I've heard people say that physical abuse is just as bad as mental abuse, but wouldn't physical abuse also be mental abuse? Do you agree that both are just as bad or do you think one is worse than the other? Also please give your thoughts on why. GO!
I think a lot of opinions on this matter come down to individual experiences, counter to experimental research. I guess you're asking for individual experiences, but then the thread wouldn't be of a whole lot of value. If you were asking for help on your individual experience of abuse, things would be different. I guess I'll leave up to the other mods.
I don't really see it as an issue of contention. Mental abuse can be physical abuse too, as there is a neurological correlate of both kinds of abuse.
There isn't really a way to compare most peoples' experiences of abuse. A lot of factors go into it, including genetic resilience, addiction, intellectual proclivity, and support of friends and family, including whether the abuse was predominantly physical, or only secondarily so. For example, someone who's relatively intelligent is probably more susceptible to mental abuse, but they more likely will be better able to advocate for themselves at a younger age to be put in an atmosphere wherein they won't be physically abused. It's just pretty complicated, more of a qualitative than a quantitative circumstance.
I'm just asking for people's personal thoughts on the matter, there's no right or wrong answers. I don't see why that would make the thread of little value. It's just meant to be a discussion.
To me they are often times overlapping concerning physical abuse with comorbid mental abuse (It's rare to have physical abuse without mental abuse) but there are many cases in suburban households where physical abuse is clearly considered crossing line, but some forms of mental abuse, especially in moderation, is really not considered horrible, even though it can have profound impacts on the child's psyche. Often times parents do not fully realize they are engaging in some forms of mental abuse, especially if the parent has OCD/perfectionism and thinks their behavior is normal or appropriate. A parent would hesitate to reveal in front of a police officer/judge something like "Well I hit the child again because I didn't think they learned their lesson", while on the other hand a parent with OCD may not see anything wrong with revealing something like "I made them scrub the floors for an hour because they got one problem wrong on their test and they needed to learn to do things right".
Personally I think relatively mild mental abuse, even just a parent with a temper or OCD, can lead to difficulties at school, where the child is then picked out and bullied - this has an enormous impact on the direction of the child's life. So even if the mental or physical abuse itself is not severe, it can lead to severe difficulties later on with peers. With the current state of technology most kids never escape from the bullying save for when they are asleep.
I think both mental abuse and physical abuse need more awareness and respect, but the majority of people are aware of physical abuse. On the other hand many people dismiss mental abuse.
Personally I had no experience with physical abuse so my post does not speak much on that subject, but let it be known I have great respect for physical abuse.
Anybody looking for a good read on both kinds of abuse should read a classic book called "A child called it".
There are different severities of both, one is not necessarily always worse than the other. I think there are instances where emotional pain can be worse than having the shit kicked out of you. I don't think physical abuse can be seperated from mental abuse though... Yeah I really don't think you can quantify one as being ultimately worse than the other without mentioning specific instances.
I agree and would venture to say you can't have physical abuse without mental abuse. Not just because I personally think physical abuse is also emotional abuse, but also the fact that if someone's beating on their spouse or children or whoever they're going to be engaging in verbal abuse as well unless they're mute or something. Good post btw.
I do not think that physical abuse can ever be separate from mental abuse; there has to be mental abuse going on for the physical abuse to take place. But mental abuse alone causes physical symptoms (stress) which can make a person physically ill so in a way they are still intertwined.
I'm just asking for people's personal thoughts on the matter, there's no right or wrong answers. I don't see why that would make the thread of little value. It's just meant to be a discussion.
I guess a better way of putting it is that mental abuse and physical abuse are both such loaded topics, so that there's a lot of complication involved and simply pitting one against the other is bound to be reductive. If you want, I can change the title to something like "Comparing Physical and Mental Abuse" so that people don't think it's an argument. Or we can go with your title. I'm not trying to be adversarial, just my impression.
Ive suffered most every kind of abuse growing up. I completely agree physical abuse is also mental abuse.
Putting aside sexual abuse, which has had a devastating effect on my life and would call just as much an example of the worst of physical and mental abuse. Pure physical abuse, as in hitting, slapping, throwing stuff, beating. All of which I had to endure growing up, they are without a doubt damaging forms of mental abuse too. Having to live in fear of setting your abuser off, walking on eggshells, it's all the same. It's just as damaging as having to walk on egg shells and live in fear because of purely verbal emotional and psychological abuse.
Without a doubt unless maybe your physical abuse was so bad it left you with permanent physical disability, which most isn't and fortunately mine wasn't, then without question the worst damage is all from mental scars and damage. Physical wounds heal, they form scars, broken bones get better. But you don't have to do much for that to happen, with time and space, you will get better to the extent the human body can. But the psychological damage, the mental side of the abuse that any and all forms of abuse, physical or exclusively psychological, can cause, are nearly always far more debilitating, they can last a lifetime. And generally won't all go away without a lot of help and a lot of time, a lot more time than most injuries take. I have more scars from cutting myself when I was younger as a result of the mental side of being abused and traumatized than from the actual physical abuse. Looking back in hindsight, I'm 27 now, the bulk of the seriously bad abuse and traumatic shit I endured was from ages 5-17, after that all I had to deal with was my mothers abuse, which was mostly verbal. And unlike earlier in my life, her abuse was mostly unintentional, she had gone through a lot of pain in her life and was trying her best to be a mother to me, it just often wasn't enough. She never raped me or molested me, she only rarely hit me, but her words could be tremendously painful sometimes. But I'd dealt with that what felt like my whole life by that point, and relatively speaking for me this was a huge improvement on what id lived with until then. She may have been emotionally and psychologically abusive, telling me no one was as screwed up and troublesome a daughter as I was, that I ruined her life and her marriage and her social life, etc etc. But it wasn't always bad with her, and she never did anything to leave me traumatized after like the sexual abuse I went through. It was still bad though and after a few years of it I tried to kill myself, and after surviving that chose to run away instead. I mean maybe it doesn't count as running away if you do it after reaching adulthood, but I didn't exactly move out, I packed a bag and took off with nothing but myself, my phone, clothes and some personal stuff. Wound up homeless in a city about a days drive away where I knew a couple friends from way back. One of those friends took me in not long after (he was living with his parents at the time but managed to convince them to take me in once he told them I was homeless), admited he loved me soon after, and after thinking it over, we got together. Moved to our own place a couple years later after both his mom and me in our first ever moment of agreement ever both told him we didn't want to continue living with the other and that we're both adults in an adult sexual relationship and should have a place of our own. That was several years ago now and fortunately since getting away from my mom in my very early 20s life is finally free of daily abuse.
Unless you have been beaten and brutalized so badly that you're either permanently disabled or live with chronic physical pain because of it, then I would say without a doubt all forms of abuse do their greatest damage in the mind. Especially if you were abused in childhood andor adolescence. Fortunately you can take a lot of beating and come out of it relatively unscathed physically. And I'm fortunate to have no chronic physical pain to deal with because of what I went through, the psychological pain from it all however is not so easily healed. All trauma if it's bad enough can potentially cause PTSD which I was first diagnosed with as a preteen when I was taken to the a child psych for my behavioral problems. Most of my symptoms are related to being sexually abused, but some stem more from the broader physical and psychological abuse I went through. For example unconsciously flinching if people raise their hands a certain way or reacting physically defensively toward innocent gestures. As an example I sometimes react dramatically towards my boyfriend when he tries to say, innocently reach out to touch me or something like that if I'm not expecting it. I'm lucky to have such a wonderful compassionate man, he's been extremely understanding of all the problems I have because of what I went through. What I'm getting at here is how significant long lasting psychological damage can result from physical abuse. I have similar problems from the psychological abuse I went through, like I have had my bf react very surprised by how easily i interpret even the smallest stuff as feeling like he's yelling at me. Then he gets upset that he has so much trouble trying to say anything to me that could be interpreted as negative. Even if he's not trying to be mean or upset me or anything like that. He's expressing legitimate concerns and frustrations and being very restrained all things considered. I just have a lot of trouble hearing negative things about my behavior in any context other than yelling and screaming and attacking me as a person as being bad and disgusting and deserving of hate and punishment and pain. I grew up with a lot of it and it doesn't take much for me to react as if it's happening again even when it's not.
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I really have put him through a hell of a lot being with me with my heroin addiction, and i deserve a lot worse than him being upset with me. Rightfully any normal person would have broken up with me for the shit ive done, but he stays with me and we keep trying to work it out, he keeps trying to support me and be supportive in trying to get me away from the drugs and drug lifestyle. It makes me feel so sad and guilty sometimes that i can't be as positive an influence to him as he has been to me. I try, i try really hard to be a good girlfriend and be supportive for him and take care of him like he takes care of me, unfortunately as much as we both love each other and both try to help each other, I'm very broken and while he's certainly had some rough shit happen to him, we both know my mental problems and addiction make for an uneven distribution of effort in our relationship. I just try to do my best and make up for my many problems with my good qualities (that i even acknowledge having any good qualities is an example of how much better i am mentally today than i used to be, and a lot of that is thanks to him). He knows I love him, but I'm an addict, and I have a lot of mental problems, and he knows that unfortunately for him, my problems are a package deal with the parts of me he fell in love with, at least at this point in our lives they are. Maybe one day it'll be different and ill continue getting better and maybe one day get off the drugs and stay off them, and then maybe, if we get better financially and doing all that doesn't take until I'm 40, maybe we'll have kids one day and give them a better childhood than either of us got.
But back on topic. I firmly believe that abuse is abuse, it's all bad, it can all cause up to a life time of damage to its victims. Especially when those victims are children. No one deserves to be abused or suffer trauma. Sometimes trauma in life is unavoidable. Most people will suffer at least one traumatic event before reaching adulthood. Trauma in the form of personal victimization however is especially likely to cause ptsd, and abuse that is long lasting, both in adulthood but especially during development years, can not only also result in trauma and PTSD, but cause any number of emotional and psychiatric problems on its own, like depression, anxiety disorders, suicidality. These are all problems of the mind. And regardless if those problems of the mind are caused by trauma, abuse, intentional or not, physical or not. They can all last for years. And the division between physical and mental is very very murkey. Theres no clear line to be had here. Physical abuse can cause PTSD and depression and anxiety, both of which are problems of the mind. Purely verbal abuse can cause depression, anxiety, maybe even ptsd as well. It doesn't really matter either way, depression alone is nothing short of a living hell. And hell is hell, it doesn't matter how you wound up there. It doesn't matter which mental disorders cause it or how many you have or what events or crappy genes caused them. All of it, can lead to a life, a mind, a reality, that seems not worth living in.
And finally, likewise, purely mental abuse, just like all abuse, is statistically linked with poorer physical health, not just from psychologically rooted behavior like self neglect, self harm, suicide attempts, addictions, and so on. But also in the form of increased risk of heart disease, autoimmune disease, all sorts of seemingly completely physical diseases that were it not for science and data collection we wouldn't perhaps think could be caused by purely psychological damage. But it can. All of it put together results in an overall lower average lifespan, and lower quality of life for the survivors of abuse.
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In many ways I'm lucky, I try to think of the things that are lucky about my life rather than focus on all the bad things that have happened to me. It took a while before I was able to think of anything in my life as lucky or positive. But things could be a lot worse. I found the love of my life, who's stood by me despite how much damage I've caused in my heroin addiction. Despite having lied and stolen, despite having done shit I dont know that ill ever forgive myself for, that I even deserve to forgive myself for let alone deserve to be forgiven by him. Shit I can't bring myself to say aloud or tell another soul even on blue light, a place full of people who like me have made some horrible mistakes in life and hurt those we love the most. Despite all that I'm miraculously lucky enough to have someone who has stayed with me through all of it, who I love more than I've ever loved anyone or anything. Who still loves me and stays with me despite having every reason in the world to hate me and dump me back onto the street. I'm lucky because so many people, men and women, having gone through the kind of shit I have, done have the good fortune to find escape from abuse as young as I did. It's tragically common for people with my kind of history to wind up as adults in relationship after relationship with people who continue to abuse them. Another way in which such abuse can last a lifetime. The only thing different with me was I got lucky. I could have so easily, effortlessly never met my boyfriend. I met him purely by a stroke of chance long ago. By being in the right place at the right time. I could have missed him by just doing something different that one day. I could have run away somewhere else and never reunited with him, I chose which city to run away too simply cause I knew the most people there by a number of 1, a single other friend winding up not leaving where I came from, a single extra friend moving to Melbourne instead of Sydney, and I'm homeless there instead. I could have died in my suicide attempt, granted it was somewhat a cry for help, I called a friend and my brother to tell them I was sorry, which caused them to call the ambulance. But it was still a serious overdose I took, they could have been out, I could have lost consciousness a few seconds earlier. I lost consciousness only seconds after telling them I was sorry and loved them, that being how they realized something was very wrong. If that had happened I would never have known how good my life would soon after be. Or I could have just as easily met some abusive asshole instead. And have some other woman wind up with him instead of me. I accepted his offer to move in off the street purely because he was the first to offer, I would have just as easily accepted an offer from anyone else my instincts didn't tell me to stay away from. And my instincts aren't perfect. When I was about 15-17ish I got together with a guy who wound up being abusive to me, he was violent, cheated on me, aggressively pressured me for sex and anything else he wanted. I didn't dump him for acting like the asshole he was, I didn't tell him how much he hurt me. It sounds so pathetic to say it, but I actually went out of my way to keep him even after he started cheating and a long time after I woke up to how he was just using me. Eventually, I finally got sick of how he treated me, but that was after he'd gotten bored of me and after pathetically trying to convince him to stop cheating and not leave me despite how obvious it is to me now 10 years later that I shoulda left the second he raised a hand to me, the second he pushed me into doing shit I wasn't ok with. I see that now at 27, after spending most of my 20s with a wonderful man who made me realize I have to have something good or redeeming about me if he wants me. And showed me how someone with a healthy self esteem expects to be treated.
But at 16, sure I didnt like how my lowlife piece of shit ex treated me but it was still better than I was used too at the time. The tragedy is I'm certain that's how it probably happens to most girls and guys who wind up with abusive partners after an abusive upbringing. If you've been treated like shit your whole life, you have no basis for comparison. And having had to cope with it for so long, you give off the subtle body language of a victim. So you attract assholes and scumbags who's entire method for feeling good about themselves is by hurting other people, you attract abusers. Who else would either put up with or consider themselves so undeserving, and be so self hating and self loathing to stay in a relationship with that kind of person? People who've already been made to feel like that because of previous abuse. That's who of course. People who've already had more than their fair share of abuse in their lives, and expect it or feel they deserve it or don't know anything else. I didn't feel anything other than that until I met my partner. I would just as easily have tolerated in my early 20s after running away the kind of shit I tolerated at 16 or continued to tolerate from my mom from 18 onwards. At the time I was more focused at escaping my mother I wasn't thinking at all about the abuse I would have tolerated from a boyfriend. But like I said, I got very lucky. Everything happened in exactly the way it had to happen for my life to wind up like this. It's still often painful and hard, I'm still a daily heroin addict, I was an addict long before I ran away, Ive been numbing my pain with opiates, alcohol, and other drugs for a long time just as I numbed it with self harm before that. But I'm extremely grateful for what I have, and I feel very lucky to have it. Maybe I'm not lucky compared to a lot of other people, but the way I see it, I'm not a lot of other people, I'm not a lot of people who have gone through worse than I have either, I'm just me, and my life seemed to me to be pretty shit for a long time, it didn't feel like bad luck at the time. It just felt like reality and I didn't really think about how different my life might have been until about 20, when enough of it had ended and I started processing what id gone through, especially the worst shit like being raped and sexually abused, which happened around 11-13ish, I'm not great at remembering specific ages around that time. I remember specific events, and the general memory of repeated events, but not much else or what ages they're from, just that it happened before 14 for a couple years. As well as the worst of the psychological and physical abuse which would have been around 5-13. The shit that first caused my PTSD. I didn't process any of it or really even contemplate the severity and seriousness of what was done to me until about 20. And that was when I became as depressed as ive ever been and is when my drug habit really started getting out of control for the first time. Combine that with tamer, less traumatic, verbal abuse from my mother and it eventually ended with me trying to kill myself. Which lead to getting some help and running away and so on. Ive spent way too much of my life suffering already. My life has been better for quite a long time now until the last year of my heroin habit getting bad enough to put my relationship in serious danger. I don't plan to let my addiction take the good ive found in my life away from me without a fight.
EDIT: So I kinda had a shot of crystal and heroin before coming on blue light, and as usual for when I do that, and sometimes even if I haven't. I turned a not enormously complicated point into a thesis on abuse and the completely unrelated topic of my life more broadly... Sooo for any who don't care about my life probably everyone except maybe nutty (I'm not that interesting, I can't blame you) I've helpfully nsfwed the long irrelevant tangents resulting from the fact I type at the same speed I think and am in the habit or writing posts as whatever thoughts come into my head and edit it after posting. That and crystal meth, fortunately it's not common I use it.
Jess, I am so sorry. Every time I read your words about what you endured as a child I get so angry and sad. Where were your relatives? Where were your teachers? Did no one notice that a little 5 year old was suffering?? I know that kids hide their wounds very well. All kids want is love and stability. Unfortunately familiarity substitutes for stability in abusive families and some kids will go to great lengths to protect it because the unknown is a thousand times scarier. I am just really sorry and I think you are an amazing person to still be fighting for yourself. (())
Thank you for your kind words herbivore. I remember our previous posts too.
I started writing a reply, but it wound up pretty much my longest post ever. Waaaay too long to post here when it's off topic. So I'm gonna pm it to you instead soon as I get the chance. Thanks again for your nice remarks.
To me they are often times overlapping concerning physical abuse with comorbid mental abuse (It's rare to have physical abuse without mental abuse) but there are many cases in suburban households where physical abuse is clearly considered crossing line, but some forms of mental abuse, especially in moderation, is really not considered horrible, even though it can have profound impacts on the child's psyche. Often times parents do not fully realize they are engaging in some forms of mental abuse, especially if the parent has OCD/perfectionism and thinks their behavior is normal or appropriate. A parent would hesitate to reveal in front of a police officer/judge something like "Well I hit the child again because I didn't think they learned their lesson", while on the other hand a parent with OCD may not see anything wrong with revealing something like "I made them scrub the floors for an hour because they got one problem wrong on their test and they needed to learn to do things right".
Personally I think relatively mild mental abuse, even just a parent with a temper or OCD, can lead to difficulties at school, where the child is then picked out and bullied - this has an enormous impact on the direction of the child's life. So even if the mental or physical abuse itself is not severe, it can lead to severe difficulties later on with peers. With the current state of technology most kids never escape from the bullying save for when they are asleep.
I think both mental abuse and physical abuse need more awareness and respect, but the majority of people are aware of physical abuse. On the other hand many people dismiss mental abuse.
Personally I had no experience with physical abuse so my post does not speak much on that subject, but let it be known I have great respect for physical abuse.
Anybody looking for a good read on both kinds of abuse should read a classic book called "A child called it".
Why Would a parent with OCD be mentally abusive? What kind of comparison is that. I don't think you understand OCD, there are so many variations to OCD and no connection with OCD and abuse especially saying they're going to make the kids scrub the floor for hours because they got one question wrong on a test. I think kids are more likely to be abused by someone who has bipolar or mental disorder like that.
OCD doesn't necessitate abuse but those sorts of personality traits like perfectionism even can lead to situations where a child is being abnormally punished for minutiae that a normal parent wouldn't have noticed or cared about, I would say that this is a form of mental abuse in my opinion, and if you count hard labor at some point it even becomes physical abuse (once again in my opinion). I'm not saying the degree of severity here is extremely high though just to be clear, although there is much worse than scrubbing floors, that just happened to be what popped into my head.
I'll add that being punished with hard labor for getting one question wrong is a very real occurrence, speaking from experience and speaking on behalf of others.
I think that you would find a higher incidence of mental abuse and physical abuse occurring under parents with OCD by the way, but I haven't seen studies for that, it's just my opinion. But once again it's not like parents with OCD = abuse 100% of the time, I'm sure some parents with OCD are great parents and I applaud those people.
I've heard people say that physical abuse is just as bad as mental abuse, but wouldn't physical abuse also be mental abuse? Do you agree that both are just as bad or do you think one is worse than the other? Also please give your thoughts on why. GO!
Id agree with you there as when does physical abuse not entail mental abuse. I have never suffered physical abuse (i was a scrappy kid and pretty fearless and violent for my young age so i could usually manage to come out on the winning end or atleast not have the same person bother me twice) but i did have to put up with a crazy mom who made life in our house hell at times. It took me a long long fucking time to get over that and it's only been the past few years i was able to put that behind me.
I guess a better way of putting it is that mental abuse and physical abuse are both such loaded topics, so that there's a lot of complication involved and simply pitting one against the other is bound to be reductive. If you want, I can change the title to something like "Comparing Physical and Mental Abuse" so that people don't think it's an argument. Or we can go with your title. I'm not trying to be adversarial, just my impression.
Sure you can change the title of the thread. I can see how it could be taken wrongly now the way I worded it. Sorry I'm a bit late, haven't been frequenting the site lately. I still need to catch up with all the posts here.
I am just really sorry and I think you are an amazing person to still be fighting for yourself. ((
))
