Relationship violence looks and feels different for everyone, only you can decide what is healthy or unhealthy for you.

The following list is intended to help you recognize warning signs; however, it is not designed to be a complete checklist of warning signs. 1

• Insults, name-calling, constant criticism, swearing or put-downs (alone or with others)
• Monitoring or controlling communications or activities (e.g. texts, calls)
• Isolation — limiting contact with friends or family or creating conflict so a person will limit contact
• Threats or implied threats about harm to a person, family/friends or pets or destroying belongings
• Constantly yelling at someone
• Making fun of someone's faith or religion, not letting a person practice it (spiritual abuse)
• Controlling what someone wears, where someone goes, who someone can see (in the case of adults)
• Preventing someone from going out, taking classes or working if the person wants to (in the case of adults)
• Threatening to have a person deported if the person doesn't behave in a certain way
• Making threats to harm another person
• Destroying a person's belongings, hurting a person's pets or threatening to do so
• Bullying: intimidating or humiliating someone (including on the Internet)

• Surprise and confusion
• Questioning of one's own memory, "Did that really happen?"
• Anxiety or fear; hypervigilance
• Shame or guilt
• Aggression (as a defense to the abuse)
• Becoming overly passive or compliant
• Frequent crying
• Avoidance of eye contact
• Feeling powerless and defeated as nothing you do ever seems to be right
• Feeling like you're "walking on eggshells"
• Feeling manipulated, used and controlled
• Feeling undesirable

A partner may also find themselves trying to do anything possible to bring the relationship back to the way it was before the abuse.

When emotional abuse has gone on for a long time, it can change how you feel about yourself. Some will feel that they cannot leave their abuser and that they are not worthy of a non-abusive relationship. Adult emotional abuse leads to the victim believing the terrible things that the abuser says about them. Emotional abuse victims often think they're "going crazy." 3

Effects of long-term emotional abuse by partners include:

• Depression
• Withdrawal
• Low self-esteem and self-worth
• Emotional instability
• Sleep disturbances
• Physical pain without a cause
• Suicidal ideation, thoughts or attempts
• Extreme dependence on the abuser
• Underachievement
• Inability to trust
• Feeling trapped and alone
• Substance abuse