Nick StumboExecutive Director driving healing from sexual brokenness

All Abuse is Physical Abuse

19 Nov 2025 · 1 min

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Short excerpt from a YouTube video (creator: Nick Stumbo) arguing that all forms of abuse — including coercive control and psychological abuse — produce physical harm because the brain/body responds with neurochemical stress reactions (fight/flight/freeze). The speaker cites long-term health consequences (cardiac issues, autoimmune disorders) and challenges minimising non-physical abuse by noting delayed onset of physical effects over years or decades.

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And what I tell people, all abuse is physical abuse, whether you are thrown downstairs or whether you are coercively controlled in a way that doesn't include what we would call physical violence because unless you can take your brain out of your skull and stick it in a jar, it is a body part and it is being harmed and it is dumping chemicals into your body that are harming you. And we know that if you sit in those neurochemicals that are released in fight flight, freeze for long periods of time, you get things like cardiac issues, autoimmune disorders. All of those to me though they don't show up as fast as a fist are physical abuse. So I think it's actually a really false argument that people make. Well, it's not that bad. Oh really? Wait five years, wait ten years. Yeah. Come talk to me about the women that have been married 30 years to somebody who's destructive.