When you recognize that it is emotional abuse that is driving these four debilitating–and, therefore, unhealthy–responses to how you’re being treated (or have been treated, particularly from your parents,) you are on your way to seeing your next best steps clearly.
Be sure to listen in so you won’t take the blame, or make excuses for, a person who is driving you to have these feelings.
HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS EPISODE:
🚩Why you feel exhausted in a toxic relationship
🚩4 ways you respond when being emotionally abused by a Hijackal
🚩Never mistake possessiveness for protectiveness
🚩How you internalize emotional abuse & the effects of doing so
Being with a Hijackal–a relentlessly difficult person–is confusing, chaotic, and disappointing.
The emotional abuse can go unnoticed for too long. See it for what it is by recognizing these four responses now.
MACHINE TRANSCRIPT:
Tonight we’re going to be talking about a topic again that you may not have thought about before. And these are four debilitating responses to emotional abuse.
They’re debilitating because they keep you stuck. They keep you down. They take away your power. And you may not be fully realizing to the extent that they are occupying your life and your mind and are problematic. I know that you know they’re problematic, but you may not have thought of them in these ways.
So tonight, we’ll be talking about four debilitating responses to emotional abuse. And you may not have even been in the place yet where you can call what’s going on in your relationship emotional abuse. So don’t panic, don’t worry, it takes a while to actually be able to say I am being emotionally abused. We may know we’re being verbally abused, but we may not understand the depth of emotional abuse. So this is going to add to that discussion tonight.
Now we’ve got these four debilitating responses. There are lots more. But these four in particular can truly as I said, keep you stuck. And you may not know what’s making you stuck. Because they’re incremental. They start in little ways, maybe even they start, you complain, they somewhat apologize and don’t do it again for a bit. And then it comes back again. Till eventually it’s full blown.
You may not have noticed the extent but you notice how badly you feel. You may not be able to put your finger on it, but you know how badly you feel. And this becomes critical to seeing what’s going on. So that you can take some positive action and do something differently.
Hijackals like to give you the feeling they’re taking care of you. Maybe even protecting you, when what they really are is the first of the debilitating responses is that they are possessive. They want you to believe they’re being protective. But you actually see and feel that they are being possessive.
We don’t belong to anybody. We are equal partners with somebody by choice. But we are not a possession. We are not an object, we are not owned by somebody. We are not controlled by somebody if we are in a healthy relationship. So the first debilitating response to emotional abuse is that feeling of being an object being possessed, and it can drive you crazy. Because it will cause you to be monitored a lot.
And they in the beginning say Oh, I just love you so much. I want to talk to you. I need to talk to you frequently. Where are you? And what they’re really doing is setting up a pattern for keeping tabs on you at all times.
So in the beginning when you’re in a relationship with a Hijackal they call frequently during the day, and you are thrilled. Oh this is wonderful. You know we’re forming a bond. This is great. But as soon becomes evident to you (at least I hope it became evident to you) that you’re in not, you’re not having that experience because they love you so much. It is because they want to possess you. They want to know where are you, they want you to be answering to them, they want to say, you should have been home 10 minutes ago.
And then of course, they spin the stories to say that you were cheating you were doing all manner of things while you were probably just sitting anxiously waiting for them to come home. So this sense of possessiveness can be debilitating, and it causes you to feel used. Nobody is supposed to treat you as a possession, that “I will move you around, I will put you in your place. I will tell you when to breathe, I will tell you when to speak, I will tell you how to act, I will tell you how you feel.”
The possessiveness will also include that gaslighting that “I will define your reality for you, I will tell you how you feel, and don’t you dare refute me because I am, right”. Hijackals always have to be right. And so you get this feeling of being owned by someone that in the beginning, it seems like they are delighted and when you’re close to you, soon after, it feels like they are overtaking you. They are overriding your choices or your feelings or your thoughts. And they’re actively possessing you. Sound familiar to you at all?
Because you want to keep telling yourself that story that they just love you so much that they want to know where you are every minute. I know that that story lingers long after it should have been extinguished. Because you want to believe it, you desperately want to believe they’re doing what they’re doing, basically surveilling you because they love you so much. No, it’s because they want power over you. And when you have that response of, “I can’t do a thing, I can’t look sideways, there can’t be a second late, I can’t ever plan on hearing are telling my story and have it being heard in the same way that I’m telling it.” It is because of that need of the Hijackal that person who hijacks relationship for their own needs and purposes. And then relentlessly scavenges it for power status and control.
That person, the Hijackal, has a great need to possess you to be the ultimate person who decides how you feel decides what you do decides what’s okay and what’s not okay. And that once you fall or crumble underneath it, or get led, they’re under the misconception that it’s because they love you so much that you get into that situation of possessiveness. The Hijackal wants you to think that they’re protecting you, they cares so much, they have your best interest at heart. But the actual fact is no, they just want ultimate power and control.
This is a hard thing to see because it was a much nicer thought wasn’t it that they loved you so much. It felt better. But when you have to see this shift, that it actually is possessiveness. You know, I don’t want you but I don’t want anyone else to have you.
That’s often what we see when you have children with a Hijackal. They don’t really have an interest in the children when you go to divorce them. But they definitely have a high interest in not wanting you to get what you want, which is the children. So that possessiveness continues.
And it is such a shame, to think that one person is so insecure, that they have to possess another person. But Hijackals may be the most insecure people on the planet, even the ones who have narcissistic tendencies who are appearing to be the top of the pile at all times, behaving as though nobody could possibly have anything but a positive response to them. They are also completely fearful. Don’t put your compassion hat on. Just know that if you are feeling that debilitating response of being possessed of not being able to sit sideways, speak sideways, or decide what to do for yourself.
Big Red Flag, great big red flag.
You do not want to feel that way. And if you do feel that way, see it as a red flag. Don’t try and talk yourself into the fact that Oh, they just love me so much. Okay, there’s the first one.
Now the second debilitating response to emotional abuse is you become depressed. Depressed means you turn all your button responses down, and you feel caught. You feel like there’s no escape, you may feel like a hostage, you definitely will be exhausted. Because you’re depressed, you’ve been pushed out and pushed down and push down and push down. And even if you fight, you get pushed down again. And pretty soon, you got nothing left.
You’re completely devoid of energy, you don’t have an idea of how to proceed. Anyway, you do proceed, they squash you. And you have this response of the body shutting down, and you becoming depressed. And when Susan Forward wrote the book, “Emotional Blackmail”, she gave us the acronym F. O.G. or fog. What Hijackals like to do is to keep you in the fog. And what fog stands for is Fear, Obligation and Guilt. They are going to get you one way or the other.
Fear, obligation, guilt, all the things that make you feel less than, that make you feel as though you’re not good enough. They will just bombard you with those thoughts, miserable words, verbally abuse you, and all to get you to feel depressed, and you feel powerless, so you don’t have anywhere to go with it. And then as you feel that way, then you find that your fuzzy thinking, you’re when you try to figure it out, you just don’t have what it takes to do that. You just don’t have the get up and go to get up and go.
And so they’re counting on that they’re counting on you running out of fight. You just being so exhausted, that you will give up and be depressed. And of course, when you do say that you’re feeling depressed and say, well, it’s your fault, right? Because that’s just part of the Hijackal nature. everything is your fault. You’ve noticed that right? There’s no question that everything will be your fault, no matter how much their fault it is, it will be your fault.
Now I’ve done other episodes on that. It’s called blame shifting. So you can do that in the search. Just go to where you like to find your podcast, put in my name, and put blame shifting, and you’ll learn some things about that.
So we’ve got the debilitating response of feeling possessed. And I guess you do feel a little crazy. So it may be the other kind of possessed to now are feeling depressed, can’t do anything about it. Tried, nothing I try works. They don’t want me to anyway. And you really start to feel like you should just lay down and play dead for a while. And you feel kind of dead inside. So so difficult. Right? And that is that response of I am powerless. It feels awful. I am depressed. My emotions are flatlining. I don’t have energy. I don’t have get up and go I don’t have gumption. And if I did, I would be thwarted and knocked down anyway. So why would I even try it? Why would I even goes there?
That’s really hard. And you may have gotten into it by thinking that you could make them happy that if you just did enough, if you did exactly what they wanted you to do, you could make them happy. And if you made them happy, they would love you and treat you well. Well, that doesn’t work very well does it?
Because I’m sure you’ve tried it. But remember when a Hijackal is determined to be unhappy with you, no matter how hard you endeavor to make them happy, or to do the things they say will make them happy, which is not your job at all to keep anybody else happy. But they like to make it your job. And if that becomes a focus for you and you think you’re doing a good job and you will never allow it to be validated for doing a good job.
It will be depleting it will be devaluing you will be demeaning, it will be dismissing it will be discounting and you will end up depressed. Anybody already there. It’s a debilitating response to emotional abuse. So look at it. You know if you need my help to look at it, you can come over to be a client.com and Use my new client one hour offer for only $97 be a client.com. Because you need to talk about it. You need to be validated for what you’re feeling and what you’re thinking and wanting a new plan.
Because living in depression, the answer is not to turn to medication as the regular thing. Yes, now and again is a great thing to use when you really need to pick yourself up. And you can’t do it yet for yourself, I have no problem with that. But if somebody is creating a relationship that is designed to turn you into a depressed human, then it’s best to look at who that Hijackal is and what they’re doing, rather than to say, oh, you know, I’m a mess.
There’s so much that you can do. And as I’m giving you these debilitating responses in this episode, I want you to know that all, almost all of this can be healed. And after you heal the wound, you can recover. And after you recover, you can recalibrate and create another life, a different life a better life, one that will not allow Hijackals back in. So that’s important.
So we have the feeling of being possessed by another person, we have the feeling of being depressed. Now another debilitating response is that feeling of being oppressed.
Like, no matter what you pop up and want to say, a good idea, as a suggestion, a pleasant tree, a congratulations, an ‘I’m so happy for you’, no matter what it is, you get put down.
And that’s so precious. “I will not allow you to live a full, vital rich life, I will oppress you, I will make you less than I will have control over you, I will manipulate you. And what I say goes and just know that.” And that debilitating response to you is you feel oppressed. And you start second guessing yourself and questioning your sanity? Is it my fault? I’m here? Is it really happening? No, it couldn’t possibly be happening, you get very confused. Your thinking becomes chaotic, and you feel oppressed, that there are no doors opening for me.
There’s nowhere to go, there’s no one to go to. There’s no way out of this situation. And Hijackals have this great need to isolate you. I’m sure you’ve noticed that. So they will have taken you somewhere to live, perhaps that sounded like a wonderfully romantic idea. We will go off and live off the land or we will go to a new city and start again fresh as a couple. But these are attempts at isolation, to get you away from your support system to get you away and dependent on them. And that’s where the beginnings of the trauma bond are.
They want you to be dependent on them so that they control whether you’re happy or not. Now they don’t want you to be happy. But they want you do believe that they will allow you certain latitude if you do what they say. It’s all a muddle isn’t it? It’s just so much.
You know, you’ve heard me said, I say if you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, I had to Hijackal parents, I’m an only child. And yes, I was married to Hijackal and had to find my way out of that with my children. So I do know things about this. And that feeling of of being oppressed. I was at the top of my game, you’re well recognized all kinds of things were happening. And my husband, he was resentful, terribly resentful of my success, even though it was feeding the family and allowing him to go back to college. But he was resentful. He was furious. Why should he have to do this? Why is this woman getting all of this attention and I am not.
And it was that feeling I had being oppressed even while all wonderful things were happening. Why aren’t you happy for me? I won a country-wide opportunity to have the job I have, why do you have to be so miserable? Hijackals could never be happy for you because if you do something, well, they’re in competition with you. They want to be the ones that are validated, they won’t validate you.
So there will be that continual oppression. And it’s very difficult to get out, if you had Hijackal parents. Everything that got put into you, particularly in the first six years of life, become your sort of basic operating system. And so if you have these Hijackal parents, it seems off very familiar and somewhat normal, that you should be in these relationships of this kind. And so you expect to be put down a little or you expect to be disappointed, or you expect to not be validated. And then you go on to be in other relationships with other humans, who are going to play by the same rules as the Hijackal parent, you didn’t like it, you’re not happy about it, but it is familiar.
And you are comfortably uncomfortable in the familiar. But because it’s subconscious from when you were so young, you accept it. And that requires a big breakthrough. Not easy to do, not easy to do. And that’s where I can come in and help you. So go to be a client calm, and we’ll talk. So we’ve got the debilitating response of their possessiveness, of our depression, of are feeling oppressed, controlled, marginalized, powerless, helpless, all escape routes are cut off, you don’t know where to turn?
Well, we can figure it out. Truly, We can’t have always easy. And it requires a lot of courage from you. A lot of willingness to play on your own team, to take off your rose colored glasses and see all those red flags for what they are. They’re waving, but when you have the rose colored glasses of hope and all on board, you can’t see them. So we have to whip off those rose colored glasses so that you can see what’s causing this feeling of being possessed and depressed and oppressed.
And then the fourth one, the fourth debilitating response is feeling obsessed. You become obsessed with the relationship? What are they thinking? Where are they? What time? Is it? When are they coming home? What stories are they making? How will they twist my words? What are they telling other people that isn’t true? How are they triangulating through my family or my friends?
Constantly obsessed with what’s going on the relationship is getting your, your every moment, every waking moment attention in some way. You’re living with your shoulders up by your ear lobes. What’s happening next? Where are they coming at me from and you become obsessed with that and you’re worried you are concerned you are on the defensive, you are just waiting for the second shoe to drop at all times.
And you become obsessed with that to the point where maybe you can’t do well at work. Or if you’re a stay at home parent that you have no energy, you can’t get things done. And you just become obsessed with how can I please them? How do I get out of here out how you know that’s all you’re thinking of because it’s all you have the bandwidth to think about. You’re second guessing yourself like crazy questioning your sanity.
It becomes too much to get up in the morning. And it too much that keeps you awake at night. Book hands on the day, being obsessed with the relationship. And with the Hijackal and the Hijackal is going yay. That’s exactly what I wanted. The person is immobilized by being obsessed with how they can please me. Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that just how it should be? says a Hijackal? No, it shouldn’t. As you know from my famous episode 115 The three must haves of a healthy adult relationship are equality, reciprocity, and mutuality.
Exactly the opposite way you’re going to get in a Hijackal relationship. Exactly the opposite. Because they want you to be obsessed with him. And that’s where the love bombing comes in that I spoke about in the last episode. They’ll give you just enough attention to get you hooked on hope that the person you fell in love with that wonderful mythical person. as rare as a unicorn you’ll have found out in your relationship is actually there underneath there, and they will give you that enticement into hoping that there is something good. And then you will sign up again, you will become involved, you will be enrolled in what’s possible. And as hola manipulation.
Many Hijackals In fact, I would say most of them are emotionally lazy. They want to play you like a fiddle, because they don’t want to bother with having to acquire somewhere else. Now, that doesn’t mean they don’t have their side hustles. Many of them do, but many of them don’t, because they are emotionally lazy. But they want you to be obsessed with them, how to figure it out how to please them what to do, how to stay in their good graces. And so you’re second guessing yourself, you’re questioning your sanity, and you feel hyper vigilant. Just always on edge, always on edge. And that’s no way to live. And you don’t want your children to live like that either. That’s debilitating.
We don’t want to build that into our children, that they’re afraid to breathe wrongly. It’s too much for you imagine what it is for the children. And then when you’re in this obsessed state, you’re always fearful. You’re always anxious. And that’s nowhere to live. It’s too much is too much for your nervous system is too much for your amygdala, it’s always going Alert, alert, alert, something terrible is happening. It’s too much for your vagus nerve is too much.
If you have certain kinds of childhood attachment, and the style that you have acquired as a result, if you had a Hijackal parent, you’re getting a double dose of all of it probably. So these things are definitely worth looking at. Definitely exploring if you have to listen to the podcast several times over.
How am I feeling about being possessed by somebody? Or someone treating me as though I’m their possession? How am I feeling? Where did my depression come from? How am I being fed? More that makes me more depressed? What can I do about it? Why do I feel so pressed? Why do I feel so pressed down? So they are just as though you have a weight on you at all times? And you can’t get out from under it? And the last one, why am I obsessed with this person, they’re taking up so much mental energy thinking about them all the time.
And if you have an anxious attachment style from your use, and then a Hijackal comes into your life, you will really notice that is a very, very wearing thing that they are going to constantly be wanting you to have only them on their mind. All these things are things that you can do something about all of these things, once you bring them into consciousness into awareness you think deeply about them, will help you to see the situation that you have found yourself in. Not the one that you created. Please exclude that idea. As soon as you begin to recognize that that’s the thing is a real thing is called Emotional abuse.
Here’s a piece of it. I’m not crazy. I am not second guessing myself a moment longer. I know this is true. And if you want to work with me, as I said, to learn more individually, go to beaclient.com If you’d like to be part of my emerging empowered community, an online community safely off social media, where we talk about all stages of wreckage from recognizing to recovering and recalibrating after life
You can come on and joinintoday.com and become part of the emerging empowered community. What are the benefits of being part of the community is twice a month we have a 60 to 90 minute zoom call together where you can ask me anything. It’s a group call. And you can join with other people hear other people’s stories here either pupils questions and answers and get your own. So come on over to join in today.com
Do you happen to be feeling these ways? Now that you have heard them? Maybe that caused a light to go on and say, I’m accepting this and I am not going to tolerate it any further. No, don’t leap up into ultimatums and get all motivated and all. Just get into awareness about it, think it through, then let’s work together so that you will have the most successful decision about should I go Should I stay? If I’m going, how do I maneuver through that whole system? And how do I manage the court? How do I do all of that? And then afterwards, how do I heal, recover and recalibrate?
You can do it. I’m here to help you. And until we speak again, take very good care of yourself. Because you’re precious, and do matter. Talk soon. Thank you for joining me on the save your sanity podcast today. I hope you’ve had some new insights, some ideas and strategies to help you gain clarity and confidence from moving forward toward greater emotional health and safety. You deserve that and so to your children, if you found value here and would like to support this podcast with $1 of five each month, please do so at patreon.com/save your sanity? Learn more about how to work with me via video conference, join me optimize circles, or subscribe to this podcast on my youtube channel at my website, transforming relationship.com Talk soon
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