Passive aggression is a form of emotional abuse - we’ve covered that in this blog before.
However, in a family setting where passive aggression is the norm, how much do you know about how it affects your children? When children are treated with passive-aggressive behavior, it is in fact a way of being treated with emotional abuse. And an abused child’s brain, according to a new article at Wired, is similar to that of a soldier’s when exposed to combat.
In “How Abuse Changes a Child’s Brain” Brandon Keim writes:
“The brains of children raised in violent families resemble the brains of soldiers exposed to combat, psychologists say.
They’re primed to perceive threat and anticipate pain, adaptations that may be helpful in abusive environments but produce long-term problems with stress and anxiety.
Previous studies have shown that abuse affects kids’ brains; as they grow up, abused children become adults with high levels of aggression, anxiety, depression and other behavioral problems.
Another recent study found that depression in people who were abused as children is especially difficult to treat.”
