SOME COMMON EFFECTS OF REPEATED ABUSE

From “Understanding Domestic Violence” by Barbara Corry, M.A.

For those who haven’t considered the effects of battering, we would like to present an overview of some of the most common effects of abuse:

YOU LIVE IN CONSTANT FEAR

“At first when you’re hit, you’re stunned and you don’t know what to do;   then you think, ‘This is it, I’m going to die’.”

“If I don’t do what he wants, NOW, I know that all of his rage - all the storming around the house - will be directed at me.”

“I knew from the way he destroyed everything - the way he smashed our presents at Christmas, smashed my car windshield, and broke up all my beautiful plants - that if I had been there he would have destroyed me too.”

“What if he takes the kids? He won’t take care of them. What if he takes them forever? What if I never see them again?”

YOU LEARN HELPLESSNESS

“I felt like a little nothing who couldn’t defend myself... because I knew  that his punch could send me across the room.”

“When you are beaten or abused regularly, you just learn how to take orders - what to buy, what to wear, whom you can see, where you can or cannot go, which friends you can have, when you can use the car, when you can see your family...You feel like he has all the power and there is nothing you can do about it.”

YOU DEVELOP PHYSICAL PROBLEMS

Many women develop back pain, headaches, depression, sleeping problems, menstrual problems and problems with alcohol or drugs.

YOU UNDERGO PROBLEMS PERSONALITY

“I didn’t realize how much I changed until a good friend told me, ‘When he’s home, you look tired, you look sad, you don’t smile, you don’t want CHANGES to go out, you are a different person’.”

YOU START TO BELIEVE THAT HE HAS ALL THE POWER

“He threatened ridiculous things, and I believed them. I really believed he could move heaven and earth…That’s how much power it feels like they have; that’s how much power he had over me.

“His threats would always be so convincing. He would say ‘I can kill you this way, or that way’ or he would say ‘If you ever leave me, first I’ll hunt you down and kill you, then I will kill all the kids, and then I will kill myself.’ Because he was always so specific, it made his threats more believable.”

YOU DEVELOP FEELINGS OF WORTHLESSNESS

“When your mate smears food in your hair (or throws dinner on the floor and then throws you into the mess) you feel deep shame and humiliation...especially when your kid’s watching.”

“When he is never there for you when you need a partner, when he refuses to even feed your cat or water your plants while you are in the hospital, it eats away at you. You feel you are worthless. You feel like you must be the scum of the earth. Stuff like this doesn’t happen unless you are scum.”

“When you are physically and emotionally abused, you begin to lose sight of how you look - your shape and breast size - and you lose sight of how you feel, because in your mind you are less than dust, you are less than nothing.”

YOU START TO FEEL LIKE AN OBJECT

“When he tells you that your wedding vows say that you have to obey him and that that’s what God and the Church expect, and when he says that as your husband he has every right over your body, you begin to feel like he owns you…like you are an object he has accumulated along with other things.”

“When he looks right past your black eye and your swollen lip and never says a word about it, never apologizes for hurting you, and when your family also looks past the injuries, it makes you feel like some kind of object. You begin to question whether the beating really occurred.”

THE ATMOSPHERE OF HOUSE CHANGES

“You start walking on eggshells, waiting for the storm to hit.”

“You have to follow his orders (e.g., take his shoes off, stay away from his electronic equipment, heat his dinner, NOW, or else)...like he was a king and this was his domain and everybody else in the family were little ants made to serve him.”

YOU CONFRONT YOUR CHILDREN’S TERROR

“You have to deal with your children being so afraid they can’t even say,  ‘Daddy, please don’t hit Mommy!’ for fear of what might happen to the them.”

“I had to answer my son when he said, ‘Momma, what if I grow up to be like that?’ I tried to assure him that other family members weren’t like that; but, how do you respond when he says something like, ‘But Momma, they wasn’t born from him’?”

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