A self-check
If you are asking the question, the honest answer is that something in the relationship is costing you more than it should. This is not a diagnosis — it is a set of questions that help you see a pattern you may have been explaining away.
Psychological abuse is identified by a pattern, not a single event. Any one of the questions below could describe an ordinary hard week. Several of them, repeatedly, over months or years, describe something else: a relationship organized around one person's control and another person's doubt.
Answer honestly, and notice how many you recognize.
Ten questions
There is no score to clear. One or two recognitions may point to a difficult patch worth talking about. Recognizing many of them — especially the ones about self-editing, shrinking contact with other people, and doubting your own memory — describes the shape of psychological abuse, whether or not anyone has ever raised their voice.
You do not have to decide anything about the relationship today. Begin a private record of what happens and when, kept somewhere the other person cannot reach. Tell one person you trust. If it is safe to do so, speak with a therapist who understands coercive control. In the U.S., the National Domestic Violence Hotline is free and confidential, 24/7, at 1-800-799-7233; if you are in immediate danger, call your local emergency number.
Common questions
Look for a pattern rather than an incident. If you routinely apologize without knowing why, doubt your own memory of events, edit yourself to manage another person's mood, and have become smaller and less confident over the course of the relationship, that pattern is consistent with psychological abuse — even if nothing dramatic has ever happened.
Yes. Psychological abuse is recognized harm on its own, and research shows sustained psychological abuse can be as detrimental as physical abuse. In several countries coercive control is a criminal offense with no physical violence required.
Worrying that you are the problem is one of the most common experiences among people living with psychological abuse, and one of the most reliable signals that responsibility has been shifted onto you. Someone causing the harm rarely spends months examining whether they are causing it.
You do not have to make a decision about the relationship to take a first step. Start a private record of what happens and when, tell one person you trust, and speak with a therapist familiar with coercive control. In the U.S., the National Domestic Violence Hotline is free and confidential, 24/7, at 1-800-799-7233.
The book
Dr. Avery Neal's research-backed guide to recognizing psychological abuse and healing its effects on the body and the mind.
Keep reading
The patterns that show up long before anyone calls it abuse.
How the two terms overlap, and where clinicians draw the line.
The Neal Method and the CLEAR framework for recovery.
The definition, the common signs, and why it is so hard to name.
How control narrows money, movement, contact, and your own account of events.
Clear definitions of gaslighting, coercive control, trauma bonding, DARVO and more.
Her clinical practice, research, books, courses and work with health systems.
