Rating: 
Summary: If you feel hurt by what you hear...
Review: I grew up with a verbally abusive father. I kept finding myself in relationships
that caused the same pain unable to recognize the source. This book opened my eyes to the verbal abuse I endured as well as the verbal abuse I unloaded on others. Many books point our problems
but don't tell us what to do to correct them. Well, this one does
and the solutions work. Thank you Patricia Evans, I will not
allow anyone to verbally abuse me any longer. I hope you are
on the internet because I've thought about writing you a letter
expressing my thanks for writing this book. I've purchased 4
copies for friends. Thank You... Richard C.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent advice on a little-understood topic
Review: This is an excellent book for anyone who is dealing with a spouse who is verbally abusive. The screaming, namecalling, silent treatment, and other emotional abuse that many people live with is actually emotional abuse. The emotional damage this type of abuse can cause is extreme. This book helps you to recognize it and deal with it.
Rating: 
Summary: Not For Christians
Review: As a Christian woman, I can tell you this book helped me identify that my husband's behavior had nothing to do with submission, but was/is verbally abusive. But that is the only good that came out of the book.Because she seemed to have some sort of insight to what I was experiencing, I felt I would be able to get further advice on how I as a Christian could get help and/or support. I quickly found out that there is no other way but her way. She addresses control in her book and identifies control as an abusive tactic. What I find interesting is that she exhibits control amongst those that accept her ideals set forth in her book. An example being, when a negative review shows up here, she goes to her bulletin board, requesting her posters to post positive reviews, which in other cases that do not pertain to her, she would label as manipulative. She and her followers believe that the abused, because they have been abused, have a special license to be offending and in fact may be abusive to others, because they are victims and should be understood. They will emphatically deny that abusers can change. Although the odds are slim, some abusers have changed. I would strongly recommend that no Christian read this book. It appears innocent enough on the surface, but once you begin to delve deeper, you will find that she, her following and ideals set forth is cult-like in nature. No other views are accepted, but labeled as abusive and slowly the attempt is to brainwash the reader.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad Advice
Review: Evans' advice to tell your abuser to "STOP IT!" is laughable. As a woman who has had years of experience dealing with a verbally abusive husband, I can tell you this will NOT help matters. If it makes you feel better, by all means, go ahead - but don't be surprised if you end up with another nasty fight on your hands and feeling worse.
Great book for women who just want to feel justified in getting a divorce. If you want actual SOLUTIONS, I highly recommend "You can't say that to me" by Suzette Elgin.
Rating:
Summary: A Wake-Up Call
Review: I can honestly say this book was hard for me to read as I experienced the mental turmoil all over again. But it gave me an awakening like I will never forget. My husband is like 13 years my senior and I am 31 and we are going on 7 yrs of having been married. No, I don't expect that everything would be all roses and sweet. We all have problems to face in life. I am looking at this book as a torch in a really dim relationship. I have read plenty of self help books and none even scratched at the surface as this one did. It is comforting to know that there is a name for the suffering some of us have experienced. I can say it is very much like physical abuse as it beats you up in your mind and you feel like you have not a leg to stand on after a while. You feel like your soul has been zapped of all its wonderous energy. But when you read Patricia's book it is like you can feel the hope, the energy start to resurface and come up for air. You know you are not alone, you know that you have hope, and then you have strength. She is highly established in her career, she gives it to you straight. NO wonder she was on OPRAH! Now that speaks volumes in itself. Please for sanities sake get yourself the book and remember that we are all human trying to make it in this world and you only have one chance at life's blessings. Don't pass this one up.
Rating:
Summary: IF YOU EVEN THINK YOU'RE IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP
Review: buy this book! I was miserable, angry, depressed, anxious and withdrawn from the closest person in my life, my mother, and I wasted five years of my life for a monster. I gave up friends, my Mom and very nearly my life for this man. Finally I couldn't stand it any more and came on Amazon and found this book, which I read avidly, and which helped me chart my course for calmer seas. After living with criticism ranging from "You're worse than Viet Nam" to (said in a malicious, mocking tone) "Everyone loves you, everyone thinks you're wonderful, but I'm your only friend, I tell you the TRUTH" I finally started thinking; Wait a minute...I'm not a bad person, I love him, I always try to help him, make him feel better, do things for him, etc etc, then, after reading the book I realized, (BIG epiphany) that it was he who was wrong, not I. NOTHING I could do or say would make one whit of difference; this was not about the minutiae he delighted in finding, it was about POWER and ABUSE. This book, reading about other women just like me, and abusers just like him, was a revelation that motivated me to end my personal hell, and none too soon, because a few months after the End of the Relationship, I was diagnosed with Stage 3 uterine cancer. Yes, I do attribute part of this to the incredible misery and terror I lived in for so long; "disease" is, literally, a "lack of ease", and I had that in spades. I wrote in my personal journal and wrote and wrote and wrote and finally wrote my way out of his life forever. I lost the most precious thing of all, irrreplaceable, and that is TIME; my mother passed away last July and how bitterly I regret those lost years pining away for this Frankenstein when I could have been spending it with my Mom. Please, if you feel bad about your own relationship in any way, buy this book, it may save your life and a lot of grief in the process. Hindsight is always 20/20, sharpen your vision and your perceptions about your relationship NOW before you suffer any more...NOTHING is worth that kind of suffering!
Rating:
Summary: HOW TO RECOGNIZE VERBALLY ABUSIVE MEN: A female perspective
Review: Going by the content and validity of the book. That should be title of the book. So not a good book in general but....
The author does hits bulls eyes with Power-over and Power-sharing theories. She identifies the fundamental problem and the types of abusive correctly but from then on she let's her personal contact with abused women and her fertile imagination to concoct some superficial and in some case damaging solution.
Pros:
* Identification of fundamental problem in abusive relationship, abusive situation, abusive patterns.
* The recognization part of the book is really good.
Cons:
* Unscientific -- The Author collects all data from her personal contact and almost exclusively from women! (and the hypocritical title!) To top it, those women were not SAMPLED from a larger collection of women or even abused women. They are mostly chosen from abused women who volunteered to be in touch with the author and provide information :)
* Assumes men is at "fault" in verbally abusive fight or argument.
* Mostly from female perspective.
It appears more like the author had a strong perspective(theories) on verbally abusive men and she wants to prove it by collecting and identifying supportive data from favorable sources. So, it reads like a propoganda than a book.
Inspite of this the author gets the recognization part of it mostly right and rest of it -- the response and gender part all wrong.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful book
Review: This book helped me put a definition to what I had dealt with in my life and my parents. Both had grown up in negative situations where they were constantly put down with words, which escalated into violence. I guess they thought that as long as they didn't hit me they were doing okay. This book helped me to see the patterns of verbal abuse in my own life, and more importantly helped me recognize of what not to do when I have children of my own. I would recommend this book to anyone that constantly feels a sense of inner conflict - you might be surprised to find that some of that feeling is the result of verbal and emotional abuse. This book will help you identify those types of patterns and from there you can better determine if you are in a situation to get further help.
This book proves one thing, words are a powerful thing.
Rating:
Summary: It is the SUBTLE, persistent abuse that is hardest to see
Review: And that is what this books aims at: identifying when you are being abused. The abuser invalidates your experience as fast as you tell him or her how he makes you feel...and he (or she), does it on purpose, habitually and selectively, so most people tend to question themselves instead of realizing they feel invalidated because they are BEING INVALIDATED. The book is an excellent awareness tool, for subtle abuse and for those conditioned to it. Of course the book is not perfect, telling an abuser to stop it, usually doesn't work. Some will go to couseling if cornered, however (small percentage actually change). Please also remeber, many women abuse their mates verbally (apply it to both genders).
Rating:
Summary: A must read in todays climate of violence
Review: This was a very painful book to read. Verbal abuse has become a large part of our global society. All of us have been verbally abused by parents, aunts, uncles, teachers and clergy. It is prevelant across genders, races and socioeconomic groups. Alice Miller has written also on this subject - although more from a historical viewpoint.
It is important to realize and be aware of the line between people who are just parroting the communication skills that they grew up with and those that actually through their own low self esteem try to demoralize and demean partners who make them insecure. Making a decision to suspend or terminate a relationship based on this book must be made carefully. There are many checkpoint lists in the book. If you underline and make notes in the book by the time you are finished you will have an accurate assessment of your relationship. Going to a therapist or asking close friends or relatives for their honest feedback helps also.
Battered Woman's Shelters around the country would do well to educate themselves and the public on this issue. Sadly, in most places there are no resources available for men and women until they have been actually assaulted. It seems that catching it before it reaches that point would do much for stopping the cycle of abuse.
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