Maybe I'm Not the Problem: Understanding Emotional Abuse with Helen Villiers and Katie McKenna

I Have ADHD Podcast

Kristen Carder

Self-improvement, Health & Fitness, Education, Mental Health

4.8 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 28 February 2023

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this special episode, I’ve invited emotional abuse and relationship experts, Katie McKenna and Helen Villiers, to share their perspective on toxic relationships and how they affect ADHDers. You may know these incredible women from their podcast In Sight: Exposing Narcissism.

With Helen being a fellow ADHDer and Katie deserving a gold medal for supporting neurodivergence, I’m in great company during this conversation as we learn definitions for emotional abuse, narcissism, gaslighting and even mysophonia.

Many of us adults with ADHD were raised with neurotypical or even narcissistic parents who did not understand and accept us for our neurodivergence. As a result, we may be more susceptible to similarly toxic and abusive relationships with people who deny our feelings and needs.

Please give this episode a listen and share with friends and family as you never know who may be suffering in an abusive relationship. I encourage my listeners to contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800.799.SAFE (7233) if you feel that you are in danger and need help.

I invite you to join my group coaching program FOCUSED, where adults like you receive regular coaching calls and have a supportive community with all the tools needed to thrive with ADHD.

Hang out with me on Instagram HERE.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the I Have ADHD podcast, where it's all about education, encouragement, and coaching for adults with ADHD.
0:14.0	I'm your host, Kristen Carter, and I have ADHD.
0:18.0	Let's chat about the frustrations, humor, and challenges of adulting relationships, working, and achieving with this neurodevelopmental disorder.
0:27.0	I'll help you understand your unique brain, unlock your potential, and move from point A to point B.
0:34.0	Hey, what's up? This is Kristen Carter, and you're listening to the I Have ADHD podcast episode number 201.
0:44.0	I am medicated, I am caffeinated, and I am ready to roll.
0:49.0	Welcome to the show. Welcome to the show.
0:53.0	Thank you so much for pressing play on this episode today. It truly has the potential to change your life.
1:00.0	Today I have on not one, but two, distinguished psychotherapists, Katie McKenna and Helen Villers, here to discuss emotional abuse.
1:10.0	And so the first thing that I need to do is let you know that this will be a heavy episode, and I truly encourage you to take care of yourself, my friend.
1:19.0	Major content warning here, but please know that everything discussed is for your benefit, my ADHD listener.
1:28.0	It's for you to be able to identify toxic relationships and patterns in relationships in your life, and perhaps wake up to the fact that you might not be the problem.
1:42.0	Now, that's the tendency that we have as adults with ADHD. It's to believe that we are always the problem.
1:49.0	And as we begin to learn about ADHD and make peace with it and ourselves, we may start to realize, hmm, maybe I'm not the problem.
2:00.0	The healthier I personally become, the more I realize how toxic the relationships around me were.
2:07.0	And please understand that I had so many unhealthy relationships that I was in, literally in every single area of my life.
2:15.0	And once I started to become more aware of what it means to be healthy, and I started to get healthy myself, I began to identify toxic and even abusive patterns in several of the relationships that I have.
2:29.0	Now, of course, the definition of a toxic relationship is subjective, but Helen and Katie are experts in this area, and they are here to help us have a deeper understanding of abuse, and what to look out for in our relationships.
2:43.0	I truly cannot wait for you to hear from them, so let me tell you a little bit about each of them.
2:50.0	After qualifying as a psychotherapist, Helen Billers completed a master's dissertation in working therapeutically with adult children of narcissistic parents.
3:00.0	Her client base is largely adult children of narcissistic parents or survivors of narcissistic partnerships.
3:07.0	Helen is unique in the field because there is very little academic research in this area, and books thus far are usually based on anecdotal or personal experience.
	...

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