Category: Abuse

Sibling emotional abuse

siobhantoner

There are as many types of emotionally abusive relationships as there are types of abuse. Parent to child, partners, friends, work colleagues, but one that doesn’t get a lot of attention is between siblings.

These can be full, half or step siblings involved and while it’s usually the older siblings abusing the younger it isn’t always the case.

Name calling and belittling, being excluded, being made to feel worthless. All this things will have long lasting consequences to the victim. Low self esteem, a need to put others first, a need to never make mistakes.

What doesn’t get noticed though is quite often the underlying message of not feeling loveable. After all, if your own siblings hate you and treat you so badly there must be something wrong with you? The child experiencing this is going to internalise this sort of message very young. They are being abused by siblings they love and look up to.  They don’t have the ability to rationalise that the problem isn’t them.

So they will grow up with this message embedded deep inside as a self concept, even if they never name it.

There is a good chance they will never even realise that their experiences were abusive. After all everyone knows siblings can be difficult and sibling rivalry is normal.So it may well be downplayed and minimised by other members of the family whilst the low self esteem it created has a lifelong impact.

So what can be done to help? The first step is to really reflect on where you are? Do you find yourself always trying to put others needs before your own? Do you find it difficult to be with your siblings or have lost contact completely? Do you jokingly say my sibling always hated me and try and pretend that didn’t hurt!

Starting to explore that relationship can help you look at the current and past situations from a different perspective and give you the insights to change things in the future. It may be a painful experience but hopefully it will be worthwhile.

Abuse

siobhantoner

This article on abuse contains a video click I’ve seen a few times, but each time I watch it I find it distressing.

What impact does neglect and abuse have long term for adults? The cycles of abuse can continue for generations, to work on changing that can be the work of a life time but changing things, no matter how difficult can help break the cycles.

Domestic Violence

siobhantoner

Unfortunately a few acts of extremist violence have taken place recently. I have been thinking about the response to those events in the general public. The sort of comments I read on social media and how whole communities are being tarred by the behaviour of the few.

However I can’t help but also think about the other acts of violence that occur on a daily basis and don’t get attention. Where is the outrage for those victims?

I am talking about domestic violence, perpetrated most often (but not exclusively) by men.

How many people share posts on Facebook condemning this and calling for their community to do more to stop it?

The data

According to this article during the 6 years to the end of 2016, in only England and Wales, more than 900 women were murdered. That is 150 victim per yearin these two countries alone. How high is the number across the world?

On this website I found these truly horrific estimates for that

An analysis of a United Nations global crime study has revealed that an estimated 43,600 women are killed every year by an intimate partner or family member. This is the equivalent to five women every hour or one woman every 12 minutes.

And this is just the estimated death toll. What about those that aren’t killed. How many are being physically and emotionally abused on a daily basis? How many children are witness to it and also being traumatised.

Compared these numbers with those killed in terrorist incidents in the UK and in Europe in this article.

Over the last 10 years there have been 1.4 deaths per year in the UK due to terrorism

Yet there have been 150 women per year killed in England and Wales alone by current or former partners.

How do you feel about these figures? Are you shocked, or all too familiar through personal experience of how widespread domestic violence is? Please get in touch if you need support for your own situation.