This is a machine transcription and is subject to error. Apologizes in advance. 

hi everyone I'm Gina Treveloni and I'm an intern in the health and wellness Center this
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summer. I'm here today with Professor Capezza, we're gonna talk about unhealthy relationships and psychological
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abuse. Hi Professor Capezza, how are you. Hi Gina! Good how are you. I'm good thanks for asking
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to start off I was wondering if you could just tell a little bit about what you do it's Stonehill and your work here. sure
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so I am an associate professor in the psychology department and my area is
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social psychology and basically a lot of my research involves relationships romantic relationships
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and also abuse issues. So I was excited when you approach me to
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talk with you today about psychological abuse. um and I teach a lot of courses in the psych department
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so research methods, relationships which is exciting, psychology of women. So a whole host
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of different courses as well. that's awesome thank you so just to start off what is actually
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considered psychological abuse and how is that any different from normal relationship conflict?
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so psychological abuse there's actually a number of different ways that people will defined the term but let me give
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you what I usually use sure. I'm just gonna read it to you. okay okay. so psychological abuse
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is non- physical aggressive attempts to control and dominate another person including ask
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such as yelling, criticizing, derogating, belittling humiliating etc. so the
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key components to our definition is thinking about non- physical aspects of control and domination
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and really making a person feel worthless and so those are are key elements to to
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psychological abuse and so when we think about that definition compared to just a normal typical
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sort of quote on quote normal conflict in a relationship we all have our conflicts but a
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typical conflict you know we argue. we might disagree on things like that but the actions
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are not meant to sort of harm and belittle or derogate or control someone and so those are some
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of the key things that you know yes we are all gonna have arguments our in relationships and disagreements but
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when it starts to really escalate to the point where the abuser is trying to harm someone and are really
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trying to belittle or derogate them put them down make them feel worthless now or deaf like crossing into
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abuse behavior. thank you so we talk a lot or people hear a lot about psychological
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abuse and then emotional abuse. can you kind of give some examples about how those are different and how somebody would know
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whether it's psychological abuse versus emotional abuse. yeah so some people actually use the terms interchangeably.
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so you know what one person refers to as psychological abuse another might just call it emotional abuse or even
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verbal abuse. so it sometimes those three terms I've heard used just interchangeably the way I think about
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it and the way that I'll use it often in my own research is to think of psychological abuse as sort of the
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umbrella term. the overarching term and then underneath will have elements of emotional abuse
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or verbal abuse. so emotional abuse, I also think is being more severe
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aspects of psychological abuse is something that is more belittling derogating
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harmful that putting the person down all the time high-level criticism
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those types of humiliation those types of behaviors will often be threatening. so those are what
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I think of is emotional abuse and behaviors where's the verbal abuse I tend to think of a little bit less
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severe and is more like yelling swearing maybe mild criticism things like that. But it still is
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falling under the label psychological abuse but not quite as damaging or quite as severe as the emotional
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abuse. that makes a lot of sense. so what's the relationship between
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psychological abuse and control I know you talked about like belittling and putting people down all the time.
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is there a certain aspect of control that people who are psychological abusers kinda looking
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for. yeah definitely so control is another aspect of psychological abuse
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and so when we think of control maybe we can you know put a definition kind of the
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idea that a person in abuser might try to control someone else's behaviors.
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so controlling even what they wear, what they eat, any aspect, who they can talk to lots
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of different ways that they could sort of have a controlling behaviors and that is an important component of psychological
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abuse and it's one component a lot of the other ones I mention others. yeah alright. so as we are already
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sort of realizing this is a challenging topic often because there are so many ways that we
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can think about it. so many aspects to the definition. one of the most prolific I'd say researchers
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in this area. Doctor Diane Follingstad and she's done research that she identified
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seventeen unique aspects of psychological abuse. yeah so that's a lot. it is
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is is so many and often when we think of it we just got a couple but if they're seventeen
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different parts of that you know control monitoring isolation, um jealousy.
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there so many pieces manipulations that that are there that I think often people
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don't think of when I thinking of psychological abuse. so control is one of seventeen
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maybe more. there's other you know typologies as well. so an important component but
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not the only component. okay and how prevalent do you or does your research
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show that psychological abuse is and more specifically like we're on a college campus is it more prevalent on college campuses.
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yeah so prevalence rates I think are quite shocking to me. so if we
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look at overall rates of psychological abuse is anywhere from eighty to ninety percent
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of individuals have experienced at least one. um-hum type of psychological abuse in a romantic relationship.
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I mean a lot of that work has been done on college campuses. but it seems to be even beyond just college campuses
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that that rate is is pretty high to me that's quite concerning obviously and shocking
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and that we think that most of us at some point in our life will likely experience some aspects
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do the better understanding we have of what it is and what it means than we can you know help
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ourselves if we're in that situation. Identify it. but help friends, family exactly identify it. so
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especially some of the more common forms of psychological abuse which are the verbal abuse the
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criticism the ridicule those sort of things that are occur quite quite frequently
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eighty to ninety percent. yeah that's crazy. and we talked a lot about
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how psychological and emotional abuse aren't physical aspects but do they
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always occur with physical or are they two separate things like you'll never see physical and emotional together.
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how do those kinda relate. yeah that's a great question so they can go together so it
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can be that someone is a victim of both that they're both in a psychologically abusive relationship
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with those high controlling behaviors and also highly physical abusive where they're they're
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getting physical assaults happening frequently but they don't have to occur together. so sometimes
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it can just be physical with no with no psychological or emotional and it definitely can be just psychological
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or emotional with no physical so you know it can go in a lot of different way there's not one
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sort of set pattern but I think what's interesting to me at least one finding that always stood out to me
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was that if someone is in a relationship with both the psychological and
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physical abuse what the person often will say is that is the psychological abuse that they find more damaging
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oh really than physical abuse because I'll say the physical because they'll say the the the bruises heal
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but that emotional costly being ridiculed and putting down and belittled all the time.
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take a lot longer now. alright so I think above and beyond the physical abuse psychological
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abuse is having a lasting impact and so you know I think in the research physical
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abuse has received a lot more attention. yeah and I'm trying to raise awareness to that we need
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to think about psychological abuse. not to say that physical abuse isn't important absolutely it is
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but eighty to ninety percent of us yeah may be facing psychological abuse at some point
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and they have lasting consequences and you know maybe some work showing above and beyond. yeah
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physical abuse out something that we want to I think spend equal amount of time that we're focused
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in and and we know what this is and yeah what we can try to do. what are some of the like lasting
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affect that a victim of psychological abuse can face and are they short term, long term does
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it vary what kind of some of the things that a victim of psychological abuse is gonna take away from that. yeah
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that's a great question especially tying into what we were just talking about yeah with that the connection with physical abuse.
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so certainly there's a lot of mental health and emotional health outcome so things such as depression
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anxiety post dramatic stress disorder low self esteem. again the sense
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of feeling worthless. so those are major components to outcomes
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for victims of psychological abuse. there's also some physical outcomes of things like gastrointestinal
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issues that people will report and they do tend to be long term
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consequences as well. so as I just sort of was saying about the ya know the bruises tend to heal but
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these other things can be harder to overcome. that's what the research suggests
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that you know if someone is it's gonna take time to heal a lot of those emotional wounds
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that occur from this treatment of psychological abuse. yeah. do you
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think or do you know any research about like is it possible to completely overcome those affect like
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can you be in a psychological abusive relationship and then later on being a relationship doesn't show any signs
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of like that you were a victim of psychological abuse there's not something that's kind of always with you.
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yeah well I I mean in some ways I think it is always with you but you certainly can
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sort of have a healthy relationship afterwards as well. so some of the work that we
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we've done has looked at some of these sort of if you're past a victim how does
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that impact your current relationship or your current views of things and it does have an impact so that
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was a future partner is showing similar behavior you may likely reinterpret those
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or think differently but also in a positive way we've also shown that so much but like I'm not gonna
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take that I I've I've been there I've done that and I I I've overcome that and now you're kind of stronger out after that
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so now you're stronger right so you could see it kind of going both ways and part of that's gonna deal with that other partner
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who is that partner. are they supportive are they not you know. so having
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a positive romantic relationship after a bad one. certainly can have much
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greater impact and are there certain relationships and psychological abuse occurs
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and more for example like the different age or sexual orientation did I have an impact on
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the prevalence of psychological abuse. so it can occur in any type of relationship. any ages
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, any sexual orientations. so definitely all types of relationships have psychological
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abuse. little bit of current research suggesting that there maybe higher prevalence in homosexual relationships
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than heterosexual so I think we'll see if that replicates if there's more works suggesting
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that in the future. some other work that I've done is actually been looking up some gender differences in
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terms of male victim versus female victim or perpetrators. so you
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know we tend to think of when we're looking abuse that it's a male perpetrator and a female victim
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but particular in psychologically abusive case and that's certainly is it's not even always the case and physical and yeah
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but certainly and psychological abuse seem to be similar rates of victims and perpetrators
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of being both males and females and interesting the same consequences occur so
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you know they're equal level of depression anxiety and negative outcomes associated with
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the victim whether with a male victim or female victims. much is also I think just some form that we're all aware
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as a society of all of the factors because it can happen to anyone yeah there's no you know set
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group that is willing to educate one group no it would be easier if there was like a road
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map but we don't now so just awareness overall exactly is gonna be a huge help everyone.
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yes you talk a little bit about your research but can you talk little bit more about some of the research you've done at
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Stonehill or with Stonehill students. yeah so I've done a few studies with Stonehill students but one
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that I think is relevant to our conversation here more. what we did was a study
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where we just asked Stonehill students kind of open ended broad question what do you think it's psychological
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abuse kinda like what is it. yeah and and we wanted them to just write like you know what happens during it
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what are some examples you know what do you think of when you just hear this term and after they wrote
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or typed yeah I think we did both writing is not good because bad handwriting we can't read anything. Yeah you
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don't know what they're trying to say. yeah so typing much better. so when we went back and we coded
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so we we had students. I had students working with me and they coded the responses and we were looking for
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those seventeen aspects that I mentioned before that Dr. Follingstad had developed to see how many
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of them did people come up with so on average our Stonehill students came up with two and a half
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out of seventeen oh wow. only about you know two sometimes three -ish
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things that they would really note and usually what they came up with where things about verbal abuse
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control. um inferiority. those are our top three that we got. but so
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many of those seventeen aspects I never mentioned yeah they don't mention monitoring isolation jealousy.
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you know these types of other you know behavior and lying deception like there's so many aspects.
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if we think of seventeen of them yeah and we're we're missing them so I think our Stonehill students have
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a little bit of an idea. yeah. schema if we wanna use a psychology term for what it is
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but they're missing a lot. they're missing a lot. It's more narrow and I actually did this the
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same exact study at a university in the midwest and found very similar results. okay
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So it's not just Stonehill students. yeah so it's an overall yeah. seems to be you know something happening here
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that people tend to have more narrow definition. do you plan to like
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expand your research anymore. certainly so so that's one study I'm trying
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actually wanna try to write that up and get that published hopefully soon. and I I just did some
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other work that was looking at the sexual orientation aspect of it so looking at perceptions do people
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perceive psychologically abusive behaviors differently. if it's two men two women
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male perpetrator yeah versus a female perpetrator and so forth and so I'm doing some work on those
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types of questions as well. yeah. so what I'm thinking is like if you did a study and
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Stonehill students or college students in general weren't really they only picked up like two point
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five of those seventeen things do people that are in on healthy relationships
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do they often recognize or do they kind of it goes over their head they don't really notice that they're in an
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unhealthy relationship. they may recognize behaviors but they
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if you asked them are you being are you psychological abused they would say no. most people will not say yes
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to that kind of. yeah. broad question so when we're doing research we wouldn't ask a broad question like that. yeah rather we would sort of
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break it down. has a has your current romantic partner ever threatened you has your current
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romantic partner ever humiliated you in a public setting something like that. yeah. and then you'd ask how often has these things
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happen. okay. and the people will sort of identify that yes the behavior that happened to me. but that doesn't mean that they
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then make the link yeah to saying oh wait I'm I'm being psychologically abused. so
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they're still that piece yeah that often doesn't happen and I think that's why they don't
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always recognize why is it difficult for somebody who's in an unhealthy relationship to just leave
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like people always say like oh if you're not happy with the relationship you're not being treating right just get out of the relationship
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but why is it so difficult for somebody that being psychologically abused to get out of the relationship well part
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of it is what we were just talking about that they don't often make that connection that these behaviors
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that my partner is doing is actually abuse. they often will think that these are just common
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things that happen in relationship especially given the prevalence rates. yeah you know it seems like well everybody's in and have things
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happen to everybody I know my my situation any different and so making that connection is often a challenge.
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and so they they wouldn't even think they're in an abusive relationship so why would they wanna leave it. yeah
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and often another thing that can happen is that people especially when the highly committed to that relationship
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is that they tend to downplay the seriousness of what's happening to them or they reinterpret it. so
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yes my partner threatened to do something yes they did this behavior but they
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did it because they love me or they did it for this other positive yeah reason where they did it because they were drinking
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right there's excuse or something that they might make for someone because how could we understand
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someone who is supposed to love us that actually is treating us so poorly yeah and especially when you're highly committed to that relationship
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people engage in a lot more of these types of behaviors and so it becomes very hard to leave
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or to get out because either they don't know what's happening. they've reinterpreted it they're very committed to this relationship
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or they just don't have the resources to leave either so especially you know isolation is a big element
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of psychological abuse as well so if they've been isolated from their friends or family
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they're also feeling stuck in that situation as well so they don't really have anywhere to go yeah
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lots of different differences yeah depending on the individual and the relationship but. and do
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you have any suggestions for somebody that can kind of see that their friend or loved one is in unhealthy
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relationship but they don't realize it or they don't understand that it's unhealthy or is there a way that
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that person can kind of help the person in the relationship realize what's happening. it's
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so hard right yeah a lot of what we were just saying about how they often will reinterpret it and downplay
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it so the one thing I I think might help is to look at and think
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about how like to sort of give them an example of another person in a relationship
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and so how can you imagine you know or Susie 's in this relationship and you know these
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different things are happening to her what do you think about that. and likely they would say that's terrible for Susie yeah
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boy what can we do you know help Susie and then slowly maybe try to get them to recognize that those things are
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what's happening in their own relationship. yeah you kinda gotta get them out of their own relationship in a way because
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we've highly committed to the person we've been with them for years we're reinterpreting their behavior is not so bad.
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um-hum. but one of having to Susie it's a lot easier to recognize it for someone else than I guess to recognize
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it for yourself. exactly so maybe we can help people sort of make that connection if we can get them out of
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their own relationship. yeah and after. so if you go over the scenario with
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them they start to realize that they're in an unhealthy relationship are there any steps that you would recommend to kind of help
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them get out of that relationship like what can somebody do to be a supporter of somebody that's in a psychological
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psychologically abusive relationship yeah so I think being there to listen is always
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helpful and then also with the resources so if the person so I mean if you're still there
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and you haven't been isolated. yeah that's amazing right so that's a great first the first thing they know that
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they can count on you. And helping them figure out where can they go. so you know how can they physically
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leave you know you may need help getting a job, do they need help having a car. so it depends on the level of
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abuse the level of you know how restrictive is this person do they have a job, are they able to get out of the house
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or are they stuck in the house right so depending on all of those factors I think can be a guide
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do you need to go get some professional help that you as a friend can help them that like what what kind
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of connections could you help make for that. yeah in the community. even might be something to do.
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yeah we'll thank you so much for sitting down and talking me today I feel like we went over a lot of really great things that are gonna
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help people and give people more information. Is there just anything else that you wanted to add or
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do you think we covered everything oh there's always very I could add I'm sure like we could talk all day
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We could talk all day. Let me just say one last thing as we wrap up so much
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of I think what we've talked about and what the research is talked about so far as been thinking of sort of traditional
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in person. psychological abuse. but now we got this whole world of cyber the whole cyber
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world out there. oh yeah I didn't even think of that and thinking about how that translate into psychological abuse
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and so I've just started a little bit of work actually here at Stonehill too looking at you know cyber abuse and I think it's all
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whole new world yet a lot of the elements we've talked about are still there isolation, monitoring I think we can do monitoring. I
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feel like is huge with I mean so like someone right now and you know could know that you're sitting in the library
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yeah because they have that location thing on your phone right so yeah that's a whole new level of thinking about
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monitoring somebody and like you know uh there's so many
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ways we could we could go there so I do think that's another whole big area that we're gonna
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go into because we're just becoming more you know social media, cyber the whole cyber world out
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there are phones and who knows what. so just to keep that in mind to like a lot of these elements that we talked
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about today can be occurring online and on social media. So it always makes it easier in a way
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I think so too. to monitor to isolate or you know through any of those seventeen things exactly.
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so we'll have to keep are eye on that. yeah as something to think about and keep raising awareness.
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Oh absolutely all the different ways and all the different signs and everything. yeah. yes definitely
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yeah well thank you again for sitting down and talking to me today and if anybody wants more information you can definitely
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visit the Health and Wellness website or email wellness@stonehill.edu.
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This is a machine transcription and is subject to error. Apologizes in advance.