this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2024
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This might be a language think, but as I understand "abuse" implies some degree of intent, repetitiveness, or suppression of the victims response, no?
If someone is punched, you would typically call that assault, while if they are punched on several occasions while being prevented from seeking help, you would call it abuse.
Likewise, if someone is yelled at or scolded or manipulated on one occasion, you usually would say that they were "yelled at, scolded, or manipulated", while if it occurs systematically over time you would refer to it as abuse.
Please correct me if I'm wrong here
I think you’re wrong here. I think a person can be emotionally abusive without intending to be abusive. They might continually seek to block or inhibit the victim’s response, but they might not think of it as such.
My mother used to harangue me for hours at a time when I was a child. It was a textbook case of emotional abuse. Her intention was to protect herself from me, to raise me to be a good person by pointing out to me when I was being harmful to her. The trouble was, her perception of all this was off. I would hang out with my friends and she would take it as me not loving her, and then I’d be in for hours of her crying and talking to me in this horrible tone and her just laying out everything I’d ever done wrong, and she would be breathless and just keep going.
She wasn’t trying to hurt me. She was trying to protect herself. But she was hurting me.
She was one of the kindest, most generous people I’ve ever met. She was also deeply wounded, and miscalibrated in terms of her sense of proportion.