Emotional abuse in a relationship can be very crippling and demoralizing for the person that is on the receiving end of that abuse. The person that is dishing out the abuse is projecting their negative words, attitudes or actions in a very sick and unhealthy way onto the victim because they themselves have deep seeded issues that stem from either childhood or adulthood that they possibly are not aware of. Even if they are aware of these particular deep seeded issues they have never resolved them and as a result they harm their love ones or significant other by engaging in emotionally abusive behavior.
In most cases, what eludes both the emotional abused victim and their abuser is that the abuser is suffering from some sort of personality disorder like narcissism or has an undiagnosed anti-social personality disorder and is possibly a sociopath or even a psychopath. In his book entitled Emotionally Abusive Relationships: Identifying and Effectively Dealing with Narcissists, Sociopaths, Psychopaths and Toxic People author Frank James explains in great detail these particular disorders and emotional disturbances and how they are possibly the root cause of someone being emotionally abusive.
In addition, in his book he examines the various forms of emotional abuse, how to recognize the telltale signs of being in an emotionally abusive relationship, treatment and management techniques that you can utilize if your relationship is worth saving and if it is not worth saving how to safely exit out of a toxic relationship.