Info About Emotional Abuse incl Narcissistic Abuse & Coercive Control

[Kizzie]

This section includes various types of emotional abuse including narcissistic abuse, coercive control and bullying. It's an important section because it can sometimes be difficult for survivors and others including the courts and even professionals in the mental health field to grasp what is emotional abuse and how it can be so damaging and lead to the development of Complex PTSD when it is ongoing. As such, I've included info about each here and the thread is yours to share about your experience of emotional abuse, and ask questions you may have. 

Emotional Abuse in General

Hyland, P., Karatzias, T., Shevlin, M., McElroy, E., Ben-Ezra, M., Cloitre, M., & Brewin, C. R. (2021). Does requiring trauma exposure affect rates of ICD-11 PTSD and complex PTSD? Implications for DSM–5 . Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 13(2), 133–141. https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0000908

The newly released 11th version of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11: World Health Organization, 2018) provides clinicians with guidance, rather than a formal definition, for what constitutes a traumatic event. In this study, we show that psychologically threatening events such as emotional abuse, neglect, bullying, and stalking that would not normally be considered traumatic were uniquely associated with meeting the diagnostic requirements for PTSD and Complex PTSD.

Mouradian, V. E. (2000). Abuse in intimate relationships: Defining the multiple dimensions and terms. Wellesley, MA: National Violence Against Women Prevention Research Center.

Psychological/emotional abuse has been variously characterized as "the use of verbal and nonverbal acts which symbolically hurt the other or the use of threats to hurt the other" (Straus, 1979, p. 77); "behaviors that can be used to terrorize the victim. . .that do not involve the use of physical force" (Shepard & Campbell, 1992, p. 291); the "direct infliction of mental harm" and "threats or limits to the victim's well-being" (Gondolf, 1987), and ". . . an ongoing process in which one individual systematically diminishes and destroys the inner self of another. The essential ideas, feelings, perceptions, and personality characteristics of the victim are constantly belittled." (Loring, 1994, p. 1).  Psychological/ emotional abuse is considered an important form of abuse because many women report that it is as harmful or worse than physical abuse they suffer and because of its role in setting up and maintaining the overall abusive dynamic of the relationship.

Coercive Control

The term "coercive control" is relatively new but such am important shift in our justice/police understanding of more nuanced forms of relational trauma and emotional abuse.  This is a huge step forward in identifying abusers and holding them accountable.  Coercive control is a form of emotional abuse that seeks to take away a person's freedom and to strip away their sense of self. The person employing this type of emotional abuse creates a world in which the person experiencing coercive control is constantly monitored and criticized; their every move is checked against an unpredictable, ever-changing, unknowable rule book.

The following types of behaviour are common examples of coercive control:

•  Isolating the individual from their friends or family
•  Depriving of them of their basic needs
•  Monitoring a person via online communication tools or using spyware
•  Controlling how much money they have and how they spend it
•  Monitoring their everyday activities and movements
•  Repeatedly putting them down, humiliating them, calling them names, or telling them that they are worthless
•  Threatening to harm or kill them or their children or their pets
•  Threatening to publish information about them or to report them to the police or the authorities
•  Damaging their property or household goods
•  Forcing them to take part in criminal activity or child abuse

This above list is not exhaustive. Physical violence may be used alongside these other tactics of isolation, mind-games and the micro-regulation of everyday life or it may never be present other than as a threat or perceived.

Narcissistic Abuse

Journal Articles

Howard, V. (2022). (Gas)lighting Their Way to Coercion and Violation in Narcissistic Abuse. Journal of Autoethnography, 3 (1): 84–102. https://doi.org/10.1525/joae.2022.3.1.84

Narcissistic abuse is a hidden form of abuse and remains under-recognized in society and within the helping professions, partly due to victim difficulties in articulating the manipulative behaviors they have experienced....  gaslighting behavior, pathological dishonesty, and intimate abuse.

Levin, L. (2021). Understanding narcissistic abuse. Mental Health Matters 8(3).

The one theme underlying all the different nuances of any narcissist beyond being selfish, is that they're inherently focused purely on themselves at the expense of others. They have the sole-focus of meeting their own needs with little to no regard for the feelings and needs of others. Additionally, they lack any sort of real emotional connection to others and feel little to no remorse or guilt for the pain they inflict on others. This means that in relationships with others, they follow very specific patterns of relatively predictable and systematic abuse.

[juliannmhall]

I've had years and years of experience with narcissists, starting with my mom throughout my childhood. I really understand now that she has always had severe cptsd too, but she actually did insanely horrific things to me, my sister and my cats. She can't even bare to recall a lot of the things she did now. I don't know, it all probably was severe emotional dysregulation and strong avoidance adaptations. She was always drinking my whole life. When I was around 12 she started using a lot of meth too. I guess the pain, shame and suffering from needing to heavily poison yourself every day turns you into a monster...