Stonewalling is damaging to a relationship and can make it fail if whatever is shut down is never brought up to be resolved. If you give your partner the silent treatment, you need to hear this segment. In segment two, I talk about expectations in friendships. Should friendships be an equal, two-way street or can there be imbalance where one person does all the work and the other just lets them do it?
[Read more…]Identifying Your Sense of Self – Overcoming the Guilt of Leaving the Emotional Abuser – Diminishing Emotional Triggers
Your sense of self and identity can dissolve or even be rewritten over years of trauma, abuse, and/or dysfunction.
Dis-integration can happen after a lifetime of challenges that you haven’t yet healed from, causing you to feel scattered and feel like you have no purpose.
When you don’t have a strong emotional foundation, the hard times are harder and you feel beat up and burnt out almost all the time so it’s important to establish who you are.
[Read more…]Transforming the Emotionally Abusive Relationship
When I was first getting to know my partner, she told me about her relationship with her ex. She said that they were the best of friends, so it only made sense that developing that friendship into a romantic relationship would enhance what they had and bring them even closer.
After several years of emotional abuse and a bitter divorce, she left that relationship a shell of her former self.
Emotionally abusive people know exactly how to be a good friend. They show up when you need them. They say all the right things. They appear to be genuinely kind and generous to you and the rest of the world.
[Read more…]