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. Hello and welcome to love and abuse. I'm going to give you some of my insights on how you enable manipulative and controlling behavior.

And you do so by being your wonderful self.

You do so by showing compassion and generosity and support to someone who reciprocates by trying to control you, by trying to make you feel bad about yourself.

And when that happens, you're actually reinforcing the bad behavior.

How do you do this?

What is happening when you are trying to be kind, you are empathetic, you are showing up in a way that is nurturing and supportive of another person. And they show up in a way that just seems

cold-hearted, mean. And if it doesn't seem that way overtly, it's covert when you're having difficulties, that is,

when you're with someone that is putting you through the pieces of control and manipulation.

And it's a very emotionally abusive setup where you show up in any type of relationship,

be it romantic, family, friend, and you are trying to be kind.

You are being generous.

You are being empathetic.

You will give your time and energy and sometimes money to these people.

And they turn things around and make things your fault, make you feel responsible

for doing things wrong.

And so what normally happens is that your wonderful self turns on more kindness, turns on more

support, turns on more generosity, becomes even more empathetic and sees them as a victim.

I'm not saying everyone does this. I'm saying this does happen. And it happens in relationships

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