Emotional Workplace Abuse FOG - Fear, Obligation & Guilt

Emotionally abusive behavior is anything that intentionally hurts the feelings of another person. “Emotional abuse is the silent monster in our midst, occurring in neighbors’ and loved ones’ homes more than we realize a storm is brewing. 

It is a tragic situation that’s a daily reality for millions,”It can be more harmful than physical abuse because it can undermine what we think about ourselves. It can cripple all we are meant to be as we allow something untrue to define us.

Because emotional abuse doesn't leave physical scars, it can be hard to discern.

It's important to note emotional abuse is about the effects of behavior, not the words used. You can say the most loving words with sarcasm and silently communicate contempt through body language, rolling eyes, sighs, grimaces, tone of voice, disgusted looks, cold shoulders, banging dishes, stonewalling, cold shoulders, etc. There are dozens of ways to be emotionally abusive.

Abusing or being abused:

1. Humiliation, degradation, discounting, negating. judging, criticizing:
2. Domination, control, and shame:
3. Accusing and blaming, trivial and unreasonable demands or expectations, denies own shortcomings:
4. Emotional distancing and the “silent treatment,” isolation, emotional abandonment or neglect:
5. Codependence and enmeshment:
• Does anyone treat you not as a separate person but instead as an extension of

Emotional Abuse

• Alienation - The act of cutting off or interfering with an individual's relationships with others.
• Baiting - A provocative act used to solicit an angry, aggressive or emotional response from another individual.
• Belittling, Condescending and Patronizing - This kind of speech is a passive-aggressive approach to giving someone a verbal put-down while maintaining a facade of reasonableness or friendliness.
• Blaming - The practice of identifying a person or people responsible for creating a problem, rather than identifying ways of dealing with the problem.
• Bullying - Any systematic action of hurting a person from a position of relative physical, social, economic or emotional strength.
• Bunny Boiling - Bunny Boiling is a reference to an iconic scene in the movie "Fatal Attraction" in which the main character Alex, who suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder, kills the family's pet rabbit and boils it on the stove. Bunny Boiling has become a popular reference to how people sometimes exhibit their rage by behaving destructively towards symbolic, important or treasured possessions or representations of those whom they wish to hurt, control or intimidate.
• Cheating - Sharing a romantic or intimate relationship with somebody when you are already committed to a monogamous relationship with someone else.
• Compulsive Lying - Compulsive Lying is a term used to describe lying frequently out of habit, without much regard for the consequences to others and without having an obvious motive to lie. A compulsive liar is someone who habitually lies.
• Cruelty to Animals - Acts of Cruelty to Animals have been statistically discovered to occur more often in people who suffer from personality disorders than in the general population.
• Dependency - An inappropriate and chronic reliance by an adult individual on another individual for their health, subsistence, decision making or personal and emotional well-being.
• Emotional Blackmail - A system of threats and punishments used in an attempt to control someone’s behaviors.
• Engulfment - An unhealthy and overwhelming level of attention and dependency on another person, which comes from imagining or believing one exists only within the context of that relationship.
• False Accusations - Patterns of unwarranted or exaggerated criticism directed towards someone else.
• Favoritism - Favoritism is the practice of systematically giving positive, preferential treatment to one child, subordinate or associate among a family or group of peers.
• FOG - Fear, Obligation & Guilt - The acronym FOG, for Fear, Obligation and Guilt, was first coined by Susan Forward & Donna Frazier in Emotional Blackmail and describes feelings that a person often has when in a relationship with someone who suffers from a personality disorder. Our website, Out of the FOG, is named after this acronym.
• Frivolous Litigation - The use of unmerited legal proceedings to hurt, harass or gain an economic advantage over an individual or organization.
• Gaslighting - The practice of brainwashing or convincing a mentally healthy individual that they are going insane or that their understanding of reality is mistaken or false..
• Harassment - Any sustained or chronic pattern of unwelcome behavior by one individual towards another.
• Hoovers & Hoovering - A Hoover is a metaphor taken from the popular brand of vacuum cleaners, to describe how an abuse victim trying to assert their own rights by leaving or limiting contact in a dysfunctional relationship, gets “sucked back in” when the perpetrator temporarily exhibits improved or desirable behavior.
• Hysteria - An inappropriate over-reaction to bad news or disappointments, which diverts attention away from the real problem and towards the person who is having the reaction.
• Imposed Isolation - When abuse results in a person becoming isolated from their support network, including friends and family.
• Infantilization - Treating a child as if they are much younger than their actual age.
• Intimidation - Any form of veiled, hidden, indirect or non-verbal threat.
• Invalidation - The creation or promotion of an environment which encourages an individual to believe that their thoughts, beliefs, values or physical presence are inferior, flawed, problematic or worthless.
• Mirroring - Imitating or copying another person's characteristics, behaviors or traits.
• Name-Calling - Use of profane, derogatory or dehumanizing terminology to describe another individual or group.
• No-Win Scenarios - When you are manipulated into choosing between two bad options
• Objectification - The practice of treating a person or a group of people like an object.
• Pathological Lying - Persistent deception by an individual to serve their own interests and needs with little or no regard to the needs and concerns of others. A pathological liar is a person who habitually lies to serve their own needs.
• Perfectionism - The maladaptive practice of holding oneself or others to an unrealistic, unattainable or unsustainable standard of organization, order, or accomplishment in one particular area of living, while sometimes neglecting common standards of organization, order or accomplishment in other areas of living.
• Projection - The act of attributing one's own feelings or traits to another person and imagining or believing that the other person has those same feelings or traits.
• Proxy Recruitment - A way of controlling or abusing another person by manipulating other people into unwittingly backing “doing the dirty work”
• Push-Pull - A chronic pattern of sabotaging and re-establishing closeness in a relationship without appropriate cause or reason.
• Ranking and Comparing - Drawing unnecessary and inappropriate comparisons between individuals or groups.
• Raging, Violence and Impulsive Aggression - Explosive verbal, physical or emotional elevations of a dispute. Rages threaten the security or safety of another individual and violate their personal boundaries.
• Sabotage - The spontaneous disruption of calm or status quo in order to serve a personal interest, provoke a conflict or draw attention.
• Scapegoating - Singling out one child, employee or member of a group of peers for unmerited negative treatment or blame.
• Self-Harm - Any form of deliberate, premeditated injury, such as cutting, poisoning or overdosing, inflicted on oneself.
• Shaming - The difference between blaming and shaming is that in blaming someone tells you that you did something bad, in shaming someone tells you that you are something bad.
• Silent Treatment - A passive-aggressive form of emotional abuse in which displeasure, disapproval and contempt is exhibited through nonverbal gestures while maintaining verbal silence.
• Sleep Deprivation - The practice of routinely interrupting, impeding or restricting another person's sleep cycle.
• Splitting - The practice of regarding people and situations as either completely "good" or completely "bad".
• Stalking - Any pervasive and unwelcome pattern of pursuing contact with another individual.
• Targeted Humor, Mocking and Sarcasm - Any sustained pattern of joking, sarcasm or mockery which is designed to reduce another individual’s reputation in their own eyes or in the eyes of others.
• Testing - Repeatedly forcing another individual to demonstrate or prove their love or commitment to a relationship.
• Thought Policing - Any process of trying to question, control, or unduly influence another person's thoughts or feelings.
• Threats - Inappropriate, intentional warnings of destructive actions or consequences.