There are 10 types of domestic violence/abuse:

Verbal: The most common form of abuse, this can happen face-to-face, over the phone, or other forms of messaging. Verbal abuse can often lead to physical abuse. Examples of verbal abuse might be threatening to hurt someone, calling someone derogatory names, telling lies, spreading rumors, etc.

Mental: Mental abuse often looks like playing mind games or using double talk with someone (deliberately obscure language). Gaslighting is a common form of mental abuse (manipulating or lying to make someone question their sanity).

Emotional: Emotional abuse occurs when someone purposefully withholds emotional interaction or support, such as belittling or mocking someone’s emotional expressions, criticizing someone’s body type or physical features, humiliating someone in public or online, blaming everything on someone, guilt-tripping, etc.

Control & Monitoring: This is when someone tries to control what another person does: forcing you to share your passwords to your accounts, demanding you share your location, constantly texting or calling you and expecting immediate responses, saying you can’t spend time with certain people, making you delete certain people out of your phone or friends/followers lists, etc.

Financial: This is when someone controls another individual by controlling their money. Sometimes this looks like withholding income from someone, preventing someone from getting more education or a better job, or guilt-tripping someone into buying or paying for everything. This is one of the most frequent reasons why someone struggles to leave an abusive relationship.

Destruction of Property: Breaking or threatening to break someone’s personal property as a show of force. This is never an accident, but rather a lesson to teach someone “Look at what I can do when I’m angry… what, or who, might be next?”

Abuse of Pet: Abusing or threatening to abuse animals is an incredibly dangerous form of abuse. People who hurt animals don’t stop with animals. If you are in a relationship with or living with someone who hurts animals, your safety is at significant risk.

Spiritual Abuse: Spiritual or religious abuse occurs when someone mocks another’s chosen faith, prevents another from practicing their chosen faith, forcing someone to practice a different faith, or when a spiritual authority figure uses their position of power to harm or control another person.

Sexual Abuse: Sexual abuse is any unwanted sexual activity or touching. This can even include kissing if you do not want to be kissed by that person. In addition to assault, sexual abuse can look like being guilt tripped and pressured into doing something you don’t want to do.

Physical Abuse: Pushing, pinching, hitting, strangling, throwing things, etc. It is worth noting that it doesn’t matter if the victim is bruised or otherwise injured – the abusive behavior is the problem, not that it left a physical mark or scar.