Dealing with Verbally Abusive behaviour before it worsens

 

There will be many circumstances in life where you might have encountered other people who engage in specific behaviours in a repeated pattern towards you, that is unhealthy and perhaps abusive. Some of these behaviours could be specifically targeted to cause hurt, shame, and other difficult emotions, to gain upper hand, to control you or manipulate you or to get you to back off etc.

Situations where you might encounter this could be in a couple relationship, friendship, siblings, colleagues and etc.   When it happens repeatedly with people that you know, people that you are close to, people you interact with on a daily basis it becomes very difficult to handle as well as to ignore, and the longer you are subjected to this kind of treatment the greater the damage is for you.   Especially in close relationships – they hold significant power to hurt us when they behave this way.

These damaging behaviours can range from ignoring what you are saying, making faces, making snide remarks, talking in a loud / Harsh / rough / rude manners, blaming, name calling, insults, labelling, using words that are hurtful/ spiteful / rude / sarcastic etc,  words and body language that is disrespectful etc to list a few.

First of all you need to understand whether this is a one off behaviour or is a repetitive pattern of behaviour or attitude that this person has towards you. If it is a repetitive pattern then this would fall under the category of psychological or emotional abuse.  The problem with emotional abuse is it is so insidious that to detect and to be aware that this particular behaviour is abuse is very difficult for the one who is facing it.  The person who gets abused most of the time would end up blame themselves for the behaviour of the abuser.

First let’s look at what not to do in this situation

1. You feel attacked and hence you try to defend yourself

This person abuses you by name calling or labelling you as stupid or useless etc. You try to defend yourself and to prove that you are not stupid are useless to them, by giving examples, by giving proof to them, that the label they gave you is not valid. No amount of proof that you give them, will stop them from attacking you.

2. Trying to reason with the person using logic and rational arguments

Trying to explain to the person who is behaving in abusive manner, your point of view and how your point of view has sound logic.  The fact that the person uses abusive behaviour as a tool means they will not be able to listen to rational arguments.

3. Shout back or use abusive words back to them

This just escalates the issue, and makes the situation worse. There is no resolution of the issue as well as the behaviour. Now your behaviour, also has gotten tuned to the other person’s behaviour. It just becomes shouting match and gets you to a place, that is exhausting, draining, leaving you frustrated and the issue and resolved.

What can be done?

1. Understand what is happening. Focus on the process rather than just the content.

When you are insulted or labelled negatively or shouted upon etc,  you feel the surge of emotions within, which could be hurt, pain, shame and frustration etc.  And you would react to the situation based upon these emotions.  As I mentioned earlier you end up defending, justifying, explaining yourself to the other person.  What you need to do is to focus on the process of what is happening.  That will help you understand what that the person is doing – be it shouting or labelling or name calling or being disrespectful.  This awareness is the very first step. Being aware of what the other person is actually doing and what is the purpose of their behaviour.  Focusing on this reduces the intensity of the emotional experience.

2. Based upon your understanding call out the untoward behaviour.

In most reasonable relationships the person would claim that they didn’t know that they were hurting you or that they were shouting or engaging in this kind of abusive behaviour.  And typically that would be one of their defences.

And by calling out, you are bringing it to their attention that they are engaging in this specific behaviour and that it will not be tolerated and you would not continue to engage with them unless that behaviour stops and changes right in that moment.

You can say

“Please reduce your volume. There is no need to raise your voice”

“What you are saying is hurtful. There is no need to say hurtful things ”

“Your behaviour is disrespectful.  This is not ok”

“There is no need to use foul language here”

” You are being sarcastic.  There is no need for sarcasm here”

etc

4. Disengage – Do not continue to engage unless the behaviour is addressed

If the other person realises what they have been doing and changes their behaviour to lower tone or better language etc., then continue the conversation. Otherwise disengage, or move away from that place or that room to a different location if possible. Tell them that you will be ready to talk to them when their behaviour comes back to normal and not until then.

5. What to do when the person is passive aggressive?

Again here call out the behaviour.

“So now you are giving me the silent treatment is it”

“So you prefer to walk away rather than address the issue”

Make it clear to them that you will not engage until the other person is willing to come and talk about what ever the issue is in a calm manner.

6. What if the behavior escalates when you call it out ?

There is a possibility that the person might escalate their abusive behaviour when you call it out to them. Verbal abuse might escalate to Physical violence too. These are situations where you need to be safe and your safety becomes the priority.This would really mean that this is an abusive relationship, the person knows about it, but they are unwilling to change despite knowing that their behaviour is abusive.

Then you need to really assess your situation, look into your dependencies on the person be it financial, emotional, social aspects and take a call to keep yourself physically and emotionally safe. You can take professional help and talk to a counselor or a therapist to weigh your options and take a decision with clarity.

Every behaviour that is abusive needs to have consequences that will impact the person adversely. The absence of any consequence only encourages the abusive behaviour even more.