00:00:01 Paul

Emotional abuse isn’t about what happens once. It’s about what’s happening repeatedly. And it attacks the nervous system and it attacks our identity. But let’s make no mistake about it. It’s very traumatic. It’s about control. And it’s about control that is done through fear. The fear of abandonment, the fear of punishment, the fear of being too much, of being wrong or unlovable, and the fear of losing this relationship. That’s what, you know, the core of emotional abuse. And I love how Gabor Mate talks about what is trauma. Right? Trauma is never about the event, and the event can be ugly, but it’s what it does to us from the inside. Right? And that’s a constant. This emotional abuse happens constantly, and it just takes away our ourselves. It’s about the trauma that’s happening and the unhealed past. That’s the beauty of compassion Inquiry. It’s a game changer. We get to the root very quickly, very quickly, and the root’s not where you think it is. The root usually goes all the way back to childhood. And that makes it difficult for people because when I’m working with them with emotional abuse, first thing we want to do is to acknowledge the emotional abuse. When they start talking about it, and I’m acknowledging it and seeing it and hearing it and being with them, when I look them straight in the eye and I say, I want you to know that was wrong and it wasn’t your fault, they start crying and they have a big release because they’re being seen and heard.

00:01:40 Rosemary

This is the Gifts of Trauma. Stories of transformation and healing through Compassionate Inquiry. 

Welcome to the Gifts of Trauma podcast by Compassionate Inquiry. I’m Rosemary Davies-Janes, and today my co host, J’aime Rothbard and I are speaking with Paul Noiles, who is a very active member of the Compassionate Inquiry community. Welcome, Paul.

00:02:12 Paul

Thank you very much, Rosemary.

00:02:14 Rosemary

I am looking forward to getting to know you better through this conversation.

00:02:18 Paul

Excellent. I’m looking forward to it, too. I just want to let you know that I’m in Canada for people who don’t know. And today is one of the coldest days ever. It’s like minus 35 out there, and I’m kind of jealous there, Rosemary, that you there in Costa Rica in heat.

00:02:33 Rosemary

Yes, I am very grateful to be here. Now, J’aime, is there anything you’d like to say to Paul before I introduce him to our guests?

00:02:40 J’aime

Of course. I would like to really just present the fact that we’re here talking to a man named Paul about a subject that is super meaningful. To me, having worked nearly two decades in the violence against women arena. And I will never tire of meeting a colleague who is male, who is bringing this conversation to the center, and who’s made it a real priority in his life to make this not a women’s issue, but a collective issue. Really grateful for you, Paul.

00:03:13 Paul

Thank you. Thank you. That’s a good point. Because a lot of times we downplay the men’s emotional abuse, which is just as equal in what it does to us.

00:03:24 Rosemary

Excellent. Well, I can’t wait to get into that. Paul, your full bio is in the show notes, so I’ll just share a few key facts with our listeners. Then I’ll invite you to include anything that’s not in your bio or perhaps that you’d like them to know. Paul, you’ve trained in Compassionate Inquiry, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectic Behavioral Therapy, Suicide Intervention and Prevention. You spent 17 years studying and teaching meditation, and 30 years working as a fitness and health expert. You wrote a book called Mistaken Identity, A Sacred Journey from Addiction to Awakening, which was published back in 2021. So that’s what you’ve done. Paul, what I’d really like to know is who are you? Who is the man behind these accomplishments?

00:04:13 Paul

Well, you just asked probably one of the most powerful questions in the world that everybody should ask. Who am I? And you know, the best way for me to answer who I am is by knowing who I’m not. And all the great mystics will say that the only way you can know who you are is by knowing who you’re not. And my book is called Mistaken Identity. And we have this mistaken identity that’s a result of our unhealed past and trauma. And we gotta peel the layer, right? I’m not my thoughts, I’m not my feelings, I’m not the mind. I’m not even my trauma. And as we peel away, the onion slowly disappears. And so who I am is an awakening consciousness. I’m awake consciousness, and that’s who we all are. And I’m not even the body. That’s not who I am either. And so that’s would be the way I’d answer it. And the very famous Alan Watts, who I’m sure a lot of you know, Alan always says it’s impossible to fully know who you are because it’s like you can’t chew your own jawbone, fire can’t burn itself, but you can get damn close enough to experience your essence, which, you know, Tolle talks about is our essence, is this great power of love in which I totally agree with him.

00:05:30 Rosemary

Beautiful answer. Thank you. And we have our wonderful role model, Gabor Maté, who in his 80s, unbelievable, is still taking off layers. And he often refers to, you know, when he was young and stupid, when he was 80. And I love that this is a lifetime process. So you are a very peeled presence. and I welcome you here today.

00:05:52 Paul

I like that. I like that, a peeled presence. Very creative.

00:05:56 Rosemary

Yeah. I’m very visual and I was seeing those onion layers fall away and it’s… I can’t call you onionless because that…. Very progressively peeled. Now…today we’re going to be focusing on the malevolent nature of emotional abuse. It’s something I’ve experienced personally and I think a lot of our listeners will have as well. Before we begin, I’d like to share my intention for today, which is to offer information, insights and stories that help listeners who are experiencing emotional abuse gain new insights and courage that both support their safety and well being and perhaps their ability to extract themselves from whatever the situation is that they’re in. J’aime or Paul, would you like to share an intention?

00:06:41 Paul

The intention I want to use is, for me, it’s always, I try to share this all the time. And it’s about compassion and it’s about self compassion and doesn’t the world need that right now, self compassion? Because when we learn self compassion, we can have compassion for others. And you know as that famous quote by AH Almaas, which I know, you know him, he’s Gabor Mate’s spiritual teacher, he says that only when compassion is present will people be able to see their truth. And that’s why it’s called compassionate inquiry. We need that compassion to see the truth, to work through our issues, our trauma. So that’s what I’d like to start with.

00:07:21 Rosemary

Thank you, Paul.

00:07:22 J’aime

Rosemary, I appreciate you presencing those who may feel they identify with perhaps they’ve experienced emotional abuse or experiencing it. I would like to wrap some love around the people who I know will discover parts of them being named that have actually done or are doing elements of emotional abuse at this time that may not be aware that’s actually what they’re doing. And I think that this Gifts of Trauma is an awareness, sort of platform of compassionate inquiry. And so I’m really just sending the prayer that the awareness of both sides of the experience, even within an individual, can be touched and also loved.

00:08:09 Paul

Absolutely 

00:08:11 Rosemary

Beautiful thank you, J’aime. I’d like to start us off with a quote from Avery Neal, the person who brought my situation to my attention because it’s really quite amazing, but a lot of us can be experiencing abuse or to your point, J’aime, doling out abusive behavior without really being aware of it. Avery Neal is a therapist who published a course and a book that I’ve linked in the show notes as both of these helped me figure out that I was experiencing emotional abuse, which, like many others, I struggled to believe. She says “Many abused people have never been harmed physically, which leaves them to question themselves rather than identifying the abusive dynamic in their relationship. Abuse is gradual and escalates over time, which makes it difficult to view objectively. And it’s not simply the insecure or meek woman who finds herself in the throes of an abusive relationship. It’s the woman who graduates with distinction from her Ivy League school or the selfless housewife who dedicates her life to her children. It’s the male executive who is ashamed to admit that his wife is abusive.” Yeah, I think that captures it. Avery was herself a victim of abuse, and in the preface of her book, she briefly shares her own story in third person, and I’ll just share an excerpt and then we’ll get into our conversation. “She could honestly say that abuse never crossed her mind, but she also couldn’t figure out why she felt so bad. She knew she chronically felt unhappy in her relationship, but she still thought, overall, he was the good guy he proclaimed himself to be. She knew that there were parts of her partner’s behavior that never made any sense to her, and there were certainly plenty of things that never added up. However, she never considered that she had been in an abusive relationship. That was something that happened to other women, not to her. When she finally left the relationship, his anger became completely overt, and she was forced to confront what had been lingering under the surface the entire time. It was at this point that she began to realize the extent to which she had been bullied, manipulated, and controlled.” And that’s a quote from her book that’s so beautifully named. If He’s So Great, Why Do I Feel So Bad?

00:10:25 Paul

Emotional abuse doesn’t discriminate. There’s no discrimination here. It can be anybody at all. Emotional abuse isn’t about what happens once. It’s about what’s happening repeatedly. And it attacks the nervous system and it attacks our identity. But let’s make no mistake about it. It’s very traumatic. It’s about control. And it’s about control that is done through fear. The fear of abandonment, the fear of punishment, the fear of being too much, of being wrong or unlovable. And the fear of losing this relationship. That’s what, you know, the core of emotional abuse. And I love how Gabor Mate talks about what is trauma. Right. Trauma is never about the event. And the event can be ugly, but it’s what it does to us from the inside. Right. And that’s a constant. This emotional abuse happens constantly, and it just takes away our ourselves.

00:11:20 Rosemary

Yeah, I hear you. And fear is a big part of it. There’s also what Avery named as things never quite adding up or not making sense. So there can also be a sense of confusion. And unfortunately, that was what I experienced. And unfortunately, women tend more to be forgiving… brush it under the rug. When things don’t add up or things don’t make sense, we skip over it. And anybody who’s listening right now who can relate to that, I urge them to not skip over it or sweep under the rug. There may be a pattern there that you’re ignoring that’s got red or yellow flags all over it.

00:11:59 Paul

I think that word confusion is spot on. If you had asked me in the first 40 years of my life, what was the overwhelming thing, was confusion, from my own emotional abuse from my father, and how that I always felt confused, like I’m doing something wrong, which are some of the tell signs of a person who’s been through emotional abuse. And the confusion, as you know, it’s the perception. And what is that confusion? What’s the emotion with the confusion? Usually it’s shame. It’s toxic shame, which destroys our identity.

00:12:36 Rosemary

Yeah. And it can also be our attachment relationship is… we don’t want to embarrass our partner. Like I was in a situation often where the person who was abusing me, we’d be out in public and he’d make a pronouncement that didn’t make sense to me, but I didn’t want to embarrass him. So it’s. ‘Okay, we’ll let that go.’ And I ignored it and I swept it under the rug. Yeah. I’m wondering, Paul, when we spoke before we began recording, you talked about emotional abuse as an epidemic and that you’ve worked with lots of people who have come to you after realizing they had been abused emotionally. I’m wondering if there are any patterns. How do people show up when they come into your office or into your therapy room, wherever it is that you work with people, or into your zoom room? What do they tell you when they’re first beginning to unpick the fact that they are experiencing abuse?

00:13:34 Paul

First of all, as being a CI person yourself, Compassionate Inquiry. We start with the present moment. What’s going on in the present moment? Where are you struggling with what’s going on in your relationships? Where do you need some help here? And then they tell me about it. Were you triggered or… And they tell me an event that happened. And that event always leads us back to. They think it’s about the present moment. And it’s got nothing to do with the present moment. It’s about the trauma that’s happening and the unhealed past. And so very quickly with Compassionate Inquiry. That’s the beauty of Compassionate Inquiry. It’s a game changer. We get to the root very quickly, very quickly. And the root’s not where you think it is. The root usually goes all the way back to childhood. And that makes it difficult for people because when I’m working with them with emotional abuse, first thing we want to do is to acknowledge the emotional abuse. And when they start talking about it and I’m acknowledging it and seeing it and hearing it and being with them, and I remember whenever this is the word, when I look them straight in the eye and I say, “I want you to know that was wrong and it wasn’t your fault,” they start crying and they have a big release because they’re being seen and heard. That they’re not crazy, that they’re not nuts for thinking that there’s nothing wrong with this. It’s manipulation at its finest. It’s slowly convincing you it’s all about you. You’re at fault.

00:15:08 Rosemary

Yeah, that’s gaslighting. You just described gaslighting. People being told that their perceptions are wrong, being told that black is white, or red is blue. Again, like you said before, over time, repetition over time. It’s so toxic and it can be so damaging.

00:15:25 Paul

There’s common signs of emotional abuse and it’s… One is chronic invalidating of our feelings. Two is the gaslighting that you were talking about, being made to doubt our own memories and perceptions and sanity. Controlling, but it’s disguised as concern. I’m just saying that because I worry about you. Withholding affection as punishment. Shifting goalposts, you’re always trying, but you’re never quite enough with your person. A constant sense of walking on eggshells. Oh my God. Can I relate to that as a little boy, that one word alone when I’m with clients, when I say does it feel like you’re walking on eggshells, that one is highly… right. And that just goes, shows you how deadly that is because it’s a constant walking on eggshells. The relationship feels drainy, foggy, destabilizing. And those are the seven common signs of emotional abuse.

00:16:25 Rosemary

Thank you, Paul. Could you say those again in order, so that people that got lost in the conversation can have them present?

00:16:31 Paul

Sure. Chronic invalidation of feelings. Gaslighting. That’s when you are made to doubt your own perceptions and memory and sanity. Controlling. Right. And it’s disguised as concern. I’m just worried about you. It’s got nothing to do with that. Withholding affection. And they use that as kind of punishment. Shifting the goalposts. They’re always telling you to keep trying and… but you’re never quite there. And they’re always like. Like a carrot in front of you. You’re never enough. A constant sense of walking on eggshells. And the relationship just feels draining and foggy and destabilizing. And for me, with my father, I liked it when he wasn’t around, because I could breathe for a bit. But as soon as he’d be around, it’s like, what’s going to happen now?

00:17:21 J’aime

Yeah, I really. I’m feeling a lot listening to you naming all of those signs of emotional abuse, Paul. And I’m feeling into the space of the listener right now, of taking all of that in and wanting to create a little bit of a space to acknowledge that maybe somebody’s hearing these things for the first time in succession. So if we could slow down a little bit just to provide some space for them to bring their body into this experience. And maybe all of us, since we’ve all been in this experience before. And I just want to make space for that tenderness. And as we make our way through feeling ourselves, like the mindfulness meditation you offered us as we got started, Paul. We bring our bodies into this moment and are still listening. What you’re doing is something you do in your practice where you help somebody name their experience. And I’d love to hear a little bit more about that process of how you guide people to name their experience.

00:18:32 Paul

One of the very first things with someone who’s experienced emotional trauma is they tell you the story. And I go, let’s go into your body right now. Where’s the tightness, Tension, constriction? Let’s do a complete scan. Almost always they’ll say, my jaw is really tight right now. And I go, squeeze your teeth. What emotion is that? Fear, sadness, anger, shame? It’s anger. Okay, I want you to be with that anger that’s in your jaw right now. What’s the anger want to say? And then they go on about the anger towards this man who’s been… or woman… whoever the abuser is. And they go on and on and then I just be there with what they’re saying and when I acknowledge it, it’s incredible. They feel heard, they feel seen, that they’re not crazy, that this is not good. It’s finally getting out of the body. We’re moving it, right? And usually I’ll get back into the body and it might have changed to the chest or whatever, but we start moving some stuff and they start getting some clarity of what’s really going on. I think one of the very first things of trauma is to get to the anger and letting them know that your anger is valid. It’s valid. That’s healthy anger. You know, Gabor Mate’s five A’s of healing. A awareness. Next one Authenticity Agency. We’ve got to be responsible for our own healing. Acceptance, acceptance. This is the situation and five is healthy anger. Those are Gabor Mate’s five A’s of healing. And I love those.

00:20:10 Rosemary

Yeah, I love what you’re saying, Paul. And I wonder if we could look at yet another facet of this situation which is, yes, identifying where we’re feeling it in our body when we’re meeting with you or someone like you, but also maybe sending a little bit of self compassion to how our body protects us. I’d love for you to expand on this. Like my body protected me towards the end of my emotional abusive relationship. I was walking around in what felt to me like a glass box. I was completely dissociated. That’s one way to respond. And I am so grateful. I am so grateful.

00:20:50 Paul

Right.

00:20:50 Rosemary

That I was protected in that way.

00:20:53 Paul

Yes. You’re talking about coping strategy.

00:20:55 Rosemary

Yes, these brilliant ways our body responds to protect us.

00:21:00 Paul

Let’s go to myself for instance. Okay. Meet a little boy right away. The little boy I developed fawning my father, people pleasing him to stay safe, which is a big impact of codependency. Right. And so that fawning, I took that and I did that with other people too. So we transferred into our… all our relationships. Fawning and the people pleasing. And can’t say no to my dad because I’m scared to death of what could happen later in my life. My coping strategy became drugs and alcohol. I’m a recovered long term person of recovery. And my book is called Mistaken Identity. A Sacred Journey from Addiction to Awakening. And so I cope by that. But it’s all about pain. All these coping strategies are about pain relief, soothing that pain. And you were talking about Disassociating, that happens a lot. People with disassociation, that’s a sign of post traumatic stress disorder too. And when people float away and you want to get them back into their body quickly and what I usually do, I’ll use a Peter Levine. Let’s just put a hand on the chest and a hand on the belly. Let’s push in. Just feel that presence come back into your body. You’re safe right now. And it sounds like you would go there. It’s up here.

00:22:16 Rosemary

I was still there. I was still there, but I felt like I was very protected, like I felt nothing could touch me. I was very present and untouchable, which was interesting now that I share that in hindsight.

00:22:30 Paul

Some people become depressed, really develop a lot of codependency, anxiety disorder, all these coping strategies to not deal with what’s really going on. Our immune system shuts down and we get sick from this type of stuff. It’s very sad.

00:22:46 J’aime

You’ve been sharing a lot of what brought you in your awareness to this work and to this epidemic through your reflection on your childhood experiences with your dad. And I was curious to hear how that came about with that progression, that recognition for you, how you came to look back in your own experience and be able to name it. And then whether you were already a professional in the field of helping others or if that kind of paved the way, I’d like to hear a little bit about how that laid out for you.

00:23:20 Paul

Unfortunately, the way it is with human beings, suffering is our greatest teacher. And unfortunately, a lot of us have to suffer greatly before we’re able to force ourselves to do the work. And that’s exactly what happened to me. I’ve reframed suffering. You know, if you think about anybody, it’s their suffering that leads them to their sacred self. It’s the gateway to the sacred self, ‘cause we gotta go through that suffering and go through it and all that pain and suffering and realize that there’s important information here for us to look at. And that’s it in a real simple way. So I had to go through a lot of pain and suffering. When people hear my story, they’re pretty shocked. They go, “No, I don’t believe you. That can’t be you.” I tried to kill myself twice. I was homeless. I was a very well off entrepreneur. By the time I was 30, I had my own company. And at 35, I lost everything. I was homeless using drugs in the streets of Toronto, homeless in Vancouver, in Montreal. So I know about suffering and I know what it takes to get here, into this awakening and to love the man I am today. I’ve been there. But it all began in my early childhood experience, where that little boy, he had to be inauthentic and become somebody else to survive. And of course, I go into the world and I finally find these coping mechanisms. I found the fawn one at the beginning and other ones. And then eventually the substance that wow. Took away all my pain. I felt whole and complete. I want more of that, but unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. We gotta face it. And so if I was gonna tell anybody. You gotta face yourself and you gotta face your pain, but don’t do it alone. It’s so big. Reach out. Get the help that you need. Get help. We all have blind spots. Including me. Including you. All of us do. And you need a professional to help you see the blind spot and to move you in the right direction.

00:25:33 Rosemary

Yeah. Thank you, Paul. And I will offer one other thing and please comment if you wish. The person who was emotionally abusive of me was extremely controlling. I was watched. I was monitored. It seemed to me initially that there was no way for me to get out. I was watched to the level that he would notice my eye movements and my breathing patterns just to reinforce how under his control I was. And he would repeat these back to me. If your eyes are going this way, you’re doing this. You know, your breath is doing this. So that means you’re feeling that. I felt very much like a smear on a microscope slide a lot of the time. So when it came time to find help, it was very challenging. I had to go out and take a walk around the block to be able to speak to someone on my phone. And – it was doable. I gathered my community. I’d been isolated from my community. I took many walks and got them all on side, told them what was going on with me. I worked with my lawyer, I worked with my bank to cut off financial access and legal access. And eventually I had built up the emotional strength and support and also able to talk to a therapist the same way. It all had to be done in a very covert manner because I didn’t want to tip him off to the fact that I was onto him. It can be very difficult. Just reaching out for support can be very difficult. I could explain, I want to go for a walk. That was accepted. I would also go out when I was shopping and speak to people while I was away from the house on a legitimate errand. It can be very tricky to extract yourself from an emotionally abusive situation. And it is possible. And I think the first thing that could be helpful to others, as it was to me, was to have these conversations with people who are willing to support you, reconnect with friends that may have been distanced because the abuser doesn’t want you well supported by a community. That was my experience, Paul, I’m going to turn it over to you like people that you’ve worked with, that you’ve supported through them extracting themselves from an emotionally abusive relationship. What can you share with our listeners that might be helpful? How do you recommend that they take care of themselves, keep themselves safe while they are seeking help if they are being similarly controlled, like what has worked for people that might inform our listeners and be helpful to them.

00:28:15 Paul

The first thing is, don’t go in saying get out of the relationship right away. because we got to deal with what’s really going on for them to see and to unpack everything that’s so compacted inside them, and allow the natural process to happen so that when they make their decision to leave, it’s them making the decision not me trying to control or do anything with anybody. That’s why Compassionate Inquiry is so amazing. There’s no judgment coming from Compassionate Inquiry. It’s curiosity, it’s compassion, it’s understanding. It’s getting to see what’s really going on.

00:28:58 Rosemary

Yeah, I get that. I get that. And that’s beautiful. And I’m just thinking you want them to be safe, they need to be safe to explore. They need to be able to get to a safe space to do this exploration. So that’s really my curiosity. Of course, you would not be telling them what to do.

00:29:16 Paul

Safety. Safety. You got it. Safety. They gotta feel safe in the whole process. Right. So trauma happens in a relationship, and so it has to be healed in a relationship. And that’s what the therapist or the what are the work you and I do is we’re holding that space in a new relationship, a healthy relationship. And that’s the beginning. That’s the beginning, absolutely. And I’m very sorry that you had to experience that. But isn’t it incredible that you’ve taken all your suffering and now you’re using it for good? And to me, part of healing is we turn it into good, we take our suffering, we reframe it, and that’s what we both do.

00:29:58 Rosemary

Thank you.

00:29:59 J’aime

I’m appreciating the nuances of this conversation a lot. The different avenues each of you are holding. Rosemary speaking about when someone is ready to go. A Safety Plan is what we call that in the field. That’s what you work with people to help them map out their safety plan. And that includes all kinds of ways of protecting from harm while you’re still in the relationship. Like for Rosemary, taking walks, creating space where it’s safe, even knowing she’s being watched and monitored. So it’s like down to the. Okay, the banking account. Okay. And all of the strategy. But I want to bring it back to what Paul’s talking about, of really in Compassionate Inquiry, we learned that the trauma happened to us when we were all alone.

00:30:46 Paul

Right.

00:30:47 J’aime

So what you’re speaking to Paul is the first step is being with them, being that attuned relationship that’s with them in that wound of theirs. And I think that is so important to talk about because what we know is that on average it takes seven times to leave an abusive relationship. And I think a lot of those seven times have to do with that. Nobody ever sat down with them in that attuned way. That wasn’t also an attempt to strip their power by demanding they leave right now, which is what a lot of relatives will do.

00:31:22 Paul

Right?

00:31:22 J’aime

Which is just another way of power and control and no agency and no compassion.

00:31:27 Paul

That’s shaming. By the way, what the friends and stuff try to do and they’re not informed on what to do, is they try to shame somebody to make a decision, and that makes it worse. I think an important… Actually, there’s one question I wanted to ask before I ask this, is that. Okay, I just want to ask Rosemary, were you at any time scared that it was going to turn physical?

00:31:51 Rosemary

No. Because as controlling as my abuser was of me, he had pretty incredible self control as well. And I knew he was more strategic. Like, he was strong, he was powerfully built, he was fit. But I knew he played the long game. He was… It was all about the mind. It wasn’t about physicality with him.

00:32:12 Paul

Here’s what I found with my clients, that the emotional abuse goes on and on, but eventually there is a physical thing that happens. And by the way, they don’t even think it’s physical. Here’s what I mean. Working with a client, no physical abuse. Paul, emotional abuse, okay? And then this one time, as we’re peeling the layers of the onion, she tells me a story where he’s just giving it to her, giving it to her emotionally, and then he pushes her against the wall. That’s physical abuse. So a lot of people don’t understand what even physical abuse is, like just grabbing you and holding you like that, did that ever happen? That’s physical abuse. And usually it does happen that it turns eventually to physical abuse. And I can see at the bottom here, you’re nodding your head, you agree with that. From the work that you’ve seen, it’s really important.

00:33:04 J’aime

There’s going to be a question later. So I’m just glad that you’re saying this now. Is that it’s important to presence that it often, almost always escalates. And there’s a by Gavin de Becker called The Gift of Fear. It was written in the 90s.

00:33:18 Paul

Oh, what a name.

00:33:19 J’aime

It’s one of the very best articulations of an abusive relationship I’ve ever read of that dynamic. And he says, these are the most predictable murders that we have that we know.

00:33:31 Paul

Yeah. Even when you’re dealing with early childhood trauma, a lot of people don’t think of spanking as physical abuse. They don’t even think of that as physical abuse. You have to talk to them. And so the thing that I wanted to talk about now is, and I think is a good time to talk about it, is the susceptibility to emotional abuse. Because when you do Compassionate Inquiry, we go back to see why we’re susceptible to the possibility of emotional abuse. And we’re not. They’re not weak people at all. They’re deeply caring people. You’re an empath and sensitive and deeply caring. But the one thing that the emotional abuser does is they choose attachment over their authenticity, which is so Gabor Mate. Right. I work with a client is when we go back into their childhood, we discover the missing elements in their childhood, making them susceptible to bringing someone like that into them. And this ain’t about blaming themselves or anything. It’s just understanding. I’m pretty sure you guys have heard this before. Gabor Mate said in many talks, he says when a pedophile goes to a playground, the person that he abuses is someone that already has big trauma because the ones that don’t, won’t even go to him. And he already knows that inside. And so they’re already susceptible to it. And it’s no different with this. And it’s something that you have to do very compassionately with a person because you don’t want them to say, I attracted it? No, it’s from your early childhood experience. And we become susceptible, because we didn’t get the things that we needed mirrored to us. Love and acceptance. And most of these people learned that their emotions didn’t matter and they got the toxic shame going on, and all those things. And I think you can even say that if we talk about the seven impacts of trauma. And the one is we disconnected from ourselves. And what Gabor Mate talks about is we disconnect from our gut intelligence. Two, we get disconnected from others, we don’t trust others because of our unhealed past. We have a negative view of the world. It gives us pain until we heal it. Conjunctive brain development. Usually people with emotional abuse, they had parents who were adult children themselves and never learned to emotionally regulate themselves. So how can you learn to emotionally regulate yourself? It also gives us personal shame and difficulty being in the present moment. Those are the seven impacts of trauma and that is the susceptibility from early on and what that does to us in our relationships. And we all know about attachment styles, right? Anxious attachment, avoidant attachment and disorganized. I was disorganized. I was both, major disorganized. Most people with a lot of trauma are disorganized, by the way. So I just thought I’d mention that.

00:36:25 Rosemary

Thank you. And I’d like to take it back to something else that Gabor always says. “It’s not your fault, it’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility to heal.” Because imagine a little child is raised by a couple of parents who are doing their best and sharing the styles with which they were parented, which were emotionally abusive. That’s what you learn, that’s what you’re attracted to. You grow up, you find a partner who reflects that feels comfortable because it feels like being with family, being with them. You don’t know what’s going on. You’re just repeating patterns that were taught to you since you were very young. So the fact that we can get into these emotionally abusive relationships is absolutely not our fault. But it does become our responsibility to get ourselves out of them. 

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00:38:26 Paul

And that’s why Compassionate Inquiry is so powerful. Because when you bring someone back to where the original trauma is and it’s usually like, you know, 0 to 10 years of age or 7, guess what happens? They have great compassion for that little person, little Paul. I always looking after little Paul. And when little Paul feels rejected, I automatically, I can very quickly go, oh my God, Little Paul thinks he’s rejected right now. And I can smile at it because I’ve done so much healing. But I gotta tell you, my inner child work is so important to my life because it just helps me separate things, to really see my true self. And it’s usually little Paul that’s upset, right? And, and I guarantee you little Rosemary was upset. With what was going on?

00:39:17 Rosemary

Yeah. Oh, very much. As Jordan Decker, who was on a recent show said, Sometimes our inner 5 year olds are driving our bus and we gotta be compassionate and say, I understand why you’re driving recklessly, kiddo, but let’s get you out from behind the wheel and give you some love.

00:39:33 Paul

And one of the hardest things, because you were talking about responsibility, one of the hardest things to get us into the responsibility is we got to get out of the victim mode. That’s the first thing that has to happen. And how do you know when you’re in the victim mode? When you’re in blame, when you’re in blame. Now, when you’re victimized, yes, you’re being victimized, being abused, but the faster that we can come out of that and own what’s going on and take full responsibility… You know, in my book I talk about that, that there came a moment in my time when I was actually two years clean and sober and I was working at a treatment center. And whatever happened that day, it just hit me. No one’s coming to save you, Paul, but yourself. I was waiting all these years for my father to rescue me or my mentor to rescue me or sponsor to rescue me. And it just hit me, Paul, it’s no one’s coming because it’s no one’s job to save you but you. And when that hit me, and it hit me in the body, in the heart, in the gut, I cried. Like I’m talking a profuse crying. I had to hide in the treatment center to go through the emotions. But at the end of that crying, I felt freedom because I understood now, I’m going to take 100% responsibility for my life. And then my life started to really change. It really did. So this responsibility piece, which I’m glad you brought up, Rosemary, is so important.

00:41:02 J’aime

I want to offer a little bit of space just to land everything that you just shared with us, Paul, that moment when you recognize it’s all you and it’s time to come home.

00:41:16 Paul

Oh, I like that. Yes.

00:41:18 J’aime

Right.

00:41:19 Paul

Yes. Come home. Oh, beautiful.

00:41:22 J’aime

While we’re talking about responsibility, which is taking the power back, which is what gets stripped in an abusive relationship, I think it’s also a really beautiful fulcrum to bring in, perhaps the people who unconsciously are emotionally abusive, because that’s also taking responsibility. Because you said one thing. You said, “You know you’re being a victim if you’re blaming”. But let me also say that perpetrators are Excalibur blamers. Right? 

00:41:51 Paul

Oh, absolutely.

00:41:52 J’aime

That’s what we’ll all nod our heads yes to, because you can never get it right, and it’s always your fault. So that is another nuance of blame and of. Okay, if you’re going to take responsibility and not make it Rosemary’s fault for looking at somebody else the wrong way and Paul’s fault for not putting the thing away the right way, and you’re going to own your anger. Can we talk a little bit about that again?

00:42:19 Paul

I just want to make a note of this because I’m glad you brought that up. Being responsible for your healing doesn’t mean you cause the abuse. It means you’re the one who gets to end its influence. That’s what the responsibility is about. We’re going to own what’s going on, and we’re going to dive in and do the work, and do the healing work. Because if we don’t do the healing work, we’re just going to attract another man, the same. He just looks different.

00:42:43 Rosemary

So true. So true.

00:42:43 Paul

And we’re not doing that on purpose. Nobody’s at fault here. It’s the nervous system that feels comfortable with this type of way, and it usually goes all the way back to childhood. We were in a childhood that was pretty chaotic, and our nervous system got wired a certain way. And then when we meet someone that also had that kind of, oh, that feels good together, but someone who had a healthy. No, I don’t feel connected to them. It’s just the way it works.

00:43:11 Rosemary

Yeah, it’s so true. And if I can just bring in a statistic here, We’ve talked about an epidemic and the statistics that I came across from the National Domestic Abuse Hotline, like nearly half of all women and men in the US experience psychological aggression by an intimate partner in their lifetime. And 95% of perpetrators who physically abuse their intimate partners also psychologically abuse them. Again, it’s very close, the physical abuse and emotional abuse. But interestingly, as we’ve touched on, psychological abuse is a stronger predictor of PTSD in women than even physical abuse. So it’s got more potency in a way. Seven out of 10 women who are psychologically abused will display PTSD symptoms, which… you touched on that, Paul, and you asked me an interesting question that I did not actually give you a full answer to. You asked me if I’d ever felt physically threatened, and I did not. However, that set me up for a physical attack. I was subjected to an engineered accident that sent me to the hospital with 3 fractures and a collapsed lung and could have easily killed me. And it wasn’t even on my radar. That was possible because up until that point, up until that tipping point, it had all been emotional. So we don’t need to go into that further, but I just share that to support what’s been said before, that emotional abuse will continue, but it will probably, possibly always escalate into physical abuse at some point. And you made that point already very well, Paul. I just did not connect the dots because it was done in a certain way, that it wasn’t him pushing me or harming me. It was setting me up to have a very big fall, I’ll put it that way.

00:45:11 Paul

Well, again, it changes who we are. Changes who we are. There’s this line I really like. It says, if I don’t heal what happened, I carry the abuser with me long after they’re gone. And imagine now a person is not looking after their healing because they are so stuck on… It’s his fault. He’s the narcissist. He’s the crazy. And they don’t take the ownership of their own responsibility. And is he getting another guy? And now they’re carrying two or three abusers with them.

00:45:42 Rosemary

Yeah, yeah.

00:45:44 Paul

It all begins with us.

00:45:46 Rosemary

It does. And it’s interesting, too. You touched on predators who may be pedophiles or they may be preying on adults. And I think it’s important to say sometimes the abuser is unaware that they’re being abusive, and sometimes the abusers are very aware and they’re dangerous people. So I think all emotional abuse deserves to be taken seriously because it could be accidental, something somebody’s unaware of, or it could be very intentional.

00:46:20 Paul

The other scary part is you… So you go in to get some therapy and we get into this stuff, and then if you’re still in the relationship and you start taking the responsibility and then you start confronting his behaviors, that’s when things could get really dangerous, as J’aime said. Right. It becomes… It can turn dangerous in many different ways. And it’s interesting. The givers usually attract takers, too. Okay. So you’re attracting a taker, and he’s going to keep taking pieces of you. And again, that goes back to attachment. Right? It’s the little me who still thinks I have to hold attachment.

00:47:03 J’aime

While we’re here, I’m going to bring us back to the aggressor that might be out there listening to this, that never considered they might be an aggressor. I’m going to use a personal experience to paint this picture a little bit of… I was in a very scary, violent, abusive relationship in college, one where I was physically abused. And I didn’t have anybody to put the pieces back together with. But I got really into FBI statistics and understanding the epidemic nature of it, and that’s how I healed. But it wasn’t a complete healing. So what happened to me in my future relationships was I began to do some of the behaviors, such as walking away, hanging up the phone, things that happened to me that used to devastate me, that I never did before this relationship. But these were ways of stripping my power and ruling the narrative. And so I would catch myself slamming the door and leaving the house and storming away when someone truly wanted to continue the conversation. And I was doing that to hurt them, because I was hurting. So what’s the thing that Gabor says about addiction? Not why the addiction, but why the pain?

00:48:23 Paul

Right.

00:48:23 J’aime

And part of my putting my pieces together, working in battered women’s shelters, which is what they used to be called before they were called domestic violence shelters. And even working in college with violent men and with sexual predators is… I got to see the pain really close. These are cycles and generational trauma acting out. So if we have 50% of people being abused, we have 50% also abusing. This has always been the question to me, what’s going to be done? Because we can’t put everyone who’s abusive in jail. Even though I would like to, over property crime, they will always be released back into society.

00:49:04 Paul

It’s their trauma response. The abuser. That’s their trauma response. Okay, I’ll use myself. I’ll be vulnerable here. Okay. Because I never learned healthy anger. I could not be angry because if I was angry in the household, I could get hurt, physically hurt. So I learned to suppress my anger, healthy anger. And I even remember saying, I don’t want to ever be angry like my father. So I learned as a little boy to suppress anger. And then when I go into the world, all of a sudden I’m suppressing anger, and all of a sudden I go off on somebody and do unhealthy anger. And I’m 62 now. But back in the day, I was Mr. Ottawa A body builder. I was a big guy, pretty intimidating to look at, and with that. And then if I blew up, that’s abusive. So I actually became part of my father in that way and had to do a lot of work on that area and to regulate my nervous system, understand what’s going on. And that healthy anger is okay. And. And that’s why Gabor Mate’s five A’s of healing. The last one is healthy anger, because that’s how we learn to respect ourselves and love ourselves. We have healthy anger with people.

00:50:15 J’aime

Yeah, I love that lesson that he illustrates, that anger is healthy. Anger’s not bad. Anger is healthy. And when we are parents and our children express anger, it’s healthy. It’s their way of actually instating who they are, their identity, and the line’s been crossed. And so I really. Paul, I really appreciate hearing you elaborate on your experience. And I want to keep coming back to, what can we offer through your experience? What can you offer to the person who’s listening to this right now and realizing that sometimes they… they do things to hurt their partner because they’re hurting?

00:50:56 Paul

That’s interesting. I’m working with a client. I’m working with a client right now who is the abuser in the relationship, emotional abuser right now. I just finished a session with him yesterday. He’s 23, just a youngie. And when you bring him back and he’s got jealousy, major jealousy going on. And by the way, Rosemary, that man that was trying to control you, it sounds like he had massive jealousy going on. And when we go, jealousy is all about their own inner fear, and their own insecurity. And the example I’ll use is, we were doing the session, he said, oh, I got in a terrible argument. I got triggered. And what was the trigger? And so his phone rang, and his girlfriend answered the phone, and it’s. She was married before, and it’s the brother, the uncle who’s talking to her about the daughter’s birthday. They’re trying to arrange something. And when she got off the phone, he lost his mind and verbally, emotionally made it all about her. And what are you doing? That’s you’re going behind my back. And when they take him back to his childhood, an alcoholic father who left when he was young, a mother that couldn’t be there emotionally for him, so he’s got abandonment issues and everything else. And what got triggered there was exactly that. And when I showed him that, he bawled like a little baby, because that’s not what he wants to do with the person that he loves. Again, he has his own unhealed trauma, his own unhealed past. Gabor Mate talks a lot about going to jails. And he said when he goes to jails, he meets some of the most incredible people who have went through incredible pain and suffering. And he was just shocked at that. Nothing is as it appears, is it? When we really dive in and talk to people and really get to know them, our whole idea can change about that person. Like the judgment that goes on with people with addictions, for instance. Once a person gets to know that person and what they’ve been through and why addiction came in their life, your whole thing changes about them. Now, abuse is never right, and it must be stopped. And everyone has to. I’m not saying that, but everybody has their healing journey, is what I’m trying to say. And that we need to know that, because I have emotionally abused somebody before, and I’m sure that lots of people have. But a constant abuser in a relationship, that’s a different thing. It’s a different beast.

00:53:31 Rosemary

Absolutely. And as J’aime said, the statistics go both ways. If about half of the population has been abused, half of the population has been abusive. So thank you for sharing that example. It’s so encouraging to hear that a young abusive man is recognizing his behavior and seeking help.

00:53:51 Paul

Yes. That’s what we need more of right there. We need more of that, too. If we just, like, if we’re talking about the men and the women. Okay. If we just look after the women’s healing and we don’t do anything with the men, we’re nowhere. It’s gotta be equal. It’s gotta be equal.

00:54:05 Rosemary

Yeah, I guess it’s, you know, it brings in the safety aspect. I recognize that abusive partners I have been in relationship with have had huge trauma in their childhoods. And I had to take responsibility for myself and take care of myself. And I recognize it can get so complicated if there are children involved. How does a mom let a child who was created with an abusive man, spend the weekend with that abusive man without losing her mind, worrying herself sick. It’s so complicated. So it’s a very tough question.

00:54:41 Paul

In utero trauma, a mother who’s pregnant with a baby and they’re with an abusive, emotionally abusive partner who constantly comes home after work and just tears a piece out of her. Okay. That baby gets it all in the body. That baby’s being abused. It’s not only her being abused, it’s the baby being abused.

00:55:01 Rosemary

And that doesn’t even touch on women who conceive out of rape and sexual abuse. It’s so interwoven and complex.

00:55:11 J’aime

Yeah. Let’s take a pause for just a minute again because we’re all very passionate about this and we all, because of our experiences, bring a charge to this conversation.

00:55:24 Paul

Yeah. A little tight in the neck. A little tight in the neck right now. And that’s where I hold my stress right there.

00:55:31 J’aime

Yeah. We want everybody, truly to bring this transmission all the way through. We have to forever be also aware and witnessing ourselves through this experience. Experience and taking responsibility in that moment and also understanding that this is a lot for our listeners to be taking in, and just. Yeah. As Rosemary says, we’re coming to a close. And I guess I will just seal my intention with thanking you, Paul, for being one of those men who can provide a space for other men. Because this has been my lifelong prayer in this work that men need to come to the table and create this safety for other men, for their little precious child that’s wounded and hurt, that’s lashing out violently. And I also want to say violently, because these are the most violent creatures when they’re in that space and it’s not safe to stay in that. I want to be really clear that this is so nuanced to hold this conversation, to recognize that you might be with a partner, man or woman, who is a card carrying, unsafe person to be with. And you have to make that call for yourself in your time and what Rosemary laid out is so important. But we also have to do the impossible thing sometimes of holding the capacity for that person who we need to get away with in a very real way. In the utmost love.

00:57:00 Paul

Yes.

00:57:01 J’aime

Far away that they may be better.

00:57:03 Rosemary

Beautifully said. Thank you, J’aime.

00:57:06 Paul

I’d like to reframe. Responsibility equals reclaiming power. And we can reframe it. For instance, responsibility means choice. Responsibility means agency, responsibility means you’re no longer waiting to be rescued. Responsibility means the pattern stops with you. So responsibility isn’t about fixing ourselves. It’s about reclaiming ourselves. As you said, it’s coming home. It’s coming home.

00:57:39 Rosemary

It’s been a delight to speak to a fully peeled, fully reclaimed Compassionate Inquiry Practitioner.

00:57:47 Paul

Great.

00:57:48 Rosemary

I love that we’ve got to have our humor. It’s like I’ve gone through what I’ve gone through. I’m recovered, I’m reclaimed. I’m peeled. Those layers have gone. And it’s so heart moving that you have committed your life to supporting other people going through that process because from what you shared with us about your story, you had an extremely bumpy ride from the get go. From the get go. And it’s just so inspiring to hear that you faced some tremendous hurdles and you’ve come through the other side, reclaimed and actually, I’m not going to say fully peeled because if Gabor is not fully peeled, you aren’t either. But you’re mostly peeled.

00:58:32 Paul

That’s right. Nobody’s fully peeled. Nobody. If they are, they’ve moved on.

00:58:39 Rosemary

That’s true.

00:58:39 Paul

They’ve left.

00:58:41 Rosemary

They’ve evanesced into another world.

00:58:43 Paul

Yeah. I always say that nobody is fully healed. We’re always healing through that.

00:58:48 Rosemary

Not fully healed or fully peeled. Thank you.

00:58:52 Paul

That’s funny.

00:58:53 Rosemary

We have a bit of a tradition on the Gifts of Trauma podcast where we end by inviting our guest to share a thought, a quote. You have the ear of the world right now. What would you like to share as we wrap up?

00:59:09 Paul

Oh, my goodness. My most favorite quote that I say all the time. I’ve been saying it all the time for 20 years. “Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything and in between the two my life flows.” And that helps to keep me humble and teachable to understand the truth. I know nothing I know nothing I know nothing. All the great mystics will say that we know just a little and the wisdom tells me I am nothing, no thing, and love tells me I’m everything and in between the two my life flows.

00:59:46 Rosemary

Beautiful.

00:59:48 J’aime

Perfect sentiment for an aspiring onion.

00:59:51 Rosemary

Yes.

00:59:54 Paul

That’s a good one, too.

00:59:56 Rosemary

And I appreciate you repeating it because it took a minute to sink in and I really enjoyed hearing that twice. Paul Noelles, thank you so much for joining us today on the Gifts of Trauma podcast by Compassionate Inquiry.

01:00:10 Paul

It’s been a pleasure.

01:00:19 Rosemary

The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, healing, transformation, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. 

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