Welcome to Love and Abuse, the show about navigating the difficult relationship, from simple disagreements to emotionally abusive behaviors.

You deserve respect and 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 Kolianni.

Thanks for tuning in.

I want to talk about the guilt you might feel leaving an emotionally abusive relationship when you've actually done nothing wrong.

You've tried to fix it.

You've tried to work on yourself, thinking that you were the problem.

You've tried to accommodate.

You've tried to make things right.

You're just trying to heal the relationship, and nothing ever works.

There's a point where you have to probably leave the relationship because you're trying everything, and they're not changing.

That's how it works sometimes, right?

You are doing everything you can to make things work.

You are accommodating.

You are changing.

Often, this is what happens.

The try to go in the direction that they believe the other person wants them to go.

There's a lot of upheaval in the victim's life, while the abusive person is not really doing anything, and always pointing the finger back at the victim of their behavior, saying, you need to do this.

You need to change.

You're the problem.

You try, and you keep trying, and nothing ever works.

You eventually might have to leave.

You might eventually have to disconnect from that person.

I received a message recently that somebody said they're having trouble forgiving themselves for choosing themselves over the other person.

Before they said that, that was the last line of their message.

How do I forgive myself for choosing myself over them?

Before that, they said guilt and shame were the tools that the other person used to control.

Praise and affection were used when they did the things that the other person wanted them to do.

When things were going great, they got praise and affection.

Things were going badly, according to the other person, they used guilt and shame.

Then they go on to say, now I still feel a lot of guilt and shame around how I ended the relationship.

Not only was this person conditioned to always feel guilt and shame in order to be under somebody else's control, the person who controls wants you to feel guilt and shame.

In many difficult relationships that we're talking about here, they want you to feel guilty.

They want you to feel ashamed, because good people don't want to think that other people see them as bad.

Good people don't want to show up as a bad person or a harmful person or someone that is ruining somebody else's life or day or whatever.

When you're a good person, when you're kind and caring and generous and supportive, and someone makes you feel guilty, you immediately jump into, uh-oh, what did I do mode?

Uh-oh, what can I do to fix this mode?

I don't want them to feel bad.

It must be something I've done, or it must be something I'm not doing right or not doing enough of, so how can I fix that?

That is the flaw in your amazing personality.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great flaw to have, but it's also something that other people can exploit.

People can exploit your kindness, your caring, your supportive and loving nature by making you feel what you don't want to feel and what you don't believe about yourself as being a bad person.

If they can make you believe that you're a bad person or you've done something wrong, what's your immediate reaction?

Your immediate reaction is to try to make it right.

Your or try to show them that, no, it's not what you think.

That's not what I meant.

I don't want you to feel bad, I want you to feel good.

This is the victim of abusive behavior talking.

I don't want you to feel bad, I want you to feel good, so what can I do to make that happen?

I didn't mean to hurt you.

I didn't mean to make you feel bad, so what can I do differently?

And so the person who is victim to abusive behaviors wants to fix things and also has a higher perception of themselves, meaning they just want to do the right thing.

They want to show up as a loving, caring, generous, supportive person, and so when somebody else convinces them that they aren't or that they've done behavior that doesn't align with that, that's when the deprogramming of self-esteem and self-worth starts to occur.

That's when you start to feel like maybe there's something wrong with you.

And if you believe there's something wrong with you, you're going to do everything you can to make it right or show them that you're really trying to make it right.

And because you're so focused on yourself, now that they have put the spotlight back on you and turned the tables back onto you and made you the problem, you're going to spend most of your time trying to heal yourself and show up as the best version of yourself.

And that's what they want.

They want you to focus on yourself because if you're focused on yourself, you're not focused on their bad behaviors.

And as long as you're not focused on them and you're focused on yourself, they never have to be accountable or responsible for their behaviors.

So you are now in the position of spending all this time on yourself and also giving them more of who you are deep down inside.

And it fulfills a dysfunction in them.

The toxic behaviors usually cover many dysfunctions like insecurities inside of them.

And as long as you're doing that and toxic behavior, they feel guilty because they don't want to be that person.

So there's a little bit of belief or a lot of belief about yourself that can occur when somebody points the finger at you and says, you did this wrong.

You did this harmful behavior.

You should feel bad for doing this to me or doing this to our kids.

Just being bad.

You should feel bad for being bad.

And because you know you're a good person, deep down inside you do.

When you know you're a good person and somebody does that or says that about you and points the finger at you, you're going to want to try to work on that.

Work on it in yourself.

That's when you start to focus on yourself.

But this is the programming.

This is the deprogramming of your self-worth and self-esteem and the reprogramming that occurs, the conditioning that occurs in every typical abusive relationship.

And you need to be aware of that because you slowly disintegrate from the inside out, becoming a shell of your former self eventually.

That's almost every abuse victim's comment to me.

I am now a shell of my former self because who I was slowly decreased over the months and years because I was always trying to be better.

I was always trying to heal technically what didn't need healing, but you were trying to heal something in yourself because somebody pointed out that you needed healing of some sort.

They may not have used those words, but they're pointing the finger at you.

And because you are very likely a person of integrity who wants everyone to feel good and feel loved, you don't want that to be you.

You don't want to show up as that person who might be doing harmful or hurtful behavior.

So again, take your focus off of them and put it on yourself.

And that's where the focus stays for most of the relationship, aside from walking on eggshells, trying to figure out what the best next thing to say or best course of action is so that you don't cause any problems.

Because the problems start when they see something about you that they don't like, or they hear something that you say that they don't like, and then you're going right back into that cycle we talked about.

You are trying to accommodate and appease and generally heal yourself or trying to heal things that don't really need healing.

It's conditioning.

It's changing who you are.

So when you're in a relationship where somebody is always trying to change who you are, it usually happens bit by bit, but eventually you do become less and less of who you really are.

That loving, kind, caring person is still in there, but the self-worth and the self-esteem, any love you have for yourself starts to degrade and disintegrate.

That's so dangerous.

That's so dangerous for that to happen.

Because if you don't have self-love, it's hard to love other people.

You start to become depressed.

You start to lose your passion, your zest for life that gets drawn and pulled out of you.

You know, I don't have to say this to everyone.

There's a lot of people listening right now that say, yes, I know this.

I know this.

And I'm not necessarily drilling into that particular topic today because I want to very important.

I talk about all kinds of things on this show.

Listen to other episodes and my other podcast, The Overwhelmed Brain.

If you go to the overwhelmedbrain.com, I do have episodes on rebuilding your self-worth and your self-esteem and rebuilding confidence and healing what has been taken from you.

Because that's what happens.

They want to take these very wonderful things about you and squash them so that you have to rely on them for your worth, for your value, for your lovability.

That's where abusive people want you to be.

They want you to feel like the only way to feel love and feel important is to seek that from them.

If you're from them, then no matter what they do, you'll want to come back.

That's not true for everyone.

That's an exaggeration a little bit, but the trauma bond starts and you start to rely on them for your worth, for your lovability, because you don't feel like you're lovable unless you are getting it from them.

And you have a huge reliance on them.

It becomes a very dysfunctional attachment.

That's the trauma bond, or at least part of it.

And I talked about that in a very recent episode, if you're listening to my episodes in order.

And it's an important episode because in a trauma bond, this is what happens.

This is what this person's saying.

How can I forgive myself for choosing myself over them?

That was their question.

And this isn't necessarily a properly worded question.

And let me just rephrase or reword the question that should be asked is, how can I not feel guilty for choosing to protect myself in a dangerous situation?

Ask that question of yourself.

How can I not feel guilty?

Or how can I feel better, if you want to turn things around here, how can I feel better about protecting myself in a dangerous situation?

It changes things a little bit because if you're asking the question, how can I forgive myself for choosing myself over them?

It sounds like you are selfish.

It sounds like you did something wrong.

It just sounds like you don't care about them and you feel guilty for not caring about them.

So when you ask a question like that, you are actually taking a route of self-sabotage.

You are almost painting the picture that you're the bad guy.

And we have to be very careful about painting that kind of picture.

And it does come out in our words.

In your words, you say, my question is, or my question now is, how can I forgive myself for choosing myself over them?

The intent, I know why you're asking this.

The intent is that you should choose yourself over someone who hurts you because it is the empowering, self-loving thing to do.

I believe that is your intent for this question.

And of course, that makes perfect sense.

Yes, you should choose yourself when you are with somebody who is emotionally abusive toward you.

And so the intent of the question is good.

It is empowering.

It is how you get out of a difficult or dangerous situation.

But listen to the words.

And I'm only repeating them, not because I'm pointing out all the wrong things about the question.

I'm pointing out how conditioned we can become to ask a question like this and word it in such a way that makes us still sound bad and wrong.

So I don't want you to sound bad and wrong.

I want you to rephrase the question, but listen to the original question.

How can I forgive myself, implying that you did something wrong, for choosing myself over them?

Again, implying that you did something wrong.

So I want you to be aware of the types of questions and thoughts and reflections that you have when you are making choices to protect yourself and to love yourself and others.

When you make decisions that cause you to go into that old conditioned state of guilt or shame, and you feel like you are doing something wrong.

Because when you word things in such a way where you feel like you have to forgive yourself, then what you're doing is putting you where they put you.

And again, I'm not trying to make this sound like you did anything wrong.

I just believe that you became accustomed to talking this way and thinking this way, because that's how the other person has conditioned and programmed you.

Because if you're in that state of how can I forgive myself, then you're going to try to fix yourself.

At least in the sense that you believe you did something wrong.

And maybe it's not about fixing, but it's about how do I get past this?

Because I know I did the thing, but I feel like I hurt that person, which is also part of this person's intent.

The person's intent is I know I have to do this for myself, but it also feels wrong or bad or hurtful because I did it to the other person.

So rewording this will help take you out of self blame mode and put you in a state of more empowered.

It'll be a more forward progress, more forward momentum for you instead of staying stuck.

Because this is a stuck question.

This is an I'm stuck and I don't think I could ever get past what I did or what I said kind of question.

And when we pose questions like this, when we pose questions like this to someone like me or a therapist or whatever, then what we end up doing is putting ourselves in a place that feels like we have no way out.

We're putting ourselves in sort of an emotional bind.

We are stuck or bound to this place.

And it's going to be hard to get out of this place, possibly because of how we worded our dilemma.

And in this case, how can I forgive myself for choosing myself?

Sounds like we've worded it in a way that we can't get out of that dilemma.

Because we are not a person who is selfishly choosing ourselves and selfishly hurting the other person by taking a stand, by honoring ourselves, by protecting ourselves so that we are taking ourselves out of harm's way.

When you take yourself out of harm's way, that is a very loving thing to do.

And it's also, and this is the hard part for some people to get, it's also loving for the other person.

It's loving the other person enough to take yourself away from their inability to control themselves from hurting you.

It's a loving thing to do for someone else to take the target of their behavior away from them.

It's loving because people who love you want you to feel safe, want you to okay and protected.

And so remember that if this person truly had your best interest in mind, then they would want you to do this.

They may not say they want you to do this, they may not like it at all, but it is a loving thing to do to take away the target of their bad behaviors.

Again, because someone who loves you doesn't want you to be a target.

And yes, there's an implied comment in here, which is, well, that means they don't love me.

And that's not necessarily what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is that some people think that love comes in the form of control and keeping their power over you.

And when somebody has that thought process going on and those old coping mechanisms going on, that that's how they deal with challenges and they don't agree with what you do or say, or they're trying to control what you do or say, then what they're dealing with is something they need to heal in themselves.

And it's hard for them to heal if the target of their bad behavior is in the picture.

This doesn't make you the problem.

This doesn't make you the cause.

It just makes them unable to break their own cycle.

And this is why in my Healed Being program, over 99% of the people who join, they join because the other person they were with finally had enough.

They finally reached their threshold.

And the people that the transformations I've seen in the people who have joined are phenomenal.

They finally realize just how important it was for the other person to protect themselves, to leave, or at least to heal.

And they finally realize that they've had enough and this better stop or else.

They've reached their threshold, their breaking point, where they said, that's enough.

I'm not going to take anymore.

And you need to heal.

You need to fix yourself or else that, you know, it came to some sort of ultimatum like that.

You need to work on that or I'm leaving.

And that's why I say protecting yourself is a loving thing to do for you and them.

Because as soon as they realize that there is no target, there's nobody to point their inability to cope, their inability to act and love in a healthy way, then they will have no choice but to reflect on their own behaviors.

I mean, they will have a choice, but they will usually take that time to reflect on their own I mean, this is the, again, 99% of the people that go through this, or at least in my program, they will take the time to finally reflect on their own behaviors and realize that they are actually hurting someone that they do love.

Most people that joined my program, they love the person they are hurting, even though that sounds insane.

But a lot of abusive people love the person they're hurting, but they love them in an unhealthy way.

And it's not truly love.

It's a lot of insecurity.

And that insecurity becomes a part of the dysfunctional cycle that once they fulfill their insecurities, or at least replace their insecurities with their own form of security, their own form of trying to stay out of fear and stay out of getting what they don't want, because they believe their behaviors are getting what they want, even though their behaviors are also pushing away the person they want.

And so what they end up doing is acting emotionally abusive ways.

I mean, this is most people, not all people.

Some people are abusive because they're abusive and that's how, that's who they are and they'll never change.

But everyone that's joined my program has wanted to change.

And sometimes the relationship can be saved and sometimes it can't because the other person's been pushed too far.

But the loving thing to do for yourself and for someone else, the person who is hurting you, is to protect yourself, put yourself in a more empowered space and show them that you will not tolerate anyone hurting you, even them.

And that is not selfish.

That is self-loving.

And that is not an intention to hurt them or make them feel bad.

It's an opportunity for them to reflect on their own behaviors and start to heal.

So taking care of yourself and protecting yourself from harm is exactly what everyone in the relationship wants, even when the other person is being harmful.

But in many cases, they don't even realize how much harm they're bringing.

And again, this is with certain people.

Certain people won't realize just how harmful they're being and some will.

And so coming back to this person's question, how can I forgive myself for choosing myself over them?

I completely understand why you would ask a question like that.

I completely understand that you don't want the other person to feel bad and you actually have compassion and you do love them in a healthy way and you do want them to feel good inside themselves and go on.

I mean, in many cases, I'm assuming this person does because you wouldn't feel guilt or shame or anything like that if you didn't care.

And so because you care, you ask this kind of question.

You don't want them to hurt and you don't want to be the kind of person that is seen as hurtful because you know yourself better than that.

And you don't want to think that you are capable of hurting someone like that.

And if you are, that gives you a low perspective of yourself, which we don't want to happen.

And that conditioning that happens over the months and years, we want to make sure that that doesn't change our perception of ourselves.

It always does.

I'm not going to lie.

It does.

But what we need to do is make sure that we still know who we are and who we were before any of this bad behavior started.

And so find a reframe for the question that doesn't make you the bad guy.

That doesn't make you wrong because you're not.

You're not wrong and you're not bad.

In fact, you've done the most courageous thing for love anyone could ever do.

You stood up and said, no more protecting yourself, which also gives them an opportunity to heal, which is a gift to them.

And they will probably feel pain.

They will probably feel fear.

That's not on you.

That's on them.

It's something that they will always feel until they heal that in themselves.

And it's not your job to heal that in themselves because if it was, you would have done it by now.

You can't do it.

They have to heal that.

They have to work on that.

They have to take action on themselves for themselves.

They can go to therapy.

They can join my healed being program, whatever it takes for them to start healing.

And when they start healing, they start showing up as a different person.

And the healthy love can start to show the way you love somebody in a healthy way is to accept them as they are.

And since they aren't accepting you as you are, they have an opportunity to do that.

Now that you're out of the picture, now that you're no longer the target.

And I know it makes it sound like you're enabling the behavior and you're not, that's not what I'm saying at all.

I'm saying that because you're there, you become a target.

And because you become a target, you have to protect yourself.

Do that self-loving thing by protecting yourself.

So it's not about how you can forgive yourself because you did nothing wrong.

And it's not about choosing yourself.

It's about protecting yourself and people who love you, want you to protect yourself.

So you are doing the very thing that they want you to do.

Even though in most cases abusers, abusive people, some of them don't realize the extent of the damage they're doing and some of them actually love you a lot, so much that they are holding on to you and controlling you so they never lose you, which is a very, very unhealthy, toxic thing to do, a very abusive thing to do in the behaviors that come out.

And what I'm saying is that when you protect yourself at the deepest level, that's what they want you to do as well, even though they don't say it or show it.

The ones who don't know the damage they're doing themselves want you to feel safe, want to know that you are safe and would be terribly upset if you were hurt, even though they're hurting you.

And I know there are people listening right now saying that's not true.

They know they're hurting me and they know what they're doing and some of them do absolutely.

And some of them do and believe they need to and they should.

I mean, I'm not saying they should.

They believe they should because that's how they were taught how to care about someone else is by controlling them, which is all selfish.

It's all abusive in the sense that when you don't allow someone else to be themselves, to make their own decisions for themselves or at least support the decisions they make for themselves and support what makes them happy and you want to control them and have power over them, then that kind of behavior is so damaging and some don't even realize they're doing it.

And it's very complex and I can understand how anyone listening to this might say, well, they're abusive.

You got to leave them, period.

I get it.

I won't disagree with you.

There are people that you should leave and then when you do, they get an opportunity to reflect and a choice to heal that they should have taken while in the relationship.

I agree.

But some don't.

Some don't believe it's real until you leave or at least threaten to leave or at least say, I've had enough.

You're going to stop this or else.

And of course, like I say in every episode, always pick your battles wisely.

If they're dangerous, you don't want to get into a conversation like that because it might turn into something worse.

So coming back to the person who wrote, thank you so much for sharing this.

I'm so sorry about what you went through.

Realize that you were conditioned and programmed into feeling guilt and shame, even up to the point where the relationship is over and you did all the right things.

You took all the right steps and you are still feeling the effects of the relationship.

You're still feeling the residual toxicity, the residual abuse because your brain is still thinking in the way they want you to think.

And to anyone that might be dealing with any type of guilt or shame, there's a couple of things I want to say.

I do have an episode called Six Reasons You May Feel Guilty for Leaving the Emotionally Abusive Relationship.

It's over at loveandabuse.com.

You can look that up in the podcast page.

And then the second thing I want to say is to remember that the aftermath of a breakup or a divorce from an abusive person, again, gives them the opportunity to reflect and choose to heal.

And what you're going to find out is if they are going to change or not.

And this is a very important part of this whole thing or a very important part of the process of what happens in the aftermath is that you either get to see them change or maybe you're not talking to them anymore and you may not see this.

But typically if you have any type of communication with them afterward, they're either going to be the same or worse.

That's one side.

Or they're going to have these reflections, which is the other side, and choosing to heal because they finally are trying on empathy and realizing just how hurtful they've been.

Which can cause them to start healing, which will then show you that that is who they are underneath and they're finally, what I like to call snapping out of their trance, their emotionally abusive trance.

So they could go that way or they could go the other way.

The other way is they stay the abuser or worse.

And either way is good information.

Either way is good data for you.

And it wouldn't have happened had you not protected yourself, taken a stand for yourself, honored yourself.

It wouldn't have happened because all you would have seen if you never left, all you would have seen is more of the same.

And so in order to see what would really happen, who they really are underneath, what they are really capable of, sometimes you just have to take that courageous leap away from them.

And it is scary because if this is all you know for a long time, this is all you've known, that's a scary step to take, which is why it's a very courageous thing to do.

And a very, again, a loving thing to do.

It's a very loving thing to do for yourself, for them, because you're giving them the chance they may not have taken ever while you were together.

Unfortunately, that's most of the time how it happens.

That's when they finally learn.

That's when they finally reflect.

And that's a gift.

I'll always see it as a gift.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for listening today.

Share this with someone who might benefit.

Love and Abuse is the official podcast of The Mean Workbook, an assessment and healing guide for difficult relationships.

The workbook contains a 200 point assessment to tell you exactly what's causing you to leave so many interactions feeling bad.

Gain clarity on your relationship today.

Visit loveandabuse.com for more information.

And if you've discovered that you are doing hurtful behaviors to someone that you care about and you want to change that about yourself, sign up for the only program that walks you through the entire process of healing from being emotionally abusive.

It has changed thousands of lives and relationships and it can change yours too.

It's called Healed Being and it's over at healedbeing.com.

And you can start with some free lessons right away and you'll figure out if it's right for you or not, because the lessons will either resonate with you or not.

That's over at healedbeing.com.

If you're looking for a safer way to listen to this show where all the titles to the episodes are changed, click on the safe listening button on the podcast page over at loveandabuse.com.

This show exists to remind you that you are not alone and you're not going crazy.

You are worthy of respect, kindness, and love, and you deserve to be accepted exactly as you are.

Stay strong.

We'll talk again soon.