Just Cause You Can’t See the Wound
Posted in Books on 03/29/2010 09:00 pm by JennEvans, Patricia. The Verbally Abusive Relationship. Adams Media Corporation (1996).
This was a great book to help you recognize the signs of abuse. There are a lot of checklists, which help to organize the matter easily. I love checklists because they help me to organize my everyday life, set goals and think through problems critically; so for me, this is a desirable feature of the book. Also, I liked the use of real-world examples used throughout. Although not everything is going to be exactly like your own relationship, hopefully if you are in a verbally abusive relationship, one of the examples will resonate with you.
The author acknowledges the part that children play in your decision to stay with an abusive person. She doesn’t treat abuse in isolation, but recognizes it can be a relationship of long-standing abuse with many facets. I respect that she touches on the overall ways to stop abuse (saying no, setting limits, acknowledging behaviour as abuse), but she doesn’t claim her book will help you to fix it all. In fact, many of her examples come from therapy sessions with abuse victims and she advocates seeking help, either a with therapist or women’s shelter, for example. This book is merely a tool to help you recognize the abusive relationship and the behaviours that the abuser might use; and give an overview on how that is going to change and how to do it.
There are different types of verbally abusive relationships and it is the easiest type of abuse to cover up. The wounds are internal, the abuser is very cunning and it can escalate so gradually you acclimatize to the behaviour instead of seeing it for what it is. I think this book really hammers home the point that verbal abuse is still abuse. Which means you shouldn’t stand for it and those around you should stand by you no matter what you decide in the end.
This was written from a male abuser, female victim perspective. At the end Evans answers some FAQs and says that the male’s experience of abuse is different and since she is a woman she was not the best qualified to handle that.
There are many books out there designed to help you with your relationship, but I feel that this is a great starting point if you suspect you are in, or know someone who is in, an abusive relationship.













