Emotional Intelligence for Better Relationships
Dysfunctional behaviors often come from trauma, neglect, or abuse, but some can come from seemingly benign areas of life as well.
We don’t know the full impact our childhood had on us until we’re older trying to relate to other people outside of our family.
In this episode, I talk about one person’s experiences from childhood and how she recognized a lot of her dysfunctions, and how she is finding a way out of them.
[Read more…]
Emotional abuse is the ultimate brainwashing technique. It hides in the form of feigned helpfulness, generosity, compassion, and love. The perpetrator knows how to appear kind and caring while intertwining abusive behavior, causing their victim to become powerless.
Emotional abuse is a method of controlling, manipulating, belittling, and invalidating a person over time. It is often hard to spot in the moment as it can be seen as benign or even “normal” to most observers. But as this behavior is repeated time and time again, the insidious compound effect of this form of covert abuse causes its victims to lose confidence in themselves, stop trusting in their own decisions, feel devalued and unimportant, and blame themselves for being the cause of, and sometimes even deserving, of the abusive behavior.
(after you read this article, be sure to tune into the Love and Abuse podcast for more on emotional abuse and manipulation in relationships) [Read more…]
I received an email from someone who was very angry with me. She said “You should be ashamed of yourself for teaching that it is okay to break ties with family!“
She was referencing an episode I did on toxic family members and how I said if they are too toxic to be around that it’s okay to part ways with them. [Read more…]
How difficult is it to experience life to the fullest when you have a dark cloud of problems and challenges?
In this episode, I help you tackle the problems in your life with many questions designed to loosen the grip emotional challenges have on you. If you can get some relief from the problems in your life, perhaps you could experience more of what it has to offer.
Your level of function or dysfunction as an adult is almost always determined by the most unhealthy or toxic people in your family growing up.
When you are raised by those who didn’t or couldn’t love and support you as you deserved, you may have developed “broken” tools to deal with situations as an adult. When your emotional toolbox has a bunch of broken tools, you may keep getting the results you don’t want, causing you to stay unhappy.
In this episode, I help you identify those broken tools and what you can do to start utilizing them the right way, or even fixing them altogether.