Why Emotional Abuse Is So Hard to Spot
When you’re looking for clues but missing all the signs
“You’re looking for clues but missing all the signs.” — Cory Lambert, Wind River
No one wants to be a victim, especially a victim of abuse at the hands of someone they love. Just the word implies a kind of helplessness and invokes a feeling of pity or sympathy…or judgment of stupidity or weakness.
The word “survivor” sounds much more powerful. And yet, how do we survive something without first being a victim of it?
This is one of the challenges that any victim of emotional abuse faces. Because the pain is not visible to outsiders, because we lack bruises or broken bones to prove we are suffering, what often happens is we don’t even believe our own perception when trying to figure out why we’re hurting so badly.
And because of our love for and attachment to our abuser, there is a part of us that doesn’t actually want to know.
Ask anyone who has been cheated on. Though we may sense something is up, there is a deeper part of us that doesn’t want to believe it may be true. We might test the waters and look into a few things, but not commit ourselves to go into full-blown detective mode (at least at first) because there exists a subconscious fear that we’re going…
