Emotional abuse can be like an infection that enters your body. You may not know it’s there until a lot of time has passed, and you’ve invested a lot into the relationship.
How does your mind and body nurture the infection of emotional abuse? Hopefully, by the time you’re done reading this article, you’ll know what to do to make sure it doesn’t thrive and multiply inside of you.
It may sound strange to compare emotional abuse to an infection, but I come to realize that abusive behaviors seem to follow the stages that an infection takes when it develops.
There are four stages to an infection. The first stage is the incubation period. This is the period between exposure to the infectious agent and the appearance of the first symptoms. Incubation is the ideal set of conditions that promote the development or growth of something. During this early stage, you may not realize you’re infected because you’re asymptomatic.
In emotional abuse, the incubation period might be when the abusive person enters your life. This can happen to any of us. We meet someone, letting them into our lives not knowing how things are going to turn out. If they’re emotionally abusive, there may have been no obvious signs of that kind of behavior at the beginning (except for possibly a few orange flags, or maybe none at all).
However, since we’re comparing this to an infection, we’ll call this the first stage of exposure to abusive behavior. This first stage is often filled with kindness, generosity, support, and sometimes lots of gifts and compliments. These are examples of gift bombing and love bombing.
At this point in the relationship, you don’t know you’re “infected.” In fact, everything might seem to be going great otherwise. The other person may appear to be showing up as everything you love and want.
Again, the first stage is often filled with kindness, generosity, support, and sometimes lots of gifts and compliments. And that all feels so good.
The word “incubate” means to provide the right conditions for a process or reaction to develop. So, in the context of the start of an emotionally abusive relationship, incubation cannot occur without the right conditions. What are the right conditions?
The ideal condition for an emotionally abusive person to thrive is to find someone who is not only kind, caring, and supportive but also willing to be the first to admit they are wrong and take responsibility for things that probably aren’t their fault.
These are the types of people who tend to love others unconditionally and rarely focus on their faults. When the abuser finds someone who thinks less about their own boundaries and more about the boundaries of others, that environment is ideal for incubation.
The ideal victim is usually one who isn’t willing to see the faults in someone else because they’ve been brought up to believe you should always see the good in other people.
These are fantastic qualities in a person, but they can be taken advantage of by an abusive person. That doesn’t mean you should let go of these amazing facets of yourself. It just means you might need to develop some protections from those who may not have your best interest at heart.
Moving on to the second stage of an infection, the prodromal stage. This is when initial, often vague, symptoms start appearing. These might include mild fever or fatigue, which don’t yet reveal the full nature of the illness.
In emotional abuse, this stage manifests as a growing sense of unease. You might start feeling guilty or uncertain, worrying that you’ve done something to upset your partner. The abuser might even reinforce these feelings, suggesting that any discomfort or problems in the relationship are your fault.
This stage is characterized by confusion and self-doubt, setting the stage for more severe manipulation tactics as the relationship progresses.
As I continue to explore these stages, it becomes clear how emotional abuse, much like an infection, gradually overwhelms your life, often without your immediate realization. Understanding these stages can be crucial in recognizing and addressing emotionally abusive behaviors before they fully take hold.
Throughout the stages, there’s a point where the initial signs become more evident, primarily reflected in how you feel. If you’re in a difficult or emotionally abusive relationship now, do you notice (or are you noticing now) a “shift” in your emotions as the relationship has progressed?
Feelings of guilt, confusion, or sadness might start to surface, similar to the prodromal stage of an infection, where early symptoms like a stomach ache begin to manifest. During this stage, you might find yourself grappling with feelings of inadequacy, constantly questioning your actions and worth.
Internally, these emotions manifest as guilt, responsibility, and confusion. Externally, you might observe behaviors from the other person that seem hurtful or disrespectful, yet it’s challenging for you to pinpoint them clearly. When you’re confused, this can lead you to make false conclusions like perhaps the problem is you and not them.
This second phase of the emotional abuse infection establishes the foundation for more severe symptoms of emotional abuse, akin to the illness stage of an infection, which is the third stage. That’s when the frequency and intensity of abusive behaviors might increase, becoming a regular part of your interactions.
At this point, emotional abuse is very present and acts much like a drip-feed of a toxin, gradually worsening your emotional health.
It’s important to recognize that, unlike some infections that can end fatally, emotional abuse tends to persist as long as the conditions are favorable—conditions where such behaviors face no repercussions or accountability.
Emotional abuse will last as long as the environment supports it.
At the end of an emotionally abusive relationship, either after the abuse has stopped or the abuser is no longer in your life, we could liken that to the convalescence stage of an infection, which involves a period of recovery and reflection. The convalescence stage is when the symptoms start to subside, and you gradually return to health.
This stage can vary in duration and, much like a latent infection, may include moments where old patterns reemerge (if the abusive person is still in your life). This is the time to recognize and protect the wonderful qualities you possess that might make you vulnerable to behaviors like that in the future.
Knowing the symptoms and the stages, whether you want to compare them to an infection or not, is key to making sure you know what to look for in your current or a future relationship.
You should definitely embrace your good qualities. But it’s equally as important to be aware that there are people who might exploit these wonderful traits in you. Unfortunately, there are people in the world who will do just that.
During the winding down stage, after an emotionally abusive relationship ends, you will need time to heal. And as you do, you may discover some new emotions inside you. When you are no longer worried about the hurtful behaviors of the other person, you will feel free to be yourself – maybe for the first time in a long time. And you might be angry that you’ve repressed who you are for so long.
You might even feel robbed over the lost time that you could have been happier. Instead of good memories, you feel duped, as if you were tricked into a meaningful relationship with someone who took away so many good months or years.
But remember, this infection was not your fault. You are not to blame.
The end of the abuse can be overwhelming, leading to intense emotions like anger and sadness. Some people might hold a grudge or experience PTSD as they struggle to rediscover their identity and reconnect with themselves.
PTSD is like a pathogen lying dormant in the body, remaining inactive until triggered by a reminiscent event, causing old thoughts and feelings to resurface.
In my Healed Being program, I’ve talked with many healing former abusers who said now that they’ve changed and are healing, their partners are actually very upset with them. This is mostly because of what I already said above: So much time has passed where the victim of abuse could have been happier.
It’s normal and natural to be upset with someone who claimed to care about you but hurt you anyway. It will take time to heal yourself after something like this.
Though true recovery, or convalescence, requires an end of the abusive behaviors, of course. But it also may require altering your environment and responses so that abuse will never thrive again. That doesn’t mean it’s your responsibility to make them stop. It means making sure they are never again “rewarded” for their bad behaviors.
Let me reiterate: You don’t have to change for someone else nor tolerate continued abuse. But changing how you react and making sure they don’t benefit from acting badly creates a less fertile environment for abusive behaviors – whether in this relationship or future ones.
By changing how you respond, you remove the ‘reward system’ that enables the abuse, potentially stopping it altogether. However, the real change needs to come from them. They need to stop the hurtful behaviors, period. And they need to work on their emotional triggers so they don’t take out their issues on those they are supposed to care most about.
In my past relationships, I used the silent treatment to manipulate my partner’s emotions. I would emotionally withdraw from them to make them feel guilty, hoping to get my way. This was a very harmful tactic to make them feel alone and unloved, something I deeply regret.
After working on myself and healing, however, I vowed never again to use emotional withdrawal as a tool for manipulation. It’s so important that the people we love feel valued and cared for, not unworthy or unlovable.
This commitment to change has changed my life and the lives of those I love. This also highlights the importance of creating an environment where abusive behaviors cannot thrive. Today, with greater awareness, I understand the impact of my past actions and never want to be that person again.
What if I can’t change my environment? What if I’m stuck here for now?
As you know, changing your environment can be challenging when you’re already deeply enmeshed in emotional abuse. The abuse becomes intertwined with your daily life, influencing every decision and action. Whether you’re alone or with close friends, the presence of the abuser lingers in your thoughts, causing hesitation and doubt in your decisions, from minor day-to-day decisions to significant life choices.
Part of the recovery process involves breaking free from this pattern of thinking. It’s about reaching a state where not every decision is overshadowed by the abuser’s potential reaction. That’s how to start healing: Free yourself of the abusive person’s influence.
But that’s not always possible, I know. Some situations are difficult to leave behind. Sometimes, you are stuck in circumstances you can’t control. The pervasive environment of abuse can feel like it extends its reach into every aspect of your life, creating a fog that clouds your judgment and diminishes your confidence.
Read the articles and listen to the episodes on this site. There are a lot of resources that can help you find clarity and regain your power.
No matter what, always reaffirm your self-worth. You deserve to be treated with respect and kindness. If the feelings you receive from the other person are anything but supportive and loving, it’s time to question their intention and remind yourself that you deserve better.
Continuous challenges and daily struggles with an unpredictable person create a volatile environment, one in which thriving often means adapting to the chaos, potentially leading to your own reactive abuse, which is when you feel like you have to become abusive in response to their abuse just to feel heard. No one can thrive in an environment like this. It is toxic and unsustainable. And it typically ends badly.
Ideally, confronting the person doing emotionally abusive behavior and making it clear that what they say and do is unacceptable does create an environment that makes it hard for emotional abuse to flourish. Expressing how their actions make you feel—hurt, unloved, and disregarded—can initiate a critical conversation. But it’s also true that confronting someone might actually make things worse.
When that happens, and the abuser is unwilling to change or seek healing, the responsibility to create any change in your situation, unfortunately, falls on you. If they won’t change, you might have to make changes for both of you.
An infection might go away on its own due to our body’s ability to stave them off. However, emotional abuse doesn’t have a natural defense. It’s insidious and works its way into your mind and body. And our mind and body don’t have a natural defense for this. That’s why it’s so important to learn everything you can about these behaviors and what they look like.
The infection of emotional abuse is curable. You can survive and thrive after the abuse has stopped. But it will take a conscious effort for you to heal and grow not only during the behaviors but also after when you realize just how much time you spent thinking about what they are going to do or say next. Those thoughts can occupy your mind 100% of the time when you’re in deep.
