Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members with Dr. Sherrie Campbell

Imagine growing up as the family scapegoat, carrying the weight of dysfunction on your shoulders. Dr. Sherry Campbell, a psychologist and author of "Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members," joins me to share her transformative journey from this painful beginning to a place of empowerment. Together, we shed light on the silent epidemic of toxic family relationships and offer support to those who feel isolated during emotionally charged times like the holiday season.

Embarking on a path to healing from family trauma requires courage and self-reflection, a theme that resonates deeply throughout our discussion. 

There's a poignant reminder that you're not to blame for the actions of toxic family members. For those seeking solace and encouragement, know this: reclaiming your story and embracing your truth is not just an act of bravery; it's a pivotal stride toward an empowered life. Dr. Campbell's insights serve as a beacon for anyone on this arduous yet fulfilling journey.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:59

Welcome to Empowered Within, a soul-quenching, transformational podcast that will set your soul on fire. Through candid and inspiring conversations, leading experts, celebrities, healers and I share our journeys of how we've overcome challenges to living an empowered life from within. I'm your host, jennifer Pilates. Welcome to another episode of Empowered Within. Hi there and welcome to the show. I am honored to have with us Dr Sherry Campbell. Dr Sherry is a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in helping healthy people cut ties with toxic people in their lives. She's a nationally recognized expert in family estrangement, a best-selling author, a TEDx speaker, a top 1% podcast host. Her show Sherropy Sessions Cutting Toxic Family Ties. She's a well-known social media influencer and regularly featured as a media expert. Welcome to the show, dr Sherry.

Speaker 2: 2:03

Thank you, jennifer. I'm so glad to do this with you. I love seeing you in my social media and this is going to be a good show from our little talk we just had, so I'm really excited.

Speaker 1: 2:13

I'm excited too. We just had a whole hoedown free off air, so let's dive right in, because I want to start from the beginning and then we'll bring it through everything. How did your journey begin to become an expert on toxic family members?

Speaker 2: 2:28

With really very little intention. To be quite honest, I think it started when I was being scapegoated as a child and got thrown in therapy and then to my family's demise. I actually had a really good therapist and my life started changing. Then I knew I wanted to be a psychologist and it started there. But it took me 45 years, almost five decades, to really understand that I needed to cut off from my family to have any sense of happiness in my life, needed to cut off from my family to have any sense of happiness in my life. I tried everything to stay connected and the abuse only got worse and it really took me having my own child. So even in my career my PhD I was 33 and I had a baby at 33 and by 45, it had all ended with my family.

Speaker 2: 3:15

So I my career even didn't start changing direction and into writing books and doing this kind of stuff until I was well into my forties and from 30 to 42, I think I was just like this isn't okay. I don't like it the way I feel when they're around my daughter. I'm starting to recognize like I'm the scapegoat of this family and I've been the bad kid my whole life, and just how deeply it affected me, how difficult both my parents by intent, wanted my life to be, how much failure they wanted me to have that they would try to make me have. So I couldn't escape the system and I escaped and then I started writing. But I was really cut off by my brother and father due to my first book that I self-published. My relationship with them ended at 42, on my birthday, no less. That's when they chose to attack me about that book, and then it took me until 45 with my mom. I think moms just hold a little bit of a different space in a child's heart, and she by far my more evil abuser as well.

Speaker 1: 4:28

Wow, thank you for sharing that. I know that you I mentioned off air when I read your book Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members. You literally saved my life, and I shared with you that when I got this book, it was pre-holiday season, and when I opened it, I was guided to read towards the back of the book, and had I not read that section, I would not have been mentally or emotionally prepared for what was to come during the holiday season with my family, and it's been since then that I've gone 100% no contact with anyone at this point, and so I really want to talk about you, talk about this being the silent epidemic.

Speaker 1: 5:13

And I'd love for you to share what that means. So people get it, because it really is something that hasn't been spoken of, and you and I have talked. We're both in our 50s and this isn't something that you would ever speak of before.

Speaker 2: 5:26

No, we really weren't allowed and no one was speaking about no contact with family before me. I thought I was going to get run off planet Earth or like no one would read my book, you know, because my first book is called but it's your family, right, and it's cutting ties with toxic family, and that's in the title. So I just could have had no forethought that it would be here and I even thought I was half out of my mind to even publish it because I'm like I'm just asking to be abused. So it's a silent epidemic because children are seen as owned by the parent in this society, that they own us more like a piece of property rather than as a human being with needs and feelings of their own, and it's more of a dictatorship than a democracy. We're not allowed individuality. Our parents are grossly immature. Children are raising parents instead of parents raising children. I thought I can't be the only one who doesn't want contact with their family. I can't be.

Speaker 2: 6:29

And I just started doing research and certain authors put out statistics and I found out and this is only what's reported is one in four, so 25% of adult children cut off from their parents for some period of time. And then there's all these other statistics on how many cut off with their mothers and why, and their fathers and why, and things like that. But I couldn't believe 25%, and that is only what's reported. How many are just so scared to say that they either want to or have, but they keep it a secret for the fear of the societal backlash. Which is really what my TED Talk talks about is we aren't allowed to talk about the problematic character of parents in a culturally open and safe space, but parents can go out, smear their kids, trash their kids in any which way they want and it's considered tough love and a bad kid. It's so unbalanced.

Speaker 1: 7:29

It really is. It's so unbalanced. And when you talk about the abuse and the methods of abuse because there's so many Will you share that? Because I feel that there's so many people that are like what are they talking about? Yeah, my parents are crazy, but whatever, and for years, like you're saying, I knew I went different times throughout my life going no contact, and it wasn't until, like, there's always this big final done moment is what I have come across with meeting people and after years of trying, this isn't something that people hope and go oh, it's not a fad, this isn't something that you want, but it's. You're literally trying to save your own life at this point and I'm wondering if you can speak to that, because so many people don't understand that aspect of it.

Speaker 2: 8:14

I explain it as if there's a bag and people are. You know your parents are filling one rock at a time full of abuse, and the way that these types of character disordered parents work is they don't want to focus on the rocks that are in the bag, because if you do that, it's like you don't get over anything. You always hold on to grudges, but the rocks are the same pattern of the same abuse over and over and over, and no matter how many times you try to communicate and pull out your PowerPoint and it's logical and you're going to come out with their twisted version of that story and at some point the bag breaks. We're human beings. We run out of try at some point. Now, most people don't try in interpartner relationships for 45 years to make it work. Some do, but in interpartner violence you tend to get out a little sooner than 45 years, right? Some don't get out at all, I acknowledge that. But when they get out, people are happy. So why is someone not happy for my freedom? Because it's my parent and you just assume all parents are good. Not all parents are good. That's the title of my TED talk. It's really that simple. Not all parents are bad. I am a parent. I see good parents all around me.

Speaker 2: 9:33

The methods of abuse of parents, though, are very easy to gaslight. Gaslighting, beating one of their methods, right? Um, emotional abuse really isn't visible by physical markers, right? But I'll tell you, it's potent enough to break your heart and your spirit for your lifetime, and to this day, I will always have moments where I just fall into the abyss of a trigger or something, when you are made to feel like you are not worthy and that your job is to walk around on a delicate eggshell walk to manage the moods of your parents. For your parents.

Speaker 2: 10:14

That is coercive abuse period. That is not a child's responsibility. Parents are obligated to children. They brought us here. We didn't choose to come here. They are responsible enough to bring us here. Then the obligation should go parent to child. Children should not be obligated to parents. We don't have the skill set. So I spent my life surviving and in fear, and I was totally defeated emotionally. Every single day, I was made to feel I was stupid, annoying, a burden, a sacrifice they didn't want to make. I was never good enough, I wasn't pretty enough, I wasn't smart enough, I was nothing enough. I'd walk into a room and it'd be like, oh, she's here, yeah, how do I? What do I do with that? When I can't provide food, home and shelter for myself, I have to live in it Period.

Speaker 1: 11:17

Provide food home and shelter for myself. I have to live in it period Right, and so many do and so many still do.

Speaker 2: 11:28

That's not love. And then they will flaunt how nice they can be to someone else's children in front of you. It's unbelievable the savagery that these parents act out on their children.

Speaker 1: 11:37

Yeah, and it's interesting and I actually would ask this question before I even make that statement is because I've had that happen to me. I can remember for years I would cry to my mother or I would cry to family members, being like when is it my time, when do I get my mom? And meanwhile she showed up for their birthdays, for this, for that, but when it came to me, it was never. When I did cry to family members about this. They'd be like you know, you're being dramatic, you're being dramatic.

Speaker 2: 12:07

So I had a sibling, male older, and he was never treated the way I was. I think character disordered mothers hate their little girls. They compete with their little girls. I think these mothers in general, because I think my brother is abused, I think he's enabled, I think that's abuse as well and she enables him to be a really horrible person in private. And then they keep each other's secrets because he's the shiny penny and that's his role. He makes her look good.

Speaker 2: 12:41

But I know all kinds of secrets because someone was turned into the scapegoat after I left and she divulged all of it. And not only are things far more evil than they were when I was there, but you know, I certainly kept that as evidence in case I needed to use it, which I did, because my mother sent a friend of hers to my social media to call me a money making schemer with my childhood story. So I let that woman in on the secrets that I knew and all the 40 photos of evidence that I had of what they had done to this other scapegoat and I thought maybe, if they know that I have this information, maybe they probably won't send another person my way as a flying monkey to call me a fake. I think my message got across because that woman deactivated her Facebook account and that isn't my story to tell at this point. But I look at it like if she's going to continue to give me content through abuse, then I'm going to continue to write, because I can't be the only one going through this. And if I can turn that predator into a purpose and really help somebody to understand that the craziness that they're seeing is actually real and they're not alone, then I will do that. At this point it's not my story to tell, so I hope they're mindful enough to keep it there, because what I know would really destroy their reputations and I'm not in the business of doing that. I don't want to do that. I don't want to have any dialogue like that, right, but if I'm forced to to protect myself yet again, then I will do that.

Speaker 2: 14:22

My books are about me, not her. So when you watch that they can be socially one way, even to another sibling, it's even more marked to you that you're flawed, you're bad, you're not loved and all the same tears that that you had, I felt like when I'm, when am I ever going to matter? And also, why am I? Why am I so bad? I'm sorry, I'm bad. I don't know why I'm bad, but you know I've got to be bad. And then I was angry and I was hurting and I was yelling and they didn't give a shit about me. So I didn't give a shit about me and it turned into that and that's exactly what they wanted. Very sick families need a scapegoat. So in my new book I went and I said going from scapegoat to escape G O A T, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 15:19

We're the truth tellers, so Escape G-O-A-T. Absolutely, we're the truth tellers, and it takes time. And for those people that are maybe unfamiliar, I didn't really understand the word scapegoat till I read your book, and then that's when all of the pieces fell into place for me. Will you share for those that are out there who don't understand what that means? What is the scapegoat?

Speaker 2: 15:37

The scapegoat is the person that the family projects all the family dysfunction onto for that person to carry. So it's their way of avoiding responsibility. Like this family would be perfect, but we just have this one really hard kid. But no one knows that that child is being abused emotionally. You know they'll say stuff like my mom would do some pretty cutting things verbally to me publicly and I would notice that other people would notice and I'd be like you know, like right, but I'd get kissed. You know she didn't mean it that way. She's your mom, sherry. I know it sounded bad, but I know your mom and she would talk about how she loved me to other people but at home and everywhere we were alone. That was not love. She wanted to drive me insane and she did, and then she'd call me the abuser and that's how you get scapegoated. It's all projection.

Speaker 1: 16:39

In your first book that I read, the Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members you gave an example and when I got to this example I almost called you at that moment because it was a mother saying to a daughter. I just can't say or do anything right with you.

Speaker 1: 16:56

And I went On, repeat, repeat, every day of my childhood, did you call my mother, like, did, like, I couldn't, and I thought did they go to the same school? Yeah, I thought I seriously am not crazy. Now, meanwhile, I had already read a good portion of the book at that point, but I thought, oh my gosh, this really is a pandemic. This is insane. This really is a pandemic. This is insane. And yet I was so grateful that you had been through this and here you are, the expert showing up, and finally it was like God just placed you in my path and said you need to know the truth now.

Speaker 2: 17:30

You do and you deserve to. As I got older, that evolved into well, I guess you know everything. You're the shrink. It was so mind boggling that then she hated me for being educated and she'd use it as a fault. She made everything about me bad Everything and God is that hard to outgrow and is so hard to live with and it was so heartbreaking. She really broke me and I still have so many fractured pieces from her that I'm constantly working on that. I enjoy working on. I enjoy this development that I have in the new book about emotionally abusive parents.

Speaker 2: 18:12

There's such a huge survival guide on how to get the various parts of you to interact your broken parts with your more healed parts or your child parts with your adult parts and all of those things. And you know the movie Shawshank Redemption, oh yes, there's a theory that dealing with acute trauma is much easier to survive than to deal with someone picking at you every single day. That that is so much more harmful to the human psyche and that's when I ever think of Shawshank Redemption is. I feel like that's almost even how I escaped. The more she picked on me, the more I tried to escape. The more she picked on me the more I tried to escape and my abuse has not ended.

Speaker 2: 18:56

We've been no contact for eight years. I never, you know, all I do is I write my books and I help my following, and she still still is just out to try to publicly humiliate me and do whatever she can, and she's never going to see my emotional carcass laying at her feet ever again. You know those statements of I can't do anything right. Well, when you're young, you're like I'm sorry, I don't. I don't mean to be so hard or difficult, I didn't know I was being difficult, because I have my own thoughts, you know, or I want you to treat me nicely. So it's so confusing when you're not old enough to get it. And then, even when you are, you still want to believe like nah, it's got to be me, it can't, it's my mom, you know. So it's a title.

Speaker 1: 19:52

And for you exactly, it's your mom, it's your uncle, it's your father, it's your cousin.

Speaker 2: 19:57

It's your mom, it's your uncle.

Speaker 1: 19:58

It's your father, it's your cousin, it's your sibling. You've talked about this numerous times. We wouldn't give a pass to a stranger on the street if they did this to us. But because they are labeled with the mother, the father, the uncle, the aunt, the cousin, the whomever, your brother, your sister, suddenly they get a pass. And now here we are years later picking up the pieces, realizing when someone's saying, after everything I've done for you, after all the money I've given to you, after how dare you? And then you finally realize how much you've been gaslit. And I remember years ago I had a therapist and it was so bad I walked in with my phone and I handed it to her and I said I need permission to block this person from my phone. It was one of my parents. I was so mentally, emotionally abused that I needed a stranger to give me permission to block someone who was tormenting me.

Speaker 2: 22:06

Yeah, and in adult survivors of toxic family members. The introduction is you have permission.

Speaker 1: 22:13

I probably sat at that part and cried for an hour.

Speaker 2: 22:17

I know, I so get it. You know, when no contact happened, I was actually cut off, so get it. Yeah, you know when, when no contact happened, I was actually cut off. I got cut off, which wasn't uncommon. She would go for weeks and not speak to me over no-transcript. I can't do this any more. She can fix it this time. It's been eight years.

Speaker 1: 22:48

And I'm glad you just mentioned that because I want you to share the difference between going no contact versus silent treatment, cause we've all had it from the narcissist and toxic people. I can remember thinking child my mother allowed her husband not to talk to me for six months in our house.

Speaker 2: 23:06

Making you feel totally unwelcome and not chosen. Yes, so no contact in the silent treatment. I make sure I differentiate that for people in my books and also now it would be called cancel culture. Right, the silent treatment is a game to get someone else to feel abandoned so that that person, not wanting to be abandoned, will fix the problem. So the silent treatment is designed to get the other person to fix the problem. It's a game. When a parent, the leader who provides for the child, silences the child, it will put the child into so much fear that child will start doing extra chores just to do anything to mend that horrible gaping space. And they have to earn the parent's love back, which is disgusting. Children shouldn't have to earn love, they should rest in it. By the way, no contact is about it's over. So the silent treatment and no contact both involve silence. So there is a commonality. It's understandable that people you know see them as the same. But no contact is about giving the survivor relief. It's finally over and that survivor wants no contact.

Speaker 2: 24:26

I never had contact, even when it was verbal and active. I tried so hard to make contact, to have a breakthrough, to have understanding, to like, move the relationship to a new area. I tried every PowerPoint, every new time of the day, new facts, new truths, new tone of voice, new PowerPoint. I tried it all to make contact. I never had contact but no contact. I just stopped. I accepted there was no way to contact these people. I would always get told don't talk back. So then I was like, oh well, that implies a one person conversation. So then when I wouldn't talk back, she'd be like, oh, you're ignoring me. I'm like what?

Speaker 1: 25:16

Right, Exactly Like what what?

Speaker 2: 25:19

what is happening? I look at it as my mother cut me off. I'm respecting her decision. She doesn't get ridiculed for it, I do Super.

Speaker 2: 25:32

So no contact is taking a relationship from active and verbal into inactive and silent. The relationship is still existing. It's still there, inactive and silent. The relationship is still existing. It's still there. It's just that it's not verbal and active anymore. It's been put on inactive and nonverbal. That's all that it is.

Speaker 2: 25:50

But I have no desire to have her beg me back. I have no desire to have her want me back, which she wouldn't anyway. But I don't have that intent. The silent treatment is oh, you know, I'm going to show her, I'm going to make her so scared that she's going to lose her mom. And then and she, every time she won, because I really didn't want to love my mom and I wanted her to love me back. Right, and I played into her game. I just didn't know what was a game. I just knew that I was not someone she loved and that I kept thinking, if I was just someone different, more like what she wanted, then maybe she'd love me. And so I kept trying to figure out what that was, and she just kept changing the game. It was ridiculous.

Speaker 1: 26:40

Right, oh my gosh. And so when you talk about no contact, you also talk about cycle breakers, which that has become kind of a buzzword lately, and I'm wondering if I could have your permission to read a piece of your book out of adult survivors of toxic family members that talks about this, because there's two things in here that I'd love to read, one now and one later um, that are just so phenomenal. How do you not share what you've given here? And so this is all about how do you cope with it and what do you do. And so Dr Sherry writes maybe I won't read it just yet. It's um, oh no, we had this talk before, and I told her I was going to do my best to get through without crying, because this is very. Um, oh no, we had this talk before, and I told her I was gonna do my best to get through without crying, because this is very.

Speaker 2: 27:25

Um, let me share something with you while you gather yourself. I'd never done an audible book before, right before becoming an author, because I hadn't written a book. So I didn't realize the power of reading out loud and I didn't cry even once writing one of my books. But then I go in to record it and I'm all by myself and it's me and my voice and the way it sounds inaudible is. It's super crisp and clear in your ears and you've got someone sort of outside of you and they're on a big thing right. To hear myself tell my own story out loud was a level of healing and feeling that I never would have known existed. And what's happening with you is we have a similar story. All of us survivors have a similar story. When you're reading it you may cry, but when you go to actually read it out loud. So now I put my patients through a gauntlet that I'm putting into a workbook and there's exercises. I have them read out loud and they all cry.

Speaker 1: 28:42

It makes it so real and then you're like it's another beautiful level of healing. And I mean, I'm always working with my clients on somatic work and the breath work, and so it's like you don't want to hold these emotions down. I want to allow them to come through and I want to be very honest and authentic as to why, because this episode is so important and so heartfelt to both of us.

Speaker 2: 29:08

Okay, I'm ready. Are you ready? I'm good now.

Speaker 1: 29:10

Okay. Dr Sherry writes the only true responsibility you have in your relationship is for your own mental health. It is your job to take care of yourself for other people and it is their job to take care of yourself for other people, and it is their job to take care of themselves for you. If, in your own life, you must put your mental health first, keep in mind that you are a cycle breaker. You are wise enough to recognize that you have the potential to be as cruel and manipulative as your family has been towards you, but you're empathetic enough to sacrifice your familiarity with that type of abuse in order to break the cycle. You do this through setting boundaries, with ties severed and strict boundaries placed on your family. The next step on your journey is learning to fully rely upon yourself.

Speaker 2: 30:02

Yes, and you know, relying upon ourselves when we've been raised in these codependent, sick relationships is also its own sort of fearful thing. When you're the scapegoat, they convince you you cannot do that. And you read in that book that my mother cut me out of my grandmother's trust in a specific way that she couldn't legally cut me out. But the way the trust was set up was that my mom and the bank had to agree okay, my grandmother having no clue how abused this would be, and it was really for my daughter's education, right. And I ended up seeing an attorney because I got ghosted when I asked for the same amount of money that my sibling took and I offered to keep that money in that bank and have it managed by them and I got ghosted. So money is also one of their ways that they make you feel like you can't live without their money, that you're not going to survive, and that is cult stuff. And any group of people can be a cult and a family can be a cult. A friend group can be a cult if they're bullies. A gang is a cult and I talk about in the new book how similar it is to leave a cult as it is to leave a toxic family, and I didn't know that until I watched Scientology in the aftermath and I was like whoa, I'm going through every single one of these things. The only thing they're not doing is living next door to me and going through my trash. The only thing they're not doing, right, they're trying to starve me back. I mean, they're just trying to destroy my reputation all to get me to tap out and come back Instead of saying I'm sorry, I love you, let's fix this. No, it's. Let's starve her, let's berate her, let's scare her. What is that? It's abuse. What is that? It's abuse? So it is hard.

Speaker 2: 32:03

And that part of the book I guess hearing you read it out loud tapped me into how scared I felt. Am I going to be able to do it by myself as a single mom? Am I going to be okay? Do I really need them? Because if I don't go back and I write about this in the new book now, I can't, because now I've really betrayed these people, right? So it's just so unusually hard and wrong. It's fundamentally evil to do this to your children and they do it and we don't have a choice and we don't have any refuting evidence. And it's how many don't leave. That just breaks my heart. And has it been really hard, this journey? Yes, but largely because of my programmed fear to do it alone. If I look back, I did phenomenal. I've been doing phenomenal without them, better than I ever could do with them, but that inner child space is like, always scared, the bottom's going to fall out. Even to this day, my default is fear. It's not. I still have that programming that if I want anything, I have to suffer for it, yes, and that I also have to have some level of guilt, even if I've suffered for it enough, if I actually have it. So all of these things come from this upbringing and it's called, you know, in Scientology. Leah Remini talks about the deprogramming and I'm like, wow, I never would have thought of that. I'm still deprogramming, literally.

Speaker 2: 33:50

I write the books and I moved to my office recently and I found a journal in my office and I thought, oh no, this was here. That means I was such a wreck that I was writing in between patients. So I opened it up and it was something I have just completely blocked out and I felt like you know, movie back to the future. I felt like I went back to the past and like like I was stuck there and I hadn't seen my boyfriend in like a week. And this is surreal. I've never had this feeling. So I'm really far along the way if I'm writing the books and this still happens to me, so it's always okay.

Speaker 2: 34:30

And my in my own podcast I'm doing a whole series on grief and this is called long-term grief and this is because of why. But I, when I saw him next, I felt like he didn't know me anymore, that I had gone on a whole trip to another zone and I started explaining it to him and I'm not much of a crier and I was sobbing and he's like why We've been together eight years, like why didn't I know this? And I'm like, because I shut it away somewhere, he's like maybe you shouldn't read your journals. It away somewhere. He's like maybe you shouldn't read your journals. And I'm like, no, it's, it was really good for me to remember that on some level, because that will now help me in sharing some of this stuff, cause we can feel like, oh, I took all these steps back, we didn't, but you can't go in and get a lobotomy of your amygdala and hippocampal areas, which is the space where memories are attached to emotion.

Speaker 2: 35:28

So if you get triggered, you haven't lost any ground. I think that you're gaining more wholeness so that you can clear even more of the pain on your journey, to alleviate from your life and to also help you navigate today. So you have to really welcome the journey and its pain Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 35:49

And I always say that if you are having a trigger, take that step back, let the light shine on it, because all it's showing you is we've got a spot here that still needs to be healed. It's okay, feel it, move through it and take your step. You're exactly. You're not going backwards. I mentioned to you before this podcast. I was very surprised. I've been, we've been you and I have been looking forward to this podcast for over a month and I started to have such anxiety 20 minutes beforehand and I went, wow, wow, really, okay, we need let's go back and reread some more of the book. This is another layer that you're going through and I think that's important for people to hear that. And you talk about the importance of grieving the no contact and I I want people to understand that, because I think so many people don't understand. They think that this is heartless, that you have no emotions and you're cutting it off and it it's the exact opposite.

Speaker 1: 36:47

It couldn't be further from the truth.

Speaker 2: 36:49

It couldn't be. It couldn't be further. Now I would say that cancel. Culture is a very hateful space, and I think our society is disgustingly sick in that area. No one wants to go no contact with their parents. No child wants to be without community. Family is the most important social community we could possibly belong to. No contact is about abandonment, die and go to their graves and never see us or their grandchildren again, than to offer any variation of the next three sentences. I am sorry, mind you, these are only three word sentences, not hard. You were right or I was wrong. The ego is so out of control that they would rather lose the relationship and go to their grave than to do what it would take to repair. So, then, what that means is that the victim is responsible for all reconciliation and repair and the hard labor of what that looks like.

Speaker 2: 38:05

Can I tell you how many people have shown far more concern for my perpetrators and what they need to get better than what was done to me and what I may need to get better? And do you know why they do that? Because they know I'm reasonable and they count on my reason, my ability to be reasonable, to let go what happened. That is so profoundly twisted that it mind boggles me that hands down, people worry about what our perpetrator needs. I don't get that. I don't get that. And if it wasn't a parent I don't think that would be happening.

Speaker 2: 38:59

You know, I watched three children in court last year testify against their parents. Letitia Stout murdered her stepson and manipulated her daughter into believing that she was innocent, had the dead body in a van with the air conditioning on, locking the dogs in the back and carrying around his body in a suitcase. And this daughter almost got convicted. She had no clue. She was manipulated. And then you watch Lori Vallow's kids on the stand. And those are extreme cases. But they're all based in coercion and manipulation. So what it takes for someone not to care about my perpetrators is my perpetrator has to murder somebody, right?

Speaker 1: 39:50

Really it's such extremes Like our society has gone just so haywire.

Speaker 2: 39:56

So haywire. Now coercive control is abusive in five European countries and now also in Australia. Ok, and I don't know them by heart, but I think it's Ireland, spain, france, denmark and there's one more. Coercive control is abuse no one should have. She murdered my spirit. She sucked me of all my value, as did my father, physically harmed me, got into cults, told me I was his sexual partner in other lifetimes. I'm sorry, but I didn't deserve that. I didn't deserve that. So these things need to come out and shows like this make it real for people. This doesn't serve me, don't you think? I'd rather have a different story. I would give up the writing and all the things so that I wouldn't have some of the core wounds that I have around my lovability and my worthiness for my life.

Speaker 1: 41:03

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 41:04

So, as cycle breakers, it's our responsibility to share our truth and to come together as a community and to give each other the love that we were never given and the support that we were never given. My community online they're so incredible.

Speaker 1: 41:22

It's an incredible community of strong people and I'm so grateful that I found you and I found them and that we've all been working together, because it's been again. You think you're alone in this. You think it's just you Society makes it out to be. It is you later, and most of us do. It's much, much later in life generally that we're all learning this, and it's not any one-sided. You talk about secondary abuse being even more painful than the actual perpetrator, and I would love just to touch on that a little bit because that really hit me too.

Speaker 2: 41:58

Yeah, there's secondary abuse and post-secondary, post-separation abuse, right? So secondary abuse is when, like my mom in the first, after you know, she cut me off, then she didn't speak to me for six months, and then I get these random Christmas presents and one of them was a. She's a master packer, okay, her job had a lot to do with packing so everything would have, you know, look like a crime scene, got shipped somewhere, fragile, all the things not packed that way. It was a bronze. I don't know if you know what a bronze is, but they're small statues and they're solid. They weigh about 20 pounds but they're not very big and they sit on mantles. It's like a cowboy, you know, like you know with a. So they're all over where I grew up in, in ski resort areas. So they're all over where I grew up in ski resort areas.

Speaker 2: 42:49

Bronzes are very common, so it was a bronze broken at the base. So that means by intent, because they're very difficult to break of a mother swinging around a daughter. No gift receipt. And I was I, you know, I'm in perpetual confusion around my mother. So my boyfriend was like not knowing how to tell me like she did that on purpose, right? No gift receipt. So now I have to contact her. Do you see the game, mm-hmm? And someone there said, well, maybe it really did just break in the thing.

Speaker 2: 43:26

So that's secondary abuse, where now the abuse is so clear but this person doesn't want to believe it's abuse. So they go at you to think about your own abuse differently. When I was cut out of the trust, people were like, well, go, that's probably not what she's doing, maybe you just don't understand. And so I went to an attorney, not because I needed one, but because I needed to prove to these secondary people that parents will actually do the shit to their kids. Okay, so when we're not believed by people or we are encouraged to go repair with our abusers and feel sorry for our abusers with them, that's secondary abuse.

Speaker 2: 44:02

Post separation abuse is the gift. That's just to be cruel. So I took the gift and I threw it in the trash because she's so evil that I knew that if I sent it back she would say I broke it to hurt her and she would go march it around to anyone who would listen. So so many examples of that occur. But secondary abuse is when other people side somehow with your abusers and they kind of make you doubt yourself that you're really abused. That's secondary abuse. And they will come after your closest people and they'll say well, she's trying, no, no, no, no, she is manipulating you. And then you look crazy to those that you love the most. It's so challenging.

Speaker 1: 44:51

And then the smear campaigns, and that brings me into talking about the dirty work, bringing in other people, talking about the flying monkeys.

Speaker 1: 45:00

That's where your book saved my tail going into the holidays because it literally was a playbook I could. Every time I just kept turning the page I'm like, oh, there it is, there it is. And so, yeah, definitely share that, because I think that's where people, again you can get very tripped up. And there was one, you know, I had an incident and I was like, no, I know my truth, I need to stand that, I need to keep that boundary.

Speaker 2: 45:29

I've learned, even since I wrote that book, that not all flying monkeys are created equal. So, true, flying monkeys are the people that are sort of the middlemen between you and your family mostly, but they will also send really random ones, which I got recently which I shared before we talked, and my typical advice is to gray rock the monkey if you don't want to lose your attachment to them, which is a show coming up I have. Next is protecting those middlemen relationships, which is in that book. I just did an episode on it. I shared with you earlier that my mother had sent a monkey to my page after a very famous podcast I was on. It had gotten around to her, apparently, that I was on the show and so, instead of using someone from the small town that I was raised in, she reached out to someone who I haven't seen since I was three and I had a really hard time placing her name. But I'd made an advertisement of toxic family survival guide and it was a picture of all my books, and she came on and said that she was my mom's best friend and that she's known me and was in my life in junior high which is not true and that I turned my childhood story into a money-making scheme. No one has actually witnessed my abuse, so I decided that this was a monkey I was going to confront because they don't know what I know from the other scapegoat that had reached out to me three years ago. I've never done anything with that information, by the way, but now it was time, because I don't need another person coming to my place of work, to my Facebook page of almost 200,000 followers, to call me a liar. I'm her child still. So I decided to write her a tasteful, articulate letter that if she was there, where was she? When, made a nice long list, she deactivated her Facebook account. She didn't need to do that. She can block me, but the truth does land in that way. She lied.

Speaker 2: 47:45

I did a background check on her just to be sure that she didn't ever live where I grew up, because she didn't. She didn't have a registered address there, so she wasn't in my life in junior high, and the only reason I remember her is because it's my first memory of my mother punishing me. My mom was trashing this woman behind her back and making fun of her in front of a crowd of people. And I'm three, so I must I must've thought that was fun, funny. So I was trying to copy my mom, copying her, and my mom you know, don't you ever do that in front, you know that type of thing in front of her and I had that memory and I thought, well, I should probably just let her know that then. So my intent in her, and I think you can use a monkey every now and again it's been eight years that I've ever confronted one. But I know things they don't know, that I know and I think it's best that they know. I know it now Cause you know, maybe you just don't send abuse to my page.

Speaker 2: 48:44

Probably don't do that. If you don't want to be exposed, then maybe just don't do that. I'm not provoking you. I leave you completely alone. I'm in my own world. No one needs, you don't need to hear about me. Read my books and if you do ignore it, you cut me off. You don't want me in your life, I'm out of your life. Be happy, right, but? But the flying monkeys are a really interesting form of abuse, because it really just makes you feel outcasted and ostracized and it dives right into the scapegoating and the smear campaign and the whole intent is to fix things for your abuser.

Speaker 1: 49:18

Right, and so I have a question, because I did ask a few people New York coming on, and they were like OK, so what do we do about we've gone no contact? Now people that we've never had contact with right Suddenly are stalking our social media, watching everything that we do, and we've had a good chuckle over. I'm like, oh, you too, me too. I'm like I have family members that don't really give a rat's ass about me for years who suddenly need to stalk everything that.

Speaker 2: 49:44

I do. Let them you know that theory. Let them, yup, I love it. Let them, you know, part of no contact is freedom and liberation, and we will never have control because social media just allows so much access. One of my family members has cut me off because of that. They she had to, you know, probably too hard for her to not go in with the in-group, but she follows me. I'm like you're a fan, oh, totally. And go, go, go tell them all, go, go tell them what you think. You see, go tell them.

Speaker 2: 50:16

I've blocked as many of them as I can, but you can create new accounts. So let them, you know, if they start to get harmful to you, block them If they make a new account, because, see, you know, if they start to get harmful to you, block them If they make a new account, because, see, if they can't help themselves, they're like gnats anymore, I just start blocking them. But yeah, this woman, the only reason I even recognized her. I didn't recognize her name, but I went to look at her picture and I recognized her, this part of her nose.

Speaker 1: 50:44

Oh, how interesting.

Speaker 2: 50:45

And then I'm like, oh that lady, oh my gosh. Now I really I was only three, but I remember she was very funny and I and I liked, I liked her. There was something else about her that my mom was making fun of. That I don't want to say, but at that age I was only three and I really liked that too and my mom was very cruel to her about that. So it was her weight. So I liked how cozy and funny she was because my mom was tiny and evil.

Speaker 2: 51:15

So I remembered her for a loving reason, which is super sad, that this woman and I think maybe my mom had her so incensed that she was so programmed and without refuting evidence that maybe that woman might have thought she was really helping my mom, who she saw as the victim. And so I was not mean to her. I have compassion. I know how manipulative that woman can be. I think she thought she was doing something helpful. She was doing something helpful and I think the reason she deactivated her account was because it was written from a space of. I didn't attack her. So I think being someone you can like around those that you don't is a superpower and the only way to get there is to really go through and heal your wounds, because healing makes us and this is one of my favorite words in the whole world but it makes us articulate and that is a superpower Our emotions. If we just act them out like our families, they can be very childish and then we can act in ways that just fall into there.

Speaker 2: 52:29

I needed to respond to this monkey as Dr Sherry, as the woman that I am today, not the inner child who was so hurt and so upset and just so mind blown. This woman's educated to be a teacher. I'm like aren't you like supposed to love children Like I am? This woman's freaking child still Are you kidding me? And so I I chose to take a few days. I thanked her honestly for the inspiration she proved everything true that I've ever written about, that it's still alive eight years later and I am thankful for that because it does give my following. You know, they saw it happen to me. Right, it's the validation. It's the validation, it's real.

Speaker 1: 53:14

This is real.

Speaker 2: 53:15

Everything I talk about, I live.

Speaker 1: 53:17

Exactly. She had no idea what she was doing, but what she was doing was actually propelling you so much more forward in your writing and in your community. For them to see it firsthand.

Speaker 2: 53:28

Once I got through the shock. Yes, yes, once you got through the shock of it.

Speaker 1: 53:33

Well, you also share, as we've been going through this episode and sharing so much and it is a heavy episode and this has been done very intentionally and very authentically and very much coming from a place of love and compassion for ourselves and for anyone that we talk about, because, again, this goes back to being, as you talk about, the silent pandemic that's going on. Something that I really wanted to touch on is that you talk about it is possible to heal after cutting off your family and, if I may, there's a small passage and same book.

Speaker 1: 54:12

Adult survivors of a toxic family members. You write dr sherry writes with ties severed. You have the space to search for, discover and recover your true self. You have the space to learn to be whole, without shame and guilt. It is time to start giving the person you are today the encouragement you need and deserve for having come so far as an independent and resilient human being. So far as an independent and resilient human being despite the family that raised you and, as you can see, this was even on the day that I read this. It says everything is underlined and highlighted and it says tears and to this day. That is such an empowering statement that it touches me so much to remind me and I want to remind everyone that's listening of how resilient and how independent you've always been.

Speaker 1: 55:12

And now and you, didn't know it and now you can stand in that empowerment that you have in a different, aligned, healthy way.

Speaker 2: 55:22

Yes, yes, and I think that I learned because I tried low contact, I tried cordial contact, I tried it all and as long as there was any drip of that poison I couldn't heal because the wounding is just so, so much there that one little drip ignites all of it. And I'm so thankful and I honestly think I think my mom's relieved. I think she abused me to leave and I think that I came back from it so many times wanting her love and I think she knew somewhere in her it just made her more and more angry that I kept coming back with love. And I think she's relieved and I honestly think she loves playing the victim of my story. I think she has some sort of parade about it weekly.

Speaker 2: 56:21

Anyone who will ask she can say that I lie about her in all these books. I think I've given her a tremendous gift. She loves attention and I imagine that she is so psychologically immature that this is exactly what she uses it for. And I think she loves probably every minute of playing that Oscar-worthy winning performance of the victim. And I think that she is relieved because the authenticity of how much I wanted her to love me made her hate me.

Speaker 1: 56:53

That is so powerful. That is such a powerful statement and it takes a lot to get to that place, to be okay, to make that statement. Oh, yes, that's a lot of work in and of itself.

Speaker 1: 57:07

Wow, dr Sherry, we have, and folks I really you know. I just want to let you know that even before we started today, we already agreed that we were going to do at least one, if not two, other podcasts, because we have absolutely so much to talk about. We are literally only just just diving in. We have so much to share and want to help everyone heal, because we know that we're not in this alone. The statistics show that. But we also want you to know that it's safe to talk about these things, it's safe to take actions and it's safe to seek out like-minded survivors, because that's what we are we're survivors and we're thriving and we're learning to live an empowered life from within.

Speaker 2: 57:54

That is what we are doing, jennifer, thank you. Thank you for showing me what it's like to receive validation. I've never received, because I've always been the writer. I've never received what I've given because there's no one really in front of me writing on the no contact. So there's people alongside of me now that have jumped into this niche, but to see how something that little old me wrote affected you in this way and many others, it's just such a gift for me and it's so inspiring and it's kind of like a corrective experience that I get the validation back from watching you get it. So thank you so much and thank you for we'll do a little Dr Sherry series. It's going to be great and I'm so happy to do it.

Speaker 1: 58:41

Thank you. I'm so excited too, and thank you so much. So, as we close out the show today, is there one last piece of inspiration that you would like to leave with the community?

Speaker 2: 58:53

One of the lines in my TED Talk that I love is that children do not cause bad parents Emotionally abusive and manipulative people become emotionally abusive and manipulative parents. They were abusers before we ever showed up, so I don't want any more children owning that. Their natural reactions that were negative to abuse make them bad and cause their parents to be that way. It's not true. Your abuse is real. It's happened. It's bad enough to be labeled as abuse.

Speaker 1: 59:31

Thank you for that. That's so powerful. Thank you and Dr Sherry. For those that want to reach out and contact you, where is the best place so that everyone can get your book and reach out and continue a conversation with you?

Speaker 2: 59:45

Yeah, so drsherrycampbellcom is my website. All my books are there. I have almost 200,000 followers on Facebook and that's under Sherry Campbell PhD. I want to transfer that over to Dr Sherry, but I'm struggling to do that with Facebook. And then I'm drsherry on Insta and TikTok which TikTok I just started, and I have a podcast, and all of that really is available on my website. So drsherrycampbellcom.

Speaker 1: 1:00:12

Wonderful and, as always, all of Dr Sherry's information will be over in the show notes on jenniferpilatescom, so we'll have links to her and her book so that you too can begin your empowering, healing journey. Thank you again, dr Sherry, for being here. This has been more than I can tell you, thank you, thank you, thank you Makes me cry again. I love you so much.

Speaker 1: 1:00:34

Love you too, thank you and, as we say everyone, until next time, may you live an empowered life from within. Yay, yay, it helps me to connect with you and gives me insight into who you are and what you're enjoying about the show. For today's show notes and discount codes from today's sponsors head over to JenniferPilatescom Until next time, may you live an empowered life from within.