Verbal abuse has become quite common in relationships; it is believed to be most frequently imposed on women by their boyfriends or husbands. There are many examples of women who are quite verbally abusive as well. For the sake of simplicity of pronouns in this paper, I will identify the abuser as male and the victim as female. Reading though the literature and articles it was obvious that it isn't as well known as physical abuse, but is viewed as type of emotional abuse.
Emotional abuse is as damaging as physical abuse, though it is harder to recognize, and as a result harder to recover from. It was interesting to see how emotional abuse causes long term self esteem issues and profound emotional repercussions for the partners of abusers. Self-esteem is worn down, sense of options evaporates, self-care is compromised, and the power of choice is eroded. (Engel, 1990).
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