The Verbally Abusive Relationship Quotes

“Don’t ever delude yourself into thinking that you should have the ability to stay serene no matter how you are treated. Your serenity comes from the knowledge that you have a fundamental right to a nurturing environment and a fundamental right to affirm your boundaries.”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“In a verbally abusive relationship, the partner learns to tolerate abuse without realizing it and to lose self-esteem without realizing it. She is blamed by the abuser and becomes the scapegoat. The partner is then the victim.”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse. — Nigerian Proverb”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“The victim of abuse is taught to believe that although she is hurting, she shouldn’t be, or that she is in some way responsible. From childhood, she is conditioned not to understand her feelings and so not to recognize the truth. This truth is that she is being abused and blamed for the abuse (as if it could be justified) and for feeling bad about it (as if her feelings were wrong). The typical partner believed the abuser’s denial and so became frustrated and confused even while she searched for answers. Unable to reach clarity and understanding, the partner was left with feelings of inadequacy and confusion. If her mate was not wrong, if he was not lying, if she did take things wrong, then she could believe only that “something must be wrong with the way she was — how she expressed herself, how she came across, or possibly with her feelings and experience of reality itself.” Thus the doubts of childhood rose up once more. She kept her mind open to what she might hear that would reveal what was wrong — why she suffered. She became, therefore, the perfect victim.”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“Verbal abuse by its very nature undermines and discounts its victim’s perceptions.”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“Verbal abuse is a violation, not a conflict. There is a definite difference between conflict and abuse. In a conflict each participant wants something different. In order to resolve the conflict, the two people in the relationship discuss their wants, needs, and reasons while mutually seeking a creative solution. There may or may not be a solution, but no one forces, dominates, or controls the other. Verbal abuse, on the other hand, is very different from a conflict. If we describe verbal abuse from the standpoint of boundary violation, we would describe it as an intrusion upon, or disregard of, one’s self by a person who disregards boundaries in a sometimes relentless pursuit of Power Over, superiority, and dominance by covert or overt means.”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“If the words or attitude disempower, disrespect, or devalue the other, then they are abusive.”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts … . — Robert Fulghum”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“Denial and avoidance are classic abusive behaviors. They’re what the abuser is doing when he trivializes and counters his partner’s experience”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“Recovery from verbal abuse is the opportunity to accept all your feelings and to recognize their validity. You may be the first person to recognize and accept them and to know that they are not wrong. They are, as we have said earlier, indicators that something is or was wrong in your environment, and it isn’t you.”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“In general, when you respond to verbal abuse, speak firmly and clearly, stand or sit straight and tall, hold your head high, look the abuser in the eye, and breathe deeply, letting your abdomen expand with the intake of air.”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“A poisonous pedagogy is a toxic method of teaching or raising a child. It is a method which controls the behavior of the child by the misuse of Power Over the child. This misuse of power causes the child extreme pain. If the child becomes an adult without having worked through the hurt and pain of the experience, he will perpetuate the misuse of power in adulthood. Consequently, the adult can become toxic or poisonous to others. This toxicity is what we find in abusive relationships.”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“Generally, in a verbally abusive relationship the abuser denies the abuse. Verbal abuse most often takes place behind closed doors. Physical abuse is always preceded by verbal abuse.”
― Patricia Evans, Verbally Abusive Relationship

“The partner suffered many wrongs to her spirit. And, she did not know the meaning of her pain. However, because she remained aware of her feelings, she was connected to the spirit of life at her center — the source of her Personal Power. Eventually, it was the power of her feelings and the knowledge of her spirit which enabled her to recognize the abuse and, in so doing, gain Reality II self-esteem.”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“Many partners, who are constantly blamed and confused by verbal abuse, are surprised to realize that they have never said, nor would they think of saying, what is frequently said to them.”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“Verbal abuse: Words that attack or injure, that cause one to believe the false, or that speak falsely of one.”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“Verbal abusers block discussions because they are not willing to talk with their mates on an equal basis. The abuser prevents the possibility of mutual support and planning together and so deprives himself and his partner of the many benefits such partnership would bring.”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“Love is the child of freedom, never that of domination. — Erich Fromm”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“and by acting in her own best interests she relieves her feelings of inadequacy and regains her natural State of Personal Power.”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“The abuser’s worth is derived from a sense of one-upmanship and winning over. If the partner accomplishes something, the abuser views her accomplishment”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“If you are considering a new relationship, be discriminating. Notice the difference between what you want, what you imagine, and what you are actually getting. Notice if you and your new mate share the same reality.”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“As long as this child within is not allowed to become aware of what happened to him or her, a part of his or her emotional life will remain frozen, and sensitivity to the humiliations of childhood will therefore be dulled.”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“If we are to recognize and free ourselves from the influence of the Power Over model, we must hear ourselves — what words we speak and in what manner we speak them. Likewise, we must hear the words spoken to us and the manner in which they are spoken. This awareness can bring us to the realization of how we do or do not dignify, respect, protect, and esteem ourselves and ultimately all life.”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship, Expanded Third Edition: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive. — Robert Browning”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“To a narrative therapist, there are few interactions between couples that are not influenced by patriarchy. If there is an abuse of power in a relationship, a narrative therapist would view the responsibility for the abuse of power as lying in the hands of the person abusing the power. A narrative approach would invite the abuser to Recognize the abuse as abuse. Position himself against it. Accept total responsibility for stopping it.”
― Patricia Evans, Verbally Abusive Relationship

“...verbal abuse is an issue of control, a means of holding power over another. This abuse may be overt or covert, constant, controlling, and what Bach and Deutsch (1980) call “crazymaking.”
― Patricia Evans, Verbally Abusive Relationship

“The abuser controls the interpersonal communication and, therefore, the interpersonal reality by refusing to discuss upsetting interactions. The abuser blames the partner for upsetting interactions, and the partner believes him and therefore thinks that they are her fault.”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“There are two kinds of power. One kills the spirit. The other nourishes the spirit. The first is Power Over. The other is Personal Power.

Power Over shows up as control and dominance.

Personal Power shows up as mutuality and co-creation. Mutuality is a way of being with another person which promotes the growth and well-being of one’s self and the other person by means of clear communication and empathetic understanding. Co-creation is a consciously shared participation in life which helps one reach one’s goals.”
― Patricia Evans, Verbally Abusive Relationship

“You get conditioned to it and confused by it, and then you don’t know what’s going on.”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond

“Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts … . — Robert Fulghum Most”
― Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond