Types of Abuse: A Comprehensive Guide
Types of Abuse: A Comprehensive Guide
There are many different types of abuse.
Learning to name and identify all of them can be challenging.
Gaining insight and a deeper understanding will help you recognize various forms of abuse, what they look like, and how to respond.
The first essential step to freedom and healing from abuse is gaining clarity.
Clarity allows victims and their responders the ability to identify, name, and describe specific behavioral patterns regarding the abuse they experienced. Clarity is necessary to empower victims to overcome prolonged states of stressful confusion, find their voice, and effectively advocate for themselves.
Clarity allows victims and their responders the ability to identify, name, and describe specific behavioral patterns regarding the abuse they experienced. Clarity is necessary to empower victims to overcome prolonged states of stressful confusion, find their voice, and effectively advocate for themselves.
This guide explains 12 types of abuse and how to identify them.
This guide explains 12 types of abuse and how to identify them.
It also includes links to other pages on our website that provide further clarification.
It also includes links to other pages on our website that provide further clarification.
Emotional or Psychological abuse
Abusive relationships begin with hidden forms of emotional abuse.
Unlike physical abuse or sexual violence, emotional abuse is difficult to pinpoint for both the victim and those in whom they confide. Covert harmful behaviors are especially challenging to identify.
Hidden forms of abuse involve manipulation tactics that confuse the heart and the mind, leading the victim to question their reality and experiences. Because it is complicated, the victim may not have the words needed to describe what they are experiencing accurately. They probably have not yet identified that the core reason for their relationship problems is emotional abuse.
Overt emotional or psychological abuse - in the form of verbal assaults, raging, or concrete manipulation﹘can be easy to recognize.
Overt emotional or psychological abuse - in the form of verbal assaults, raging, or concrete manipulation﹘can be easy to recognize.
On the other hand, covert emotional abuse (“CEA”) is much more challenging to identify and difficult to confront because there are usually multiple behaviors being used simultaneously that cause victims to feel confused and bewildered.
Covert Emotional Abuse
Covert Emotional Abuse is the hidden, hard-to-name, and repeated behaviors used to assert power and control over another person, ultimately causing harm.
Here are some questions to consider to help you to determine whether CEA is present:
A ‘yes’ to one or more of these questions may indicate that covert emotional abuse is the core relationship problem.
Below are some of the most common and devastating types of covert abuse.
Withholding
Withholding is one of the most destructive forms of abuse.
In withholding, the abuser refuses to communicate or acknowledge or validate their partner’s efforts to communicate a hurt, disappointment, or reasonable concern. It can also look like withholding encouragement, celebration, or acknowledgment of the victim’s accomplishments or minimizing a positive event or outcome taking place in the victim’s life.
Through withholding, the abuser may shut the victim out emotionally and physically by refusing to provide eye contact or speak to them, touch them, or in other ways that might make the victim feel they are irrelevant to the abuser.
Abusive withholding is different than when the one who is being harmed needs to step away from communication or physical intimacy as a boundary to allow them to heal from destructive behaviors. Telling an abuser, “I need to take a break from communicating for an hour or two to process what you’ve said, self-regulate, and collect my thoughts. But I will re-engage in a couple of hours,” is not withholding. That is placing a healthy boundary.
In a healthy relationship, needing space to gather one’s thoughts is entirely different than imposing a time of withholding communication or affection to block conversation or punish the victim.
gaslighting
Gaslighting, one of the most common and yet misunderstood types of covert abuse we see, is highly destructive.
Gaslighting happens when the abuser manipulates their target through lies, partial lies, omissions, re-writing history, and other tactics intended to make the victim question their sanity and reality. For example, a gaslighter’s response to a victim’s reasonable concern about something that happened might be, “You’re imagining things; I never said that.”
While it might sound innocent enough, the repeated use of these types of responses or behaviors causes the victim to question their memory and perceptions. They may become highly confused and concerned that they cannot trust their perspective or personal account of any circumstance.
Gaslighting breeds deep-seated self-doubt.
Check out our resources on abusive gaslighting HERE.
Double Abuse®
Double Abuse is a secondary form of abuse that takes place when victims finally find the courage to speak up or reach out for help—and rather than being believed or receiving support, victims are instead minimized, criticized, ignored, and/or even shunned by family, friends, religious, or professional communities.Covert Emotional Abuse is the hidden, hard-to-name, and repeated behaviors used to assert power and control over another person, ultimately causing harm.
A responder’s unintended or intentional, harmful responses exacerbate the victim’s trauma from the original abuse, causing further harm.
While a desire to help a victim or their partner is noble and good, it is not enough to make a meaningful impact.
Even if you have the right heart behind your words, if you respond from ignorance or bias, you may unintentionally harm them.
Knowing how to respond to someone who has been impacted by abuse is essential to prevent this type of harm.
Learn more about Double Abuse here.
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Domestic Violence
(Also called Intimate Partner Violence, Relationship Violence, or Domestic Abuse)
Domestic Violence is a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship by one person over another person, whether through physical, sexual, emotional, economic, or psychological action or threat of an action, that leads to the unfair treatment of the other. Domestic violence often leads to the victim developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Physical Abuse is the intentional use of force that results in added fear or bodily injury, such as punching, slapping, pinching, choking, kicking, or shoving.
Sexual Abuse is a sexual act forced upon another without their consent or pressuring them into compliance.
Emotional Abuse involves acts to undermine the target’s sense of self-esteem or self-worth, often through constant criticism, minimization, name-calling or raging, falsifying information, accusations, and other behaviors that seek to undermine the victim.
Financial Abuse is when a person controls or restrains another’s ability to acquire, use, or maintain financial resources to which they are entitled.
Psychological abuse, which is often used interchangeably with emotional abuse, in its purest form, involves the perpetrator causing fear through intimidation, threats, and forced isolation.
Technological Abuse is a pattern of behavior intended to harm, threaten, extort, shame, etc., another person through the use of technology.
Damage to property or pets is a form of retaliation or intimidation to instill fear and compliance. When one physically damages property or harms pets, it often impacts the victim in a way similar to physical assault.
Simply stated, all forms of abuse are intended to power over and control the victim, allowing the abuser to maintain the position of power in the relationship while sanitizing the abuser from responsibility.
What Many Miss About Domestic Violence
Many communities across the country still consider Domestic Violence to solely be physical violence, but this is not accurate.
The Centers for Disease Control and numerous scholarly studies describe domestic violence in a much broader definition, with an emphasis on the severity of emotional abuse.
Here are a few overlooked types of domestic violence:
Financial Abuse
Financial Abuse is when the abuser maintains total control of financial resources by stalling or withholding financial information, barring access to money, intervening without the victim’s mutual consent, or intimidating the victim into compliance. The victim of financial abuse is pressured or forced to become financially dependent and controlled.
The abuser may also refuse to allow their partner to have a job, make money, or have any input in the financial decision-making of the couple.
Another tactic of financial abuse is where the abuser withholds finances that would allow for their partner to care for themselves or their children, such as food, clothing, medication, or shelter, usually while the abuser overspends on themself.
You can learn more about financial abuse here.
Verbal Abuse
Verbal Abuse happens when negative statements are directed toward someone, causing emotional harm.
These statements could be insulting, humiliating, or threatening and can take the form of harsh language, undeserved accusations, harsh or chronic criticism, intimidation, judgments, name-calling, orders and threats, put-downs, ridiculing, and/or teasing at the victim’s expense.
Here are some of the most common different types of overt verbal abuse:
Bullying
The Centers for Disease Control and Department of Education define bullying this way:
“[A]ny unwanted aggressive behavior(s) by another youth or group of youths, who are not siblings or current dating partners, that involves an observed or perceived power imbalance, and is repeated multiple times or is highly likely to be repeated. Bullying may inflict harm or distress on the targeted youth including physical, psychological, social, or educational harm.
Common types of bullying include:
Bullying can also occur via the use of technology, which is called electronic bullying or cyberbullying. A young person can be a perpetrator, a victim, or both (also known as a “bully/victim”).
Bullying can be hard to detect, which is why it is often referred to as covert bullying. Learn more about Covert Forms of Bullying here.
SEXUAL ABUSE
Sexual Abuse is any non-consensual, unwanted sexual contact or sexual maltreatment imposed upon another.
Sexual abuse may occur in any romantic relationship or partnership, including marriage. Some people refuse to acknowledge marital sexual assault or abuse based on the faulty belief that, once married, partners are always entitled to sex with their partner. Because of this and possibly for many other reasons, sexual assault or coercion among intimate partners is unfortunately common (although exact statistics vary).
Sexual coercion in a relationship takes place when one partner feels coerced or threatened into sexual relations, whereas sexual assault takes place when there is no consent, forced or not. Either way, it’s abuse and incredibly destructive to romantic relationships.
Sexual coercion in a relationship takes place when one partner feels coerced or threatened into sexual relations, whereas sexual assault takes place when there is no consent, forced or not. Either way, it’s abuse and incredibly destructive to romantic relationships.
CHILD ABUSE
Child abuse is best described as verbal, physical, sexual, or emotional harm caused by the action or inaction (or neglect) toward a child, especially by a parent or caregiver.
(The same is true for elder abuse and abuse of the disabled.)
And yes, emotional abuse by parents is a skyrocketing societal problem.
Institutional Abuse
Institutional Abuse occurs when power is misused to intimidate, silence, offend, degrade, or humiliate, resulting in the mistreatment of individuals who are part of the organization or who are helped by the organization.
Institutional abuse occurs when an organization denies a victim’s story, justifies the perpetrator’s actions, or avoids the issue altogether.
Some examples of institutional abuse include: publicly promoting abusers’ attributes, minimizing consequences to the abuser, protecting their position due to fear of retribution against the organization, and/or working to preserve the employment standing of abusers and/or those who support them.
Institutional abuse may attempt to minimize financial liability to the institution, even though the opposite occurs often.
These offenses significantly cause further harm and result in Double Abuse, leading to longer and more challenging roads to healing for the victim.
For more on institutional abuse and what you can do if you find yourself in an institutionally abusive setting, click here.
conclusion
Understanding the different types of abuse is crucial in recognizing and addressing these harmful behaviors. By shedding light on these distinct forms of abuse, we hope to empower individuals to identify it and seek help.
As we have seen here, abuse can happen in various ways, not just through physical violence. Emotional, verbal, financial, spiritual, and institutional abuse can leave lasting scars, causing significant harm to victims' well-being and self-esteem.
Also, understanding the concept of "Double Abuse" is key to breaking the cycle and offering survivors the compassion and validation they deserve.
Also, understanding the concept of "Double Abuse" is key to breaking the cycle and offering survivors the compassion and validation they deserve.
To combat abuse effectively, we educate ourselves and others, challenge misconceptions, and foster open conversations about these sensitive topics. Here are free abuse resources that can help with this education.
By supporting abuse survivors and holding abusers accountable, we can work toward creating a safer, more empathetic society for everyone.
If you or someone you know is experiencing abuse, please remember that there is help available. Reach out to us here. We can help to get you started on the path to healing and recovery.
Together, let's stand against abuse.
Help & Information
If you are in immediate danger contact the national hotline (1-800-799-SAFE) or call 911.
Disclaimer: The author of this website, The MEND Project and its founder, Annette Oltmans, takes responsibility for the presentation of the content of this website. We are not clinicians, but are researchers and desire to help you. We are not trying to vilify any gender, or any person, regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality etc. Our mission is to identify and clarify the single behaviors or patterns of behaviors that occur when covert abuse is present. The material on this website and the services our nonprofit offers are offered in an effort to serve all victims of abuse. © 2024 The MEND Project. All Rights Reserved.