Unsnazzy,
I'm glad you reached out. Any kind of abuse is not okay! Whether someone is male or female, adult or child. Abuse is abuse. Period!

Emotional abuse is what I call the early warning sign. I come from a family that has experienced physical and sexual abuse. Emotional abuse is usually included - often the most damaging part! Less obvious. Like walking away feeling 'stabbed in the back'.

How about if we look at it another way. Most of us hope to be loved, or at least liked.
Without respect, how is it possible to have a decent relationship with anyone?

We can only control our own behavior. I choose to respect myself and other people. I So, I will not allow disrespectful behavior to continue in my presence. I will remove myself, assert myself, or log it, in case it needs to be reported. Usually, some combination of the three.

Someone close to me is a man, who has been in emotionally abusive relationships. It's been very damaging. He's an amazing person. With support, he's learning to refute things are patently untrue about himself and others. I'm tired of overused stereotypes - of men and women!

Being emotionally health is the root of happiness or peace of mind, in my opinion.
It's often people with unresolved emotional stuff that do the most damage in the world.

Good for you - finding support here!

We all need support to be our best selves, or to prevent ourselves from being taken advantage of.
Hopefully, you'll also hear from the male perspective here.

Please feel free to keep posting here, and finding other ways to help with your situation. Abuse can be very difficult to address, so getting help can be crucial.

It was a teacher for me, so he never had a chance to do anything physical. But everyone else liked him, so I couldn't speak out. One thing I remember was sitting in class and him saying "Sit dow, shut up and put in your earbuds so I can teach the students that are actually worth my time." I looked around the room at my friends and the other students but no one said or did anything. That really hurt because one thing he kept drilling into me was that I wasn't worth anyones time or effort so I should just give up. And there my classmates were proving it.

Though I don't mean to say teachers can't physically abuse students, just that he specifically didn't have the chance.

I have struggled with this aspect too. You're right, people can brush it off. Many don't even understand what emotional abuse is and the damage that it does which is part of the problem. The other issue, I think, is that many people, if not everyone, has manipulated a situation in their life time, or been manipulated in some way by someone (especially those in a more powerful position). Therefore people can brush off certain scenarios of emotional abuse, or even enable the abuse through being a bystander, because they can rationalise it, whether they see it as a one off, or that the superior knows better, and they may not perceive it as abuse. The thing is, that emotional abuse is a cycle or pattern, abusive behaviour over a period of time, and many people don't see that or can not really perceive or relate to that. While it is good to be open with the people who care about you as they can give you support, what really matters is what you think, and what you make of the situation. Becoming really clear with yourself that IT IS ABUSE so that if any one brushes the abuse aside, you have the power to choose your next step, whether it is informing them of what emotional abuse is, or acknowledging that perhaps they may not be able to give you the emotional support that you need, but maybe they can be supportive in another way.
I have struggled with expressing my abuse to my family as they don't understand/in their eyes they don't have a magic wand, but I have found that talking to a psychologist is grounding enough for me so that I don't feel the need to continuously express my abuse to people who don't really hear what I'm saying.

I'm sorry that happened to you.

Emotional abuse is not merely
"the tip of the iceberg,"

it's

the BASE of the iceberg.

Abuse is about damage,
not gender.

Please talk to a
qualified counselor
whose specialty is
recovery from abuse.

For the record, when
I was in second grade
I was verbally bullied
by a teacher.

Verbal and emotional abuse
has not been recognized
and treated to the extent
it should be because of
many factors. That's why,
when we realize what's
happening for ourself,
we need to take steps
to support our well-being.

Sending you hugs
and wishes for
healing.

I didn't realize it was abuse until I started talking to a therapist recently, a full two years after it happened, but neither of us have come out and said it. Maybe because(and this is the "best" part) I don't want him to get in trouble. I was raised to respect my elders, to not make trouble for them, so to call him out on it would go against that.

Side Note: I'm currently taking psychology(possible major) and I was wondering if abuse could fall under classical conditioning. One symptom of emotional abuse can be the association of similar environments and people with the abuser. I ask because a coping mechanism for me is applying pure logic and emotionally distancing myself(i know, real healthy).

Intermittent reinforcement perhaps? At least my abuse was because as it was mixed in with periods of calm and being 'rewarded', which kept me walking on eggshells and trying to please my abuser.

Even if you're intellectualising everything for now, atleast you are taking steps towards understanding it so that, in the very least, you will recognise this behaviour with others.

@Paintbynumbers Hm. That sounds like Variable Interval, which is when the "reward" is given out at random in order to prevent Reaction Extinction. That falls under Operant Conditioning, but I'm only in Psych 109, so what do I know. And I'm not saying you got a reward for staying nor am I comparing you to a lab rat, just using the terms from my lectures.

Yeah, I agree with you there. My reward (what I have realised since) was a very superficial sense of support through lies, caring but empty words and touch, and I was hooked on the hope of the relationship for various reasons.

With figures of power like a teacher who verbally​ and emotionally​ abuses the student, the student is already in a position of having less power and control over situations.

You said that "no one said or did anything". Were these students treated differently? Treated better than the way that you were treated? This in itself would be enough to keep the other students in line out of fear that they would be punished, and get you hooked to the hope that your good behaviour could be met with the 'reward' of being treated as equals.

Its something that can be so hard to really work through and feel, but it can also act as a very strong drive when going down the path of helping others.

Well, he didn't penalize them for turning things in late and if he did he never took off more than two or three points. If I asked for an extension he wouldn't allow one, often until I got my IEP case manager involved(that was one thing he loved to point out: "hey look, this kid has ADHD and dyslexia or dysgraphia or what ever). He would make it very difficult to use my accommodations, either by making up dumb rules or by simply shaming me. He never told them to put their phones away even though phone usage in class was explicitly banned in 2 or 3 sections of the student handbook, but when I took mine out he got mad(but he also wanted me to put in my earbuds so he could "teach the students that were actually worth his time." catch 22). They could talk in class, write on the board without permission and didn't have to follow the "two bathroom passes a term" rule. Guess who couldn't do those things and that rule did apply to?