Passive Aggression, Emotional Abuse, & Co-Dependency

Emotional Abusers seek business, personal, family, and intimate relationships where they make you feel incompetent, less confident, and in need of them to succeed deep in the psyche of your being. They seek a co-dependent relationship with people in order to compensate for their fear of abandonment. It is however ironically this behavior that on longer time lines leaves them abandoned.

It becomes a vicious cycle where abusers create the conditions that lead them to want to abuse by controlling your image of yourself. A lower-self esteem person is an easier person to control. People who attack you without helping you are abusers by default. They want to lower yourself esteem and blind self-confidence. This is worse than physical abuse in my opinion.

I reviewed a lot of journals, summaries of journals, blogs, and other analysis in my discovery process on the foundations and tell tale signs of emotional abuse. I found this list below the most succinct in identifying emotional abusers. If people are displaying a consistent pattern of most if not all of these behaviors on a regular basis, you are being abused, tormented, and used, even by your loved ones, family, colleagues, friends, confident, etc.

People resort to passive aggressive abuse to control. The problem is that 1. abuse is wrong, and 2. even if we are wild and in need of moderation, the only legitimate way to get that from us is by asking in clear words with a compelling and reciprocally beneficial or sincerely sympathetically compelling reason that is not advocating codependency.

With this list if it nails someone you know, you will never see the same way again.

1. The abuser uses put downs and demeaning remarks to humiliate you in public; pointing out embarrassing moments and telling others that you are always doing things like that is one sign.

2. They use sarcasm to hurt you or make you feel bad about yourself. When you express hurt, they call it “teasing” or claim you are too sensitive.

3. They correct your behavior and with no follow up on how to improve.

4. They try to control finances and won’t allow you to spend money except as they see fit.

5. They blame you for their problems or unhappiness. “If you were only… (fill in the blank), I would feel better,” etc.

6. They are unable to show empathy or compassion you and your flaws.

7. They will use the silent treatment, or disengage, making you feel abandoned, and then criticize your feelings.

8. They share private information about you with other people.

9. They are unable to apologize – often making excuses for their behavior and blaming others.

10. They repeatedly cross boundaries with no regard for your feelings.

11. They often see themselves as victims and blame you for their problems. They are unable to take responsibility for their behaviors.

12. They want you to doubt yourself and your ability to do anything, because it makes them feel like less in the company of people with more confidence than them where they feel they would fail.

13. They can withhold sex to manipulate people.

14. They make subtle threats to scare you.

15. They are unable to laugh at themselves and cannot tolerate any appearance of lack of respect.

16. They are emotionally distant.

Independent of each other these above traits may not mean the person is an abuser. It is however when we see them in a pattern over time, combined or singularly, that we have an emotional abuser on our hands.

Emotional Abusers seek business and intimate relationships where they make you feel so incompetent, you turn to them on advice on how to do everything in life. That dependence creates what we call in psychology as codependency. This results in altering your reality such that it cannot thrive without them to help you. It also gives them control of you. Don't do it. Accept help but do not allow it to be a habit.

"Emotional abuse takes a huge toll on their victims – it can cause stress leading to anxiety, depression, and trauma. If allowed to continue, the victim can experience all kinds of physical illness as well. It can’t be allowed to continue."

"That may mean ending the relationship with the abuser. No matter what, a licensed mental health counselor can help you to recognize the signs of abuse and to help you with decision making."

Even if you read this list off to someone who subjects you to these behaviors, the hardest part is to accept that you must forgive them, and you must: because they know too not what they do. You will find them just as shocked as you when the list is in front of them. I assure you this is not how they see themselves. It was their coping mechanism for fear of losing, childhood neglect, or more. Most people do not wake up and say, "I want to be a hurtful person" such that I undermine my own welfare and end up alone, hurt, with nothing, in pain.

Forgive others when they know now what they do, but do not let them hurt you either. Call them out delicately and directly, but do not belittle or hurt them either.