 Hey everybody, I am so excited for today's show. This is Paul Colliani who I'll introduce formally in just a minute. And this is hilarious because yesterday I was in bed with 102 fever. Paul doesn't even know this. I was sicker than I've been in so long. But you guys know me. I mean, my job is to hack health and wellness and illness. And I think I hacked it because I feel back to 100% today. And hopefully I don't look too post illness. But I'm so happy to be there. I just say that because I literally, I have you guys have seen me every week come on here with different incredible guests. But today is really special. And Paul is someone who didn't even know it, but he helped me in a really difficult time. And I want to share just a little bit of that story. And then we'll get to hearing him and hearing from him on the tips and things that he has on toxic relationships, how to identify if you're in one and how to have healthy boundaries. I found that so many men and women and especially professional women in my sphere, like me, they have a profession, they have things together in many realms of their life. But then they find in relationships, they are maybe choosing poorly choosing or having some old trauma patterns or messages that allow them to be in a space that's really, really unhealthy. So this is the Dr. Jill live part of me that you may or may not have ever heard, but I'm going to share very intimately and authentically with you today on some of those fronts. So just a little background, you can get all of my videos on YouTube on my channel, Jill Carnahan, and you can watch these on Facebook, they'll be recorded. So feel free to check back anytime. If you have anything you want to look up on the website, it's just Jill Carnahan.com. So let me introduce my guest and then we'll get to talking. So Paul is a behavioral and relationship coach and host to podcast, the overwhelmed brain and love and abuse. And those are the two where I found him and found, like I said, I'll share just a little bit of my journey. He's been teaching emotional intelligence and critical decision making for the past 10 years. And as the creator of several books and programs for those looking to overcome difficulties in their lives and relationships, he resides in Atlanta, Georgia with his girlfriend, Asha. So Paul, I am just so delighted to have you on. And I can get to my bit of a story in a minute, but I'd love to start with you and tell me how did you get into this work? This, it's kind of a calling if it's like anything like my life, we don't choose really necessarily, but tell me tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into this. It's great to be here. Thank you, Dr. Joe. And I'm so glad that you are well now. And I think your past of recovering from all the stuff that you went through, I read, I read your about page and changing your diet and changing your habits and changing and exercising and just being healthy allows you to bounce back so quickly from 102 fever. So I'm so glad that you bounce back. Thank you for the introduction. I got started probably about 15 years ago studying hypnosis and brain sciences and something called neuro linguistic programming, which half the world knows. And the other half love NLP. And so I started researching all that and it all stemmed from a girlfriend who told me you should be a hypnotist. So one day I read about all that stuff and I studied for years and years and I finally decided to get certified in NLP and hypnosis and becoming a coach. And that was like, it was just over 10 years ago. And I, you know, I still needed to make money. I wasn't doing coaching. So I was in technology sector for a long time. And I was working in regular corporate job type jobs. And I felt like, or I could tell that people kept asking me questions. And I could help them when they'd asked me these questions. And I would always be the guy that stayed after five and talked to somebody for the next two hours while we went through some personal challenges of theirs. And I decided, you know, this is something that I seemed to be able to help people through. So from that point on, I started transitioning from my regular nine to five job into more coaching and really picking things up and really studying harder and harder to get to that point where I felt like I could be helpful. I mean, there's a whole background I could probably get into. I started hypnosis practice and I failed at that because I was so self conscious and I moved past that and I moved through and I felt when I finally got to that point where I can feel I can help others. That's why I transitioned. I love it. And you're helping so many people with your podcast. Like I said, we're going to link up to those and make sure that I encourage you guys to listen and check those out because they were a game changer for me, Paul. And I suspect, like I said, I don't know your personality type or any of that, but I suspect you're actually more of an introvert that's really, really intuitive and perceptive and sensitive like I am. And we go out in the world because that's where we actually can teach and train and help people. But it's funny because those gifts are actually they're more of a like behind the scenes. We're just very usually perceptive about the environment and observational. Would you say that's true about you? I could call myself a super introvert. At the same time, I'm comfortable being an extrovert and the life of the party, not really life of party, but I like being the life of the party and like I'm not usually the life of the party. But I like getting the attention when people laugh and things like that. But I really feel so comfortable being introverted. I don't know if I'm even allowed to call myself sensitive or anything like that. But I do feel like this is how I look at introversion. When you're introvert, when you're ready to recharge, you just need to unplug from everyone and everything. I like to sit in nature. I like to be in nature. I like to play my guitar because you probably see it behind me maybe. And when I'm in that space, I feel like I'm recharging. So and I love the grounding feeling of taking my introverted nature wherever I want and being happy wherever I am. Happy in general, but no, not all the time. But when I need to recharge and unplug and feel better, that's what I like to do is go into that introverted or grounded space. I love that. And I get it because it's funny. For years, I thought I was an introvert. I was going to be a librarian before I was going to be positioned because I love books. But then I realized like this is actually you hit the nail on the head. It's actually more of a highly sensitive trait. It's 10% of the population. And those of us who are in that realm, we just really observe details and we see patterns and people and you know, and all these different things that we do. And then we make sense of it and teach other people. And I used to be what I thought was an introvert. I'm kind of like you, I can be on a stage. I can be in front of people. I love it. It's just that recharging and it's that perceptive ability that I know that you have because you wouldn't be doing what you do without that ability to really see the nuances of human behavior and interactions. It's interesting that you say that if I don't, if you don't mind me interrupting because I think I learned how to be more perceptive by being an introvert. I think I learned how to observe people because and maybe this works. I haven't even thought about this. I believe that the more you go through not so much trauma, but maybe trauma when you're a child, you seem to bring yourself back into yourself. So you pull yourself in and maybe the less you go through, you're not so introverted. This is just a total hypothesis right now. But when you're always inside, then you're observing from that inside place. And so I grew up asking myself, what would I do in that situation? I wonder what they're thinking. I wonder what they think of me, all these questions that keep coming up. And I think that has helped me become more perceptive. And a lot of people that had gone through any type of dysfunctional upbringing or an upbringing where they just wanted to be left alone because there's so many people bothering them or hurting them even. And so I think that helps people gain intuition and become more sensitive to the environment and people around them. I could not agree more because I've seen that pattern of like, like say you had an abusive stepfather and every single time he comes in the door, you're cringing because you have to judge by his eye contact, no eye contact, his mood, his actions, the littlest nuances. You have to judge if it's safe or not. And when it regards your own safety, you're going to become really observant to those clues of human behavior and action and inflection of tone and things because that's going to determine. And when you're young and you have to do that, you become really, really good at watching people and observing behaviors and reading them, right? You just described my childhood. I mean, exactly the same. The abuse of alcoholic stepfather, I could not. I did not know that, Paul. I didn't mean to look on the side at all. That's okay. I mean, it's the perfect segue into my childhood. No, but that's exactly what happened. I did not want to see him. I hoped he never came into my room. I could hear him yelling and screaming at my mom. And I always tell my past with an understanding that a lot of other people's past are a lot worse. I never received any physical abuse, but the fear was always there. And the fear is real. And you're going through it. And yes, you're right. You just have all these thoughts about, let's hope this doesn't happen. I've learned that being alone is a very safe place. Yes. And so that's probably where it came from. Well, thanks for sharing that. Because again, as you who are listening, if you get on here, Paul's podcasted, like I did, it's so powerful because you are incredibly perceptive about human behavior and actually bringing that to an understanding. I have studied for my whole entire life, human behavior, like my greatest goal, I love the functional medicine piece. But what I love even more is understanding why people do what they do, how to motivate people to change behaviors, how to be in a relationship that's super healthy. And I'll tell you, we'll go to my story just for a moment. And then I want to hear your comments. I want to talk about abuse and all that. So let's see where to start. Well, first thing is I'm working on a book right now. If I'd write it in like two sentences, it's kind of like, okay, I think I want to read that book. Because when I was 40, my ex-husband came home around my 40th birthday and said, I don't love you anymore. I want to be with another woman. Total shock and blew up my happy bubble. No inclination prior to that of any problem. And that was the beautiful thing about it was I was sleepwalking in those first, it was almost two decades of marriage and didn't really understand who I was or what I was in relation to this relationship. And so it was the best thing that ever happened to me because I was forced to all of a sudden find my own identity, say what happened here and not point fingers because I could do that. But to say what part of me either showed up, didn't show up, how was I in this relationship, what happened, right? And so I did the deep, deep, deep work around that. But shortly after the, during the separation right before the divorce, I met a man and I was so naive, like I met my ex-husband at 19, married at 21. So that's all I had known. And I'm like a happy bubble kind of person who's very naive in that sense. And this was a manipulator abuser. He was a later on found bipolar and borderline. Very, of course, loving and, you know, bringing those things and it reflected on part of me that felt like I wasn't worthy of love and not enough and all those things because I just got out of what I, you know, who am I and why did this person leave me and am I not lovable. And the bottom line is after it became physically abusive, I filed a restraining order, which in and of itself was shocking and very different for me to set a boundary. And within two days of that restraining order, he committed suicide. So yeah, who know me, haven't heard this part of me yet either. And that would, if that wouldn't have been enough, that would have been a great story. The next six months I got involved with an ex felon alcoholic. And he became very emotionally abusive. And that's when I found some of your information. And it was so profound. I remember trying to make a decision. And the thing that I want you to talk to the listeners about is the confusion that manifests in these relationships. Because here I am. And this is why I wanted to talk about this. I have a successful practice. I have a, you know, great presence on the internet. I love to teach and love to, and I think I bring joy and happiness. And I have great friendships. Like my life is so beautiful. And yet with the past, with the men that I chose to be in relationship with, it was so freaking dysfunctional. And so you would think like looking at me, Oh, Jill has it all together. She has it, but I didn't. And I want today to speak to those of you women out there that might have a lot of areas of your life together. But in this area, there's still some childhood wounding around your value, your self worth, your boundaries that allows you to be in stuff that's so dysfunctional. And I remember driving on the road after a dental appointment, and I was so overwhelmed. I had to make a decision that I knew would really, I had basically broken up with this last toxic relationship, but there was still that stickiness. And we can talk about that. And it was all manipulation. I didn't understand that. I didn't know why did I feel so bad about myself, which you talk about. Why did I feel so entangled? Like, why couldn't I get out of this? Like I knew in my head, I had written pages and pages and pages, I'd done workshops, I'd understood at an analytical level why this was bad for me. But on the emotional heart level, there was this stickiness and it was that emotional abuse component. And I'm driving down the road in like almost in tears, like I need to make a decision. What is wrong with me? And I just am like, maybe there's some podcast that can help me. And I'm flipping through and there's millions of podcasts out there. I don't know how it happened, except by divine intervention. I see the overwhelmed brain. I thought, well, that's very appropriate because I'm super analytical. So I'm always in my head. Like I can figure anything out in my head. I'm an engineer background. I do, you know, medical mysteries for a living. I love to figure things out. But in this relational level, I could cry. I couldn't figure it out. I was stuck. And I was completely stuck because I'm what is wrong? And why can I know this is not good for me and yet be so stuck? And I listened to I don't know what episode it was, but I was glued and mesmerized because I felt like you were talking to me about and the two things I remember from that podcast were choose empowerment over fear or choose empowerment. Oh, yeah, I think it was empowerment over fear. I think that might have been the title of the podcast. And you were talking about how any choice it might be really difficult in that time. But if you choose empowerment over fear, even the person that you're setting a boundary with, it's going to be better for both of you in the ends, right? And the other thing that I heard from someone else was always choose expansion over contraction. So at the heart level, I knew, okay, that's easy. I know my choice. And I made a choice after that that was totally blew apart that toxic relationship. And it was the best thing I ever did. But that was from literally from like everything changed after that. And then I went that this is you're going to love this. That weekend, I found your other podcast Love and Abuse. Oh, no, I think I spent like eight hours a day for three days listening to every episode. I was like, this is amazing. And I wrote notes and I got your workbook. Because for me to understand, I'm this kind conscientious trying to make I tried to make it right in to try to make it work. And then to realize, Oh, this is emotional abuse. I didn't understand that. So that's I want to frame that I'd love to let you comment on some of that. But thank you for this is why it's so important for me to share what you've done for me publicly because it was profound. Well, I'm so glad you shared that story because other people need to hear this, because they're in your shoes now or they were and they still don't understand it. You probably spent a long time looking for closure. Like, what did I do wrong? What could I have done better? What should I have done? You mentioned, I mean, everything you mentioned is very packed. We could just like no dearth of what to talk about. No, well, one of the things that really stood out was he was very loving. And you you went past it really quick. But there's an important part there. A lot of them are loving at first, very loving. It's called love bombing, gift bombing. They're just showering you with love. And they will feel like your soulmate. They will feel like this is the perfect person to me. I don't know if that you went through that. But I felt like I was seen for the first time. And like, I've been in places where I had to be like, Dr. Jill or on stage Jill or my hair was all and I felt like in that I could be myself so truly and be seen and be loved no matter what shape or state I was in. And that was really hard to understand that, you know. No, that's a great way to put it. I don't really think about it that way too often, but you're right. And it is it's almost like they're fully non judgmental and fully accepting. And you just feel like you could be your vulnerable self with them. And what that is is they're unlocking the secrets that you keep so they can use those against you. And you ask, you know, how how does somebody who is kind of people and I mean, you didn't say these words, but they're they're they're happy and they're kind and they're doing everything they can to be just go out there and be themselves. And suddenly they attract this. You didn't say it, but monster sometimes they could be a real monster. I think what ends up happening is that a lot of our compassion, our kindness, our caring, our supportive nature is used against us by people like that. It's just true. There's people out there in the world just like that. There are many ways to recognize them. One of them you've already mentioned, which is love bombing when everything is moving so quick, you feel so good with this person. It doesn't mean it's going to be a bad thing. It just means you've got to keep your radar on. You're going to go, Whoa, this is really moving fast. This is moving really fast. I love it. I hope it continues to move that fast. But you know what, I've got this little watchdog up here. I'm going to just keep that watchdog on guard all the time. Because at the first sign that something's weird, some sort of what my girlfriend calls a glitch at the first sign of a glitch, I need to ask myself questions about it instead of going into the benefit of the doubt mode. You might have done that like when things started happening. I'm just guessing at what your relationship was like. When things started happening, you might have thought, well, maybe he was having a bad day. Maybe there was something I said and I didn't come out right. Maybe I miscommunicate all these maybes. But let's step out of that and look at what exactly happened. Like I said, there's a million things to unpack about what you said, but I really do think it's important when things start moving fast and they feel really good. We have to keep our radar on and still enjoy it. You can do both. I did that for a year in this relationship I'm in now because I became so aware of my boundaries. I became so aware of what I wanted for myself in my life and what I will and won't accept just like the relationship boundaries that you're talking about. When you are aware of what you will accept and won't accept in your life, it's always good to always have that watchdog or radar or whatever you want to call it in the background running so that when things start happening and we can talk about those things, then we can start questioning what's really happening here. And this does involve like you were talking about maybe there was some naivete inside you where you felt, you tell me if you felt maybe a little gullible to this because you were just trusting. Oh, it's huge Paul. I'm the biggest like I could take a, well I did take a felon and find the good in their heart and then like make excuses because I'm like, oh well they had childhood trauma. They just need love. I'm totally that person but then again it got to be and like what you just said within eight weeks he proposed. I mean that should have been a red flag. Oh, okay. Right? And then later the love bombing I got one day to my office like 10 bouquets of flowers from Hawaii and I was like, oh this is amazing but my night I'm not quite so naïve anymore but at the time I was like, oh this is lovely if it's into Jill's Disneyland but that's the problem. Well, you know the people like that will discover a lot about you at the very beginning. They want to know all about you. Tell me everything and of course that feels wonderful. You want to talk about yourself because you feel like you're being accepted. You feel like you're being listened to and understood and it's so hard. Emotional abuse is so hard to define sometimes because it's a mixture of everything that you want and everything you hope is real and good with a little deception of manipulation or a lot of manipulation that has an agenda behind it. So I like to look at that, okay is it moving too fast? Okay if it's moving too fast we're falling in love really quick let's slow things down because what the emotionally abusive person a lot of them aren't going to like is the fact that they're not getting their way fast enough and if it's slowing down and you're saying no we're going to wait on this no we're not going to move in together yet this is what I want they're going to sense that confidence in you knowing what you want and it's going to be troublesome to them and then some behaviors will start to come out and oh you just you know you just don't really love me you say you love me but you you don't even want to move in together oh okay you're starting to make me feel bad you're starting to make me feel guilty and I can go down the laundry list of all the things that you'll feel but as soon as you start feeling bad in the relationship and they don't necessarily care that you're feeling bad and then I go one step further as soon as you start feeling bad about yourself in the relationship and they don't seem to care that you feel bad about yourself we have an issue we have a challenge that we need to talk about and get through. I loved how you said that over and over because that's the thing I wouldn't I would never have equated with emotional abuse but you brought it really simply and like I said I think I've heard every episode of that this is like a podcast but it was always clear like if you feel bad about yourself in a relationship and the other person doesn't care and maybe you can phrase it better but like that's the heart of emotional abuse it doesn't have to be specific and then the other thing you said that I found myself because I would kept pushing boundaries like I knew for probably nine months that I should be out of this so I kept pushing pushing pushing I would spend less time I would break up I would do all these things to give distance but I would still be in that cycle of feeling bad about myself and in that stickiness and again I'd love for you to kind of go over like if someone's listening like well how do I know if I'm in an emotionally abusive relationship what would you tell them? Well we start off there you know if you're starting to feel bad in the relationship I think that's something important to talk about like you know when we have a conversation honey I always feel like I don't know I just feel I'm worthless I feel like I'm worthless after we have these conversations I mean this is an honest vulnerable I mean now you're being honest and vulnerable when you say stuff like this which if you feel fear about being vulnerable with the person you're with there's a sign right there I mean you shouldn't have to have that fear the person that you're with the person you're sharing your life with or some time with should be the biggest person in the world that you can trust that should be the most trust and the most safe that you feel and so when that starts to disintegrate because you know it started off with trust and love and respecting you felt all of that stuff when that starts to disintegrate this is typically what happens is that you will start to feel like it's your fault because it was there before and so you start taking the blame you start taking responsibility for all the problems in the relationship you start feeling more and more guilty you start feeling just down and sad and down about yourself and you really feel like it's your fault the guilt is a big one when you start feeling guilty about things that are happening like you know I moved his or her food or I moved his or her beer or whatever and they got upset they got so upset they were so angry it's like whoa this really doesn't justify that behavior doesn't justify what just happened so you start seeing these things and you realize okay when these things happen they're all components of something bigger you know once we see behavior that we don't like that behavior is in there it is part of them we can't just throw it away and say well maybe they were having a bad day no no that's part of them so we have to understand that that's in there now when does it come out and what is it what is its purpose are they just upset and they go oh I hate when people move my beer that's different than saying I hate when you move my beer and do things that make me angry now they're making you feel bad instead of instead of like highlighting something that they're dealing with and they've always dealt with in their life no it's about making it about you so I really think it's important to learn to listen to find out if it's really about you personally yeah instead of something that they're dealing with because a lot of us have childhood trauma a lot of us have been through a lot of dysfunction and of course we're going to have our own sob stories our own victim stories and we'll bring them into the relationship and we want our partner to feel you know something for us oh my god you went through that I'm so sorry you went through that you know that's great we can connect and communicate but when we use that story as a way or as a means to make you feel bad about yourself or to have power over you and take your power away suddenly it's not what it really is supposed to be which is hey that was a really sad story I'm here if you need me oh thank you so much it's not bad at all it's more of hey you know what I'm the victim here this is the emotional abuser talking I'm the victim here so why are you doing this to me and they'll just turn it around so the biggest challenge with emotional abuse is that each behavior is a tiny component of something bigger which is why it's so hard to explain to friends and family that so and so did this and they're going to look at you and say well that doesn't sound so bad and you're going to say no it happens all the time well yeah but and then you'll have this conversation that won't go anywhere because they're not going to see it as abusive behavior but that I look at it as like a drip feed like they're constantly drip feeding you this bad behavior and this manipulation and this maybe the lies and the deception and it feels like that Chinese water torture it's just in your head constantly and you just can't stand it and you get to that erosion and it's also mixed with the loving kindness that can come too so it's very deceptive one thing I thought of as you were talking that was my biggest aha moment was I was always defending myself like always always defending myself especially we'd have any extended time which actually for a long time limited our time because it would be so exhausting it'd be like a two or three hour conversation where I might bring one little thing up that I wanted to talk about or get worked on you know through our relationship and then it would turn into an attack on me and because when I learned oh wait I don't have to defend myself that was the first part of my freedom because before that I was like oh someone's attacking my character my integrity I have to say that no I wouldn't mean to hurt you I didn't mean you know I like I wanted to defend not defend against anything evil just say no my intention wasn't to hurt you but then it'd go on for hours and again you know this so well when I got out of that relationship I had 10 times the energy back because it was so draining to have these three hour phone calls and then I was defending myself for three hours yeah I mean that I have you heard the episode called the turnaround game am I loving abuse I think so yeah I think that's exactly the whole episode I'm talking about that where all they do is no matter what you bring up hey you know when you said that you know you being the person receiving the emotional boost and when you said that it kind of felt disrespectful could you not say it so harshly next time I'm being disrespectful what about you when you did this and you caused this and and suddenly you're going because you're a nice person and you don't want to be seen as a bad person you're going to defend yourself you're going to say no no that's not what I meant at all I you know this is what I meant and they're going to keep you busy defending yourself and that takes sure that is a powerless position oh it was huge the moment I really and again that one's from probably that episode I was like oh wait and there's another book uh Edith Eger called the get she's a holocaust survivor I'll also talk a little bit about this such a great but both of those things it was like oh wait the moment I said I don't have to defend myself anymore and I would hear this and I literally might even say you know what I don't have to defend myself against that that's not true and it would like there's nowhere to go and it was amazing the power that I had when I stopped defending myself that's wonderful that that reminds me of a quick story of my girlfriend I mean even healthy relationships I believe I have a healthy relationship even healthy relationships have arguments you get mad at each other sometimes and it can be screaming that sometimes thankfully not a lot for me uh but there was one time when she said well you're just being stupid you're something something like an idiot or stupid and she was like serious and I just kind of chuckled and she said why are you laughing I just called you stupid I said well I guess I would be offended if I believed that and she laughed and then we just ended the conversation but that made me think that we if if you're offended if you're hurt then it's at some deep level you must believe some part of what they're saying about you and we often do that because we're with somebody that we think we can trust so we put all this trust in someone that turns out to be deceptive or manipulative or controlling and so when they say something we believe it and then we take it in and we think oh that is a part of me what oh I need to fix that I need to heal from that and so I like to I like to understand who I am at the deepest level if you can before you get into a relationship know yourself am I a nice person am I respectful am I kind am I honest do I have I have integrity and I know myself so well so when I get into a relationship and you can do this while you're in a relationship know yourself well because who were you before that relationship know yourself well enough so that when something comes your way and they say well you're just a liar you know I'm I'm not a liar I know myself well enough so I'm not going to have to I don't have to defend myself so I'm glad you brought up defending yourself because they they want to keep you busy doing something doing something that has no power defending yourself is doing something you have no power making you feel guilty making you feel bad all of this stuff is a low power place and as long as you're there they're on top it's sometimes called the power over model I have power over you therefore as long as you're in this space because it's you know then I'm then I'm ahead or I'm above you but if you rise above and say no I don't believe that I'm not going to take that behavior anymore I won't I won't accept that behavior anymore then they're going to get a little scared because now their method of control which is probably mostly survival mechanism for them is being taken away and they'll probably pull out some more bag of tricks to see how far they can push you and keep you down I love that and what I learned too is all of this it's for me it's always this journey of like what's my part in this because I can point fingers all day long and but I still have the power to change myself or to get out of the situation and so even if you're listening here there's so for me what it was you know they've said that all root of you know sadness or dysfunction comes with feeling unlovable unworthy or helpless and you've listed in your guide other things that indicate level count you you mentioned straight from your mean workbook which will be sure and let people have a link to that as well if they want to purchase it's very worth very worth it great resource but you talked about confidence stability security self-trust self-love self-compassion and decisiveness and I remember like this is funny story but it's a huge thing one of the game changers of getting out of that relationship was fixing my own garage like how silly is that but I had I felt like I'm I'm confident in you know treating patients and all that mechanical things no so to have you know someone in my life that could take care of the fixing the garage fixing with those kinds of mechanical things felt really good because in those ways I maybe felt a little helpless and then one one day I remember so specifically my garage door was broken and I figured out what to do I did it myself and it was so freaking empowering I'm like I freaking fix my own garage door but it was one of those things were like I didn't feel helpless and helpless was how he had kind of got a little bit of control over me because I felt like oh my gosh what am I gonna do if something breaks I can't fix it but that's true you just mentioned that part of the workbook where I talk about becoming self-reliant in all those areas of your life financially just I mean there's there's all kinds of areas in our lives that we typically have a dependency of someone or not typically but often have a dependency on someone else for and rightly so I mean when you get into a relationship and you get a house and you have kids and then wherever you go with it you're going to have to share responsibility so it makes sense to have these dependencies but the problem is when somebody becomes controlling and has power over you and now it's becoming a bad situation if you're not reliant enough on your own or can't figure out how to do it it's going to be very difficult which is why in the workbook and other places I talk about you need to build these levels of confidence and you mentioned one at the end decisiveness there's so many people that I talked to that that tell me that they just can't decide they can't they don't trust themselves they don't know what to do next and I have episodes in the overall brain on decision making definitely listen to those but when you get to the point where you just make a decision and just go for it whether you're going to fail or not at least you've made the decision at least you're taking a step forward if you fail you get back up you dust yourself off and say I'll never do that again and then you move to the next one and you just keep moving forward so I really like that you brought up those levels because though I think in the the book it shows like a graph where if if you're low in this if you're low in confidence then they're above you here and if you're low here and so getting this is all about self-help I mean or going to therapy or coaching whatever you do getting the help you need reading the resources watching the resources that you need to build yourself up I like to look at it as you want to bring the best healthiest version of you into a relationship so when the really if the relationship starts to go bad that you feel good enough in yourself to say whatever you need to say even at the risk of losing the relationship because it's that important to you to be in that space because they're not going to take your power away you already have it when you bring it in and I think a lot of people that may be listening or watching right now they're already in the relationship they already feel powerless they already feel like well what do I do now you just start you just start working on yourself if you are if you fear something then you move toward that and you start working on what you fear and figure out why you're afraid of it what's going to happen what's the worst case scenario there's all kinds of little processes I talk about like worst-case scenario how how much worse can it get than that how much worse can it get than that you try those on and then you realize oh I guess I could probably survive that hey I made it through and once you make it through your confidence goes up oh that's great yeah I had a love to talk about like just like you said it's a few specific so say we're talking to people who are in something like this and like well what do I do I know for me there was a point that was really clear where it was self-trust and self-love and how that played out is if I if I would have trusted myself from probably the very beginning of that relationship I knew intuitively there was something not right but I overrode that sense of trust because like oh that must be just you know me thinking the worst or that must be just oh my gosh that you know poor thing he had trauma if I would have trusted myself and trusted my intuition to know this was not right I would have been out of that a lot sooner so the self-trust and then like you said the self-love is and it's funny because I come from a background of like almost too much humility where it's so horrible to say oh my gosh I love myself so I swung the other way but then in that I lost the sense of like no I'm worthy of love and respect and kindness and I'm going to show that too so if there's no problem with believing that I'm worthy of that because I'm going to give it just in fact when I there was a little icon that I gravitated towards my own and it was I want to be the queen of grace and truth and I want to show up in the world with love and compassion and I want to give and receive the love that I want in my life so it's like this whole thing that I wrote out that really helped me to embody I want to show up in the world this way because that's what I want to receive but I'm going to give it just the same and that is all about self-love that's wonderful it's all self-nurturing behavior and I love that you've created a philosophy or a mantra or whatever you want to call that and it almost acts as your home base like if anything ever happens I'm going to write back to that and I'm going to say this and is this what I'm receiving in my life is this what I'm getting it reminds me of a question I ask people to ask their partners or their emotionally abusive person in their life which is when you when you think there's I mean well let me back up there's one thing that you said that has to do with when things start going bad maybe there's a way to address it when it comes up and I think this does lead to my question the question that I like to ask people is when some bad behavior happens or you're not sure about the behavior because you were saying you know you trust your instincts you trust what's going on because if it's if it's strange to you it's probably something going on so maybe you witness some sort of bad behavior maybe you're experiencing it I like to have people or victims of emotional abuse ask the question do you realize that what you did or said hurt me I think it's a very great opening safe opening question do you realize that what you just did or said whatever it is hurt me because it it offers them an opportunity to have an empowered answer it gives them an opportunity to show up as a knight in shining armor or big jerk and when when they answer it you're going to know a lot well okay most likely most of the time they'll probably say well no or they'll say I'm not trying to hurt you or you know what you're not getting hurt they're going to invalidate you right away you're not feeling hurt well I am and I just wanted to know you know just keep it keep it on topic keep it on the subject your question has to be answered do you realize that what you just said hurt me well no you know let's just say they say no the next question the follow-up question is well now that you know will you please stop I think that's another fair safe fair question if they say well you know you're hurting me too they're going to try to change it try to turn it around that may be true there's another follow-up you know what that may be true I may be hurting you as well and I think we should talk about that but I just want to know bring it back right back to the question now that you know will you stop so what you're doing is continuing to focus on what you want to know the answer to and also what they're promising their behavior is going to be from this point forward now I did have somebody write to me and say um I asked that question I asked that question to my partner because he was doing some really ridiculous things and uh she said okay do you realize what you said hurt me and he said yes and she said well well why are you doing it and he said well uh because it's fun she said I left the next day tells you a lie wow I was like wow it is because either way you're going to get truth and you do have to kind of understand that this will lead to truth and if you don't mind I'm going to expand on another thing that you said about the intuition and understanding that maybe your instincts are right they almost always are about something that's going on because if you're in a healthy a good healthy relationship you're probably not going to carry around some deep emotional trigger about what they're going to say or do but if you are carrying that around then something's going on so this might be a place that a lot of people are confused like I don't know what's going on there's something happening this is why I do my show 11 abuse is why I do my show the over on brand is why I create the workbooks and the content you can find out all about all the signals all the the signs and everything from what I talk about but I really do think it comes back to learning to say okay I'm feeling something is not right here because relationships are supposed to be fun they're supposed to be a little bit easier than emotional abuse of relationships you're supposed to have maybe some conflict every now and then but it gets resolved you actually talk about it and talk through it it may come up again but then I could give you a personal story my girlfriend I just resolved something that happened months ago didn't know the anger was still in there but it was in there mostly in her and then it came to me we talked about it and we finally reached an understanding that was based on a misunderstanding but this is what a healthy relationship should go through it should go through the trials and tribulations the ups and downs until you reach that some sort of closure but if it's anything lingering if you have got if you've got something lingering and you're carrying it around and you just don't want to talk about that subject anymore and you don't want to bring that thing up and again and you hope that he or she doesn't do this then you've got something else that's a little bit deeper and you should really consider that your instincts are right and what you're thinking has some validity to it so don't not trust yourself follow through because either way you're going to win if you find out that there is something manipulation deception control emotional abuse if any of that's going on then you've learned something that will help you make your next decision or if you learn something or if you find out that none of that's going on it was a complete misunderstanding from point one you still win because now you don't have to worry about it anymore you can get some closure so I like to look at it that way you just have to investigate inside your own relationship to understand what's happening be that analytical person like you are and really break things down to understand what's happening I love that you're saying that and it's funny because I've learned it all my life my first my marriage the long term relationship it wasn't bad but I was a conflict avoider and I love hearing like Brittany Brown says uh clear is kind and she talks about it as with boundaries and confrontation and that helped me so much refrain because when I set a boundary or when I say something that feels conflictual it feels like it's unkind but when I think about wait no no no giving them the truth and love in a kind way is actually clear is kind like that's helped me and then Edith Eger said you know what if you have a relationship and you have no conflict you don't have intimacy I was like oh wow that's a big one because again like and my ex-husband and I are friends now he would probably say the same thing we had a lot of fun and we had no conflict and I don't know if we had true intimacy like it wasn't a bad relationship but I think it was on such a superficial level and we both weren't quite willing to do the work to go because he avoided pain I avoided conflict and so we just had fun and we avoided all those topics and then at the end when things you know started to get rough and we didn't even know it we didn't know that we didn't have the depth to support the things that come in life so now I understand in hindsight but you're so right about that because conflict is not a bad thing being clear with boundaries let's talk a little bit about boundaries in the last few minutes how do you approach especially for someone like me who's terrified of you know being in conflict and doesn't like to have any of those difficult conversations I've learned so I'm much better but tell tell us more about the importance of boundaries how to approach boundaries a little bit about boundary work probably one of my favorite subjects because like you conflict avoidance almost all my life I mean most of my life I was afraid to ask for raises I was afraid to tell my partner that they're being mean I was no matter what it was I didn't want to make waves I learned that from my mom who did not want to make waves with her alcoholic husband you know abusive husband and so I learned that it was easier to make people laugh it was easier to get along it was easier to just be the neutral to balance her all of that stuff because it just seemed like it avoided conflict the problem when you avoid conflict is it builds up in the background and every friendship that you have starts to get burnt out every relationship every job you have I mean this would happen in my life everything started to burn me out because I never spoke what was on my mind and I remember when I first realized how much I was getting walked on and walked over and how I mean there's a point in your life where you look at your past and you say why am I or ask yourself why am I losing all these relationships why do I get burnt out so quickly and so you start to break down what happened and you go well when my friend said this to me and I said well of course you know I'll help you move oh you've got a sleeper couch on the third floor that sounds like fun I'll do it with you when I really wanted to say no hell no I don't I don't want to go near that's a that's a 300 pound couch but I decided that it was important for me to start practicing know start practicing boundaries and so I remember the I've told the story of my show I remember the first time that I practiced a boundary and it was very difficult my I had two bosses they were talking to me about another employee and they were saying oh Mike does this and Mike did that and he's not good at this and he's not good at that and I was thinking well Mike's not even here to defend himself so my old self would be like oh I've never been not saying anything you know this is whatever's going on with him but my new self is thinking okay I gotta practice this what's gonna happen because we fear practicing or honoring ourselves because we're afraid of the consequences so I kind of came up with a little question in my mind that said what would I do or say if I had no fear of the consequences what would I do or say if I had no fear of the consequence so I sat in that for just a moment while they were talking and I finally said you know you guys are talking about Mike he's not even here to defend himself and I just don't think that's fair oh good for you my god my I swallowed and I just waited it was so I was so afraid I was just waiting for to be fired I was just waiting for it but this this was it this was my practice and they both stopped and they were kind of like what's going on here they just kind of interrupted their pattern and what came out of the mouth was totally unexpected I said you know what that's exactly what we need to hear this is exactly the kind of feedback that we need you know and it just turned into a productive conversation and then shortly after that I got a raise and a promotion of like wow what all this time I've been avoiding conflict but it was the very thing that led to that so that was like step one you know if I can get through it once I can do it again so I started practicing boundaries more and more and I defined boundaries just to back up a little bit I defined boundaries as what you will and what you won't accept in your life so when people show up in your life you have these boundaries if they you know if a stranger touches you on the face you're like whoa maybe you won't accept I won't accept that in my life unless it's really a unique certain circumstance but when that happens you go wow I won't accept that that's unacceptable you do that again I'm out of here we have a problem or I'll slap you or whatever it is and you show them that there's an accountability there's accountability for their behavior so I like to look at my values in my life what do I value and what will I accept and make sure that I am solid in those so that when somebody violates one of my boundaries then I can say hey look that's a violation so the the question that I asked myself what would I do or say if I had absolutely no fear absolutely no fear of the consequences typically will identify and define your boundaries for you there's going to be times when you're going to be overboard and you're like oh I just punched that guy in the face that may not be a boundary but it's going to help you start to define what you will and won't accept in your life and so I started going forward with the idea that what would I do or say if I didn't have any fear and I started testing that over and over again and I tell you what every single time this is without fail every single time I wanted to do my old conflict avoidant thing I instead did the one that I feared that I really wanted to do or say and every single time it has worked out better than I could ever imagine not only because I got to be myself and say what I wanted to say or do what I wanted to do within reason but in a boundary sense but also it gave me closure I I didn't have to carry it around with me it wasn't lingering anymore and it works in relationships too when you are honoring yourself in a relationship like hey you know what you what you just said was very disrespectful it was very disrespectful and I I won't stand for that that is the that is the moment you stand up for yourself and you realize you're doing it at risk of the relationship because they may say oh well that's too bad because that's how I am yeah then you can say well I know I make it sound easy there's a lot to break down there but we're running out of time so I just wanted to this is great and I mean that's kind of where a story started because I think one of the first things I heard you say I'm in this like indecisive place and I think it was the overwhelmed brain on decision making or something like that and like oh empowerment versus fear the empowered decision might feel hard in the moment but in the end it's the just what you said it's the best it's actually going towards the conflict potentially in a way that is clear and kind right so I felt like I had heard that before but not in such a clear way and the timing was perfect so um gosh Paul I knew we could talk forever we could go on we're gonna have to have an episode too um but I have really really enjoyed talking to you tell us where people can find you and where they can get the mean workbook because that thing has been really powerful and like I said I've referenced it and I want people to have access to it if they'd like thank you it's been an honor to be here and talk with you and thank you for sharing your story Dr Jill and you can reach me at theoverwhelmbrain go to theoverwhelmbrain.com that is about empowering yourself you know building your self-esteem your your confidence and all that stuff we talked about about building who you are from the foundation up I I look to look at it as disempowerment to empowerment if you feel at all like you're disempowered somewhere come over there and then loveandabuse.com loveandabuse.com is where I have the other podcast I have two podcasts Love and Abuse is where I talk about difficult relationships manipulation control emotional abuse and um we get into all kinds of subjects it breaks down everything we talked about today and much much more and I think that if you're in any type of difficult relationship that's really going to help you and over there is where I mean she mentioned the mean workbook that is the manipulation of emotional abuse workbook that helps you understand the pinpoint the exact behaviors that you are can identify in your relationship that might be seen as emotional abuse so that can be helpful to you there and obviously you yeah super healthy and like I said go so I put both those links below and both on the youtube and on the facebook I'll include all these links Paul and so grateful for the work you do and for bringing light to help people like me and everybody listening thank you again for your time today thank you