THE DAMAGING EFFECT OF VERBAL ABUSE.

Imagine yourself as a child who had kept hearing that he is worthless, unloved, and unwanted throughout his life by his immediate caregiver. How would you feel? Hurt, alone & depressed, right! But according to your Vedic mantra, if you are not bleeding or physically maimed, you’re not hurt. Now, how much does it makes sense!

It is nothing but that individual’s word power who has given you the scars. That would last throughout your life. Words can help to lift you and beat us down, comfort us, or hurt us accordingly.

• How does it start?

Whenever the individuals thought clashes with another, converting it into an argument. This argument exceeds an extreme limit losing a person’s cool, and the person starts yelling and starts showing command on another person; at that point, the verbal abuse occurs.

Nowadays, a broader spectrum of youth, adults abuses each other and other peer groups and consider it a “COOL” factor to get a desirable amount of attention from other people and form an image as some authoritative figure.

Verbal abuse is not constraining to any specific age, gender, area, country, religion, or culture. It only causes irritability and significant changes in a person’s brain activity who is continually suffering from this.

In this pandemic situation, cases have been registered in NCRB by women who suffered any abuse.  Four lakhs + cases are from the women who live in metropolitan cities & semi-urban parts of the city. The abuse rate of the women residing in the rural area is beyond that we can’t even count in numbers.

• Can Verbal Abuse affect the structure of the brain?

It does affect beyond disputes. Many studies have revealed that the brain goes directly into survival mode to deal with environmental stress and deprivation, causing the changes into the mind’s gray matters (without proving causation).

In the second example, in the experiment done by Ethan Kross and others, 40 people participated who experienced an unwanted and a hurtful romantic breakup. Using MRI scanning, they asked participants to look at a photo of their ex and especially think about how they felt rejected. Then they had the participants look at a picture of a friend who was the same gender as their ex and think about positive experiences they enjoyed by the person. The results were, the same part of the brain lit up when the lost love and rejection were recalled of emotional and physical pain very much the same.

Other studies have identified the corpus callosum areas (responsible for transferring motor, sensory and cognitive information between the two brain hemispheres), the hippocampus, and the frontal cortex (thought and decision making) are seriously affected. They are making it a long-lasting one.

• It gets internalized in you.

A good friend of mine suffered from lifelong stress and anxiety as a kid from my previous view. Says that the voice of her father keeps on traumatizing her at every walk of her life. Making her criticize or question her self-identity and her worth.

The person here typically lives in the constant fear of that abuser as to what they may say or how they will react. Due to which they lose their confidence, peace of mind, and their independence.

According to Florida State University studies, Children who are victims of this type of abuse become anxious and depression-prone adults. Besides, they may also tend to grow into adults who have a more negative self-image.

VERBAL ABUSE IS NOT NORMAL.

• What do I do!

First thing first, you should have willing to get outside of this mess.

Don’t isolate yourself. It can make you more depressed and anxious.

Spend time or meet new people who could boost you up positively by re-building your confidence and self-esteem.

In a severe scenario, don’t hesitate to call for help from the mental health expert or psychologist.

If you are a child suffering this abuse or bullied into the school, seek help from your teachers and other school faculty.

• Remember!

The abuser is just trying to deny you from all the rights of self-thoughts, emotions, or experiences by calling out various names in public, judging or criticizing, harming your prestige, threatening many other forms. Just convince the individual not to do so. Even if the person doesn’t understand, make him taste his own medicine.

If the situation goes beyond the limit, make a phone call to the rescue’s toll-free number (organization).

Doing abuse is a crime, but bearing the abuse is also a colossal crime.

YOUR LIFE MATTERS.