Emotional child abuse

[StarStruck]

Thought I'd share this;

I have been looking into Emotional child abuse; apparently it is hard to define in relation to other abuse; due to there being no visible signs.

(Having to witness physical abuse to another is also included under emotional abuse)

Here's a couple of category lists I found:

Categories defined by Garbarino et al

Isolating

Preventing the child from participating in normal opportunities

for social interactions

Terrorizing

Threatening severe or sinister punishment, or deliberately

creating a climate of fear or threat

Ignoring

Being psychologically unavailable and failing to respond

to the child’s behavior

Rejecting

Behaviors that communicate or constitute abandonment

of the child, such as a refusal to show affection

Corrupting

Behaving so as to encourage the child to develop social values

that reinforce antisocial or deviant behavior, such as aggression,

criminal acts, or substance abuse.

Categories defined by Hart and Brassard

Spurning

Verbal battering that includes rejection and hostile degradation

Terrorizing

Verbal threat to inflict major physical or psychological injury

to a child who disobeys

Isolating

Active isolation of a child, ranging from locking in a confined

space to limitation of appropriate social and peer interaction

Exploiting/corrupting

Modeling of antisocial acts and condoning of deviant standards

and behaviors

Denying emotional responsiveness

General unresponsiveness to child’s attempts at interaction,

and absence of warm physical contact and empathic conversation

[lucyhoneychurch]

The hostage taking aspect of emotional abuse... . you can't tiptoe enough, you can't disappear enough, you can't fade into woodwork enough... . between the beatings... . when it was quiet was the worst. You knew it was going to blow, just didn't know when.

The name calling, shaming, blaming, guilt-tripping, accusatory, gaslighting, undermining, mental kidnapping of *children* - always the first to blame themselves when "mommy" is "upset."

Always a next time in our minds - next time I won't say that... . do that... . ask that... . need that... .

You associate any normal childlike need or demand with the brutality, so it has to be the cause.

You need less, ask less, want less, live less.

We learn to be invisible. But it doesn't or didn't earn us any peace.

Thank you for posting this. After 50 years of living in this world, it still haunts me. No matter how much I know better or lived better since.

[halfnelson]

Thank you for posting this. Very interesting to read as I had suffered a lot of emotional abuse from my mother, and I think that is why I ended up with emotional instability. Since she only did it to me, and not my sisters, it wasn't easy for them to see why I had 'issues'. They all thought I was the favourite because I was called 'special', but I feel like I was treated as if I was a threat to her.

[StarStruck]

lucyhoneychurch What a description... . it really hit home reading your post. This describes my experience. Freaks me out to think I didn't know the gravitas of this at the time, you want to go back and take yourself out of it!  

halfnelson Me too I came off worse than my brother, I would say I was the scapegoat  

[Sitara]

I think worst for me is the ignoring/denying emotional responses.  The rest of them I think I've been able to better move on from because as an adult the threats and demeaning comments hold little power over me anymore.  But not being there for me emotionally is still difficult.  Especially since she was excellent at withholding love when I most needed it.  Whatever I was going through, she had it worse.  And because she had it worse, I was supposed to be supportive of whatever her issue was (whether present or distant past) and deal with my situation on my own.  The double-whammy of having an emotionally unavailable father probably made it more difficult, and pushed me more into doing whatever my mom wanted so I could glimpse those brief moments of her conditional love.

I've wondered if overprotective parenting is considered abusive.  My mom let me do lots of extracurricular activities, but she was always there when possible.  She volunteered at school, went on all the field trips, and taught some of the after school classes (but insisted I had to be in the class).  It felt very much like she didn't trust me and wasn't allowing me an outlet to express myself without her influence.  Could this just be a form of isolating despite being surrounded by people?

[StarStruck]

I've wondered if overprotective parenting is considered abusive.  My mom let me do lots of extracurricular activities, but she was always there when possible.  She volunteered at school, went on all the field trips, and taught some of the after school classes (but insisted I had to be in the class).  It felt very much like she didn't trust me and wasn't allowing me an outlet to express myself without her influence.  Could this just be a form of isolating despite being surrounded by people?

Overprotecting children can be considered abusive from what I've read... . it comes from some parents controlling natures.

In regard to whether one could describe your example as isolating.- that would seem to fit into the description here;

Categories defined by Garbarino et al

Isolating

Preventing the child from participating in normal opportunities

for social interactions


Due to that I think the term isolation & this Garbarino et al definition is worth more investigation. Also the overprotection of children, to get a clearer understanding of where this experience lies.

Thats the thing with the definitions that are written with regard to personality disorders in general and the signs of emotional abuse; for me it does lead to misinterpretation and they don't often clearly define your experience, it leaves room for doubt for me sometimes. All the excuses I needed to give benefit of the doubt for all the years I have.

Emotional abuse being the hardest to get real information on in a sense because the incidents are different for each person and no signs for anyone else/scientists to witness and categorize by observing.

[lucyhoneychurch]

Sitara, I think one term that might apply to your question is "helicopter parenting," where they *hover* constantly - my mother would do it in some circumstances, and not in others and as I look back, the ones where she was non-vigilant ended up being where her children really and truly HAD needed help and observation and intervention. Helicopter parenting, in my opinion, really serves the parent's needs not the child's/children's. It is about their fears and their paranoid notions not reality. Yet in my case and my siblings', we were adrift where we ended up either being abused by outsiders or getting involved in very self-abusive behaviors with drugs/alcohol.

Self-medication, if you will.

I remember her usual drill sergeant insane demands about being home from a date at exactly whatever hour, and I'd be there a half hour ahead just to avoid a scene - yet in younger years, I was out and about for HOURS on a bicycle, a thin skinny little waify girl who could've been snatched off the streets, future milk carton poster child sadly, and she wouldn't notice I was gone. The area I grew up in had multiple cases of kids being vanished.

I think the date curfew was some nutty idea of hers about where I'd be or what I'd be doing with said date... . not my safety. Her odd comments about her own "near misses" where young men (according to her) tried to take advantage seemed to feed this very twisted notion that the hour I got home was the key - not where I was any other hour or what I was doing then.

Smothering mothering - I had it nonstop when I didn't need it, as did my siblings, and NO mothering at all when all of us could've really used it. Lifelong traumas from things other people did to us and things we did to attempt some sort of salvific escape from that house.

Maybe see what you can read about helicopter parenting - I know pithy labels are a dime a dozen these days, but there is a good deal of accuracy in that one.

And the irony, really, is that their "take no prisoners" approach, I too was a student at a school where she taught had to ride home with her or walk (I got alot of exercise those 2 yrs ), and the reality we lived with behind those closed doors of that "home," you just want to ask, "Who were you kidding?"

I think when we keep dragging this stuff out into the light of day and other supportive adult children of uBPD mothers, we thrash it to bits and it loses its virility and toxicity.

That's how it's worked for me before.

thank you for listening.

[Sitara]

Maybe see what you can read about helicopter parenting - I know pithy labels are a dime a dozen these days, but there is a good deal of accuracy in that one.

I've looked into it a little.  Most of it seems to talk about well-meaning parents who want the best for their kids.  It generally doesn't seem to be thought of as abusive.  They do seem to agree that the side effects cause underdeveloped adults by essentially teaching their kids that they won't be able to do anything without their parents help and making them unprepared for the adult world.  Perhaps the difference is, then, that some parents are doing it because they want to protect their kids from the pain in the world, but mine was doing it to fulfill her disordered needs.

[StarStruck]

So... overprotective parenting /or helicopter parenting could been seen (and should be described) as damaging then rather than abusive. Surrounding the word 'intent'. So with heli parents the intent isn't to harm so it's not abusive.

Perhaps the difference is, then, that some parents are doing it because they want to protect their kids from the pain in the world, but mine was doing it to fulfill her disordered needs.

But if it's coming from a disordered parent it adds to their arsenal doesn't it... . being another thing thats potentially disruptive to a child's development and well being. The degree to which they are heli'ing no doubt could also be taken into account. An abusive parent would therefore think from current reading that it's really not bad.

There is stuff that describes this part of a parenting style as damaging in... Brene Brown - Daring Greatly - How the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent and lead talks of this too.

[BunsandCoffee]

Wow. The "denying emotional responsiveness" rang very, very true for me. Sometimes I do wonder if I would turn out different or "better" if the circumstances were different. My two siblings are 5+ years younger than me and I know they didn't experience the emotional abuse to the degree that I experienced. My parents were not overprotective so it's hard for me to understand the grasp of what the "damage" or "harm" it would be.

I think the extremes of the behavior and how the extremes stunt/damage/hinder growth can help you classify if it is abusive or not, and not necessarily intent because they could be doing it without realizing it or purposeful maleficence. I mean, extremes like completely neglecting the child (my case) vs. being there EVERY single moment and stunting a child's emotional/psychological growth.

[StarStruck]

I think the extremes of the behavior and how the extremes stunt/damage/hinder growth can help you classify if it is abusive or not, and not necessarily intent because they could be doing it without realizing it or purposeful maleficence. I mean, extremes like completely neglecting the child (my case) vs. being there EVERY single moment and stunting a child's emotional/psychological growth.

Bunsandcoffee.... what you've put here makes sense to me, with you on that

SSx