Loving You Shouldn't Be Hurting Me: Psychological Abuse and Its Effects on Physical and Mental Health

5 Star Review

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Editorial Book Review:

By William Reimers

Most people can describe physical abuse. Far fewer can name what’s happening when a relationship leaves them anxious, confused, ashamed, and physically unwell without a bruise in sight. That’s the territory Dr. Avery Neal has spent her career mapping, and Loving You Shouldn’t Be Hurting Me is her most rigorous contribution yet.

Neal, a psychotherapist and international author whose first book If He’s So Great, Why Do I Feel So Bad? has been translated into twelve languages, brings both clinical precision and genuine compassion to an area that most healthcare systems still largely miss. Her central argument is that psychological abuse, the chronic manipulation, control, and fear that can define an intimate relationship, doesn’t just damage the mind. It damages the body. It dysregulates the nervous system, elevates stress hormones, and generates real, measurable physical health costs. The research she cites is striking: a significant percentage of intimate partner violence victims in emergency rooms are never identified, and women experiencing nonphysical abuse alone carry dramatically higher annual healthcare costs than those who aren’t.

The book earns its place by moving from insight to action. Neal doesn’t stop at helping readers recognize what’s been happening to them. She introduces the CLEAR Framework, her own five-phase clinical model built around clarity, liberation, empowerment, autonomy, and regulation, giving survivors a structured path toward recovery rather than leaving them with diagnosis and no map forward.

What sets this book apart is its ambition beyond the individual reader. Neal is simultaneously licensing screening tools and clinician training to hospitals and health plans, which signals her awareness that psychological abuse goes undetected precisely because the systems designed to catch it aren’t equipped to look. The book is both a resource for survivors and a quiet argument for systemic change in how healthcare approaches relationship trauma.

About the Author

Avery Neal

Avery Neal, PhD, LPC, is a practicing psychotherapist, researcher, and international author. In 2012 she opened Women’s Therapy Clinic, which offers therapy and counseling support to women. Avery is the author of, “If He’s So Great, Why Do I Feel So Bad?: Recognizing and Overcoming Subtle Abuse,” which has been translated and published in twelve languages. Avery has spoken at numerous conferences alongside some of the world’s leading experts in psychology. Her articles and interviews have been published by Oprah. com, Counseling Today, American Counseling Association, DailyOM, Conscious Life, BookTrib, Best Self Magazine, Hitched Magazine, Bustle, POPSUGAR and PKWY Magazine, and her courses and curriculum have been taken by individuals, professionals, universities and organizations worldwide.