The ICI Experience:

The post I did on verbal abuse for Blog Catalog's Blogging Against Abuse challenge last September is still getting regular hits, so I thought I would post an update to some of what's going on in the relatively new field of the study of verbal abuse. There's this tiny link on the verbalabuse.com home page, to this fantastic essay from the St. Petersburg Times called "Life: The lies that bind." Oh. My. God. Bad enough to have been raised by a verbally abusive father who can get under your skin and does so knowingly. I had this epiphany when I was in my early thirties, I think. Can you imagine having it when you were seven? And this father takes it a step further... by ramming it home to his little girl in no uncertain terms in the middle of the night, along with the crystal clear message that he thinks she is stupid and worthless. Seven years old. Oh My God. I pray for the children. I pray for the inner child in all of us, even the abusers. I haven'...

There's only one rule and it's simple, just "Blog Against Abuse". Any kind of abuse. The topic I've chosen to blog about is verbal abuse. I first became aware of the concept of verbal abuse in the mid-1990's, I guess. I was wandering through the eclectic mini bookstore of the university where I matriculated and then worked for several years, and the book titled "The Verbally Abusive Relationship" by Patricia Evans just jumped out at me. (There's a slide show of links at the end of this post, to Ms. Evans' books on Amazon - which are currently the best books available on the subject.) I read the bulleted list (below) from the back cover of the book and answered 'Yes!' to every question when apparently just one 'yes' would have made the book required reading: • Does your partner seem irritated or angry at you several times a week? • Does he deny being angry when he clearly is? • Do your attempts to discuss feelings of pain ...