Emotional Abuse in a Workplace.

Emotional abuse involves controlling another person by using emotions to criticize, embarrass, shame, blame, or otherwise manipulate them. While most common in dating and married relationships, mental or emotional abuse can occur in any relationship including among friends, family members, and co-workers.

We going to focus on emotional abuse at the workplace.

By definition, emotional abuse deals with severe, hostile actions that have short- and long-term effects on the victim’s self-perceptions and well-being. The authors have refined the definition of emotional abuse to emphasize the persistent, repetitive patterns of verbal and nonverbal (but nonphysical) behaviors that harm or are intended to harm the target. Similar to counterproductive work behavior, emotional abuse is studied in a job-stress framework, from the perspective of the target. The authors develop a comprehensive analysis of emotional abuse as a complex interplay among situational forces, actor characteristics, and target-oriented factors. All three sets of factors are required to understand emotional abuse as a socially constructed experience within the social cauldron of organizational life.

5 signs of Emotional Abuse

• They are Hyper-Critical or Judgmental Towards You

• They Ignore Boundaries or Invade Your Privacy

• They are Possessive and/or Controlling

• They are Manipulative

• They Often Dismiss You and Your Feelings

Emotional abuse at work is something that’s been a long-term problem with long-term impacts. Constantly on the rise, what can we and our employers do to prevent a hostile work environment?

Emotional abuse encompasses a wide variety of behaviors, usually causing a hefty amount of stress for the targeted individual. Emotional abuse can be intentional or unintentional and, in some cases, can only be a symptom of a much larger problem that could indicate a toxic working environment.

Examples of noticed or unnoticed emotional abuse in the workplace can include:

• Yelling or screaming

• Derogatory name calling

• “Silent treatment”

• withholding necessary information

• aggressive eye contact

• negative rumors

• outbursts of anger

• public ridicule

On top of the obvious signs, emotional abuse in the workplace can follow a common pattern alongside abuse in other environments. An abuse victim at work might be told they “Can’t do any better” in terms of their job rather than their partner if the abuse was found at home instead. In fact, if you were to look at signs of an abusive relationship, a lot of the criteria can overlap with abusive behaviors in the workplace.

Although is a mentally challenging time and situation action must be taken.

Try and resolve the problem informally with the person, although sometimes this might not be an option.

If possible, confide in a member of HR or a higher up that you think could help, companies can be liable for your trauma if they don’t take necessary measures to prevent it.

Gather any possible evidence you can of the bullying without putting yourself in harms way and show it to the appropriate person to warrant them to take action.

Talk to a trusted co-worker, family member or friend about your situation.

As is any other form of abuse, emotional abuse in the workplace is a problem that urgently needs fixing. A culture that normalizes harmful behaviours is a culture that need to be changed.