Hello my friends, sure you are doing splendid today. I am deeply sorry I couldn’t make it here last week. I was on the road for the better part of the week preaching the glorious Gospel According to Child Protection.
I am here today to continue with our discussion on helping you to guide against all forms of abuse either from your peers or caregivers. This is an important discussion because, the older you get, the more you must become responsible for your safety. Since your custodians will not always be with you, the greatest gift they can give to you is to equip you with tools to protect yourself.
Today I will be sharing with you how to protect yourself from emotional abuse. I think the first thing we should do today is to define emotional abuse. Emotional abuse is an attack on your self-esteem. It is acts or omissions of your peers and caregivers, which reduce your self-worth. It attacks how you see yourself. Emotional abuse gives you an unhealthy picture of yourself to the point that you begin to look down on yourself. In some cases you may even detest yourself and lack believe in yourself. When you detest yourself to a point you may begin to abuse yourself. Many young people have resulted to self-trolling in responding to the impact of emotional abuse. What is self-strolling? This is when a person sets up different accounts on the internet (social media platforms) for the purpose of sending abusive message to self. It is so bad that some children do it to themselves and later commit suicide. I think after they have lost all of their self-esteem, they result to self-trolling as a means to convince themselves that they should commit suicide. This so sad, yet it is true.
You may also believe that you are never good enough for the best in life. Therefore both in relationships and other areas of life you do not always go for the best. Emotional abuse brings fear and what I call siege mentality. What is siege mentality? It is when you do not feel safe even in the midst of those who should be closest to you like parents, guardians, neigbours, classmates, friends etc. It is when you feel everyone is at war with you by virtue of their unfriendly attitude towards you, particularly what they say to you.
It is important to note that when emotional abuse reaches its peak, a person, who is being abused, may become tired of living. That is why we find that some of the children, who suffer abuse on social media platforms, end up committing suicide. ‘WHO’s “Health for the world’s adolescents” report reveals that depression is the predominant cause of illness and disability for both boys and girls aged 10 to 19 years. The top 3 causes of adolescent deaths globally are road traffic injuries, HIV/AIDS, and suicide. Worldwide, an estimated 1.3 million adolescents died in 2012.’ It is important to note that depression is the leading cause of suicide and one of the leading cause of depression is abuse.
Please note that emotional abuse is often committed against children through constant yelling and threatening behaviour, scaring the child or playing games with their emotions. It is important to also note that every form of abuse (physical, sexual and neglect) leads to emotional abuse.
I beg to bow out here. I will be with you next week to discuss with you how you can protect yourself from emotional abuse. I am available on this platform for interaction. Do have an INSPIRED week. Stay SMART!
