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.

Thank you. power and your sanity. I'm your host, Paul Koliani. Welcome to another episode of love and abuse. I just want to let you know that all

information on this show is meant for educational purposes only.

Always seek a professional for your mental health and well-being.

And I'm just going to dedicate this episode to an email that I received with the subject line that says,

All I have to say is, thank you.

So I'm going to read this to you.

It says, Dear Paul, in the past six to eight months, I really started to feel and notice that I am in a verbally and emotionally abusive marriage.

Through these realizations and with the help for my therapist, my support group, like

family and friends, it led me to self-help books, research, and your podcast.

When I came across love and abuse, I was first looking for a specific

topic about manipulation through threats, such as suicide, which my husband does to me often.

I then became a regular listener. Yes, I do have an episode. If you have to deal with this with

anyone in your life, when the person threatens threatens suicide if you leave, if you don't

do what they say, that is emotional abuse and it does need to be addressed. And I have very specific

pointers in that episode. So you can go to love and abuse.com and look for, I mean, just look for

the word suicide. You'll find the episode I'm talking about.

So she goes on to say, I became a regular listener and I felt like you were speaking directly to me.

Your podcast has helped me realize myself worth and gave me the empowerment to finally tell my abuser, I want a divorce. I finally mustered up the courage and told him I want to move on and I'm ready

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