ABUSE

Academic research and NGOs involved in the field of abuse make it certain that abuse ranging from spanking to hitting with objects of different kinds, is still astoundingly popular among parents who try to regulate the behaviour of their children. Whatever the form, all hitting has documented negative correlates, ranging from higher risks of alcoholism to depression, hopelessness, alcohol abuse, suicide, and violence against peers among others. Yet abuse can take many forms, and speeches like the example below qualifies as verbal abuse that has repercussions as severe as that of physical abuse:

 You are so stupid, you are so lucky to have me no body else would want you... Oh shut up, don't give me that look, you don't know how good you have it... You suck at that, you are never going to amount to anything. Dont you know how much I love you?

 Lizzy Glazer, from which the above quote is taken, comments further:

When I was younger I thought I was the only one who had experienced this, I thought I was all alone, I had heard of domestic violence before but did not realise how psychological abuse was just as prevalent as physical abuse, just as real

Contrary to neglect and abandonment, absue is a much more 'deliberate process' and occurs, in Peter’s understanding, anytime these conditions are met: 1) Person A is dependent on person B; 2) Person B uses this dependency to fulfill his own needs in a way that arms person A; 3) Person A cannot defend or change the pattern.

I said 'deliberate process' but I did not imply conscious, because as the TEd talk below shows the abusive behaviour can be so normalised in the abuser that the process of abuse is bound to be largely automatic.

The abuse becomes a repetitive automatic response not just because the abuser itself, as in the case above, is psychologically disturbed, but because a whole culture, a whole system of relationships, a whole environment has normalised such behaviour.

 Because of their immaterial nature, and the little attention we give pubically to the topic, psychological and verbal abuse occur the most and are least talked about, and for this remain mostly invisible. It is so easy to get trapped in an abusive relationship and yet it is so difficult to escape whether you are a teenager or an adult. In fact, from my own experience it seems no one is immune to domestic violence, it can affect everyone, no matter what race, gender, socioeconomic background, level of education, religion or sexual orientation.

While details on parental ineffective practices such as neglect, abandonment and abuse dominate in length, the scope of this details are not that of making trauma mechanisms in families alone the central subject of our considerations, but rather appreciating how in simple everyday relationships, we find all the trauma-chemistry we would expect to find in more obvious dramatic environments such as wars, dictatorships, and the like. 

While details on parental ineffective practices such as neglect, abandonment and abuse dominate in length, the scope of this details are not that of making trauma mechanisms in families alone the central subject of our considerations, but rather appreciating how in simple everyday relationships, we find all the trauma-chemistry we would expect to find in more obvious dramatic environments such as wars, dictatorships, and the like. 

As the children of survivors are said to dream the night-mares of their parents, I inherited nameless fears (Anonymous)

As we continue to dive deeper into the depth of trauma mechanisms, understanding how our social environments produce and maintain trauma, we reach those layers of experience where trauma transcends our individual time-scales and communicates through silence the wounds what words cannot bear to carry anymore.  Check out my blog article on inter-generational trauma to know more.

Wishing you Well,

Your Shrink in Bansko