Types Of Psychological Abuse

Help Us Help Others:

There are many different types of psychological abuse. Emotional abuse often comes in subtile forms and can be difficult to spot.

Most common forms of psychological child abuse

  • Intimidating children
  • Humiliating children
  • Manipulative & controlling behavior by parents
  • Disregarding, discounting or trivializing children’s emotions
  • Abusive forms of psychological control

Other types of psychological abuse

Passive-Aggressive Behavior
Passive-aggressive behavior is a type of emotionally abusive environment in which a parent or caretaker resorts to indirectly malicious behavior to either control the child or to garner attention. The best example of this can be seen in the parent who resorts to acting much like a child themselves as a way of manipulating their family members. Common forms of passive-aggressive behavior include:

  1. Sulking/intentional scouring: A parent sulks when they don’t get their way; forcing family members to play to their tantrums.

  1. Refusing to talk: Going long periods of time (hours, days, or even weeks) while refusing to talk out of spite.

  1. Intentionally forgetting important things: For example, a father purposely “forgets” the school presentation he knows his daughter wanted him to attend.

  1. Passive or direct non-cooperation: Intentionally holding things up when the family is heading somewhere; refusing to help out with a necessary household chore; being inflexible in a way that causes other family members great inconvenience or the loss of important activities, such as when one parent is working but another is not, yet he nonetheless refuses to get his daughter after soccer practice.

  1. Sabotaging: Engaging in ploys to sabotage the child’s life or relationship with friends/loved ones.

Taunting or cat and mouse games
This involves placing rigid and/or unrealistic expectations before children that are accompanied by severe threats should a child fail to meet them. For example, telling a child they need to completely clean out and sweep the garage by 5:00 or they won’t get dinner, while knowing full well that it’s impossible for the child to complete the task on time.

The use of intimidation has several negative consequences. First, the child feels fearful and threatened while also feeling powerless and helpless; the same emotional combination that makes things like rape and assault so destructive for adults. They’ll tend to feel degraded by such tactics as well. But most of all, it establishes a bully atmosphere, in which the same despair, the same feelings of helplessness, the same resentment that is regarded a school-yard bully is brought into the child’s home environment.

Exploiting/corrupting
This involves modeling, permitting, or encouraging antisocial or developmentally inappropriate behavior. For example:

  • Telling a child to do things the adult knows might get them teased, ridiculed or hurt.

  • Misinforming a child or telling them deceiving things for personal thrills (“Your teacher would like it if you pinch her butt”).

  • Encouraging a child to smoke, drink, or do drugs.

  • Manipulating the child into antisocial behavior that’s harmful to themselves or others, such as when a parent tries to alienate the child from the other parent during a divorce through lies or deceit or by playing into the child’s desires for reunification and making the other parent out to be the bad guy; or when an abusive spouse coaches the children into belittling the other parent.

Withholding
Withholding is a common form of emotional abuse that takes place when a parent or caretaker withholds something valuable that the child needs – such as warmth, love, affection, attention, praise, etc. – and uses this withholding as a means of emotional control. Abuse specialist David R. Walters elaborates with an example: “Probably the greatest emotionally abusive parents are middle-class Americans who withhold love or use the contingency of love to manage either children. If John brings home a report card with five As and one C the typical response of middle-class parents is not, ‘How well you have done!’ but, ‘Why did you get the C?’ This constitutes emotional abuse. …their children experience feelings of guilt and worthlessness.” (Walters, 1975, pp. 36-37)

Having high expectations for your kids and pushing them to succeed is not emotional abuse. Nor is that what Walters was referring to. The problem is that many parents have the tendency to keep children on a perpetual treadmill, trapped in a never-ending cycle in which the praise, affection, or love they so much desire is always held just out of reach. The other problem is that they do this in ways that imply to the child that their love is conditional: I love you when you’re good, but not when you’re bad. Your worth to me is dependant upon what you do and how you act. This isn’t a healthy message for children, who need to know that they are unconditionally loved and that you’ll still love them if they fail, or even if they do something for which you don’t approve. Contrary to the beliefs of many parents, it is this environment that children thrive in anyhow. Positive motivation is always more effective than negative motivation, especially wherein kids are concerned.

See also:


Help Us Help Others: