visit, and immediately afterwards Jamie's attitude seemed to flip like a switch. All the things Beth did that didn't bother him at first all of a sudden bothered him like crazy. Every little thing was used as a criticism to tear her down. She had a job working for her father. From my perspective, the important thing is that she had a job and was self supporting. But to Jamie, it became suddenly bad that Beth was working for her dad.

He turned it against her.

It was their first fight that I’d classify as legitimately bad. The families had left, and they were sitting on the couch as he accused Beth of working for her father because she would be unable to get a job from anyone else. It didn’t matter what Beth said. Jamie wouldn't drop the criticism or listen to any of her arguments. He just kept verbally attacking her, until it looked like he was tearing her down solely for the purpose of tearing her down.

From the moment of that fight onward, Jamie changed dramatically towards Beth. All of their interactions, unless they were lovey-dovey (because he was/is a Jekyll-Hyde), would turn ugly with excessive criticism. He was Mean. He was Nice. He was Hot. He was cold.

It was exhausting.

Textbook verbal abuse.

I was expecting the experts to call him out. I kept waiting for it. But they never did! Instead they normalized the toxic dynamic by calling it a roller coaster relationship. They made it seem like some couples are like this and it’s no big deal.

Yeah, sure, lots of couples tear each other down, but that’s because those couples are in verbally abusive relationships.

It’s not healthy.

It’s extremely damaging to the person getting verbally criticized every time they turn around. And the fact these experts let so much of Jamie’s behavior slide, and that they never called him out on the verbal abuse was really upsetting and problematic.

4. Mocking

As a child and teenager, I was forgetful. I would drive one of the family cars into school, park in the lot, and then forget to turn the lights off. After a long day of school and studying, I'd walk to the car and stick my keys in the ignition, but the engine wouldn’t start. The car would start because I had left the lights on all day long.

I’d then run back into school, find a payphone, and call my parents. My dad would pick up, and because I was scared and distraught I’d cry, “Dad, the car won't start. The car won’t start!”

He always told me to find someone that could give me a jump right before hanging up. And I would, distraught, go from person to person asking if anyone had jumper cables and could help me jump start the car.

I was lucky.

Somebody always stepped up to help me, because for the most part, people are decent. But what always happened every time this story played out was that I would come home feeling relieved because the crisis was over. Then we would all sit around at dinner, and my dad, in front of everyone, would start fake crying: “Dad, the car won’t start. The car won’t start!”

“Stop that,” I’d say. “It’s embarrassing.”

“That’s exactly what you look like,” he retorted. “Pathetic. Embarrassing.”

This is a really clear and obvious example of mocking as verbal abuse. But often, someone using mockery to abuse you will say something biting or condescending, or something more subtle. 

If you call the person out, they’ll be like, “I was joking. Can't you take a joke? Grow a sense of humor why don’t you?”

It may not be as obvious, but it’s still verbal abuse.

5. Censoring

This was a favorite of my now ex-husband. He set rules of what I wasn't allowed to talk about. For instance, he would say, “Angela, I don't like it when you talk about politics.”

He would sit next to me in church. I would raise my hand in Sunday school to say something, and he would turn all red like he was embarrassed.

I would speak my comment, and he would be like, “I wish you wouldn't do that. I wish you wouldn't raise your hand. I wish you wouldn't share your opinion in church, cause that's really embarrassing for me, Angela.”

This was difficult, because I felt I wasn't allowed to have a voice or an opinion or thought about anything. Particularly, not anything that wasn’t in agreement with his own thoughts and opinions. What makes this verbal abuse is that one person is seizing power over someone else’s ability to speak. It is wrong. 

I felt demoralized and diminished by this.

6. Blaming

Everything was my fault in that marriage.

My husband, now ex, lost his security clearance at one point and for some reason that was my fault. Beats me how that could possibly be my fault. Nobody interviewed me about his clearance. I didn't malign his character or do anything to reflect poorly on him. There was literally no way I could have been to blame for the fact he lost his clearance.

But he still found a way to blame me.

Oh that’s right. I asked him to see a therapist at one point in our marriage. He went to a few sessions and then stopped. Somehow he twisted this around to claim if I hadn’t made him go to therapy, he’d still have a clearance. When I found out the real reasons things went poorly for him, this was an obvious lie. But since it made him feel better while making me feel inferior and unworthy, it gave him a sense of being in control. Of being on top.

Blaming is one way verbally abusive partners keep you feeling bad about yourself.

7. Name Calling

For this one, I’m going back to Jamie and Beth’s relationship on Married at First Sight. It was a favorite tactic of Jamie’s. He called her materialist, dramatic, a princess, spoiled, a bitch.

It was full blown character assassination.

At one point he even called her the c-word. Hurtful as that was, I’m not sure the power of that one word is anymore destructive than a bunch of less severe ones piled one on top of the other. The cumulative effect is harmful. My now ex-husband used to call me “woman.” Like, “Woman, make me a sandwich.” Although, he didn’t use that phrase specifically.

The name calling on season 9 of this show was so damaging and effective for Jamie, he used it as a way to get Beth to put out sexually. Anyone who’s had a UTI knows they can be extremely painful. And on the show, Beth developed a UTI precisely because Jamie had such a high sex drive and wouldn’t give her any space in this department.

But even after Beth developed the UTI, Jamie still wanted to have constant sex with her. To get his way he would pester her, meanwhile calling her a tease. It didn’t matter to him that Beth was in pain and was wanting time to heal. Her being in pain didn’t slow him down.

There is so much wrong with this. It’s beyond inconsiderate. It shows a callous disregard for your partner’s needs and feelings. It shows Jamie had to be dominant in the relationship. The name calling was abusive. The sexual demands were textbook coercion. And I thought for sure when the experts came over, he would have all of these things pointed out to him.

But Jamie would be really sweet to the experts when they came over. He would act extremely nice and reasonable where Beth would be prickly around them, acting hurt. She wasn’t always kind to the experts, which can be explained by her personality being basically the same regardless of who she was speaking with. If she was upset. She would be prickly toward everyone, experts included. Jamie was the one who could turn the charm on and off at will.

I found him to be very manipulative.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of focus on improving Beth and not a single expert telling Jamie to stop verbally beating his wife into the ground. They didn’t seem to notice, or maybe they just didn't care.

8. Ordering Around

When we order someone around we make demands. “No” is not an option. You can tell when a relationship isn’t healthy if you politely say the word no and the person flips out on you, or starts screaming, or they fly into a rage. There’s also guilt trips. 

Anything to send you the message that “no” is an unacceptable word. You should probably get out of any relationship you're in where this happens. When your partner can't accept hearing the word no, it is the biggest red flag there is. I'm not going to give an example because this one’s pretty self-evident.

9. Threatening

Let me tell you about the Mormon Bishop who threatened me.

He wasn't a bad guy.

I mean, most of my conversations with this bishop were positive, and I don't think he intended to be hurtful, but it doesn't change that what he did was verbal abuse.

When I was losing my faith in Mormonism, I told my husband. I also asked him not to tell the bishop. Of course, my husband refused to keep the secret and said the bishop needed to know anyway. So he went into the bishop’s office and straight out revealed his wife was losing her faith. He also cried.

The bishop felt really sorry for him.

So naturally when the bishop called me into his office next, the cards were stacked against me. In case you haven't gathered, there were a lot of issues with that marriage aside from the religious elements. It was not a healthy relationship. There were problems with him having to wear the pants to the point that he was willing to demean me in order to be dominant; but all my bishop saw was this full grown man crying and broken, all because his wife didn't believe in what he perceived as the one true church.

So I walk into the office of this bishop and sit down. 

Since the bishop was feeling sorry for my ex, he was not willing to hear me. I told him the marriage wasn't healthy and asked if there was someone he could refer us to. “Some counseling services?” I asked. “Someone that could help us get our marriage to a better place?”

He shook his head. Then promised me that if I would just read the Book of Mormon and start believing in the church again, all of the problems in my marriage would be solved, they would all just go away, because my doubt was where all of the problems came from.

He said we didn't need to see an expert or therapist. We didn't need to go to couples counseling. “Read your scriptures and believe. Pray.” And this is where the threat came in. Instead of dropping things there, he said that if I didn't get my testimony back--of the church, of Joseph Smith, and of the modern Apostles--that my children would grow up to resent me.

He had no right.

Granted, I'm sure he believed what he said, because that's what they teach you in the church. But that doesn’t make what he said okay. He can think what he wants, of course, but the fact that he would say that to me, that he would actually make that threat as a bishop and as a man who I respected at the time, was hurtful. It cut deep. 

And that brings us to the last verbal abuse tactic.

10. Playing The Martyr

I think this one deserves a lot of consideration. I've yet to meet a verbally abusive person or an emotionally abusive person who did not play either the martyr or the victim.

My husband, now ex, was a martyr because, in his own words, "I let you go back to work." 

I wanted to go back to work after my children were born, but my husband wouldn’t allow it unless I did it only when he was at work, when the kids weren't around, and if it didn’t interfere with fixing meals, with getting the kids on the bus, with helping them with homework, with getting them off the bus, or with taking them to activities.

He offered no help. 

It was my idea. Thus, my responsibility to do everything myself. So when I finally did find a job (and I was lucky, because I found one working on Sundays while he and the kids were at church) he would talk about what a great, wonderful person he was for letting me work.

His behavior was strikingly the same when he "let me" go back to school.

He didn’t tell me I couldn’t do it.

Instead he said I had to get a full tuition scholarship, or it wasn’t going to happen. His first question was always, “How are you going to pay for it? Because I'm not paying for it.”

Again, I was lucky. I was able to get a scholarship to go back and get my master's degree. The financial constraints didn’t hold me back, but he came up with more conditions. “Sure, you can go back to school,” he said. “But only if you can find a babysitter and only if you make sure there's dinner on the table for me every night.”

I remember making crock-pot meals in the morning each day that I had school, because I knew that if he got home from work and I wasn't there, because I was at school studying and there wasn’t something warm ready for him to eat, he was going to be furious. So I was always careful to have the crock-pot meals made ahead of time.

And yet, to this day, he talks about what a wonderful husband he was for letting me go back to school. He talks about how supportive he was. What a great, amazing, supportive husband. Never mind that it’s the most messed-up version of support ever!

His form of support was, in fact, not support. But that’s not how he sees it. He has convinced himself that because he let his wife work and let his wife go back to school, that he is a martyr.

When I first asked to do those two things, he would turn the requests into arguments that were as unpleasant as possible. Then we would revisit the issues a couple days later. He would change his approach to, “Yes, you can do___. But only if you meet all these conditions.”

And from that day forward, he would say that I always had to get my way. Anytime I asked for anything, no matter how reasonable, he might grudgingly concede after several torturous discussions. But his compliance was proof that I was controlling and always had to get my way.

He was the martyr for putting up with his overly ambitious wife who couldn't just be happy staying home, raising the kids, and fixing meals. He was a martyr for putting up with a woman who had her own ideas about politics that he didn't agree with, this woman who had to have her own education that he didn't approve of, this woman who wanted to go back to work. The irony being that if I really was everything he wanted, if I stayed home and didn't spend money on my hair, if I put dinner on the table and did everything he claimed he wanted, he was still a martyr.

Because then he would go on about how he was paying for everything. He would never ever let me forget that he was paying for everything until I felt like an absolute leach. 

This is verbal abuse, but I think it’s also emotional abuse. The threat example earlier overlapped with spiritual abuse.

It's important to recognize spiritual and emotional and verbal abuse often overlap, and while my husband never hit me, there were times when he would stand in my space and refuse to let me move. He would block me from walking past him, or he would stand behind me and then physically shove me forward to make me move faster.

It’s not the same as hitting your wife, but still... 

I want you to think about it. Do you think that counts as abuse? And if so, what kind?  I’m not sure. If you have a thought about it, send me a message or write me a comment.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this