Emotional Abuse Is Just As Bad As Physical Abuse & This Is How A Brain Gets Affected
What according to you abuse is? Is abuse a term related to drugs alone? Abuse is any interaction in which one person behaves in a cruel, violent, demeaning or invasive towards other person or animal. Abuse occurs in different forms namely physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, intellectual abuse and spiritual abuse.
Are you being accused of cheating or your behavior is being controlled by other person’s words, accused of jealousy or possessiveness? Then, you are being emotionally abuse. On early stage these abuse does not affect your daily life but as it continues it may lead to psychological trauma such as anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation and self harm, eating disorder, post traumatic stress disorder.
Emotional abuse often termed as psychological abuse is a form of abuse in which one person shows behavior such as insults, humiliates and instills fear in other person in order to control them.
Emotional abuse happens not only in romantic relationship but also in parental and professional relationship. Even children are being emotionally abused in one or the other way, knowingly or unknowingly by their parents and family members. For instance, a child who is made repeatedly feel worthless, unloved, alone or scared, constant rejection, hostility, teasing, yelling, bullying, criticism and exposure to family violence.
Emotional abuse involves verbal abuse such as yelling & insulting. Rejection such as constantly rejecting thoughts, ideas and opinion. Gaslighting is making oneself doubt their own feelings and thoughts by manipulating the truth.
Emotional or Psychological abuse affecting brain:
“Emotional abuse is worse than a broken bone”
“Continuous yelling and humiliation leads to brain destruction”When an person is emotionally or psychologically abuse for a longer period of time, shrinking of brain happens. The two major structure of the brain being affected is Hippocampus and Amygdala.Hippocampus is a complex structure of the brain involving in learning and memory. when a child is being emotionally or psychologically abused it affects the learning in children since any piece of information is only first stored in short term memory and then to long term memory or gets deleted. If there is impairment in memory then it affects the learning in children.
Also, when a person is on continuous stress, there takes place a flight or fight response releasing a stress hormone named “Cortisol” which attacks the neurons of hippocampus leading to decrease in size.
Amygdala closely works with Hippocampus. It is a part of the brain concerned with emotional and behavioral function, strong reactions such as fear, anger and love and lust. When a person is abused for a longer time, swelling of amgydala happens. When someone is emotionally abused their amgydala is constantly on alert so slight alert of abuse also gets reacted.
The Right and left brain gets affected and fails to get connected to each leading to anxiety, depression, hostility, anger, dissociation or drug abuse in later stages.
