It wasn’t until I was in my third serious and very unhealthy relationship that I began to dig deeper into why I kept picking men who treated me so horribly. It seemed that with every relationship, I was seeking validation of my self-worth but all I was getting was a constant demand to ensure and…
DetailsThis week’s blog is a little different for us, but we are too excited to wait. We wanted to take this time to share our latest podcast interview. If you have been following The M3ND Project, you may remember that the organization was birthed out of our founder’s, Annette Oltmans, personal struggle with covert emotional…
DetailsThere are many images that come to mind when we think of child abuse. Some may imagine the child in foster care who was abused by their biological or adoptive parents and pulled from the home because the home was no longer deemed safe enough for the child to remain. Some of us assume physical…
DetailsWhy is validation so important to an abuse victim’s healing process? To answer this question, it’s important to understand more about what a victim experiences internally in response to the covert abuse. Within the abusive relationship, a victim’s emotions have been regularly dismissed, denigrated and invalidated by their abuser. Through frequent, systematic use of various…
DetailsGaslighting. Most of us have heard the term before. Many use it regularly. Some of us have been its victims. But what is gaslighting? How does it play out in real life? How do you know if you or someone you love is being gaslighted? What is gaslighting? The dictionary definition of gaslighting is…
DetailsToday, we are sharing a story from a brave woman, named Crystal (a pseudonym to protect her privacy). In abuse cases, victims often say that the covert emotional abuse was much worse than any other form of violence that occurred. It is common that the honeymoon phase Crystal experienced in the beginning happens before the…
DetailsIn our last blog, we discussed how RZIM’s varied responses to allegations that Ravi Zacharias, a prized, powerful and lucrative member of their team who had sexually violated and abused multiple women during his life and ministry, were at first abusive and then later, after RZIM completely changed its approach, healing. Today, we describe what…
DetailsIf only I knew what I was going to hear before the phone rang and I decided to pick it up. I wonder if I would have answered; if only I had known. Within minutes, I realized that this was a conversation I did not want to have; in fact, I was not at all…
DetailsThe thing with covert emotional abuse is that the tactics used by the one causing harm are tactics we see in many of our relationships, even those that are not abusive. And so it can be very confusing to those within the abusive relationship as well as those hearing about it from the outside. Minimization,…
DetailsCraig’s story reminds us…men can be victims of abuse. Like women, they find themselves in sexually, emotionally, or physically abusive relationships. But coming out about the abuse for a man is exceedingly difficult as you will see from Craig’s story. Although he experienced physical, sexual and covert emotional abuse by his wife, when he disclosed…
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