Welcome to Unfilteredd!
Hello, thank you so much for coming to learn more about Unfilteredd.
Unfilteredd is an organization dedicated to making information about abusive and manipulative relationships accessible and actionable for everyone.
Unfilteredd is committed to presenting the full spectrum of information available regarding abusive and manipulative relationships through professional research summaries, partnership with mental health professionals, and ongoing communication with individuals who have experienced abuse and manipulation.
Juliana and Elijah Akin, the founders of Unfilteredd, believe that relationships are a cornerstone of happiness and the key to leading a fulfilling life.
Therefore, the content that Unfilteredd produces is designed to provide readers with the information necessary to analyze relationships and engage in healthy interpersonal communication and partnership.
Our Story
Juliana and Elijah Akin decided to create Unfilteredd in the summer of 2021 because of a question Juliana asked Elijah.
She asked him, “Do you think that my parents are normal? I feel like I’ve had a dysfunctional childhood.”
She asked him this because she had a few conversations with her parents earlier in the week that left her feeling both invisible and misunderstood.
After a long pause, Elijah said, “No. I think that they are abusive.”
At the time, Elijah didn’t know much about abusive/manipulative relationships, but he knew enough to know that Juliana’s upbringing was not safe, child focused, or nurturing.
To explain himself, Elijah began to open up about his own experience in a relatively short term, dysfunctional romantic relationship from his past.
He walked Juliana through the manipulative behaviors that he experienced such as gaslighting, narcissistic rage, and triangulation.
Then he tried to point out how Juliana’s parents were displaying the same manipulative behaviors.
At first, Juliana was in denial about the whole situation.
But a few days after they had this conversation, Juliana had a phone conversation with her mother and she realized that she was being gaslighted.
The conversation was about a childhood interaction that Juliana had with her mother where she felt her mother should have afforded her protection and did not.
Juliana’s mother responded by blaming Juliana and implying she was responsible for not keeping herself emotionally safe.
As you can imagine, this realization was incredibly destabilizing for Juliana.
In fact, the more she thought about her relationship with her mom, the more her world began to unravel.
After a lot of reflection, Juliana told Elijah what had happened.
Over the next several weeks, Juliana and Elijah looked into the behavior patterns of abusive/manipulative parents.
The more work they did, the more obvious it became to them both that Juliana was raised by narcissistic parents and experienced narcissistic abuse.
Now, even though this sequence of events started when Juliana asked Elijah if he thought that her parents were normal, they both believe that Unfilteredd started the moment that they realized Juliana experienced narcissistic abuse.
This is because the knowledge that Juliana and Elijah gained about narcissistic abuse set three things in motion.
First, Juliana and Elijah realize they both experienced relationships with narcissists, albeit quite different duration and impact.
Juliana experienced narcissistic abuse from her parents and Elijah experienced the frustration of dating a person fitting the diagnosis of narcissism from his ex-girlfriend.
Second, Elijah and Juliana began to notice all the people they know who were experiencing narcissistic abuse or components of narcissistic abuse.
Juliana has three younger siblings who are also experiencing narcissistic abuse from their parents and Elijah has a close friend who he believed was in a narcissistic relationship.
Finally, Juliana and Elijah realized that healing from narcissistic abuse is complicated.
Juliana and Elijah scoured the internet for therapeutic support but couldn’t find enough information about narcissistic abuse that they could use to truly process and overcome the impact of abusive and manipulative experiences.
Although therapy is ideal for addressing abusive relationships, ongoing treatment is expensive and unaffordable for many, including Elijah and Juliana.
This is when Juliana remembered that she was able to access professional literature through the University of Turku, where she earned her master’s degree in law.
With the guidance of this literature, Juliana and Elijah were able to construct a foundation of knowledge related to narcissism that helped Juliana begin her healing journey.
They also used this knowledge to create a thoughtful path for Juliana to support her siblings of varying ages and to help Elijah provide support and information to his friend who was engaged to a narcissist.
Two of Juliana’s siblings are preteens, so she focused on being a healthy emotional mirror for them. This has allowed her to slowly build trust and compassion with and for her siblings.
In the future, Juliana can explain narcissism and narcissistic abuse to them. But for now her focus is being a person that all of her siblings trust with their thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
As for Elijah’s friend, Elijah was able to explain narcissistic abuse to her and provide her the support that she needed to end her abusive relationship and begin her healing journey.
For a while, Juliana and Elijah believed that these few months were in the rearview mirror.
But this all changed when Juliana reflected back on her work as a lawyer.
As noted earlier, Juliana has a master’s degree in law.
She is a lawyer in Finland and has handled many domestic violence cases.
When she started thinking about the cases that she worked on, she began to recognize how closely the behavior patterns she witnessed mirrored what she and Elijah learned about narcissism.
Juliana started thinking about all of the exhausted survivors of abuse who came into the office looking for justice through the system and all of the abusers who experienced no legal consequences.
Juliana began to understand how ineffective the legal system is in managing the harm caused to the targets of abuse and manipulation.
After explaining this to Elijah, the two of them revisited all of the literature that they had read in the past.
Once they felt comfortable with the scope of their ability to understand information about abuse and manipulation, and their ability to relay that information to others, they began to build the structure of Unfilteredd.
At first, Unfilteredd was just a blog. Once the blog began to gain traction, Juliana and Elijah decided to expand the reach of Unfiltered by creating a podcast and YouTube channel.
This is how Unfilteredd started.
It is a platform for unpacking all of the insidious ways that abuse and manipulation impacts people.
It is a place for learning, supporting, and thriving.
Unfilteredd is designed to support a deeper understanding of abuse and manipulation, be a place where survivors can explain their path towards healing and motivate others, and to link viewers with resources and support.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a cool story behind the name Unfilteredd.
If you ask Elijah, he will be very mysterious about it all and tell you, “It is a secret.” But the truth is that it was a name that just came to them randomly.
However, I think that name suits them.
If Elijah had filtered his response when Juliana asked him if he thought that her parents were normal, who knows where the two of them would have been today.
This work comes with immense challenges and many potential pitfalls, but Elijah and Juliana are committed to working together to create a positive and impactful resource for others.
Contact Information:
Phone: (802) 267-4454
Email: [email protected]
Mailing Address: 1060 Teer Rd, West Rutland VT, 05777, USA