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39 reviews for:
The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond
Patricia Evans
4.0 AVERAGE
39 reviews for:
The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond
Patricia Evans
4.0 AVERAGE
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
This was one of the better books I've read on the subject. It offers clear insight into the problems of mentally/verbally abusive relationships without adopting the “blame the victim” mentality so many of the other books had. For someone struggling with their decisions already, those types of books only make things worse. Although, this book, like the others, has suggestions for how to make things work with your abuser which doesn't help either if they don't want to pursue it. It just makes you feel like you didn't do enough if other people had agreed to recognize what was going on but your partner wouldn't. This book could also be potentially useful for those in abusive situations that aren't intimate relationships as well.
The first part of the book helps you to evaluate your own experience and whether or not your relationship contained verbal abuse. It also focused on what the author calls the two types of power and why one of them isn't healthy. It explores these powers and how people use them within the relationship. Most importantly, this chapter focuses on the consequences of the abuse. Part two goes more into depth on the different types of verbal abuse and trying to change it. There are also sections discussing therapists and children in the relationship.
I found this book helpful when it talked about recognizing the signs of abuse. Often victims of abuse don't trust their own judgment after being talked down to so long that they can't personally see whats happening to them. This book helps provide a checklist for validating the experiences. Also, if you are still in the relationship, it does give a couple tips for trying to make the abuser see the light so to speak and get help. The problem with this is that for people who have already left the relationship or who's partners won't recognize that they need help, this part is rather useless and instead makes the abused feel worse as they think there was more they could have done, when really they couldn't.
There are good and bad books out there and I would rate this as one of the better ones. It still won't meet everyones needs but hopefully can help some people.
The Verbally Abusive Relationship
Copyright 1992
217 pages
Review by M. Reynard 2011
The first part of the book helps you to evaluate your own experience and whether or not your relationship contained verbal abuse. It also focused on what the author calls the two types of power and why one of them isn't healthy. It explores these powers and how people use them within the relationship. Most importantly, this chapter focuses on the consequences of the abuse. Part two goes more into depth on the different types of verbal abuse and trying to change it. There are also sections discussing therapists and children in the relationship.
I found this book helpful when it talked about recognizing the signs of abuse. Often victims of abuse don't trust their own judgment after being talked down to so long that they can't personally see whats happening to them. This book helps provide a checklist for validating the experiences. Also, if you are still in the relationship, it does give a couple tips for trying to make the abuser see the light so to speak and get help. The problem with this is that for people who have already left the relationship or who's partners won't recognize that they need help, this part is rather useless and instead makes the abused feel worse as they think there was more they could have done, when really they couldn't.
There are good and bad books out there and I would rate this as one of the better ones. It still won't meet everyones needs but hopefully can help some people.
The Verbally Abusive Relationship
Copyright 1992
217 pages
Review by M. Reynard 2011
Although the main focus of this book is on couples, it is also extremely useful regarding friends, family, colleagues.
informative
fast-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Sexism, Toxic relationship, Gaslighting
Picked up a physical copy after listening to the audiobook - it completely changed the way I see one of the men in my life. It helps articulate this form of abuse that is lesser known and is often excused.
Changed my life. I came upon it in a bookstore; I always felt like the book literally jumped off the shelf at me. I bought it impulsively and it absolutely illuminated every single thing about some of my relationships and how I was raised. I cannot possibly recommend highly enough.
Verbal abuse and emotional abuse are such subtle things that are so hard to realize in our own life. Even after you realized it, you might still second-guess yourself, "was that abusive, or am I just too sensitive?" At least that's how I think and that's how my mind was trained as I growing up in an abusive environment. This book does not only help people who can't see the abusive attitude clearly but also will help us become more self-aware and be respectful towards others. This book should be read by everyone, especially mental health professionals. I have encountered therapists described in the book who has no knowledge of verbal abuse and emotional abuse. And the result of talking to them was putting myself in danger. Luckily after a long period of seeking, I found this book and two very well-informed therapists to help me process trauma and understanding boundrys.
We should have more of these kinds of books on the market.
We should have more of these kinds of books on the market.
Disorganized and repetitive, as well as sometimes very off-topic. There's a whole chapter on financial abuse, even though this is a type of abuse completely separate from verbal abuse. There's also a chapter on verbal abuse and children that feels very out of place. The book starts off overly academic and then becomes very new-age; I would have guessed this book was written in the 70s based on the Reality I/Reality II business. Large portions seem to just be the author's opinion, not based on any studies. The author also gives terrible advice to pursue couples counseling and for the abuser to do individual therapy, even though most books on abuse note that both types of therapy tend to make abusers worse. The only useful portions of this book deal with the specific kinds of verbal abuse and suggestions for responding to them.
Evans is dangerously close to alienating her readership as she denies her reader's partner his (or her) humanity. So far she offers her victims no advice and no evidence to ground her assertions. That said, I am a little removed from the general readership and it is clear that both I am benefiting from the reader and so did my benefactor. I gained more from the comments left by the woman who read this book before me, but I do understand where this book could benefit some readers.
The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond is fraught with grammatical and typographical errors, but more than that it doesn't seem to recognize the depth and breadth of women who might pick up this book. For instance: it insists that the reader is a female and that the reader's lover is a male. It assumes the reader has no knowledge of verbal abuse despite the fact that the reader picked up the book. Having just read the 1992 copy I don't know if the newer edition is improved at all from this.
The last few chapters are the most useful--were I to recommend this book to myself I would have suggested I skip straight to the second half of Part II. That said, I am very familiar with myself and didn't really need a course on what verbal abuse entails. For others, who perhaps fit Evans's view of her readership, this might not be so.
The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond is fraught with grammatical and typographical errors, but more than that it doesn't seem to recognize the depth and breadth of women who might pick up this book. For instance: it insists that the reader is a female and that the reader's lover is a male. It assumes the reader has no knowledge of verbal abuse despite the fact that the reader picked up the book. Having just read the 1992 copy I don't know if the newer edition is improved at all from this.
The last few chapters are the most useful--were I to recommend this book to myself I would have suggested I skip straight to the second half of Part II. That said, I am very familiar with myself and didn't really need a course on what verbal abuse entails. For others, who perhaps fit Evans's view of her readership, this might not be so.
I really appreciated how clear and consistent this book is about defining abuse as a thing a person does in order to exert control over another person. This changes the conversation from parsing just how mean the things a person is saying are, or whether the person hearing them is just oversensitive and can't take a joke. Something is abuse when a person is doing it in order to coerce obedience. It's that simple.
Unfortunately, this is a book that I wish I could directly pipe into the brain of someone I care about. But you can't read books for other people, no matter how good it would be for them.
Unfortunately, this is a book that I wish I could directly pipe into the brain of someone I care about. But you can't read books for other people, no matter how good it would be for them.