Emotional Concussion

Whilst in a conversation with a friend the other day, who recently had an accident and is now being treated for a concussion, we touched on the subject of emotional abuse, especially within a marriage or relationship.
I commented that a punch would be better as it takes months and often years to untangle all the nasty words from your brain, heart, life.
Concussions and emotional beatings are not dissimilar.
The heart, like the brain, is a very delicate organ, vital to a healthy functioning body.
When either becomes damaged almost everything physically is affected ie. your breathing, eating, sleeping, etc. and day to day living starts to get a bit hard and often unmanageable, difficult or nearly impossible in the worst cases.
My youngest brother, before he took his life in 2006, suffered a huge concussion in a car accident so after his death I researched concussions and closed head injuries.
A closed head injury is when your head receives a massive blow but there is no bleeding.
But whether your head bleeds or not, often you can have a concussion, even a small one.
The medical community calls the more serious ones TBI or traumatic brain injury and it is really hard to detect the extent of the damage without doing an MRI. People who suffer concussions are usually sent home with panadol and a little sheet of paper that details symptoms and care of yourself following a concussion. It is very important that you have a friend to check up with you or at least stay with you for that first week or so.
After an injury-causing concussion, the patient has to be monitored carefully and another knock to the head can be very dangerous as the brain is already in a very fragile state with damage to nerves and blood vessels.
Symptoms of a concussion are; not remembering what happened immediately before or after the injury, confusion, difficulty concentrating, loss of judgment and coordination, walking unsteadily, dizziness, changes in vision (what they can see), slurred speech, sleeping difficulties.                            
Post-concussion syndrome - some symptoms continue for several weeks and these are forgetfulness, trouble concentrating, personality changes, tiredness, not being able to sleep or sleepy.

I personally feel and this is just my observation and opinion, based on a lot of reading and personal experience, that a punch or an injury to the heart results in much the same symptoms as a head injury or TBI.  
We now have a THI - traumatic heart injury and perhaps this type of emotional injury should be treated in the same way you would treat a concussion.
Your heart has now been concussed due to angry, abusive, controlling, hurtful words thrown at you and sometimes these insults, accusations, and assignations to your character can go on for hours and days. 
So just imagine your heart being punched over and over again.
We have all seen the bloodied and pulped faces of boxers in the ring, our heart now looks like this.
Or even if you have just had one big angry session from your abuser, you are now injured and need self-care after this THI/ traumatic heart injury.

The same care you would apply to any trauma would be relevant here.
But sadly just like a closed head injury, there is no way of knowing how serious and deep the injuries are inside a battered heart and there is no MRI to tell us or give a time expectancy for the healing of a heart.