How to Recover from Verbal and Emotional Abuse

What we will learn here in how to recover from verbal and emotional abuse is as simple as learning where the world ends and you begin. In other words we will learn about our boundaries.

Welcome to our website. We are glad you are here. Why does verbal and emotional abuse hurt so much? How do we defend against it, and ultimately have victory over it? The key to how to recover from verbal and emotional abuse is in figuring out what it really is so we can start growing beyond it. The answer is surprisingly simple!

Some psychotherapists may not want you to know this, for they need patients, but I want to tell you the truth, in all of its simplicity up front, so you can get on with your life. Once you know a few basic things, you will have all the tools you need to do your own recovering, and your own healing, and all the weaponry you will need to identify future abusers and engage them on their own turf. Nevertheless, there are a few foundational facts that you need to learn about ‘you’ first.

Obviously, you are assessing your situation, or that of a friend, so there are desires to heal and to make some life changing choices. Why you have visited us tells us a lot about you. Researching on how to recover from verbal and emotional abuse says you are seeking a change for your self or a loved one. What are your feelings now about a certain situation in your life, perhaps at work, or within you own home? Are you or a loved one experiencing verbal and emotional abuse today? If you are, there is a high probability of a connection to your childhood; every abuse today has a link in early development. If you can spot the similarity, you can diffuse the abuse now and in the future. Seeing the relationship, and the unmet needs from that relationship will be a road map for the recovery.

Now we get to the simple part, the inside truth of the matter which most therapists want to take several years of your therapy money to tell you. All verbal and emotional abuse is violations of your personhood boundaries. I bet you did not know your personhood had boundaries did you? Alternatively, maybe you have never heard of your ‘personhood’. Well, we all have one, which is our higher order deified self or our original self, as the mystics would say. In addition, here is where we get to the childhood-connection part. Our parents teach us about our personhood very early on in life. We learn about our personhood from them, either in a good way or in a bad way. If our parents abused or neglected us, we need to learn what our parents did not teach us that are right about ourselves. The verbal and emotional abuse in your world today will come through gates in your city that your parents incorrectly taught you to leave open for intruders. How to recover from verbal and emotional abuse is simply a matter of finding those gates, learning about them, and then closing them to outsiders, and we are going to do all of that right here on this web page in one sitting! Do not worry about assessing your childhood right now, that may take a while, and you do not need to do it all at once.

Remember we said that all verbal and emotional abuse is violations of your personhood boundaries. What that means is abusers are skilled at getting inside your boundaries and violating your dignity to cause you shame and humiliation, and to empower themselves. Nowadays the law defines most violations such as rape, assault, racial and ethnic hatred, and harassment, for it overtly violates a person’s boundaries either physical or emotional. However, there are no laws to clarify the more subtle boundaries of your personhood in a legal sense, or to define violating acts to prosecute. Our culture is not that advanced yet, but someday it will be. Your recovery is as simple as seeing these spiritual boundaries and defending them aggressively.

In the meantime, we have to stick with defending ourselves personally, with awareness of ourselves, and defensive weapons. If someone rapes or assaults you, they have violated you ‘body space’. If someone verbally or emotionally abuses you, they have violated your ‘soul space’. Those wounds are just as damaging as anything physical is, and in some cases can be even worse! The problem is we cannot detect it, for the assault is subjective and we cannot define it, until now. The reason we cannot detect it is that we were not aware of what our personhood is. Therefore, we could not see the boundaries of it that the abuser is crossing. Well now, we will find out.

Each of us has a personhood, if we are aware of our personhood, and its boundaries then we can see a violation as it occurs, in real time! Our recovery is as simple as an awareness of our spiritual edges, and defending them.

Our personhood has five boundaries, or edges if you will. These boundaries are to see things through your own eyes, feel your own feelings, think your own thoughts, and make your own choices. The fifth and foundational boundary is we have the right to demand worship of the deity of our self, as we do those things. Good parenting from your mother and father would have shown you that all others must come into your world and respect those boundaries, and show deep reverence to you for the privilege to be a part of your precious world. You would have learned subconsciously that you could demand worship of yourself in your world. Your closest friends do that automatically, and loved ones do that to each other, and we call that respect, but it is in fact worship. That is good, and it is as it should be.

For your recovery you need to understand this fully: The closer one person gets to another, the less value the one approaching has, and the more value the approached person has. At the point where both values are the same, that defines a boundary, either physical or spiritual. Abusers are skilled at getting inside your spiritual city through one of your open gates if you allow them, and the result is humiliation and shame. They are good at getting inside your boundary, and withholding worship, for causing you shame, while they keep their action too subtle to put a finger on, until now.

Any action directed at you, which questions the integrity of your view of something, your thoughts, your feelings, your choices, and does not offer open respect to you in your world, is violating your dignity. You do not need to be able to put it into words yet, for it to be damaging. You will soon be able to do that, as you become more skilled with your recovery. The real good abusers are skilled in making their violations almost invisible, very discreet, but you still feel it. Over time, you will learn to tell what it was about a certain remark that violated your rights, of seeing, feeling, thinking, choosing, and being worshiped. As you reflect on your days activities in the evening, you will soon learn to see clearly the abuse as it happens, and see through the skill of the abuser. Recovery and your healing will come gradually as you learn to define a boundary violation, and become more skilled at defending your self in socially appropriate ways. Soon violators will learn of your skill and they will back off. Predatory personalities need weak people, and they are afraid of strong and honest people.

Every one of us deserves respect and reverence in our daily activities. The strong and assertive of us know how to demand that respect by our posture from the beginning. Those of us with a quieter and meeker personality depend on the good will of others to respect our boundaries and to give us the reverence we deserve. However lower order humans do not give lesser assertive people any respect, for they see only power, as they have no morals. Your recovery will allow you to do two things: first you will learn the skill to defend yourself, second, your spiritual healing and recovery will attract higher order souls into your life, who will worship you and respect you in personal and in business life. Spiritual healing of yourself attracts spiritually healed people into you personal and your professional life.

Now back to the beginning for a second.

The first step in how to recover from verbal and emotional abuse is therefore to learn how to project your power. This communicates to the aggressors that you are aware of your boundaries and you demand respect and worship. How to communicate that point is a skill you must learn on your own. This is because we all have different personalities and different approaches to communication.

I personally am not a good speaker or arguer, so I make it clear in my posture that I will have their respect or I will leave them. It does not matter what the relationship, whether in employment, marriage, business, or friendship. They know right up front I do not tolerate humiliation in any degree in any form, or I am gone.

Projected messages in your posture and spirit are not an acting skill you need to learn in theatre class somewhere. You project messages all the time. In fact, the reason you are having trouble with emotional abuse now is that you project the message you deserve it and will tolerate it! What you think about yourself, you project to everyone, and that message attracts predatory abusers as they see that message right away.

Sharks smell your blood in the water, if you quit bleeding, they will lose interest, and they will leave. This posture draws you into relationships with these people and into settings where you need to deal with them. The second you change your posture, the abuse will cease. If it does not cease, you leave them and find a nurturing relationship to replace it. Do not worry about the mechanics of the posture to tell others you demand worship and respect. All you need do is to start thinking it, and your body and your spirit will project it automatically.

Once you have realized you do deserve worship and respect from others in you daily life, and you decide to leave the abusers if it continues, a sense of power will come over you. Feeling powerless over abuse is what does have you down. Making choices to liberate yourself will make you see that your worship is in your and not your abuser’s hands. How to recover from verbal and emotional abuse is first about seeing your self as worthy of respect and worship, and being willing to leave those who do not worship you.

Once you make this decision, abusers will fall away from your life, and respectful people will fill those relationships in their place. How to recover from verbal and emotional abuse is to quit abusing yourself by tolerating the abuse from others. Life will send you relationships that mirror your exact views of you, and nothing more. Our friends treat us as we feel about ourselves. The reason the abuse hurts from others is that they are expressing from themselves what you feel deep inside already! Life is a mirror of what is within us, and we can change what we see if we do not like it, by changing what is within. When we come home to our authentic ‘Original Self,’ the abuse, and its effects will vanish without a trace or a scar.

For more on this subject please consider our first in series book Overcoming Depression from Emotional Abuse/The Tools of Your Mind. In it, we take you through your spiritual journey back home to your Original Self. We talk about God's purpose behind that soul’s journey, as we follow our heart’s dreams to our ultimate destiny. We answer many questions about selfishness, prosperity, psychotherapy, and finding our dreams and happiness. We share much about boundaries. We also talk about the spiritual controls we have within to bring our good to us. Those controls are our Sincerity Switch, Spontaneity Switch, and lastly our Feelings and Dreams Switch.

God bless you as you begin your new life today. We would love to hear from you. Please tell us how you are doing in your search for answers, and to share your trials and victories with us! We answer every Email personally.

Thanks for visiting!

Shayne and Lori North

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Overcoming Depression from Emotional Abuse/The Tools of Your Mind The Book