When Domestic Abuse is Psychological
Did you grow up in a home with psychological abuse?
For as long as Jane could remember, she struggled with depression and anxiety. After carrying her struggles on her own for years, she decided to seek the help of a counselor. As Jane began to explore her feelings and the stories attached to them, she and her counselor started talking about the kind of home she remembered growing up in. “My home life was OK,” she said. “We were never physically abused or anything like that, and my parents provided for what we needed.” But as Jane continued to explore and unpack the relational dynamics of her childhood home, a different story began to emerge.
While her father was involved in different areas of her life, she remembered being afraid of him most of the time. She remembered fragments of memories about how her dad used to treat her mom, and it never seemed right. It often felt confusing to think about. No one outside of the family seemed to really know about it, and those who did acted like it wasn’t a big deal. Jane remembered her mom never seeming to have money that was hers. Her dad would keep her mom from using their money for anything more than household necessities, such as groceries and basic needs for the family. She also remembered how her dad would regularly insult her mom, making cruel comments about her appearance and ability to do things. On a few occasions, Jane remembers her dad flying into a rage and upping the intensity of his control when her mom tried to assert herself or appeared to gain independence. One time, her dad was so angry that he threw a plate across the room in mom’s direction, but she did not remember what made him so angry. He just seemed angry a lot of the time and was unpredictable and scary.
These memories felt confusing to Jane and did not make her feel good. It was hard to remember details, and she would get foggy when trying to remember what it felt like to watch her father hurt her mom in these ways. As she shared these stories, she was slowly able to notice sensations form in her body. Sometimes they felt like a sharp pain in her chest, and other times they felt like her chest sank into her stomach. Other times, she couldn’t feel anything and had a difficult time feeling present in the therapy session. As Jane and her therapist worked to connect her physical sensations to the feelings of depression and anxiety she had been experiencing, they were able to start unpacking the ways Jane’s experience within her family was continuing to affect her many hears later.
Jane never thought of her home in the category of “domestic abuse” because she was used to thinking of domestic abuse in terms of severe physical violence. But domestic abuse has many faces, one of which is psychological and emotional.
What comes to your mind when you hear the words “domestic abuse”? It can be easy to push those words aside, thinking that domestic abuse only applies to severely violent situations. But domestic abuse extends further—even into the category of psychological abuse in ways that can be hard to identify. There is much to be said regarding those who experience domestic abuse from a partner, but what if you grew up in a home where that abuse was present and you were regularly exposed to it? Without a good working definition, it can be easy to assume it was not a part of your experience, but domestic abuse has many covert and less obvious signs. The United Nations defines domestic abuse like this:
“Domestic abuse, also called "domestic violence" or "intimate partner violence", can be defined as a pattern of behavior in any relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner. Abuse is physical, sexual, emotional, economic or psychological actions or threats of actions that influence another person. This includes any behaviors that frighten, intimidate, terrorize, manipulate, hurt, humiliate, blame, injure, or wound someone.”[1]
Does anything from this definition seem to put words to what you saw and experienced in your home growing up? It may be easier to recognize where there was physical abuse, but what about the more subtle psychological actions you saw one parent take against another? Did there seem to be a pattern to the behavior you saw? Maybe there were only a few instances you can remember where something more violent happened, but when you think back about the more subtle psychological abuses you witnessed, you realize they happened for years. They may still be happening even now and you may notice the parent who has been controlled by the abuse still cannot seem to climb out from under it.
Here are some helpful definitions and examples to think about two subtle forms of domestic abuse:
Psychological abuse is abuse that is verbal, mental or emotional.
Examples include:
- Growing up in a home where one parent was regularly criticized, shamed, or demeaned. This is often done to keep their self-esteem low and to lower their confidence.
- One parent often seemed fearful or afraid of the other one.
- One parent would regularly gaslight the other, making them doubt their perception of what was happening.
- One parent was regularly threatened with harm or abandonment by the other.
- One parent would destroy something important or valuable to the other parent when they were angry.
- Care was denied by one parent for the other. Excuses were made about why the abuser’s actions were acceptable.
Economic abuse is abuse surrounding resources.
- One parent had more control of the finances and limited access to money, or only gave the other parent enough money for essentials in the home.
- One parent was kept from earning their own money in order for the other to maintain financial power over them.
If any of these examples resonates with what you experienced growing up in your family, domestic abuse in the form of psychological abuse may be a part of your story. Sadly, it is not uncommon for a domestically abusive parent to also be abuse of their children. It would not be surprising, unfortunately, to find a pattern between the way one parent abused the other and a similar form of abuse you or your sibling experienced at the hands of that same parent. It would also not be surprising that a child who grew up in a home with a psychologically abusive parent would struggle with depression, anxiety, emotional regulation, and potentially many other mental health related issues without really understanding why they feel the way they do.
Beginning to name the psychological abuse you witnessed and experienced and exploring how it connects to the experiences you currently have is one helpful place to start. Doing this with a trained counselor can help begin the process of healing from past harm in your story that you may just be starting to realize.
[1] “What Is Domestic Abuse?” United Nations, accessed September 29, 2021, https://www.un.org/en/coronavirus/what-is-domestic-abuse.
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