Mental abuse may be sporadic or occur regularly, it is up to you to decide and choose how much and if you want to continue tolerating this type of treatment.

1. A Few Suggestions of How To Handle Mental Abuse
Mental abuse also known as emotional and psychological abuse is detrimental to your
psychological wellbeing. It can lower your self-esteem; make you feel like you’ve lost your
independence and ability to think and provide for yourself. Even after you’ve freed yourself
from an abusive relationship you may still suffer some post-traumatic stress.
Mental abuse may be sporadic or occur regularly, it is up to you to decide and choose how
much and if you want to continue tolerating this type of treatment.
Here a few suggestions on how to handle mental abuse:
1. Acknowledge there is mental abuse: the first step is understanding when it’s just the
occasional mean comment spoken out of anger and when the abuser is regularly
putting you down, being aggressive, controlling, making you feel vulnerable and
fearful. When someone is in an abusive relationship they often fail to recognize the
signs of one, out of “love-blindness”.
2. Be an emotionally intelligent communicator: Try to understand why this person may
be behaving this way. Do they do it to you or
to others close to them too? How do they
treat strangers and animals? Is it something
personal or something that has inherently
gone wrong inside them? Often an abuser is
so because they’re insecure. If you can
understand what they are insecure about
and can find a way to communicate with
them without triggering abusive reactions,
as long as you are being yourself, you may
be able to succeed in changing the direction
of the relationship
3. Accept there is nothing you can do to change this person: One of the most important
things to realise in an abusive relationship is that there is not much you can do to
change the other person. While you can express your concerns to this person this does
not mean you should waste all your energy trying to turn them into a better person;
that is not your job. You should be taking care of your inner self instead. Change
yourself first. Inevitably, doing this will allow you to find strength to change your
situation.
4. Stop being an enabler: The more times you allow this person to hurt you by forgiving
them for it or taking the blame they falsely put on you, the more you are enabling their
behaviour. You are letting them believe that even if they treat you this way you will
still love them and need them. This isn’t good for you or them. Set limits for how much
you are willing to tolerate and don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself when you feel
you should.
5. Know when to end it: Each of us can only handle SO much. We want to be loving,
patient and understanding of our partners, we want to know we did all we could so

2. that we can at least have that, if nothing else. If you’ve tried approaching the situation
from every angle you could come up with and still aren’t seeing change, even if you still
feel there is so much to salvage, it may be time to put your own mental sanity and
physical safety first and to do this you need to know when to walk away.
By: http://domesticviolenceuk.org