It is closely correlated with alcoholism, drug consumption, intimate-partner homicide, teen pregnancy, infant and child mortality, spontaneous abortion, reckless behaviours, suicide, and onset of mental health disorders.

Most abusers and batterers are males - but a significant minority are women. This being a "Women's Issue", problem was swept under carpet for generations and only recently has it come to public awareness. Yet, even today, society - for instance, through court and mental health systems - largely ignores domestic violence and abuse in family. This induces feelings of shame and guilt in victims and "legitimizes" role of abuser.

Violence in family is mostly spousal - one spouse beating, raping, or otherwise physically harming and torturing other. But children are also and often victims - either directly, or indirectly. Other vulnerable familial groups include elderly and disabled.

Abuse and violence cross geographical and cultural boundaries and social and economic strata. It is common among rich and poor, well-educated and less so, young and middle-aged, city dwellers and rural folk. It is a universal phenomenon.

Abusers exploit, lie, insult, demean, ignore (the "silent treatment"), manipulate, and control.

There are many ways to abuse. To love too much is to abuse. It is tantamount to treating someone as an extension, an object, or an instrument of gratification. To be over-protective, not to respect privacy, to be brutally honest, with a sadistic sense of humour, or consistently tactless – is to abuse.

To expect too much, to denigrate, to ignore – are all modes of abuse. There is physical abuse, verbal abuse, psychological abuse, sexual abuse. The list is long. Most abusers abuse surreptitiously. They are "stealth abusers". You have to actually live with one in order to witness abuse.

There are three important categories of abuse:

Overt Abuse

The open and explicit abuse of another person. Threatening, coercing, beating, lying, berating, demeaning, chastising, insulting, humiliating, exploiting, ignoring ("silent treatment"), devaluing, unceremoniously discarding, verbal abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse are all forms of overt abuse.

Covert or Controlling Abuse

Abuse is almost entirely about control. It is often a primitive and immature reaction to life circumstances in which abuser (usually in his childhood) was rendered helpless. It is about re-exerting one's identity, re-establishing predictability, mastering environment – human and physical.

The bulk of abusive behaviours can be traced to this panicky reaction to remote potential for loss of control. Many abusers are hypochondriacs (and difficult patients) because they are afraid to lose control over their body, its looks and its proper functioning. They are obsessive-compulsive in an effort to subdue their physical habitat and render it foreseeable. They stalk people and harass them as a means of "being in touch" – another form of control.

To abuser, nothing exists outside himself. Meaningful others are extensions, internal, assimilated, objects – not external ones. Thus, losing control over a significant other – is equivalent to losing control of a limb, or of one's brain. It is terrifying.

Independent or disobedient people evoke in abuser realization that something is wrong with his worldview, that he is not centre of world or its cause and that he cannot control what, to him, are internal representations.

To abuser, losing control means going insane. Because other people are mere elements in abuser's mind – being unable to manipulate them literally means losing it (his mind). Imagine, if you suddenly were to find out that you cannot manipulate your memories or control your thoughts... Nightmarish!

In his frantic efforts to maintain control or re-assert it, abuser resorts to a myriad of fiendishly inventive stratagems and mechanisms. Here is a partial list:

Unpredictability and Uncertainty

The abuser acts unpredictably, capriciously, inconsistently and irrationally. This serves to render others dependent upon next twist and turn of abuser, his next inexplicable whim, upon his next outburst, denial, or smile.

The abuser makes sure that HE is only reliable element in lives of his nearest and dearest – by shattering rest of their world through his seemingly insane behaviour. He perpetuates his stable presence in their lives – by destabilizing their own.

TIP

Refuse to accept such behaviour. Demand reasonably predictable and rational actions and reactions. Insist on respect for your boundaries, predilections, preferences, and priorities.

Disproportional Reactions