Emotional abuse can be verbal or behavioral, active or passive, frequent or occasional. Regardless, it is often as painful as physical assault. And, with rare exceptions, the pain lasts much longer. The other children are quick to imitate their parents. And so the cycle continues.
Emotional abuse is both the most pervasive and the least understood form of child maltreatment.
Its victims are often dismissed simply because their wounds are not visible. We understand and accept that victims of physical or sexual abuse need both time and specialized treatment to heal. That assumption is dangerously wrong. Emotional abuse scars the heart and damages the soul. Like cancer, it does its most deadly work internally.