What does emotional abuse do to a woman?

Emotional abuse can feel as destructive and damaging as physical abuse, and can severely impact your mental health. It’s often used as a way to maintain power and control over someone.

Emotional abuse may be accompanied by other kinds of abuse: sexual, financial or physical. However, it doesn’t need to include other kinds of abuse to count as abuse; it’s serious enough on its own to be a concern. Sometimes it might feel hard to define what emotional abuse is. The points below can help you to understand what emotional abuse looks like, how it affects you and what signs to look out for if you're worried about someone else.

Types of emotional abuse

Emotional abuse can involve any of the following:

• Verbal abuse: yelling at you, insulting you or swearing at you.
• Rejection: constantly rejecting your thoughts, ideas and opinions.
• Gaslighting: making you doubt your own feelings and thoughts, and even your sanity, by manipulating the truth. For more information on how gaslighting works, visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
• Social abuse: seeking to harm your other relationships or reputation, sharing photos of you without permission, and monitoring your activities (both in person and online).
• Put-downs: calling you names or telling you that you’re stupid, publicly embarrassing you, blaming you for everything. Public humiliation is also a form of social abuse.
• Causing fear: making you feel afraid, intimidated or threatened.
• Isolation: limiting your freedom of movement, stopping you from contacting other people (such as friends or family). It may also include stopping you from doing the things you normally do – social activities, sports, school or work. Isolating someone overlaps with social abuse.
• Financial abuse: controlling or withholding your money, preventing you from working or studying, stealing from you. Financial abuse is another form of domestic violence.
• Bullying and intimidation: purposely and repeatedly saying or doing things that are intended to hurt you.

Symptoms of emotional abuse

Physical violence is often seen as being more serious than emotional abuse, but this simply isn’t true. The scars of emotional abuse are real and long-lasting. 

Emotional abuse can have a range of impacts both mentally and physically, including:

• Negatively affecting your self-esteem and confidence
• Leaving you feeling depressed, anxious, worthless or even suicidal
• Making you feel like you have no control
• Making it difficult for you to trust others
• Withdrawing from your normal activities and relationships
• Difficulties managing your emotions and feeling your behaviour moves between extremes, including having outbursts or becoming passive and quiet
• Sleep disturbances

Signs someone else is experiencing emotional abuse

You may be worried that a friend or someone in your family is experiencing emotional abuse. As emotional abuse often happens in private, it can be difficult to see if it's happening for someone else. If you suspect someone you know is in an emotionally abusive relationship, some key things to look out for might include:

• You notice their partner or family member talks down about them or intentionally shares embarrassing or upsetting things about them (including photos)
• They have become increasingly insecure
• They apologise frequently about things that are not their fault
• They do no want to talk about their relationship, even when you express concern
• Their partner or family member is constantly checking where they are and who they're with
• They act differently after receiving a message or call from their partner or family member
• They seem more withdrawn and you find it hard to lock in time to see them

Getting support

If you’re experiencing emotional abuse, it’s important that you seek help. There are a number of services you can contact if you need someone to talk to.

Check out Domestic violence and what you can do about it for information on things to consider when dealing with domestic violence, including where to go to make sure you’re safe, and the kinds of support you can access: legal, financial and medical.

Most importantly, if you feel afraid or believe you might be in danger, contact the emergency services (000) immediately.

Want to chat with a peer worker who can listen to you and support you? Book a free, text-based session with ReachOut PeerChat.

You can also use ReachOut NextStep, an anonymous online tool that will recommend relevant support options for you.

The effects of physical abuse are obvious – a black eye, a cut or a bruise – but the effects of emotional abuse may be harder to spot. Emotionally abusive husbands or wives can affect mood, sex drive, work, school and other areas of life. Make no mistake about it; the effects of emotional abuse can be just as severe as those from physical abuse.

And perhaps even worse is the fact that victims of emotional abuse tend to blame themselves and minimize their abuse, saying that it was "only" emotional and "at least he/she didn't hit me." But minimizing adult emotional abuse won't help and it won't hide its devastating effects.

Short-Term Effects of Emotional Abuse

Short-term effects of an emotionally abusive husband or wife often have to do with the surprise of being in the situation or the questioning of just how the situation arose. Some emotional abusers don't begin their abuse until well into a relationship. Husbands or wives may find themselves shocked to see the new, emotionally abusive behavior. The behavior and thoughts of the victim then change in response to the emotional abuse.

Short-term effects of emotional abuse include:1

• Surprise and confusion
• Questioning of one's own memory, "did that really happen?"
• Anxiety or fear; hypervigilance
• Shame or guilt
• Aggression (as a defense to the abuse)
• Becoming overly passive or compliant
• Frequent crying
• Avoidance of eye contact
• Feeling powerless and defeated as nothing you do ever seems to be right (learned helplessness)
• Feeling like you're "walking on eggshells"
• Feeling manipulated, used and controlled
• Feeling undesirable

A partner may also find themselves trying to do anything possible to bring the relationship back to the way it was before the abuse.

Long-Term Effects of Emotional Abuse

In long-term emotionally abusive situations, the victim has such low self-esteem that they often feel they cannot leave their abuser and that they are not worthy of a non-abusive relationship. Adult emotional abuse leads to the victim believing the terrible things that the abuser says about him/her. Emotional abuse victims often think they're "going crazy."2

Effects of long-term emotional abuse by significant others, boyfriends or girlfriends include:

• Depression
• Withdrawal
• Low self-esteem and self-worth
• Emotional instability
• Sleep disturbances
• Physical pain without a cause
• Suicidal ideation, thoughts or attempts
• Extreme dependence on the abuser
• Underachievement
• Inability to trust
• Feeling trapped and alone
• Substance abuse

Stockholm Syndrome is also common in long-term abuse situations. In Stockholm Syndrome, the victim is so terrified of the abuser that the victim overly identifies and becomes bonded with the abuser in an attempt to stop the abuse. The victim will even defend their abuser and their emotionally abusive actions.

What are the effects of emotional abuse?

What are the 5 signs of emotional abuse?

What it feels like to be a victim of emotional abuse?

What happens to the brain after emotional abuse?