Have you been emotionally, verbally, or psychologically abusive to someone you love AND you really want to change?
…welcome.
The statistics are difficult to swallow: according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 10 million people report being abused every year, and up to 95% of those include emotional abuse.
And that’s just in North America. Based on that, logic tells us that there are at least several million people in the world who are being abusive. Let’s let that sink in for a moment. Millions of people — just like us — who are grappling with the issue of hurting the people they love the most.
And yet despite that, there’s (still) very little help for abusive people — and that is an honest-to-goodness tragedy.
That’s where we like to lean in and say, with genuine conviction, thank you for your courage in facing the hard truth about your behaviour, even though society right now wants to pretend you don’t exist, or you’re beyond hope. You’re not beyond hope.
You’re among the special group of people who want to change, and with help and a plan, CAN change. We’re unspeakably glad you’re here exploring how you can do just that.
Hi, we’re Andrea Lee and Karen McMullen, and we’ve been where you are.
Each of us has walked the path of realizing we were being emotionally abusive in our personal relationships, and were overcome with the desire to change. Like you, we found very few resources for abusive behavior, and unfortunately, ran into a lot of obstacles when we tried to find help. People even told us they didn’t believe we were being abusive!
The journey took us a lot of years, but we’re blessed to say today that we’re no longer emotionally abusive. We worked hard for that change, and it’s super precious to us.
There’s still not enough acceptance of the fact that to stop abuse in a relationship, we have to help the abusive individual as much as we must help the person being abused.
However, things have gotten better, and there’s more hope for abusive individuals today than 5 years ago when Andrea’s article in the Washington Post was first published. And there are more people raising their hand asking for help today, than there were when Karen first published the Emotional Abuse series on her Youtube Channel.
How did we change? We get asked that a lot, and we’ve been helping people individually to work on this, but we realize that not everyone’s ready to do that. So, we decided to pour all we know, and share all the tools, science, mindset, and personal experiences we have into one place, and make it easy and affordable to access, for as many people as possible.
- Unlike so many other places where you aren’t welcome — because you’re talking about being abusive, not being abused…
- Unlike experiences where you’re treated like a disgusting human, written off as hopeless or told ‘we don’t help abusers here’….
- Unlike the feelings you have of not knowing what to do, having nowhere to go, and no tools to address what you’re going through…
Here at We Can Stop Being Emotionally Abusive, we want you to know, you are:
- Recognised for wanting to change your past behaviour
- Understood for your fears and remorse over how you’ve treated people you love
- Invited to explore what’s causing you to behave the way you are, so you can finally get to the root of things and CHANGE
- Treated with compassion and empathy as a human being trying to do better
We Can Stop Being Emotionally Abusive is a mini-course consisting of 13 videos and supporting materials designed to help you understand and plan your healing journey.
We know that when you’re ready and motivated to face hard truths, you’re really ready! Which is why we’ve made every video, every single handout, assessment, exercise, and guided visualisation available immediately. Within minutes of signing up, you can be watching, making notes, taking action, much clearer about what’s going on and on your way to a PLAN.
The “We Can Stop Being Emotionally Abusive” Mini-Course is designed to show you the wide range of approaches and tools needed to take a wholistic approach to your journey.
If there’s one thing we wish someone had told us when we first started working on this, it’s this:
Talk therapy alone isn’t enough. This is a multi-dimensional problem that has a biological, psychological, community-based, neuroscience, storytelling, and even spiritual dimension.
- Yes, finding an understanding therapist can help you enormously. But if you don’t address the physical parts of this, you will miss some very important and helpful things.
- Yes, reading the best books on the subject is an essential part of the journey. But engaging your thoughts and not your feelings will only go so far.
- And yes, joining a supportive group of people is extremely powerful and encouraging! But there’s more available to do, and we know you want to do everything you can.
Which is why you’ll find all of the following in the mini-course:
- Personal experiences from both Karen and Andrea about what it was like to be abusive, and what healing looked like for us
- From Karen, specific movement exercises to help you increase your capacity for change, and holding painful experiences
- From Andrea, specific mental frameworks that help you understand your journey so you can have compassion for yourself (you need self compassion because this is a hard journey!)
- Useful definitions of emotional abuse (that help you change) and self-assessments that shed light on the severity of your situation
- We give you a range of tools you can use immediately, focused on preventing you from being abusive – before things get out of hand
- But we know that sometimes you’ll find yourself in the middle of an outburst, argument, or situation where you’re already in the middle of big emotions, so we have a module focused on what to do when that happens.
Throughout the videos you’ll find us empathetic, enthusiastic about your commitment to change, and, above all, kind.
Figuring out how to stop being abusive can be overwhelming and exhausting.
When you’re in the middle of this massive behavior change, we know you just want something to be easy. We took some time to make sure the course is super user-friendly, clear, and easy to come back to whenever you need.
You’ll have access to written handouts that cover the video content so you can take notes, and refer to as you do any journaling exercises if you like.
You’ll also have downloadable Mp3 versions of the videos so you can play just the audio if that’s easier.
To top it all off, the Mini-Course includes guidance for next steps after you’ve finished the videos.
For USD $200, the price of just 1 or 2 individual therapy sessions, you can start learning from two experienced coaches right away in the next few minutes.
Here’s some good news: habit change science tells us change really is possible. Slowly but surely people who’ve been abusive — some for a very long time — are standing up to share. It IS possible to stop being an emotionally abusive person. And you can be one of them.
The 13 Videos and supporting resources in the We Can Stop Being Abusive mini-course are available for USD $200 or two payments of $100. Once you’ve registered, you’ll receive an email immediately telling you how to log in and start watching.
Taking action is up to you, but our goal is that after digesting and using the mini-course materials, you will:
- No longer be confused about why you behave abusively.
- No longer feel alone fumbling around each day hoping for the best, fingers crossed that you don’t have an abusive episode.
- No longer hate part of yourself, wishing you could cut that part of you out of you, and shove it somewhere far away.
- Believe – and genuinely know – that you can change, that there is a path to becoming someone who doesn’t hurt the people you love.
- Have a list of frameworks, exercises, tools, and solutions to apply in your life right away, so your healing has structure and focus.
- Feel a sense of relief (emotional relief and a release of some physical stress) based on doing the exercises as we go along in the 13 videos.
- Have clarity about the resources available and the choices you can make beyond the mini-course.
- Have a way to talk to your loved ones about what’s going on with you and your plan to change.
- Have a way to dig deeper and move more fluidly in any 1-1 therapy, coaching or group work you do, because you understand your own abusiveness and how to talk about it.
In short, our goal and mission is that shorten the painful path of abusiveness between you and your loved ones, and remove as many obstacles as possible for you as you change your abusiveness. We want you to have a clear picture of your healing journey from the start, along with tools you can use right away << exactly what we wish we’d had when we started this ourselves.
To help you decide if the mini-course is right for you, here are all of the module names, exactly how you’ll see them after you register.
Intro: What to expect and how to use this mini-course
Key Concepts
Module 1: What is Emotional Abuse and Assessing Where You Are
Module 2: You are Not Alone
Module 3: You Are Not A Monster
Module 4: Change Is Possible
Tools and Approaches to Prevent Abusiveness
Module 5: Prevention —The Fighting Dog Parable with Andrea
Module 6: Prevention — A Framework for your Feelings with Andrea
Module 7: Prevention — How to Hold Pain and Other Intense Emotion with Karen (2 parts)
Module 8: Prevention — Tending to Your Needs
Module 9: Prevention — The Physical/Biological Part of This
Module 10: Prevention — Connection with Your Inner Child
Tools and Approaches When Your In the Midst of Being Abusive
Module 11: When You’re in the Thick of Things: Remove Yourself
Wrapping Up
Module 12: Planning Your Next Steps
Module 13: What Good Can Come From All This?
Total run time: Approximately 3 hours – each video is easy to rewatch, or relisten in audio-only format in moments when you need it most.
You’re in good, safe hands with Karen and Andrea.
In addition to understanding where you are right now, we bring our training in coaching, facilitation, psychology and bodywork to this course. We’re not trained therapists, so you’ll want to also work with a therapist if you want that background, but we are both well-regarded coaches with decades of client work under our belts.
The most honest thing we can say is – neither of us aspired to doing work on the topic of emotional abuse. The topic found us, and we finally decided that just because we’re not therapists, doesn’t mean we can’t be helpful. We checked in with our hearts and higher guidance, and we’re confident that our coach training and experience makes us excellent guides.
Of course, as an adult learner you’re always in charge of your experience, and we will insist that you pace yourself, go to a moderate level of intensity as you do the exercises, and always have somewhere you can call or reach out for support as you need it.
We want you to get the most out of this Mini-Course.
As part of our commitment to contributing our best to the world, we want to encourage you to take the course when you’re really ready to use it. To support that, we’re offering you two additional things:
Seven days after you register for the mini-course, we will send you an email requesting input on your experience of the course so far, using 3 coaching questions. When you complete the 3 questions and return that email to us, we will send you a credit for $100 that you can use towards work with Karen or Andrea in the next 3 months. That makes your investment just $100 for the course after you use the credit.
Also, if at seven days you feel the course isn’t for you, that after watching it you haven’t received value from it, we’ll refund your investment minus a $25 administrative fee.
The final word is a word of thanks. Thank you for:
- Being someone who cares to change. That’s a big deal.
- Your courage in looking at the parts of you that are hard to look at. That’s a really big deal.
- Your commitment to loving the people closest to you in a way that doesn’t hurt them. Another really big deal.
But most of all, thank you for saying ‘YES’ to the version of you that you know is inside you. The version of you that feels good, and makes you proud.
We’re here for you and we look forward to working with you. Together, we really can stop being abusive, and we can’t wait to get started.
Warmly,
Andrea & Karen
Will I be able to download and save the recordings?
Yes, they are stored within our Podia platform, and available to replay there, or download as you wish.
Are there any live calls in this course where I get to talk to Andrea or Karen?
This mini-course is 100% recorded and there are no live calls, just supporting handouts. However, if you wish to work with Karen or Andrea privately, we would welcome that and invite you to be in touch.
Do I have to have a therapist while I use the tools in this course?
We highly encourage you to consider working with a therapist, however, it is not a requirement to have one while taking this course. Your well-being is a #1 concern of ours, so we recommend you always have someone – a friend, professional or other support – available to talk things over as needed.
How do I know the mini-course will work for me?
First, the mini-course is not designed to 100% heal you of abusive behaviour using just these videos. There is more to this kind of behaviour change than a course like this can tackle. BUT, the course can give you a solid foundation and a map of what you can do going forward, so that you’re clear.
Also, the mini-course is based on real-life change achieved by two people who used to be emotionally-abusive so it is very personal, containing stories that you won’t hear from therapists or most other resources. We suggest you think about whether you’ll get value from that.
Lastly, the mini-course comes with a 7 day refund window. If you don’t find ample value in the videos, we will refund your tuition minus a $25 administration fee.
What kinds of people take this mini-course?
Karen and Andrea have reached 10s of thousands of people over the past 5 years, and worked with 100s of them. Each of them **has** one thing in common – they have harmed their loved ones with emotional abusiveness and they really want to stop. This is exactly the kind of person this mini-course is designed for.
I don’t know if I’m being emotionally abusive, how do I find out?
We suggest you watch the videos on Karen’s Youtube Channel here. That should help you get to know us as teachers and guides, and help you decide if this course is a good idea.
My partner tells me I’m being emotionally abusive, and I believe them, but I don’t know if I can stop. Is this course for me?
If you can hear that you’re hurting your partner, and you have the spark of desire to change, that’s enough to get started. You may not know if you can stop, but so long as you want to, this course is for you.
I am physically abusive to my partner, is this course for me?
This course does not address physical abuse, as we don’t have the experience or qualifications to be helpful in that case. If you are also emotionally-abusive, you could take the mini-course to address that part of your behaviour, but we definitely recommend you look for other resources to help you with the physical parts of what’s happening.
What kind of tech setup will I need?
If you can watch YouTube videos on your device (laptop, desktop, tablet or phone) you’ll be able to watch the videos in the course. You will also want to download audio files or PDF handouts, which shouldn’t require anything out of the ordinary. All mini-course resources are password protected and for your own personal use only.
Will there be space for questions in the course?
There are no live components to this course, because we focused our efforts on making these materials available around the clock, every day of the year. However, we welcome you to reach out with questions via email which we will do our best to answer. To get more or deeper, personalised support, you can inquire about 1-1 work, as well. In future, we hope to add a group coaching option that includes this course which you will be invited to if you’re signed up at stopbeingabusive.substack.com
Who is this Mini-Series not suitable for?
If the main challenge in your behaviour is physical violence, and you’re not receiving help for those behaviours, this mini-course will not be the right focus for you. The emotional components of your relationship are very important, and you could take this program along with something else, just not on its own if this is your situation.
If the tuition for this program will put undue financial stress on you, we would prefer you to reach out and let us know, so we can designate a scholarship spot for you. Just email andrealeeonline at gmail dot com and share a sentence or two about why you’d like to take the course.
What can I expect after I register?
You’ll see a confirmation page, and then you’ll receive two emails (1) a receipt for your purchase and (2) a more detailed prep email to get started.
USD $200 or 2 Payments of $100