Mar 16, 2021
STICKS, STONES, ADJECTIVES AND NOUNS
Surviving the Slings and Arrows of Emotional Abuse
As a kid, I remember hearing that I should only react to physical aggression, as if verbal assaults were harmless. They never felt that way.
Despite the pain we’ve all endured as a result of an unkind word, we’ve forever been told verbal venom can’t hurt us. In truth, few things injure the ego and lead to more heartache than vitriol spewed from someone you love.
Like the breaking of a puppy by its “best friend,” verbal domination crushes the will momentarily — long enough for the feeling of worthlessness to gestate in the victim, making the abuse seem justified.
“They’ve figured me out,” one imagines, “I must be worthless.”
If the abuse is from a friend or loved one, and repetitive, it can become a tool for long term control. By verbally implanting seeds of self-doubt in someone with codependent tendencies, a person can, intentionally or otherwise, destroy the confidence of their target. Then, when the abuser offers affection again, it is as if they are doing the wounded animal they just kicked into submission a favor.
And if the dog has the nerve to snap back — to give a loud bark that says he’s tired of the abuse — he is chastised as bad — further evidence of why he deserved to be abused.
This pattern can rule your existence, repeatedly convincing you that you’re the villain in your own story. The hero and supporting characters are interchanged seamlessly — some of them providing loaded praise dependent on your obedience. As long as the perpetrator is the apple of your eye, you are the apple of his. The moment you show displeasure, or anything short of capitulation, you are unceremoniously knocked from your perch, only to be looked down upon, as if you were never worthy of admiration.
The reflection that brings a proud smile to your face one day can make you nauseous the next. The perfect word, from the perfect person, at the perfect time, is all it takes.
A study by Michael D. De Bellis, MD, and Abigail Zisk A.B., (Child Adolesc Psychiatr Clin N Am. 2014) found changes in brain chemistry in victims of emotional abuse. The researchers discovered a lack of connections between regions of the brain in adults who suffered abuse as children, as well as underdevelopment of the hippocampus, which houses the pleasure center, and overactivity in the amygdala, which controls fight or flight mode.
According to the study, “Childhood traumas, particularly those that are interpersonal, intentional, and chronic are associated with greater rates of PTSD, PTSS, depression and anxiety, antisocial behaviors and greater risk for alcohol and substance use disorders.”
Adults subjected to emotional abuse in relationships, such as at the hands of a narcissist, are also prone to brain chemistry changes due to the persistence of neuroplasticity (brain network adaptability) throughout adulthood. Amygdala overactivity and stunting of the hippocampus have been noted in victims of narcissistic abuse (Goleman, 2006), due to frequent release of the stress hormone cortisol. This correlation leads to emotionally driven action and an inability to think rationally.
Experiencing violence on a regular basis trains you to always be on your toes. Shutting off your brain becomes difficult. As an adult, you look for ways to take away thoughts of impending doom — drugs, partying, promiscuous sex, jumping out of planes, fighting, pouring your thoughts out onto paper — whatever gets them out of your head.
When your body goes into fight or flight mode daily because you’re being emotionally tormented, it becomes conditioned to look for danger everywhere. The pressure of a project due at school or work becomes the feeling of having a gun stuck in your face (not a good one, in case you’re wondering). Worse, that feeling becomes what you need in order to get a rise out of your carcass — to feel motivated enough to get anything done. The constant release of stress hormones left your body in such a state of high alert that anything less than catastrophe results in inaction.
According to a paper published by the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University entitled, Excessive Stress Disrupts the Architecture of the Developing Brain (2005, updated 2014), “Toxic stress during this early period can affect developing brain circuits and hormonal systems in a way that leads to poorly controlled stress response systems that will be overly reactive or slow to shut down when faced with threats throughout the lifespan.”
So, when someone wants to start a fight with you, it’s tough not to want to finish it. Once you’ve been triggered to defend yourself, your brain flies into action.
“As a result, children may feel threatened by or respond impulsively to situations where no real threat exists, such as seeing anger or hostility in a facial expression that is actually neutral, or they may remain excessively anxious long after a threat has passed,” the paper continues.
That can make it tough to trust people — or to turn the other cheek when you feel attacked. Calming down once you’ve been riled up becomes a matter of time, not will (unless you’ve developed self-regulation skills). This may be difficult for your partner to understand, resulting in further conflict when one partner is ready to make up while the other is still at defcon 1. Ironically, once self-regulation skills are developed, and the same buttons no longer trigger you, the people around you may grow uneasy with your ease.
Unfortunately, the consequences of verbal abuse are often ignored. Adults under environmental or professional stress (and dealing with their own neurosis), are often oblivious to the psychological impact their words have on others, particularly their own children. Many consciously forgot what if feels like to be angrily yelled at by a giant whose love you desperately crave — but, the body never really forgets.
When that child grows up and is embarrassed or belittled by someone else, he is reminded of the pain — the feeling of betrayal and worthlessness. If the memories haven’t been processed in a healthy way, and remain attached to negative emotions, the feelings will escape onto an undeserving victim, or be turned inward.
Adults who are subjected to emotional abuse techniques like gaslighting can slowly be convinced they’ve lost their minds. The chipping away at self-esteem and the constant release of stress hormones bring exhaustion or illness to the body and anxiety or depression to the mind.
I’ve been on both sides. Tormentor and tormented. The cycle followed me through adulthood, after I spent my adolescence straddling the tracks— an angel on one side, a demon on the other. There wasn’t much in between — or there didn’t feel like there was, because that space was filled with too much thought — too much time to dwell on what didn’t make sense. And there was a lot that didn’t make sense to me at the time — like, “how the hell did I end up being born into a family that doesn’t understand me in a place where everyone is an alien?”
Once I looked around, I realized I was outnumbered — so I figured, “I must be the alien.”
I got yelled at when I disagreed, so I said nothing or yelled back. Pretending wasn’t my thing. Nodding along when I thought you were full of shit was a challenge. Angel or demon
One of my fondest childhood memories is getting dragged back down the aisle at church by my mother after I stormed out in protest mid fire and brimstone sermon. I was nine years old. Good times.
Quiet and obedient, or a “cantankerous little fuck,” as Dad loved to say. Whichever I chose was unsustainable.
The angel is who I always thought I was, and who I wanted to be. The demon was who I was forced to become so I could survive among the other demons. I was scared of them, so I had to become something worse. I had to become my demon completely to get over the fear. He had to be scary enough to keep everyone away. He was. He protected me.
The dueling sides of my personality are equally powerful. One is never going to destroy the other. My job is to tilt the balance in the direction of what’s good for me. It’s usually the angel, but not always. Sometimes the demon comes in handy. When shit gets scary for other people, or a polite “please and thank you” aren’t getting the job done, I unleash demon me.
Because I got into fights, and saw shootouts and stabbings and death as a nerd growing up before I was old enough to get a learner’s permit, actual violence doesn’t scare me as much as the thought of dying unfulfilled. I was drawn to becoming hyper-muscular, bouncing in night clubs, and competing in martial arts to conquer my fears and prove myself to the guys from the old neighborhood that I’ll never see again. It’s comforting to know demon me always has my back, and lucky that he keeps out of sight most of the time, or I’d be in prison.
Rather than deny my dark side, I train to control it, so that I can use it for good — because I’m never really going to get rid of it. Memory reprocessing techniques, talk therapy, meditation, medication, education and martial arts training continue to help me gain much greater mastery over my emotions. I am still overtaken by my feelings frequently, but I understand what is happening when it happens. I don’t see it as a flaw, but a characteristic that I need to incorporate into my ideal life.
You either wanna be just like the person whose love you couldn’t have, or you defiantly try to be the exact opposite. No matter what, you end up seeing glimpses of who you don’t want to be in the mirror. Even when you work everyday to undue what’s been done, you know you’ll never arrive at some magical place where the reset button makes everything as good as new.
There’s a lot of pain along the way if you don’t work on yourself. Even more when you do. But there’s also a chance at forgiveness, freedom, and redemption— your own and of the people you hurt, but also of those that hurt you.
The biggest challenge is learning to forgive yourself and the people you’ve blamed for so long. The only way to do that is to stop seeing yourself as different from them — as better or worse. Empathy heals wounds by allowing you to walk in someone else’s shoes emotionally, through your common humanity. It allows you to consider the adversity and consequences that led to your tormentor’s circumstances.
Empathy and compassion have allowed me to see my parents as curious, innocent children forced to quit school in the sixth grade to help provide for their families or care for siblings. I saw them as that little boy and girl, yelled at, mistreated, malnourished and beaten mercilessly by the people they love most to this day, and whose memories they won’t sully with the truth. I saw two people ill suited to give a child like me the emotional support he needed, yet entrusted with the guardianship of an alien baby whose language they didn’t speak.
I know they tried, but I also wish they had tried harder.
The commonality of our inner lives connects us in ways that outward experiences don’t. The more we learn about ourselves, and those who have most impacted our emotional lives, the clearer the picture of why we are how we are becomes. Our shared understanding of joy and pain can help bridge the gaps left by trauma and abuse, and allow us to extricate ourselves from the past so that we can mindfully move forward.
