Episode Details

Abusers are enabled, as these myths are embedded into the population: therapists, clergy, friends, family, and neighbors, and random people on the internet, like a recent Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast reviewer who left a comment riddled with the 7 Toxic Myths about Emotional Abuse.

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7 Toxic Myths About Emotional Abuse

1. Women with strong opinions, religious views, and world views should not be taken seriously.
2. Emotional abuse advocates usually try to find someone to listen to their own story, and aren’t actually helping victims.
3. If it doesn’t include physical violence, it’s not abuse.
4. If it only happens once, or occasionally, it’s not abuse.
5. A man can harm his partner, and it’s not technically abuse.
6. Pornography use isn’t abuse.
7. Betrayal isn’t abuse.

These myths are dangerous: they enable abusers to keep abusing and they encourage victims to stay in abusive situations.

7 Powerful Truths About Emotional Abuse

1. All women deserve a voice, especially victims of emotional abuse. As women share their stories, they can begin the journey to healing. Furthermore, strong world views, opinions and perspectives are absolutely necessary for women to begin healing. In an abusive situation, it is black and white: there is an abuser and a victim. There is the truth and there are lies. It does not take “two to tango,” and there are not “two sides” to the story of abuse.
2. The most powerful advocates for victims of abuse, are survivors of abuse! As women courageously tell their stories to other victims, powerful communities filled with hope, healing, and validation are created.
3. Physical battery is absolutely abusive, but there are many other forms of abuse that are equally destructive to another human being. Emotional abuse, psychological abuse, coercion, and betrayal are all forms of abuse that are just as serious as physical violence.
4. When a man harms a woman, even once, it is abuse. Pure and simple. The phrase “isolated incident” has enabled too many abusers and has put too many women in mortal danger.
5. Harm is another word for abuse. If someone is harming you, they are abusing you.
6. Pornography is abuse: it’s abusive to partners, it’s abusive to children, it’s abusive to the women and children used in the industry.
7. Betrayal is an excruciating form of emotional abuse.

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