Verbal Abuse
The audience was roaring from the bleachers, but no one, not even the buzzer that announced half time, could drown out the team’s coach. She’d spent most of the game pacing back and forth on the sideline, a motion punctuated with occasional flurries of angry expression, screaming, or pointing. A few parents in the crowd who seemed determined to match or surpass her interjected their own screams or stood to object to a certain call made by the referee. At half time, the team shuffled away toward the locker room, heads down, ready to receive whatever verbal blows their coach decided to deliver. And by the looks of the way she was clutching her clipboard, she was NOT happy.
Hopefully the scene I’ve described to you above isn’t one that you’ve personally experienced or had to witness, but my guess is that if you’ve been involved in sports, you’ve probably seen some shade or hue of it at one point. Coaches may prefer to call behavior like this “passion” and talk about the intensity of being all in the game, but the reality is that some coaches have used their position of power as an excuse to become abusive in the way they communicate with and motivate their players (Zehntner, 2019). Forms of verbal abuse (from a coach or anyone) can include yelling, name calling, belittling, shaming, or threatening. Put bluntly, verbal abuse is when a person uses their words to attempt to manipulate, control, or dominate another person (Gordon, 2022). And verbal abuse isn’t limited to the world of sports. It can also come from your caregiver, students in the hall, colleagues, grandparent, friends, teacher, sibling, or a neighbor. If someone can speak, they’re capable of verbal abuse.
One difficult to identify form of verbal abuse is when someone makes public jokes about you at your expense. The feelings you could experience as a result of this are shame, humiliation, anger, and confusion. Humor is an effective mask should anyone choose to confront the inconsiderate behavior. They can always respond with, “I’m just kidding. Don’t take it so seriously.” Don’t let such a response fool you. Anyone who responds like this simply doesn’t want to be held accountable for the hurt that their words caused. A person who truly cares about you and knows how to love in a healthy way will always listen when you need to talk about something they said or did that hurt you. They’ll believe you. They don’t want to hurt you. A person engaged in verbal abuse on the other hand will often attempt to convince you that you’re wrong and that what they said wasn’t actually that bad (Gordon, 2022).
Because verbal abuse doesn’t leave any visible wounds or bruises, it can be easy to overlook or convince ourselves that it isn’t so bad. But it is. Some of the long term effects of verbal abuse include chronic stress, low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, PTSD, social isolation, and substance use (Gordon, 2022). If you think you might be experiencing verbal abuse from someone in your life, please reach out and talk about it. No one deserves to be verbally abused. Ever.
References:
Gordon, S. (2022). What is verbal abuse? Very Well Mind. Retrieved from https://www.verywellmind.com/how-to-recognize-verbal-abuse-bullying-4154087.
Zehntner, C. (2019). Toughen up snowflake! Sport coaches can be emotionally abusive - here's how to recognize it. The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/toughen-up-snowflake-sports-coaches-can-be-emotionally-abusive-heres-how-to-recognise-it-110267.
Challenges/Points:
Verbal abuse is common in sports but can exist anywhere between any two people.
Forms of verbal abuse include name calling, belittling, blaming, shaming, shouting, or making public jokes at someone else’s expense.
This form of abuse can be harder to identify since the wounds it leaves are invisible, but it is just as damaging and sometimes comes with another form of abuse such as physical or emotional.
Questions:
Have you experienced verbal abuse or witnessed someone else experiencing it?
How have you engaged in verbal abuse in small ways? Have you called your sibling names out of anger or made fun of someone in front of others?
Who is a safe person or where is a safe place you can go to when you are experiencing verbal abuse?
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