Healing the Scars of Emotional Abuse
Dr. Gregory L. Jantz, Ann McMurray
February 1, 2009
ISBN-10 : 0800733231
Jantz, Gregory L., and Ann McMurray. Healing the Scars of Emotional Abuse. Revell, 2009.
The signs of emotional abuse are easy to overlook. There is no scar tissue to stretch, no bruises to yellow and heal, no gaping wound to point to. In spite of their invisibility, emotional wounds comprise a very damaging form of abuse.
While emotional abuse always accompanies physical and sexual abuse, it can also be present on its own. Because its implications have been overlooked, it’s been left to do its damage in silence. The abused have no recourse but to wonder why they just can’t seem to get their lives on track.
Each will think back to his or her childhood and won’t be able to come up with a single time they were back-handed across the room or left alone with no food, or forced to do something “naughty” in secret. They conclude they were never abused and delve no further into the past to discover why their present doesn’t seem to be working. But just as physical and sexual abuse have signposts to mark their presence, emotional abuse, being a systematic attack on one’s sense of self, has common traits and runs the gamut of intensity and damage.
