Befriending you and gleaning information from friends and relatives are ways the abuser gains insight into how to undermine your mental health. Should you have even a minor psyche issue, it will be greatly exaggerated and much-discussed.

Dominate or destroy is the basic premise of gaslighting. Usually early childhood issues are played out in the imbalanced mind of the aggressor. Anger and jealousy are often at the root of the situation.

This is not a one-time or temporary situation. It often continues indefinitely until a crisis shines a light on the situation. Concealment is a hallmark of this form of mental and emotional abuse. Isolation and emotional manipulation are common tactics as well.

My sister has been undermining my life, my role in our family and my spirit for decades. I’m not surprised her abuse escalated past vicious gossip and back-biting. As she gained recruits to her cause of discounting …

The Child Emotion Lab and work conducted by Dr.’s Seth Pollak, Moshe Szyf, and. Dr. Pollak explains that children of abuse will endure a lot of physical ailments because of the emotional trauma they endure as a child of abuse. Dr. Szyf believes our experiences in life affect our genes significantly and can alter the way our cells function without changing the DNA functions; this is called epigenetics. Epigenetics explains how identical cells, with the same DNA can turn one cell into a liver cell, and one into a heart cell, or one into a cancer cell.

Dr. Szyf conducted a study on rat pups in 2005, at McGill University, with colleagues, and found the rat pups had a gene that helped them manage stress, called the NR3C1 gene. The NR3C1 gene was a methylated muted gene, made of tiny quartets of carbon and hydrogen atoms, which stick to the …

By fostering a dependency that creates a power differential, the ambient abuser implies s/he possesses great insight, which will assist the targeted victim in her growth and well-being. The ambient abuser ostensibly only wants the best for the target. The ambient abuser behaves altruistically, concealing the underlying motive to get the upper hand. The ambient abusers’ appearance of benevolence, honesty and generosity is seductive and disorients the target and assists in ensuring the necessary leverage needed to ‘manage’ the target and diminish her self worth.

When conflict emerges it’s an opportunity for the ambient abuser to deny wrongdoing and assign responsibility for the alleged infraction to the target. The seemingly well-intentioned ambient abuser may ‘selflessly’ point out how the flaws and shortcomings in the target are responsible for instigating the dispute.

George K. Simon Jr., wrote (In Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People), “Playing the victim role: Manipulator …