gostryter........ emotional abuse is not about just "being yelled at". its about the breaking down of self esteem. my dad was a big-time emotional abuser, though he'd never have known or admitted it. he'd get mad and say things like "no one is ever gonna want to marry you, who'd put up with you?" and when a family friend told me i was "getting to be prettier than my sister" my dad said "oh, he's just trying to make you feel good". he also told me regularly that i was crazy. by contrast he once told my sister "you're not exactly a rocket scientist". my dad's been dead 10 years now and i still think i'm ugly (no matter how many people tell me different), and i still can't have a normal relationship because i don't respect myself. "who'd want me? who'd put up with me? i'll never be as pretty as my sister, anyway." and my sister still thinks she's stupid (she's not), and feels she has to prove her intelligence to everyone while still being "the pretty one".

what i'm getting at is that, for me at least, that emotional abuse has stuck with me in a big way. my dad also didn't protect me from the neighbor who sexually abused me. my father never laid a hand on me (other than some hair-pulling if he was super pissed off), but i am angrier with him than i am with the "real" abuser. i'm a mess at 34 and a lot of that has to do with my dad and the things he said to me when i was a kid, and him not protecting me. and he said alot of positive things too, told me i was beautiful, told me i was smart. those aren't the things that stuck though. what stuck was "you're crazy and you're not as pretty as your sister and no one will ever want to marry you". i don't know why. it just did.

don't know if i've answered your question at all but wanted to tell you the way it is for me.