Welcome to Love and Abuse, the show about navigating the difficult relationship,

from simple disagreements to emotionally abusive behaviors.

You deserve respecting kindness.

All the information on this show is meant for educational purposes only.

Always seek a professional for your mental health and well-being, and always pick your battles wisely.

I'm your host, Paul Koliani.

Thanks for joining me for another episode of love and abuse.

If this is your first time, welcome to the show.

And I'm sorry that you had to tune in because you're probably tuning in because something is happening in a relationship,

maybe an important relationship in your life.

And so you listen to this show or you're looking up stuff on the internet,

trying to figure out what's going on in your relationship.

Today I want to talk about a very subtle manipulation that might be happening to you or someone

you know that it's very hard to spot because it makes you think that the other person

is being vulnerable.

It makes you think that they're being honest and self-reflective. It's something

that I noticed in conversations between couples. I see these patterns and I can usually pick out

where the emotionally abusive patterns are. Now, some of it's pretty easy. Some of it is,

you did this to us and I can't believe you're such a bad mom or dad. I mean, there's a lot of obvious emotionally abusive

behavior. And you can usually tell which language is designed to hurt, which language is

designed to gaslight, to deceive. You can usually tell

if you're used to catching somebody in a lie, what the lie is. But what's really hard to catch,

...