Marriage Rehab: Exposing Narcissistic & Emotional Abuse
Sep 14, 2026 · 38 min · 11 segments
Many couples enter counseling believing their biggest problem is communication. But what if communication problems are only a symptom of something deeper? In this episode of Marriage Rehab, Dr. David…
David HawkinsHostJohn HudsonGuestWhen we, when we did the, uh, first part of this series, we talked about how communication is often identified as the thing that we see, the thing that we experience, and we believe, uh, and a lot of practitioners, you and I included, have grabbed ahold of that.
And that's somewhat of a disservice to our clients because we're not taking the time historically to look deeper and see that, uh, communication problems are typically a symptom of a much deeper issue.
Now, there certainly could be and will be communication issues and things to learn, skills to learn, but it, it, it's not really going after the meat of the problem.
We highlighted last time, Dr. Hudson, I'd like you to just maybe briefly comment on each of these issues.
We, we detailed out, and by the way, I would encourage everyone to go back and watch, uh, the first podcast that we did on this topic.
But we detailed out, Dr. Hudson, that it could be that there are issues with emotional unsafety.
Every one of those issues, if there's one of those, it's going to derail an entire relationship.
What are we talking about when we say emotional unsafety, power and control, emotional abuse, emotional immaturity?
Well, we can take just a minute or two, Dr. Hawkins, to remind people, if communication really is the issue, then you'll see that both parties are not functioning well in their communication patterns, right? So that's a give and take on both sides, where they're, they're not listening, they're not validating, they're misunderstanding each other, and they have different communication styles, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
However, when we're recognizing that one person is sabotaging the whole process-
When we, when we did the, uh, first part of this series, we talked about how communication is often identified as the thing that we see, the thing that we experience, and we believe, uh, and a lot of practitioners, you and I included, have grabbed ahold of that.
And that's somewhat of a disservice to our clients because we're not taking the time historically to look deeper and see that, uh, communication problems are typically a symptom of a much deeper issue.
Now, there certainly could be and will be communication issues and things to learn, skills to learn, but it, it, it's not really going after the meat of the problem.
We highlighted last time, Dr. Hudson, I'd like you to just maybe briefly comment on each of these issues.
We, we detailed out, and by the way, I would encourage everyone to go back and watch, uh, the first podcast that we did on this topic.
But we detailed out, Dr. Hudson, that it could be that there are issues with emotional unsafety.
Every one of those issues, if there's one of those, it's going to derail an entire relationship.
What are we talking about when we say emotional unsafety, power and control, emotional abuse, emotional immaturity?
Well, we can take just a minute or two, Dr. Hawkins, to remind people, if communication really is the issue, then you'll see that both parties are not functioning well in their communication patterns, right? So that's a give and take on both sides, where they're, they're not listening, they're not validating, they're misunderstanding each other, and they have different communication styles, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
However, when we're recognizing that one person is sabotaging the whole process-
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