by Kyrai Rose, Ph.D.
Abuse can happen to anyone. Abuse occurs across all identities, age groups, geographical areas, socioeconomic statuses, and all levels of education. It can occur in many different forms. Because of the harm done by abuse, it can feel frightening to admit what is happening and seek help. This article is meant as a helpful guide to understanding types of abuse, the common attributes of each type, and their effects. This information can help identify what has happened in troubling relationships in the past and contribute to our healing process. In addition, understanding types of abuse can also help us see abusive patterns in current relationships and help us move toward change and freedom. Acting in abusive ways and withstanding abuse can both be thought of as maladaptive survival strategies. The goal is to clearly recognize those outdated, destructive survival strategies and the associated patterns of behavior, and then cultivate new ways of relating that can replace them. Most of all, the goal is to move toward safety and healing.
Narcissistic Abuse: This type of abusive relationship has just enough good days to keep you invested and just enough bad days to keep you confused (Durvasula, 2024). It can take a while to understand what is happening, because the relationship has positive, enjoyable aspects and the person enacting narcissistic abuse has likeable and lovable qualities that make the destructive behaviors almost unbelievable, and at the very least, confusing. In relationships that exemplify narcissistic abuse, patterns of control, manipulation and dominance are enacted by the person with narcissistic traits in order to protect their vulnerability, insecurity and fragility. People functioning through narcissism can present as either overt or covert. It is important to know that not every person who enacts narcissistic abuse patterns has narcissistic personality disorder. There might be narcissistic personality features, but there can also be other factors involved. For example, anyone with active addiction is going to function narcissistically in relationships. Some people with trauma are halted at a certain stage of development, and therefore display narcissism typical of adolescents.
Overt narcissistic people tend to be obviously grandiose, self-focused, controlling, and dominating. They are the classic depiction of narcissism; charismatic, charming, attention-seeking, arrogant. Covert narcissistic people instead present as suffering more than anyone else suffers. They use this suffering as a way to control, manipulate and dominate people close to them (Fox, 2018). Covert narcissists tend to present as victimized, “never getting their fair shot” in life, needy, resentful, sullen, broodingly angry, irritable and sad (Durvasula, 2024). People functioning through covert narcissism tend to dominate and control in more underhanded, less obvious ways. For example, inundating the other person with constant text messages or emails, seeming to be in distress and desperate for the other person, justifying the violation of boundaries, and overwhelming the recipient. This type of control includes: not allowing the other person in the relationship to have space or time to process conversations or events; pushing for closeness or a conclusion when the other person is still confused, hurt, or angry at what has happened; and insisting that the constant efforts to communicate and make contact are due to “love” and a “desire to work it out.”
Narcissistic people may even accuse the other person of not caring, not wanting the relationship, or not being capable of communicating when they set boundaries. The style of intrusion seems urgent and frantic, rather than overtly aggressive – yet the effect on the recipient of the abuse is similar. Disorientation, difficulty concentrating, hypervigilance, trauma bonding, heightened anxiety, deadened affect, confusion and clouded thinking are all common results of such covert narcissistic relentlessness.
Here are some (but not all) common behavioral dynamics in narcissistically abusive relationships:
Love-Bombing: This aspect of narcissistic abuse has become somewhat of a buzzword in popular culture recently. It is the practice of flooding someone with what seems like loving words, behaviors and experiences. You can think of it as the person functioning through narcissism using what they have to get what they want. The attention and affection shown is usually a perfect match for exactly what the recipient of abuse has always wanted - to be seen and understood in an almost bizarre way, to have someone bring the most thoughtful gift that no one else would ever think of, or to have an experience that has never been had before. The function of the love-bombing is to make the abuser indispensable to the recipient of abuse - and to solidify the attachment. If someone believes they will never get this special kind of love from anyone else, they are more likely to work very hard to keep the relationship. Love-bombing usually happens at the beginning of the relationship and again every time there is a fight or potential break up to remind the recipient of abuse "why they don't want to let go."
Gaslighting: Gaslighting is a denial of your reality/feelings to make you submit to the narcissistic person’s reality because they cannot tolerate their reality crumbling and exposing their vulnerability or faults (“It wasn’t that bad,” “Other people go through worse than what we are going through,” “You misunderstood what I said,” “I never did that/that never happened,” “You’re overreacting.”). When someone is gaslighting they will often twist emotions, words, and experiences; take back what was already said, which causes that person to question their reality, to doubt their own judgment and memory, and to make them feel that they are “going crazy”(Womenslaw.org). According to Sarkis (2018), gaslighting also includes telling partial truths or selective pieces of information. This happens so the person gaslighting can control the other person's response and keep the power by the "truth" being a fluid, changing thing instead of something real, reliable, and shared between two people. This keeps the recipient of narcissistic abuse off-balance and never knowing what the whole truth is in the relationship. Gradually, this eats away at security. Gaslighting makes it much more difficult to leave the relationship because it keeps the recipient confused.
Minimizing, Dismissing, Invalidating, Manipulating, Exploitation: This set of behaviors have the effect of dimming your light and shrinking you to a smaller, weaker, more confused person than you were before the relationship began. These behaviors end up playing on and amplifying your vulnerable emotions (guilt, obligation, low self-worth, confusion, anxiety, fear).
Disagreeableness: This set of behaviors includes antagonizing, arguing, baiting, blame-shifting, rationalizing, criticizing, talking over or repeating the same thing and not letting the other person talk, and other confusing contradictory behaviors. The narcissistic person uses these tactics to push the recipient to get activated and reactive – and then the narcissistic person becomes calm and portrays them as the dysregulated or volatile one (Durvasula, 2024). They might follow this up with then saying “we’re just crazy because we love each other;” or, “we have both made mistakes,” to minimize the dysfunction.
Betrayal: Betrayal patterns include things like lying, hiding things, telling half-truths. being unfaithful, and future-faking. These traumatic betrayals harm safety and trust. Insidiously, because narcissistically abusive relationships are so difficult to leave, the manipulations used to justify, excuse, or blame-shift for betrayal are effective. Covert narcissistic people will even become so extremely distraught at their own betrayal of someone that the betrayed person will end up feeling guilty and sorry for the person because they seem to be suffering so terribly. Subsequently, overlooking and forgiving betrayal behaviors gets added to the list of things the person in a narcissistic abuse situation feels shame about, and the cycle is reinforced.
Narcissistic abuse alternates with periods of connection, closeness, and comfort, making it very difficult to end the relationship. It is inportant to remember that people using narcissistic abuse tactics are not that way all the time. They can alternately be kind, affectionate, and convincingly apologetic. The attachment increases as the cycle continues, and the recipient of abuse feels they have more to lose by leaving.
The effects of narcissistic abuse include excessive thought rumination, self-doubt, lowered self-esteem, difficulty trusting your instincts, feelings of helplessness, drained physical and mental energy, emotional exhaustion, euphoric recall, confusion, guilt, and shame. Traumatic responses can also be experienced, like: flashbacks, disrupted sleep, hypervigilance, hyperarousal, difficulty concentrating, and dissociation. To cope with being in a narcissistically abusive relationship, people may appease, reassure the other person, apologize, self-monitor and try to be perfect or save the relationship, and engage in denial, self-blame, and self-devaluation.
Healing and recovery from narcissistic abuse requires time, patience, diligence, resources, education, support from people who understand, and professional help. Narcissistic abuse includes both emotional and psychological abuse, and can also include other forms of abuse, like financial abuse and physical abuse.
Narcissistic abuse often leads to a trauma bond. For more information about trauma bonds, see this article: https://www.sandstonecare.com/blog/trauma-bonding/ Being in a narcissistically abusive relationship can also lead to reactive defense, which will be discussed next.
Reactive Defense (sometimes termed Reactive Abuse): Reactive defense refers to a victim’s defensive response to the narcissistic abuse behaviors they have been experiencing repeatedly over time. Although it is also called reactive abuse, reactive defense is a more accurate term because a victim is not an abuser.
Reactive defense occurs when the victim either becomes exhausted and frustrated or the aggressor in response to the abuser. Reactive defense occurs when the victim reacts to the abuse they are experiencing. The victim may scream, shout or write insults, or even lash out physically at the abuser. “The abuser then retaliates by telling the victim that they are, in fact, the abuser” (BreaktheSilenceDV, 2019).
Reactive defense occurs when a person who is being abused reaches their limit and loses control of their own behavior due to being outside of their window of tolerance for an extended period of time. Once the recipient of abuse responds with self-defense that is out of character, the perpetrator often claims that the abuse is mutual (Gupta, 2023). It is extremely important to include reactive defense in our understanding of abuse because it is a factor that contributes to difficulty leaving an abusive dynamic by playing on feelings of guilt and self-blame.
Perpetrators of abuse turn a person’s valid anger and frustration at the abuse they’re facing into a weapon to use against them to inflict psychological and emotional damage. Reactive defense will often involve someone gaslighting others by claiming that they are the one that’s “crazy” and “needs help.” The self-defender who acts out of character will typically be alarmed by their own behavior and apologize or use it as a reason to seek help for their relationship. The abusive party may quickly forgive the person when they apologize, and use this as an opportunity to express even deeper love, and baiting the person who was self-defending to think the relationship is really love. It can be extremely detrimental to one’s self-esteem and ability to walk away. Reactive defense can eventually also inhibit one’s ability to see oneself as a good person deserving of better treatment (DeWitt, 2022).
One reliable factor in identifying reactive defense is by looking at a person’s personality and relationship history. If the episodes of self-defensive behavior are uncharacteristic of the person and are outside the normal range of their way of relating, the person is most likely outside their window of tolerance and in an ongoing fight/flight state due to the stress of ongoing, intermittent, unpredictable abuse. Reactive abuse is the body’s way of protecting itself instinctively from a traumatic encounter or threat. It is important to understand that reactive defense happens automatically once the nervous system reaches a certain level of distress and it becomes unsustainable and intolerable (MEND project, 2023).
High stress and confusion over an extended period of time increase the risk of the development of PTSD, making it nearly impossible to recognize a connection between their trauma symptoms, hidden forms of manipulation and abuse, and their reactive behaviors (MEND project, 2023). The longer high stress and confusion continue, the more stress hormones, and the more mentally and physically compromised the victim becomes. Fragmented thinking and communication increase; they involuntarily shake and are emotionally and physically exhausted. This weakened state makes separation from the abusive situation more challenging (but not impossible!). There are common features in reactive defense, including over-explaining states of distress, excessively trying to make the abusive partner see the intensity of the effects of abuse, over-taking responsibility for the difficulty in the relationship, self-blame, and flipping between clarity and confusion about the events in the relationship.
If you find yourself doing things you have never done, feeling that you are outside of your body while reacting, or noticing that you are unable to stop your own behavior that feels unsafe or dangerous to yourself – these are signs of reactive defense. You might find yourself afraid and thinking, “Whoa, this isn’t me. This isn’t how I am normally. What is happening? I am being changed by this.” You are noticing your reactive defense. If you find yourself automatically reacting in an uncharacteristic or extreme way to a situation that has happened over and over in your relationship, this is the nervous system reaching its limit and responding instinctively. It is a signal that something is not right about the relationship, and it is time to seek professional help or support through a twelve-step program.
Physical Abuse: Physical abuse includes deliberate aggressive or violent behavior that causes the domination of another person’s physical body. Physical abuse interferes with and disallows body autonomy and/or creates harm to the body. Physical abuse includes intimidation, punching, pushing/shoving, slapping, squeezing, shaking, holding someone down, picking someone up against their will, refusing to let someone leave, trapping someone, throwing objects at someone. Individuals who experience physical abuse often feel helpless and isolated and are prone to the subsequent development of numerous pathological conditions, including depression, eating disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, and substance use problems (APA, 2024).
Verbal Abuse: The American Psychological Association (2018) defines verbal abuse as: “extremely critical, threatening, or insulting words delivered in oral or written form and intended to demean, belittle, or frighten the recipient.” Because communication patterns are learned early in life, verbal abuse is sometimes overlooked or difficult to identify by people who were raised in environments in which verbal abuse is familiar. Sometimes, even extreme sarcasm or biting comments that are dismissed as “just kidding” can be a part of a verbally abusive pattern of interaction. Some believe that verbal abuse can include things like silent treatment or stonewalling as well as body-shaming, mocking, and criticizing (Streep, 2023). Verbal abuse is a persistent pattern in a relationship that erodes trust, warmth, closeness, self-esteem, confidence, and self-worth.
Emotional and Psychological Abuse: There is overlap between emotional and psychological abuse, so they will be presented together. Narcissistic abuse, described above, includes much of what occurs in emotional and psychological abuse situations. These forms of abuse have the function of eroding a person’s self-esteem and self-worth and create a psychological dependency on the abusive partner. It includes non-physical behaviors that are meant to control, isolate, or frighten. This may present in romantic relationships as threats, insults, constant monitoring, excessive jealousy, possessiveness, manipulation, humiliation, intimidation, and dismissiveness, among others. “Emotional and psychological abuse are difficult forms of abuse to recognize because the abuse is spread throughout your everyday interactions. Unlike physical abuse, there are often no isolated incidents or clear physical evidence to reference. Psychological abuse involves the use of verbal and social tactics to control someone’s way of thinking” (Womenslaw.org, 2021).
Sexual Abuse: Sexual abuse includes any sexual contact that is accomplished by force, threat of force, coercion, or manipulation. This includes sexual acts where there is no consent given and where consent cannot be given (including instances when one is under heavy influence of substances or is unable to speak or move due to a freeze response). Sexual abuse includes any and all sexual activity between an adult and a child – regardless of whether there is deception or the child understands the sexual nature of the occurrence (ACOG, 2011). Sexual contact between an older child and a younger child also is considered abusive when there is a significant difference in age, development, ability, or size. Many people do not know that sexual abuse includes not only sexual touch and contact of all kinds, but also exposure to sexual acts, pornography, and voyeurism.
There are many effects of childhood sexual abuse, including emotional reactions such as fear, shame, humiliation, guilt, self-blame, complex post-traumatic stress disorder or related symptoms (nightmares, flashbacks, chronic hypervigilance, chronic shut down response, amplified startle reflex, feeling of unsafety in close relationships) codependency, difficulty with boundaries, damage to self-worth and self-esteem, dissociation, difficulty with embodiment, anxiety disorders, and depressive disorders. In addition, distorted self-perceptions often occur in which survivors develop a belief that they caused the sexual abuse or deserved it in some way (ACOG, 2011). These types of distorted self-perceptions can lead to survivors choosing self-destructive relationships in order to have congruence between the distorted self-perception and outer relationships.
Survivors of sexual abuse can experience difficulties or confusion related to sexual activity as adults, and can have more instances of chronic pain, diffuse pain and abdominal and pelvic pain. This is consistent with trauma theory, which posits that the body holds the effects of trauma and that they manifest frequently in physical pain and mental health concerns (Van der Kolk, 2015). Stored trauma from sexual abuse (and other kinds of abuse) can lead to unexpected, unpredictable nervous system responses to both real and perceived threats in life; including the fight/flight, fawn, or freeze response. It can also lead to the body remaining mobilized for threat in a chronic way, causing a continuous anxious state or shut down state mimicking persistent depressive disorder (Fisher, 2021).
Self-protection is a skill that must be learned for survivors, because the intense breach of boundary that occurs in sexual abuse can instill a false belief that the person is not to be protected. Healing from childhood sexual abuse takes time, patience, persistence, specialized professional help, resources, psychoeducation, support, and practices to produce safe embodiment and restore self-worth.
Spiritual/Religious Abuse: Spiritual/Religious abuse occurs when spiritual ideas, doctrines, rules, or/and positions of power/leadership are used to harm, exploit, control, diminish, or manipulate within a spiritual/religious community. Spiritual/religious abuse usually involves one person or a small group of people seeming to have “the answers” for other people. Often, spiritual abuse is the attempt of a religious group or an individual in a position of religious authority to gain control over a person. Something that makes spiritual abuse unique is that because it involves the sacred, its impact can ignite an existential crisis, which can bring up confusion about the existence of God. As a result, some people who have experienced spiritual abuse are left with a sense that their connection to the sacred has been ruined or tainted. (APA taskforce, N.D.).
Financial Abuse: Financial abuse is actions taken to control the finances of another person. This includes controlling a person’s ability to acquire, use, and maintain financial resources (Gordon, 2022). Financial abuse is used to keep people trapped in relationships or living situations. It is also a tool to create or maintain a power differential in a relationship, where one person is dependent upon another and may feel obligated to do what they are told or do things the way the person controlling the money wants them. Some tactics used in financial abuse include: controlling spending money; offering to manage the finances to take the load off of the other person; not allowing free access to money; ruining someone’s credit history; making large purchases secretly to make debt for both people; feelings of entitlement to another person’s money or resources (demanding a paycheck be turned over); hiding money; minimizing your job or contribution.
People who experience financial abuse in their relationship may end up having difficulty finding financial independence or security. This interferes with independent living and stability, and can contribute to difficulties leaving abusive relationships permanently.
Neglect: Neglect is a type of abuse. The effects of neglect are long-lasting and far-reaching, much like other types of abuse. Neglect is the ongoing failure to meet a child’s basic needs, including: shelter, food, healthcare (medical, dental and mental health), education, love and belonging/connection, and safety. Neglect can also include not providing proper supervision. Emotional neglect refers to when a child does not receive the nurturing and stimulation they need (NSPCC, 2024). This can include ignoring a child’s emotions, needs or presence. It can also show up as humiliating, dismissing, invalidating, intimidating or isolating behaviors by parents or caregivers that cause a child to hide their emotions and/or needs.
Sometimes children who are emotionally neglected are placed in a parental role in the household and must care for younger children or for themselves due to a parent or caregiver not being present and available. This dynamic makes emotional neglect and mental health neglect sometimes difficult to identify because the parentified child appears to be extremely independent, functional, and capable. This creates a child who exists to please others and systems in order to validate their existence and can develop into perfectionism as a veneer to hide a feeling of emptiness within. Often people who have been neglected during their childhood have difficulty knowing and asking for what they need in a direct manner. They can become hyper-self-sufficient on one hand, and on the other hand, could repeat the neglect pattern in how they treat themselves, and develop difficulty with hygiene, completing tasks, self-care, finance management, educational pursuits, or job performance. These difficulties relate to the internalized feeling of being unworthy that comes from neglect during childhood.
Connection and trust might be a challenge for people who experienced neglect in childhood, because when neglect is ongoing during formative years, it becomes the internalized norm. There is an expectation that one’s needs will not be important to those around them, and that any request will cause them to be seen as a burden or bother. Mental health risks such as depression and addiction are higher for people who have experienced neglect during formative years. Inner child/inner parent work, compassionate self-care, professional help, and building secure attachment to self and Higher Power are all helpful for recovery from neglect.
Conclusion
Abuse of any kind is traumatizing, stressful and damaging. All forms of abuse are boundary violations. When a boundary is crossed in such a traumatizing way, it is like having someone else moving into your house and rearranging your furniture. IT is disconcerting and disorienting. It also unfortunately sets a pattern in place when this type of boundary violation occurs during formative years. Someone with power crossing personal boundaries becomes "normal." Therefore, the unconscious emotional instinct seeks to replay that story in an attempt to heal it (See https://www.findthekeytherapy.com/post/why-do-you-exist-here-the-gravity-of-trauma-and-leaving-orbit ).
Sometimes, because of the inherent confusion that happens with abuse, it can take a long time to realize one is being abused or has experienced abuse in the past. Shame and embarrassment can also be factors that keep us from seeking help when we are stuck in abusive situations. You are not alone. The hopeful news is that there is help for healing past abuse and for gaining the strength and clarity to leave current abusive situations. It takes time, patience, and support to walk the path away from what hurts and toward what heals.
Professional counselors, psychologists, licensed social workers, and licensed marriage and family therapists can be a source of help. It takes time to heal and shift your perspective of yourself after experiencing abuse. Staying close to strong supports, professional help, and programs designed to help with recovery from abuse are all essential elements of recovery from abuse. Reading this article is a great first step in seeing that the patterns you have survived might be abuse, and that means it is time to reach out for help and support to begin or continue the healing process. Those who enact abuse also need healing. And, it is important to focus on yourself and allow that person to realize their need for help and seek it on their own.
Please see the following list of resources for more information:
· The Mend Project: Help in Healing from Abuse https://themendproject.com/
· CODA (Codependents anonymous) – coda.org
· ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families) https://adultchildren.org/
References
APA (2018). Verbal Abuse. https://dictionary.apa.org/verbal-abuse
APA (N.D.). Abuse & The Church: Christianity, Spirituality, & Healing
APA (2024). Physical Abuse. https://dictionary.apa.org/physical-abuse
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (2011). Adult Manifestations of Childhood Sexual
Abuse. Committee Opinion, No. 498.
BreakTheSilenceDV (2019). Reactive Abuse: What It is and Why Abusers Rely on It.
DeWitt, H. (2022). What does reactive abuse look like, and how do I get through it?
Durvasula, R. (2024). It’s Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People.
Fisher, J. (2021). Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma: A Workbook for Survivors and Therapists.
Gordon, S. (2022). How to Identify Financial Abuse in a Relationship. Verywell Mind.
MEND Project (2023). https://themendproject.com/reactive-abuse/
NSPCC (2024). Neglect. https://www.nspcc.org.uk/what-is-child-abuse/types-of-abuse/neglect/
Saris, S. (2018). Gaslighting: Recognize Manipulative and Emotionally Abusive People-and Break Free. Hatchett Books.
Streep, P. (2023). 2 Kinds of Verbal Abuse and the Damage They Cause. Psychology Today.
Van der Kolk, B. A. (2015). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Womenslaw.org (2021). Emotional and Psychological Abuse. https://www.womenslaw.org/about-
abuse/forms-abuse/emotional-and-psychological-abuse
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