2 Kinds of Verbal Abuse and the Damage They Cause

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One thing became clear when researching my book, Verbal Abuse: how many people are confused by what is verbally abusive and what isn’t. Some of that may have to do with the sticks-and-stones rhyme, despite research that shows that childhood verbal abuse literally changes the structure of the developing brain and convinces people that words are benign in their effect, especially compared to physical abuse.

It’s also true that when we’re in a verbally abusive relationship, we can’t either leave (as is the case for children with verbally abusive parents) or aren’t ready to leave as adults. We normalize and rationalize verbal abuse. Many of us raised with it have trouble recognizing it.

Overt and Covert Verbal Abuse

Many also have the misconception that verbal abuse has to involve yelling; it can, but it needn’t. Some verbal abuse is quiet or covert and doesn’t involve words but weaponizes silence. Enumerating forms of overt and covert verbal abuse helps clarify and aids recognition.

Among the forms of overt verbal abuse are belittling, blame-shifting, body-shaming, using brinksmanship, contempt, and disdain, controlling by stealth, dismissing gaslighting, guilting and guilt-tripping, hypercriticizing, mocking, name-calling, scapegoating, shaming, and undermining.

Covert verbal abuse includes withholding love, praise, or support, especially in the parent-child relationship. It also takes other forms; among them are expressing contempt in gestures, ignoring, silent treatment, stonewalling, and withholding.

Staying silent–rolling your eyes, pretending a question hasn’t been asked, or refusing to answer–is a potent form of verbal abuse. It turns not using words into a weapon.

Seeing the Effects of Both Kinds of Verbal Abuse

While it’s true enough that healthy self-regard can’t grow in the scorched earth of either kind of verbal abuse, the effects of each are different. Let’s paint a picture in broad strokes, keeping in mind that these are generalizations and that, yes, there will be notable exceptions in individual cases. Also, remember that most verbally abusive people avail themselves of both, so it’s really a question of which style–overt or covert–was used most often.

With overt verbal abuse, the internalized messages often usurp the space that healthy self-regard is supposed to occupy and fill it with the words and labels pinned on you–that you are stupid, ugly, unlikeable, inadequate, or any other variation on the theme. The messages function as foundational “truths” about the self, facilitating self-criticism and profound self-doubt and enabling you to “self-inflict” verbal abuse. While the messages often lead to low achievement–fear of failure inspired by the so-called “truths” tends to trump every effort to set goals–they may coexist with real-world achievement. (That’s the imposter syndrome.)

While it may look from the outside that this woman or man has healthy self-regard–the trappings of outside success, conflated in the culture as we’ve seen–whatever sense of self-worth she or he has is always tenuous and under siege. Seen through the lens of attachment theory, this is the fate of the anxious-preoccupied style, always in need of validation and super-sensitive to criticism and slights.

But this isn’t the only possible behavioral response to overt verbal abuse. An individual may respond to the emotional battering of a parent or parents by developing a deep mistrust of others and an even deeper need to be the controller him- or herself. The shame and self-loathing associated with the internalized messages are buried deep inside; much energy is devoted to building an armored persona to face the world where true self-regard ought to be.

As Joseph Burgo pointed out, it gives him or her a way of wielding power that hides the deep shame he or she feels. While this persona has no true foundation and is more like a house of cards than not, it works because it permits him or her to bury the pain of the abuse experienced in the past and to exert control over the future. In terms of attachment theory, this is the dismissive-avoidant style–with a high opinion of the self and low opinion of others–and, if you’re wondering, a description of an individual high in narcissistic traits and, yes, verbal abuse is one way a narcissist becomes who she or he is.

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Covert abuse affects people in more insidious ways because it’s even harder to recognize and pinpoint as abusive in nature; it takes a great deal of self-confidence and sophistication to label a person abusive when nothing is being said, especially since the working definitions of verbal abuse focus on words and tone. If the space where self-regard is supposed to reside has been under fire by covert abuse, the space is filled with a lack of trust in one’s perceptions, doubts about one’s thoughts and conclusions, and one’s supplying the “reasons” for the parent’s treatment. It is emotionally and psychologically confusing. These generalized feelings of worthlessness–not being important enough to be seen or heard, being so inadequate or unlikeable that one can be ignored or attention isn’t warranted–instills terrific fearfulness and self-doubt and solidifies both fear of rejection and a sense of complete isolation. Unable to trust his or her feelings or perceptions, the child, and later the adult, keeps hiding in plain sight. Covert verbal abuse contributes to the fearful-avoidant attachment style and, using other terms pertaining to self-regard, which we will explore next, echoism.

Again, many people are exposed to both kinds of verbal abuse. Still, covert abuse affects individuals in ways that make them even more insecure at some fundamental level than those most often blistered by words. Covert abuse is like being shadow-boxed, and the child, and later the adult, may not even realize it is real. That’s what Laura, now 59, wrote:

It was the coldness of it all as I painfully and slowly realized in therapy that made it so hard to label her behavior as cruel and, even more, for me to be able to see the effect on me. It was as though the sound had been turned off in the house–no yelling, no screaming, and no explanation ever–as though I was watching pantomime. I didn’t trust myself enough to be able to label her behavior as abusive for years and years. Being yelled at or even hit clarified things for me.

Realizing that subtle forms of verbal abuse can be enormously damaging, especially if a gifted therapist supports that recognition, can open doors that have been closed for decades.

This post is adapted from text in my book, Verbal Abuse: Recognizing, Dealing, Reacting, and Recovering.

To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.

Copyright © 2022, 2023 by Peg Streep.

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