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By Patricia Evans
Verbal Abuse is insidious.
Verbal Abuse is endemic.
Verbal Abuse impacts millions of people.
Verbal Abuse and its denial are crazy-making
Verbal Abuse usually occurs in secret.
If you've heard,
"You're Too Sensitive"
you've heard verbal abuse.
Although many people have heard sticks and stones may break our bones but words will never hurt us, those who have suffered from verbal abuse know that words do hurt and can be as damaging as physical blows are to the body. The scars from verbal assaults can last for years. They are psychological scars that leave people unsure of themselves, unable to recognize their true value, their talents and sometimes unable to adapt to life's many challenges.
Except for name-calling many people don't recognize verbal abuse especially when it comes from a person they believe loves them or from a person they perceive as an authority figure; or when it comes from a person who is in a position of power, for example, one's boss, a family provider, one's parent, or even an older sibling that one has learned to look up to in childhood.
Unfortunately, when people don't recognize verbal abuse for what it is, they may try to get the person who is putting them down, giving them orders, or correcting, denouncing, yelling at or ignoring them to understand them. Or, they may try to stop them by giving it back in kind. In other words, they may act out their anger.
The circumstances under which verbal abuse takes place make a real difference in how to respond to it. In the workplace, for instance, an appropriate response to a very abusive boss might be to prepare a resume or to read the want ads. On the other hand, a child can't very well escape from an abusive parent and so we, the observers and relatives of the child must be alert and ready to speak up for him or her. Keeping a record and letting others know what is going on are often good first steps.
Since, in the majority of cases, people who indulge in verbal abuse are selective about whom they abuse, many people are surprised to hear that someone is experiencing on-going and periodic abuse from someone they know and have always seen as nice and friendly. Nice and Friendly is the persona of many an abuser. Although many folks are as nice and friendly as they seem, some are not.
Verbal Abuse is insidious.
Verbal Abuse is endemic.
Verbal Abuse impacts millions of people.
Verbal Abuse and its denial are crazy-making
Verbal Abuse usually occurs in secret.
If you've heard,
"You're Too Sensitive"
you've heard verbal abuse.
Although many people have heard sticks and stones may break our bones but words will never hurt us, those who have suffered from verbal abuse know that words do hurt and can be as damaging as physical blows are to the body. The scars from verbal assaults can last for years. They are psychological scars that leave people unsure of themselves, unable to recognize their true value, their talents and sometimes unable to adapt to life's many challenges.
Except for name-calling many people don't recognize verbal abuse especially when it comes from a person they believe loves them or from a person they perceive as an authority figure; or when it comes from a person who is in a position of power, for example, one's boss, a family provider, one's parent, or even an older sibling that one has learned to look up to in childhood.
Unfortunately, when people don't recognize verbal abuse for what it is, they may try to get the person who is putting them down, giving them orders, or correcting, denouncing, yelling at or ignoring them to understand them. Or, they may try to stop them by giving it back in kind. In other words, they may act out their anger.
The circumstances under which verbal abuse takes place make a real difference in how to respond to it. In the workplace, for instance, an appropriate response to a very abusive boss might be to prepare a resume or to read the want ads. On the other hand, a child can't very well escape from an abusive parent and so we, the observers and relatives of the child must be alert and ready to speak up for him or her. Keeping a record and letting others know what is going on are often good first steps.
Since, in the majority of cases, people who indulge in verbal abuse are selective about whom they abuse, many people are surprised to hear that someone is experiencing on-going and periodic abuse from someone they know and have always seen as nice and friendly. Nice and Friendly is the persona of many an abuser. Although many folks are as nice and friendly as they seem, some are not.
bump!!!
Verbal abuse is awful, but Joe fact is saying something like "You're too sensative" in and of itself doesn't constitute verbal abuse. Some people might over react to a joke for example and be "Too sensative"
Language fascinates me, because except in symbolic logic systems such as math or chess, pinning down the exact and unchanging meanings of words is generally an exercise in futility. The problems arise in communication when we try to specify that truth in verbal terms, and that's owing to what Michael Polanyi called "the poverty of language," by which he meant the inadequacy of words to fully cover all the shades of meaning that the various participants in any conversation bring to it and try to say.
So words that would clearly be abusive in one context can be either totally harmless or even terms of endearment in another. And the harder we try to stabilize, standardize or objectify these meanings, the more elusive, controversial and sometimes oxymoronic they actually become.
Here's my favorite real-life example of a failed attempt to govern or control the meaning of a word, and in this case the word is actually "Christian" itself. In about the 14th century, the French nobility decided that words like "idiot" and "imbecile" were cruel and unnecessarily insulting to one's mentally challenged neighbor. Henceforth, they decreed, the proper way to refer to such a person was to be, "Il est bon Chrtien" or in very rough translation, "He's a good Christian, now leave him alone." Time, usage and some inborn human distaste for enforced politeness eventually changed that, and now in its shortened form, both we and the French just say "cretin."
If I told you that I have a friend who is tiny, no doubt you would imagine a small person. But if I told you I have a friend whose nickname is Tiny, your sense of the oxymoronic would intuitively kick in and you would probably imagine a 300 lb. linebacker who eats whole hams for lunch. If I said of someone that I obviously admire, "He's a gem," you would rightly interpret that I think highly of the fellow. But with a very slight change in my tone of voice, it would be just a clear to you that my real intent was to tell you that I think he's a jerk.
The moral of the story is that language, especially the spoken language rather than written language, is uncontrollable, and today's official, well-mannered Hallmark greeting is tomorrow's biting smackdown-- not in spite of the prohibitions or attempts to stabilize the meaning, but precisely because of these efforts to control.
Nemo has....well his whole post is right-on.
I have noticed in some-longterm marriages...that what I consider abusive...Works like gang-busters for them. Has the wife suffered years of abuse or has that marriage survived? (Gee there's a good religious joke there...but i pass)
Ya I agree with Nemo..great points to ponder
Words can be devastating or motivating...depending on a whole lot of factors.
IMO, no one had this down to a gentle art form better than did Ogden Nash:
"Sure, deck your limbs in pants;
Yours are the limbs, my sweeting.
You look divine as you advance --
Have you seen yourself retreating?"