Welcome to Love and Abuse, the show about helping you identify poisonous communication and toxic behavior.

You deserve to be treated with respect and kindness.

That's why it's important that you learn to pinpoint manipulative and controlling behavior so that you keep your power and your sanity.

I'm your host, Paul Koliani.

Music power and your sanity. I'm your host, Paul Koliani. Welcome to another episode of love and abuse.

I've got a question for some people out there.

Not everyone that listens to this show,

but some. How do I stop hurting my partner? How do I stop hurting my friend? How do I stop hurting

somebody in my family? I get this question a lot, actually, more than I expected. When I

created this show and I started talking about emotional

abuse on my other podcast, The Overwhelmed Brain, I didn't expect to get questions regarding

the person that was being emotionally abusive or controlling or manipulative. I didn't expect to get

questions from them asking me how to stop

doing it. So it's a surprise to me to hear from people out there, you if you're listening and

you feel like you might be in this category. It's surprising to me to hear from you, for you to want to change, to improve, to maybe evolve from who you are and how you're being, into something, I'm going to say, greater than yourself.

I mean, you are great, but greater than who you're being now.

And so to the survivors of emotional abuse and difficult relationships, I'm not necessarily

talking to you, although this episode could be very helpful to you.

I am talking to the people that are perpetrating this behavior that are doing the

quote bad behavior. I shouldn't even quote it. It is bad behavior. When you are abusive,

controlling, or manipulative, when you're lying, you're deceiving, when you want someone to change and you're doing things to try to make

them change, then it is bad behavior.

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