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Emotionally Abusive family

This post is not about me, it's how to help my girlfriend, who is emotionally abused by her family.

My girlfriend lives in a horrible household, spending most of her nights locked away in her room because her parents shout at her, treat her like a slave and make her feel completely useless. It's only till recently, since she met me, that she has finally someone to talk to as her siblings don't listen to her because they ignore what their parents do. I'm fine with knowing all of this, but she won't let me help! To be honest, I wouldn't know where to start but I can't just sit back and watch as my girlfriend becomes more and more depressed. To me, her parents need professional help as they couldn't cope with a traumatic experience and have since started to take it out on her. But she is too embarrassed or scared to get any, for herself or them. She has a job, and goes to college, and will hopefully (I am praying) that she goes to university this year, but even there she will probably still feel the force of her parents as they also take her hard earned money off her and will probably do so with her loan.

What can I do to help her?
Is she over 18?
Could you persuade her to move out. There's only a few months before uni so she'll be living in dorms? All you can do is be there for her and occasionally try and persuade her to maybe leave, but ultimately it's up to her you can't force her to do anything or go out of your way and do something as that could cause a drift in your relationship. That at the moment is probably the only good thing happening in her life at the moment.

I have recently been through a traumatic event which my parents wernt very supportive of and I would not have been able to handle it if it hadn't been for my boyfriend acting as a rock.
Original post by Anonymous
This post is not about me, it's how to help my girlfriend, who is emotionally abused by her family.

My girlfriend lives in a horrible household, spending most of her nights locked away in her room because her parents shout at her, treat her like a slave and make her feel completely useless. It's only till recently, since she met me, that she has finally someone to talk to as her siblings don't listen to her because they ignore what their parents do. I'm fine with knowing all of this, but she won't let me help! To be honest, I wouldn't know where to start but I can't just sit back and watch as my girlfriend becomes more and more depressed. To me, her parents need professional help as they couldn't cope with a traumatic experience and have since started to take it out on her. But she is too embarrassed or scared to get any, for herself or them. She has a job, and goes to college, and will hopefully (I am praying) that she goes to university this year, but even there she will probably still feel the force of her parents as they also take her hard earned money off her and will probably do so with her loan.

What can I do to help her?


She's very, very lucky to have you.
Before leaving home at 18, I was living under similar conditions and can't tell you how difficult it was to do it alone. You obviously care about her so very much - that's really nice to hear.
Thinking back to how I felt and what I've learnt since, I would say you can help her by always being there for her as you're most likely the only stable part of her life. You should definitely try to encourage her to move out and get some independence - emotional abuse and people who readily use it are very very difficult to deal with. I don't know how extreme it is in your girlfriend's case but the feelings you can be left with can really have a detrimental effect on you the longer you put off getting out of such an environment.
If moving out is really impossible, encourage her to see a counsellor/psychotherapist to buffer the effect of the abuse. And don't forget in all this to always look after yourself too, as it's easy to get caught up in trying to rescue the people we love and forgetting about ourselves in the process.
I hope this is of some help to you.

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