In today’s world, emotional abuse, manipulative communication, and deceit are alarmingly prevalent, presenting a significant challenge to navigate life without encountering individuals intent on exploiting you.
Becoming a victim of someone else’s harmful actions isn’t inevitable, nor should anyone accept toxic communication without first arming themselves with the necessary knowledge.
The Love and Abuse podcast is committed to empowering you to recognize the damaging behaviors of those who don’t have your best interests at heart. It aims to equip you with the tools to identify harmful conduct, enabling you to make informed decisions about the relationships in your life.
Love and Abuse is the official podcast of The M.E.A.N. Workbook: An Assessment and Healing Guide to Difficult Relationships. My goal is to provide you with ample information on distinguishing between toxic and healthy behavior.
Love and Abuse is designed to teach you what kindness and respect should look like in any of your relationships. It will also help you pinpoint specific behaviors some individuals exhibit that cause you distress.
Learning how someone treats you—especially when they deceive you, make you feel bad or guilty, or make you feel responsible for their issues—is crucial. Recognizing and addressing that behavior is essential to avoid falling victim to toxic behavior, manipulation, lies, deceit, or emotional abuse.
By working through the assessment in the workbook, you’ll begin to recognize the unhealthy and destructive behaviors and communication patterns present in your relationship.
The primary objective of Love and Abuse is to ensure you’re familiar with all the terms related to unhealthy and toxic behaviors and to recognize them when they occur.
I often receive emails and letters from my other podcast, The Overwhelmed Brain, where individuals write to me about their relationship issues. Sadly, most of these communications are about emotional abuse. Despite its prevalence in many relationships, emotional abuse is often challenging to define and especially difficult to pinpoint. Some individuals might attribute the problems they’re facing to normal relationship difficulties.
Love and Abuse addresses all forms of hurtful, controlling, and abusive language and behavior that make you feel bad. Emotional abuse and toxic behavior are often subtle and not immediately obvious, which is why I created this podcast and blog.
Most emotional abuse I hear about is hidden from the public eye. You could be in a relationship where someone uses language and behavior to systematically wear down your spirit—your very being—and you might not even realize it’s happening.
In emotional abuse, you can have a conversation with someone and leave feeling worse about yourself without understanding why. Toxic behavior gradually erodes a relationship. Therefore, I want to ensure you recognize what it looks like and how to respond when you encounter it.
The challenging part is that satisfying the demands of an emotional abuser is never enough. Even if you meet their standards of perfection, they will always find something else to criticize.
Because of its insidious nature, many people cannot identify when emotional abuse is happening. It can be so subtle and sometimes so deliberately concealed that the abuser can manipulate the other person often without being called out.
If you can’t tell when it’s happening, you will likely feel defenseless against the abusive behaviors. It’s difficult to ask someone to stop hurting you when you can’t even pinpoint how they’re doing it.
If you’re in a relationship and know something is wrong but can’t identify what it is or how to recognize it, this podcast and blog will help you. Also, consider getting The M.E.A.N. Workbook and taking the assessment to help you determine the extent of abusive behavior in your relationship.
Even if you’re not currently in a relationship, Love and Abuse will educate you on how to spot red flags and avoid becoming entangled in a challenging situation. I aim to ensure you don’t get deceived and become a victim of someone else’s misconduct.
My mission is to promote healthy communication, which entails two individuals listening to each other, giving space to express themselves, showing empathy and compassion, and allowing each other to be themselves.
However, it’s crucial to remember that this requires effort from both sides. If only one person is doing their part and the other isn’t, both suffer.
With some individuals, you can’t afford to let your guard down. It’s important to learn how people can manipulate and unethically influence you, gradually eroding your identity and taking advantage of you in ways you might not even recognize.
I want you to have the healthiest, happiest relationships possible with everyone in your life. I never want you to feel isolated, confused, or even responsible for other people’s misbehavior.
If you believe you might be in an emotionally abusive relationship, know that you are not alone. Many others are experiencing what you’re going through. While knowing this may not ease your situation, I’m here to ensure you don’t feel stranded without knowledge and support.
If you happen to be the perpetrator of emotionally abusive behaviors, this will be a valuable resource for you as well. I’ve also created a program for emotionally abusive individuals who want to heal and change called Healed Being. It has already helped thousands of people and saved many relationships from the brink of destruction.
Although it’s true that a relationship might not survive if abusive behaviors have persisted for too long, many can survive and even thrive once the emotional abuse stops. But it always takes the willingness of the abusive person to stop the behaviors and heal their coping mechanisms, two of the many challenges I address in Healed Being.
Whatever you’re going through, stay strong and know that as you learn more about what you may be going through, that wisdom will lead to more of your personal power and the ability to start making changes, even if you believe you have no choice but to accept there’s nothing you can do.
Sometimes, we can’t see the choices we have because the brain fog is too thick. Love and Abuse will help you lift the fog and get your sanity back.
If you have any questions for me, please reach out through my contact form.
