Emotional and Psychological Abuse

In this deeply personal and heartfelt episode of The Music of Life, I open up about the emotional and psychological abuse I endured during my marriage and how it shaped my life. Reflecting on childhood dynamics with emotionally unavailable parents, I share how these patterns influenced my choices and relationships as an adult.

This episode sheds light on the subtle yet devastating effects of emotional abuse, the power of storytelling in healing, and the resilience it takes to navigate these experiences. If you’ve ever felt trapped, unheard, or manipulated, this episode offers understanding, validation, and a reminder that you’re not alone.

Episode Highlights:
[0:00] - Introduction and the significance of sharing your story.
[2:12] - Reflecting on emotional neglect in childhood and its impact on adult relationships.
[6:48] - Recognizing the signs of emotional and psychological abuse in marriage.
[10:15] - How manipulation and withholding affection can erode self-worth.
[14:32] - Powerful dreams that revealed emotional trauma and subconscious fears.
[18:55] - The role of storytelling in finding community and healing from abuse.
[21:47] - Song inspirations for this episode: "Close My Eyes" by Mariah Carey, "Prisoner" by Raphael Lake, Aaron Levy, and Daniel Ryan Murphy, and "Sharks" by Imagine Dragons. 

Links & Resources:

Be sure to follow, share, and leave a comment if this show resonates with you! Send me a message at podpage.com/themusicoflife to share your experiences, or to leave a comment. I'd love to feature it in a future episode.

Transcript

Caryn Portnoy: 0:00

Karen, hi everyone, and welcome to the music of Life. I'm your host. Karen Portnoy, before I get into this episode, please comment, ask questions, share some of your experiences, and don't forget to subscribe. So I ask you, what were some of the red flags that you noticed when you first met your now spouse, and of those red flags, which did you ignore? One of the red flags that I remember looking back on when my my now ex husband and I first met, I noticed that he couldn't really handle my emotions too well. And now that I can look back with more clarity. I can remember why I know I spoke in an earlier episode about what my relationship was like with my mother when I was young, and how I never felt like I had access to her, and I felt neglected and unloved and abandoned and all those things, but I never really got to speak yet about my relationship with my dad when I was young, and being that I lived with my mother and my sister until I was 10 years old, in which case, I moved in with my dad and stepmother, with my sister and my step brother, there were definitely things that were very difficult for me with my dad when I was younger, primarily, he couldn't handle my emotions either. I'm sure a lot of it reminded him too much about how emotional my mother was, and maybe that's why he couldn't handle me, but it may have also been how he grew up and how he was raised by his parents. So you know, there's so many different dynamics and psychological factors here, and it's hard to know what the answer is, but I do remember, up until the age I was 10 and moved in with him, I really struggled being with my mother, who who just wasn't able to help me navigate my emotions as a young girl, and it became overwhelming to me because I I just had no emotional regulation at that point, nobody to help me process my emotions. So when I would call my dad crying that, you know, I wanted to come live with him, and you know, whatever was upsetting me at that time, he would yell at me, stop crying, get on the bus. You're going to school, you know. But it was like it was not an emotional response. It was not something to comfort me or help me sort through my feelings. It was just yelling at me whenever I would be sick with a fever or anything like that, and I would call him for comfort, I was met with yelling as a young girl growing up, I think most young girls turned to their father to provide and protect them, and part of that included handling emotions. My mother wasn't equipped to do that, so I turned to him, but it turns out he wasn't equipped either. Maybe it was his fault. Maybe it wasn't, I don't know. I know my grandmother was not an emotional person at all. So you know how much of this was his fault, I'll never know, but it's no surprise really that I would go from a father who couldn't handle my emotions to a husband that couldn't handle my emotions. Where I am right now is at a place where it was neither my my father nor my husband's role or job to do that. I guess as a small child, your father is supposed to help you through those times. I mean, as a small child, you're not expected to know how to regulate your emotions at that point. You barely even know to identify them. I'll talk more about this in a in a future episode. I have a lot more to say about that as I went through my spiritual journey. You know, when I think about myself as a young girl whose parents divorced when I was three and a half, versus my own daughter whose parents divorced when she's nearly 15. You know, I know people whose kids were in college when their parents divorced. The bottom line is, is that there's no good age for your parents to get divorced. It affects you at every stage of your life, in every phase and every age. There's just no way around it. It's just, how is it going to affect you as you grow into an adult? And how prepared are you to deal with those emotions? And how do you move forward? The song that reminds me of what I'm speaking about now. Regarding my dad not being able to handle my emotions and what it was like growing up with two unavailable parents to me as a young girl, so the song that reminds me of this time is close my eyes by Mariah Carey that really resonated with me the last six to eight months of living together before there was an actual plan of splitting, there was a lot of screaming from my daughter that I should leave and never come back. Just get out of the house and leave and like she was at her breaking point and 100% fueled by him, who also used to tell me to leave and never come back, she would say, nobody wants you here. But you know, like I've said before, it was two against one. From the moment I served him, she would not have been able to recognize that the reason that I was still there was to be there for her, even though she didn't want me there when she grows up and looks back to this time, I hope that she can understand that I was there for her, knowing what he was doing and how he was manipulating her and weaponizing her against me. I'm pretty sure that once she figures that out herself, I don't know if she'll be glad that I was there or not, but I was not going to abandon her, and that's why I showed up every day and every night. So the song that reminded me of this time was prisoner by Raphael Lake, Aaron Levy and Daniel Ryan Murphy. It was very indicative of the prison that I felt I had been living through for the last three years, although he did keep me in some somewhat of a mental prison as well, which I can't even describe. What that feels like it was. We owned half the house. I owned half the house. I had every right to be there. I had every right to move around freely. You know, between his intimidation and his bullying and overbearing and and harassing and threatening and all kinds of things it, you know, it takes its toll on purpose. That was the whole point of it. You know, it came a point. I was living in the guest room for four years, but we were going through a divorce for three of those four years. And I don't know, maybe it was within the first, first six months to a year, you know, I was in the guest room, and I wound up going to sleep naked every night, and not on purpose. It just, I just had to get clothes off of my body, because I felt imprisoned. I felt like Sleeping Naked was the only form of freedom I had left. It was a very scary feeling to feel that imprisoned. There were some things that I had written down as time went on through the divorce that I felt it was important to document for myself, just so I didn't forget them, some of them being dreams I had, conversations I had, or things that went on. So I'd like to share some of these things that I wrote down. One of them had to do with emotional and psychological abuse can be just as damaging as physical abuse. The tactics are so subtle. Emotional manipulation is when they play with your emotions. He would use my fears, vulnerabilities and insecurities against me, things I shared with him over the years. He would taunt me with and throw back in my face as a way to control my behavior. I wasn't ever seeking His approval. It was more about avoiding his disapproval, because there were always negative consequences over time, this cycle erodes self worth and caused me to constantly be on edge, which happened throughout the marriage. Mind games were played constantly throughout the marriage. The example that infuriated me the most, and the most frequently used, was when he would do something to upset me, and then once I was yelling or crying or whatever, he would turn around and say, I'm sorry if you felt that way, avoiding any kind of responsibility for causing the upset to begin with, I would correct him every time saying, How about I'm sorry that you feel that way. That was the closest I could ever get for him to take any accountability for upsetting me. Withholding affection is a powerful form of emotional abuse. He would. Often give me the silent treatment, refuse to show love or appreciation or withdraw physical affection as a way to punish or control me. The night He almost hit me, which I speak about in a previous episode, also slamming his fist on my door when he knew I was in my bedroom, knowing he'd scare the crap out of me. He kept me in a state of constantly being on edge, which resulted in my needing to stay in survival mode constantly fight, flight or freeze. I never knew which one I would be in from one moment to another. I had friends from my life before I met him, whom he didn't like very much. Any time, my single friends would be in town and I would have a chance to go see them and spend time with them, he always had a problem with it and gave me a hard time. These were friends of mine for decades. He all but told me I couldn't spend time with them. Usually, dinners were as much time as I could spend with them without provoking him enough to fight over it. Forget about spending a weekend away once a year or even an overnight road trip. Everything was always a problem. Micromanaging me like this was a way to strip away at my autonomy, and I would have to obey him if I wanted to keep the peace. Often, he would make derogatory comments about me in front of friends or family. It was very subtle, though it was always loud enough for me to hear but I was never sure if anyone else heard him, since he was always needing to put on a facade as being such a great guy to everyone else, I suspect I was the only one who actually heard his comments. Case in point, I always felt like he treated me like a waitress whenever we hosted his family. Never appreciated how much work, time, effort and care I put into preparing and hosting holidays, dinners, family get togethers or other gatherings. He always spoke to me like the hired help. It made me cringe every time, and I was very vocal about it when everyone went home, except by then, it was a moot point, and he didn't care. The last time this happened, his family came over for an outdoor lunch in our backyard during COVID. There was a dream I had in July of this year, 2024 if anyone ever dove into psychology, you kind of know it's kind of a basic psychology 101, that you know you play out your fears and things and your dreams. So I dreamt that my ex husband and I saw each other at a local supermarket where we shopped, wherever I was standing, someone was wheeling pallets of toilet paper towards me, but didn't see me. My husband saw it and didn't warn me. Next thing I know, I'm on the floor writhing in pain. He makes it seem like he cares and is looking to help me, but I see he isn't actually helping me. Next thing I know, I'm screaming in pain as something feels like it's eating or pecking at the back of my head, causing severe pain from the inside, debilitating pain as I'm screaming, get it off of me. I have no idea what it is. I see my husband standing over me, smirking and enjoying whatever is happening to me. I can't move and I'm still screaming as I wake up. That was some scary shit. It felt really demonic. Another dream I had was that he was physically taunting me, coming at me unexpectedly with his hands giving me jabs, mostly to my face, but also on my upper body. I heard a loud noise in my room. In reality, when I woke up, I saw that I had knocked over nearly everything on my night table. Everything was strewn all over the floor, I guess in my dream, I fought back. Here's another example of sabotage that happened so frequently. He was asking for me to accommodate his request to take my daughter for the first night of Passover. I'm assuming that I was scheduled to have the first night, and he would have the second, but he was asking me to switch it. I said I would accommodate his request, and that I would also need to have my daughter attend a family Bar Mitzvah in Virginia on my side of the family from a Friday to a Sunday, while he said that she could go, no surprise there that he would convince her not to go. So once again, she was a no show with my family, which never happened with his family. And here's just another example of how the dynamics played out during our divorce, my daughter had been asking my husband to take her. To get a bagel. For the past three hours, he was cleaning her room and fixated on that. So he kept putting her off, saying after she just got cranky, and kept asking him to take her she never once asked me. Eventually, she had enough of him putting her off and walked out the front door. I think she thought she would walk to the bagel store alone to get a bagel. Never did anything like that before. No jacket. 34 degrees out. I asked him if he was okay with her just walking out the door like that. He said, Yes. I said, great parenting. He said, she doesn't have any money. I said, What do you mean? She has the debit card you got her? He said, she has no idea how much is on there. I believe she can check through an app. He finally got in his car to go look for her. Meanwhile, she kept calling his phone, which he left at home. I called her to see if she was okay. She said she was in his car and fine. Another example, my daughter came home from a Bat Mitzvah at 11:40pm I pulled up behind the parent who was driving her home from the party. I knew that he was home as I checked our ring app and saw his car parked in front of our house. I figured he was waiting up for her. It's a good thing. I got home when I did, I parked my car in the driveway as I saw her at our front door, presumably ringing the doorbell. I opened the garage door with my remote, and she came into the house that way with me. I went to take the dog out, and my daughter exploded, yelling at him for falling asleep and not answering the door for her. He yelled back at her, asking why she didn't call him. She said her phone was about to die, and they went back and forth, round and round, escalating their arguing. She was out of control, screaming at the top of her lungs, having a complete fit, crying hysterically and blaming him for not answering the door. She threatened to pour the milk she just poured on him. He said to her, if you do that, it'll be the last thing you do. They kept going round and round while I took the dog out. When I returned, my daughter had gone to her room, fixing her own bed to go to sleep, she was under the covers. By the time I approached her in her room, she was hysterically crying and on the verge of hyperventilating. I was able to calm her down enough for her to tell me that she interpreted his comment to mean that he was going to kill her, and pouring milk on him would be the last thing she did before killing her. I told her she needed to tell him that this is how she interpreted his comment. She asked me to go get him and have him come into her room. He reluctantly came in, and I sat there listening to him say that he meant he wouldn't do anything else for her if she poured milk on him. She told him that she thought he meant that he would kill her. He denied it and never acknowledged how scary that must have felt to her. Never consoled her, never apologized for making her feel that way. Nothing. She went to bed thinking her father wanted to kill her. You she screamed at him to leave her alone so she could go to bed. I stayed back to see if she was okay, knowing how upset she was, I offered to rub her back or do whatever I could to soothe her to go to sleep. She declined. I told her, if she needs me to text me as my room is literally five steps from hers. I had told my husband that I made plans for the next day and that I would be leaving at 9:30am He never said anything about making plans, except when I told him I made plans as usual, he responded that she was supposed to go with him, but now he doesn't want to be with her, so he was happy to leave her home alone unless she makes a plan with a friend. I was not okay with leaving her home alone, which has been an ongoing issue since her attorney didn't like him leaving her alone either, especially not while we are still living together. Once separated, obviously I have no say in what he does with her alone. So now, once again, we have a problem with no communication and him deciding he can come and go without communicating plans with me or who was with her if she didn't make a plan with a friend. This is not okay. While we are still living together, she is living in total chaos and confusion. She thrives in an environment of structure, routine and knowing what plan or activity or event is happening next. This happened earlier in the divorce, when I still had more involvement and interaction with her, but those days. Were numbered as time went on. Another dream that I had, which was very disturbing. I dreamt that he and our daughter and I were in a hotel room together. He had taken a shower and was just wearing a towel. She was in the bathroom and I was fully clothed. He was taunting me, trying to intimidate me as he kept moving closer to me until I fell backwards onto the bed. He laid on top of me and kept trying to kiss me as in his way of enticing me, which always made me sick. I kept telling him to stop, but he wouldn't. I kept getting louder, yelling at him to get off of me. He kept advancing as I was yelling until she came out of the bathroom. Then he acted totally innocent, like I did something wrong. Instead, he jumped up off me and went on with whatever he was doing earlier. She was none the wiser. This is one more example, and then I'll move on. My husband and daughter had a bat mitzvah this one night that he took great pleasure in telling me I wasn't included in. He was asked to go as an afterthought, but he loved that it was him that was invited and not me. When I asked how much of a gift he was giving, he said $200 on top of the $700 he doled out for the last week's party. Mr. Moneybags. That morning, he asked me if I had plans that night, and I said yes. He told me, as he was leaving to take her to his job for a few hours that his car was on the fritz. He didn't know what was wrong with it, and they had this bat mitzvah, and he was supposed to take two of her friends to it as well. I said I was sorry, but I had plans. He said, so I have to figure this out. I said, Yes. He then unleashed on me in front of her about how selfish I am, and it's not even my car, whose name is on it, who pays for it. I said it didn't matter and that it was my car. He snapped back with, well, then maybe you should pay for your car. He will retaliate somehow. He always did. Also wanted to read something from Dr David E Clark, PhD, also a narcissistic expert, the narc, calls you crazy and will tell others, many others, including your kids, that you're crazy. You're unstable, mentally ill, you're bipolar. Come to find out, your hormones are all out of whack, you have dementia. You're not the crazy one. He's the crazy one. Anyone who tries to tell you you're the crazy one is the crazy one. So as I've mentioned a bunch of times already, that you know, my intention for doing this podcast is to help other people going through it, and I hope that by my sharing my story and all that I've gone through will help others going through it too. I came across something that that was so true, and I just want to read this one more thing. It's called Tell Your Story by L, R, nost, K, N, O, S T, it says, tell your story. Shout it, write it, whisper it, if you have to, but tell it. Some won't understand it. Some will outright reject it, but many will thank you for it, and then the most magical thing will happen. One by one, voices will start whispering, me too, and your tribe will gather, and you will never feel alone again. Another song that was very appropriate for this episode was sharks, by Imagine Dragons. I really appreciate your listening. I'll see you in the next episode. Please join me every Thursday for a new episode. I invite you to comment, like, share, subscribe. You can reach me at the music of life five, five@gmail.com with any questions or stories or experiences or anything that you want to share with me, I'd be happy to talk about it on another episode. You can check out my website@podpage.com slash slash the music of life. You.