Navigating the labyrinth of emotional abuse can often be overwhelming. Paul Colainni joins us to help demystify reactive abuse - an insidious form of emotional manipulation where the abuser blames the victim for reacting to the abuse. We dissect the anatomy of reactive abuse, decode the abuser's intentions, and offer insights on how to differentiate it from your response.
You can connect with Paul here: loveandabuse.com
Website: Emotional Abuse Coach
Instagram: @emotionalabusecoach
Email: jessica@jessicaknightcoaching.com
{Course} Identify Signs of Abuse and Begin to Heal
{Free Resource} Canned Responses for Engaging with an Abusive Partner
Navigating the labyrinth of emotional abuse can often be overwhelming. Paul Colainni joins us to help demystify reactive abuse - an insidious form of emotional manipulation where the abuser blames the victim for reacting to the abuse. We dissect the anatomy of reactive abuse, decode the abuser's intentions, and offer insights on how to differentiate it from your response.
You can connect with Paul here: loveandabuse.com
Website: Emotional Abuse Coach
Instagram: @emotionalabusecoach
Email: jessica@jessicaknightcoaching.com
{Course} Identify Signs of Abuse and Begin to Heal
{Free Resource} Canned Responses for Engaging with an Abusive Partner
Welcome to the Relationship Recovery Podcast hosted by Jessica Knight, a certified life coach who specializes in narcissistic and emotional abuse. This podcast is intended to help you identify manipulative and abusive behavior, set boundaries with yourself and others, and heal the relationship with yourself so you can learn to love in a healthy way.
Speaker 2:Hello and thank you for being here today. Today I have one of my favorite people, paul Colliani. He joins us to talk about reactive abuse. Reactive abuse is typically the abuse that an abuser will blame you for when you react to their abusive behavior. For example, that could look like yelling, that could look like screaming, that could look like if you're throwing something, but it's basically your reaction to their abuse. That is our topic for today. Paul is a wealth of knowledge. He has a great resource. At the end of the podcast he will go through how you can find him and where you can listen to him. If you're listening to this and you're like, oh my God, I got to hear more about the work that this guy does, it's all there and it's also in the show notes.
Speaker 2:A few quick updates as you know, the emotional abuse breakthrough program is still available on my website. It is the first step to beginning to uncover and beginning to work through identifying emotional abuse, which was the gateway that I had into understanding abusive behavior. One-on-one coaching is still open. I still have validation calls that are being scheduled about a month out or so, but if you need something more immediate, you always can reach out, as always. If you want to know how to learn more about me or find me, you can go to my website, emotionalabusecoachcom. You can follow me on Instagram at Emotional Abuse Coach. If you're looking for more high conflict divorce related resources, you can go to high-conflictivorstcoachingcom. Hi Paul, thank you so much for joining me again.
Speaker 3:Great to connect with you again, Jessica. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Now, I know that listeners probably know who you are by now, but just in the event that this is somebody's first episode, if you wouldn't mind just sharing who you are, what you do, I'll tell us a little bit about you.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. My name is Paul Culliani. I've been hosting the Overwhelmed Brain Podcast since 2013. That is a podcast about helping you navigate the difficulties of life and all the things that can happen. Then, in 2019, I came out with the Love and Abuse Podcast, which is about navigating the difficult relationship, which can be very complex. But I've been coaching and being a behavior and relationship coach for about 15 years now. That has been what I've been up to and who I am a little bit. I live in Atlanta, georgia, with my fiance, asha, and it's hot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm sure. How hot is it there right now.
Speaker 3:Right now it's actually gorgeous, so I cannot complain.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, the weather. I live in Boston, massachusetts, and it's been so hot it was 90 degrees the other day with the heat warning, or 90 something with the heat warning and my child's school didn't have air conditioning I was like I just want to keep her hope at this point Crazy. Well, I found you and people that have listened to this before know this through Love and Abuse and it really helped me in my healing journey. In reflecting back to that time, I was thinking about what was one of the main lessons that I learned through listening to your podcast and then also reading some of the material on your website, and it was really that I started to believe that I was the abusive one and through listening and understanding the patterns and wrapping my mind around some of these concepts and the behaviors and who I am as a person, it really helped me see that no, I'm not and that what I was doing was I was reacting to their abuse.
Speaker 2:But a lot of the times that this would happen is I would get to the point of yelling or being like this is ridiculous and leaving or something like that, or stonewalling, refusing to answer when I was at my breaking point, when I was done when I was like, when I had spent hours and hours trying to have a normal, quote-unquote, normal conversation. I wanted to explore that sometimes is named reactive abuse today, because I think a lot of people wonder am I the abuser? Or even if I yell in a conversation, am I the abusive one? Or they threw this, they did this, they did this and now it ends up here. So I just wanted to open up the conversation and ask what is your perspective on reactive abuse?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean what you said was one of the most common questions. I get a lot, which is am I the abuser, am I the one doing the hurtful behavior? And I've answered that in a couple of my episodes and I think it's we're all capable of hurtful behavior and we're all capable of reacting.
Speaker 3:We all have emotional triggers, so it's gonna happen. This is just like perfectly natural, normal behaviors, because we're just trying to process things in real time. I think, when it comes to that question, first of all, am I the abusive one? I think you have to think along the lines of do I want? Is my intent to change or control them? Now, that's a tricky question, because the victim of emotional abuse is going to say, well, yeah, I want them to change, I want them to stop hurting me. And then the abuser their goal is to change or control you. And so there's that dichotomy that can happen where you think you're the abusive one because you're doing things that might seem hurtful or might be seen as abusive, yet there's similar qualities in both people they both want the other person to change. So it gets tricky to get down to the when you're doing it yourself, when you're trying to assess yourself. But I find it very easy to determine the answer to that question when you hear someone talk about their relationship. You hear someone talk about saying I'm trying everything I can, I'm doing this, I'm doing this. No matter what I do, it doesn't work. No matter what I say, they always get mad at me, or it's always about me and me. And that is usually about the victim talking about what is happening in the relationship, where the abuser usually talks about they never do it right, they always do this and they won't change, and this and this, and it's always about them. And so, to answer part A of this, I think it's important to hear yourself talk about the relationship. And typically the victim of emotional abuse is saying I'm trying everything I can, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm trying to change, I have changed, I've changed these things about me and it still doesn't work. That's all about me. And it usually means they are I mean not usually, but often means they are the victim of abusive behavior, where the abusive person, the hurtful person, wants to change the other person, wants to control them and it's all about them. The abusive person is saying it's all about you and this is what you're doing and this is what you're doing. So again, those can be looked at in different ways by different people, but that's the general sense of things that I get when people say am I the abuser? I think it's a good way to look at that. There's other ways, but that's a good way to look at it.
Speaker 3:And then we have the aspect of reaction or reactive abuse. When you have an abusive person in your life and you're trying to convey a message to them, you're trying to talk with them and, no matter what you say or do, they won't stop being hurtful. What'll happen is that you will reach, like you said, you will reach a breaking point where you just can't communicate and you can't get your needs met either. You just want some sort of connection, you want to talk with them and have a normal conversation, and what ends up happening is that they make it so difficult or impossible because they turn it around on you, they make it all about you, they make you the problem, and what we end up doing if we're in that situation is that we get so frustrated, not being able to convey, and so maybe needy or not needy that's a bad word but just needing, I think needing to want to talk with them, to connect with them, to the point where, because nothing else is working, we finally lose it or we finally just get upset, or we finally get angry and say, well, this and this, and then we're also capable of being manipulative and trying to communicate in a way that they can understand which is really the bottom line of what I look at with reactive abuse is when they can't communicate in the way that we want.
Speaker 3:To communicate with them, we have to use almost their language so this happens sometimes is that this person will be manipulative or abusive and so we say you know, you're hurting me. And they don't stop hurting. So we have to try to manipulate them to stop hurting us. As a victim, or the victims that are listening now and I don't like to use the term victim, it's just sometimes it's easier for brevity but when we are in that situation and we can't get our message across, what do we do? We want, we have needs, we have wants, we want to connect, but they're not listening, or they're not getting it.
Speaker 3:So how do we do it? Well, maybe I should just try manipulating this and making them think something else, which is, yes, it's a controlling, manipulative thing to do, but then you find out it gets the job done because they're finally connecting you with you. Maybe and that's what happens is that the reactive abuse can spring up from not being able to clearly communicate what you want, because they're not listening or don't want to hear it, and so you start doing these other behaviors and learning oh, that works, that gets through to them.
Speaker 2:But when I yell, they finally say so, they finally pause.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly, yeah. So you finally get through and you think, oh, that worked. Then you ask the question am I the abuser? Because I'm laughing, because it's ridiculous what you have to do, the lengths you have to go through to get through to someone, especially someone close in your life, where you should just be able to share something easily, have a conversation about it. But because it's so sometimes damn challenging, you have to turn into this other person just to get through to them. And then you think, well, geez, I don't like being that person, I don't want to be that person, I don't want to be manipulative, I don't want to have to lie to them or anything like that. I don't have a normal conversation. But then you realize I can't get the message across any other way, and so that's how I see. Long story short, reactive abuse is that we are changing ourselves to be able to communicate with them, to be able to have a conversation with them, because everything else we've tried doesn't work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think a really important thing that you said, that I wrote down right when you said it was about the intent. And it's funny because my partner, who I would argue is like a healthy partner, and I have in this argument well funny argument around intent because I'm always like I don't assume that you do like that, you have a malintent, so I don't care if your intent was to do this, you did this and this is what happened. And his is like I didn't mean, you know, and like it's, but it's just like funny back and forth because I've been in those conversations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because he's not, but he's not abusive. But like with an abusive person though and I'm thinking about, like a lot of my you know past partners it's my intent as the healthy I would argue the healthy partner was always like I want to be able to communicate. I want this to be better. I want to work on this. I want to fix this dynamic. I don't want to continue fighting, and his intent always felt like he just wants me to change my perspective or admit that I'm wrong, or just shut up and be able to move on with whatever the hell it is that he wants it to be. I know that you work with abusive personalities and helping them identify and recover from that. What would you say is the intent of an abusive person when they are abusing? What is going on in their head about their motives?
Speaker 3:I just answered this question yesterday on another podcast in a different way. Oh, wow, no, it's great, yeah, because it's so important. It's one of the most important points and it's another. One of the most common questions I get, which is similar to what you're saying, is why do you do it? Why do you abuse? What is the intent is basically asking well, why are you doing it?
Speaker 3:And in my past I was emotionally abusive, I messed up my relationships and I had to reflect on that. Why was I doing it? I saw my partner suffering and it didn't affect me enough to stop. It didn't make sense after I healed until I realized why I was doing it, which was and this is what I've discovered with most people that I've worked with too is that we absolutely believe we're right and it's just a mindset.
Speaker 3:While you're in that abusive mindset as the abuser, as the hurtful person, you honestly believe that what you're thinking and doing and saying is right, and so I would put my partner through the paces, making her feel guilty, making her feel like she's doing something wrong or withdrawing love and withdrawing support and just doing all these manipulative and hurtful things, and my goal was that she would change for us. She would change and make us happy, and it's her fault that she's not changing, which is why we're unhappy, and it's such a toxic way to think. Now I can see things clearly, but I look back and I think that's how I was. I remember all she had to do was change and fit my mold of an ideal person, an ideal partner, and we'd be happy. And I don't know. Her not changing is the problem, and so that was my mindset. It was just like there had to be something, she had to do something on her part so that we could be happy.
Speaker 3:I was never in the mindset of hmm, I wonder what I could do to change. Never, Because I had like a perfectionist attitude about myself Well, I'm perfect because I have high standards, and if she doesn't meet my standards, well then she needs to meet those standards, and if she doesn't, then it's not my fault that she's unhappy. It's not my fault that she's crying because she's doing it to herself. And again, I know it's so toxic to think that way, but it's helpful for me to know this now so I can teach others.
Speaker 3:This is what you're doing and the way you're thinking. You're putting out impossible standards that people will never be able to meet. And then we have to go through their belief system and their values. And why do you think you're right and what makes you so special? Why do you think you're so important that everything has to be done your way? There's a whole slew of stuff that we have to talk about to get through that. That's just a minor thing, but that's my answer to your question. Like well, why are we doing this and what is the intent? And the intent is to change and control the other person to meet the standards that I, that the I or the abuser puts out there.
Speaker 2:And it sounds like from your answer that that your perspective is that the in these moments, the abuser really believes that they are right. It's not like it's a I'm sure there's yeah, I'm sure, there's times that there's like a power. You know we all have had those moments where, like, we know that we're wrong but we don't admit it. This sounds like one of those moments of like no, they truly believe in their core that they are right and this is the way to do it, and they're going to stop at nothing.
Speaker 3:Exactly From this perspective, where the abuser knows they're right and again I'm using the terms abuser and victim just for brevity, but they know they're right and the victim of emotional abuse or any type of abuse they don't know if they're wrong and they don't know they're always like there's a lot of confusion that goes on.
Speaker 3:Am I wrong? Am I right? And being in that confused state also helps separate you from the idea that you might be the abuser. Going back to that first one, but having the thought that you know you're right and they're wrong and everything they're doing is wrong and they need to change, for you and for the relationship. And I need to change nothing about myself, boy, that just labels very likely an abuser if I'm looking at an abusive relationship Whereas the victim is looking at things going well. Maybe they are right about me, maybe I am wrong, maybe I need to work on myself, maybe I need to improve, maybe I'm not showing up in the way I should, and so all these maybes and uncertainty is another way to define the characteristics of being a victim of abuse.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how, when people come to you and they're like you are able to see that the victim is clearly the victim and they clearly are being abused and they are engaging in what they probably would label as reactive abuse, but really it's just their reactions, their survival mechanisms are kicking in of how do I survive this relationship? What are some things that you recommend for people to begin to step away or step out of that dance of what I'm imagining is really being pushed to the brink over and over and over again, and then there's a reaction, or then someone's like, oh my God, stop. Or screams, or something like that. How do you recommend that somebody might be able to slow it down a little bit and just be able to start to realize what's happening, what is this pattern that's happening, so they can begin to let go of that feeling of self-blame?
Speaker 3:For the victim to let go of the hate.
Speaker 2:Almost like for the victim to be able to see clearly what's happening, so, instead of them thinking that their abuse have been getting wrapped up in that but to be able to notice the reoccurring dance that's happening with the abuser and to be able to begin to take some space from it, so that they can start to begin to see it clearly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a great question. A lot of people don't even know they're being abused. A lot of people don't know it's emotional abuse. And I think when you're humble, like a lot of people that say, well, maybe it is me, maybe it is me, you have to give yourself a little bit of a break, because you probably give other people the benefit of the doubt. You probably give other people third, fourth, 100 chances and you're always trying to be optimistic and trying to see things their way and you're always open-minded to that.
Speaker 3:And it does take some self-discipline to step back and say, no, what they're doing is not right. And this is hard because you don't know sometimes what they're doing. Sometimes you're just so confused, like what just happened. Now I feel guilty and now I feel responsible for everything that is wrong with the relationship. How is this happening? I don't even know.
Speaker 3:So the idea that just accepting that you might be in a state of confusion because there might be abuse going on can start to open your mind a little bit to what else is going on. So that's kind of the first step is just opening your mind that there might be something more going on if you don't already know. If you do already know, then this is the hard part, right, because both the victim and the abuser are regular, normal people, not normal. Some people aren't normal, but these are human beings that have human reactions and we have the breadth of emotions that populate our existence. And so what can happen is that we can become emotionally triggered. Like you said, things can ramp up and then things can spiral downward really quick. In fact, even when you're in a healthy relationship, that happens. Oh, there's a misunderstanding. Well, I didn't understand that misunderstanding, and now we're miscommunicating, and now we're going further, and now we're having an argument, now we're slamming doors. That can happen in any relationship. And I think what I've started to do, what I've started to do in my own life, at least a few years ago, when I started to heal in different ways from my old emotional triggers, because the emotional abusive behaviors they're made up of an inability to cope well and get through a challenge, an emotional challenge that you're having Someone upset you. It might be the first thing on the emotional abuser's mind to point toward the person that's upsetting them, saying it's all you, and so our focus is very outward, and to start to get out of that, being open minded and figuring out, okay, what's going on here. It's really stepping out of yourself, it's really dissociating from the situation, so you're not so emotionally engaged, even though that's impossible sometimes. But if you can step out of the situation long enough to see that something is starting to brew, something is starting to build, then that focus that we have on the other person what are they doing, what are they saying, why can't they understand me can be reversed so we can focus on ourselves and our own reactions. And this is, again, not easy to do and not necessarily advice that you can just walk away with and go. I'll start doing that, but it is something to keep in mind.
Speaker 3:And practice and this is something that I teach in the program too is that you practice some of the things that have triggered you. So what I mean by that is you think about something or an argument that you had, or disagreement or whatever, that things got heated and you got sucked down the rabbit hole and you think, okay, what exactly got me upset, what exactly made me feel guilty, what exactly made me confused? And you just you try to pick out some parts of it and then you can say, okay, when they said this, I was really confused at that moment or I really felt like I couldn't defend myself. Okay, so now when that happens, what can I say next time? So this is kind of visualizing the future of it happening again. So I became emotionally this is how I break it down I became emotionally triggered by what. I became triggered when this happened. Okay, so next time this happens, I'm going to visualize it happening in my head and I'm going to ask myself okay, so next time it happens, how do I want to react then? And I'll be more prepared that way.
Speaker 3:Now this is a big complex thing that we could dive into and break apart and put together in a million different ways, but I like to look at it as if something happened, if something caused me to feel a certain way that something is going to happen again in the future. So I'm going to visualize myself behaving and reacting differently. So that's just one small step, because what ends up happening is we get surprised, somebody springs something on us or somebody says something, and suddenly we're surprised by what they said, and then we react. And what I'm doing is visualizing ahead. Okay, when they say this about that dent in my car, then I'm going to, in my head right now, react to it and how will they react when I react that way? So it's like another small step is visualizing the kind of conversation that you want to have.
Speaker 3:Now. This doesn't solve anything. It just helps you prepare instead of being so reactive and so surprised by what's going on or what they're saying in the conversation or what they're doing in the conversation. You can prepare. So I like to prepare for emotional triggers ahead of time. Now your question comes down to like the back and forth that can happen in getting. It sounds like you're saying and clearly, stuff, if I'm wrong, how do you get out of the back and forth cycle where you just get sucked in into like a something like a disagreement or that just continues to amplify? Is that kind of where you're going with that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, like, basically, I understand that when we're in these cycles, we can even think a conversation is starting out a little bit differently and like, oh, they're hearing me this time. But a lot of times it goes right back to where it was, especially when the other person hasn't done any personal work or anything like that. They're working off the same script. And so I think that somebody might be listening to this and feel like, okay, this is definitely happening in my relationship and I need to find ways to step away.
Speaker 2:But I'm really wondering, like, if somebody is like really blaming themselves and they're like looking at their behaviors, but they need a strategy to basically be able to like get out of this disagreement or move away from the argument, and in my perspective, what I think we're doing subconsciously is really creating enough space so that we can actually think about what's going on.
Speaker 2:It's like less about trying to fix it in that moment. I think it's more about, like we need we're not thinking clearly at all, so we need to take a step back and regulate our bodies and all that stuff. But I wonder, like, when you start calling out the abuse or when you change your reactions, the abuser typically becomes more abusive. And so I'm just curious, like, if someone is like very used to like finally getting through to them in air quotes, getting through to them in air quotes, when they finally explode and they want to stop exploding, like they don't want to yell, would the commitment maybe be like okay, like at this point I'm going to walk away? You know, are there like some boundaries that you would recommend somebody sets within themselves so that they separate from the dance?
Speaker 3:of abuse. I get you. I'm sorry, I need to go ahead.
Speaker 2:That's okay. No, no, no, go ahead.
Speaker 3:Well, it reminded me of the qualifying question that I like to ask on my show and others that are going through. This is that there's two things. One is you ask yourself how am I feeling right now and what am I feeling? And then you express that you know I'm feeling this, I'm feeling angry that you said that, or I'm feeling confused about what you said, and the abusive person is probably going to say well, you know, that's your problem and you're confused because you're stupid or whatever whatever they say to make you feel stupid. They may not even use those words, they might manipulate it. So you feel stupid and it's important to convey those feelings because you want to find out if the person that's supposed to care about you cares about you. I'm feeling hurt right now. Well, it's your problem, not mine.
Speaker 3:If you're hurt, that doesn't sound like a very caring statement from somebody who's supposed to care about you. So this is what happens is you'll start to build evidence in your mind about who they are to you and who you are to them in your life. And this may hurt, because when you say I'm feeling hurt, I'm feeling sad If you say that to someone you care about, someone you care about and someone who cares about you is going to say I'm here for you, I'm so sorry you feel this way. Let's talk about that if you want, or I'm shoulder to cry on if you need that. But someone who's abusive or hurtful or is trying to manipulate they might say something differently. They may say something different. They'll say something along the lines of blaming you for doing this. They want you to believe you're the problem. And so I like to say, okay, let's just convey the feeling, the emotions that we're having to see what happens. When you said that it hurt, it felt like you don't value me, it felt like you don't love me.
Speaker 3:When you say things like that, and if they say, well, too bad, I mean that says a lot. How much more evidence do you need than that that somebody doesn't really care enough that they're not hurt, that you're hurt, they're not sad, that you're sad. That just it's a basic first step, and the second step is the qualifying question that I like to tell people to ask is do you realize that what you just said hurt me? That gives them an opportunity to answer it. I call it empowering the person to answer the question. You empower them with the question, instead of just pointing the finger, saying you're hurting me.
Speaker 3:You ask the question do you realize what you're doing is hurting me? And you might have to ask in a different way. But what you just did hurt me. Did you know that? Do you know that what you're doing is hurting me? You know what you're doing is just making me feel unloved or it feels like you don't respect me.
Speaker 3:Now, in the trigger moment that they're in, they may get angry and stuff, but you're conveying it and you want to find out what you get. And if they say, well, no, I didn't realize it, hopefully they'll say I don't want to do that and I'm just upset. Maybe you'll have a conversation that springs up open from there, which would be great. But if they say, well, no, but that's not my fault and it's you, and it's you and it's you, then you can ask the next question, which is well, now that you know that what you said or did hurts me, will you please stop? And so I like to ask those two questions, and I don't know if I told you before, but I've said this on the show.
Speaker 3:I had somebody or somebody wrote to me and said I asked that question of my partner and he said yes, I do know I'm hurting you. And she goes well, why, why are you doing that? And he said well, it's fun. And her mind was blown and I think that really solidified in her mind that this wasn't the relationship for her. And so this is what I mean by building evidence is that it's hard to make decisions when you don't know for sure where they are and how they're showing up. You don't know for sure, so I like to know for sure.
Speaker 3:I like to build evidence in a way that gives me enough data to make a solid, easier decision, and that data might be asking some hard questions Are you still in love with me? You still care about me? Do you still want a future together? Those might be the types of questions that maybe you don't want answers for, but it's important that you get them so you can make these decisions. And that's the two questions I like to ask is do you realize you're hurting me or do you realize what you just said hurt me, and then you follow it up with? Well, now that you know, will you please stop? It's another way to decide. Or you can say why, why are you doing that? But hopefully they'll say no, I didn't realize it. Maybe we should talk about it. But if they say yes and they continue hurting you, now you really have something to chew on, and that is solid data that you can work with, even though it might hurt, but you can make a decision based on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, two things came up as you were talking about that, and I do remember listening to your podcast and hearing that suggestion and trying it, and what came out of it and I've certainly heard this from a lot of people too is that it just became more abusive, because I asked that question and then it was like no, I don't care. And I'm like, well then, if you don't care, then why are we having this conversation? And then it just sort of like you know, it just gets worse. But then he says he does care. It's just like okay, well, I started one. I started to see that nothing makes sense, which I needed to see.
Speaker 2:But the other thing is that you actually remind me of something that I think is important is that asking those questions and almost becoming witness to what's happening rather than being like an actor in it, but more like you are witnessing this pattern and you're taking a step back it allows you to slow everything down within yourself and within the argument and really look at what's happening. Like you said, like taking, like, almost, like taking note of like. What is the response to this? Do they change? Does their demeanor change when you note that what they're doing is hurting, or does it just continue? You know, does it get more entitled? Do they get more abusive? I read like if we are in the right mindset going into something like this, I think we can really slow ourselves down and that will probably lead to less engagement around it.
Speaker 3:I mean, you're explaining exactly the best way to do it and a lot of what happens, or a lot of times what happens is the victim of abuse will be so involved and, like you said, engaged. They'll be so in it that all their emotions are involved and they want to work on things together. They want to solve these things together, which any normal, healthy relationship that would be a great healthy thought and they want to work through things as a participant in the relationship, to step back and out of it. It almost and maybe this is what happens to some people it almost feels like a betrayal, like I'm assessing the relationship, I'm observing it from afar and I need to find out what's going on. It's almost like a parent watching a kid. You know their relationship is the kid and they're making sure their kid's doing the right thing from afar. But it has to happen when the relationship's going downhill. The other person won't stop being hurtful or won't stop doing what they're doing, and somebody has to take that step and taking a step out of being in it, being totally enmeshed in it and being out of it and being the observer, almost like you are your own relationships therapists, not to them, or him or her or whatever.
Speaker 3:You are just observing it from a reasonable, rational place so you can assess what's going on. It's the zoomed out picture like you're talking about. You're zooming out and you're saying, okay, they react this way, I react this way, this happens, this happens and nothing's changing. And that's like we I don't know if we talked about this, but like the trend line in a relationship is it going up and to the right and everything's getting better over time. Is it steady, is it going up and down or is it always down? And there's a lot of peaks and valleys and it's just never ends. It's just like, okay, yesterday is going to be today, yesterday is going to be tomorrow, what has happened will happen. I just have to bear that in mind as I go forward.
Speaker 3:And again comes back to just collecting data about everything and what you said is perfect. You step outside of it, you observe, you see what's happening and be honest with yourself this isn't happening and they haven't changed and they said they would change six months ago or six years ago and nothing is happening. So I have to get real, I have to get honest, and that's hard because that means facing some bigger decisions that maybe are very difficult or feel impossible to face. But you have this one direction that you could go, where nothing changes. Or you have another direction where something will change, even though it'll be hard, but at least there is change. So it just depends on what's going on in your situation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you've talked about your Heal being program on our podcast before and something that always has stuck out to me is just how much work and how hard it is for an abusive person to change, because they have to change the way that they think, and I think that question of do you know that you're hurting me is really the gateway into their own personal work. If they choose to do it, to say wait, I'm hurting somebody I really love and I don't want to do that anymore.
Speaker 3:You know, yeah, you said something that's really hard for them and I'm sure a lot of people listening now are thinking, well, it's too bad if it's hard for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, and more like you're so right, yeah.
Speaker 2:Like it's like you know, like so for yeah, but now I feel that he's a clarify, so move me too. But actually the way I explain it with my clients, but I'm trying to get them to understand that this person is likely not going to change based on the behaviors and the relationship that we're seeing. I usually give this coffee tea example of if you drink coffee every day from the Starbucks a block from your house, you got the same order, you talk to the same people every day, you walk the same route. It would be really difficult for you if you could not do that anymore and you had to drink tea. It'd be the coffee aspect, it would be the walk, it'd be this whole thing would be different.
Speaker 2:But say like there was, that wasn't an option. You had to choose to drink tea every day. You would go through this thought process every day of having to remind yourself why you're doing this and why you need to. And that's essentially what an abusive person needs to do. A lot of time is like to be so, like every time they blame somebody else or look to somebody else for the reason behind their issues or all of this. They have to go back inside right and ask themselves like what is going on in here?
Speaker 3:It's a great analogy. It's like the pattern you followed all your life. You now have to change. It's like I might even look at it as tying your shoes, if you've ever tried tying your shoes differently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know yeah, or with, or like everything done with your left hand.
Speaker 3:Exactly or right, if you're right or lefty, but exactly is you're changing the way you do things. If you always wash your chest in the shower first, try washing your feet first and see what that feels like. It's a completely different thing for the emotionally abusive person. And, speaking from my own experience and from the people I've worked with, I have to tell them that this is going to be difficult because who you were has to change so much, so radically, that you're not going to. It's like you're changing to a different person. You're no longer Bill, now you're Ted. You're no longer Mary, now you're Maria. And so it changed. You change so much that I can look back now on my former self and think, oh my God, I will never be that person again. Wow, who was that guy? It's so different.
Speaker 3:And then there's something, a little side note as you, as the emotionally abusive person starts changing, they start seeing behaviors that they used to do from others Not always necessarily from the person they've abused, but sometimes. But what ends up happening is that as one changes and stops being hurtful and stops in behaviors, they recognize those behaviors. They finally see them from outside themselves. Talk about stepping out, stepping out of themselves and seeing those behaviors and being so aware of their own behaviors that they start to see it in others, which helps their healing process and helps with their empathy, to connect with empathy, because now they see whoa, that person over there is doing what I used to do. Oh, that's terrible, that's emotionally abusive. I know that now because I was just thinking about this yesterday or this morning where, when I was the emotionally abusive person, I never saw those behaviors in others and when I did, I probably thought they were so normal that it didn't make a difference to me. And people would say, oh, so, and so is hurting me. And I would look at the behavior and think, well, I don't understand. That sounds like a normal relationship problem to me.
Speaker 3:And so we see that as people heal and, of course, as the victims heal from being emotionally abused, their fog starts to lift, they start to clear up and then, when they are, it usually takes about two to four months to start really feeling different and having the confusion lift and start trusting yourself again. And for some people it's longer because a lot worse has happened. But this is the typical timeframe I see is that as the victim of emotional abuse gets away from the abusive behavior and they're separated from that person. For a while, they're able to see things differently and feel things differently and think about things differently. And then they say, oh, why was I in that mess in the first place? They might even get upset with themselves for being in that mess and we talk about that in the show and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:And it's important not to get upset with yourself because you didn't know any better. You didn't know. If you knew then what you know now, you wouldn't have been there in the first place. So you didn't know then what you know now. So you had to go through it and learn and go through the paces.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that also opens up an opportunity for us, when we are on the other side of healing, to be able to ask, like to look at our behaviors and see what we like and what we don't like about ourselves. Like maybe we do. You know, there are things we want to personally change, that we're not changing so that we can exist in the abusive relationship, but that we decide to change because we're looking back and we're like, oh, I don't like that response and in a healthy relationship I don't want to have that response. I want to be able to talk about things this way, or maybe like I don't like the way my how I manage my anger, but finding ways to approach it in a healthy way once you have enough space from this abusive pattern.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think the mirror in any relationship you know the other person is that mirror, that reflection that gives us the feedback that we need for ourselves. Just like the victim of abuse might feel like they had loose boundaries before, but now they don't, because they got out of that situation and they won't allow people to cross their boundaries again, and that is a very healthy, self-loving, self-compassionate thing to do. And then they feel better about themselves as they work on these things in themselves. And, like you said, maybe I shouldn't react like that. Maybe I need to work on that in myself.
Speaker 3:It's all a healing process, as long as people turn their focus away from the other person and put it back on themselves and ask what can I do for myself instead of what can I do to change them? What can I do for myself and what do I need to do for myself and what should I work on in me and everyone should do that and what should I work on and what should I accept and not accept in my life? Because if that person's being hurtful to me, you can't accept that and I need to stand up to that or walk away from it if it's dangerous, and so on. So, yeah, everything you said is spot on.
Speaker 2:Paul, thank you so much for unpacking this with me. I know it's going to be so helpful for people and I really hope. My hope with this topic is that they're able to look at, listen to this and really be able to say you know what? This is not my fault, what I'm experiencing is not my fault, but I have some strategies now to begin to break the cycle A bit or at least become more aware of it.
Speaker 3:Yes, thank you for having me. Thank you.
Speaker 2:How does somebody find your podcast and are you on social media?
Speaker 3:Oh, I am, Yep, I actually. You can go to theoverwhelmedbraincom or loveandabusecom and I can be found on Facebook. I have a group called the Overwhelmed Brain Empowerment Group. You're welcome to join and we connect and talk in there. And best way to find me.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, thank you so much again for coming on. I'm sure you'll be back soon.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Jessica. Always important and many directions that we could take.
Speaker 2:topic yes, yeah, that's how I roll.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's good. Yeah, thank you.