Our relationships and families should provide us with the things we all need: like love, being cared for, support and safety. But sometimes this is not our experience…
Does your partner, your boyfriend or girlfriend, your friend, your care-giver, or a family member:
- □ Make you feel uncomfortable or afraid?
- □ Often put you down, humiliate you, or make you feel worthless?
- □ Constantly check up on what you’re doing or where you are going?
- □ Try to stop you from seeing your own friends or family?
- □ Make you feel afraid to disagree or say ‘no’ to them?
- □ Constantly accuse you of flirting with others when this isn’t true?
- □ Tell you how the household finances should be spent, or stop you having any money for yourself?
- □ Stop you from having medical assistance?
- □ Scare or hurt you by being violent (like hitting, choking, smashing things, locking you in, driving dangerously to frighten you)
- □ Pressure or force you to do sexual things that you don’t want to do?
- □ Threaten to hurt you, or to kill themselves if you say you want to end the relationship?
- □ Have your children heard or seen these things or been hurt themselves?
If you have answered ‘yes’ to any of these, then there are signs that you are not being treated right, or that you are being abused.
If you don’t feel safe, respected and cared for, then something isn’t right.
Abuse happens when one person tries to control or hurt another.
Abuse may be physical, such as hitting, pushing or choking.
Abuse can also be other things, like putting you down and making you feel worthless, or being possessive and jealous to stop you from speaking to friends or family. Forcing or tricking someone into doing sexual things is also abuse.
These things can be just as hurtful as physical violence.