Sometimes teens don’t know what abuse looks like. Below are terms to help them identify if they are in an unhealthy relationship.
Physical abuse: Any act of using force against the will of another such as choking, pushing, slapping, punching, hitting, grabbing hard, or breaking objects to scare you. If someone uses their body to prevent you from leaving an area or room, that’s also physical abuse. Bruises or cuts don’t always tell the story.
Emotional abuse: When someone tells you that you’re wrong, makes you feel guilty, or insists you don’t deserve to be loved, and blames you for their behaviors, they are playing games and controlling you with lies and uncertainty.
Verbal abuse: Name-calling and insulting your appearance, intelligence, abilities, feelings, choices, and even your friends and family.
Digital abuse: If someone insists on knowing your passwords or see all of your social media content, asks you to not communicate or follow friends (male and female), or they hack into your accounts to “stalk” you and manage your profiles, that’s abuse.
Jealousy: It’s not flattering when someone tries to control what you do and who you hang out with, or accuses you of behaviors and intentions that are false.
Peer pressure: Any type of coercion in participating in the use of drugs, alcohol, or behaviors that makes you uncomfortable and/or is illegal, dangerous, or embarrassing.
Threats: Any type of consequence that intimidates you physically or emotionally such as threatening harm to you, friends, family, or themselves, as well as threatening to break up with you, or share secrets that put them in a position of power or control and you in one of fear.
Sexual violence: Insists you have sex or perform/receive sexual advances when you don’t want it, or pressuring you to not use condoms or birth control.