Abuse in the family… the causes and the effects
The family is the fundamental unit of society. Parents guide, protect, and provide for their children; they teach them the values, attitudes, and skills to cope with adulthood. They are the bridge from infancy to maturity. Whenever stress occurs, the family bands together for love and support. Yet instead of this norm, many families are the locus of abuse, violence, neglect, and contempt.
Why is this so and what are the consequences of abuse?
Abuse between persons is as old as Cain and Able. In the family, it can occur between the parents, parent(s) and child (ren), siblings or any combination of these. Regardless of its source, abuse of any form (physical, verbal or sexual) has both psychological and physical consequences. Young children have symptoms such as prolonged crying, intense fear, prolonged temper tantrums, aggression, nightmares, bedwetting, social withdrawal, and poor school performance depending on their age. Adults can have similar symptoms as well as mood disturbances and antisocial behavior.
The erroneous belief that children will “forget” the experiences or “outgrow” them has been discarded. Via MRI technology, we now know that stress and trauma produce lasting physical changes in the brain. The area in the emotional portion of the brain, namely the hippocampus, which handles and processes emotional input from our experiences, shrinks in size when it can’t handle the input. Various psychiatric illnesses, including schizophrenia, depression, alcoholism, and post-traumatic stress overwhelm the hippocampus resulting in decreased tolerance for stress. Persons who have been faced with severe stress become emotionally over-sensitive and reactive to even mild stimuli. In children, whose brains are still developing this change is permanent. There will be a lifelong vulnerability to stress with an emotional exaggeration of future threats.
Children suffer the worst psychological consequences of abuse. Because of the self-oriented perception of cause-effect relationships coupled with cognitive immaturity, the child assumes the blame for any abuse inflicted by a parent —”I’ll be good, mommy”. He or she mistakenly believes that the abuse is punishment for his misbehavior or forbidden thoughts and wishes (preschool children are still too young to understand the difference between an act and a thought). Although innocent—abused children acquire self-blame, guilt, and shame. In fairy-tales, there is no such thing as a bad mother! There can be an evil stepmother—Cinderella, Hansel, and Gretel—or bad children but never a bad mother or father. Children who are physically abused learn to run and hide. Distancing one’s self from danger is a natural survival technique. Such children learn to hate their parents. Unfortunately, they may strike their own children for lack of a better role model for discipline.
Verbal abuse is even worse than physical. It seems that physical abuse for wrongdoing is more understandable for children who have not yet developed the ability for abstract thinking. Moreover, children are impressionable and earnestly believe everything their parents say. Some misinformation, such as stories about Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, or the Easter Bunny is readily believed without problems. Name-calling and woeful predictions are not. Let me provide a couple examples.
After being called a whore and tramp throughout her childhood by her father, Sally became promiscuous at age ten. She reasoned that she had been receiving the punishment for years, so why not commit the crime. She fulfilled her father’s expectation. In another case, Mike, 48, repeatedly heard his father tell him he was no good —”You have never given me a day of happiness since you were born.” He was lost and confused with poor self-esteem and lack of confidence. “I can’t even boil water,” he told me. In his case, psychotherapy to provide a corrective emotional experience helped him to marry and become a loving father.
Sexual victims frequently utilize the technique of vanishing while being abused to escape from reality. Cindy imagined herself becoming smaller and smaller until she was nothing. Other patients report similar out-of-body experiences as though they are watching a movie. Such psychotic distortions of reality are required to cope with the trauma. As adults, such victims frequently develop borderline personalities with identity and sexual confusion. Siblings who are sexually abused by another develop lifelong hatred and disgust toward their perpetrators.
Among spouses, why would two people who vow to love, honor, and cherish each other become hostile and antagonistic? Some persons remain emotionally immature, selfish, and self-centered and use the other person for their own pleasure. They never develop the capacity for concern for others. Loving another person means putting your needs secondary to your loved one’s welfare. Not getting what you want, and now, leads to demands, anger, power, and violence in persons who lack the ability to tolerate frustration or delay gratification. On a more profound level, men and women have different basic needs. While a wife needs love, a husband thrives on appreciation and respect. A woman is programmed for love and nurturance; the most important thing in her life is her relationships. Women tend to vocalize all possible problems in the relationship to clear the air, whereas a man tends to remain silent and not complain about “trivial” things. A man, on the other hand, needs to be treated like a man, with honor and respect—even if he is wrong! It is just a guy thing, as men do not like to be “dissed” (disrespected). A woman may unwittingly undercut a man’s respect for himself by criticizing his judgment and behavior, and he immaturely responds with anger, shouting, withdrawal, and perhaps violence.
How can we reduce the level of abuse and violence? Husbands must develop a loving nature in addition to providing protection and provision for the family. They must learn to hear the perceived criticism from the wife as a message to better the relationship instead of a personal attack. Wives ought to respect their husbands as being the heads of the households —remember that she is the neck— and tell him of her appreciation for what he does. Children should honor their parents and siblings, just as parents likewise behave honorably. Education about what constitutes abuse —scolding and striking children, withholding love or showing disrespect to another—should be more available. Social skill training to promote interpersonal competence is beneficial for everyone because the family must be preserved as the essential unit of society.
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"Abuse in the family… the causes and the effects"
authored by:
Dr. Mercier is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Wayne State School of Medicine. After his internship at Los Angeles County General Hospital, as a Navy physician he served one year in Vietnam with the Marines and earned a Bronze Star with ...
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