While having an abuse history is a significant risk factor, most abused people do not go on to become abusers themselves. Abuse is a complex, learned behavior and a choice, not an inevitable outcome or a justification for future actions.
Surviving child abuse or witnessing domestic violence as a child does not ultimately determine that someone will become an abuser themselves. A partner who uses their past to justify their choice to abuse is making excuses and failing to take accountability for their actions.
Abusive people believe they have the right to control and restrict their partner's lives. This is often because they believe their own feelings and needs should be prioritized in the relationship or because they enjoy exerting the power that such abuse gives them.
There are several studies that suggest that chronic trauma can lead to the change of psychological personality traits such as increased aggression, depression, distrust, alienation, tendency to withdrawal and isolation, impaired self-protection, and poor social integration (23, 24).
5 Childhood Trauma Personalities
Unhealed trauma often appears as chronic people-pleasing, relationship struggles, anxiety, self-destructive coping, or persistent shame and emptiness. Trauma rewires the hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex, affecting memory, emotion regulation, decision-making, and social interactions.
The 7 key signs of emotional abuse often involve Isolation, Verbal Abuse (insults/yelling), Blame-Shifting/Guilt, Manipulation/Control, Gaslighting (making you doubt reality), Humiliation/Degradation, and Threats/Intimidation. These behaviors aim to control you, erode your self-worth, and make you dependent, creating a pattern of fear, anxiety, and low self-esteem, even without physical harm.
What are the ten different types of abuse?
These studies together show that about half (50%) of the variance in aggressive behavior is explained by genetic influences in both males and females, with the remaining 50% of the variance being explained by environmental factors not shared by family members.
While all traumas leave a profound mark on an individual's life, there's a different level of difficulty in recovering from what's called "complex trauma." Unlike single-incident traumas, complex trauma stems from repeated experiences of stressful and traumatic events, usually in environments where there's no escape.
The 7 stages of trauma bonding, a cycle keeping victims attached to abusers, typically progress from intense idealization (love bombing) to creating dependency, then criticism and devaluation, followed by manipulation (gaslighting), leading to the victim's resignation, loss of self, and finally, emotional addiction to the unpredictable cycle of abuse and intermittent kindness, making it hard to leave.
In univariate analyses, all 5 forms of childhood trauma in this study (ie, witnessing violence, physical neglect, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse) demonstrated statistically significant relationships with the number of different aggressive behaviors reported in adulthood.
Abusive personality disorders, such as narcissistic and borderline personality disorders, can cause significant distress in relationships. These complex mental health conditions can lead to various types of abuse, including verbal, emotional, and physical, leaving victims feeling hopeless and fearful.
Repeated loss of temper. Frequent physical fighting. Vandalism or property damage. Increased use of drugs and alcohol.
People are only slightly more likely to share personality traits with their parents than they are with a random stranger, researchers say. The study concludes it is impossible to accurately predict a child's patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving from those of their mother or father.
Signs of emotional and psychological abuse
"Gali" (गाली) in Hindi/Urdu primarily means abuse, swear word, or insulting language, but the word "gali" (गली) can also mean a narrow alleyway or street. The context determines the meaning: "gaali" is profanity, while "gali" (often transliterated as "gully") refers to a small street or lane.
The 5Rs of Safeguarding - Recognise, Respond, Report, Record, and Refer - are essential for ensuring safety and well-being.
Narcissistic abuse typically involves a pattern of showering you with excessive affection and then attempting to tear down your self-esteem. Constant criticism and belittling. To devalue you, the abuser might unfairly nitpick your every action, insult you, or minimize your accomplishments. Shifting blame.
What “Rewiring” Means — And How Healing Happens
Emotional abuse refers to a situation when a person willfully causes or permits a child to suffer, inflicts unjustifiable physical pain or mental suffering on a child, or willfully causes or permits the child to be placed in a situation in which their health is endangered while under their custody.
Jonice Webb, (reference at end) describes a range of symptoms of childhood emotional neglect in adulthood:
The challenge of supporting someone with PTSD becomes particularly complex when they begin to push away those closest to them. This pushing away, while painful for supporters, is actually a common response rooted in the nervous system's attempt to protect itself from further harm.
8 Signs of Childhood Trauma in Adults
As a Harvard-trained psychologist, I've found that there are seven phrases you'll hear from highly narcissistic people: