Verbal Abuse

A person of any gender, race, culture, sexual orientation, age, or size may experience verbal abuse. Typically, in couple, family relationships, and online verbal abuse increases in intensity and frequency over time. After exposure to verbal abuse, victims may develop clinical depression and/or post-traumatic stress disorder. The person targeted by verbal abuse over time may succumb to any stress related illness. Verbal abuse creates emotional pain and mental anguish in its target.

Despite being the most common form of abuse, verbal abuse is generally not taken as seriously as other types because there is no visible proof, and the abuser may have a "perfect" persona around others. In reality, however, verbal abuse can be more detrimental to a person's health than physical abuse. If a person is verbally abused from childhood on, he or she may develop psychological disorders that plague them into and throughout adulthood.

Verbal abuse includes the following

 * countering
 * withholding
 * discounting
 * abuse disguised as a joke
 * blocking and diverting
 * accusing and blaming
 * judging and criticizing
 * trivializing
 * undermining
 * threatening
 * name calling
 * chronic forgetting
 * ordering
 * denial of anger or abuse
 * abusive anger