Healing From Emotional Abuse

Healing From Emotional Abuse: Signs of A Toxic Relationship

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.
 
Today, I wanted to read a couple of the stories from my books: Breaking Through the Silence, the Journey to Surviving Sexual Assault and Breaking Through the Silence: #Me(n)Too. Both of these books are compilations of survivor stories, told from their voices, in their words, including my own.  To help all survivors become champions and take their lives back, feel empowered and feel relatable to other survivors.  I want every survivor to know that they are not alone, and what happened to them was not their fault.
These are real stories from real people that have endured and overcome their abuse and assaults. These stories are in the words of the champions, so there may be some inappropriate language or triggering content. Be mindful while to listening to keep yourself safe.  Thank you so much for listening and supporting champions of abuse.
 
All the stories being told today can be found in my books, Breaking Through the Silence, the Journey to Surviving Sexual Assault and Breaking Through the Silence: #Me(n)Too, available on my website at www.marissafayecohen.com/the-books or on Amazon.  Like I mentioned before, these are all from the voices of the survivors.  They had complete control over their stories. Every champion that signed on to help me with the Breaking Through the Silence series, voiced their intention to use their stories to help other survivors feel empowered by knowing that you are not alone.
 
The first story I’m going to read is from Breaking Through the Silence, the Journey to Surviving Sexual Assault. It’s called, Will You Become One of My Friday Night Regulars, on page 62.
 
Will You Become One of My Friday Night Regulars?
I’ve talked about my abuse with my daughters, but not with my son or husband. I’ve never told him, because I felt it would be so hurtful for him to know. I told my daughters that this is uncomfortable, but I wanted them to know what happened to me to make sure they knew how to take care of themselves. Yes, you should be able to do what you want and be safe, but in this world, you just never know who’s a predator.
I was a freshman in college, and it was my first time away from home. I was naive; I was not a virgin, but I was very naive about how things worked in the world. I was much more trusting than I became in the end. I went to a party with a male friend of mine, hosted by his friend who was on the soccer team. I had too much to drink, as often happens in school your freshman year, and apparently, I passed out. My friend was hanging around the party waiting for me to be awake enough for him to try and get me home. The host of the party (my friend’s friend) said, “Don’t worry, just leave her here. I’ll take care of her when she comes to.” Of course, my friend thought nothing of it. After all, he was an athlete, a buddy, and a good boy from a good school.
I came to, completely out of it, and knowing that something was going on. This guy was on top of me. I was so confused because I was drunk, and I wasn’t sure about what was happening. Then I felt extreme pain, and boy, that sobered me up. He was about 6’6 or 6’7. I was not aroused in the slightest. He ulcerated my vulva. I yelled for him to stop, but he continued to do it anyway. Afterward, I was still drunk, but also in shock. There was blood on the sheets. He said, “I didn’t know you were a virgin.” I said, “I wasn’t,” to which he responded, “I better take you home.” 
When I came in, my roommate was still up. She looked at me and said, “You’re bleeding.” There was blood on my legs, between my thighs. She thought I had my period and was trying to warn me, but I just started freaking out, wailing, and crying. She couldn’t get out of me what was happening, so she called my friend that I went to the party with. He came over and managed to calm me down, and get out of me what happened. When they realized what had happened, we didn’t even know what to do. Who knew? There was no guidance; there was nothing -- this was the 1970’s. He took me to the Health Services building, and the doctor asked me if I wanted to call the police. At this time, self-preservation had kicked in, and I said no. I just wanted to make it all stop somehow. The doctor said, “I will say this was obviously not consensual. This was not willing, you don’t have tears in your vulva from nothing.” I just said, “No, no, I want to go home. I just want to go home. I just want to go home.”
Then, the harassment started. The whole thing couldn’t have taken two weeks, maybe more. Everyone had whiteboards on their doors, and the next day when I came back from class, somebody had written that I was a slut on my door. Then notes started being pushed under my door. Notes that called me a dirty whore, and if I say anything they will tell everyone that I’m a dirty slut. I had no idea what to do. There was a knock on my door one time, and when I opened the door, there was my attacker. He wanted to know if we could go out and talk. I told him, “No. I never wanted to see your face again.”
He was just standing there looking ashamed and uncomfortable, and then he said, “So, my coach says that he knows that you had another boyfriend and that your old boyfriend (who was also a soccer player), is willing to testify that you’re a slut and you would sleep with anybody.” I just looked at him and told him, “You just get out of my face. Just get the fuck away from me and stay the fuck away from me.”
He tried to see me one more time after that. He called me and said that he had to talk to me. I called up two male friends of mine who were on the track team, big guys, in an absolute panic. Why didn’t I call the police, campus security, call my dorm, I don’t know. The guy showed up, and my two very large friends were just sitting there. They stood up and said, “If you didn’t understand her, she said she never wants you to contact her again.” I never heard from the guy ever again. Thankfully I got past that, and I was lucky enough to have no sexual problems as a result. I’m thankful to have had support, not just from women, but also from male friends.
When I was 23 or 24, I had a boyfriend who was violent toward me. He was quiet and seemed unassuming. He had a lot of interesting stories from being a roadie with my favorite rock band. Things seemed fine at first, and then he started having what began as little hissy fits.
For example, once we were going to a concert and when we got to our seats, he didn’t like the view from the seats. I remember saying, “Well, it doesn’t matter. These seats are fine. We can see fine.” All of a sudden he got up and stormed off. Now, had I been a different woman, I would have thought, “what the fuck, asshole?” stayed, watched the concert, got a cab home, and never saw him again. Because I am how I am, I asked, “What, what’s happening?” I started grabbing my coat, followed him and kept asking what happened and what was wrong. Of course, I was thinking, “What did I do?” because he made it seem like my fault.
From there, it progressed. He would be overwhelmingly lovey-dovey and romantic one moment, and then would be the smack-down. It was a lot of emotional abuse. One moment he would say, “I love you, I love you,” and then “I don’t want you to do that, and you’re going to do it anyway, and I’m not going to speak to you.” For example, one night, my friend asked me to be his date to a wedding. My boyfriend didn’t want me to go, but I told him, “Look, he has been one of my best friends since high school. I’m not going to tell him no. He’s my friend, you know he’s my friend.” He still didn’t want me to go to the wedding, but I assured him I would come home immediately after. We weren’t living together, but I spent much time at his place.
On the night of the wedding, I was wearing a short dress and sandals (keep in mind that this is in December, but it was a cute, appropriate outfit for an indoor wedding). When my friend dropped me off and I walked up to my apartment. I had this really wonky lock, and usually you could pull it, and jiggle it to open it up. This time, however, it didn’t open, and there I was in my short dress with my bare legs and sandals, unable to get into my apartment. It wasn’t that late, maybe midnight. My boyfriend lived blocks away — within walking distance. I walked all the way to his apartment, and I rang the doorbell, and I said, “It’s me. My lock won’t open again. The damn thing won’t open!” He said, “Too bad.” I rang again and said, “I’m in a dress, in sandals, and it’s snowing out. Let me in!” but, he wouldn’t let me in. I was starting to panic, and I had to beg to be let in. The next morning, it was like nothing had happened. I asked him why he wouldn’t let me in, and he said he was tired.
He only hit me twice during our relationship. I know, the word “only” is not great because it shouldn’t even happen once. The first time was after we had broken up. I went out with someone else, and he called me when I got home. I could tell he was very upset. He begged to speak with me and came over. He started asking questions about whether the guy had kissed me during our date, and was digging for information. In my mind, it wasn’t any of his business -- he broke up with me, and I can kiss whoever I want. Then he slapped me. I looked at him and told him, “Get the fuck out, and I never want to see you again.” He called, and called, and cried, and called, and begged, and cried and showed up with roses. He said, “What was I thinking?” and, “If you take me back, I’ll make it up to you!” Why did I take him back? The guy who I was out with that night called me, and I told him I had gotten back together with my boyfriend.
He was a nice guy, and I didn’t tell him what had happened, but he said, “You know, you’re a nice girl. But I gotta tell you; you’re being really stupid. And it’s not because you’re not going to date me. It’s because you’re putting up with this and you don’t have to.” I made excuses for him. I don’t seem like that kind of person now, but being with someone like that chips away at your self-esteem. And yet, I was with him for another year. The first six months because I wanted to be, and the second 6 months because I was afraid of him. He started complaining about me spending time with my male friends, but then it became my female friends too, and then my family. He didn’t want me to spend time with my parents. “Why do you have to spend so much time with your family? Why do you have to spend so much time with your parents? Aren’t you a grown-up?” Of course, I would keep doing it, because I was not going to step away from my friends and family. That would lead to these punishing hissy fits. I was unhappy. I was not myself, and people saw it.
There was one wonderful woman at work, this wonderful, old, grandma- like lady with white hair who was always sweet to me, who said, “Something’s not right. You’re always so cheerful and happy. What’s wrong?” I told her everything. I told her what was going on, not realizing how bad it was. She was not sweet this time. She looked at me very sternly, and she said, “You need to stop. You need to stop this right now. You need to stop this.” I believe she even used the word abusive.
Oddly enough, the thing that finally made up my mind was when I got my first cat. I didn’t want to be at my boyfriend’s anymore; I wanted to be at home with my kitty cat. And I began to realize if I want to be with the animal more than I wanted to be with the man, that was saying something. He didn’t want to sleep at my apartment because of the cat. When he came over to my place, and we were starting to get intimate, my kitty jumped up on the bed because he was used to sleeping in bed with me. Without even stopping, my boyfriend scooped him up and tossed him off the bed. And for the first time, I kicked him, and pushed him off the bed, and said, “Get Out! Get out! Get the fuck out!” I was screaming, “Don’t you ever touch my cat! Don’t you ever touch him! Get! The Fuck! Out!” And he did. And I thought, “If he could abuse me, but he mustn’t touch my cat, what does that say about me?”
I thought this was it, and I was done. I should have let it be over, but the next day, I told him I needed to talk to him. So, the next day I went over to his place to end it. As soon as I spoke the words, “This is over, I’m done!” he started walking towards me...and I knew. I just knew. I ran for the door to try and get it open, but he got me at the door. He hit me so hard that he knocked me out. It sounded like a “thunk,” almost like the sound that you make when you hit a watermelon. The next thing I knew, my shirt was torn, I was bleeding, and I wasn’t by the door anymore - I don’t know how I got to where I was. I started screaming and screaming and screaming at the top of my lungs, “Help, help, someone call the police, help!” By this time, my boyfriend had gotten himself together, because he saw that I was hurt and bleeding and hysterical, and he was trying to calm me down. He asked to let him take me to the hospital, and I let him drive me to the E.R. I just wanted everything to stop, for it to be over.
When we got there, the nurses did an intake report to see what happened. I told them I fell and hit my head. So, after I was stitched, the doctor asked me what happened because it said that I tripped and fell. The doctor said they had to give me some stitches, and they needed to stabilize my jaw because it was unhinged. I had three stitches on the side of my head. “Who hit you?” the doctor asked. I didn’t say anything. He said, “This is not a falling accident. This is an impact accident. This is what you get when someone hits you. Was it your husband, your boyfriend, your father? Who is it?” I still didn’t say anything. He said, “Do you know how I know this? I know this because every Friday night, they come in here, these beaten women. It’s the same ones over and over again. And each time, it’s a little worse. It’s a black eye. Then it’s a black eye and a broken nose. A broken cheek. Stitches in the head, it’s a concussion, and some of them eventually die. They have police out in the waiting room. I’ll have them come in, I’ll file a report, you’ll file a report, and they’ll arrest him. So, are you going to become one of my Friday night regulars?”
With that, I was able to meet his eyes, and I said, “NO! Never again”.
I left the hospital and went home, where my boyfriend was standing, crying and apologizing. I told him that he was not staying, and he was not coming in, he was leaving. At this point, I was so calm; I was just trying to keep control. I went into my apartment, shut it and locked it. I went into my room, and thought, “I’m safe now.” I felt overwhelming relief because I was never going to see him again, ever...or so I thought. He called and called, trying to apologize. He would go through phases. He would call begging and pleading. He would call in the middle of the night screaming and cursing at me. One night, he was down in the courtyard of my apartment complex, banging on the door and screaming, and the girl upstairs called the police on him. He sent roses to my office one time. I looked at the card, went into the lunchroom, threw the roses in the garbage, and went back to my desk. Two years later, I was in a new relationship with my now-husband. I told my husband about the phone calls, and how I would just hang up. One day the phone rang, and my husband decided to pick it up. He said, “Yep, hello? Nope. Nope. She doesn’t want to talk to you. Go right ahead. It’s a whole lot harder to beat up another man than it is to beat up a woman. Come right on.” and he hung up. I hyperventilated and thought I was going to hear my doorbell ring, and he would be tracking me. But thankfully, I never heard from him again.
What helped me at first, were my friends. Women didn’t talk about assault, or domestic violence very much, but if you did share, somebody would share back if they’d experienced it. It was really helpful to hear another woman say, “Don’t you put up with that shit.” Especially older women. I got a fair bit of counseling, which also really helped. I never spoke to my parents about the rape, and I don’t know if I told them about the abuse. I mean, obviously they saw it. They aren’t stupid, and they probably knew something was going on, and you could see that I had been beaten up. I think that the hardest part was looking back and thinking, “Good Lord, what was I missing in me, that I would take that?” It isn’t my fault. I know it isn’t my fault.
You can’t let it define you; what you did, what you didn’t do, how you fought or didn’t fight, is not who you are. Someone else did you wrong. How it felt, what you did at the moment, and how it felt in the moment is all so confusing for a decent person who doesn’t want to hurt anyone else. It’s really hard to comprehend. Someone else fucked up, and you got the sharp end of it, but it’s still your body and still your life. It’s still your sexuality. It doesn’t belong to them. I don’t know how we make it stop. I don’t think we can make it all stop. Women can’t do this on our own, because women want to be loved and desired and wanted. In addition to wanting to be respected, they want to be desired. That’s why women with brains and guts and education and ambition will go somewhere and have their pubic hairs ripped out by their roots with a bikini wax. Why? Because somebody told women, it makes them sexier. You have to have men join you as part of the effort to stop abuse. All it takes is for good people to do something.
 
 
Thank you for listening today. I hope you enjoyed the story.  I know they’re a little dark, and they’re hard to hear, but it’s really important that more people speak out about their abuse and what they’ve experienced in order to help other people feel comfortable doing the same thing.  The whole purpose is to empower other survivors.  We want a world where nobody feels isolated and stuck because of a situation they are or were in.  I want everybody to have the comfort and support of a community that empowers and loves and validates them. And I think that by writing these books and sharing these stories, is a really important and effective way to let people break through their silence, and heal from their emotional 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!

Healing From Emotional Abuse: Narcissistic Abuse Cycle

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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.
 
This is the explosion.
 
Where you going, I'm leaving you
No you ain't, come back
We're running right back, here we go again
 
Honeymoon / Reconciliation
 
It's so insane 'cause when it's going good, it's going great
I'm Superman, with the wind at his back, she's Lois Lane
Tension:
But when it's bad, it's awful
I feel so ashamed,
Explosion:
I snapped, who's that dude
I don't even know his name, I laid hands on her
Honeymoon:
I'll never stoop so low again, I guess I don't know my own strength
....
You ever love somebody so much
You can barely breathe, when you're with them, you meet
And neither one of you, even know what hit 'em,
Got that warm fuzzy feeling, yeah them chills, used to get ‘em
 
Tension Building
 
Now you're getting fucking sick, of looking at ‘em
You swore you've never hit 'em, never do nothing to hurt 'em,
Now you're in each others face,
Spewing venom, and these words, when you spit ‘em
 
Explosion
 
You push, pull each other's hair, scratch, claw, bit 'em,
Throw 'em down, pin 'em, so lost in the moments, when you're in 'em
It's the rage that's the culprit, it controls you both
 
 
If you listen to the whole song, it rounds the cycle a few times, like I said.  And there are a ton of other songs that reference abuse or the cycle of abuse. Wasted and Blown Away by Carrie Underwood, My Immortal by Evanessence, Better Man by Little Big Town (that’s a really good one) — because it references that want to go back from the survivors perspective, but having to fight yourself to recognize that going back is a mistake.  I could do an entire podcast episode on just music about abuse and sexual assault.  If that is something you would want to hear, leave me a comment and I’ll absolutely do that!In the meantime, I hope this helped you understand more about the cycle of abuse, and the types of abuse that are out there.  It’s way more than just hitting someone.  Abuse destroys you psychologically and emotionally until you feel completely trapped and isolated.  It’s a horrible place to be.  But we’ve built a community here that is in place to help support and empower survivors to leave, and feel confident growing into their strongest selves.
 
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!

Healing From Emotional Abuse: Movies About Narcissism : With Mike Sellari (Part 2)

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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 ends up being PG-13. Again, a lot of this changes.   There is violence to a certain extent.
 
Marissa:
A lot of the things you say are based on perspective.  But also, based from your experience.  And that’s totally okay.  I actually just want to shift gears just a tad, and go to pedophilia.  For some reason, while you were talking, what popped into my head was American Beauty.  And I’m not a Kevin Spacey fan anymore.  I’m actually quite devastated at the destruction he caused, because I was a big Kevin Spacey fan, and then found out he’s a pedophile in real life.  And Anthony Rapp is one of my favorite Broadway actors. So, I have a real issue.
 
Mike:
You are the big Broadway girl.
 
Marissa:
BIG Broadway girl.  So, for him to have hurt somebody who I have never met, and have so much love for… and hurt anyone in general. To rape somebody and assault somebody in general…
 
Mike:But specifically Anthony Rapp
 
Marissa:
Specifically Anthony Rapp. it makes him such a horrible human being.  But American Beauty, growing up was one of my favorite movies.  I just thought it was so creative. And looking back I’m like, No no, this is an adult male, 40-something or 50-something, having an over sexualized infatuation with a 15 year old.  Now, in some states, like Mississippi, that’s actually okay, because the age of consent is 14.  But in most states, I think pretty much every state but Mississippi, that’s SO not okay. And that is SO wrong.  So I just want to focus on that for a minute, and see if you can think of any other movies or examples of movies that have that kind of theme, and okay and almost glorify pedophilia. 
 
Mike:Well, I will in a sense, I mean, I’ll get you there in a second. I don’t know if there’s a lot of stuff that glorifies it. But, we looked at things in different ways.  First off, you’ve gotta remember where we come from.  We were okay with Elvis Presley marrying, how old was she? Like 13 or 14 years old?  And I mean, you see it for forever.
 
Look at The Professional. Natalie Portman and John Reno are fantastic in it.  And it’s about the relationship between a grown man and a young girl. Now, he sees it more as a Father-Daughter relationship, and she obviously tries to flip it around.  And you can kind of look at that relationship and think, how is that not related to Besson’s own relationship with Maïwenn Besco? She was this french model, but she was really young when she was dating Luc Besson.  And I know people have had conversations about why Drake is friends with Millie Bobby Brown. That seems weird just because they’re both actors or famous or something. 
 
And we again, default to truth, and want to hope that people are the best that they are, and we’re all just trying to pick each other up, and meet cool people.  And I mean, look, I work in the entertainment industry.  I’m a talent manager.  I have clients and I’ve worked with clients who are kids; I’ve worked with clients who are older. And I would call some of them friends.  Is it weird that I have an 18 year old friend? It’s someone I work with.  So, it becomes complicated in this kind of industry because I work with them, but at the same time, they are kids.  And then it’s like, what are we saying “work” is? And it becomes complicated.  I think it’s just ultimately looking at it at a case-by-case basis.  If you want to look at movies, Manhattan was always one that always put me a little off.  The premise of the movie is Woody Allen is dating this really young girl.
 
Marissa:
Wasn’t Woody Allen sleeping with his step daughter? Not his step daughter, his adopted daughter, or his foster daughter?  No, his adopted daughter.
 
Mike:
Yes.  And it’s also not glorified.  It’s not meant to be a good thing. People call him out on it.  But it seems like a funny movie. People praise this movie, and stuff like that. The movie charms us.  In the world of the movie, we’re there.  And I haven’t seen Manhattan in a very long time. I believe it’s not used… they don’t say this is a good thing, I think people really do call him out on it.  I’m trying to think of other movies.  There’s definitely tons of movies where young girls have been sexualized. 
 
But you’re talking about pedophilia.  I mean, movies that really do explore it in interesting ways.  I mean there’s Little Children, which is a fantastic movie.  There’s Mysterious Skin, which is about how two people have coped with being sexually abused as children by their baseball coach.  There’s also Mystic River, plays on dealing with a pedophile, and how does it affect you.  Here’s the thing, a lot of the examples I’m coming up with don’t say this is a good thing. And to an extent, American Beauty doesn’t say it’s a good thing.
 
Marissa:
I just think they do a really beautiful job of creating a positive character arch for Kevin Spacey’s character. He goes from being this miserable, horrible dad, totally removed, piece of crap human being, to  then he just sees this girl in a skimpy outfit as a cheerleader, at 15 or 16 years old, and his whole world changes.  He starts being happier, and sticking up for himself.  He quits his job and starts working out.
 
Mike:Well, okay. So this is something about American Beauty, which again, I think further along will change.  I mean, 90s and you probably remember this, were such a different time with everything.  And so good. And also, it’s a pre-9/11 movie.  And it’s weird when you see pre-9/11 movies and you see peoples problems.  It’s like, our problem was, we were too bored with our lives.  Look at Fight Club.  Look at American Beauty. I mean, Revolutionary Road, which was kind of a sequel to American Beauty in a spiritual way in my mind, because they were both directed by Sam Mendez and they both are explaining the boringness of suburbia and how it kills us.  Little Children does the same thing.  And I don’t think that they’re saying that he’s… I don’t even think they’re saying in American Beauty that Lester Burnum was a bad dad.  He is a person that is now bored with his station in life. He’s in the suburbs, he did everything he was supposed to. And then, yes, he gets an injection of, “Maybe I need to start living my life.”  And has this mid-life crisis thing, where he starts smoking weed, and working out, and doing all this stuff.  And working at Burger King, and stuff like that.  And he knows his wife is having an affair.  And that’s part of the thing that pushes him.   And what’s one of the most mid-life crises things, you date a younger woman. 
 
And I know… Marissa just made the biggest grimace face… Everyone, just so you know.  But that was something seen as stereotypical.  Stereotypical thing in the 90s, when some guy would go through a mid-life crisis, they would buy a motorcycle or a hot-rod or corvette.  They would go on some vacation.  They would maybe have an affair with a younger woman.  It’s seen in so many movies.  It’s really cliche, and that’s what American Beauty kind of plays on.  And then what is to make that even worse? And that’s where he stops.
 
When he has that moment to have sex, and then right before he dies, he has that content moment where he’s looking at that photo of his family, and he realizes, “You know, I had it all along.” Again, I haven’t seen it in a while.
 
And this is where you and me differ.  I can separate art from the person. It’s difficult sometimes because you say, well this came from this persons mind. Yet, this mind is also that.  And what I’ve noticed from people is, people are complicated. And people have different layers to themselves. It’s an onion, it really isn’t just one thing.  Kevin Spacey can be a good actor and can also be the biggest piece of shit ever.  And I can still say he’s a good actor.  Woody Allen has written some of the best screenplays of all time.  And has been a shitty person.  Louis C.K. is gross.  But, Hilarious is a great comedy special.
 
Marissa:
I’m going to definitely comment on the Louis C.K. thing. Because I went and saw him at Madison Square Garden before the accusations came out, and I remember him making a joke about masturbating in front of his assistants or employees.  And it was so gross that it was funny because of the way he said it, and the way he worded it.
 
Mike:
Exactly.  It’s meant as a matter of fact thing to play on our ideas of society, and hold a mirror to it in a weird way.  Obviously, he was commenting on real things, but when you’re not looking at it in a context, it plays differently.
 
Marissa:
But that to me rang differently because he knew he was doing something wrong, and disgusting, and made a big joke about it. So not only was he doing the bad thing, but then he was mortifying the people he was actually doing bad things to, knowing they couldn’t hurt him. I would say he, I remember he waited a year after the accusation came out to come out and start doing comedy again, and apologize.  I’m still kind of conflicted about it. I do think that his comedy is good, but like you said, I just have a difficult time differentiating the art from the person.
 
Mike:I know.  And there are some episodes of Louis that are just out of this world fantastic.
 
Marissa:
Thank you so much for doing this with me Mike.  Oh my gosh, I’m happy we got to have this chat and you are so knowledgeable and awesome to talk to. And you’re very funny.  I really hope we get to do this again soon. I love the idea of us watching a movie and then discussing it. I definitely have al list now of movies I have to watch.
 
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!
 
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Healing From Emotional Abuse: Movies About Narcissism : With Mike Sellari (Part 1)

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 threatening to beat his wife. “One of these days, Alice. One of these days.”  And even though she’s the power-play in that relationship, there’s still that. I mean, people grew up with that.  But at the same time, comedy is what we’re doing to comment on society in a way.  And like it or not, the bad parts are in society.
 
Let’s talk about stuff kids watch.  Animal House, a movie that I love.  My dad showed that to me.  I love Animal House. And there’s that scene where John Belushi is on the ladder looking at the sorority girls. And they’re just all taking off their tops and having a pillow fight.  Everyone remembers that scene.  And there’s the moment that, that girl walks into a different room, and he hops with the ladder.  Okay, it’s hysterical because it’s Belushi hopping on a ladder to see what this girl is doing.  Let alone that he’s peeping on her.  Even the idea of a Peeping Tom was charming in a way, in these older days. 
 
In Back To The Future, I mean, they call him a perv, but George McFly is spying on his soon-to-be future wife getting changed with binoculars from a tree.  And he falls from the tree and that’s how he supposedly meets his wife.
 
We see certain things as, “Oh, that rascal,” sort of thing. And Belushi is the most rascally of rascals.  We see him do the eyebrow thing. We see his face. He’s got this baby face. We’re inclined to laugh.  At the end Animal House, there’s that moment where the girls clothes get ripped off by happenstance, and the chaos of the whole thing, and John Belushi, dressed as a pirate, swings down and picks her up and puts her in a car.  And she’s screaming and her legs are kicking, and then the last moment we see, he drives off with her.  Then later, it cuts and he has her arm around her.  She’s sitting in the car, she’s happy, and later, you realize she becomes Senator and Mrs. Bluto Blutarsky. He stole her and she became his wife and everything worked out. 
 
And we know that’s not real life. That’s not how life works. And we know to an extent that Animal House isn’t real life.  We know that Revenge of the Nerds isn’t really how college goes.  We look at Porky’s and we say that’s not how real life is.  I mean, Porky’s, is a really great example. That’s a movie that’s played for laughs all the way through. Weird.  And also, talking about going back to a different time. Here’s the Rotten Tomatoes critic consensus for Porky’s:
 
“Gleeful in its misogyny and celebratory of bad behavior, Porky's is an intermittently funny farce that will leave audiences feeling in need of a shower.”
 
And that’s weird.  That’s just weird. And I mean, the most famous scene of Porky’s is the shower scene.  It’s the scene where a group of girls, completely naked, and to that extent, we look back in the past, it seems very gratuitous and those TNA movies were just meant as softcore porn to show kids.  It’s why Porky’s isn’t meant to be taken seriously.  Although, it’s problematic.  There’re these guys and they’re peeping on girls. What does that teach other guys?
 
There’s a hole in the shower and they’re looking. The girl gets in the way and they yell to move.  And the girls laugh.   Like it’s charming that these guys are spying on us. We laugh at that.  There’s also in Scary Movie, people were just beating up women and it’s played for laughs.  It’s kind of like when you see a Naked Gun movie and Leslie Neilson punches an old woman or something.  Or even in an Austin Powers movie, where he’s very hyper-world sexual. We laugh. is it funny to punch an old woman? You think about it, and it’s weird but the answer is.. in the right context.  He knocks the girl to the ground and jumps like a wrestler on his elbow off-screen and you hear a noise.  It’s these things that are played for funny.  And it actually wouldn’t be funny if it was a guy.  The reason it’s funny is because it’s taken to such an extreme. It’s not even that, that’s a plot point of the movie.  It’s meant as almost slapstick comedy.  It’s mean as a hyper-realized version of Marx Brothers.  Or Stooges or something like that.
 
If you want to move away from the playfulness and talk about it as as serious subject, we can do that. Rape and abuse is used as a weapon. Let’s talk about the ones that use it better. The ones that use it traumatically.
 
There’s things that are also books that became movies.  Let’s talk about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  The whole premise of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, or I guess I shouldn’t say premise, I should say themes, is about the violation of women and the violence against women.  You have this guy investigating this family and the death of this girl, and who killed this person.  At the same time, he’s teamed up with this woman whose life has been shaped by abuse. She is a lesbian. She’s being raped by her parole officer who she is forced to give blowjobs to in order to not land in prison, because he controls her and it’s this power dynamic.  You watch these scenes and they’re visceral.  There’s a scene in his office and you see his hand just around her head.  You’re not seeing anything really, it’s very close up, but it’s hard to watch.  And you say to yourself, do we need to see that? Can it be implied? And the problem with implying it is, this is what happened in the older movies.  You’d see stuff happen off screen. You would hear people say things.  And it becomes not that bad if we’re just saying words.  When we start seeing stuff, it then become more visceral.  And something about a movie, there’s something about art even.  It’s supposed to invoke a feeling.  And there’s a reason why we still talk about these movies today.  It’s not because we think, “Awe, can you believe they did that?” No.  There’s something artistic here.  There’s something that’s trying to be said.
 
Also, rape is used to show savagery.  There’s that mentality that we put that on the savagery.  One of the most universal movies that people have seen that showcased rape in a savage way was Deliverance. Do you know Deliverance?
Marissa:
Again, I know of it, but I haven’t watched it.  I’m not as cultured as you are.
 
Mike:I wouldn’t call myself cultured. I just call myself someone who watches a lot of movies.  Deliverance is a John Boorman movie that is honestly, it’s good.  This is an Oscar-caliber movie. The movie has Ned Beatty, of the Beatty’s, Sean Connery, John Voight.  It’s basically these four friends that decide they’re going to go down a river canoeing.  They’re going to live in the wilderness, and Sean Connery is this really man’s-man who knows the wilderness.  One of the guys is more of a white-collar guy.  And there’s these locals that are played up as these rednecks, and they are of their own area.  Almost like their own law and stuff.   They’re in two different canoes,  and they get separated. And one of the canoes crashes and the two guys happen upon these two rednecks who basically beat them, tie them to a tree, force one of the guys to strip naked, squeal like a pig, and then they rape him.  They kill these locals and now all the other locals are after them.  And it becomes this fight for survival.  By the end of the movie, you see what happens, and you’re like, this is this ordeal these people have gone through. And it is an ordeal.  It’s crazy.  How almost primal it becomes.  And I think that’s part of what Deliverance becomes.  It’s showing that primal-ness.  Some people say, did we need to have that rape scene there?  Couldn’t it just be violent? And I don’t know the answer to that honestly.
Marissa:
Thank you so much Mike, I always love talking to you about this stuff because you’re so insightful and so well versed in the world of movies and cinema and all that.  So, I just wanted to thank you for being here and talking with us.  And we will talk again next week about more of the history of how sexual assault has impacted cinema and movies.  And truthfully our culture.  I look forward to talking to you again next week, Mike.  We’ll see you soon!
 
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!

Healing From Emotional Abuse: Reclaim Your Life : with Dr. Leonie H. Mattison

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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 for release.  Release fear and break the painful pattern.  And there are questions that are associated with each of these steps.  And step 4 is Enlist. Enlist allies to become the person you lost inside.  And what I love about E step.  This is where I do what you’re doing.  I empower women to speak up.  To share your story.  To release and get it out.  Talk about what you’ve been through without changing or blaming.  Share your story.  Release it from out of you.   So that’s the E.  So, step 5 is A for Adopt.  Adopt new mindsets and create new healthy patterns.
 
I see help as an equivalent to medicine. So if you’re taking medicine, you have to allow it to work. You have to give it time to take effect.  And while it’s working, something is breaking apart or falling apart, and it’s okay.  And this one of the most difficult steps because it forces us to step away from those behaviors. Or to step away from the things that we’ve been told.  I remember listening to your podcast and you were talking about how victims are often times blamed. They blame us while saying you were wearing.  Or it’s something you were doing.  Maybe you said something to trigger a reaction from the person. So this is the step where we’re saying, you’re gonna demolish those accusations.  You’re going to let go off of them because they’re untrue, and they do not power the better and most highest version of who you’re created to be.    And the last step, step 6, the D. That is Design your joyful life. And it’s almost like I’m saying to women Dream Again.  You get to dream of a new you, and design your joyful life with intention.  Design that life that you really want.  Design the life that will allow you to fulfill your mission and take the step.  Take action.  Be bold enough so say, I deserve to free myself of trauma.  Those memories.  Design that life that says, I will rise and go for the win, and be okay with that without feeling guilty.  Without having to justify anything to anyone.  To taking charge, taking your power back, and to really feel passionately about women taking your power back out of the hands of trauma.  Reclaim your life and live it. And living with intention.
 
Marissa:
You are so inspirational, and you can just hear the passion in your voice. I loved listening to you, I didn’t want you to stop talking. 
Dr. Mattison:
Thank you.
 
Marissa:
Thank you for doing the amazing work you’re doing. I think THREAD, those 6-steps are perfect.  It’s like rewriting your story.  It’s speaking it.  It’s what I say.  You have to Break Your Silence.  You have to speak your truth.  Because if you stay silent and don’t speak your truth, you can’t heal.  You’re still not accepting it.  And you’re still letting it weigh you down.  And i think it’s so important that survivors always speak about it and break their silence because that’s the only true way to heal. 
 
Dr. Mattison:
Absolutely. I  couldn’t agree with you more. Well said.  I have found healing writing a book.  I have found healing just talking to you and sharing my story. The emotions I feel is one of joy and liberation.  And that’s why I wrote the book. I wrote the book to create an avenue for women just like, just like you. Designed by abuse, and are desperately wanting to work through the past, so they can live the life that God envisioned.
 
This book is really a reminder to survivors that you’re not alone. You’re not alone on your healing journey. And I want them to know that God can heal them, to control their stories. To take control of your story. To rewrite it and to rewrite it with their own voice.  To rewrite it out of gratitude because they survived. We’re survivors. 
 
I was listening to one of your podcasts where you were talking about, again, the whole victim shame thing.  I was angry.  I listened to it and I wasn’t angry at you, but I was just so angry knowing that so many women never share their story.  And either they’re living as victims in the space and the world of guilt and shame, or some of them have passed on never feeling that freedom that you and I feel today.  And I want to help millions of women, even if it’s just through writing and sharing your story with me.  Or we jump on my podcast and share it as a revamp in my podcast.  And if even just one chapter of that story, I want you to share it.  Share it without retribution. Share it without the guilt and the shame. Share it out of your spirit of survivorship. Out of that gratitude-ness.  Out of that liberation.  Knowing that you’re no longer a victim.  You survived the hell that life put you through. Girl, rise! Rise. Share your story so we can help others to do the same.
 
Marissa:
I am so in agreement with you. Everything you just said. There are so many of us.  One of these campaigns that I started a couple of years ago with a friend was called I’m a Statistic because the connotation of being a part of a statistic is so negative.  You’re just a number.  But if you think about it in terms of survivors, you’re a statistic, you’re one of a million, or one of one hundred million.  Of this huge number of people that can all relate to you and empower each other to speak our truth.  To let that weight get lifted off our shoulders and help us heal.  So, I love that. I love everything you’re saying. When you started seeing your therapist, and I also saw that you used a healing coach, what techniques or tools did they teach that you helped you with your anger, and your bitterness, and also with your healing.
 
Dr. Mattison:
Number 1, breakthrough for me happened when I was taught to speak to the little girl when she shows up.  That little girl was always ignored.  She was always told to shut up.  She was abandoned. She never felt like she mattered.  So when that little girl shows up now, I don’t ignore her.  When she wants to be acknowledged for how she’s feeling, I stop and I pay attention.  So that was a breakthrough for me was to recognize acknowledge and pay attention to the little girl, Little Leonie when she shows up.  And what that looked like for me while i was on my healing journey, an example is, I was diagnosed with breast lumps, and I remember I was angry.  And I wondered why this happened to me.  So when I went into the surgery, it left a lot of marks. The wounds and the things to deal with.  And I wouldn’t touch my breasts. I felt shame, I wouldn’t touch it.  And I remember the second tool that I learned was to do mirror work.  And I remember, I’m in front of my mirror, and I didn’t want to look at myself.  I was looking away.  And finally, I said, I’m going to face her. I’m going to face me.  And I looked in the mirror at myself, and I looked at myself and I said, “I’m not going to ignore you. It’s not fair.  You gave my children, you breastfed my children, and now that you’re not well, I’m going to ignore you? No!” And I just started putting lotion all over my body.  And I started lotioning myself and just thanking my breasts for what it has done and how far it has come with me.
And I lotioned my body and thanking my body, and thanking my organs and my hands and my feet. I just started being grateful.  And then I said I love myself.  I remember I looked at myself in the eyes and I say this to women, “Leonie, I love you.  I love you.  I’m not going to abuse you.” Because that’s what a lot of us as survivors do, and we don’t know we’re doing it.  We end up abusing ourselves.  We end up ignoring ourselves.  We end up being so negative. And in the book, there’s a chapter in the book where I actually went through a whole exercise for what I learned.  It's around page 181.  I remember listening to Lisa Nichols, she’s also a motivational speaker, and while I was attending on of her conferences, I learned this.  About speaking forgiveness over yourself.  And I wrote in my book, after hearing Lisa Nichols speak during one of her seminars, I started speaking words of forgiveness to myself in the mirror.  Every day for 21 days I would look myself in the eyes, place my hands over my heart, and with no self judgement, would learn to speak forgiveness over myself.  And affirm the value of my God-ordained existence.
 
Now here’s what I wrote, and replace your name with mine. 
 
[Leonie] I forgive you for forgetting who God says you are, and for not accepting yourself completely.  [Leonie] I forgive you for allowing others to corrupt your mind into thinking you weren’t good enough.  [Leonie] I forgive you for lowering your standards and seeking love and acceptance in all the wrong places.  [Leonie] I forgive you for letting people take advantage of you, and letting bitterness cause you to miss mistake lust, lies and loneliness for love.  [Leonie] I forgive you for ignoring the warning signs.  For not trusting your discernment. 
 
I also honored my commitment to the woman I’m becoming through positive self-talk.  So that’s another tool I learned and I wrote. 
 
[Leonie] I commit to valuing myself and that my Yes will be a true YES.  And my No will be a firm NO.  [Leonie] I commit to pressing stop completely on the negative self talk. [Leonie] I commit to letting go of living in torment from living in past failed relationships. [Leonie] I commit to loving you always and will be okay with you when you’re crying, and when you feel sad.  [Leonie] I commit to lightening up and not coming down so hard on you.
 
The next part, I wrote:
I celebrated with Love, the woman who is taking steps to write a better next chapter in her life.
[Leonie] I celebrate you for getting out of bed this morning.  [Leonie] I celebrate you for showing up and operating with excellence at work. [Leonie] I celebrate for seeking help to heal, and I celebrate you for writing and sharing your story with the world. [Leonie] I celebrate your model in self-care, self love and healthy boundaries.  [Leonie] I celebrate you for  knowing, believing and appreciating the fact that your very existence is enough.  You can rise above your limitations ands self defeating thoughts. To stand in the space of possibilities.  In that space there’s plenty of room for pioneers of the possible.  History makers.  Navigators of the unknown; Change agents, and trail blazers. 
 
God remains the same.  He is the creator of life, the author of purpose, and the remodeler of old into new. 
 
Marissa:
I love that.  I think mirror work is so strong and so underrated.  And your affirmations are phenomenally written.  They are so powerful.  You are such a powerful speaker and I really do enjoy listening to you.  I think you should make your book an audio book so I can listen to it. Your voice just adds something to it.  Your passion and your true love towards helping survivors and through telling your story is really infectious, and I just catch myself drifting off listening to you.  Envisioning what you’re saying.  I love it.  So, thank you very much for sharing all of that.
And going back to mirror work.  Mirror work is so important.  It’s all about telling yourself how much you love yourself, and forgiving yourself and looking at the parts of your body and the things that happened to you, that hurt you.  And learning to truly embrace them, because it’s all just a part of you and it’s a part of your story.  I love it.
 
Dr. Mattison:
Thank you. Thank you very much.
 
Marissa:
What advice would you give to survivors that are still either on their healing journey or not yet on their healing journey.
 
Dr. Mattison:
Mmm. That’s a great question.  So, if you’re a survivor of trauma, and you're desperately seeking help and thinking about fulfillment in your life, and let me say there are a lot of people out there who aren’t, I think the best thing the woman or men who love us who are listening today can do, is to listen to your soul. It has a voice.  I mean, really stop and listen to the wisdom of your soul that’s crying out for healing.  That was what caught my attention.
 
You’ve got to make the decision to reclaim your life. You just have to.  And take the determined steps to make sure that you do.  That’s where I remember I got stuck.  I spent my childhood pretending to be someone else, while I was hiding behind the pain of my past.  Much of my adult life, I was hiding behind the childhood pain, while I was retreating back into darkness.  And i remember I thought I was living up to what society expected of me, and I wanted to be something other than who I really deeply felt in my soul I was created to be. I made my soul sick.  And when the soul is sick, it’ll vomit all over you.  When the soul is sick, it shuts down.  When the soul is sick,  you’re confused about your purpose.  When the soul is sick, then the body eventually manifests itself off the sickness.  The mind manifests itself on that souls sickness.  And so, I remember having to just pause, because I was realizing these symptoms, you know the bitterness, the anger, the sicknesses that I was experiencing, were all symptoms of a soul that was sick.
 
And so that would be my number one advice to victims and survivors. Listen to your soul. Listen to it. And because it’s during those moments that your soul will actually help you to see what you’re wanting and needing to help it to get better. It is during those moments that we will see that, “you know what, I need to listen and I also need to take steps to becoming better.”  So embrace the wisdom of your soul, and turn off the noise of everything else that is unnecessary. 
 
Marissa:
That’s great advice.  One of the chapters in my second book, Breaking Through the Silence: #Me(n)Too, was “You’re Only As Sick As Your Secrets.” And I love that.  You really are.  You’re only as sick as your secrets.  If you hold on to your abuse, and you don’t let it out, and you don’t heal, you’re truly killing yourself from the inside out.  Is there anything else you’d like to share?
 
Dr. Mattison:
My book is now available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, almost everywhere books are sold.  And in March, actually, I’ll be preventing at the Best You conference in Los Angeles and I’m inviting folks if you’re in the LA region to come on out and hear more about my book.  The topic of the talk is Rise From Trauma and Reclaim Your Life.  So, I’m really inviting as many women as possible to come out to March 20th at 5pm to attend to really important intentional conversation that I’ll be having with women.  And my website is being revamped.  My podcast will be ready around the April timeframe, and so I’m also welcoming guests who want to share their story of trauma and how they’ve achieved intentional transformation. And also, together we can learn so we can help more women to rise to become the women that they were created to be.  So, you know, that will be my last little tidbit for our listeners.
You can follow me on Instagram: Leonie H Mattison
I’m on facebook: Leonie H. Mattison,
 Twitter @LeonieMattison.
 
I really look forward to engaging with as many women as I can this year because I am on a mission to impact millions.  And one of the last things I’ll share with you about how my book took another turn, too, I’m actually doing some work in the local county jail here in Santa Barbara. So the book is actually in the jail here, and the women are reading the book and they have tons of questions. So i’ll be starting a 12-week program online and also on-site to really be looking at how to achieve intentional transformation.  SO people can check out my website, I’ll have more information in the coming days on how I’m really on this mission to reach a million women with a message of intentional transformation.
 
Marissa:
Great goals and thank you so much for sharing your story, and your work with us.  You’re such an inspirational person and I’m so happy that I got to talk to you today.  Thank you very much for being here today.
 
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!

Healing From Emotional Abuse: Is This Love?

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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!

Healing From Emotional Abuse: What Stalking Looks Like

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.  Before you ask, I didn’t want to call the police because I felt bad for him, and was also scared of the backlash for him and myself.  And finally, he would fall asleep on my floor.  And I would wake up, and he would be in my bed.  Manipulative and  Controlling.
 
When I worked for the Army, I had a co-worker who was a friend, and never anything more, that began to stalk me as well.  He would harass me with text messages all the time, make really forward and uncomfortable comments at me, and imply that he, his wife and I should have a 3some.  Those are not stalking… that’s just inappropriate, disgusting behavior.  The stalking began when he started commenting on the pillow I was laying on at home, when he wasn’t there.  Or when he would comment on my surroundings or the people I was with, without him having any prior knowledge.  He hacked into my phone camera and was watching me.  I thought I was going insane.  And when I went to the police about it, they told me that it’s impossible to hack into my camera and that they think he is just a really good guesser. 
 
So, I was alone on this one.  I even made a report to the commander of the base, and she told me just not to go near him.  I ended up covering my phone camera with a post-it note and was always looking over my shoulder at work and at home.  It didn’t help that he knew where I lived.  So, I registered for my FOID card, because this person has a history of aggressive, threatening and stalker tendencies.  He has, in the past, threatened to kill himself and the person who he was stalking.  She even transferred to a base in another state, several states away to get away from him, and he followed her there.  And because of the 7 PRIOR reports that went un-investigated, I become paranoid that he would come to my house, or break into my house while I wasn’t home and kill my dog.  If he’s willing to fly states to stalk someone, I think he’s willing to drive 45 minutes. So, I got a FOID card, and learned to shoot well.  Luckily, it never had to use it, and I transferred to a different base.  Not that he stopped trying to get to me… but it didn’t last much longer than that.
 
Anyone who has any social media, I’m sure, knows the term “facebook stalked,” or “Cyber Stalked”.  It’s a soft way of saying that you dove deeply into someone’s facebook page.  And that’s totally fine.  My concern with it, is the act of cyber stalking loses its meaning when it’s watered down like that.  Cyber stalking is what Joe does.  He digs so deeply into someone’s social media, and connects dots to find out where Beck lives, who her friends are, everything about her friends, everything about her dad, where she was at that festival.  Learns everything he can about her and everything around her, so he can systematically control her and all of them.
 
Cyber stalking is not a funny joke.  I’ve seen lives completely turned upside down for a decade from being cyber stalked.  Always watched.  Always intimidated.  Being threatened and sent candid pictures of yourself taken from your computer camera while you’re not actively taking pictures.  I’ve had several friends who were being watched and then blackmailed with pictures taken from their computer camera’s, by someone who hacked into their computers, of them changing, or naked or after a shower, or in bed with someone.  And those pictures were used against them.  That’s such an invasion of privacy, and it’s terrifying!  You’ve lost control of the comfort of your home!
 
Imagine being in that position.  Imagine being sent pictures of yourself that you didn’t know were taken in compromising situations.  That are now being held against you and threatened to be posted to someone who shouldn’t see them.  That’s a real invasion of your privacy.
 
To prevent stalking, CDC promotes the importance of early prevention and support efforts, which can include:
Empowering everyone to understand, recognize, and address stalking.
Mobilizing men and boys as allies in prevention efforts.
And supporting safe environments within relationships, schools, and communities through programs and policies that reduce risk and promote healthy relationships.
 
So to recap: Stalking is dangerous.  It’s a loss of control of your life and your surroundings.  It makes a person feel uneasy in their homes, offices, streets, anywhere and everywhere.  It can result in physical harm and death, as seen on YOU.  And it psychologically traumatizes victims for years, sometimes for ever.  I can never say that i’m 100% over it.  I still have nightmares, I still am paranoid in public places.  I still look over my shoulder.  I still like to be sitting facing the front doors at restaurants.  I still wonder if someone is watching me through my phone or computer camera every day.  The chill still runs down my spine when I think about it.  And it’s been a few years since I’ve been in contact with either of these people. So, bottom line, before you write-off stalking as a minimal crime, just keep in mind that external damage heals, but internal damage doesn’t go away.  It stays with you and inside you for a long time.
 
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!

Healing From Emotional Abuse: Self Esteem Activities

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!

Healing From Emotional Abuse : What Does Victim Blaming Mean?

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 false reports? Those people must account for something.”  I’ll get more into this topic in another podcast, but only between 2%-8% of reports to authorities are false reports.  Now, take into consideration all the sexual assaults that happen. 1.5 million girls will get raped in college. 1 in 3 women and 1 in 5 men get raped in their lifetime.  And of all of that, only 5% of cases get reported to the authorities.   And of that 5% only 2-8% are false reports.  That is the exact same number, it is equal to every other crimes false reporting statistics.  2-8% of breaking and entering reports are false reports.  2-8% of homicides are false reports.  2-8% of every criminal act reported to authorities are false reports. So why are rape victims the only ones with the bad reputation?  Why are rape victims the only ones that are doubted?
 
Bottom line, be more mindful of victim blaming in your every day life!  Let’s empower survivors and champions to take their voices back and tell their stories.  We can stop so many horrible things from happening if we stop doubting survivors, and we start believing them and empowering them to speak their truths.
 
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!

Healing From Emotional Abuse : How To Overcome Narcissism

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 what it’s supposed to be like afterwards.  What you’re supposed to feel and that these feelings weren’t normal. 
I had no idea, and I had no one to talk to about it.  Some of my friends had sex.  But it wasn’t a conversation that I was wiling to have. So, I sat down with my mom the next day, and she told me sex is beautiful. And sex is something that you do when you love somebody, and that it’s okay.  I didn’t tell her that it wasn’t consensual. I  still didn’t tell her, and after that, I just didn’t want to hurt her.  I didn’t want her to feel like she could have stopped it, because she couldn’t have. I didn’t know what was going on.  He took advantage in a very vulnerable moment. So, I just went with it and said thank you very much.  And I know that sex is a good thing.  It’s a good thing to do with someone you love. Fine. Cool. Moving on.
 
I didn’t talk to anybody about it for the rest of the weekend.  But the next Monday in school, I was in the office with a couple of my friends, and I had subtly brought up the fact that Dave and I had, had sex for the first time, but I didn’t really want to.  And their reactions were explosive. It wasn’t “Oh my god, what do you mean?”  It was, “WHAT?? WHAT IS GOING ON?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DIDN’T WANT IT?? HE HAD SEX WITH YOU ANYWAYS?!” And I just was terrified, and I withdrew.  They knew him.  I still loved him and I didn’t want anyone to hate him or get him in trouble.  Again, I still didn’t know that what had happened was rape.  So I didn’t talk about it again for about 6 months.
 
I want to take another minute to reflect on this.  What do you think you would have done in my situation?  If you were already very timid about something that happened to you, and very, very confused about a situation, and you had people getting really aggressive and loud.  It’s a little intimidating.  I’d like to know what you think you would have done or did do, in that situation when you had it or when you could have potentially had it.  It’s confusing and scary.  And one of the biggest fears is potentially being judged.  So now, you’re being judged, on top of being overwhelmed.  So what do you think?
 
Meanwhile, I continued to have sex with him over and over again, because I thought maybe it would get better and fill that hole in my stomach.  And then the sexual abuse got worse.
He forced me to go down on him. That was a horrendous experience, too.  And he blamed all of that on me crying after sex because it made him feel so bad and he felt so guilty for making me cry.  So this  was me having to repay him for hurting him, which was really manipulative. 
 
About 6 months later, I was driving with my best friend, and we were jamming to Taylor Swift and eating candy. We passed this ice cream place we both really liked and she said something like, “If you love me, you’ll pull over.” And I just lost it.  I fell into another panic attack.  She had to grab the wheel because I couldn’t breathe, and pull the car over for us.  I unloaded everything, and told her everything.  And that was probably the smartest, unplanned decision I ever made, because she happened to be the perfect person to tell that to.  She was calm, and she was actively listening.  She let me say what I needed to say, and she wasn’t trying to solve my problem.  She listened to me, and loved me and validated me, and told me that we will do whatever it takes to make me okay.  And to help me get over this.
My best friend happened to be the perfect person to tell this to and speak to.  Not only because she was so calm and understanding, but because she had experience in it.  And she totally empathized with me and totally understood what I was going through.  Who is somebody you feel that you can talk to without feeling like you’re going to be judged.  Or without feeling like what you’re going to say is going to scare them.  Think about that, because those people are so important to have in your life. 
 
So the event happened on January 15, 2010.  On March 15, 2010,  exactly two months later, I broke up with him.  We got back together and broke up again a week later, but the big one was March 15.  And then, in July is when I told my best friend.  So, there was a good amount of time where I was just devastated, still and not talking about it. But not dealing with him, either, in a romantic way. 
I definitely took my trauma and ran with it in a way that was very unhealthy.  I still had that big hole in my stomach, and having sex with him didn’t fill it, so I thought maybe having sex with other people would.  So I started sleeping around.  Not with randoms, and not with hundreds of people.  But people I was interested in, I was much quicker to jump into bed with them than I would have been. Than I was initially and planned to be, growing up.  I was always a person that was very conservative with my “self.”  I didn’t go on dates with people I didn’t want to.  I didn’t kiss people I didn’t want to.  I never felt forced to do anything.  I never felt like I needed the attention.  And so that stuff never really bothered me.  And that stuff really never affected me. 
But after this, I had this feeling, and I just wanted that feeling to go away. So that summer,  I did my fair share of sleeping around and soul searching, and hurting people without meaning to.  It was all about a self-discovery thing for me.  And so, to anyone who I may have hurt that summer in 2010, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to.  It was a reckless summer for me.
So many people have, so many different responses to this type of trauma.  Some people completely withdraw from society, or from the gender that hurt them;  Or from friends and family.  And just maintain that victim mentality, “Shell of themselves” lifestyle, which is really, really unfortunate. Some people develop eating disorders. Some people really get into a hobby.  It’s so different for every person.  There is a lot of overlap in drug use and alcohol  abuse and sexual assault and domestic violence.  There is homelessness.  There are so many different outcomes.  So being understanding of that and knowing that this is all a response to a trauma, is really important to be mindful of.
 
So fast forward through the summer.  I went back to school for about a week, and then I got accepted into a program in Israel, where I was studying psychology overseas in a  phenomenal school.  And so I jumped on a plane and went.  And I moved their.  I ended up connecting with old friends.  And started a relationship with this guy who ended up being my first love.  He helped me completely rewire my messed up brain. He helped me relearn about healthy relationships, about learning to love myself again, what to expect from a partner, and toxic relationships.  He helped me put myself back together.
 
After my year in Israel, I moved home and continued with that relationship with the guy from Israel.  I was back at the school with my abuser for one more year. I was elected Vice President of the Student Government, and he was the Treasurer.  So I was still his boss in the student government, and he didn’t like that.  So he spent the whole year trying to make me look bad.  Trying to undermine everything I was doing and saying. At this point, I was already empowered.  I had this phenomenal boyfriend who was still my boyfriend and came from Israel to visit me.  And it made my abuser really really uncomfortable that I was so happy and so strong and sure of myself again.  The whole year had gone by, then one day in April, I was sitting outside reading, and Dave came and sat next to me.  And he asked if we could talk.  I told him I’d prefer not to, but I will.  What do you want?
And he said, “I just wanted to tell you that I ruined you.  And I’m so sorry for everything I did.  I don’t know why I did it. But I am really happy that you found the Israeli guy.  And I wanted to apologize and tell you that I’m really sorry for everything that I did to you.” And I said okay thank you.  And that was it. After that, we were fine. I forgave him.  I didn’t forget, at no point did I forget, and I certainly wasn’t going to go back to him - I knew what I was getting with him. Plus, I was with somebody  so much better.  But it was my sense of closure.  And i knew that it was okay to move on and not hold on to that anymore. And that was huge. Once you forgive, never forget, but once you forgive, you’re taking that power back from them.  When you hold on to that anger and that hatred and that darkness, all you’re doing is fueling their power.
 
So the next year, I transferred to Rowan University in southern NJ, and the Israeli guy and I decided that our distance was too much, and we can stay loving each other, and in a relationship sort of, but we could date other people. It was something that we agreed on and something that we were both comfortable with because it didn’t seem reasonable that while I was in college and he was in the military to hold onto each other like that.
 
That was 7 years ago.  Now I am safe. I wrote two (now 4) best selling books about my abuse, and other survivors of abuse:
Breaking Through the Silence™: The Journey to Surviving Sexual Assault
Breaking Through the Silence™: #Me(n)Too
The Ruhe Approach: Healing From Abuse
The Healing From Emotional Abuse Philosophy: The 3 Keys to Overcoming Narcissism
 
And I plan on writing a lot more.  I have a ton of stories to share.  I’m an open book.  So ask me anything.
 
Thank you so much for listening to Healing From Emotional Abuse today.  I think that these messages and these stories are so important to get out because our voices need to be heard.  I would love it if you would rate and share this podcast with anybody you think that needs to hear or read this information.
 
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!