i agree perna.. it certainly IS violence... but in a situation in which no physical violence is occurring the victim may not understand or be able to connect the two. i never ever would have thought of my situation as involving violence... and of course, that is a misconception on my part.. but it kept me from finding help sooner.

im not suggesting we water down the terms, but be additive and inclusive... because the resources out there are set towards helping victims of physical violence validate their experience, which they need to, victims of other types of abuse struggle to grasp whether they are being abused at all...

"maybe it's not that bad" "maybe i'm blowing it out of proportion"

my point is about how people like myself often do not have the skill required to *know* what they suffer(ed) is abuse. Violence is what i suffered, but i would never have looked further into it because i had no idea... i was timidly exploring the *possibility* that it *may* have been abuse.

i say to my T all the time... i was not hit as an adult, not molested as a child, it doesn't seem you count if those aren't the case

i know it counts... but i didn't used to

yes, abuse is violence... i didn't dare use the word abuse even... that made bigger leaps than i could make. Do we leave out a large group of victims simply because they can't make that plain and simple connection?

it's been a year with this T, six mos with the previous and about a year and a half with a mental health worker who was just letting me talk so that i'd have someplace to turn... i am able to write out the word abuse. That is three years to just choose that word. well.. i suppose i started to use it a couple of months ago.. so subtract those.... i am only now starting to call a lot of it verbal violence.. because that is the only thing that describes the degree of screaming that happened...

"violence" as a term, label, category... are all appropriate, in retrospect for me... i never once followed those links before last year... to me they meant something bigger than what i faced, because afterall, like many victims.. it wasn't that bad right?