Healing From Emotional Abuse

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Get Your FREE COPY of  my book, 3 Signs of A Toxic Relationship, Now... Can you heal from abuse?  What do I do after leaving my narcissist? What does a healthy relationship look like? These concerns cross the minds of over 20 people every minute; over 28,800 people every day.  And the sad fact is, we still don’t talk about it enough.  Healing from Emotional Abuse isn’t a bandaid situation.  But it doesn’t have to be a five year process either. Millions of other survivors around the worlds entire lives have been impacted by their narcissist.  Yours doesn’t have to.  To show you how to live a free, confident and peaceful life, your host and Founder of the Healing From Emotional Abuse Philosophy, Marissa F. Cohen.   Welcome back toHealing From Emotional Abuse.  Today, I want to address the Cycle of Abuse, and the 6 types of abuse that are most prevalent.   There are three parts to the cycle of abuse.  There is the Honeymoon Phase, the Tension Building Phase, and the Explosion Phase.  This is often referred to as the power and control wheel.   Abusive Relationships, like every relationship, start off with the calm honeymoon phase.  The abuser is charming, and kind.  Makes you feel comfortable and loved. Mine would bring snacks to my desk at school and we would watch Glee, because he knew I love that show.  And he would send me cute messages and tell me how beautiful, smart and witty I was.    Once he had me smitten, he began to make occasional, seemingly out of character remarks to me.  He started to push my boundaries with verbal abuse.  Telling me that things I was saying were stupid, or that I was stupid.  My opinions were invalid.  Or that the major I declared in college was dumb.  You name it, he said it.  It made me feel really insecure.  I began carefully selecting things to tell him.  Things that wouldn’t make me look stupid to him.  Things that would avoid any conflict. I felt like I was walking on eggshells, and anything I said to him could be used against me, or used to make me feel bad.   Have you ever experienced a friend, partner or colleague that treated you like this?  It might have confused you, because once you were once so close, or they were so nice.  And all of a sudden, it started to creep in that they became a little hurtful. And then, very hurtful.  They would make little jabs that threw you off or confused you. And then you felt insecure or uneasy sharing things with them?    This is the tension building phase of abuse.   Finally, the last phase of the cycle is the Explosion phase.  The explosion phase is when the big blowout happens.  When the abuser snaps and creates a big act of control.  It could be causing a scene, or yelling.  It could be a blowout of verbal or emotional abuse.  It could be physical or sexual abuse.  The recent trend we’ve been seeing is strangulation, over the last couple of years.  The explosion phase is usually when friends or family will be called or asked for help, or when the police will be called.  Or when the survivor tries to leave.   The problem is, that brings us back to the beginning of the cycle.  The honeymoon/reconciliation phase. This is when the abuser comes back and apologizes.  Makes promises that they’re not going to keep. Like that they’re never going to hurt them again.  Or makes a million excuses for their behavior.  “Oh, but honey, I was just drunk, and I was angry.” Or, “I have so much stress at work, and there’s something going on with me.” And sometimes, they’ll bring gifts and chocolate, and are extra affectionate and attentive.    And the cycle continues.  Everything is great for a short period of time, and then tension builds again until we hit another explosion.  And things don’t get better.  They will always continue to get worse and worse, because throughout the tension and explosion phase, the abuser is pushing boundaries.   Seeing how far they can push their control over the survivor.    There are 6 major types of abuse. Emotional abuse / Psychological abuse Verbal abuse Financial abuse Spiritual abuse Sexual abuse Physical abuse   Verbal abuse is when someone says mean things to you in order to belittle you and make you feel insecure.  It’s a way to break your confidence down, so you’ll submit to what they say about you.  It can be cursing, yelling, calling mean or derogatory names.  Anything that is said with the intention to hurt someone else.   Emotional abuse and Psychological Abuse is used to break down your self-worth, and push boundaries.  For example, the emotional abuse that my abuser said to me was that I was lucky to have him because nobody else could ever love the damaged person that I am.  That I had no value and no worth, and I would never aspire to be anything.  I would always depend on him to take care of me.  He knew that was my biggest fear, because I grew up so independent, and being taught how I need to be an independent person and take care of myself. And he exploited that by trying to make me feel like I would never achieve that.   Financial Abuse is very common, but not often talked about.  There are a few scenarios that depict financial abuse.  Either the abuser does not allow the survivor to work, so they won’t have any access to money, and won’t have work experience, which impacts someone’s ability to leave their abuser.  And the other type is forcing the survivor to work, in order to sustain the household, while the abuser has full control over the finances, and often times stays at home.  They usually monitor the bank accounts to make sure that the survivor isn’t spending any money, or lying about where they are.  And also, not allowing the survivor any access to the money they’re bringing in, so they cannot leave.    Spiritual abuse, also not commonly talked about, is refusing the survivor the right to their beliefs.  It can be the abuser forcing the survivor to believe in the abusers religion of choice, or just not allowing the survivor to practice the faith or religion that they want.  It cuts survivors off from their communities, and is also a method of control.    Physical abuse is the most commonly talked about.  It’s actually what people usually envision when talking about domestic violence.  It’s the pictures of people with black eyes, making the excuse that they’ve walked into a doorknob, or tripped and fell down the stairs.  It’s any physical contact that is meant to hurt someone, or control someone, or have them submit to the abuser.  Like I mentioned before, choking and strangulation have been very common in the last few years.  I personally think it’s because cutting off someones air supply is horrendous, but it’s also complete control over their life.  And fingerprints are easier to hide behind hair.  Pushing people down stairs, biting, scratching, hitting are all different examples of physical abuse.   And sexual abuse.  This can range of making an off-putting sexual comment, or behavior - like touching someones leg, or butt or any part of their body that makes them uncomfortable, to full on rape and sexual assault.  Harvey Weinstein was just convicted on this. Two people came forward and said that he had forced himself on them, and that’s sexual abuse. It is any unwanted or unprompted sexual advance where no consent is given.    Abuse doesn’t typically start out physical.  If you meet someone, you start to like them, and then they punch you in the head, chances are you’re going to leave, right?  What they’ll do is build trust and affection and love.  And in the midst of your relationship building, they’ll insert small jabs and boundary pushes to see what they can and can’t get away with. And like climbing a staircase, they’ll start with verbal or psychological abuse.  Push boundaries and see how much they can get away with. Then, they will move up to the next step.  They may touch on financial or spiritual abuse, and sometimes both. Then, when they have that full mind control over you, they’ll move up to the next step and may push to become physically and sexually abusive.    Not every abuser follows the exact same pattern, and not every relationship becomes physically abusive.  But it’s not as simple as, they punched me in the face, so I’ll leave. It’s little-by-little steps, building up the abuse as they go, after the survivor is already smitten.  Or after the survivor already feels trapped.  People would not stay in abusive relationships if there wasn’t some semblance of love.  If they didn’t see good in the abuser. Or if there weren’t times of beauty and kindness and love.  They wouldn’t stay.    I mean, would you? If you were with somebody that you truly loved, and they started acting really bad towards you, you would wish for the good times back. That doesn’t mean you enjoy the abuse.  It just means that you know that they can be better, because they have been.  So survivors will hold out for that to come back.  Maybe they’ll justify it by saying their narcissist is just stressed at work or this is a phase. Or they’re going through a lot.  But at the end of the day, the bad habits and the bad traits and the bad actions don’t go away.  The bad behavior is what stays.  And it’s the good times that become fewer and farther between.   Have you ever heard the song Love the Way You Lie, by Eminem and Rhianna?  I really appreciate that song for how lyrically gifted Eminem is.  That song does a phenomenal job of depicting the cycle of abuse.  He highlights a few different types of abuse, and the lyrics are cyclical.  They take you on a journey around the cycle of abuse a few times. Rhianna depicts a survivor, who is conflicted because she loves her partner so much but doesn’t like the abuse, and Eminem depicts the abuser, and the cycle.   I’ve picked out a few excerpts from the song to break down, but I urge you to listen to the whole song and try and find the different parts of the cycle.  I’m not even going to try to rap, I’m just going to read the lyrics.  That is so not my forte.  

Get Your FREE COPY of  my book, 3 Signs of A Toxic Relationship, Now... Can you heal from abuse?  What do I do after leaving my narcissist? What does a healthy relationship look like? These concerns cross the minds of over 20 people every minute; over 28,800 people every day.  And the sad fact is, we still don’t talk about it enough.  Healing from Emotional Abuse isn’t a bandaid situation.  But it doesn’t have to be a five year process either. Millions of other survivors around the worlds entire lives have been impacted by their narcissist.  Yours doesn’t have to.  To show you how to live a free, confident and peaceful life, your host and Founder of the Healing From Emotional Abuse Philosophy, Marissa F. Cohen.   Marissa: Hey everyone!  Welcome back to Healing From Emotional Abuse. This is part 2 of my conversation with Mike Sellari.  Writer, director, producer and movie expert. With Mike’s insight, we were able to pick apart a bunch of movies with depicted sexual assault and discuss the necessity of those scenes, in relation to the themes of the films.  If you haven’t heard part 1 yet, go check it out on Youtube, iHeart Radio, Spotify, Podbean, Stiticher, iTunes, basically any platform that hosts podcasts.  In this episode of Healing Through Emotional Abuse, we dive a little deeper into the world of cinema.  And just a heads up, some of these depictions of sexual assault may be graphic and potentially triggering.  And there will definitely be movie spoilers.   Marissa: I think that rape and sexual assault and domestic violence have been used as slapstick comedy for a really long time because it was not something that was really questioned.  Every time somebody came forward about domestic violence through the late 90s, the police would show up, they would tell the narcissist or abuse to take a walk around the block, and they’d question the victim about what they did to piss off the abuser.  That’s how it was handled.  It wasn’t handled. That’s the problem.   Mike: Yeah, and you see that.  You see that in the first season of Veronica Mars, and it kind of carries on into the second season of Veronica Mars. It is about a rape, and she goes to the police to report it, and his response is, “You know, I think you should go see the Wizard, and ask him for some guts.” Or something like that.  I don’t remember exactly what he tells her to ask for.    Marissa: Because that still happens today, in real life.  But also, I don’t know if you’ve seen the Netflix show, Unbelievable.  Mike: Yeah, I love it.   Marissa: Okay, Awesome!  So, Unbelievable is based on true stories.  It’s about several people who have been sexually assaulted or raped in various places around the country.  And with the first case specifically, she goes to the police right away, she makes her report.  They ask her the same question 55 times. And then they find one small detail that she mixed up, because it’s really easy for us to forget the exact order of things - who she called first was the thing she mixed up- and then they get her on that, convince her what happened didn’t happen, made her believe that the police were never going to help her.  So she just admits defeat, says it was a lie, even though it wasn’t.  And then she get ostracized for it.   That’s the kind of stuff I’m hoping becomes more common in film and tv - just like you were saying before.  We have to see the uncomfortable stuff to really feel it and understand it, and take the severity of it to heart.  If we don’t see it, if they were doing it off screen, or they do just soundbytes or it’s just a black screen or whatever, it takes the power and the discomfort away from us.  And it makes it easy to excuse.   So even in the show 13 Reasons Why, which I know you’ve seen. When that show was released, the National Suicide Hotline said that their phone calls blew up 40x.  So, 40x the normal number of calls were made to the hotline.  Which is a phenomenal, but also awful, because you don’t know if those same people were already suicidal or if it was something they felt glorified suicide.  The statistics were never conclusive.  One thing I did really appreciate - I watched a little bit of the second season and it really felt like it was trying to bank too much on the #MeToo Movement, which pissed me off a lot - but I really appreciated the cinematography of the rape scene because it’s so, you just, it just.  Oh god. The closeup of her face, and you just see her.. the life leave her eyes.    Mike: Yeah   Marissa: The humanity just falls out of her.  And it lingers like 10 seconds too long.  And they did that on purpose so that you could truly see the dehumanization of a person when they’re being raped.   Mike: I’m going to move away from movies for just a second to mention a book that I just recently finished and I recommend to you and your listeners.  It’s covering a lot of topics here. And what it’s called is Talking To Strangers. It’s a Malcom Gladwell book.  The thesis of the book is that we as a society do not know how to talk to strangers.  We do something called “defaulting to truth,” meaning that as soon as somebody says something to us, even if we haven’t met them before, our inclination is to believe that person.  And the reason we do that is because if we don’t, society can’t function.  That’s how society functions is because of default to truth.  If everybody is super suspicious of every single person, we can’t trust anybody, society can’t function.  The whole premise of the book is, we don’t know how to talk to each other.  We don’t know how to make decisions regarding each other.  We really don’t know how to read people.  And because of that, problems arise. You can’t tell comfortability, or if you are, you’re not sure about it.   You look at people who have made these apologies and stuff like that in real life.  And you can find the difference between the people we like and the people we don’t like.  Dan Harmon comes to mind, where Megan Ganz accused him of sexual harassment.  It’s what I mentioned before. He was always asking her out.  He was her boss, she was afraid to do certain things.  There was this sexual harassment thing, and she called him out on it and it became a whole situation.  I highly recommend everyone to listen to his apology.  It’s a masterclass of apologizing, how he did it on his podcast, talking about the situation.  That’s why he’s still doing Rick and Morty and still able to do stuff.  He has his show Harmontown.   Alright, we’re talking about abuse and all that stuff, we have to hit the main ones.  There are two movies that we haven’t talked about that we’ve gotta talk about.  First is, The Last Tango in Paris.  Marlon Brando, there’s that infamous scene where he rapes her with butter. She talks about how that has affected her as a person and as an actress.  Last Tango in Paris was a move, though, that was highly revered. People still talk about how much that movie has influenced them. Now, this girl was traumatized by this.  She was 19 years old, they didn’t have it in the script.  She showed up on the day, and they said, in this scene, he’s going to rape you and use butter as lubricant. It’s obviously not really happening but she was crying.  The tears you see in the movie are her real tears.  And Bertolucci and Brando defended themselves throughout the years, and it became contentious.  I think that’s why the Last Tango in Paris doesn’t come up in the conversation of great cinema anymore, which is fine.  There are movies that we revere at a time and then we can say, “We’re done with that.” And we can move on.    It can still exist and we can watch it for  posterity.  But we don’t always have to revere something because it was revered in the past. And I think we’re learning that more and more.  And I think that’s something that, it took a while for people to treat women the right way, or at least closer to the right way.  Movies we have to talk about.  Last Tango in Paris, it’s a brutal thing, and we didn’t see it as brutal in the time.   On the flip side, there’s a movie that we do see as brutal and it was seen as brutal at the time.  And that’s The Last House On The Left, and that’s Wes Craven’s first movie.  I just watched it for the first time a couple months ago.  I’d been putting it off for a while.  I knew what it was about. They remade it recently, not as aggressive. And I mean, it’s a staple in horror cinema.  When you watch it, you can see the moments of Wes Craven’s talent.  I mean, you can see his talent in there.   The premise of the movie is, these two girls are going to a concert in the city.  They meet this guy, he is like, “Hey, come hang out.” and stuff like that.  Him and his family are actually escaped convicts.  And they torture them, they keep them hostage.  They rape one of the girls.  It’s very brutal.  And this one girl dies just walking into water, just defeated.  It feels very much like an Ophelia moment, and she’s dead.  And it’s just brutal watching it.  And to a point, you can say it’s gratuitous. And early Wes Craven movies did that. And there are movies that put rape in their movies that I don’t think they need to.  Recent one that comes to mind is Don’t Breathe.  But Last House On The Left I think needs it in there, because it goes back to that brutality thing.  It shows that these are the most debased people ever.    And theres a reason people watch that.  There’s a reason wired in us that is kind of okay with violence.  And maybe that’s because society told us it’s okay with violence.  PG-13 movies with blood are okay, but not a little sex.    There’s a great movie documentary called This Film Is Not Yet Rated, which is about the MPAA,  the Motion Picture Association of America.  The people who rate movies.  And they talk about, if there are two similar things in two different movies, one gets rated PG-13, one gets R.  And a lot of times it has to do with sexual orientation.  Gay stuff ends up being R, Hetero stuff

Get Your FREE COPY of  my book, 3 Signs of A Toxic Relationship, Now... Can you heal from abuse?  What do I do after leaving my narcissist? What does a healthy relationship look like? These concerns cross the minds of over 20 people every minute; over 28,800 people every day.  And the sad fact is, we still don’t talk about it enough.  Healing from Emotional Abuse isn’t a bandaid situation.  But it doesn’t have to be a five year process either. Millions of other survivors around the worlds entire lives have been impacted by their narcissist.  Yours doesn’t have to.  To show you how to live a free, confident and peaceful life, your host and Founder of the Healing From Emotional Abuse Philosophy, Marissa F. Cohen.   Marissa: Hey Everyone! Thank you so much for joining us this week on Healing From Emotional Abuse. Today I’m so grateful and excited to introduce my friend Mike Sellari to talk about sexual assault and domestic violence and how it’s portrayed in movies and tv. Mike has an amazing background with film. Right now, he lives in LA as a talent agent, but I do have to say that back in 2006, I starred in his first student film that he wrote, produced and directed, called Man Seeking Woman.  So we go back a long. time. He’s an awesome person with a great personality and I’m so excited to have him here.  So, let’s get started.   So, lets’s talk about some movies. You’re a huge movie buff, you love talking about movies and I love looking at your posts on Facebook.  Every single time you watch a movie, you kind of critique it and every season, I love looking at your lists of best movies of the year. So, I’d love your perspective on movies with domestic violence and sexual assault themes, and what you think about them. Mike: Okay, I mean, right at the top, I feel like I’m already going to be treading into dangerous waters with whatever I talk about. Mainly because it’s a complicated issue.  There’s a lot of different ways we can discuss this.  There’s a lot of different points of view, and I think everyone thinks different.  So, I guess it’s hard to talk about, because you’re saying domestic violence, abuse and stuff like that.  And a lot of that also goes back into misogyny and a lot of that goes back into the distribution of power between men and women.  Especially from pre-60s, because there was that whole “housewife” ideal of the 50s and stuff.  And you can see that with older movies with women, “Being in their place.” And men as the aggressor.  Even in the 30s there were still powerful women.  You look at stuff like the Philadelphia Story or His Girl Friday, or Lady Eve.  You’ll see strong women characters besting the man. But you also see people looking at women in a way that was more, “Of the time.” And I guess right at the top, we really can’t look at things from the past with 2020 eyes. We’re going to look back at a lot of stuff, because probably every single one of these movies has happened in the past.  And some just come from different generations. And I’m going to talk about movies that I also love, and will watch still.  It’s kind of like you have to just be able to say, look, that was a different time.  50 years down the road, we’re going to look at the stuff we’re doing on a normal basis and our kids are going to be like, “What? What are you doing? How could you just let that happen?” And we’re going to say it was just a different time, and they’re going to tell us that’s a bullshit answer. And we’re going to say, look, I know, we just didn’t realize it.    I mean, if you look 5 years ago, the stuff that we were laughing at in comedies that now we’re looking at and we’re pulling on our collars and going yikes because it’s hard to watch.   Marissa: Superbad is a great example of that, actually.   Mike: And honestly, a fantastic movie.  And something that we’re going to get into is the idea of what is art, and how far can we push our art? And what’s subversive vs. expletive vs. gratuitous. And then, also, if we’re going to show reality, shouldn’t we have to show the dark sides of reality? Because if we hide it, then what are we saying about our history, and stuff like that?  For instance, talking about the civil war and the stuff that did or didn’t happen.  Talking about our history and movies about slavery.  Haven’t we said all we’ve needed to say, or are we hiding stuff from our past that we don’t want to talk about? But we’ve got to keep it.   Something to just start off the top, and this is definitely an abusive thing.  Let’s talk about Michael Jackson for a second.  Obviously, we’ve known about his quirks and his weird things, and I truly believe he had a mental illness - and I believe a lot of this stems from mental illness.  There’s a whole thing we can talk about with Michael Jackson and his family. And also just what were people doing in just letting their kids be around him? And also stuff we just decided to turn a blind eye to because of certain things. And it keeps going, then Leaving Neverland comes out and that was an intense documentary.  And after that came out, James L. Brooks announced that they were puling an episode from the Simpsons from all internet, rerun, syndication, and now it’s on Disney+ but that episode is not on Disney+.  And it’s not even that Michael is in it.  You’re not seeing his imagery.  It has nothing to do with off-color thing.  The premise of the episode is Homer goes to a mental institution and meets an inpatient who calls himself Michael Jackson.  He’s clearly not Michael Jackson, but he’s voiced by Michael Jackson.  It’s weird that we pull that form our history, because we have to look back and see that we see that.  However, James L. Brooks says, “This is my stuff. I get to make the decision over what I want out there. And I don’t want it to seem like Michael Jackson is getting more residuals, or his estate getting money from this.” So, when we start taking things out of our history and out of our films,  I worry that we have the ability to repeat ourselves in dangerous ways.  It’s important to see that stuff. It’s important to acknowledge that we were off base and learned from it.  We can watch those movies in a different way.  We can see that they were made in those times.   For instance, let’s go into now talking about this. There was a time when rape was a joke.  It was kind of funny.  It was played off as not a big deal.  It was played off in comedies in particular as something that could just happen. Let’s talk about specifics here.  There’s a movie if you think back into the early 2000s, there’s a movie I really like that a lot of people don’t called 40 Days and 40 Nights. It starts Josh Hartnett and Shannyn Sossamon, who I just love. And the premise of the movie is, this guy is experiencing a breakup.  He’s experiencing this obsession with sex and stuff.  So he decides to not masturbate or have sex or do anything sexual for Lent. For 40 Days and 40 Nights. And everyone says he can’t do it. It’s impossible.  And he starts losing his mind… it’s a comedy. Meanwhile, his friends are all betting on the day that he’s going to “bust”.  And people try to take advantage of that.  At the end of the movie, his ex girlfriend bets a lot of money on the final day, and then rapes him while he’s asleep.  It’s seen as just a plot point.  And then the other girl, the girl who likes him, is like, “I can’t believe you had sex with her.” It’s not, she did it against his will. He was pinned down. He didn’t want it. But that doesn’t matter in the context of that story.  But if we look at it there, it’s really weird that she just rapes him and we’re not going to talk about that? And the same thing happens in Get Him to the Greek. Jonah Hill is raped by Carla Gallo.  You mentioned Superbad, with the period blood girl. That’s like the reversal of that scene in a way.  So there’s this playfulness. There’s this moment in Revenge of the Nerds where Louis puts on this Darth Vader costume that the jock was wearing.  And the hot girl, thinking it’s the jock has sex with him. And he pulls off the mask and she’s like, “You’re that nerd!” But she’s like, that was wonderful. And she forgets it.  Like he’s “sexed her” into it’s okay.   If we at that and we look back into the 80s the 70s, moments in the 60s, and even in the 90s and 2000s, and late 2010s. We see these moments.  It was before being really aware of what we were doing.    There’s a philosophy I have and that’s: What we put on TV really feeds into society.  And then society feeds it back. It’s a cycle.  You see movies and I can’t think of any specifics, but the guy pursues the girl.  She says no.  And the idea is, it’s romantic to keep going and push, push, push.  Keep doing that. You see it in tons of high school movies.  You see it in movies like American Pie.  You see it in to an extent, When Harry Met Sally. That teaches us at a young age that “A No just means you have to keep going, and push past the no. And one day, she’ll give you a shot.”  And so that feeds back into it.  And that becomes problematic.    However, we’ve also romanticized a certain thing. There’s a term from How I Met Your Mother which I love and use in my own daily life.  It’s called Dobbler-Dahmer effect. It means an act could be construed as romantic or psychotic based on how the person feels about the other person.  It’s not an easy explainable situation that we’re talking about here.  And because of that, we get these movies that show us grey areas.  I mean, 16 Candles, there’s definitely that weird moment where the guy is like, “Here, just have my girlfriend.” That’s another thing of older movies, is women being treated as objects.  And stuff like that.   Obviously, throughout all the history of cinema, and television, we’ve seen people who combat that.  We’ve seen Lucille Ball fight back, and Mary Tyler Moore be these stronger women on TV.  You see and take over what we have.  But you also see the Honeymooners where Ralph is always threat

Get Your FREE COPY of  my book, 3 Signs of A Toxic Relationship, Now... Can you heal from abuse?  What do I do after leaving my narcissist? What does a healthy relationship look like? These concerns cross the minds of over 20 people every minute; over 28,800 people every day.  And the sad fact is, we still don’t talk about it enough.  Healing from Emotional Abuse isn’t a bandaid situation.  But it doesn’t have to be a five year process either. Millions of other survivors around the worlds entires lives have been impacted by their narcissist.  Yours doesn’t have to.  To show you how to live a free, confident and peaceful life, your host and Founder of the Healing From Emotional Abuse Philosophy, Marissa F. Cohen.   Marissa: Today we’re joined with Dr. Leonie Madison. She’s an organizational and talent development practitioner, Author of the books The Thread: The perfect Steps for a God Ordained Purpose, and Beside Still Waters: 21 Days to Developmental, as well as the creator of Threads: 6-Step System to Help Survivors Free Themselves from Past Trauma and Live An Abundant Life.  She earned a doctorate in organizational leaders from Argosy University, A Masters in Business Administration from Georgian Court University, and A Christian Life Coach Certificate from Light University.  She’s a recipient of 2018 8th Annual Pacific Coast Business Times 40 Under 40 Award - Recognizing the 40 best and brightest transformational leaders on the central coast under the age of 40.  Thank you so much for joining us today.  I’m so excited to chat with you.   Dr. Leonie Mattison: I am so excited about our conversation today as well.  Thanks for having me.   Marissa: Of course! So lets get started.  Would you mind telling me a little about your story and what brought you to where you are today?   Dr. Mattison: Sure! Thank you for asking! So, My name is Dr Leonie H. Madison.  I like to consider myself an impact storyteller.  I’m a trauma survivor, and I was chosen to be able to do this work of pioneering what we’re calling The Thread.  It’s a project, it’s a book, it’s a devotional, it’s a 6-step system; all in the spirit of helping survivors to achieve intentional transformation.  Helping survivors to rise from the trauma that they’ve experienced and to do some work.  Take the steps forward to really force your life forward.    I am a single mom.  I have three beautiful daughters and a dog.  And they are all the highlights of my life, and I love them dearly.  I love my job.  It’s part of my calling;  I am an organizational and development practitioner, where I get to really help organizations to shift strategy, improve performance and grow revenue.  I always say that’s how I use my superpower in the marketplace.   And beyond all of those things, I am just one grateful girl speaking to another survivor, saying, “Hey, I survived.”  Also speaking to your listeners saying, “I survived.  And after survival, I had to do some work to survive.  To thrive beyond the trauma.”  So that’s a little bit about who I am and why I got here.    I have a background about my experience being a victim of abuse.  I’m not sure if you hear my accent, but I was born on the beautiful island of Jamaica.  The west indies.  I suffered quite a number of years of abuse as a child.  Sexual abuse, spiritual abuse, emotional abuse, and physical abuse.  I immigrated to the US when I was about 15 years old.  I am also the product of parents who, my father abandoned us.  My mom had to leave the island to get work and so we grew up being bounced around from one city to the next in Jamaica.  And that’s where a lot of the abuse started.  And then when I came to the US, it didn’t stop.  I thought it would, but it didn’t.  I unfortunately suffered abuse in the faith-based community.  I was abuse by a priest minister, sexually and spiritually.  And so I have that traumatic background, and I didn’t allow the background to keep my back on the ground.  I listened to quite a number of your podcasts and it was really using the power of my voice and my words to elevate myself from out of those situations.   It’s one thing to get up, but it’s another to create a new mindset and to adapt new behaviors to truly live this abundant life that we were created to live.  So, that’s in a nutshell who you’re speaking with today.   Marissa: You gave a lot of really good information, so thank you for sharing. So, your book is called Thread: A 6-step System to Help Survivors Free Themselves From Their Past Trauma.  If you wouldn’t mind maybe giving us a little taste of the six steps, or what you learned while writing the book.   Dr. Leonie: I love that question.  So, the 6-step system was developed as a result of my experience while I was on my healing journey.  And I remember particularly, in addition to the abuses that I’ve gone through, endured, suffered, whatever word you want to use there, I am also a survivor of Delspalsy and a stroke.  I had finally made the decision, it was almost like my awakening journey, I finally made the decision after hitting rock bottom that I was ready for change.    There was a dissonance between the girl I was living or the woman I was living, versus the woman that I deeply down in my soul thought I should become.  And so I started questioning a lot of theories, philosophies, and just life on a whole.  And my big question was to God.  I wanted to know why I had gone through what I was going through (Why am I going through what I’m going through). I wanted to know why he abandoned me.  I wanted to know why God chose this path for me. I had a lot of questions and I just felt like, books were great, and I would read and gain new knowledge, but I felt like I wanted to challenge God to give me the answers to the questions I was asking.    And so, I’m on this journey, and I felt so many times while I was on this journey, there were times where my back was literally on the ground.  And somebody had to come pull me up, because I just couldn’t get up on my own. While on this journey I was bitter.  I was angry.  I was lost.  I had no courage or energy to live at one point.  And I remember distinctly.  I was on, what I call, one of my excursions.  And I remember I was sad, and I was crying.  The sun was hot.  And I had a radio, and I turned the radio on. When I turned the radio on, there was a minister on there, and I distinctly remember him talking and he said, “The prodigal son come home.”  And I turned it off because I didn’t want to hear anything religious.   Then I went inside the living room and I remember turning the television on.  And on came this woman.  Her name is Juanita Bynum.  She’s a female minister.  And she started the whole, “Prodigal son come home.” again, thing.  And i knew exactly the story in the bible.  And at that point she got my attention.  And I listened.  And at the time, you have to understand, I had just gone through a physical abuse by a partner with someone I was dating.  They had abused me physically, kicked me, I fell on the ground, knocked my head.  There was an iron and the ground, and I burned a part of my leg.  So, I was in a very bad situation, and I was self-blaming as well.  So when she said that, I knew I needed help, but I didn’t trust anyone around me to help me.  And I definitely didn’t trust God because I was blaming him.  And so when she started speaking and she said, “There’s a woman watching and the Lord said to tell you, if you turn to Him, He will turn your life around.”  And I turned the television off and said, “I don’t believe that.”  I just don’t believe it.  And I remember I just started crying and screaming and I got to the point where my mind felt sick and tormented.  I took all of this glassware and I just smashed the house.  I couldn’t hit him because he wasn’t there.  And I took the television off of the wall and I smashed it.  I was just so angry, I felt so alone.  I screamed.  I cried to the point that my neighbors called the cops because they thought something was wrong. Like I was being abuse.  And when they came, they couldn’t believe how I had trashed the home. And it was at that point I realized that I really needed help.  And it was at that point that I started sharing my story.  I actually got up and went and got help from a therapist.  And I started sharing my story.  I didn’t know, I had forgotten some of what I had been through.  At this time, I was in my 20s, and I had forgotten some of what I’d been through, but she was asking the right questions, that triggered the memory.  And i started connecting the dots of what happened to me in my past as a little girl, and being molested.  From being inappropriately touched.  From being raped when I was sick in bed. I started connecting the dots and I realized that these were patterns in my life. These were things that were happening to me every 5-10 years.  I would go through a huge traumatic injury.  And so i started documenting everything that I could remember. And the first thing I remember doing was, when the therapist asked me what is it that I want.  “What do you want your life to look like?”  I didn’t know what I wanted, because I was never given that option before.  But I remember I went home and started thinking and dreaming of the best life ever. So part of my system, the first step is to Think of the outcome you want.  Think of that outcome.  That’s the T.  And the H is to Harvest the lessons you’ve learned and heal your heart.  And what I know for me, the lessons that I’ve learned on my journey, one of the biggest ones was I was a big people -pleaser.  In  my book I refer to myself as, I was a “giving harlot.”  I would give, give, give because that’s what I thought God wanted me to do. I give up myself, I’d give up my time, I’d give up my resources.  I would give without being conscious of what I was doing.  And I was doing that because I wanted, I needed, I so needed for love.  I was so needy for affirmation and acceptance.  Step 3, R f

Get Your FREE COPY of  my book, 3 Signs of A Toxic Relationship, Now... Can you heal from abuse?  What do I do after leaving my narcissist? What does a healthy relationship look like? These concerns cross the minds of over 20 people every minute; over 28,800 people every day.  And the sad fact is, we still don’t talk about it enough.  Healing from Emotional Abuse isn’t a bandaid situation.  But it doesn’t have to be a five year process either. Millions of other survivors around the worlds entires lives have been impacted by their narcissist.  Yours doesn’t have to.  To show you how to live a free, confident and peaceful life, your host and Founder of the Healing From Emotional Abuse Philosophy, Marissa F. Cohen.   There is a lot of misconceptions regarding the fine line between a loving, healthy relationship, and toxic, abusive relationships.  On my facebook Page www.facebook.com/marissafcohen, I had a little campaign going where I would describe a behavior ask whether that behavior was love or abuse.  For the most part, I would say that I used a lot of leading language, so people generally got the answers right.  But there were a few points of contention that shocked me.  So I wanted to explore this concept.   What is love? Some people characterize love as an intense feeling of deep connection.  Or, feeling deep romantic, and sexual attachments to someone.  What is your definition of love?  What are actions and characteristics that you expect from someone who loves you?   Mine definition of love is the trust and respect towards someone that you have strong, affectionate feelings for.  I truly believe you cannot love someone without wholeheartedly trusting and respecting them.  Just like you can’t hate someone without loving them, you also can’t love someone without trust or respect.  Think of someone that you love.  It could be a family member or friend.  Do you also respect that person?  Do you respect opinions, their goals? Their wants and needs?  I know that I ask my friends for advice all the time, because I trust them and respect what they have to say.  Now, think of someone that you love but you don’t respect or trust. You don’t appreciate their opinions.  You don’t think they’re a good person, making good decisions and doing positive things with their life.  You don’t think they’ll keep your secrets?  You don’t feel comfortable or safe sharing your thoughts, feelings, opinions or experiences with them because they might judge you.  Anyone?  Bueller?  Bueller?  Probably not.  And I expect anyone who loves me to also trust and respect me.  They go hand in hand.   “Love” without respect and trust in my opinion is just sexual tension.  That’s why friends with benefits often don’t end well.    Abuse is treating a person or animal (but in this case a person) with cruelty or violence, regularly or repeatedly.  There has to be a pattern of abuse in order for it to be considered domestic violence, and intent to make the survivor feel badly.    You wouldn’t normally think that these two concepts could get confused, right?  I mean they are so specific and so opposite. But think about this: You and your significant other, friend or family member, just pick one, are out to eat at a restaurant.  The meals you ordered come out and are set in front of you.  You excitedly dig in! The person you’re with looks at you, cringes and says, “You’re eating like a pig!”  How do you feel?   Here is where the controversy is.  Some people will hear that and think, “Well that was unnecessarily rude and judgmental. I’m hungry, and their intention was to make me feel uncomfortable, small or fat.  That’s not love.”  Meanwhile, someone else will hear that and think, “They were just looking out for me because they love me.”   Which one did you hear?   Obviously, there is an element of perception, but on paper, that is classic emotional abuse.  There are ways to convey a message about eating habits that aren’t low-key making someone feel uncomfortable, insecure, or judged.  The only purpose of staying that was to have control of you and what you’re eating. The less you feel good about yourself and your decisions, the more control they have over you.   And this is where the misunderstanding on abuse vs love comes in.  In this example, the abuser lacks RESPECT.  Can you think of another example, hopefully not personal, where someone you respected said something to you to intentionally make you feel insecure?  Write me a comment.    Along the same lines is jealousy.  Jealousy is not love.  Jealousy is a trait portrayed by abusive people.  If your partner or friend tries to isolate you from other people because they don’t like you around other boys or other girls, or don’t “trust” you around people, that is an emotionally abusive and manipulative move.  The purpose isn’t to keep you safe.  It’s to keep you insecure and away from people that could undo the control they have on you, or empower you to feel good about yourself and your decisions.  Your Narcissist want to to feel like they are doing this for your benefit, when it’s truly and honestly not.  Someone who is jealous will typically put you down because they want you to be on their level.  This is toxic.  You should be surrounded by people who encourage you and boost you up.   I have a friend who told me a story that I think will help to clarify this.  My friend, Jess, had a best friend, Ally.  Ally was very needy, and constantly needed Jess’s attention.  When she didn’t get that attention, she would blow up Jess’s phone, until Jess answered her. Then, Ally would use Jess’s disappearance to make Jess feel like a bad friend because Jess wasn’t there for Ally when she needed her.  The problem was, this happened all the time.  And usually, the situations that Ally would try and make Jess feel guilty about, either weren’t related to Jess at all, or weren’t that important.  Jess just wasn’t allowed, by Ally’s standards, to have a life outside of their friendship.  If they didn’t talk in a couple of days, Ally would harass Jess and call her a bad friend.  Ally would make Jess feel guilty for spending time with other people, and engaging in hobbies without inviting her along.  And it was toxic.  That kind of control and abuse, although might seem flattering on the outside, was a way for Ally to have a controlling hand on Jess.  After Jess told me that story, I encouraged her to start to cut ties, because Jess didn’t feel like she could do anything anymore without running it by Ally first, or without starting a fight. That’s abusive, manipulative and controlling behavior.  Have you ever had a friend like that with a friend or family member?  Someone who would make you feel guilty or uncomfortable for spending time with other people, or harass you until you answered the phone?  That’s not okay. And it’s not flattering.  It’s abusive.   Regarding the aforementioned facebook posts, I wanted to run them by you, and let me know if you think whether these are abuse or love?   Your partner feels insecure or jealous over your achievements. Love or Abuse?   2. Your partner checks your text messages and social media accounts.  Love or Abuse?   3. Your Partner monitoring your eating habits. Telling you what you can and can't eat.   Love or Abuse?   Hey! If you enjoyed this podcast, you have to check out www.MarissaFayeCohen.com/Private-Coaching.   Marissa would love to develop a made-for-you healing plan to heal from emotional abuse. She does all the work, and you just show up. Stop feeling stuck, alone, and hurt, and live a free, confident, and peaceful life.  Don’t forget to subscribe to the Healing From Emotional Abuse podcast, and follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/marissafcohen, and instagram @Marissa.Faye.Cohen. We’d love to see you there!

Get Your FREE COPY of  my book, 3 Signs of A Toxic Relationship, Now... Can you heal from abuse?  What do I do after leaving my narcissist? What does a healthy relationship look like? These concerns cross the minds of over 20 people every minute; over 28,800 people every day.  And the sad fact is, we still don’t talk about it enough.  Healing from Emotional Abuse isn’t a bandaid situation.  But it doesn’t have to be a five year process either. Millions of other survivors around the worlds entires lives have been impacted by their narcissist.  Yours doesn’t have to.  To show you how to live a free, confident and peaceful life, your host and Founder of the Healing From Emotional Abuse Philosophy, Marissa F. Cohen.   January is stalking awareness month, so I thought it would be fitting to make the last January episode about stalking.    The term “stalking” as defined by the Department of Justice, means engaging in a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to fear for his or her safety or the safety of others or suffer substantial emotional distress.  Making someone feel unsafe in their surroundings or environment.  Stalking occurs when someone repeatedly harasses or threatens someone else, causing fear or safety concerns. According to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS), about 1 in 6 women and 1 in 17 men have experienced stalking in their lifetimes, reported by the CDC.   I was chatting about this with a colleague of mine last week while having some coffee, and we were talking about harassment and stalking, and how common it is.  And I began to speak about experiences I have had with stalking, in college and in workplaces, and had this overwhelming sensation that, these are not experiences I have discussed much.  I rarely speak, in detail, about the three times I was aggressively stalked, and figured it was because stalking isn’t a common topic. In fact, it’s rarely given the same weight as rape or assault — people will generally overlook it until something physical happens.  But, stalking is extremely psychologically damaging.  You don’t feel safe anywhere.  Even if they never touch you, you feel unsafe in all areas of your life. Have you ever experienced anything like this?  That subtle feeling that you’re being watched? The tension in the pit of your stomach that something isn’t right?  That unconscious need to peer over your shoulder consistently, but you don’t know what you’re looking for?  That’s the residue of the psychological impact that stalking has on a person.  When I go to my alma mader, Rowan University to visit my old campus, or speak, I always find myself going to the one bar in the town for food.  Landmark.  Landmark is a big place.  It has 3 separate rooms and a “nightclub”.  I love the food there, but I find myself having this undeniable need to always be looking at the doors, or the entrances to the room I’m sitting in.  I can’t have anyone sitting behind me, or I peer over my shoulder a million times.    And that goes back to a boy I dated in college for roughly one month.  After we broke up, he would find out where I was, using his Fraternity brothers and other greek life resources on campus, and then show up.  He would have his brothers stand in every corner, or by every exit of Landmark, watching me and monitoring everything I did.  He would position himself outside of my classrooms after all of my classes, or have his friends outside my classrooms or outside of the building to watch where I go, and make sure I wasn’t with anyone else. He would use his fraternity brother’s facebooks to stalk me and see where I was, who I was with, and what I was doing.  I was never one for posting all of my personal information anyways - but it really deterred me from even using social media.  It even boiled down to me asking my friends to cut down on posting or tagging me in things, for fear he’d show up.  Usually drunk. Always irate or crying.   I haven’t seen him since I graduated in 2014, and he hasn’t seen me in person either.  But I still have this unconscious need to see the front door at all times.  I remember one night after class, my friend had to sneak me out of my classroom, and we maneuvered around through back doorways to get out of the building, because he was standing outside the room on a day that he texted me over 75 times in one hour, and didn’t answer.  I was scared of his reaction.  I was terrified of what he would say or do.  His behavior was erratic.  So, we snuck out the back-way, my friend came with me to my apartment so I could pack a bag, and we went back to his dorm where I stayed for a couple days while I made a safety plan.  And that’s just one example of one experience I had with him, one time.   If you haven’t watched the Netflix series, You, I recommend it.  Season 1 is painfully accurate regarding how the mind of a stalker works, as well as, signs and red flags that are commonly ignored or overlooked by stalking victims.  Season 2 is great too, it just has more of a “serial killer” vibe, and less of a stalking vibe.  The stalking is still there, but he’s more violent aggressively in Season 2.  So I’m going to focus mainly on season 1.  And this is a Fair warning, there will definitely be spoilers: SPOILERS!  For example, when Peach starts to notice that Joe is always around, or was conveniently at the train station and other places that Beck was at, but Beck ignored and justified it.  Overlooked weird things that Joe just knew about her, and how he would say the perfect thing.  And how he was always right there, at the festival and in the park.  Those are all big red flags.    Joe’s obsession isn’t really about making Beck feel loved and comforted, it’s about taking full control of her life and surroundings, and isolating her, so nobody can penetrate the wall he’s building around her.  By encouraging her to stop spending time with her friends, and making her feel guilty or upset about wanting to spend time away from him, he is manipulating her free-will and controlling her life.  When you’re on the inside of it all, it’s difficult to see.  Especially with someone as coy and sneaky as Joe.  But those yellow and red flags, the uneasy feeling in your stomach that tells you something isn’t right, are huge warning signs, and shouldn’t be ignored.    Penn Badgley, Joe,  is not an unknown actor.  He has been in hit films and shows like “John Tucker Must Die,” Gossip Girl, and Easy A. But after Netflix bought YOU from Lifetime, his twitter following blew up!  Great for him!  I’m really happy.  But the messages he was receiving on twitter were horrifying.  People would tweet at him and ask Joe to kidnap them, and that they wish someone would fight for them like Joe fights for Beck.  THAT IS NOT OKAY!  And Penn addressed this situation by trying to correct people’s mindsets about stalking.   Here a couple examples:   @PennBadgley kidnap me please Penn: No thanks Said this already, but @PennBadgley is breaking my heart once again as Joe.  What is it about him? Penn: He is a murderer. I’m telling you it’s your face that does it.  You’re gorgeous.  I can see past that crazy shit. Penn: But you’re supposed to see past my face TO the crazy shit!  It’s the other way! The Other Wayyyyyy Ugh! The amount of people romanticizing @PennBadgley’s character in YOU scares me. Penn: Ditto!   And I have to agree.  The amount of people that are romanticizing stalking is sick.   Close your eyes and try to imagine this… or if you’re driving, don’t close your eyes, but imagine this scenario.  Have you ever been out at a bar or a coffee shop with a friend, where  you guys are sitting and catching up.  And you start to feel this burning sensation on the back of your neck, like someone is watching you?  You get a chill down your spine, and you can feel someone staring at you.  You know the feeling.  The chills roll down your back, and you look behind you, but nobody is there.  You can take a deep breath, and continue your conversation, and enjoy the rest of your time there.  Has that ever happened to you?  If you’re a victim of stalking, that feeling doesn’t go away.  Imagine living life always looking over your shoulder, and feeling like someone is watching.  My stalker stopped trying to find me in 2016, and I still find myself looking over my shoulder.  Even in places that he would never truly be in.  My guard is always up now.    A common misconception that NEEDS to be addressed again, is being stalked isn’t romantic or flattering.  I wasn’t stalked because I’m cute or have a great personality.  I was stalked because a person who is controlling and manipulative worked his way into my routine, and did everything in his power to make me feel uncomfortable, vulnerable and scared.  I was stalked because this person was sick.  After I broke it off, he used to sit in his car outside my house at 2 in the morning and watch me.  I lived on the first floor, and I would see him staring into my window at 4am.  I had my best friend sleep over for 3 weeks so I could hopefully get 1 hour of sleep per night. This image of him standing outside my window as burned into my eyelids.  Until I finally lost my mind, and started sleeping at other peoples dorms or houses, I did not get any sleep.  I would pace around my room all night trying to find ways to get him out of my head.   At one point, He convinced my landlord that he was interested in real estate, and asked for an internship, so he could be in my house when I wasn’t there.  And her office was across from my room.  So he was always in close proximity to me.  He would get intoxicated and call me asking if he could stay over because he was too drunk to drive home.  And obviously, there was no reasoning with him.  He would show up, throw tantrums, yell and scream until I let him in the house, and then would stomp around, kick, cry throw things, and cause a big scene until I gave in.

Get Your FREE COPY of  my book, 3 Signs of A Toxic Relationship, Now... Can you heal from abuse?  What do I do after leaving my narcissist? What does a healthy relationship look like? These concerns cross the minds of over 20 people every minute; over 28,800 people every day.  And the sad fact is, we still don’t talk about it enough.  Healing from Emotional Abuse isn’t a bandaid situation.  But it doesn’t have to be a five year process either. Millions of other survivors around the worlds entires lives have been impacted by their narcissist.  Yours doesn’t have to.  To show you how to live a free, confident and peaceful life, your host and Founder of the Healing From Emotional Abuse Philosophy, Marissa F. Cohen.   Abuse is debilitating, and the feeling doesn’t just go away.  Domestic Violence, emotional abuse, narcissism, and Sexual Assault, aside from physical damage, leave severe and lasting emotional and psychological repercussions on its victims.  In sexual assault situations, our personal space and body are violated.  We lose control of our bodies, and are instead met with shame, guilt and the feeling of being worthless and devalued.  Our crime scene is our bodies.  We never have the luxury to leave it.    And with domestic violence, something everyone needs to understand, it never starts out with someone punching us in the face.  They need to hook us first.  It’ll start with charm and love and kindness.  Then slowly but surely start to verbally and emotionally abuse us, and that branches into physical and sexual abuse.  It’s a cycle that never ends, sometimes even after we leave.  But the verbal abuse and psychological abuse depletes our confidence and self-worth.  We begin to lose ourselves.  And when that happens, we convince ourselves that everything our abusers said to us was true.  And tear ourselves down and make us feel worse and worse.   We often search for ways to forget, or pretend it never happened.  And that doesn’t help either.  You can’t escape your past.  When it comes back to haunt us, the first thing survivors grab for are quick fixes.  That can be anything from abusing substances or promiscuity, to total reclusion and anything in between.  According to the Center On Addiction dot Org, a common psychological factor that attributes one to becoming a drug addict is having endured,  “physical, sexual or emotional abuse or trauma.”  The best way to take control of your past abuse is to build yourself up in a healthy way.  And that starts with your confidence.  Someone who values themselves  and has a strong sense of worth, typically won’t turn to drugs or alcohol to numb the pain.   So, let’s keep you safe and build you back up.  Give you your power back.  The most important way to build your confidence is by changing the way you talk to yourself.  And this goes for everyone - not just survivors of abuse.  For whatever reason, it became a societal mantra that we are our harshest critics - which encourages us to trash ourselves, to ourselves.  We as people should always push ourselves to be better and do our best.  But not at the expense of our self-esteem.    In high school, typically we look to the athletes and the honors students as the high achievers.  The ones with the highest sense of self, that push themselves the hardest and will go on to achieve the most.  Right?  For my high school, it was the soccer players.   And what made our soccer team so successful is that they, and their coach, demanded their best from them at every practice.  At all times, they were pushing themselves to do their best.  But not at the expense of their confidence.  The coach and team would bolster their sense of confidence, and they would supplement it by talking themselves up.  Statistics show that high school students with more confidence are less likely to take part in risky behaviors.  The two least susceptible populations in high school for trying drugs or teen pregnancies are : Athletes and Honors Students.  Because these activities provide the students with confidence.   For me, I attended a magnet program for theater and performing arts for high school.  So instead of having gym and electives, I had a secondary schedule filled with dance classes, voice and acting. And it was always the same people. And it was a lot of fun.  But, I always felt isolated from my classmates.  They were a clique, and I didn’t belong.  Now, they never said I didn’t belong or wasn’t invited.  It was what I told myself, everyday.  That I wasn’t pretty enough, that I wasn’t cool enough, or that I wasn’t talented enough to hang out with them.  And without them having to say a word, I completely took myself out of the running to be included in their group.  At the time, I didn’t realize what I was doing.  I felt like what they were doing and saying was what kept me isolated.  But looking back, because I was telling myself that I wasn’t worthy of being a part of their group, I didn’t even try to be their friends.  I had myself completely convinced that I was not good enough.    Have you ever had an experience like this?  Think back to a time where you felt left out or isolated from a group or an event.  Did anyone ever say anything about you not being invited or welcome there?  Or was it you that told yourself?  Was it you that convinced yourself that you’re not good enough to be there?  Or that nobody there likes you?    I wanted so badly to live with the confidence they had, but I didn’t realize that I was the one tearing myself down constantly.  With the help of my teachers and peers, I was handed more than enough evidence to prove to myself what a piece of crap I was, but it was really just me tearing myself down.  Have you ever noticed yourself doing that?  Reiterating what someone else that you respect says about you?  When others say it, it hurts, but not as much as when you say it to yourself.  Think of a time that someone you loved or respected told you some horrible quality about you. Even if it was in a fight. What did you say to yourself after they said it?  Did you tell yourself that it wasn’t true, or did you agree and feel even worse about yourself?   There are innumerable benefits to building your confidence.  First and foremost, you won’t feel bad about yourself anymore.  You won’t blame yourself or beat yourself up.  You won’t feel powerless or like a small floating blob in the big, big universe. Instead, you could be the person that inspires others. Finding love within yourself, and being able to share your journey with others is inspiring.  Recognizing that you’ve overcome obstacles, whatever that means for you, and helping others to do so makes you a leader.    What I want you to do today, is recognize all of your amazing qualities.  Like I said, it’s easy to beat ourselves down.  So let’s work on building self esteem.  Let’s take some time and reflect on all of our amazing, strong qualities, and start putting more emphasis on those, than on the negative qualities that we judge and criticize ourselves for.   In the comments, make a list of your favorite qualities about yourself. It can be something physical, like, “I love my eyes,” or “I love my smile.” Or something emotional like, “I really care about my friends.” or “I am a kind and generous person.”  It won’t seem conceited or egotistical.  It’s confident.  If you’re beating yourself up because you can’t think of anything, just ask your best friend or a family member.  Somebody you trust whose kind and whose opinion you respect. Ask them what your 5 best qualities are and write them down.   Within the next few weeks, I will be launching a program called 5 Days to Confidence (Now, Healing From Emotional Abuse: Confidence Building Exercises for Survivors of Narcissism https://marissafayecohen.thinkific.com/enroll/1064727?price_id=1184204 ), where I take these ideals and more, to help you build confidence back up after abuse. Changing your self-talk is just one small step to increasing confidence.  In 4 days, you’ll learn tools tips and tricks on how to build yourself up, and stay confident while healing from your trauma.   Thank you guys for tuning in today! You’re taking big strides to becoming a more confident you! Next week, we’ll be talking about Stalking.  The dangers, the show You, and maybe a special guest!   Hey! If you enjoyed this podcast, you have to check out www.MarissaFayeCohen.com/Private-Coaching. Thats www.M-a-r-i-s-s-a-F-a-y-e-c-o-h-e-n.com backslash private-coaching.  Marissa would love to develop a made-for-you healing plan to heal from emotional abuse. She does all the work, and you just show up. Stop feeling stuck, alone, and hurt, and live a free, confident, and peaceful life.  Don’t forget to subscribe to the Healing From Emotional Abuse podcast, and follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/marissafcohen, and instagram @Marissa.Faye.Cohen. We’d love to see you there!

Get Your FREE COPY of  my book, 3 Signs of A Toxic Relationship, Now... Can you heal from abuse?  What do I do after leaving my narcissist? What does a healthy relationship look like? These concerns cross the minds of over 20 people every minute; over 28,800 people every day.  And the sad fact is, we still don’t talk about it enough.  Healing from Emotional Abuse isn’t a bandaid situation.  But it doesn’t have to be a five year process either. Millions of other survivors around the worlds entires lives have been impacted by their narcissist.  Yours doesn’t have to.  To show you how to live a free, confident and peaceful life, your host and Founder of the Healing From Emotional Abuse Philosophy, Marissa F. Cohen. Hello and Welcome back to Healing From Emotional Abuse. I’m Marissa F. Cohen.  Today, we’re talking about Victim Blaming. What is Victim Blaming?  Victim Blaming is Devaluing the victim of a crime, an accident, or any time of abusive maltreatment by holding them wholly or partially responsible for the wrongful conduct against them.   In laymen's terms, that means blaming somebody for the crime that they did not commit.  That they were a victim of. Or putting any sort of blame on that person, even though they had no part in the making of the decisions.   There are a lot of ways that people might not realize that they’re victim blaming.  A lot of really common phrases are blaming somebody by saying that they’re doing this for attention.  Or they’re saying it for attention. By asking somebody how much you drank.  If you were at a party and something bad happened to you, saying, “how much did you drink?” Or, “did you use any drugs?”  And using that as a means to explain why that person is at fault for what happened to them.   And my absolute least favorite ever, and it still, I don’t understand how, but it’s still so common that this is the first thing people ask victims of sexual assault after it happens.  “What were you wearing?”  Why on earth would somebody’s clothing determine whether it’s okay or not okay to take advantage of that person? I’ll never understand. Or, “if you didn’t want that to happen to you, than you shouldn’t have… blank.”  So you’re saying that they are the cause  of what happened to them because of something they did.   And while some of these play a part in being targeted for abuse, they are not the reason for the assault. The only reason a sexual assault happens is because offender chose to offend. The victim does not have a choice or any say. They don’t give consent. And that’s what makes it sexual assault.    Rape and sexual assault are never about sexual urges or being turned on.  It’s about power and control.  Being able to overpower a person, and take away their control.  It’s a violent and coercive shift in the power dynamic.  A perfect example is, On January 1st, 2020 an article came out from Northern Illinois University’s newspaper, the Independent, citing a classic example of victim blaming.  A woman was sexually assaulted in an alley behind a bar, and the lawyer representing the establishment, El Hefe Super Macho Taquiria, stated that “she was more than 50% of the proximate cause of injury.”   That’s his way of saying, she did this to herself. The survivor claims that she was drugged at the establishment and assaulted by the two security guards that escorted her out to the back alley behind the bar.  The bar’s defense against that was that she  became overly intoxicated and, “neglected to take adequate and proper steps necessary to protect her own safety while at the establishment.”  So now, not only are they saying that their employees, their security guards were not responsible for what happened, but she completely is because she was drinking and became intoxicated.   Now, I know that, that’s not an excuse, and that’s classic victim blaming. But that is so dangerous to survivors.   So, what do you think about that?  Does the responsibility of safety fall on the establishment or on the patron?   I know from working in the restaurant industry for 12 years that laws surrounding getting a liquor license will tell you that the establishment is to blame.  They are required to maintain a safe environment for patrons by monitoring drinking while in the establishment.  But what do you guys think? Another example is:   In 2018. the Centre de Communautaire Maritime in Brussels featured an exhibit filled with clothes worn by victims of sexual assault to combat the idea that what you were wearing does not in any way justify rape.  There were clothes from button up tops and dress pants, to dresses, jeans and even baby clothes. Toddler clothes. Clothes that you were too young to be able to know or be able to conceptualize what sex is. And they were hanging on the wall.  Hundreds of pieces around this exhibit.  And it was really eye opening for a lot of people.  It doesn’t matter what you’re wearing.  What matters that somebody else is taking control of you.  Whether you are conscious or unconscious.  Whether you are a child or an adult.  If there is no consent, it is sexual assault.  It is rape  The belief that what you were wearing  causes rape is extremely damaging to survivors.    There are numerous programs you’ll see around college campuses in April.  There’s denim day.  There’s the Clothesline project.  There are all these programs and all of these things to show you that it really doesn’t matter what you’re wearing.  There was a girl that was raped while wearing jeans and the judge decided that the perpetrator was not guilty because jeans are difficult to take off.  And in order to pull jeans off of a person, the person wearing the jeans needs to help.  So she was partly responsible for her rape and therefore, he was not guilty, which is the origin of Denim Day.  People wear jeans on Denim Day to show how ridiculous a claim that is. You can be raped in anything.      Think about it this way.  Do we blame people that wear backpacks or purses for their belongings getting mugged?  Do we blame people who were the victim of a drive-by shooting or a school shooting for being shot?  What is the difference?   When victims come running out of a school, or afterwards on the news when we see a school shooting, we never, ever, it doesn’t even cross our minds to blame the people that were shot.  Or the people that were there, that were not the shooter or the event.  So why do we blame survivors of rape and sexual assault for what happened TO them without their consent?  What’s the difference?   Another example.  After the video was released of former Baltimore Ravens Running back, Ray Rice beating his then fiancé (now wife) Janay Rice, the Baltimore Ravens tweeted about how that was Janay Rice’s fault.  She was clearly the victim in all the videos.  There was nothing she could have done to deserve being punched like that, then dragged by her hair out of the elevator.  But we try to blame the victim because the Baltimore Raven’s didn’t want the negative PR against Ray Rice.  That’s not right.     And what about that case in Stubenville, Ohio? There was a 12 year old girl that went to a party, just like 200 of her classmates. She got drunk and passed out and then was gang raped by her entire football team. Clearly she was too young to be drinking, but you know what, so were the 200 other people that were there, including the football players.  So why is it that the town of Stubenville turned against the girl who was gang raped by the football team, and not the football team?  And not the students that took videos?  Why was she the one that was vilified and tormented and harassed until her family left the town?   As a society, I feel that we tend to value people who are more important.  Who have a higher value.  So the football team brought money and attention to Stubenville, so it only “makes sense” to value them more than the victim of a crime, right?  That makes total sense.   And transitioning past that, who remembers the Harvey Weinstein case?  I mean, how could you forget it?  A ton of celebrities came out about that, starting with Ashely Judd, Alyssa Milano, Rose McGowan, and it eventually got to Angelina Jolie, Reese Witherspoon, and all of these people who hold so much value in society.  We never for a second doubted these women.  Not once did I hear anyone say, “Oh, they’re probably lying about it for attention.”  Why? Why do we put more belief in people who “hold value” than other people who are victims of the exact same crime?  Why do you think nobody doubted the famous celebrities that came out and spoke up about their abuse?  And why are we the first ones  to jump on people that  accuse famous people?  Like Bill Cosby’s accusers.  And the accusers of famous NHL players or basketball players?  Why are we so quick to judge them, but we’re not nearly as quick to judge famous celebrities who are accusing other people?   Do we think fame or celebrity or value affect peoples likelihood to believe the victim?   Here is how Victim Blaming hurts people.   It makes victims less likely to come forward because they don’t want to be blamed or not believed by people.  They’re afraid of the JUDGMENT that comes from coming forward. It prevents people from breaking their silence, and getting the help and healing they really need! It silences victims and empowers predators.   The documentary The Hunting Ground from 2013, followed a bunch of survivors of sexual assault on college campuses.  In their research, they found that only about 9% of males in the world are abusers.  Of the small percentage of men who are abusers, about 85% of them rape 6 or more people.  So, why are we empowering small percentage of perpetrators that are hurting people, instead of the giant number of survivors every single day? Why do we empower the people that are hurting people, instead of the people that are trying to heal?    And I understand, I always get this.  You might be thinking, “Hey Marissa, but what about fa

Get Your FREE COPY of  my book, 3 Signs of A Toxic Relationship, Now... Can you heal from abuse?  What do I do after leaving my narcissist? What does a healthy relationship look like? These concerns cross the minds of over 20 people every minute; over 28,800 people every day.  And the sad fact is, we still don’t talk about it enough.  Healing from Emotional Abuse isn’t a bandaid situation.  But it doesn’t have to be a five year process either. Millions of other survivors around the worlds entire lives have been impacted by their narcissist.  Yours doesn’t have to.  To show you how to live a free, confident and peaceful life, your host and Founder of the Healing From Emotional Abuse Philosophy, Marissa F. Cohen.   Hey Everyone, Welcome back to Healing From Emotional Abuse. Where we talk about anything related to narcissistic abuse in a very raw and candid way.  The whole point here is to bring awareness to the topics of domestic violence and sexual assault. I want everyone to know what people go through, and the different topics and coping skills that relate to narcissism, and narcissistic abuse and sexual assault so that you can be more understanding and aware of people and friends and family members who experience it, and how you can better help.   My life mission is to help survivors who are leaving abusive relationships or have already left abusive relationships find healing.  I want to help you succeed and be the champions of your lives.  Take your life back and take your voice back.    Today I just wanted to share a bit of my story, and how I’ve gotten to where I am now from the experiences that I’ve had.   My first boyfriend in college started off by being kind and he was charming, and he was funny.  We were on the student government together.  Every single day he’d bring me snacks to my desk, and we would put our feet up on my desk and watch Glee and eat snacks.  It was fun and he made me feel special and loved. And I was thrilled because he was my first ever relationship, and that’s what I wanted.  I wanted someone to coddle me, and be kind and funny and thrilling.  It was thrilling.  It wasn’t thrilling like we were on a roller coaster.  It was thrilling like this is what I saw in movies, and this is what I always dreamed my first relationship would be like, and it was really happening.    So, by the time we were official for three months, he did a complete 180 and had become verbally abusive, emotionally abusive, psychologically abusive, and sexually abusive.  It started off by him telling me that the things I was saying were dumb or stupid. And then my opinions were stupid.  And then, everything I did and said, and believed and wanted were stupid.  One of the things that he told me was that I was never going to be independent.  That I’m always going to depend on a man, specifically him, for support financially and emotionally, because I was a piece of crap. And I would never amount to anything.   After he would say things like that, it’s not like I had the foresight to say, “Hm, he’s wrong. I’m not going to be like that.  I’m never going to be like that.”  At this point, he had fulfilled my dreams and what I expected from a boyfriend.  And I had grown to love him and respect him so much throughout the first couple weeks and months, that by the time that it was getting really bad, I didn’t even see it anymore.   I thought and felt that everything he had said and done to me was because he loved me and respected me.  And he wanted me to be better.  I thought that it was all out of love and respect, because that’s what I gave to him. I thought that this was his way of showing love and respect to me.    At this point, it was a little bit passed Christmas.  I had become such a shell of a human, that  was experiencing horrendous bouts of depression and anxiety.  The thought of going to school, getting up in the morning, showering, brushing my hair, were all feats.  And they were things that I needed to overcome every single day.   I was still on the student government, I was still the face of the student government.  I had all of these responsibilities and things I needed to do, on top of working two jobs and taking six classes.  So, it’s not like I had a lot of time to wallow. I just had to figure out how to pretend that I was not this broken shell of myself.  So, everyday I’d go to school.  And everyday, people  would talk to me, and talk to me and approach me, and he would demean me and it just never got better.   And I thought, “He loves me, and he is doing this because he loves me. I just wish he wasn’t hurting me.  I wish he wasn’t saying these things and I wish he wasn’t doing these things. But he must be doing it for my benefit.”  And all I could think about were the good times.  How at the very beginning, we’d sit at my desk and watch Glee.  And how he took me on these beautiful dates to these amazing restaurants.  How he took me for a walk on the beach, and held my hand, and made me feel so special. And said all these beautiful things to me.  That’s what would go through my mind every single day. All of these horrible things that were happening right now must be coming from a better place because he’s still that good person inside. There’s still that goodness in him, and those experiences  that we had.  And occasionally we would go on beautiful dates, and he would say beautiful things, and we would do fun stuff and he would be nice.  But it just got worse and worse.  With everything that I let him get away with and everything I didn’t stand my ground on. I want to stop for a second and really reflect on this.  Have you ever had an experience like that? Where a friend or a boyfriend or significant other or family member treated you in a way where you didn’t truly understand what they were doing was narcissistic and abusive?  But it made you feel bad, you just justified and rationalized it?  Think about it. Because that’s something that all survivors of narcissistic abuse go through. It’s really important to keep that in mind when you’re working with or talking to or helping survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, emotional abuse and narcissism.  Not seeing those red flags and justifying those behaviors is very common.   On January 15, 2010, the ten year anniversary is coming up, I remember we were at his house and his parents and his brother were downstairs, and we were upstairs in a hang out room.  We were watching a movie and the movie ended and I said I need to get ready to go.  I had about 15 minutes before I had to leave to be home before my curfew.  He suggested we go and cuddle for 15 minutes before you go.  “I really want to spend that time with you.”  And that was something that we’d done before.  We cuddled, and laid in his bed. And we’d lay on the couch. It was fun and familiar.  And those were the quality moments that I rally loved with him.   So, we went into his room, and we got on his bed, and he said, “If we’re going to cuddle, I want to cuddle naked.”  It was weird, but it wasn’t out of the ordinary.  It was something we’d done before.  He justified and we justified it as, the skin-on-skin contact is so much more beautiful.    At this time, I was a virgin.  I had never done anything before.  I think I made out with one guy, maybe two guys before him.  But that was it.  I’d never done anything else.  So, he knew that I was not ready for sex.  We had had that conversation, to the day, one week before that I wasn’t ready.  And we’d been together for almost three months and I was still a baby.    So, we were laying in his bed, naked, cuddling, and then before I could even blink, he had flipped me onto my back, held my hands above my head, and he began to have sex with me.   It was so shocking that I couldn’t breathe.  And it was like time had stopped, and everything in the world was frozen.  And I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t scream.  And I couldn’t do or say anything.  I didn’t even realize it was rape until about 6 months later.  I don’t know how long it went for, all I know is I don’t think I breathed the entire time, and when he stopped, he rolled over on his side and I was still laying on my back, and I was shaking.  He was panting like he had just done all this incredibly difficult work.  I just rolled over, looked away from him and started crying, and I couldn’t stop crying for an hour. I couldn’t make words. I think that was the first panic attack I ever had. I was gasping for air, and I was just hysterical.   And he was just laying there rubbing my back, telling me that everything fine and I’m just being dramatic.  That, “Sex is nice and that’s what boyfriends and girlfriends do.  You have sex with each other. So what’s the problem?”   I ended up staying at his place that night because I couldn’t drive.  I was hysterical.  And I stayed in a guest room, but I didn’t sleep the entire night.  I don’t even think I closed my eyes for more than 10 seconds at a time because I was very fearful.  The next morning, he took me out for breakfast, after his parents gave me a ton of crap about having had sex.  And making the joke that he owes me a morning after breakfast.  And all this stuff.  I was mortified.  So, we went out to breakfast.  He further justified why what happened the night before was okay.  And how I’m supposed to just keep doing it.  Doing it more will make it better.  But I didn’t feel anything.  It’s not like it hurt.  It just felt numb.  So the problem for me wasn’t that it hurt or didn’t feel good.  Or that I wanted it to get better, physically. The problem was that I didn’t feel anything physically, but emotionally, I feel torn apart.  I remember sitting at breakfast and I was eating food, I was force feeding myself, but I just felt this big, gaping hole in my stomach that I couldn’t fill.  I thought maybe eating more food would help, or having more sex would help.  I didn’t know, because I didn’t know it wasn’t normal.  There was no education about w

Get Your FREE COPY of  my book, 3 Signs of A Toxic Relationship, Now... Hey Everyone.  My name is Marissa Faye Cohen, my website is MarissaFayeCohen.com, and I wanted to introduce myself before we start on this journey together.  For the past 11 years, I have worked closely with thousands of survivors of narcissistic abuse, emotional abuse, sexual assault and harassment around the world of all sexualities and genders.  I’ve published three best selling books The Breaking Through the Silence Series, and Healing From Emotional Abuse: the Three Keys for Overcoming Narcissism, all about how to heal from abuse. In these works, I use my 11 years of research and personal life experience to share my philosophy to overcoming narcissism, in order to help other survivors feel relatable, find healthy relationships, and boost confidence. That has become my life mission.  To help as many survivors heal from their emotional abuse as possible.  Between my books, the Breaking Through the Silence series, coaching programs and my Healing From Emotional Abuse Philosophy, I have created a system to help anyone suffering heal from emotional abuse.   On this podcast, the goal is to answer the questions and concerns that survivors have in terms of overcoming and healing from their abuse.  Can you heal from abuse? Narcissist definition.  Is my partner a narcissist? Healing from narcissistic abuse. Steps to healing from abuse.  Confidence Exercises. Confidence.  Self Love. and Self Esteem. Healthy Relationships. What are toxic relationships? And much more.   I know that what you’re feeling right now is difficult, disheartening and it feels like the pain will never go away.  But it will. I have worked with over a thousand survivors of emotional and narcissistic abuse, and created a philosophy to legitimately healing from emotional abuse. And it can and will help you overcome your narcissism, and live a free, confident and peaceful life.   Right now, imagine that you’re standing on a cliff, and across a deep deep canyon, is the happiest version of yourself.  You see yourself smiling, surrounded by healthy relationships and good friendships. You see yourself having fun, and laughing.  What are you doing? I have built the bridge to get you from here, where you’re standing now, to the other side.  All you have to do it let me guide you across the bridge. If you’re ready to feel free raise your fist and say YES! If you’re ready to wear confidence, raise your fist and say YES!  If you’re ready to live peacefully without fear, raise your fist and say YES! Awesome!  You’re ready to start Healing From Emotional Abuse   Your abuse doesn’t define you.  It’s the steps you take to heal that will determine the rest of your life.

Anne Catona Lynn survived a traumatic car accident at age 4, multiple sexual assaults in her 20s, and decades of unprocessed PTSD—until she discovered EMDR therapy and began her healing journey. Now a trauma-informed consultant and author, Anne shares her transformative story and the specific techniques that helped her reclaim her life. Discover how childhood trauma affects physical health, why self-medication fails, and the surprising connection between adverse childhood experiences and autoimmune diseases. Learn practical, actionable strategies you can implement today to regulate your nervous system and begin healing. Anne also discusses her groundbreaking work building trauma-sensitive, resilient schools and communities—and how the same principles that heal individuals can heal entire organizations. Topics covered: EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing) therapy breakthrough Childhood trauma and PTSD recovery Sexual assault healing and shame Mind-body connection: trauma and autoimmune disease Practical grounding exercises for nervous system regulation Reframing trauma narratives from shame to strength Building trauma-informed schools and communities Holistic healing: nutrition, movement, mindfulness When to seek professional help and therapy Resources mentioned: "Shedding Lies: Living Beyond Childhood Trauma" (available on Amazon, Kindle on sale for 99¢) "Depression Lied to Me" (anthology featuring Anne's story) Upcoming book: "Grief, Grace, and Gravity" (with her husband) Website: KatonLynnConsulting.com Keywords: trauma recovery, EMDR therapy, childhood PTSD, sexual assault healing, nervous system regulation, autoimmune disease, trauma-informed schools, healing strategies, adverse childhood experiences, mental health   Transcript:    📍  📍 Welcome to Healing From Emotional Abuse, the award-winning podcast that sheds light on the journey from victim to survivor. I'm your host Marissa f Cohen, and I'm thrilled to have you join us on this empowering and healing adventure, the Healing from Emotional Abuse podcast. Isn't just another conversation. It's a sanctuary for those who have endured abuse and are determined to reclaim their lives. Through interviews with inspiring survivors, experts, and advocates, we aim to break the silence surrounding abuse and empower our listeners with the knowledge. Support and resources they need to break free from their past. Our mission is to provide a safe space where survivors can share their stories, find solace in knowing they're not alone, and discover the strength within themselves to heal and thrive. Each episode is filled with powerful narratives, practical strategies, and compassionate guidance to help you overcome the lingering effects of abuse and build a brighter future. It brings me immense joy to announce that the Healing from Emotional Abuse Podcast has been honored with the prestigious Purple Ribbon Award for outstanding domestic violence podcasts by domestic shelters.org, recognizing our commitment to raising awareness about abuse. And offering hope to survivors worldwide. We have hit top 10% globally and top podcast in 25 countries. This accolade is a testament to the incredible guests who have shared their stories and the tremendous support from our devoted listeners. Thank you so, so much. Whether you're a survivor seeking healing, a friend or family member wanting to understand and support, or an advocate dedicated to creating a safer world, this podcast is for you. Our conversations delve into topics such as emotional, physical, financial, and psychological abuse, recovery techniques, self-care strategies. Legal rights and much, much more. Join us as we embark on this transformative journey together. Subscribe to healing from emotional abuse on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, your story matters, and you have the power to break your silence from the chains of abuse. I'm your host, Marissa f Cohen, and this is healing from emotional abuse. Let's reclaim our lives and empower one another.    📍  📍 All right. Welcome back to The Healing From Emotional Abuse Podcast. I'm your host, Marissa f Cohen, and today we're joined with Anne Catona Lynn, who is an incredible survivor. She also is a coach, um, an author of a couple books and a consultant. So, uh, consultant, coach, and author. I'm sorry, author and speaker, empowering community leaders. To build safe, supportive schools through authentic engagement, um, and helps communities unite to prevent problem behaviors, crises, and improve school culture. She's the author of Shedding Lies, sharing my Journey, sharing her journey, overcoming Childhood Trauma, and she likes to advocate for younger adults with mental health and substance use disorders. So welcome on. Anne, thank you so much for being here today. Thanks so much for having me. I'm really great. I'm really excited to be here. Oh my gosh. I'm so excited to have you. So tell us a little bit about yourself. I read your bio, um, but I wanna hear it from you. Yeah. Um, so. Um, you know, again, I, I, I do this work and it really came out of my childhood trauma. So I, um, I had an accident when I was four and, um, I was, um, it was a car accident and I went face first through the windshield and I remember all of those things. And, uh, at the time, they wouldn't allow families to stay with you in the hospital. And so I was in the hospital by myself and again, remember all of it. I'm 57 now, so this was 53 years ago and I remember everything and it, they further traumatized us. So it was, I had full blown PTSD. Then when I got home it was 1970, we didn't talk about stuff. We still, in so many ways, especially kids, we're like, oh, if they don't, we don't see any big issues. Let's not talk about it. And, and the mistake was I was really struggling. I just, it wasn't as outward as much as it, you know, it could have possibly been, but there were a lot of things I was hiding and didn't know that that's what I was doing. Again, it was just my coping strategies and so. That really set the stage for the work that I do. Um, you know, again, childhood trauma, I had full-blown PTSD. I started drinking in my at 14 'cause it's socially acceptable and it's really kind of, you know, we would go out to Bush parties and, you know, get a keg of beer and that's what we did. It was not a big deal. And so it was kind of like a cool rite of passage. And, um, so I, but what I, what I realized then was that my PTSD was kind of. Being self-medicated by the drinking. And I was al, I've always spent most of my life trying to prove myself and, uh, you know, just trying to kind of put on a good face, like everything is wonderful. None of the, you know, and, and so everything that I learned as a child was kind of what I did. And so. That really, um, set the stage for just more self-medication. You know, again, a lot of times we think of self-medication as something like alcohol or, you know, drugs or anything, which, yes, it's true. I also, you know, uh, good things can be self-medication. So for me too, I was so insecure. Uh, I'm the youngest of seven and I really. I didn't feel that I, you know, I didn't have a, my, my family was busy and my parents were both working, so I didn't get a whole lot of attention. I was kind of passed around and again, didn't really realize the impact that that had on me. But my self-esteem was really low. Uh, and I got into relationships with guys that weren't really good for me because. I was looking for love and you know, like the song, looking for love in all the wrong places. And unfortunately, you know, um, in my early twenties, uh, I just had ex, I had, I had experienced being sexually assaulted by two different guys that I was, that I knew. And one of them I previously dated. So, um, that further added trauma and, um, you know, the first one, like I said, it was a guy that I had dated and so we had sexual relations and, um, this, this happened after we had broken up. And he came to my apartment on a Saturday night and it was, you know, uh, my, I was sleeping and it, it was, he rang the doorbell and, and I'm like, you know, what do you want? I'm sleeping. And he said, I just really wanna talk to you. And I'm like, okay. 'cause I couldn't, there's like an extra layer of security and I couldn't see that he had someone else with him. And so, um, if I would, I would've not let him in for sure. And. Um, so anyway, let him in. And he pushed in through the door. 'cause you know, when I saw the other person with him, it was his cousin. I didn't want him to come in just 'cause I was like, what's going on? What do you, why you're here. And, um. I just wanted to go to sleep. So anyway, when they came in, he just, um, forced himself on me. And, uh, I didn't realize what happened. My body kind of just shut down and really disconnected from my, you know, my brain. My brain disconnected from my body. And um, and then like three days later I was out with some friends and we were at a bar and all of a sudden I had a panic attack and I realized that, I'm like, oh my gosh, I was raped. So I filed a police report. I didn't press charges. 'cause again, there's so much shame and blame that you put on yourself. And that was, um, you know, not only had I already had so much of that being a woman in the seventies and I. You know, kind of again, being the youngest and, um, feeling that I, I, I was sort of, I, I wasn't expected. I have six siblings and eight years, and I'm eight years younger than them, so it was like an oops. And, um, you know, so I didn't, I, I just, uh, really did not feel like I was, um. I felt like I was a pain in the butt all the time, so I always felt like I was a bother. So that's why I really, I couldn't imagine, and I, you know, I was also across the country. I was gonna school in San Francisco. My family's on the East coast, and I, I just couldn't even imagine going through a court trial of. Having to press charges and, and,

Laura Richards spent 33 years married to a narcissist before realizing she was being emotionally abused. Now nine months post-divorce and thriving, Laura shares the painful truth about what emotional abuse looks like from the inside—and why it took so long to recognize. Discover the subtle manipulation tactics that kept her trapped: constant devaluation, gaslighting, lack of empathy during family deaths, and the shocking discovery that her husband was likely grooming her best friend (who he's now engaged to). But more importantly, learn the exact strategies Laura used to heal: journaling, therapy, vulnerability, and finding a tribe of friends who truly support you. This episode breaks down the difference between high confidence and narcissism, explains why narcissists are often "people-pleasers," and offers hope to anyone still trapped in an emotionally abusive relationship. Topics covered: Red flags you might miss in a narcissistic relationship Gaslighting, devaluation, and emotional manipulation tactics Why narcissists lack empathy (especially during grief) The people-pleaser narcissist vs. overt narcissism How to identify healthy vs. unhealthy friendships Journaling as a healing tool Therapy and professional help Using humor to cope and survive Breaking the silence: why community matters Moving forward with hope after divorce High confidence vs. narcissism: understanding the difference Resources mentioned: Laura's Podcast: "That's Where I'm At Podcast" Website: ThatIsWhereImAt.com Amazon Journals: Divorce journals, gratitude journals, and more Available on all podcast platforms and social media Keywords: narcissistic marriage, emotional abuse, gaslighting, narcissist red flags, divorce recovery, narcissistic personality disorder, covert narcissist, emotional manipulation, healing from abuse, toxic relationships, narcissist awareness     Transcript:      📍  📍  📍 Welcome to Healing From Emotional Abuse, the award-winning podcast that sheds light on the journey from victim to survivor. I'm your host Marissa f Cohen, and I'm thrilled to have you join us on this empowering and healing adventure, the Healing from Emotional Abuse podcast. Isn't just another conversation. It's a sanctuary for those who have endured abuse and are determined to reclaim their lives. Through interviews with inspiring survivors, experts, and advocates, we aim to break the silence surrounding abuse and empower our listeners with the knowledge. Support and resources they need to break free from their past. Our mission is to provide a safe space where survivors can share their stories, find solace in knowing they're not alone, and discover the strength within themselves to heal and thrive. Each episode is filled with powerful narratives, practical strategies, and compassionate guidance to help you overcome the lingering effects of abuse and build a brighter future. It brings me immense joy to announce that the Healing from Emotional Abuse Podcast has been honored with the prestigious Purple Ribbon Award for outstanding domestic violence podcasts by domestic shelters.org, recognizing our commitment to raising awareness about abuse. And offering hope to survivors worldwide. We have hit top 10% globally and top podcast in 25 countries. This accolade is a testament to the incredible guests who have shared their stories and the tremendous support from our devoted listeners. Thank you so, so much. Whether you're a survivor seeking healing, a friend or family member wanting to understand and support, or an advocate dedicated to creating a safer world, this podcast is for you. Our conversations delve into topics such as emotional, physical, financial, and psychological abuse, recovery techniques, self-care strategies. Legal rights and much, much more. Join us as we embark on this transformative journey together. Subscribe to healing from emotional abuse on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, your story matters, and you have the power to break your silence from the chains of abuse. I'm your host, Marissa f Cohen, and this is healing from emotional abuse. Let's reclaim our lives and empower one another.  Hey friends. Welcome back to Healing for Emotional Abuse. I'm your host, Marissa f Cohen, and I'm so excited for this week's episode. Um, this interview is a. A little bit old. I think it's about a year old. Um, but it's with a dear friend of mine, Laura Richards, who is an incredible podcast host. And, um, we talk about her narcissistic marriage. She was married to a narcissist for 33 years, starting when she was a young 22. And. We get into like the nitty gritty of things that he said to like weaponize against her and you know, how it made her feel and then getting out of it and healing and the different techniques that she used to heal. So I am so excited for you to listen to this week's episode. If you have any comments. Questions, concerns, um, anything about it, feel free to email us at Healing from Emotional abuse pod@gmail.com. Um, so thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoy this week's episode.    📍  📍 Welcome back to The Healing From Emotional Abuse Podcast. I'm your host, Marissa f Cohen, and today we're joined with a really good friend of mine. I just met her a couple weeks ago, but like I'm in love. I feel like we're best friends now. I know we talked a lot today, too. We got to know. Yes, we did. Well. Presenting Laura Richards, um, we went to a mastermind together, um, met in Vegas and just kind of hit it off instantly. So welcome on. Laura. I'm so excited to have you. Hello everybody. How's it going? We're great. Thanks for asking. No kidding. Would you mind, would you mind introducing yourself? Sure. I will not mind. I do not mind. I'm, uh, Laura Richards. I'm from Las Vegas, and, um, uh, for 15 years I was a speech therapist and, um, but most recently I am, um, a podcaster talking about the things that we don't talk about in the, in the world, you know, like emotional abuse, like we're talk about today. Grieving and death and abuse and widowhood and all the things that just we don't talk about as women. And so I've been doing that and I was married for 32 years and uh, recently, um, realized I was being emotionally abused and left that relationship. And so now I'm on my healing journey and trying to make a difference in the lives of others. That's what I'm doing. And I also have three amazing grown children. Very important thing to not forget. Yes. I try not to forget them. I know. No, not really. No. I love them. And I also have a son-in-law and, um, so they're just, they're amazing. Yes. I'm, I'm very thankful that they have survived all of this, so. That's awesome. Thank you for sharing. And, um, I will be on, on Laura's podcast Yes. When it comes out. So I'll link, I'll link that to the show notes here too. Yep. Um, and thank you for putting together that podcast, the things that we need to talk about. You know, the more we talk about abuse and widowhood and miscarriages and all those, all, like all these things, the more we talk about them, the less taboo they'll feel to talk about. And also the more information we get. You know, in the last couple years, it's completely unrelated, but in the last couple years. We started talking about miscarriages more because women were always blamed for them. Oh my gosh. And you find out that about 40% of women experience miscarriages, but the 40% are all quiet and have been guilted or feel embarrassed or ashamed. So now, you know, everyone felt like an island. But now we're starting to see, and it's the same thing with abuse. Yeah. We're starting to see the real frequency of it. Well, now you're giving me more ideas. There you go. I'm happy to know and, and infertility and, you know, I know people who are struggling with infertility, you know, things like that, that we just don't, I didn't think of them because we're not talking about them. And one of my really good friends, I said, um, healing comes in community, she said, but it also comes when you have the conversation. So not just us hanging together, but actually being vulnerable and talking about these things so that we can all heal on our journey. Yeah, absolutely. You know, everybody feels silenced because we feel alone, like nobody will understand. And then you find out one person understands and can relate, and then you find out 300 other people can, or in our case, 1.5 million people this year can. Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's a lot. That's a gross number, you know? Mm-hmm. One 5 million women specifically. Mm-hmm. Um, experience abuse every year. Yes. That's terrible. Yeah. And that's just from the demographic that talks about it, you know? Right. Pretty, pretty awful. Yeah. So Laura, on a happy moment. That's right. Why don't you tell us your story? Okay. Well, I can laugh because I'm nine months out from my divorce and I am happily divorced. I will say that for the rest of my life I'm happily divorced because I felt so oppressed for so long. My, um, ex and I were together for 33 years and, you know, 22-year-old Laura didn't know what she was doing other than she trusted this guy and was looking for love in all the wrong places because, and I say that because I know how I was at 22, I, I just was awkward and insecure and I felt like, oh, this guy loves me. And I think in his own way, he, maybe he did. I don't know. I'm still working on all. I'm still trying to unravel what was a lie, what was not a lie, but whatever. I mean, I don't think someone sticks around for 33 years without having something in there, you know? Um, and we had a really good time together and we met in college and, um, but I was, I went, I had a long relationship before that with a high school boyfriend, and so it was, I could see why it happened and. So, you know, being nine months out and learning about narcissism and all this, it's like manipulation. I'm still on this healing journey. It's been amazing to, to my brain is like unraveling so m

Michael Kent, traveling comedian and magician, joins Marissa to share hard-won lessons from 20 years of marriage while spending up to 250 days per year on the road. Discover why performer relationships fail, the "dopamine trap" of audience affirmation, and the one ritual that saved his marriage. Learn the three pillars of healthy relationships (communication, respect, trust), how to communicate vulnerably without blame, and why human connection matters more than ever in our isolated world. Michael reveals advice from Ralphie May that transformed his marriage and shares practical strategies for maintaining intimacy across distance. Topics covered: Why entertainment industry marriages fail (and why his didn't) How to distinguish between audience affirmation and real love The power of saying "What can I do to help?" Reframing relationship conflicts Breaking the content vs. happiness debate Connection as the antidote to addiction and loneliness Keywords: healthy relationships, marriage advice, communication skills, long-distance relationships, relationship tips, emotional intimacy, relationship goals   Full Transcript:  Marissa F. Cohen (Marissa F. Cohen) Welcome, Michael. I'm so excited to have you on the podcast today. Thank you so much for joining us.    Michael Kent Absolutely. It's so good to be here. I was happy to have you on my podcast recently, and I've never been on a podcast like yours, so I'm kind of excited and nervous. Oh, don't be nervous.   Marissa F. Cohen (Marissa F. Cohen) It's easy, breezy conversation. We're just chit-chatting. But tell everyone about your podcast, because I thought it was so much fun to be a guest on yours. Thank you. Sure.   Michael Kent Well, my podcast, it's funny because it has nothing to do with what I do for a living. So I make my living as a comedian and magician. During the pandemic, me and so many other people decided we were going to podcast. So I decided that mine was going to be about history, but not like the boring history. I am fascinated by the fact that I'm in my 40s and I'm still learning things. Every day, like there's new things to learn. And some of them are important. Some of them are just interesting. They're not important. And so what I decided to do was find a different story from history every week. And it has to sound like it's something that I just made up. And initially, the podcast was called Tell Me What to Google, because tell me what to Google, because there were people giving me these ideas like, hey, you should Google this. Because after the first season, I realized that it's really hard to be found on Google when you have Google in the name of your show. So my buddy Jonathan Burns came up with the title, The Internet Says It's True. And that's what it's been called for 267 episodes. Every week is a news story that sounds like it's absolutely made up. And they're all 100% verifiably true. I go through painstaking efforts to like go back and find the original newspaper articles and everything. But I present them in a way that's really fun and lighthearted. And then we do a quiz at the end. So yeah, it's been a fun project. It's really fun for me to work on something that is not me. It's not about my show and me.   Marissa F. Cohen (Marissa F. Cohen) And it sounds really fun. History is so interesting, and there's so much fun stuff out there. I love being on your podcast. For the last couple episodes, we were talking about food, which anyone who knows me knows that food is a passion of mine. Not cooking it, just eating it. But yeah, so check out The Internet Says It's True. It streams everywhere. You can listen to the episodes I'm on. But let's jump into the Healing for Emotional Abuse podcast. Michael, so you mentioned that you are a traveling comedian and magician. Will you tell us a little bit more about what you do?   Michael Kent Yeah. Basically, my job for the last 22 years has been to give people an hour of their life where they don't have to think about what's going on outside. They don't have to think about the... about the... They Thank You know, the stress and the tests and the exams, or if it's a workplace, you know, the deadlines and the news and politics. I'm just giving them an escape, which is what magic is. Magic is an amazing ability for us to be able to suspend our disbelief as if we're watching a wrestling match. And it's really easy, it turns out, for people to believe that something's happening that's impossible, because we all want to believe that that's true. Even the most skeptical people react to magic in a way that is almost childlike. Magic has a different reaction from everyone. Everyone has a different way of reacting to it. And I really love that, but I don't love the tension that magic brings. So I do a comedy show. I do a comedy magic show that sort of acknowledges the strange elephant in the room, and that is, I'm a man in my 40s pretending to be a wizard. This crazy career has taken me quite literally all over the world to 49 states. I still need to go to Wyoming. I haven't performed there yet. But 49 states, 19 countries, I believe, and cruise ships and military bases. And gosh, I performed on board an aircraft carrier last year while they were active in the sea. It's been an amazing career for the last couple decades. I'm focusing my efforts now more toward corporate groups and providing corporate groups with sort of an engagement tool and being that engagement facilitator for them to improve their events. So that's sort of the focus of my career currently. But for the last 20 years, I've been one of the top comedian magicians on the college market. So that's how I know you.   Marissa F. Cohen (Marissa F. Cohen) That's true. That's awesome. So you have... You've in one relationship for basically like the extent of all of your career. So 22 years on the road, and you and your wife, first, can you tell us how you met?   Michael Kent Yeah, it's not like one of those, you know, Hallmark stories. But my wife and I went to college together, had the same major and several of the same classes and never met.   Marissa F. Cohen (Marissa F. Cohen) We figured that out after the fact.   Michael Kent So we met through the girl that I grew up next door to when I was a little kid. So from the time I was born until I was eight years old, I lived next door to this person who I won't name because I don't know if I have their permission to talk about them publicly. So I grew up next to her, and she's like a sister to me. And we reconnected after college, like right after college, for the end of college, and we're hanging out. And Allison, my wife, was always around in the friend group. And I started sort of jokingly referring to her as my girlfriend because I had a crush on her. And finally, I asked her out, and we went on what I thought was like an amazing date. It was an amazing date. And then, let's see what happened next. We went off and dated other people. It didn't last. And then we reconnected like four or five months later, and that was the end of that. And we're coming up on our 20th wedding anniversary in August.   Marissa F. Cohen (Marissa F. Cohen) Wow. Yeah.   Michael Kent And like any marriage, know, it's had ups and downs and good times and bad times. And much of the good times and bad times have come from dealing with exactly what you're talking about, the idea that I do spend. At one point, I spent 250 days a year on the road doing shows. And that's really tough on any relationship, married or not, however long, you know, it's... It's just a difficult thing to learn how to deal with. When we met and started, you know, getting serious about dating, I was wanting to be a magician. I was wanting to do this, but I wasn't very successful yet. So she was sort of my sugar mama for the first few years because she had a job and I didn't. And so, you know, it took a while for my career to take off. And then it's been obviously a very, like, fulfilling and lucrative career since. And so, yeah, that's sort of where we are. And she and I are one of those sort of opposites attract couples, you know, like she is a bit more conservative and pragmatic. And I'm sort of a dreamy artist who, you know, head in the clouds type. But we have sort of become more similar as we've gotten older. think that probably just happens with married couples. After a long time, our tastes have become more similar.   Marissa F. Cohen (Marissa F. Cohen) That's awesome. So 20 years married, more than 22 years together. In our industry, like the college market, the traveling to entertain market, I don't know the statistic. I can look it up. But I think most marriages end with one partner that travels a lot and the other that doesn't. And thinking to the conferences that we go to or the colleagues that we have, most of them have been divorced. I can really only think of four people who have been consistently married to the same person. So keeping the communication, the love, the marriage alive is very challenging. So what do you and Allison do or like what have you learned over the years that has helped you guys navigate this, you know, kind   Michael Kent Yeah, first of all, she is a saint to be able to deal with this, right? Like when you think about someone being gone that much, and that's just the half of it. The being gone part is only half of the equation. We'll talk about the other half in a minute, but I was in Chicago Midway Airport headed to, where was I going? St. Louis. And I was headed to a conference, and the comedian Ralphie May, who has since passed, I recognized him just being a fan of comedy, and we struck up a conversation, and we sat next to each other on the flight, and we talked the whole way to St. Louis, and somehow we got talking about relationships. And at that point, Ralphie was married. He ended up getting divorced later, but he gave me the best relationship advice ever, and it sort of, I think, saved my marriage. And B

Email us at: HealingFromEmotionalAbusePod@gmail.com   Healing after abuse doesn’t end when the abuse does. In this episode, I reflect on 15 years of life after experiencing abuse, sharing how healing evolves over time, what recovery actually looks like long-term, and the insights that only come with distance and self-work. We discuss: The long-term effects of abuse Why healing isn’t linear or time-bound Growth, grief, and self-compassion years later Rebuilding identity after trauma Moving from survival into intentional healing This episode is for survivors who are years into their journey and still learning, growing, and redefining what healing means. Ideal for listeners searching for: Healing years after abuse Long-term abuse recovery Trauma reflection and growth Survivor stories and healing journeys Mental health and post-traumatic growth 🎧 Follow the podcast for trauma-informed conversations on healing, healthy relationships, and reclaiming your life after abuse   Full Transcript:      📍 Welcome to Healing From Emotional Abuse, the award-winning podcast that sheds light on the journey from victim to survivor. I'm your host Marissa f Cohen, and I'm thrilled to have you join us on this empowering and healing adventure, the Healing from Emotional Abuse podcast. Isn't just another conversation. It's a sanctuary for those who have endured abuse and are determined to reclaim their lives. Through interviews with inspiring survivors, experts, and advocates, we aim to break the silence surrounding abuse and empower our listeners with the knowledge. Support and resources they need to break free from their past. Our mission is to provide a safe space where survivors can share their stories, find solace in knowing they're not alone, and discover the strength within themselves to heal and thrive. Each episode is filled with powerful narratives, practical strategies, and compassionate guidance to help you overcome the lingering effects of abuse and build a brighter future. It brings me immense joy to announce that the Healing from Emotional Abuse Podcast has been honored with the prestigious Purple Ribbon Award for outstanding domestic violence podcasts by domestic shelters.org, recognizing our commitment to raising awareness about abuse. And offering hope to survivors worldwide. We have hit top 10% globally and top podcast in 25 countries. This accolade is a testament to the incredible guests who have shared their stories and the tremendous support from our devoted listeners. Thank you so, so much. Whether you're a survivor seeking healing, a friend or family member wanting to understand and support, or an advocate dedicated to creating a safer world, this podcast is for you. Our conversations delve into topics such as emotional, physical, financial, and psychological abuse, recovery techniques, self-care strategies, legal rights, and much, much more. Join us as we embark on this transformative journey together. Subscribe to healing from emotional abuse on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, your story matters, and you have the power to break your silence from the chains of abuse. I'm your host, Marissa f Cohen, and this is healing from emotional abuse. Let's reclaim our lives and empower one another. Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the Healing From Emotional Abuse Podcast. I am your host, Marissa f Cohen. And before we jump in today, um, I just wanted to give a, a content warning, a trigger warning. Um, what we're gonna listen to today is, uh, a rant from 2025 on the anniversary of my first sexual assault. Talking about kind of where I've been and how I'm feeling, and I was very deep in my feelings. So I, I use the legal terms. Um, I. I am very direct. And so if at any point this episode becomes triggering, traumatizing or gets you worked up or feeling unsafe or uncomfortable, please feel free to turn it off. You're also welcome to send me an email at Healing from Emotional abuse pod@gmail.com to let me know, um, if there's a better way for me in the future to sensor or to, um. To, to handle these conversations, but I will have, you know, this particular conversation was with myself and unscripted and just kind of a reflection. And then I also am reflecting on it. A year later. So, um, I just wanted to give you a trigger warning. There's a few things you could do. Turn it off, put on some decompressing music or something that helps you get back to your baseline. You can hum because humming actually engages your vagus nerve, va vagus nerve. Um, and we will, we'll calm you down or you can snap your fingers. Because that tricks your brain to send receptors to your fingertips and not your eyes. It'll stop you from crying. So please enjoy this episode. Thank you so, so much for tuning in. Um, leave a comment, send me an email. Um, I really appreciate any feedback and so let's jump right into the next episode of Healing from Emotional Abuse. Hello, and welcome back to the Healing From Emotional Abuse Podcast. My name is Marissa f Cohen. I'm your host, and today I wanted to give you kind of a, a more special episode. It's a little bit more personal. Um, so last year on January 15th was the 15th anniversary of my sexual assault. My first, um, with my first boyfriend. And I interviewed on that day a survivor who was on the podcast, Emma. And. After I got off with her, I was kind of feeling my feelings. It was the 15 year anniversary, and so I just kind of started. I recorded myself just kind of talking and reflecting. I haven't listened to it in a year. My goal was to post it last year, and then I just. I don't know. I just couldn't do it. So, um, what I'm gonna do this year is listen to it when I was deep in my feelings and, uh, completely unscripted, unplanned, and reflect on that reflection and kind of give you an insight of where I am now. One year post. That, but also 16 years post my own experience. Um, and having had several years of research and. Working with survivors and doing what I do every day. So this is going to be an interesting ride, unscripted, just kind of giving you my feedback on my feedback very inception. But let's, let's kind of jump right in and today is January 15th, 2025. Um. As you've probably heard, I also, uh, recorded another episode with a guest, um, a little bit earlier today where I mentioned that today is the 15 year anniversary of my sexual assault that kind of spiraled my life into where I am today. For better or for worse. And so I kind of wanted to do like a 15 year reflection because I didn't realize it had been 15 years, um, until I mentioned it, until I looked at the date when I was talking to Emma. Uh, the, my, my. Episode guest that's a hundred percent real. I completely blanked on what day it was, and I know that January 15th is the anniversary of the date, and every year I try and do something special on that day. But last year, I guess I was so distracted I didn't realize. And then we were recording the podcast and I had that realization was like, oh shit, I can't believe that It didn't, like it didn't land. It very weird how brains work, and it kind of got me thinking, I went downstairs to make myself lunch. Um, because as soon as I kind realized that it, it sent me into a bit of my feelings. Not necessarily in a bad way. I mean, of course. What happened to me was awful, and it did change the trajectory of my life in many ways. Again, for positive or for worse. So this is kind of just like the unscripted ramblings of me right now, reflecting on the last 15 years and how my life has been forever changed by the actions of truly like a piece of shit. Um, a person who. Could not have cared less about me, my needs, my health, and my safety, and was exclusively interested in overpowering and controlling me. Um, and he showed that in a lot of different ways. This was one experience of many from him, specifically him. I've had other awful experiences as well. Um. But yeah, this was, this is one anniversary of one horrible thing he did. There were a million red flags that led up to this point. You know, keeping me a secret was a big red flag. And then embarrassing me in front of people later was a big red flag. And I mean, he did a lot of things to keep me down, to control me. He was very abusive before we got to this point, um, one of the things that we learn as. People who work with survivors, you know, and people who've gone through it, is that it's abuse is like a staircase, you know, it's, it's just constantly pushing new boundaries. So they start out small, something minuscule. They call you a name, or they make a comment, or they say something like a little demeaning and see what your reaction is. And if you don't stop it right there, then that's a boundary they've pushed. Now they're gonna go up to the next step. And do something a little bit worse, and then push that boundary and then a little worse, and then a little worse and a little worse until you finally get to what is, you know. Big explosions and violence, whether it's physical violence, emotional, and verbal violence, sexual violence. And so that's what happened here is there was a lot of controlling behaviors I didn't track, I didn't notice, I didn't even know were problematic until. It was way too late. And so this was, you know, January 15th was kind of the culmination of several months of growing abuse, growing red flags, and a lot of actions to be controlling and, you know, overpowering and abusive. Um, and he did obviously for a, for a good bit of time and, um, so yeah, it's weird to think about. As a survivor, what life would have been had that not happened? Um, obviously choices were made on both sides, mine and his, that got me where I am today. Um, but reflecting on my choices, I originally wasn't even interested in him. And the reason that I. Went on my first date with him was truly out of spite because another person accused me of breaking up with him for my abuser. And so just

Attorney Arlene Haeggquist, survivor advocate and legal powerhouse, shares how women can take legal action against workplace sexual harassment, assault, and abuse. Learn documentation strategies, your legal rights, and how to empower yourself through the court process.   This episode covers: ✨ Workplace sexual harassment and assault—50% of women experience it ✨ How to document abuse for legal cases (emails, screenshots, timestamps) ✨ Your legal rights as a survivor of workplace abuse ✨ Breaking the silence: why reporting matters ✨ Building support systems during litigation ✨ Toxic workplace culture and power dynamics ✨ Healing from financial abuse and exploitation ✨ Arlene's story: From abuse survivor to advocate for thousands   Perfect for survivors, advocates, and anyone wanting to understand workplace rights, boundaries, and legal empowerment.   Your journey from victim to survivor to thriver starts here. If you're ready to reclaim your life and learn from others' healing journeys, hit subscribe and join our community of resilient souls. Have a story to share? Email us at HealingFromEmotionalAbusePod@gmail.com —we'd love to feature your questions, healing strategies, opinions and survivor testimonies on the podcast.   Transcript of Episode:     📍  📍  📍  📍  📍  📍 Welcome to Healing From Emotional Abuse, the award-winning podcast that sheds light on the journey from victim to survivor. I'm your host Marissa f Cohen, and I'm thrilled to have you join us on this empowering and healing adventure, the Healing from Emotional Abuse podcast. Isn't just another conversation. It's a sanctuary for those who have endured abuse and are determined to reclaim their lives. Through interviews with inspiring survivors, experts, and advocates, we aim to break the silence surrounding abuse and empower our listeners with the knowledge. Support and resources they need to break free from their past. Our mission is to provide a safe space where survivors can share their stories, find solace in knowing they're not alone, and discover the strength within themselves to heal and thrive. Each episode is filled with powerful narratives, practical strategies, and compassionate guidance to help you overcome the lingering effects of abuse and build a brighter future. It brings me immense joy to announce that the Healing from Emotional Abuse Podcast has been honored with the prestigious Purple Ribbon Award for outstanding domestic violence podcasts by domestic shelters.org, recognizing our commitment to raising awareness about abuse. And offering hope to survivors worldwide. We have hit top 10% globally and top podcast in 25 countries. This accolade is a testament to the incredible guests who have shared their stories and the tremendous support from our devoted listeners. Thank you so much. Whether you're a survivor seeking healing, a friend or family member wanting to understand and support, or an advocate dedicated to creating a safer world, this podcast is for you. Our conversations delve into topics such as emotional, physical, financial, and psychological abuse, recovery techniques, self-care strategies. Legal rights and much, much more. Join us as we embark on this transformative journey together. Subscribe to healing from emotional abuse on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, your story matters, and you have the power to break your silence from the chains of abuse. I'm your host. Marissa f Cohen, and this is healing from emotional abuse. Let's reclaim our lives and empower one another.    📍 Welcome back to The Healing for Promotional Abuse Podcast. I am your host, Marissa. And I'm your co-host, Sami Litchert. Yay. Welcome Sami. We're so excited today 'cause we have a really cool interview with Reen Quest. But before we get into that we really wanted to talk about something that is really important. And I know Sami has brought up to me workplace dynamics. And so we wanted to share some like workplace sexual harassment issues just because. It's so common and Irene touches on it in her interview and it happens to 50% of women and we're both women and we are each on the other side of the 50%, oh gosh, so many times from actually from male bosses and female colleagues. I've experienced all kinds of harassment from women. It's usually more of like commentary on my body or like complaining about my clothes or trying to make me feel intimidated or uncomfortable by overpowering me or getting in my face. When I worked at the military base, I had a female coworker who. This is all, my perception of it, but my assumption is that she was jealous of the attention I was getting, but my job was to be friends with everybody, so I just did my job and she didn't like that. The men on base, which made up probably 85 to 90% of my base, really liked me, right? And not liked me in a sexual or intimate way. But like we got along really well. I went to the gym with them. We had lunch together. I played Scrabble at lunch with some of my coworkers. Like we, it was fun. We went out to lunch all the time and hung out after and went to happy hour, things like that. And she didn't like that. I had these relationships with them, and so she would. Regularly get in my face, stand up really close to me, and she was taller than me, so she'd look down on me and flex on me. And she would do that often. And then she would taunt me or, talk bad about me. And so while that wasn't directly sexual harassment, because she wasn't like leveraging my position, she was trying to make me feel intimidated and trying to get me to leave or back down or stay quiet as opposed to like. Being able to function and do my job properly. Have you ever had a situation like that, Sami? I would say I had a similar situation, but not to that level. I would definitely say that. I would say recently it was very minor. Harassment, but it wasn't even to my face. It was all behind my back, which is even worse. I feel like, I wouldn't say even worse. I apologize. I was like, it just didn't feel good. I would say at a position that I was in, I was told that. So when people get to know my personality, I'm a very excited person. It's just who I am. Very bubbly. That was a con. Apparently there that was a thing that someone did not like that I was a very bubbly person and tried to make my job a living. HELL and it was very frustrating, but it didn't let it affect me until it started trickling down into staff members to saying, oh, she's not professional. Oh, she's dress I'm a very T-shirt, jeans kind of girl. I'm a comfort dresser. She's not professional enough. She's not doing this. It was all very frustrating. 'cause there's things that really value who I am and they value who I am as a person. And it was frustrating. 'cause it's things that are, am I supposed to change this? Am I not? I think that's where I wanna say it's similar, but not am I supposed to be, become a miserable person at my job and just go in, log in, do the job and leave. Or am I supposed to stay who I am? So I think the I wouldn't say the frustration, but the confusion is I didn't know who I was for a few months and I did not, I didn't like that. That really brought me down. And I've, I finally, it took me a long time to work out to the place where I am in my life. Took a lot of friends, a lot of support, a lot of stories, a lot of sharing and a lot of therapy. And for this place just to start bringing me back down for minor things that. Didn't even affect what I did in my position. It was hurtful. And the things that happen at work trickle down into our real lives. If you think about it, we spend eight hours, supposedly eight hours sleeping, eight hours at work and eight hours at home, right? If you break it up into a perfect, that's 33% of your adult life you spend at work, and if that 33% is you getting harassed by bosses or coworkers, shit, talked behind your back, made to feel insecure or inferior, or in danger. Unsafe like that actually does trickle into our ability to sleep, which impacts our mood, our irritability, our performance at work. It impacts outside of work, our personal relationships, the way we feel about ourselves and others, our feeling of safety and comfort with the people around us. So what happens at work and in your workplace in those dynamics, whether it's coming from a boss and a superior that is. Making you leverage or leveraging your needs, right? Your basic needs of like shelter and food, which is directly related to working to like their fulfillment, that's problematic, right? And so if you are getting harassed or bothered or talked about and made to feel unsafe at work. I'm sure that it impacted you and Anton a little bit, right? Your mood, your ability to communicate your feeling of safety and you live where you work. I was just about to add that. I'm like, I was like on top of that when you. When you can't even leave the place that you work, it makes it difficult. Yes. I physically walk about 40 yards from one door to the other, but it's just stepping outside your safety zone, your home, like as soon as you walk out, it's difficult. And we have animals on campus, so sometimes I may wanna go out in some PJ's on a Saturday morning to let my dog relieve herself to come back in, fall asleep. It's the judgements and the looks and the. All of that happens at my workplace that does, like you said, trickle into home. It affects it. Things are great. Now, by the way, I wanna preface that really quick. Like things are phenomenal. All things are great. I'm not even referring to current stuff, it's just stories. But yes, a hundred percent. I didn't mean to throw you. I was like, I just wanna make sure. No, but it makes sense, right? Especially if you live where you work, there's literally no escape. Or if you own your own business like I do, where if I have a bad day or I start beating myself up and I am my own boss, which really is a nice benefit, but I've had so many prior experiences that were awful th

Meet the new co-host transforming your healing journey. Sami Litchert joins us to explore the relationships that matter—toxic relationship recovery, healthy relationship building, and the power of survivors sharing their stories. If you're breaking free from emotional abuse, learning to set boundaries, or supporting someone on their healing path, this episode is a turning point. Together, we're creating a safe space where survivors are celebrated and empowered. Join us as we dive into what healthy relationships look like and why your story—and your boundaries—are worth protecting.   Episode Transcript:  https://marissafayecohen.com/healing-from-emotional-abuse-introducing-sami-litchert-boundaries-toxic-relationships-survivor-stories/     📍  📍  📍  📍  📍 Welcome to Healing From Emotional Abuse, the award-winning podcast that sheds light on the journey from victim to survivor. I'm your host Marissa f Cohen, and I'm thrilled to have you join us on this empowering and healing adventure, the Healing from Emotional Abuse podcast. Isn't just another conversation. It's a sanctuary for those who have endured abuse and are determined to reclaim their lives. Through interviews with inspiring survivors, experts, and advocates, we aim to break the silence surrounding abuse and empower our listeners with the knowledge. Support and resources they need to break free from their past. Our mission is to provide a safe space where survivors can share their stories, find solace in knowing they're not alone, and discover the strength within themselves to heal and thrive. Each episode is filled with powerful narratives, practical strategies, and compassionate guidance to help you overcome the lingering effects of abuse and build a brighter future. It brings me immense joy to announce that the Healing from Emotional Abuse Podcast has been honored with the prestigious Purple Ribbon Award for outstanding domestic violence podcasts by domestic shelters.org, recognizing our commitment to raising awareness about abuse. And offering hope to survivors worldwide. We have hit top 10% globally and top podcast in 25 countries. This accolade is a testament to the incredible guests who have shared their stories and the tremendous support from our devoted listeners. Thank you so much. Whether you're a survivor seeking healing, a friend or family member wanting to understand and support, or an advocate dedicated to creating a safer world, this podcast is for you. Our conversations delve into topics such as emotional, physical, financial, and psychological abuse, recovery techniques, self-care strategies. Legal rights and much, much more. Join us as we embark on this transformative journey together. Subscribe to healing from emotional abuse on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, your story matters, and you have the power to break your silence from the chains of abuse. I'm your host. Marissa f Cohen, and this is healing from emotional abuse. Let's reclaim our lives and empower one another.   📍  📍 Welcome back to the Healing for Emotional Abuse Podcast. I'm your host Marissa, and I first wanna start off by apologizing. This podcast has been going for about five years actually five and a half now, but I took about a two year hiatus. Because I got really into speaking and was traveling all the time, became really hard to manage, and so the podcast fell by the wayside. So for everyone listening, I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to like completely desert you. I'm still here for you. I'm still an advocate and a survivor, and I'm still talking about relationships and abuse and sexual assault and trauma. Just on a different medium. But then I met through all this journey. I met Sami.  And Sami is incredible. She's an advocate. She is like an outspoken supporter of survivors, and she has been really helpful to me along my speaking journey. Keeping me organized and just being like an incredible person. And we had a conversation a few weeks ago where we discussed her coming on to co-host the Healing from Emotional Abuse podcast, and I'm so excited to introduce you to our co-host of the Healing from Emotional Abuse Podcast. Sami, welcome on Sami. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited. So tell us a little bit about yourself, like introduce, you know yourself to our listeners. Awesome. Yeah, so my name's Sami Licher, I started out with in higher education, worked through there. I don't really know where to go from that. I did my higher ed trips and then I took a step out and I worked in a leadership company for a few years, and that's where I actually met Marissa. That's where I then one thing led to another, and now I get to see her almost every week which is wonderful. And now we're here helping out. Thank you so much, Sami. It's so nice to be able to do this with you and get to know you more. I know you pretty well I think, being able to like, introduce you to our listeners and so I would love to talk to you about relationships because the theme of this podcast is relationships. We talk about toxic and abusive relationships. I wanna focus on healthy relationships as well, and the trauma of like sexual violence and things like that. So first and foremost, you had a really exciting summer, right? It's August right now. You've had a very exciting summer. Do you wanna maybe share your exciting summer news? I did have a great summer. So for everyone who's listening this past 4th of July Anton, who is my partner, has asked me to marry him, and I said, yes, of course. Yes. Really exciting. And I wanna say just it's just wonderful, to be honest. It was an amazing opportunity to be able to actually have my own proposal 'cause I've always been there for other people's. And then for him to get down on one knee and then to make it just so heartfelt. We were camping. There was nobody around. And for anyone who knows me, I'm always surrounded by people whether I want to or not. It was just the two of us. It was amazing. That's awesome. And Anton, I've met him a couple of times and he's wonderful and I'm so happy for you guys. So you can speak from a healthy relationship perspective because you have incredible communication. You guys respect each other so much and you're so supportive of each other and it's such a beautiful, thing to be able to see, like a situation, to be able to see from a third party outsider. Especially as a relationship person where my whole world revolves around talking about and experiencing and, hearing all these horrible relationship stories, it's so nice to be able to like truly see a really healthy and awesome relationship. So give us a little bit of background about how y'all met and the last few years of your relationship. That I love talking about it is it's the fun fact that I almost gave up on dating, so I didn't have the best history of dating, but I wanna keep the positive going. Anton and I actually met on Facebook dating right when I was about to give up. And the reason why I went to Facebook dating is I just felt like trying to date in, like in real life, unfortunately, just was not working out. I was too busy. I worked three jobs at the time. But the beautiful story is when Anton and I met, we we went out, we did like cute little coffee date. I have never met a more gentleman like person, and it's just like who he is. He portrayed himself amazingly. Something that I, I have a lot of anxiety and whatnot, it took forever to get over when I went to go meet Anton. So the fact that I was extremely nervous, I know that I was tongue twisted, but the whole time he was just phenomenal. And then it just grew from there. We have a lot of the ups and downs, but throughout all of our ups and downs over the past two years, which is my longest relationship and hopefully my forever relationship now it was just, it was phenomenal. I would say there's way more ups than downs and. The best thing that I noticed is every time that we had a little hiccup or a little bit of a down, our communication was phenomenal. It didn't matter who was upset, what the situation was it could be silly, it could be serious. And everything that always comes down to is our communication piece. And even up to the day when I said yes, I absolutely do wanna marry you. It was funny because we had a really bad night right before that. Unpacking was horrible. Our camp hosts were horrible, but Anton and I made it fun. The two of us didn't talk to each other the whole night when we unpacked, but it was out of love. We knew that everything was, you know what, this is a crappy situation, but it's still gonna be a fun time to to be together. I didn't know he was gonna ask me to marry him, which makes it even better. I didn't expect this for another year and a half at least. So just yeah, everything in the past two years, there's been so many things. That's amazing. And I think it's really funny that the whole night beforehand you didn't talk. He was probably so nervous to propose to you that because you guys didn't talk to each other. But I think that's amazing. You said something that sparked a, an interest for me. So you met on Facebook dating. I've only heard of a handful of people using Facebook dating. But from what I, from the people that. I know that did, it was really successful for them. Have you tried other dating sites like that were bad or, had bad experiences with that? Do you wanna tell us a little bit about that? Oh, of course. I did Tinder. I stayed off it for the longest time and then I just said, you know what, heck with this and let's just go find what the guys are. Don't do that ever. It's not the best advice. But it was, I'll say, nice to see that I found a good one out of all the bad patches. Another one I did was Bumble. I was only on that one for a little dating sites scared me a bit. I like the flirting part aspect of it, but that idea of talking to someone, I don't know, like what their face looks like. For real, everyo

Campus Sexual Assault Survivor Speaks Out: How the Legal System Failed Her The Truth About College Sexual Assault Cases: A Survivor’s Fight for Justice Survivor vs. The System: When the Legal Process Fails Sexual Assault Victims Sexual Assault on Campus: One Survivor’s Legal Battle and Road to Healing Why the Justice System Fails Sexual Assault Survivors—A College Student’s Story

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