The 5 Cycles of Emotional Abuse: Investigating a Malignant Victimization‪.‬

Abstract: In 1982, SaraKay Smullens began a journal recording the early years of emotional abuse she recognized in the histories of many of her clients and in her own early life. These recordings led to an identification and documentation of five cycles of parental or caretaker behavior that constitute emotional abuse. Her recordings indicated further that when emotional abuse begins in childhood, it leaves its victim vulnerable, entrapping them in future relationships with friends, lovers, co-workers and forming an ever expanding cycle of emotional abuse. Her findings and how to break the malignant yet invisible cycles of emotional abuse will be published in her forthcoming book, Setting YourSelf Free (New Horizon Press, September; 2002).