Tag Archives: Self Esteem

abusive behavior, emotional abuse, healing from abuse, healing from emotional abuse, verbal abuse

Steps to healing: accepting yourself

In the process of recovering our self-esteem, there are several little steps that bring a lot of joy. Once you have decided that the view of you that he is promoting has more to do with his sick fantasies than with your reality, then you begin to detach.

Detaching is making some space between his perceptions of you, and who you are. The person who you are is not decided and described by him; now you have begun to be your own person.

Good or bad, you are who you decide to be….it is exhilarating to realize that you can be yourself and not depend on anybody else to tell you how valuable or unworthy you are…

Once you take stock of who you are, warts and all, you can begin by rejoicing of your new freedom! Be happy about freeing yourself; of only depending on yourself for deciding about your life. You can even allow yourself a bit of panic thinking: “what if I need something and I can’t get that by myself?” and the answer is…..’I will find a way, because I’m a resourceful and resilient person!”

Feeling secure and happy about yourself is one of the strongest points in having a healthy relationship with any partner. Remember: you are your own person, and you make yourself happy with your decisions…

For instance: Taking care of yourself by eating right will boost your self-esteem. With a high self-esteem, comes confidence and happiness within yourself. When you are happy about yourself, it’s easy to be happy towards others especially your partner. You are sending the message that you can provide your own peace of mind, so others don’t imagine that it would be easy to control you! This is a shield of protection around you that sends a strong message to potential mates.

Being carefree and self-reliant has also more benefits… You are self-centered in a good way; when you are with or without your partner, you don’t worry about what she or he is doing. Fill self-confident about yourself and carefree about the relationship because you expect good things only.
Of course, you already know how to spot signals of abuse, so now you can say: “I’d prefer you not to treat me in this way: I’m too valuable to be here waiting for you to finish having a conversation with your friends while we postpone going together for dinner. Can you make up your mind and tell me if we are going together, now? There are other things I need to pay attention also…”
And here you are now: positioning yourself in a place of equality and respect….congratulations!

emotional abuse, healing from abuse, healing from emotional abuse

How to begin the healing!

After realizing that you are in a relationship that diminishes your self-esteem by making you feel the unworthy and less powerful side, you need to consider a simple plan to backtrack and go back to the whole, self-respecting person you want to be, right?

Perhaps the only place to begin is with yourself. Looking at this primary and inevitable relationship, try to make a plan to forgive your mistakes and learn how to appreciate the good things you do…Every time you catch yourself saying: “Yes, I did that, but it didn’t last (or was too expensive) (or was a lot of work) (or I was working on the wrong direction…) STOP! saying “yes, but” thwarts the process of recognizing the good work you do. Learn to say “I’m able to do excellent work,”  and leave the self-recrimination behind.

One should always work on building and nurturing the intimate relationship with oneself, specially if our minds are full of other people’s negative expressions. Learn to hear yourself saying negative appreciations, without even evaluating if they are right or  not, and teach yourself to stop.

Once you have learned to assert your individual value, and you respect yourself as you are now, then it is possible to begin teaching others how do we want to be treated. Be firm without being aggressive when someone is giving you less respect that you aspire to. Say again and again: “This is not the way I prefer to be treated, it’s better if you call me by my name and don’t use “sweetie” or “pretty thing” when talking about me.
Also, if you need to raise your voice, don’t be surprised if I choose to walk away….in my life, someone shouting at me is not acceptable.”

Healing from abuse is based on the important decision of shutting out any hurtful expression; and expressing our needs to be treated with love and understanding. Perhaps it will take you some time to get to the point of feeling confident in asserting yourself in this aspect. Try at the beginning to put some distance between you and the abuser, and signal that you need time alone to repair and heal. And use this time to remember all your positive aspects of which you should be proud of!

abusive behavior, emotional abuse, healing from abuse, healing from emotional abuse, verbal abuse

How to stop emotional abuse in marriage

Too many times in life, there is a friction between us and others, and a deep sense of frustration when our basic emotional needs are not being met.

However, sometimes we deal with a person who surprises us: when we are able to talk with them, express needs, and negotiate positive solutions, we are shocked and think to ourselves, “Why hasn’t this person told me this before? It would have been so easy to satisfy their request, if only I had known it!”

How does that exchange of needs and satisfaction begin? With assertion! Assertion is the art of saying what you need, believe, and deserve in a way that other people can hear you clearly.

This ability is essential for if you want to stop emotional abuse in marriage, and improve an abusive marriage. Unhealthy alternatives to assertion are:

1.    Submission – letting other people’s needs come always before yours, whether just or unjust. This happens if you accept disrespectful treatment from a loved one for some time, and breeds deep resentment;

2.    Aggression – forcing your needs on another person without their agreement.

Both are lose-lose options, meaning that both sides, even the “winning” one will get less from the relationship. These options build anger, hurt and resentment instead of respect and love.

The proper way to assert your needs and desires is this:

1.    Create a clear idea of exactly what behavior is irritating you, and why. If he/she is not speaking to you in front of your friends, that is clearly a hostile behavior that needs addressing. What is the behavior that you want, instead of this? Acceptance, care, attention? Be clear on what you want.

2.    You need to define the behavioral change that you need from this person or to set limits with someone whose behavior is unacceptable or hurtful to you.

3.    Don’t back down on your personal rights as a dignified person; stand firm in your belief that your rights, needs, and dignity are just as valid and important as anyone else’s, regardless of age, power, role, or gender.

How does assertion work?

1.    Begin describing the negative behavior in clear words:

“When you make jokes about my cooking in front of my friends, as you did last night at Alice’s party…”

2.    State the impact on you:

“I feel put down and unappreciated.”

3.    Declare that you want a change and to agree to making the change:

“Remember that we are each other’s support system and we don’t criticize the other in public.”

If you want to stop emotional abuse in marriage in a healthy way, remember that your purpose is not to blame, but to deliver information about the impact of the behavior. Messages centered on the “I” pro noun, delivered calmly and with steady, non-apologetic eye contact have a better chance of being received as information, and not criticism.

The victim of emotional abuse needs to provide the offending person with a steady feedback on the impact of their behavior for two reasons. It is information necessary to change, and to building up self-esteem. Assertion greatly assists an emotionally abused woman, because it gives her the opportunity to express and defend her own needs in an unequivocal way. In this way, you deal with an emotional abuse marriage.

Nora Femenia, Ph.D is passionate about supporting women’s recovery from emotional abuse once and for all. Nora has created a powerful set of tools for helping women break out of the mind-set that keeps them in a toxic relationship by first discovering unconscious beliefs and family blueprints.

To know more about her latest book “Recovering From Emotionally Abusive Relationships” please visit http://www.healingemotionalabuse.com

emotional abuse

What is emotional abuse by an abusive personality?

5 Comments

I’ve been with my boyfriend for 1.5 year after I left my ex-husband who commited adultery. I suffered from depression and being in constant fear/incapable of function as a normal person anymore at that time. My boyfriend take care of me, but my emotion has beeing going up & down. I’m extremely suspicious & worried about things. I’ve been contributing to most of the expenses, monetary issue has add on to the tension, although he has been working hard trying his best to get income. Until a few occassions, he couldn’t take my unreasonable suspicious anymore (when girls talk/sms him), he just burst, broke things and wanted to hit me. I’m still feeling very fearful for one that happened juz 2 days ago esp I witness violent in my childhood. Is my behaviour an emotional abuse to him? It has been a few times this happened and once he wanted to hit my mum too, I’m worried something serious will happen one day. What should I do, leave him? Other time, he is very caring & responsible. How should I react?

There are so many issues and questions going on here that it is hard to know were to begin. First, I have to say what your boyfriend is doing is the emotional abuse. He has not actually hit you, but has made a real threat. This can actually increase your thoughts of mistrusting him in other areas.

He may not like the suspicions, but I do not think that there is anyway that this can be seen as emotional abuse. If you are not using threat of harm or trying to demean him then it is not emotional abuse. In the case he has an abusive personality, some things can change.

I’m not you so I can’t tell you exactly what is going on with you, or how you should react. If your thoughts of suspicion are nearly constant and interfer with daily life that may be an indication of anxiety or even OCD. Your emotional highs and lows are enought of an indicator to me that you should be seeking professional help.

You could even consider couples therapy for you and your boyfriend. However, my honest thoughts on anyone who even threatens violence is to get rid of them and fast. You never know when the threat will become an actual act.

Take this advice from someone who was married. After months of small fights over things like money and childcare he pulled a sword on me and threatened to kill me. I never gave him another chance to make real on his threat. He did this when I was three months pregnant and our toddler son was watching. You have to think about more than just your when you make these choices.

emotional abuse

Let’s Prevent Emotional Abusement

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Stop Emotional Abuse, You Deserve Better. We all know about Sexual Abuse. Abusement. We all know about Physical Abuse. But, we know very little about Emotional Abuse. Emotional Abuse occurs when one person emotionally and psychologically abuses another person who is in need of sincere affection. This kind of abuse takes many forms… When is it abusiveness? When the other person abusively orders, or commands of shouts at the other person, imposing his/her will.  Your partner undermines your self-esteem constantly. Emotional abusers deliver mixed messages: “I love you” (I hate you.) It’s like pushing you through a cliff and …

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