Abuse in relationships can be physical or emotional. While physical abuse is obvious and needs no test, emotional abuse can sometimes leave the victim confused:
“Am I being emotionally abused or not?”
Unlike physical abuse, emotional abuse can easily hide under the shadows of things like ‘It was my fault’ or ‘Their anger was justified’.
Emotional abuse is characterized by a pattern of deliberate controlling and inhumane behavior. The emotional abuser, with their words and behavior, undermines the dignity and self-worth of the victim.
Emotional abuse affects the victim emotionally in that they’re likely to feel anxious, fearful, sad, depressed, or even develop PTSD.
Signs of emotional abuse include:
- Criticizing and derogation
- Blaming and shaming
- Humiliation
- Excessive control
- Gaslighting and manipulation
- Frequent boundary violations
Emotional abuse can occur in any type of relationship. Although it’s common in romantic relationships, marriages, and parent-child relationships, it can also happen in boss-employee relationships and friendships.
Taking the Emotional Abuse Test
This test is based on the common behavioral and verbal features present in emotional abuse. While doing this test, you need to keep one person in mind who you think is emotionally abusing you.
If you believe more than one person is emotionally abusing you, it’s recommended that you do the test separately for each person.
This test has 27 items and you have to choose between Agree and Disagree for each item. Select the option that best describes your abuser. Your results will only be displayed to you, and we don’t store them in our database.
Hi, I’m Hanan Parvez (MA Psychology). I’ve been writing about Psychology for 9+ years. My work has been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Reader’s Digest, and Entrepreneur. If you have any queries, use the contact form or reach out to me on my socials.