Editorial Review
"Engel doesn’t just describe–she shows us the way out."
–Susan Forward, author of Emotional Blackmail Praise for the emotionally abusive relationship
"In this book, Beverly Engel clearly and with caring offers step-by-step strategies to stop emotional abuse. . . helping both victims and abusers to identify the patterns of this painful and traumatic type of abuse. This book is a guide both for individuals and for couples stuck in the tragic patterns of emotional abuse."
–Marti Loring, Ph.D., author of Emotional Abuse
and coeditor of The Journal of Emotional Abuse
"This groundbreaking book succeeds in helping people stop emotional abuse by focusing on both the abuser and the abused and showing each party what emotional abuse is, how it affects the relationship, and how to stop it. Its unique focus on the dynamic relationship makes it more likely that each person will grasp the tools for change and really use them."
–Randi Kreger, author of The Stop Walking on Eggshells Workbook
and owner of BPDCentral.com
The number of people who become involved with partners who abuse them emotionally and/or who are emotionally abusive themselves is phenomenal, and yet emotional abuse is the least understood form of abuse. In this breakthrough book, Beverly Engel, one of the world’s leading experts on the subject, shows us what it is and what to do about it.
Whether you suspect you are being emotionally abused, fear that you might be emotionally abusing your partner, or think that both you and your partner are emotionally abusing each other, this book is for you. The Emotionally Abusive Relationship will tell you how to identify emotional abuse and how to find the roots of your behavior. Combining dramatic personal stories with action steps to heal, Engel provides prescriptive strategies that will allow you and your partner to work together to stop bringing out the worst in each other and stop the abuse.
By teaching those who are being emotionally abused how to help themselves and those who are being emotionally abusive how to stop abusing, The Emotionally Abusive Relationship offers the expert guidance and support you need.
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Customer Reviews
Abusive relationship no more 
2007-07-05
Beverly Engel is in fact one of my favorite authors. If you really want to stop being abused or understand the meaning of abusive relationships and everything it entails this is the book for you to read. The examples, the questionares and all the exercises the book gives you will help you tremendously. Definitely a book to read.
decent text on an important subject 
2007-04-29
I think this book has some useful information, both theoretical and practical, for self-help if you find yourself on either end of an emotionally abusive relationship (or if you find yourself in a mutually abusive relationship).
One piece of advice I'd offer, however, is that if you're uncomfortable with a particular exercise and you it will only serve to re-sensitize you to painful experiences, then perhaps it's best to skip the exercise. I'm sure the author was well intentioned and that the advice for some is quite practical but I'd also say 'don't fret and don't give up on the process entirely' if certain challenges seem unduly painful.
Uncertain about your relationship? Good read to identify emotional abuse, but look elsewhere for help 
2007-02-16
I purchased this title while investigating the characteristics of emotional abuse and attempting to determine if I was in an emotionally abusive relationship. It did provide that insight by explaining identifying characteristics of emotionally abusive relationships, exploring possible causes (to include personality disorders), and offering ways out. While there is some tremendously good advice (e.g., leave if in danger), I found some of the recommendations to be counterproductive (e.g., list out and then dwell on all of the abuses that made you feel bad, make your abuser read your list, make your abuser give a 3-part apology) and somewhat too superficial in aiming to change top-level behaviors rather than deeper causes (i.e., it treats only "symptoms" rather than the "disease"). Once I fully understood that I was square in the middle of an emotionally abusive relationship, I found the advice in Dr Steven Stosny's book You Don't Have to Take It Anymore to be much better focused on: 1) correcting deep core value hurts that create resentment and ultimately spawn abuse (for the abuser), and 2) "healing and growing to feel more valuable and confident regardless of what anyone says or does" (for all involved).
Comprehensive, serious, deep, yet light reading 2007-01-14
Congratulations to the author. From this one book a whole scenario opened up to me and made me want deepen my knowledge on the subject. Even to me, a foreigner, the reading was pleasant, flowed smoothly and I could appreciate not only the teaching, but the penmanship.
Thank you for the indication,
Ana Cunha
from Brazil
Finally, Help for the ABUSER! 2007-01-10
When I recently discovered I had some emotionally abusive tendencies, I wanted to do something to STOP. The problem was, every resource I could find on abusive relationships was aimed at helping the VICTIM and painted the abuser as an incorrigible monster beyond redemption. They all just said to the victim: "Get out now! He'll never change." Now, I'm sure in some cases that's true, but I don't believe it's ALWAYS true. I think that, sometimes, an abuser CAN change if he's willing, and I was.
What *I* needed was a resource for the ABUSER. Something that would help me and my partner work TOGETHER in HELPING me. Something to help us figure out WHY I was acting the way I was acting and to change it. However, as far as I could tell, such a resource didn't seem to exist.
That was until my partner found this book for me. I was ASTONISHED at what I saw. This was the first book I've ever seen that actually tackles abuse from the perspective, not of dissolving the relationship and allowing the victim to escape, but of trying to REBUILD an abuse-damaged relationship and reestablish a healthy foundation for it to continue.
This book paints the abuser, not as a horrible monster, but as a Human being who has simply made mistakes. This book tell you, IF you're willing to made an HONEST EFFORT to change, you CAN, and an abuse damaged relationship CAN be saved, provided BOTH parties are willing to WORK towards that goal.
This book gives hope to BOTH: victim AND abuser.
It's absolutely AMAZING. I STRONGLY recommend it for ANYONE who is in an abusive relationship, particularly if you'd rather work it out than split up. If your relationship can be saved, this book will tell you how. If it's beyond saving, this book will help you recognize that and give you the tools you need to get out and move on. Either way, it addresses BOTH sides of the relationship in a way no other book or resource I've ever seen does and I feel, on that basis, it's probably the strongest self-help resource I've EVER seen on relationship abuse.
Insightful, hands-on and extremely helpful 2008-07-23
Engel leads you thru step-by-step discovering how your childhood relationships impact your adult relationships. She offers good examples and thot-provoking questions so that you can finally pinpoint your own triggers and negative behaviors. THEN she provides concrete coping stragies and methods to avoid or reconstruct negative patterns. Finally, a book that provides more than just insight into your past - and more than "If you think you can, then you can!" type of help. Not cheerleading, and not preachy. My husband and I both benefitted greatly from this book.
this author is off base 
2008-06-30
I just got out of an abusive relationship and this women treats the subject as some small problem that can be solved with therapy. Lundy Bancroft understands this author does not. Moreover the information in this book could keep women in abusive relationships by hoping the abuser will get better.
The Book that hit home 2008-04-30
I have gone to therapy and read different books to try to understand what I was going through, and my depression, even my divorce judge said mental and emotional abuse didnt exist, it wasn't domestic violence, but this was the first book that hit home. I was in an emotionally abusive relationship for 20 years, and even tho there was no physical abuse, I thought I was just in a bad relationship. As I began to read the book, I began to cry, because for the first time in my life, (including therapy) I found what I was looking for, the understanding of my life, and how it affected me, and that more important some else understood the dynamics of this unhealthy relationship, I am going to give this book to my 3 daughter who have also been a victim of emotional abuse from their up bringing, I strongly urge a person who has been a victim of emotional abuse, or who is the emotional abuser to read this book it will change your life
Misguided, potentially harmful book 2008-03-09
I read this book last night and had nightmares about the possibility that someone could be emotionally or even physically harmed by following this author's so-called "program". If you're up for a heaping dose of "blame the victim", a lack of understanding of victim's issues and even some not-so-thinly disguised contempt for them (in one section, the author describes victims as "whining" and "groveling"), this book is for you. But if you truly want to understand what has happened to you, why you are not at fault, and how to deal with it, I suggest "The Verbally Abusive Relationship" by Patricia Evans, "Why Does He Do That" by Lundy Bancroft, or "Emotional Blackmail" by Susan Forward. Another good book with lots of advice on how to manage your life once you've decided to leave an abuser is "When Love Goes Wrong" by Ann Jones and Susan Schechter.
This book is written by an author who reveals that after 20 years as a practicing therapist AND undergoing therapy, she had an epiphany that she is a narcissistic abuser herself. One thing is clear, she has an agenda: to fight the "demonization" of abusers in popular media and give them a "chance" for recovery. From the beginning of the book, she makes excuses for their behavior and blames it on their bad childhoods. At the same time, she makes sweeping generalizations about victims that are negative and substantially untrue. She wants you to believe that even though she took 20 years, AND therapy, just to gain awareness, this book by itself can pop open the eyes of abusers everywhere to her "breakthrough program". What she doesn't share with you is that the odds of that happening to a true narcissist/abuser are very, very slim.
The worst part of this book is its potential for guiding victims into dangerous situations without a whole lot of support. Her suggestion to confront your abuser - head-on, alone, with "confidence" and a meager handful of pat phrases - would be laughable if it weren't so hazardous to your emotional and even physical health. This suggestion shows a gross lack of awareness that many abusive people react aggressively and even violently when confronted and no one else is watching. The author also INSISTS that since your parents MUST be either controlling or abusive, you must first confront your parents and then "maintain boundaries despite threats or manipulation".
You could probably write another book on what is wrong with this is book, but a few of the author's most glaringly wrong-headed points are this:
- Abusers can change, but first you must do a complete analysis of your life history, and then you must confront them with grace, composure, and a perfectly-worded response, because you just might open their eyes. WRONG: it is not the responsibility of the victim to dance around an abuser's behavior or convince them to change - in fact, the victim is the LEAST LIKELY person to trigger an abuser's change of heart.
- All victims willfully choose their abuser, put up with the abuse because they don't think they deserve any better, and are repeating abusive patterns started by one or both parents. WRONG: Abusers can hide their true nature for months or years; being moderately accommodating and agreeable is a positive trait as long as you're dealing with "normal" people; most victims grew up in non-abusive households.
- Poor self-esteem is what causes you to allow yourself to be abused. WRONG: abuse causes a lack of self-esteem, not the other way around. And when the abuser is gone, the self-esteem comes back.
- People with narcissism and border-line personality disorder (BPD) are good candidates for therapy. WRONG: Even with a competent therapist, the prognosis for recovery from ANY full-blown personality disorder is not good.
- People with personality disorders such as narcissism can be "helped" by studying this book. WRONG: People with personality disorders, by their nature, have a highly defective self image; they entirely lack the objectivity and self-awareness that is necessary for self-improvement.
- Narcissism and border-line personality disorder (BPD) are illnesses just like depression and schizophrenia. WRONG: Major depression and schizophrenia are involuntary, biologically-based illnesses which can be controlled with drug therapy and cannot be controlled by changing one's behavior towards other people. Narcissism and BPD are behavioral disorders. There is no drug for narcissists or BPDs to change them into more healthy people. They can change simply by behaving differently, but they overwhelmingly prefer not to.
The author desperately wants us to believe that abusers are not hopeless. They aren't, but victims need someone to set a realistic expectation about their abuser, and the author has not done that. If someone with a career in the mental health field, who's in therapy, can be oblivious to their own personality disorder for 20 years, what are the chances of John Q. Narcissist latching onto this book and making a life change? The author shares no personal insight with us at all - she never pauses for reflection on her own moment of awareness or thinking processes, and never demonstrates heartfelt empathy for victims (I prefer the term "targets"). For that reason alone, I have a hard time believing this author should be taken seriously. The harsh, ugly truth is that most abusers make a conscious CHOICE to be abusive.
Save your money for Lundy Bancroft 2007-07-16
This is like a "dummy's" or a "McDonald's" guide to emotional abuse. Doesn't compare to Lundy Bancroft's work. It provided no clarity at all. Because Engle tries so hard to make it balanced, the book left me more confused about my role in an abusive relationship---that's not a good place to be. Abusers are constantly telling the victim "you're the problem" "if only you could fix yourself." It preys right into an abuser's tendency to claim that he is himself is the victim. Save your money for Lundy Bancroft.
