Expert advice from ONRECORD for how to prove emotional abuse
Emotional abuse is often referred to as the ‘silent killer’ in counselling circles. It can have a devastating impact on a person’s psychological wellbeing, namely because it can be so hard to prove when there isn’t a ‘one-size fits all’ type of emotional abuse. It is also hard to estimate how many emotional abuse cases there are in the UK. How do you prove you are being emotionally abused?
There are no physical scars because this is a form of mental abuse. The abuser manipulates your emotions and can, over time, completely change the way you think and feel. Emotional abuse is a slow, toxic form of abuse that can be very difficult to break away from. However, if you have the right tools to help you prove you are being emotionally abused, they might just help you stop the cycle of manipulation.
Read more information on emotional abuse.
At ONRECORD, we have developed a range of resources and an app to help you gather evidence of emotional abuse. With ONRECORD you can quickly and easily make a record of any incident when you are being emotionally abused to use as evidence.
How To Gather Evidence Of Emotional Abuse
Tip 1: ONRECORD is the best way to collect and save the evidence of emotional abuse as it is purpose built for this kind of problem.
It may be that you are so controlled, or it may be too dangerous for you to sign up to ONRECORD yourself or download the mobile app onto your phone. If so, how about asking someone else, if you are allowed to talk to them, to download it and keep a record for you.
Tip 2: Use the mobile app to record each and every incident when emotionally abusive behaviour has happened. Each incident on its own may seem trivial to someone else but if you can show how often these little things happen people will be able to understand more easily. By being able to show other people a record of all the things that happen, they will see how each little incident builds up a pattern of abuse. The more you record the better your evidence will be when you come to do something to stop the abuse.
Tip 3: You may choose to make several different labels to record different kinds of abuse. For example, one label might be to record how you are controlled when you are out, another might be to record what happens at home. You may be suffering other kinds of abuse as well, such as physical violence, in which case you might want to record that under a different label.
Tip 4: Particularly important is to record if you get abused in front of your child(ren) as this will be child abuse as well as emotional abuse of you.
Tip 5: If other people, such as family members, witness what is going on, make sure you record that they were there.
Tip 6: Remember, there’s no point in gathering the evidence unless you are going to do something about it, which may be going to a counselling service, seeing a solicitor, contacting the police or maybe proving to someone you trust and want to confide in what is actually happening to you. ONRECORD allows you to ‘Connect’ your records to a professional or an organisation such as a solicitor or the police without having to physically visit them (but you need to either get their ONRECORD serial number from them, if they have one, or get them to sign up on our website for free, temporary access to your account by giving them your name and email address). Making records is how you prove that you are suffering from emotional abuse. The next step is to do something about it and bring it to an end.