Change Your Brain Every Day - Psychological Ways Abuse Can Damage Relationships

Episode Date: September 5, 2018

Abuse in relationships is extremely common, and it can take shape in many ways. Some of these forms are obvious, while others are inconspicuous or subtle. In the second part of a series on abuse, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss how these types of abuse affect relationships, as well as the psychological well-being of the people in them.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Welcome back. We are talking about abuse this week and the different types of abuse. And now we're going to talk about the signs of abuse. First, I want to talk about some of our testimonials, which I really love. Here's one. It says, mind-blowing literally from Matilda C. It says, I've been watching several podcasts lately of Dr. Amen and his wife, Tana. I'm thoroughly impressed with you both.

And the information you have to give us is mind-blowing and so very important for a happy and healthy and hopefully long fulfilling life. I'm now a huge fan. Thank you both for helping us all with your knowledge and experience. God bless you both. Michelle Callahan. Thank you, Michelle. So continuing this hard topic we're tackling this week on abuse, we want to talk about some of the signs and symptoms. How do you know if you're in an abusive relationship, either personally, in your family, at work, or even in the society? And it starts with domination and control. That the other person says things on a regular basis that upsets you or frightens you. Or belittles you.

So if you're tenderhearted and you find that you're always being anxious or freaked out. Walking on eggshells or they're belittling you. Right. Another sign is becomes overly and inappropriately jealous of attention from or conversation with others. So they begin to limit or they attempt to limit your contact with others. And I'm actually thinking about mean girls in high school

that try to do this. That's actually very common that you know these girls become friends or these guys become friends and they start to talk to other people and it spins that other person into a controlling now we should be clear that is not the same thing as having boundaries in a marriage. I'm clear. You cannot go be with someone else. I mean, you can. Actually, you can.

Is that controlling? But there will be. You can go do it, but there will be consequences. When we go through these, I have many of them. I mean, you can go do that. But yes, no, you need. There are boundaries. Well, let's go to number. Yes, no, you need. There are boundaries. Well, let's go to number three.

Monitors your time and your own business. Okay. We need to, wait, wait, wait, wait. We need to talk about this. Yes, I have a pretty intense security system. Think about our lives, what we do. I have a pretty intense security system at my house, and I have an app on my phone called Life360.

I guarantee you, 60 to 70% of the moms out there have this app on my phone called Life360. I guarantee you 60 to 70% of the moms out there have this app on their phone for their kids. And if you don't, you should. It monitors where your kids are down to like the address. It's not just your kids. It's anybody you sign up. Anybody you put on it. So before we started this podcast. He chose to put himself on it. Before we started this podcast, I see a text opened up on Tana's phone from Life 360.

Daniel was six minutes on the road. He was going at this speed in his car. He has arrived. And I'm like, you know, take that with the 11 cameras at home. Wait. Monitors your time or whereabouts. But he chose to be on there. It's designed for your kids, teenage kids who are driving.

But as a family, we have chosen to put this on there. And I have to tell you, it's actually really good if you've got elderly parents. Like, I worry if I don't see my mom on there for two days. So it's really good. So you can look at that either way. Number four, monitors your telephone calls, texts, or email contacts.

Yeah, no, we don't do that. Because the day I feel like I have to start doing that, we have problems. Makes decisions that affect both you and the family without consulting you or the family or reaching an agreement. So it's domination. Controls the finances or how you spend money. So this is not a relationship. It's a monarchy. It's a power over. Dictatorship.

Repeatedly crosses your boundaries and ignores requests. Make subtle threats or negative remarks with the intent to frightening or control you. So that's domination. What about verbal abuse? Oh, so till death do us part is not allowed? Well, it's allowed in our relationship because it makes you feel better. And that is absolutely my feeling as well. But if it wasn't my feeling, then... It has to be consensual. It's absolutely consensual.

We'll talk about the Black Widow cage and all of that at another time. This is not appropriate, but trust me, you want to hear that story. But let's get to verbal abuse. I'm not a Black Widow. Shows complete disregard and disrespect. Right. And that is not something that we do. We respect each other.

But John Gottman, who's a very famous marital therapy researcher, says he can tell in a five minute interaction with couples with 90 some percent accuracy whether or not they're going to get divorced and this was the thing he pegged it on when faced with the problem did they talk to each other with respect or does it involve disrespect and belittling the other person. And I think we're actually really good at showing respect. I mean, not like 100% of the time. Well, no, but here's the thing. Every couple I think is going to have times where one feels disrespected and sometimes

it was intentional by the other person and sometimes it wasn't intentional. But I think the key is that you have to be able to say it and draw those boundaries or it's not gonna go on very long. It's not gonna last. So another verbal sign of abuse is disregards your opinions, ideas, suggestions, or need. You just don't matter. Makes jokes at your expense,

uses sarcasm or teasing to put down the other person or make them feel bad. People go, oh, it's just a joke. You can't take a joke. Well, if the other person didn't think it was funny, it's not a joke. Swears at you or calls you names, creates circular never ending conversations to confuse or calls you names, creates circular, never-ending conversations to confuse

or exhaust you. Oh my God. Right? I've been in a relationship like that. Yeah, me too. Regularly points out your flaws, mistakes, or shortcomings. So we're in church and one of the pastors said, on average, teenagers hear seven negative things about themselves. So I don't understand that. To one positive thing about themselves. And if you treat that way, how are they going to feel good about themselves? And if they don't feel good about themselves, how are they going to be good parents themselves? Demanding and controlling expectations.

So these actually come from a website called liveboldandbloom.com. Demanding and controlling expectations. They order you around, treat you like you're a servant. They get angry when their demands aren't met. They demand obedience to their whims, treat you like a child, behave like a spoiled child.

Now, some of these actually are symptoms of borderline personality disorder. Oh, interesting. We see a lot of these with people who have that diagnosis. Acts helpless to get their way. So even though it's not sort of domination abuse, it still can be a form of abuse. I have seen that in many relationships. The person becomes so dependent that the other person really has no freedom. They have to drive them everywhere. Oh, yeah. has no freedom they have to drive them everywhere oh yeah nurture them everywhere um

so intolerance lacks empathy um views you as an extension of themselves rather as an individual interesting um and then it goes to emotional blackmail escalates abusive language or behavior if you talk back to them, use guilt trips. I've been in relationships like this. It's a relationship like this. Behaves dramatically in public until you agree to what he or she wants. Withholds sex or affection to get his or her way. Extraordinarily. The opposite of that is true, though, too.

Sometimes forcing yourself on someone it'd certainly be nomination right um frequently emotionally distant or unavailable um gives disapproving or contemptuous looks it's that look that only your wife can give you. Yeah, I don't know if I agree with that one. Sorry. Unpredictable emotional outbursts. So they control you because you never know what you're going to get. Does the one above that include eye rolling? Gives disapproving or content. Yeah, I think eye roll would work with that.

Declan Hyde. Oh, yeah oh yeah no that one i know well stomps out of a room slams doors throws things refuses to talk shakes his finger or her throws things at you um acts jealous or suspicious of your friends. You have to make sure you didn't give them reason for that, right? I mean, because when relationships are threatened, people get very anxious. They start acting crazy. Does something to spite you, just to get a rise out of you, which is often in my book, Healing ADD, there's a whole chapter on the

games ADD people play. And the first game they play is let's fight. I think you brought up a good point and we should just throw that in there really fast. This is all the signs of abusiveness, but I think it's always important for the person being abused to take an inventory. Like when you read this list, it's like, did I do something to, was it always this way or did I do something to trigger current recent behavior? Did I do something to make this person suspicious of me? Did I do something to make this person angry? Like legitimately, right? Well, if there has been a violation and I guess 40% of people who are married have had

an affair of one form or another. That's going to cause a reaction. It's going to cause someone to react. Funny, I was thinking about, and I'll always be thinking about your frontal lobes, right? The front third of your brain, focus, forethought, judgment, impulse control. But what your frontal lobes really do is they play out the consequences of your behavior. And too often people act in the moment and they don't understand if I say this, if I do this, well, how's that going to affect my goals a week from now?

Right. Or a month from now or 10 years from now. And so they're not playing out the consequences of the affair that just made devastate right that person's emotional life for a decade or sometimes for the rest of the I think there's one important thing to point out here like I had I had a friend one time who I didn't agree with what she was doing. Okay. So she started complaining a lot about her husband who was actually a very nice person. And so it was hard. It was hard. It's hard to be in that situation where, you know, your friend's like, Oh, he's being a jerk. He's doing this. He's doing that. He's being mean.

He's saying this he's, but as I'm talking to her, it's like like I think it's important to be honest with people too kind firm and kind and honest because I'm like I know you want out right so you want out and you actually want to be with this other person so you're starting to create a scenario that makes it okay for you to leave right that you create the trouble so you can blame the other person as bad and in that way, that's your out to do. Right, and the kinder thing to do would be to just tell him you don't love him and you want out.

That would be kinder than to just stir up trouble and cause him to be quote unquote abusive. And it's much more authentic, which ultimately makes you feel good about yourself. This isn't working for me. But to force him into an abusive... I'm sorry. You end up feeling so much better about yourself than you are bad, you're evil.

I have to leave you because you're so terrible. Right, she's forcing a nice person into an abusive position. And that's not right either. And there's always an interaction. What do you say? There's, you know,'s you know your story his story there's there's three sides to every story his side her side and the truth and it's all about perspective and perception because perception is reality right so another group of statements is character assassination the littles insults berates you in front of other people.

Don't do that, especially if you're doing it to get your way with children. It's just so destructive. Puts down your physical appearance or intellect, belittles or trivializes you, tells you your feelings are irrational or crazy. Now, I'm actually a psychiatrist, so I can formally diagnose you as crazy. No, you don't get to do that in a relationship. Nope. We drew that boundary early on. I'm like, you don't get to psychoanalyze me. Nope. Turning other people against you, corrects or chastises you for your behavior shares personal information with others so that's crossing a boundary um invalidates you hijacks so i want to comment on the sharing personal information with others i'm sorry um

that's actually a pet peeve of mine it's always important to have someone you trust to get together with, to have discussions with. If they are valuable, it's really dangerous to do this girl talk thing with the wrong people. And it's actually a huge pet peeve of mine. To get together with someone that you know is unhappy and tell them your dirty laundry when you know they're going to just reinforce the feelings that you have. Huge pet of mine. So I know that I have a group of friends that if something's going on in my life,

I don't care what it is and what area of my life, if it's kids, if it's whatever, if I go to those people, they're Christian, they're grounded. They're not going to tell me what I want to hear. And that's more important than me going to someone who's going to be like, oh yeah, you should... And just do that whole bashing thing. The male bashing thing is highly dangerous. So stay away from people like that. You want people who are going to make you better, not people who are going to tell you what you want to hear that's actually huge huge stay away from toxic people they will destroy your marriage then if you are with someone who constantly reinforces your negative feelings about your partner then the

relationship is gonna blow it up right You want someone who gives you accurate, honest feedback. Right. Now if you're with someone that's abusive, you want that information and support. Right. For sure. But you have to be careful who you listen to. But it's like my friend who was putting the guy in that position. It's like, no.

And then I've had another friend who was in an abusive relationship and I'm like, sweetheart, you're lying to yourself. You need like, this guy's bad. So you, but you need to like have friends who are grounded, that you respect and that you trust. Not ones who are just going to tell you what you want to hear. When we come back, we're going to talk about, well, what do you do if you're an abusive relationship? Stay with us. Use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com

or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way and the Brain Warriors Way cookbook we give away every month.