ARE YOU BEING ABUSED?

Signs of Emotional Abuse

• Insulting you, calling you names, criticizing you, humiliating you especially in public
• Exhibiting signs of jealousy or possessive behavior
• Accusing you of being with other partners
• Accusing your family and friends of trying to sabotage your relationship
• Withholding affection or acknowledgement in order to punish you
• Cheating on you intentionally and openly
• Lying to you, stalking you, refusing to leave when asked
• Attacking your sense of self worth
• Disrespecting your feelings, your rights and your opinions
• Making it difficult for you to establish and maintain friendships
• Reading your mail, monitoring phone calls and checking or destroying your cell phone
• Hiding your keys and your identification
• Always threatening to take the children away from you or threatening to harm them

Signs of Financial Abuse

• Preventing you from having access to your bank accounts or your joint accounts
• Providing you an allowance
• Monitoring your sending habits
• Deciding what can or cannot buy
• Making withdrawals or transfers from your bank accounts without your permission
• Refusing to contribute to shared household expenses such as rent, groceries, utilities, childcare, etc.
• Refusing to work and support the family
• Not allowing you to work or attend school or learn new skills
• Interfering with your job
• Preventing you from owning a car and monitoring your travels

Signs of Psychological Abuse

• Threatening to harm you, your loved ones, your pets, your children, or your possessions
• Monitoring where you are at all times of the day and night
• Controlling how much time you spend with friends, family, co-workers
• Controlling and criticizing what you wear, often with the accusation that you attract too much attention
• Destroying or stealing your belongings
• Blaming you for the abuse, saying that you deserve what happens or that you instigated the problem
• Gaslighting: saying things to make you question your perception of reality, such as “That never happened, you never remember correctly”
• Manipulating your children, your friends and family members
• Creating impossible rules and abusing you for violating them
• Insistent on being right about everything
• Keeping weapons and threatening to use them

Signs of Verbal Abuse 

• Attacking your sense of self-worth
• Is excessively jealous and accuses you of being unfaithful.
• Criticizes or puts you down; says you are crazy, stupid, and/or fat/unattractive, or that no one else would ever want or love you.
• Rages out of control with you but can maintain composure around others.
• Finds the things that others like most about you and uses it to make you feel worthless.
• Humiliates you in public.
• Uses anything that makes you happy as a format for debate and criticism.
• Listens to your conversations as means to verbally attack you for what was said or what he / she thinks was said.
• Twist your words during conversations to initiate an argument.
• Makes repetitive negative comments consistently so that they become ingrained in your daily thoughts.
• Blames you for his behavior, accuses your words or actions to instigate confrontations / arguments.

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Signs of Sexual Abuse

• Demanding sexual acts that make you uncomfortable or unwilling to perform
• Forcing sex when you’re not feeling well or unwilling to comply
• Degrading you physically and verbally
• Using violence such as hitting or using objects to torture you

Signs of Destruction

• Driving Recklessly
• Abusing alcohol and / or drugs
• Deliberately causing trouble or acting out in public
• Threatening self-harm or suicide
• Punching holes in the walls
• Destroying furniture, clothing and personal treasures
• abusing pets and items that are meaningful to you
• displaying self-destructive behaviors such as alcohol / drug abuse
• Reckless driving
• Threatening self-harm or suicide
• Purposely causing trouble especially in public