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It can be used as a powerful weapon- but sometimes the person you hurt is yourself. Our thoughts, dreams, and beliefs can shatter with another person’s word, no matter how strong we think we are. They could yell, scream, or undermine you until you give up on yourself.

That’s the reality of living with a mentally abusive parent. As a victim of abuse, I constantly downplay my struggles because I can see stories that are worse than my own. This is a symptom of a culture fascinated with the macabre. We are fascinated by serial killers, addiction, and torture. These things definitely make the public sad, but it is what we continue to pay attention to most in the media. The media portrays stories like David Pelzer, author of “A Child Called It” more often than less traumatic cases. Victims of mental, emotional, and sexual abuse (in some cases) are less likely to be public about their pain because, compared to these horrible stories, they feel as though their lives weren’t that bad. In truth, emotional abuse is extremely detrimental to all involved. Children, especially, suffer the consequences of abuse for their entire lifetimes. Emotional scarring can be just as painful, but often not as visible as, physical scars. Living in a sensational culture such as our own can increase the amount of time someone lives in abusive situations or never seeks help. The fear associated with any abuse hurts so many people, and it is past time it ended.

Mental abuse can become apparent in a variety of different situations, but this article is going to focus on parents mentally abusing their children. I was a mentally abused child and I still struggle with the effects of my childhood, despite the fact that I am an adult and live on my own. For years, I was confused about what does and does not constitute as abuse. My father loved me, took care of me, and did not beat me (when I got older). So what he was a little mean and made me feel bad? That’s just human nature, or so I made myself believe. Now, I see happy families and parents and I realize that my experience was not always a good one. Here, I am going to focus on the forms of mental abuse and offer help if you suspect anyone you know or love is experiencing abuse.

I’ve gotten some more information from teach-through-love.com, a website that encourages recovery from child abuse.

Rejecting

Rejecting can be any number of things. The underlying idea in the context of abuse is that the abuser makes the victim feel unwanted. This is anything that makes the victim feel like they are a burden to their parents. Now, we all have experienced the frazzled parent- or grandparent, older sibling, and babysitter- that lashes out. However, this is more than just a flippant comment you apologize for later. Whether it be a parent making fun of, ignoring, humiliating, or teasing a child, it can be considered mental abuse. My father, for years, undermined my intelligence, appearance, and capabilities every day. He said repeatedly that I was a disappointment, which made his life terrible, I was ugly and fat, and I would be screamed at multiple times a day. All of these absolutely wrecked my self-esteem and skewed my self-worth. From a very young age, I understood that to live with my family was to constantly pretend egg shells are underfoot. If you moved the wrong way, you would inevitably get hurt, and it was very easy to do this. It seemed like no matter what I did, something would always be wrong with me. I graduated high school with a 4.2 (weighted) and got into DePauw University, Franklin College, and Purdue University. Despite my obvious work ethic and exceptional grades, I still (sometimes) believe I am stupid. I was bulimic for five years, partly because my father yelled about my weight and appearance constantly. He intimidated me, threatening to physically harm me, and yelling in my face on a regular basis, hand raised. He made me undermine every little thing about myself and I am still coping with these feelings.

Ignoring

Ignoring is anything that a caregiver does that is neglectful to the child. This can be the failure to provide care, failure to take interest in activities and things going on in their child’s life. It’s being made to feel like your opinion, emotions, and voice are inconsequential. You then, in turn, feel like you don’t matter and that what you like doesn’t matter to anyone, either. It can also mean not paying child support or ensuring your child has a clean, safe environment. My dad did a fairly decent job with me at this, but he could always be counted on to say what I believed in was stupid. During the period he was with his fifth wife, who he married when I was about 10, my father ignored most of what I said. My step-mother and I fought, both verbally and sometimes physically, and it was not a healthy environment for me. In an effort to keep his marriage, he moved me to a relative’s house. My dad rarely acknowledges, now, that he was in the wrong, and that is one way he ignored my needs.

Terrorizing

Growing up, I did everything I could to please my dad. Despite this, what I did usually wasn’t right, and I paid for it immensely. This is a sign of terrorizing. Terrorizing is making a child feel generally unsafe. It’s yelling, screaming, or verbally threatening them. It can be witnessing violence with other members of the household, like between parents. Excessive teasing, especially in front of others, is a sign. When I read about this, it seemed to fit my father perfectly. When I cried, which was normal, I was teased mercilessly. He threatened me around other family members, saying he was going to put my head through a wall or teach me another lesson. I also witnessed severe mental and physical abuse with his ex-wife. It was not abnormal for my dad to give me multiple demands and chores all at once, which frustrated me. He would then yell or scream at me and sometimes hit me. My family has a running saying that my father is like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. You never truly know which version you will get. He also frequently threatened our various dogs. If they went to the bathroom inside of the house, he relayed he wanted to break their bones or kill them. I began to, as an adult, understand that these were just words. But, as a child, they were terrifying.

Isolating

This type of abuse is often discussed in the media. We have all heard the stories about children being locked in their rooms, not given food, or not given love. These are examples of isolating. Isolating is when a parent refuses to let their children have friends, join clubs, interact with other members of their family, or generally keeps a child from social stimulation. Growing up, I rarely had friends. I had the occasional school friend, and I even went on a few trips and visited my mother fairly often (when my dad allowed). My father would always guilt trip me when I did these things, however. As I got older, it became clearer that I was his only friend and, besides me, he had no stable relationships with family or other adults. After he had another child, Alivia, at 55, I dropped everything. I lost a massive amount of friends, I was homeschooled a year, and I even had to quit a job to stay home and babysit. This sounds like many other households in the regard that I babysat often, but the difference between my household and others was the emotional aspect. If I did not abandon everything to serve his needs, I did not love him and I did not love my sister. On the rare occasion, I did try to branch out, I could never stay doing anything for a long period or I knew I would have trouble at home. Due to this, I became filled with social anxiety. I became afraid to do anything and would judge myself harshly whenever I tried. This is still something I cope with, that no amount of medicine or therapy can take away.

Corrupting

Corrupting is allowing a child to be exposed to material or actions it should not be. This can be allowing a child to drink, do drugs, or be promiscuous at an early age. It also can be as simple as letting the child watch inappropriate movies for their age. An example of corruption is alcoholism, which many families deal with. One example, which is far from terrible, was when I was a teenager shopping at Goodwill. I was with my father and my sister. I found a phone someone left in a dressing room. It was a nice smartphone, fairly new and advanced for its time. I showed my father and said I was taking it to the desk and, instead, he shoved it back in my hands. He demanded that I steal it and when I wouldn’t he began to insult me and tell me how bad of a daughter I was. Feeling miserable, I did take it, but I forced him to return it the next day. When my dad was married, I would witness several displays of sexuality and inappropriate behavior that he excused.

Exploiting

This is possibly the biggest form of mental abuse I experienced. Exploitation is expecting more of a child than they can offer. It can mean forcing a child to participate in unwanted activities, like stealing, requiring a child to care for a sibling without considering their limitations, unreasonable expectations for chores, and making a child feel bad for how someone else acts. I experienced this every day as a child. My father did not regard me as a child, even from a very young age. I was privy to knowing about our financial affairs and had extreme anxiety about whether or not we could keep the apartments we lived in or if I could be doing anything to help. When living with his wife and her son, the exploitation heightened. I was required to do laundry for the entire household, dishes, sweeping, and keeping the house generally clean. Her son, on the other hand, had only trash that I usually ended up taking out. I was blamed several times by him for things I did not do.

During this time, my father expected me to be out of the house and have friends, but he did not allow me to have friends before this. My stepmother hated me for being in the house so much, and she would say terrible things about me. My father also treated me as a nuisance. Possibly the biggest example of exploitation in my house was with my sister. After her parents divorced when she was only about 1, I took care of Alivia. I raised her, so much so that, even now, she wants to come live with me. I was expected, before I was even a teenager, to know everything about raising a child. I would get up in the middle of the night to take care of her, stay home from school to watch her, and did not leave the house in order to watch her. Growing up, Alivia saw my dad treat me extremely badly. She began to realize that, no matter what I did, it would be wrong. She, in her developing subconscious mind, thought this was normal and treated me rather badly as well. She would not listen, she caused scenes, and she would sometimes hit me. He then would blame me and say hurtful things to me. Don’t get me wrong, we were both demeaned constantly and I served as her protector (and she now serves as mine). But she, as a child, didn’t realize how bad she was egging him on.

In this article, I have exposed you to six types of mental abuse and shared my story along with it. Any abuse causes issues that last a lifetime, but mental abuse causes your brain to turn on you. You cannot succeed in life with the feelings, emotions, and resentment at being mentally abused without help. Please, if you yourself experience mental abuse, get help now. It might not manifest itself in an obvious way, but abuse has many effect that you can go years without exhibiting. They say that abuse is often a cycle. You have the power to break that cycle and to harness your pain towards better things. Abuse, in all forms, lessens a child’s chance before it even begins. If you recognize that you are mentally abusive to your children or harm them in some way, I ask that you get help. Parenting is not easy, and no parent is perfect, but no child should have to suffer at the hands of their guardian. Children are supposed to be nurtured, loved, and protected. What can they do when the only person that promises to do that doesn’t?

If you or someone you know needs help, please call:

1-800-4-A-CHILD (800-422-4453)

Someone qualified will help you, whether it be counseling, advice, literature, or a safe house.

Don’t suffer alone