Emotional abuse can be described as someone messing with your emotions as a way of controlling you.

It might be flowers and other gifts to apologise, and to show their love for you - after they have attacked you. It might be withholding affection from you as a form of punishment. Or constantly putting you down, humiliating you, mocking you. It might be trivialising your thoughts and feelings, or turning things around and telling you that the abusive behaviour is your fault so that you are the one who ends up feeling guilty.

Emotional abuse can take many forms, but is always designed to control you. 

The emotional manipulation can be hard to spot, and our clients have often taken a long time to realise that the behaviour is abusive. The constant criticism, the verbal abuse in insulting remarks, the subtle threats, and the coldness or lack of affection are just some ways our clients come to realise that their partner is being emotionally abusive.

Domestic abuse is rarely just one type of abuse, it is usually a combination of different types. Emotional abuse is a key part of this.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, call us on 0808 801 0500