Abuse. It is a powerful word, which evokes an immediate reaction when it is used. It carries with it images of battered women, molested children, people who have forever been scarred by the things which were done to them. Few people would acknowledge it as a word which is unfamiliar to them. But do people really understand the full extent of what abusive situations entail? For the purposes of this article, an abusive situation is defined rather simply as any situation which is destructive to one or more of the people affected by it. This destructiveness can take place on many different levels, ranging from something as concrete as physical harm, to something as subjective as emotional harm, or even to such things as mental or financial harm.
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