What is worse - physical or verbal/emotional abuse?

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Both physical and verbal/emotional abuse are horrendous. They usually go hand in hand although often verbal/emotional abuse is a predecessor of physical abuse. Both physical and verbal abuse have dire consequences in the long-term well being of an individual.

I purposefully left out the option of "both are equally bad" because I wanted see see a specific result in peoples opinions. Even if you would normally choose the "equally bad" option I want you to put that aside and choose one or the other for the sake of argument.

 

I voted for verbal. The reason I voted for verbal is that it is a type of abuse which is legal and therefore more people suffer from it and there really isn't anything they can do about it.

 

Building up a resistance to physical abuse might actually help you stay fit.

 

I think it depends on the scope. At the most basic level, severe physical abuse is worse -- that is the type of abuse which will leave a person dead or disabled. Once you take that down a notch then bruises heal and scars fade.

Emotional abuse stays with the person and never goes away. Very few abuse victims are faced with life threatening injuries so for the majority the emotional abuse is worse.

Paracelsi: You don't build a resistance to physical abuse -- you can't resist a burn as a lighted cigarette comes in contact with your skin, a sharp hit to the nose will still bloody it, bones are still broken with a harsh blow. You build a tolerance to pain. Those are two different things.

Edit: Ironic that my 9,000th post is about abuse....

 

Yes, psychological trauma can be a pretty horrible thing.

+1 ^ Well said, T2.

 

Ask a random person whether they would prefer to be punched in the face or to be insulted. Most people would prefer the insult. I don't think they are even comparable. Physical abuse is an escalation of verbal/emotional abuse. Not to mention that it is rather hard to be physically abused without also being emotionally abused. As I understand it is the emotional scars of physical abusive that hurt the longest.

The only way that non-physical abuse could be worse is that it may lead the abused person to stick around for more while when the step has been taken to physical the victim often wakes up and removes themselves from the abuser.

 

IMO "the act" of physical abuse causes emotional abuse. The emotional abuse is the lingering aspect. Physical abuse can linger when pertaining to breaks, cuts and bruises. But it is the emotional damage that sticks. But to me, physicl abuse is a source/sub-tier of of emotional abuse.

 

@ The Great Snook - Verbal abuse is not legal, although people get away with it a lot more than physical abuse.

 

joacqin: I'd say that "most people" have not been a victim of real abuse. I'm not talking about the run of the mill 'daddy spanked me once because I set the house on fire' or 'I can't believe my parents grounded me and said bad things for sneaking off and screwing around.' I'm talking about the daily dismantling of a person's confidence and self-worth. Being told every day of your life that you're worthless. Having someone you care about respond in conversation in the most derogatory way possible to show total contempt. Real emotional abuse is the systematic destruction of an individual and replacing that person with a subservient target to be used.

Been there. I'd rather have another hit to the face or even more cigarettes crushed out in my skin than go through that again.

 

Depends on the scope of the abuse, the perp, the victim, and the situation. The serious emotional/verbal abuse described by T2 is a prime example of the kind of thing that can screw a person up for life.

 

@T2 - I disagree. I think its far more common in our society than we realize. After I got me and my children out of our situation I became outspoken about it. Not in a preaching way, but by being honest and open about the nature and the process of what I've experienced. Funny thing I found about that was when I shared my experiences, suddenly a surprising number of other women I knew started opening up to me about their own experience. Although a lot of it had to with verbal abuse (and I'm not talking about the occasional name-calling associated with normal spousal interaction) there was also some instances of physical abuse as well. My guess is that a large percentage of abuse cases remain hidden.

 

Disagree about what? The "most people" is in quotations and a direct response to joacqin's comment ... or did you miss that? And technically I'd have to say less than half the population has been abused -- by default that means most people have not been abused.

 

What some folks are missing is that it's impossible for physical abuse not to contain at least a moderate if not actually high degree of emotional abuse. Hitting someone is never just hitting someone. It's not just pain and even if it were possible for the abuser to activate pain with a button on the remote, it would still contain a boatload of attendant emotional suffering, traumas and complications. (Humiliation, powerlessness, fear, lack of predictability, uncertainty of existence, more.) Even the fact that someone would violate your bodily integrity just like that is already a powerful experience.

Fail?

 

They both amplify each other.

 

I said verbal/emotional based on my own experiences. I've never actually been systematically abused, but I was bullied by my peers when in grade school. The physical stuff (someone stood on my foot) was far less painful and easier to recover from than the emotional/verbal stuff ("friends" suddenly deciding they couldn't be seen around me). The one I was able to stand up to; the other caused huge confidence issues that I'm still dealing with.

 

Yeah well, mild physical abuse is nothing but shouldn't we compare the same level of things? Mild physical abuse should be compared to mild emotional/verbal abuse. Severe emotional/verbal abuse should be compared to severe physical abuse. Yes I would also prefer a slap in the face over years of degradation and isolation but that isn't really a fair comparison is it?

Oh and Chev people didn't miss it but wrote pretty much that in a post not much above yours.

 

I don't know how to answer the question. It's like asking me if it's worse to be shot in the left leg or the right leg. They both sound bad.

Although I tend to agree with chev's point - it seems implausible that someone could suffer strictly from physical abuse without mental abuse coming with it. OTOH, I think you could suffer from mental abuse without there being a physical element. So in that regard I guess physical is worse, because then you're getting both.

 

I think I'd pick physical for the reasons chev stated.

Although if you could somehow have physical abuse without the emotional aspect (which I don't think is the case), then I'd say emotional, because physical wounds heal much easier than emotional ones (other than physical wounds with significant permanent effects, of course).

 

Hmm... good point. I'm not sure where to put the severity levels, though. I mean, the girl who stepped on my foot hated me from day 1 and was very aggressive over a fairly long period of time. The "friends" who stopped being my friends ... Not sure how that compares, other than that safe areas were removed.

I think this speaks to the point that when a kid is abused by one parent while the other knows about, they tend to feel more betrayed by the parent who knew and let it happen than by the abuser.

Another issue for me is that in my situation, very few people actively liked me. I wouldn't say that I was seriously bullied, just mildly by that one girl. But the knowledge that people didn't like me (and please read literally here: because they didn't talk to me, it might not be that they *disliked* me -- it was more that I just went unnoticed most of the time -- so, when I say they didn't like me, I mean that specifically: they did not actively indicate that they did actually like me) was more damaging to me over time than the active bullying by the one student. It seems less severe to me because it's not intentional, but maybe it's not.

I'm still struggling with it and I'm going to be 36 at the end of September. I'm teaching high school, and a lot of my old insecurities (Will they like me?) are all popping up again.

Anyway, I agree that severity should be taken into consideration with these comparisons, but I'm really not sure how to figure out what the severity is. And I think that's part of the point. If they're equally severe, aren't they equally bad?

Another thing that makes me lean towards emotional/mental being worse than physical is the fact that unless they are using tactics to make sure no marks are left and no injuries occur, there is a physical sign of the damage. Emotional/mental abuse doesn't look the same. You can't see it or prove it as easily. That makes it very easy for the victim to think that there's nothing wrong. It's a lot harder to think that physical abuse is "normal". Unless you have a certain amount of confidence, you can't see the mental/emotional abuse as abuse, and the first thing abusers do is break down confidence levels. This happens with physical abuse, too, where victims will start thinking they "deserve" it on some level, but I would argue that that's an emotional/mental aspect of the physical abuse. Confidence is important because if you don't have confidence, you stop trusting your own judgement. When you stop trusting your own judgement, it's very hard to see/believe in emotional/mental abuse as it is happening. Physical abuse could be a wake-up call and allow the victim to see that there is real abuse happening.

I guess for those of you who are arguing that you can't have physical abuse without emotional abuse, but you can have emotional abuse without physical abuse, my question is: in a case where both are present, which is worse? So, the wife is beating the husband AND mentally/emotionally abusing him. It's the same situation now, so we're not comparing a husband who is being physically AND mentally/emotionally abused with one who is only being mentally/emotionally abused.

If we're going to make severity an issue, I think it's clear that someone who is being abused in both ways is in a more severe situation than someone who is only being abused in one of them. So, if we're only talking about the person who is being abused both ways, which one is worse for that person?

(And yes, I deliberately avoided the idea of a husband abusing a wife. I think it's unfair to men to say that it always happens that way, or to constantly use that image rather than the reverse).