The very physical violence in psychological abuse

It’s amazing the physical impact on a person who is shouted at.  There may not be a single bruise on their body, but the spirit is bruised, and there are physical changes within the body, including in the brain, which isn’t just in our head, but it’s in other areas, including the stomach, the heart, and wherever brain and neurological matter exists.  Being verbally abused and intimidated has a very physical impact on our body and on our overall being.

And then there is the confusion that occurs in other psychological abuses, like emotional and spiritual abuse, where the abuser uses either the majesty of trickery to ‘psych’ their prey out or they belittle them, and the worst of this is when they make themselves out to be either completely innocent or exonerated and justified in the toxic act.  There is a high degree of gaslighting done in the kind of abuse that leaves a person traumatised even as they blame themselves in myriad ways.  Such trauma always has a physical effect; yet, not a bruise exists anywhere that can be seen by a layperson.

It’s in the science of MRIs and other expert medical analysis that will reveal the fuller physical magnitude of the bodily damage incurred.  There is nothing surer, however, that psychological abuse has a physical impact, and impact is the perfect word, because we can only imagine what happens to the physical body when there is physical impact.

I hope you can see that you can never underestimate the actual extent of violent damage done by the supposedly intangible abuse that is purely psychological in nature.

Not that you would ever consider yourself fortunate to be physically harmed — because physical abuse that very often leads to marks, maiming and even death is unconscionable — but I know many who have been harmed in non-physical ways who have lamented the fact that there weren’t physical signs of the damage done.  Psychological damage, in and of itself, is a bizarre kind of betrayal, where the victim knows how much damage has been done but is in the unenviable position to need to prove it.  It is always diabolical to experience great harm and not have people believe that it happened.  But then again, there are many who deny the damage done even when it is obvious to see!  No wonder victims of abuse can often feel they’re going mad.  In situations like this, there is never any justice.

Those who are in psychologically abusive relationships need to know that the damage being done to them is not insignificant.  They only need to ask those who love them, who watch on and see the devastation first-hand and second-hand, who have no power to stop what should be stopped.  There is a word for it: anguish.

The greatest tragedy in these situations of domestic abuse is the abuser does not repent.  They not only continue their reprehensible behaviour — (and so what if it’s only every month or so!  Once is too often) — but they never own their behaviour, and they never apologise.  Even if they did apologise, what kind of apology would it be if they just kept on doing what they were supposedly sorry for?  But no, there is no apology, for this seems to be an entitlement to aggression and violence, and this is license for them to violate and injure.

There is only one recourse for the very physical non-physical violence that occurs in relationships where verbal, emotional, or spiritual abuse or neglect takes place.  Include financial abuse in that, because wherever there is psychological control with entitlement, the purse strings are usually part of it.  The one recourse is to force an impasse.  I recognise that not everybody is in the immediate position to do that.  But the situation of abuse must end sooner rather than later, before more very physical non-physical damage is done.

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