The World in My Eyes
Hundreds of people have written to me over the years explaining that when first encountering my work, they felt I had somehow climbed inside of their head. My writing in this piece is more subjective ...
Verbal Abuse Hurts
Don't Put Me Down! When I first Wrote Back From the Looking Glass - 13 Steps to a Peaceful Home (now in its 11th edition), it was much shorter and called "Don't Put Me Down!" I think the issue of domestic…
Intro – Handling Verbal Abuse
Do You Command Respect? The person who wrote, "Sticks & stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me." obviously never lived with verbal abuse. Quite simply, words can and do hurt." For years I lived on the…
Overview – Verbal Abuse is a Really Big Deal
Steve Biddulph got me started with the ideas I will present in this series. My life changed when I read his classic book, The Secret of Happy Children. His advice was about dealing with children having tantrums. I would say most verbally abusive people just never had a parent help them grow out of this behaviour.
Part 1 – A Crash Course in Raising Your Status
The pecking order is very real and whether you admit it to yourself or not, we make assessments all the time of whether the people around us have more or less power and influence than we do.
Denying that we judge people in this way won't make us innocent of power abuses, in fact the more we are aware of these internal assessments, the less likely we will be to abuse power in the hierarchies we live within.
Part 2 – Reclaim Your Confidence and Choose Victory!
Today I want to answer a question that I know you might be asking yourself, which is . . . "With everything going on in my life - can I really win this war?" Without knowing your situation, my answer is still, "Yes".
Part 3 – Don’t Let Sulking Ruin Your Life
If you have begun trying some of the ideas offered in the previous articles in this series, you may find your partner does stop verbally abusing you, only to shift to a different type of anti-social behaviour. A common one of these is sulking, which will sometimes be dished out as a kind of punishment for you standing up for yourself.
Part 4 – Tuned to the Wrong Channel? Get Out of Defense!
The articles in this series, so far, have mostly been about dealing with other people in defense. It will be extremely helpful if you can begin to see when you are doing the same. It is much easier to see in others than it is to see in ourselves.
Part 5 – Aloof or Manic? Dealing with Each
Today I want to deal with a couple more defensive behaviors you may come up against. These include a person who is needy and talking too much or the opposite 'lights are on but nobody home'.
Part 6 – Mr. or Mrs. Perfect: When the Verbal Abuse is Covert
Today we will discuss another type of defense you may come up against. But first I should share that the aim of these articles is not to judge anyone, but to help you become aware of defensive behaviour and continue practicing ways to bring you back to expressing your authentic self.