The Quiet Damage: How Silent Abuse Impacts Our Children

We think we’re shielding them.
We lower our voices, we hide the tension, we pretend everything is fine.
But children feel everything. Especially what’s unspoken.

In a home filled with silent gaslighting and emotional manipulation, children may not witness physical violence—but they feel the weight of the lies, the tension, the confusion. They hear the silence. They see the imbalance. They watch one parent shrink and the other dominate with calm cruelty.

My daughter began showing signs before I fully understood what was happening myself. The way she hesitated to speak up. The way she nervously tried to smooth things over. The way she seemed afraid of emotional eruptions that hadn't even happened yet. She was learning to read the room instead of feeling safe in it.

And then came the moment she ran to the neighbor's house because the yelling became too much. She shouldn’t have known what fear like that felt like. But she did.

Silent abuse doesn’t just target the partner—it distorts the whole environment. Children internalize these dynamics. They may begin to believe love looks like fear. That relationships mean walking on eggshells. That silence is safer than truth.

That’s why I left the relationship. Not just for me. For her.
Because breaking the cycle doesn’t just heal the past.
It protects their future.

Carlin