What Are the Signs of Mental Abuse: 6 Ways to Recognize It

You don’t need to be in a relationship or married to experience abuse from someone. Coworkers, family, friends, all of them can show signs of mental abuse or be abusive towards you, and you should be careful not to let them.

According to Healthdirect, emotional abuse definition is as follows:

Emotional abuse is a common form of abuse that occurs in close relationships. It is also known as psychological abuse and includes verbal abuse.

Emotional abuse is about one person maintaining power or control over another person. It usually takes place between intimate partners or comes from a parent to a child. It can also happen in situations such as schools or workplaces.

If you feel you are mentally abused but aren’t sure, you most likely are. To help you give a clearer picture, we have some signs of mental abuse to identify the person you are dealing with or associated with is toxic.

Here are the most common signs of mental abuse:

Passive aggression

People with abusive behavior love the passive-aggressive game. Perfect for work, common at home, this behavior is one of the most used ones.

When a person is passive-aggressive, it means that you will never get a confrontation. No constructive arguments, and you will never fight, but, at the same time, you will always have trouble getting things done. 

If it is about work, some papers will always be missing, and you will be responsible for losing them when the boss calls the meeting, and at home, your favorite activity will never be possible for some reason. 

If you love Sunday night football, the abusive wife will always need you for something exactly at that time.

Jealousy

Jealousy shouldn’t be taken just as a couple’s problem. It is one of the very common signs of mental abuse in work, offices, schools, among family members, and in a mentally abusive relationship. When people feel jealous, they can portray their feelings in many ways. Looking down upon your work, acting possessive, humiliating you and similar behavior can be expected.

Feeling some jealousy every now and then is not something to be concerned about. But when it gets out of hand and the person feeling it does something too extreme to sabotage the person they are jealous of, it’s a sign to be concerned about. 

Extreme jealousy is a serious mental and emotional abuse symptom.

Control

If you have a problem with a person who is always trying to control you, then these are the signs of a mentally abusive relationship. They will always try to tell you what to do which doesn’t even make sense sometimes and this is one of the mental abuse symptoms.

Things must be done the way they want and all your actions must be in accordance with their needs and plans. Being controlled all the time is exhausting and should be stopped right away as controlling is one of the signs of mental abuse.

Bad temper

Some people are very hard to please.  

We say they are bad-tempered when they get angry very fast and it’s very hard to find a way to make them feel satisfied. If you live with such a person or have to spend a lot of time during the day, you will become frustrated and exhausted from always trying to meet their never-ending demands. 

If the behavior is accompanied by arguing, yelling and obsessive need of making things right even though nothing’s wrong, these are the signs of mental abuse.

Unpredictability

We all follow some sort of pattern. We expect other people to have certain patterns too so we can decide whether we like them or not. 

Sometimes, people have an unpredictable way of acting and communicating with you. Once they are sweet, kind, and friendly, but very fast they can turn into demanding, hostile, and unreasonable. 

For people you meet for the first time, it’s no big deal, but if you have to live with this kind of person then it’s a real hell.

Acting out of character very frequently is a characteristic trait of a mental abuser or an abusive relationship. If your partner is unpredictable to a very high extent, this can definitely be called one of the signs of mental abuse.

Verbal abuse

Maybe the most common and the worst of them all. 

Verbal abuse is something no person should tolerate, no matter if it’s marriage or any kind of relationship in question. 

The abuse might be obvious when a person swears, makes threats, order, judge, criticize, but it can be also in a more subtle form such as sarcasm, joking, or playing games that are abusive. This is why some people are not even aware that this is one of the signs of mental abuse.

Emotional abuse affects the person or victim negatively.

The video below discusses that emotional abuse can be more devastating than physical abuse. While wounds and bruises may leave scars, they will heal eventually. Emotional abuse can affect the development of your brain and your capacity to process emotions.

However, tolerating abusers can become a real problem that later might need to be treated with therapy and specialized counseling.