Experiencing Verbal and Emotional Abuse as an Adult Child

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Interactions with a parent can instantly transport us back into the emotional world of childhood. A confident executive may suddenly feel powerless during a phone call with her mother. A successful father may find himself seeking approval from a critical parent despite decades of accomplishments.

When verbal and emotional abuse occur within the parent-child relationship, the effects often extend far beyond childhood. This can be especially true when abuse is experienced from both parents. In fact, many adult children continue to experience emotional manipulation, criticism, shaming, invalidation, guilt-tripping, or controlling behaviors long after they have become independent adults.

What Is Verbal and Emotional Abuse?

Verbal and emotional abuse involve patterns of behavior that undermine a person's sense of worth, safety, identity, or autonomy. Unlike physical abuse, emotional abuse leaves no visible scars, making it particularly difficult to recognize and validate. It often leaves the recipient spiraling into self-doubt and confusion. They express it as “crazy-making,” and they feel as if they’re “going crazy” and that hardly anything they say or do is ever “good enough” for their parent.

Examples may include:

• Constant criticism or judgment
• Name-calling or humiliation
• Gaslighting ("That never happened," or "You're too sensitive")
• Chronic invalidation of feelings
• Guilt-inducing statements
• Manipulation or emotional blackmail
• Silent treatment or withdrawal of affection
• Excessive control over decisions
• Conditional love based on compliance

When these behaviors occur repeatedly during childhood, they can become normalized and internalized. Adult children may struggle to recognize them as abusive because they were commonplace within their family environment.

To survive emotionally, many children rely on coping strategies such as avoidance, denial, repression, or suppression. Over time, these adaptations can persist into adulthood, even when they are no longer protective. Research suggests that emotional abuse is associated with long-term psychological difficulties, including anxiety, depression, diminished self-worth, emotional dysregulation, and relationship challenges (Norman et al., 2012).

Why Setting Boundaries Feels So Difficult

Children are biologically wired to seek safety, attachment, and connection with their caregivers. Even when caregivers are emotionally harmful, children often adapt by suppressing their own needs to preserve the relationship.

One of the most common questions adult children ask is: "If I know this relationship is unhealthy, why can't I simply set boundaries?" The answer often lies in childhood conditioning. The nervous system may react as though survival is at stake, even when the adult logically knows otherwise.

The Powerful Grip of Fear, Obligation, and Guilt

Many adult children describe feeling trapped between protecting themselves and maintaining family harmony. Forward and Frazier (1998) described this dynamic as FOG—Fear, Obligation, and Guilt—a pattern frequently seen in emotionally manipulative relationships. Adult children may fear upsetting a parent, feel obligated to meet the parent's expectations, and experience intense guilt when prioritizing their own well-being.

Consider Bella, a 45-year-old mother of two, who frequently receives guilt-inducing messages from her mother whenever she declines a family request. Her mother accuses her of being selfish, ungrateful, or uncaring, often reminding Bella of sacrifices she made while raising her. She also consistently compares Bella to her younger sister Maggie, and doesn't hold Maggie to the same standards as she does her. As a result, Bella regularly cancels personal plans, overextends herself, and prioritizes her mother's needs above her own. Each attempt to earn her mother's approval reinforces a cycle of guilt, resentment, and self-sacrifice.

Grieving the Parent You Needed

One of the most difficult aspects of healing is accepting that the parent you longed for may never become the parent you needed. Many adult children continue hoping that if they are patient enough, successful enough, accommodating enough, or loving enough, they will finally receive the validation they have long desired.

Walker (2013) describes how survivors of chronic childhood emotional neglect and abuse often remain emotionally attached to unmet developmental needs. Part of recovery involves grieving the loss of the idealized parent and acknowledging the reality of the relationship. While painful, this process allows individuals to stop seeking healing from the very person who may have contributed to their hurt and distress.

Emotional Abuse Essential Reads

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What Is Symbolic Abuse and How Can Parents Avoid It?

What Healthy Boundaries Actually Look Like

Many individuals mistakenly believe boundaries are designed to control another person's behavior. Rather, boundaries define what you will and will not accept and how you will respond when those limits are crossed.

For example:

Instead of: "You need to stop criticizing me."

A boundary might sound like: "If the conversation becomes critical or disrespectful, I will end the call."

The focus shifts from changing the other person to protecting yourself.

Healthy boundaries may involve:

• Limiting the duration of interactions
• Declining certain conversations
• Refusing to engage in arguments
• Leaving situations that become emotionally abusive
• Reducing contact when necessary
• Communicating needs clearly and respectfully

Importantly, boundaries are not punishments. They are acts of self-worth and self-respect.

How to Begin Healing

Healing from emotional abuse often involves more than changing behavior. It requires changing adaptations and long-held beliefs about oneself. Many adult children carry deeply embedded messages such as: "My needs don't matter," “Disagreeing is dangerous,” "I am responsible for other people's emotions," "Setting boundaries is selfish," and "I have to earn love." Recovery begins by challenging these beliefs and developing a healthier relationship with oneself.

Helpful Steps

1. Name the behavior. Many people minimize emotional abuse because it does not involve physical harm. Identifying manipulative, controlling, or abusive behaviors can provide you with clarity and validation.
2. Strengthen self-trust. Adult children often learn to question their perceptions. Gibson (2015) emphasizes that healing often requires learning to trust one's internal experiences after years of having feelings dismissed, minimized, or invalidated. Rebuilding trust in your emotions, thoughts, and experiences is a critical part of healing.
3. Expect discomfort. Walker (2013) notes that challenging longstanding family roles often activates old fears and emotional flashbacks. Feelings of guilt, anxiety, shame, or self-doubt may emerge not because the boundary is wrong but because you are breaking patterns that once helped you survive, and whereby old conditioning is being challenged. Facilitating boundaries may also lead to projection, rejection, and alienation by a parent because you are choosing to discontinue unhealthy dynamics. This may prompt you to yearn for connection, no matter how you’re able to receive it, even if it means slipping into habitual unhelpful patterns. Note that this is a natural reaction. Move through the feelings, recalibrate, and reinstate your boundaries.
4. Seek support. Therapy, support groups, trusted friends, and psychoeducation can help individuals process family dynamics and build healthier relational patterns.

Reclaiming Your Voice

Healing involves reclaiming the right to take up emotional space. It means recognizing that love does not require self-abandonment. It means understanding that protecting your well-being is not an act of betrayal. And it means accepting that you can love a parent while also refusing to tolerate harmful behavior.

Research on childhood adversity suggests that healing remains possible throughout adulthood. While early emotional wounds can have enduring effects, individuals can develop healthier relationships, strengthen emotional resilience, and cultivate greater self-compassion through intentional healing work and supportive relationships (Shonkoff et al., 2012; Norman et al., 2012).

Perhaps the most important realization is this: Setting boundaries is not about changing your parent. It is about changing your relationship with yourself. When you learn to honor your needs, trust your experiences, and establish healthy limits, you can discover something you have been seeking all along—not parental approval, but personal freedom.

Nurture yourself with this Inner Child Guided Meditation led by me.

To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.