In discussing emotional and then spiritual abuse — both forms often so subtle — we come to a more explicit form of abuse: the verbal variety.
Verbal abuse is used often to intimidate and control the people around the abuser, and it is ever more a problem and issue if the person feels they have a right to spew words of disdain and anger any time they please.
The signal for this is they don’t apologise and they don’t take responsibility for their damaging behaviour.
Examples include patterns of behaviour that involve:
1. Shouting as an overt form of intimidation and control, especially when they stand over you or bellow in your face
2. Using threats intended to intimidate and control
3. Insults that are landed through name calling, swearing (cussing), and other words of intimidation, so this kind of abuse is double-barrelled — actual words of harm with hiss
4. Put downs that leave the other people shaken, hurt and harmed. This kind of verbal abuse is coupled with emotional abuse, and so realistically it is both forms
5. Public humiliations that leave a person feeling silly or stupid
6. The use of words intended to bring harm, the motive for which can be seen in continuing until (or beyond) the time harm is caused
7. Words with emotion intended to cause fear and intimidation
8. Passive aggressiveness that comes through words we feel intimidated by. This is particularly an issue when the verbal abuse leaves the party with no right of reply
9. Words spoken that are half-truths or even baseless, where there is no way given of responding — it’s not a dialogue but a monologue
10. Words uttered, spoken, and shouted that are cutting in nature. This variety of verbal abuse may even be whispered
11. And, yes, it can even be a dismissing sigh that is then followed up with a rant
Verbal abuse does not involve feeling humiliated because our pride was hurt, however. There is a discrete difference. If someone gently and caringly gave us feedback, intended for our good, and we’re hurt, that can be an example of pride. But this, depending on the motives of the person doing it, can also be a very covert way of emotionally abusing a person, if between the two, trust is low, and the person receiving the feedback doesn’t feel safe. This may be especially the case when the person receiving the feedback in not allowed to enter the conversation — that’s abuse.
There are very many nuances in emotional abuse that don’t exist in verbal abuse, because the latter is very overt, meaning that it is heard.
One of the saddest things about verbal abuse is its communicability, meaning we often learn to verbally abuse people having received or been harmed by it ourselves.
The only way to recover from verbal abuse, as in all abuses, is for the person to be honest, to confess it and, in seeing their wrong, repent of it (which includes comprehensive apology) — which is a change of mind leading to motivation which causes a change in behaviour. In the simplest terms, they stop doing it.
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