Healing Your Inner Child: Transforming Relationships and Embracing Empowerment with Dr. Sherry Campbell

Ready to transform your relationships and embark on a journey of deep self-awareness? Join us as we welcome back Dr. Sherry Campbell, a licensed clinical psychologist and family estrangement expert, to Empowered Within. This episode promises to enlighten you on the profound impact of healing your inner child for creating healthier romantic relationships. Dr. Sherry shares transformative insights on breaking free from toxic patterns and discovering your true self through tools like personality tests, astrological charts, and human design analysis.

Ever wondered about the difference between "relentless hope" and "rebellious hope"? We dive into this crucial distinction, shedding light on how adult survivors of emotionally abusive parents can escape cycles of abuse and make healthier life choices. We also discuss why taking a year off from dating can be a powerful step towards healing and personal growth. Through heartfelt anecdotes and practical advice, Dr. Sherry and I guide you on how to foster self-love and build a foundation for more fulfilling relationships.

Embrace your feminine energy and understand the dynamics of empowerment in relationships. Reflecting on personal experiences and past relationships, we uncover how mutual respect and emotional security are vital for personal and relational growth. Discover the importance of individual empowerment, maintaining personal magic, and navigating gender dynamics with balance and respect. We invite you to a collective journey filled with gratitude, authenticity, and a sense of belonging, aiming to inspire you to live an empowered life from within.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Healing Your Inner Child for Relationships
• 15:17 Healing Through Rebellious Hope
• 26:26 Navigating Relationships With Empowerment
• 39:54 Embracing Feminine Energy in Relationships
• 50:49 Awakening Feminine Empowerment and Love
• 1:02:09 Embracing Self-Discovery and Authenticity

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:39

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. Episode of Empowered Within. Hi there and welcome to the show. I am so honored once again to welcome back our guest, 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 is a nationally recognized expert on family estrangement, a best-selling author, tedx speaker, a top 1% podcast, host of her show Shareppy Sessions Cutting Toxic Family Ties. She's a well-known social media influencer and a regularly featured media expert and we are honored in our series that we've been doing here Share-A-Pie Sessions. We have chatted about how to survive toxic family members, what steps we can take to heal, and here, in our third session, we are here to talk about taking that one step forward how to have healthy romantic relationships. Welcome to the show, dr.

Speaker 2: 2:04

Sherry, thank you for having me back. I love being on your show, jennifer, and this one's going to be a good one.

Speaker 1: 2:10

Oh it is. I am so excited, and so I figured we may take one little step backward in order to take this huge jump forward to help people along. If they haven't already listened to our other two episodes, they can grab those afterwards. So I wanted to jump into what you talk about in your book Adult Survivors of Emotionally Abusive Parents, your latest book. You talk about the three aspects of healing self the inner child, the present day self and our future self I like to say our higher self and you talk about to know love is to know yourself, and so we want to talk about how important that very step is before you can really jump into that romantic relationship.

Speaker 2: 2:51

I think that we can jump into romantic relationships to sort of get mirrored to us, where we don't know ourselves very well. I would say that my most toxic romantic relationships have probably been my greatest guides and teachers leading me to me Right. So I was not loved, I wasn't cherished, I was a commodity, I was a piece of property, and I did not learn to know myself because my way of surviving, like many survivors, was to please my perpetrating parents and not that I ever successfully pleased them, but it was better than going against them, because that only created my demise and the benefit cost to that was zero for me. So there's no way to get to know yourself if you grow up having to please for survival. So there's no way to get to know yourself if you grow up having to please for survival.

Speaker 2: 3:45

You grow up trying to be the version or image of what you think someone outside of you wants you to be. That causes you to attract people who will not honor you, and you will be running around playing this game of who do I need to be in this moment? Who do I need to be today? Who do I need to be in this moment? Who do I need to be today. Who do I need to be this week? And that's sort of when we get to this place of just such intense heartbreak that we either get stuck there and we stop evolving and we just blame the people that we're dating, that we're selfishly using us. But we have to take accountability that we allow that and why. So everyone always in our culture says, including me love yourself, and I think that's appropriate for some part of someone's journey. Who's evolved Self-care techniques I totally believe in, I recommend them, but those things have never led for me to self-love.

Speaker 2: 4:42

I'm just doing loving things for another person I don't love, right. So I couldn't love myself until I knew myself. And knowing myself took and takes a lot of examination and I now am at a place where I know my wounding very, very well. And I think that's the biggest part of knowing yourself is what are your bad habits? What are your core wounds? How much do you operate from feeling abandoned or fearing being a burden or feeling like you're never going to be enough or no one's going to like you, so you're overcompensating.

Speaker 2: 5:20

You've got to get to know that person and I think that's our child self. I think the most emotional part of us is our child self and in my work and I put my personal work always in my books, because what's worked to heal me isn't out there, because I don't know another expert who tells their story in a professional manner in the way that I write my books. I'm sort of the pioneer that way. But I really had to do a deep dive and I get more comments on that part of my book as being life-saving than any other part. Because how can we know, how can we love someone that we don't know? If we don't value us, how can someone else? Why would someone else? We're not even requiring it. So you'd really do need to do a deep dive in getting to know yourself and you know what People are in their heads right now going. How do I do that?

Speaker 2: 6:20

Exactly Right, right, and that's how sad it is is, is that we don't even know how right right.

Speaker 2: 6:26

So I did a lot, a lot of things to do that and you know I took all the psychological personality tests. I could get my hands on Myers-Briggs Enneagram. I found my life path number. I did my astrological chart. I'm also a human design analyst so I read that chart. I read every book that I loved from every theorist I loved, and I found out who I was, why I was this way. Understanding why I was that way helped me to look to the directions of how I could change that.

Speaker 2: 7:03

I hated my inner child as much as my parents did, because that's what they taught me. I was ashamed and embarrassed of my insecurities and my overcompensating habits, and so I had to look at those as superpowers and guides or signposts, talismans, to get me to the next place of what I wanted to feel. And I developed this theory of your child self, your present day self and your future self, and they all need to come together and have some conference calls, team meetings, so that you can nurture your emotional self the way it never was. So that is, at the present day you're not living in self-hate and self-abuse. And then you have an idea from the future self who do you want to be. How creative is that? And we can be whoever we want, and so that tripart theory that I developed has been the most powerful healing tool for me personally as a survivor.

Speaker 1: 8:09

I would agree with you. I think it's so important when you can go back and connect with your inner child and understand what you missed out on. You know that love. You have to learn how to reparent yourself. You have to be your mother, be your father of what you didn't have for whatever reason.

Speaker 2: 8:29

Be the child who was rightfully angry, rightfully abandoned, rightfully pissed off, rightfully run over, rightfully abandoned. Those are your rights. That is what happened to you. Those are your rights. That is what happened to you.

Speaker 2: 8:42

We don't get to rob people of their core wounding experiences. You know it's, yes, it's about reparenting, but it's also about accepting that you are emotionally abused, because all abuse is emotional, all of it. When my dad punched me in the face, that made me sad, far longer past the time my injuries healed. When he called me a fucking prick, that hurts my feelings today, far past due the time that he said those words. If you are molested, I promise you you're hurting today, far past due the time that your last physical act of being molested happened. All abuse hurts us and I gave my inner child her world back and I let her feel it and I let her own it and then you can go in and reparent. But I didn't want to reparent a pleasing child who still was not allowed to own and live in the rightful feelings that she deserved to have as a natural consequence to her abuse.

Speaker 1: 9:50

Right, no, it's so well stated, it's so important to just get back and it's such a powerful healing process when you work with your inner child and when you allow yourself to feel those emotions, your whole world changes. It's you, literally, are that Phoenix that is coming up and rising again yet, as that little child which is so important, as you say, to integrate with who you are today and your future self, where you'd like to be headed.

Speaker 2: 10:21

And the only the one thing I would say that I learned the most from going through that in my journal is sort of beautifully manifested as something I should do was the only part of me that has never lied to me was the child self. She was the most honest of every aspect of me, and it was her honesty and sensitivity that got her scapegoated in the first place. So she's the real hero, Little Sherry, as I call her in my book. She's the real hero. She pestered me and destroyed my life until I listened to her and I woke up to her. I didn't wake her up.

Speaker 1: 11:02

Here we go. Tears are coming, yeah, I mean, but I feel that so deep in my core when you say that. I truly feel that so deep.

Speaker 2: 11:13

Yeah, and I don't think it's. I haven't seen anyone else sort of have that experience, or at least write about it or talk about it. But I admire her more than anybody else, far more powerful than even my future self, because I'm creating my future self out of the child self, right. So she just wouldn't stop until I listened. And that is what children do. They don't stop until they're heard. And if you don't hear them, they will estrange themselves from you. And then we become estranged from within. Until we listen to the person that we left to protect, to the aspect of self that we left that family, those parents, to protect. We still have to do the work. Leaving and estranging is only the very first step of your healing journey. You really cannot heal if you have very sadistic parents, until you estrange. But what they've done to you is still yours, it's your work, it's your inner child, it's still your responsibility. Our perpetrators aren't going to come in and fix it.

Speaker 1: 13:51

Certainly not. We know they just pop back up to try to continue to trigger it Absolutely, and we've both seen that. So you're saying there's hope. You're saying that there's hope through all this because I know, like you, like me, you know we can look back. I can remember saying I could walk into a room, close my eyes, open my eyes and pick out the Robert Downey Jr in the room.

Speaker 1: 14:18

You know the guy who's going to be cheating on you, who's doing he's got some sort of addiction, blah, blah, blah. I would look at him, be like he's mine and that's, that's what I'm going to have now. I can't count how many of those. But what's so wonderful is, once you get on the other side and you're like, oh my gosh, because what are they? You know who was the common denominator in all of these learning? You know we'll call them crazy relationships because we were just repeating what we knew. So once we get to that point of aha, of wow, okay, I'm healing, I'm working with my inner child, my future self, my present self, what do you think are those next steps when one feels actually ready to?

Speaker 2: 15:03

So I would say that no matter who we end up dating, they will trigger us. They will. But I want to go back a minute to hope, Because when you're in, I talk about this. In Adult Survivors of Emotionally Abusive Parents, the book we're talking about today, there's two kinds of hope and I break those apart. In this book there's relentless hope, which keeps us stuck to perpetrators who fluctuate us between shock and hope. To keep us stuck, the shock at their abuse and the audacity that they so overtly show to want to hurt us, audacity that they so overtly show to want to hurt us intentionally. They follow that up with some love bombing and it gives us hope. And we're like in a pinball machine, fluctuating between shock and hope, making us far too confused to know where reality is, let alone to know what to do or how to handle that for decades right. So we learn in that dynamic relentless hope, that hope that our perpetrator will finally wake up, see what they've done, own it and change. And that is the type of hope that becomes rope, Okay, Metaphorically. Okay, Metaphorically, hope is dope. So we don't want to get high or hung in relationships where we have a relentless hope in someone who will never change. So we tend to leave those relationships over time, but we still want them back when they're gone, because we're totally stuck in the relentless hope, because the hope that would come after the shock could feign itself as ownership or insight, and it wasn't okay. The kind of hope we need to have is called rebellious hope. We want to have a rebellious hope in ourselves, to be discerning and to make good decisions.

Speaker 2: 17:09

So your first step that you asked me to take is I would take a full year off of all dating. It takes nine months of gestation to birth a baby and in human beings, the first three months you have a fetus. We are the only animal who does not walk on the day of birth. So that's a year. I think you should take a full year of healing. What is one year going to make in the dent of your life? Do you want to continue to be abandoned and cheated on and not honored in one relationship after another? But you're not alone, so therefore that's better. How is that better? You lose your self-worth more and more and more over time Each time that you shame yourself by getting into these dynamics. That one year, the first three months, are likely going to be excruciating Because all of your core wounds.

Speaker 2: 18:17

If I'm not good enough, I hate being alone. I'm a loser. If I'm alone, there's something wrong with me. I'm never going to find someone. I'm not good enough. You know all of that stuff. You got to go down into that space with you and read about it. Why do I feel not good enough? Find a book on that.

Speaker 2: 18:40

Being single, learn how to be single. I found a woman. I can't remember what her thing is, but she's like, promotes herself as the single woman. I don't remember the names of her right offhand, but I read every single book of hers. I had to learn to be single. Also, I learned that you should never be alone.

Speaker 2: 19:03

I had nine marriages between two parents, Okay, so I learned that too. So I did. I took a whole year off of dating, and I've done this now three times over my lifetime, and you will find someone new, I promise. But each time I decided to take a year off, each relationship got a little bit healthier, Okay, but I was still attracting the same crap. And so those three years have been the most magical, manifesting years I've ever had, but the first three months, because I'm very sensitive to feeling abandoned because of my childhood, I shatter. In the first three months it's like I lose all kinds of weight. I can't eat, I can't sleep, I can't function, Um drive places, not even remember the drive like just horrible for me because it doesn't just bring up the loss of that man, it brings up the loss of myself. Why am I not lovable? How come people can't love me? It's got to be me. What's wrong with me. So I had to really look and peel through all of those things. And then you know, I would say three to six months kind of functioning again. It's not that bad. I'm making it to the end of every day. I'm okay, I'm going out with friends more you know.

Speaker 2: 20:25

And then the next six months, there were times I didn't even want to be in a relationship. I had learned to be so happy on my own that I felt like having a man in my life would destroy what I'd built. And getting to that place is when I would be healthy enough to think why don't I know my value and I don't have any adults to look to to figure that one out. So I would find books. So in my very first book that self-published I talked about, I had paper parents.

Speaker 2: 21:01

If I ever needed just kind of calm, sound, rational advice I didn't really have parents I could go to that I would ever want their advice. You know, four on my mom and five on my dad in terms of marriages don't really want their advice. So, and not never did I see a happy one, Right, Um, and then I was a stepchild at the consequences of these unhappy people's, had other abusers in my life, Um, so I would go find and learn skills. You know, having a personality as a skillset If you want to learn to be composed, practice composure. You know I made a whole list of words on a mirror of what I thought a healthy adult was, and I did it with a dry erase marker and I wrote it a week and I practiced putting that into every aspect of the way that I breathed, I walked, I talked, I ate, I thought, and you do that enough and those things become a part of who you are. I didn't have parents to model in that way, so I had to do it a different way.

Speaker 2: 22:13

And that's your first step Find you first Love you first. Enter the next relationship. It'll make it very clear to you where your holes are right. So if that relationship ends, look at those holes, rebuild, and you'll find someone I've been with my partner for. He and I've been together for eight years. We're raising kids in two different counties, so we're not going to move because kids come first. He's had a couple of bad relationships and we have our issues and our triggers and we openly discuss those. I can trust him and he doesn't use my pain against me. It's really a beautiful thing. I earned that because I became a version of me that would attract something like that. It's all on you. It is not about your show empowered within. It is all on you to empower yourself to become the version of you that you want to be. No one else has a role in that kind of recovery but you.

Speaker 1: 23:25

It's so powerful and I love how you share so deeply on the importance of just taking time to be with you and you say a year, but maybe somebody might take two or three years because, like you say, they're suddenly so enjoying themselves. They're like I don't want someone in my space, I'm all that and a bag of chips. You know, I don't need someone in and you really really can do that deep healing work to recognize that only the highest of vibrational value can show up at your door for you to actually open it.

Speaker 2: 23:58

That's right, and I think that when you start living out what your core values are, which is, you should define what those things are. We all have our own idea of morality and we have our own idea of what we value. You need to figure out what are your core values and operate from that, because that would be your authentic self. Make sure someone is in alignment with those you know. When you have abandonment syndrome, you don't care who the person is, just as long as you're not alone. You know it's like you'll pick a number. You don't care. You know and you've got to start to care, because if you don't value you, why would someone else and it's not their job to come into your life and teach you your value? Because if you don't know it, we will discard the ones that are nice because they're not aligning with the terror and abuse and mirroring us that we're not lovable because we haven't done that work. So it all starts with you. When you start to heal, you start changing your vibe, everything about you shifts and you start to pull in people that are more in alignment with that.

Speaker 2: 25:16

So many of us have been raised and indoctrinated to believe that in all these Disney movies that she's rescued by him. She rescues him. Cinderella wanted a nice pair of shoes, a dress, and a day off he was looking for her. She didn't even know she was dancing with the prince, she had no idea she bails. And what do you do for the rest of the movie? Right? He's trying to find her, spent his life looking for her, beauty and the Beast. She saves him, pulls him out of his animalistic, immature narcissism and introduces him to a deeper, more love-filled life. So we could go on and on in every movie, but he's looking for her Entangled. Who saves who? Who transforms who? Right?

Speaker 2: 26:26

So I love men. I'm not here emasculating them. I'm here to empower women, though that you bring heaven to earth. How much more powerful can that be Our men? They bring us a grounded security. Women want security. There's nothing wrong with that, and that doesn't mean fiscally. We want a strong man to help us keep our feet on the ground. My man is so strong that watching me shine is his greatest joy. It doesn't emasculate him, it doesn't make him less. He is so proud of the woman that he has.

Speaker 2: 27:02

And I have a very masculine boyfriend and I love love following, because I'm type A all freaking day, and I love being just a freaking bobblehead on where we're going to go for our day, where we're going to go for a hike. I don't even have to use a brain cell. I love that. But if I have an interview in LA, he goes with me. He loves watching me shine. He heard my TED Talks 7,000 times.

Speaker 2: 27:32

He loves watching me build me creatively, spiritually, intellectually, in my career. Doesn't make him feel like less of a man. It makes him feel like more of a man, right? And I found that because I built my way there and I've also had hard lessons in this relationship. So has he and we're building together from our core, wounding what we each have to look out for so we don't hurt the other person inadvertently, right? So I'm not unique. If I can do this, you can do this. But what I would tell men or women listening to this show? If you want change, change yourself Right. Because if you want hope, have hope in yourself, not love out there. Have it here first, then you will attract it. You won't even have to look for it.

Speaker 1: 28:33

Right, it'll just pop up. Yes, it'll just happen. So, for those that are out there, you know, when we look back and and maybe I don't know if you went through this, but I grew up with it's you should always stick it out. Yeah, you should always stick it out. Well, can I tell you that I I drowned myself over the years and sticking it out. Now it's almost too. I don't want to say it's to the other side, but now it's like if I even barely see a little red, like a little red, something up, I'm like peace out.

Speaker 2: 29:08

Yeah, and I think that that's a phase to go through too. What I always tell people is you will know when. Also, when something is meant to end, it's going to end, whether you want it to or not. So I try not to encourage either way, even in couples. I don't encourage either way. I don't encourage sticking it out. I don't encourage one red flag go.

Speaker 2: 29:34

I encourage you listening to your body and looking at the percentages of happiness to unhappiness over a duration of time. If you're 90% unhappy over the course of time and you're living on breadcrumbed hope, you got to get out and you know how. Also, you'll know You'll start losing friends. You'll start people won't want to talk to you because they're so tired of the same story, because at some point you just look like a victim and honestly, you're allowing yourself to be one, and I know I've been there. That's happened to me.

Speaker 2: 30:21

I then was in a relationship that had to be private because no one wanted to hear it anymore, and as I was watching people lose respect for me, I started protecting my secret instead of I was like 25, but instead of like wow, I must be losing respect for myself and I don't know it. Well, I never had self-respect. Wow, I must be losing respect for myself and I don't know it. Well, I never had self-respect. How would I know? So I think all those phases are important to go through through your growth.

Speaker 2: 30:46

But we have to keep in mind that all of us, including us, as healed as we are, are still imperfect, and we will also accidentally hurt our people unknowingly. Or maybe we won't. Maybe we're so attuned to other people's feelings that we don't. You know, I can't recall a time that my boyfriend has one or two times in eight years that he's hurt my feelings. Okay, he hasn't had near the trauma I've had. So we've had far more discussions about my feelings being hurt.

Speaker 2: 31:21

And I'm a girl right, I have more neurons in my brain, especially in my gray matter. I experienced more negative emotion than a man doesn't ever will, because that is my brain. But can we talk about it? Can it be civil? Can it be raw and can it be understood? Yes, or I wouldn't be here eight years later. He doesn't have near the trauma I do. He doesn't sometimes know when it's not nice or when it's hurtful, but he learns and he's more than willing to, and there is real change. So that ends up making us feel closer, not further, right. So you've got to get in and you've got to play with the magic. You've got to allow people to be human and and cipher through. Is this toxic or not? You might not know for a while, but time will tell you absolutely.

Speaker 1: 33:04

And do you think when you began dating, was it something that or you allowed to organically unfold as far as, maybe, what your triggers were or what they want, or did you actually have a conversation at an appropriate time of going? You know know, this is kind of what I've been through, and so this is you know, how do you, how do you manage that? How do you? You know work through that.

Speaker 2: 33:27

I learned the hard way in other relationships with men that when I told them my story of trauma too early on, it was just used against me as a weapon later. Just used against me as a weapon later. So this guy that I'm with now I met him the weekend after I cut ties with my mom and I didn't talk about it for the first year. He knew something had gone wrong but I said I am not, I don't know you, I don't know your family Like and nor was I even ready. I don't think I was in therapy. He knew and he was always just like I'm here if you ever want me to know, and that that was that was great for me. There's things. Even now.

Speaker 2: 34:15

I'm a very suspicious person. Unfortunately, or fortunately, because of how I was raised. I would say over eight years there's only been two times that I've really let him in and openly take a tour of my pain in my basement. I need to learn to do that more, and that's both of those times have been this year. So I he's like why don't I know these things about you? And I'm like, because they're mean old monsters in my basement, I don't like to go there.

Speaker 1: 34:46

I think that's super important, that you shared an incredible advice to of what you held close to your heart until you felt safe because I wouldn't.

Speaker 2: 34:56

I'm eight years in and he's still right.

Speaker 1: 35:00

It's very close to my heart.

Speaker 2: 35:01

It's my stuff.

Speaker 1: 35:03

I wouldn't have thought about that as someone using it to weaponize against you. But when you said that, I like had some flashbacks and I'm like, oh yeah, actually that has happened in the past, so I had a guy say oh, if people just don't do exactly what you want, you cut them off.

Speaker 2: 35:20

I'm sorry but it took me four and a half decades to do that. I don't I'm not canceling people everywhere and, by the way, I was cut off. I was the one who was cut off, but you know that was used against me and that was very painful. I would also say for both men and women. I knew nothing about men. I didn't know about their brains, I didn't know how different they were. I didn't realize that I was wanting men to respond to me like a girlfriend would. I had no idea and because there's no courses to help us understand men, I realized how much I was doing wrong Just being a girl.

Speaker 1: 36:04

Okay. So right there, what were the top three things that you think you were doing wrong? That can help us all Okay.

Speaker 2: 36:13

I would be the giver. Giving is masculine, receiving is feminine, receiving is feminine. I would give too many words and I would do it sort of from a place of like duh, because you hear, men, women, men are dumb. They're not dumb, but they do only use one side of their brain. And I understand why they do. They are built that way because that's how god made them, for their sole purpose on planet earth, which is to face fear every day and bring home the bacon. So if they had all of our gray matter and a bird flew by, they'd be like mid-kill, like did you see that when they die, okay so I don't text him first, I don't call him first.

Speaker 2: 37:01

In theory, maybe he would like that. We talked about this in the beginning. But for him to have the conversation I need he'd have to come all the way back from hunting, put down all his things and that file, pull out my file to give me the attention I want. So I I allow him to be in his full masculinity. I don't text him during the day he's working. I have so much respect for how hard he works. I don't bother him, I can wait. If I'm a mature woman, I can wait. I don't want. I was a grown girl. I was like, take care of me. I'd call the not this person, but other men the day. They'd be like, yeah, and I'm like, oh, guess you don't want to talk to me. Guess I'm bothering you. I projected all my shit all over them.

Speaker 2: 37:52

Really, he can't do two things at once because he's not built that way. It's not because he's dumb. So when you tell a man something and it's so clear to you and I would say that women hands down are almost always right Because we use both sides of our brain, but how we communicate it is almost always wrong we can be very self-righteous, like why don't you get it? Well, you need to tell him, give him bullet points, not all the words. We use 20,000 more words a day than a man. Let him go in his cave and don't do this. Just let him think about it, let him digest it, so you're at the same level. Then you can have a really good conversation and he will see you and he will be able to see a better version of him. This is the magic of being a woman. But we have to drop our egos and the know-it-all attitude. When we're right, we have to allow him to marinate in longer than we need to, because it's harder for him. Right? If you give a man a lot of words, he's going to shut down. Right, it's too much, it's too much, he's going to shut down. So learning to edit, I think, has made me far more articulate, and I'm learning that to be articulate is a superpower because I get to do a lot less work and say a lot less and get a better result. Now I'm a woman, so do you know where I dump all my anger and my self-righteousness? And when I think I'm right, I go to my journal and I write it all out. Okay, I write it all out because I think women make men feel very, very unsafe in verbal talks, so they're not really designed for that, okay?

Speaker 2: 39:54

Another tip always go side by side with a man. If you're at dinner, sit next to him. Think about it. All men at war go out to the battlefield side by side. Who do they face the enemy? All football players, athletes. They run out onto the field side by side. Who do they face the opponent? Your boyfriend is a VP and he's going to go to a business meeting. Who's he going to sit across from His boss? So if you want to prepare your man to fight and argue, sit across from him. When you sit next to him, you can put your head on his shoulder. It's less threatening, it's in his DNA. So in my office I angle my chair and my men always sit away from the angle unconsciously, they don't even know Because they feel safer.

Speaker 2: 41:02

Talk therapy is really foreign to men. It's really not built for what men need. If I have a male that's very hard to open up. I'll say let's go out and walk, because if you get them driving moving, because right, if they're going out onto the field, they're moving, so movement. If you have sons, sit next to them, walk with them, throw a ball with them. Let there be something in the middle so that the man doesn't feel this spotlight on him where he's got to be feminine and say the right things and do it all the right way. Or she's going to be mad and she's going to say I'm not good enough and I'm failing her and why am I so dumb, right? So I had to learn what feminine energy really is. I never considered that giving was masculine, ever.

Speaker 1: 41:59

I've never heard that before. I mean it's in all my years. All my years, never heard it before.

Speaker 2: 42:05

Well, let's pull apart the penis and the vagina. Okay, okay, let's just go there. Let's go there. What does the vagina do? Does it give?

Speaker 1: 42:15

No, it's receiving.

Speaker 2: 42:17

Does the egg chase the sperm? No, isn't our organ. Internal Isn't our organ internal yes, Can you see it from the outside?

Speaker 1: 42:30

No.

Speaker 2: 42:31

Okay, we receive. Right, yes, we're the receiver. My eggs have never left the uterus and chased a man around. But women that are desperate, they chase the sperm. I'm like, why are we baking him cookies? It's date one, let him give, let him open the door, let him love you.

Speaker 2: 42:56

Do you know that they feel so masculine? And I can already hear women, because I hear it in here If I don't do anything, he's not going to do anything. Then he's not your man. Right, 100%? Okay, scott doesn't let me pay, scott doesn't let me pay, scott doesn't let me pay. Do you know what Sherry tried to do here? I'll get this one. Some men will let you do that. I don't think it's wrong, but it's not feminine on my part. So I learned about feminine energy and, my God, I was working so hard to be a dude so that I could have control, so that I could feel safe, so that I could have, I could have, I could have right. I couldn't wait. I didn't trust that if I waited, that it would actually happen. So I had to learn hard, hard, hard things like patience. My mind, in being patient, would start spinning an abandonment story, a fear story, a cheating story. It would be insane.

Speaker 2: 44:00

So to stop my pain. I would then become masculine and I'd initiate contact or I'd initiate something Right and I was attracting really all the wrong men because I was being the wrong woman. I love me. So I had to learn to sit in fear. I had to learn to be patient. I had to learn to trust that the right man was out there for me and that he would find me and he did Okay.

Speaker 2: 44:32

So I think there's three types of women. So if there is an island of feminine, of women, there is the hitchhiker at the shore who I was for years. There's a woman in the middle of you know, kind of that way. But there's a woman at the core. There's these women at the core and they're mysterious and they're magical and that's who men want.

Speaker 2: 44:56

Okay, so I'm hitchhiking for years and they pull up, I'd get in the boat, they'd get me past the waves, and then I they throw me the oars, start rowing. So I'd row and row and they'd be me past the waves and then I they'd throw me the oars, start rowing. So I'd row and row and they'd be like you're not rowing Right, You're not doing this Right, You're not that right. And then I finished fighting. You know I? You got in my boat, I didn't you. You were hitchhiking and I would wash up dead on the shore over and over and over again and I was constantly like when's the next boat coming? Like I tried to time when was the next boat? I don't want to be alone. I'm so scared to be alone, Right, and then that that didn't work and that wore me out and it wore me to my bone and it made me hate myself and I felt unlovable. I felt so easy to abandon and reject. And so then I just went into hiding, which I would call healing, and I would hear about these other women, the mystery women. Okay, these bitches are magical sorcerer manifesting beautiful women who are so happy and living in their own feminine lives. And living in their own feminine lives. They don't even know boats are going by, they don't care, and men will leave their boats and go on a major hunt to find these magical women and they will die healthy, late and happy. I love it. Yeah, I hitchhiked for years. It's all I knew. My value was so low. A man cannot save you. A woman cannot save a man either If he's not healthy, no matter how healthy you think you are. You cannot fix him. If he's not in his healthy masculine energy, you can't fix him. So I had to learn about men. And then I had to learn about women and I studied. I studied goddesses. I studied the Greek goddesses. I studied. I got a book called Pussy, a reclamation One of the best books I've ever read. Women who Run With Wolves Wow, that book knocked my socks off the Red Tent.

Speaker 2: 47:16

I love feminine round, soft, receiving, patient, articulate, smart, magical energy and I live it every day now and it is what makes my relationship work, because I stay feminine. When I'm masculine, I'm afraid, I'm insecure and I'm feeling afraid. I'm feeling I need control, and that's what masculinity manifests in women. Okay, A man doesn't want you to come in and control him and tell him what to do and be his boss. That's masculine North at his job, to tell you what to do or order you around, Unlike Harrison, but Kurt may be thinking, but I do believe that it's important to have know who you are.

Speaker 2: 48:09

If you're a woman, have you ever studied being one? Do you know what it is? Have you ever studied feminine energy? Have you ever read a book on this? Do you know what masculine energy is? Do you know how masculine you are every day. I love women. I wouldn't say I'm a feminist, because I think men are equally important in earth and for our lives and our kids. Not all women are in their feminine energy and not all men are healthy in their masculine energy. We've got a lot of masculine women. I was. I really prefer being feminine.

Speaker 1: 48:52

It's so much more lovely.

Speaker 2: 48:54

It's so much more easier.

Speaker 1: 48:55

It's just flowing, yes, you're just flowing.

Speaker 2: 48:59

Yes, when I get women insecure, like should I call? Should I call him? Like I don't know, did your eggs want out? Do they want to go chase the sperm? Like, wouldn't you feel better in the big picture if he really actually did reach out? It was his effort towards you, wouldn't that? Can't you wait for that? Or you're so scared that it won't happen, that you make it happen. But now you're the man. I mean, if you want, you want to do that, you can. I'm sure he'll answer, but then you're going to always be the leader Right, and then he's. He'll let you row the boat, he'll get a free ride. He works hard all day. Why not get a free ride? You know what I mean. So I would take those steps if you want healthier dynamics.

Speaker 1: 49:53

Those are brilliant. I love all of those. I want to ask you this because, well, you are the expert here Throughout and you've shared some, but this is, I think, going maybe one step deeper Throughout all of the experiences that you've navigated with your romantic relationships, with your romantic relationships, what really has been the most profound aspect that you've learned about yourself in the process.

Speaker 2: 50:58

I would say, really embracing, being very feminine has been the most joyous part of my life. Like future Sherry for me, is is like sorceress. Future Sherry for me is like sorceress, witchy. She's so magical and so wise. I love imagery, I love metaphors, right? So I have a healing room at home in my house, which I think I described on another show, but I think of things like in Pocahontas, the wise willow tree.

Speaker 2: 51:33

I love finding myself, I love discovering myself. It is such a didactic, beautiful but all internal process and I used to try to find men and now I'm constantly in pursuit of building me and finding new aspects of me. It's such a creative process and I really love that. That's been the most profound awakening of my life, that my healing journey is the greatest journey that there is, and discovering me and building me and rediscovering me and remembering me and stinging over my bones and doing all of that healing work is something I don't ever, ever want to stop because it keeps me alive. But I get to write myself back into existence through a journal or my books every day in such a creative process and I get to be this person that I love being and without shame.

Speaker 2: 52:37

Unless I'm really triggered do I feel shame anymore? And I don't want to be powerful because that insinuates to me power over something. I just want to feel empowered, and that is a verb for me, it's not a noun. I want to always be empowering myself and not over anyone else. Just for me, stretching the boundaries of what I think I can manifest. I love helping other people, I love having an impact. The only way I can do that is if I keep magic in my life, and my life was full of pain for so long and I love the magic. Now it's really a beautiful space to be.

Speaker 1: 53:26

Thank you for that. That was so amazing and just so authentic. And to remind people about magic, and I feel that there's so many of us like you and I that, as we get to different spots on our healing journey, you can see the magic that's around us and the magic that you're pulling in.

Speaker 2: 53:46

What I get called now and I've been being called this for years in my social media is an earth angel, and there's an actual song called Earth Angel that my boyfriend found and he always posts it on my birthday. But I think it's so magical to be a woman and so magical to embrace your feminine energy and then that supports and empowers men to be in their. And so magical to embrace your feminine energy and then that supports and empowers men to be in their healthiest masculine energy. And we're men and women, we want that vibe to be very attractive and to do that over time. You know, I think too.

Speaker 2: 54:23

Sometimes people get married and they just it becomes bartering and deal-making this is my role and then we're always making each other unhappy and I think it's really important to always live your individual life first and then share it with your partner. Share it. It's lovely to live without demand and without letdown and without high expectations of others. And not that we don't run into those traps, because you do have to partner with someone, right? But if you're individually really, really happy, that means that you are taking care of you for your person and they're taking care of themselves for you. That just seems like such a better deal, then you need to do this.

Speaker 2: 55:08

For me, for me to be, you need to speak my love language for me to feel loved. Well, what if that's not their love language, though? What if their love language is something different and for they're doing all of that, they're loving you in their language. Why doesn't that count? Like, I just don't like all of that. You have to be some type of way for me to be happy. No one's going to be able to do that for anybody no male, no female so work on your individual life. We all have bodies for a reason, like, if we're all supposed to be one, why would we separate out into all these different bodies? Like we just be a blob of some other type of thing, right? So we're supposed to have separation and individuation, and, in fact, eroticism. Keeping sex alive really has more to do with distance than closeness. Oh, do tell. There's a book called Mating in Captivity and I highly suggest you all read it. Oh, boy, okay.

Speaker 2: 56:10

When is a relationship the most spicy and sexy. When is that? The beginning, when you're getting to know someone. So why would we stop growing? Because we got married, you're married and so now you get to stop growing because what your person's going to do all of that for you? Or why not become the most magical wife or magical husband you can be individually, have alone time, have separation, so you still want to have sex. Text less during a day, so you're excited to talk to your person when they come home. You know little ways and she goes through all these ways. Uh, how it's a myth that the closer you are to somebody, the more you want to have sex with them.

Speaker 1: 56:58

It's totally a myth. Well, I mean, it goes back to all the programming we've talked so much in here. We just made like five other podcasts about what's gone on in our society and all that jazz, and where has masculinity gone? And femininity you know what you're saying is so important and it really just goes back to the foundation of our world as to how it once was, and it speaks to the collective honestly, and the spiritual war and the spiritual war that we're in right now. This speaks collectively as to where we're trying to go back to, or refresh or bring a new back into the feminine role, which is of the goddess and the gentleman showing up and being there with their swords and whatnot that's right, but we don't want women waving handkerchiefs from castles of come save me, right.

Speaker 2: 57:47

No, we want to be the woman in the center of the island that is so magical, so intelligent, so in her right, but not masculine. Today, some of the feminists seem like they have bigger penises than the men and that they want that and that they're considering this feminist. They're abusive to men and they're feminist. I don't understand that. I don't want that part because that's not what I was born with. But I want to know what my part is. I bring heaven to earth. I'm sorry, but I don't need to get into a competition of who can top that right. But I want to bring heaven to earth, not just through babies, but through magic, through impact, through intelligence, through being articulate, through being soft, receiving feminine, kind, generous, courteous, respectful, right, disciplined, hardworking. All of that can still be feminine because it can be your individual person. And I can still go to an airport with my boyfriend and I can use one brain cell and happily bobblehead along with him.

Speaker 1: 58:57

Isn't that the best?

Speaker 2: 58:58

It's the best. I'm so geographically challenged that my boyfriend's like babe, you are not going to LA on your own. I'm like I love you because Barbie can't end up in dangerous places.

Speaker 1: 59:13

Not a good idea. No.

Speaker 2: 59:15

So he takes care of me in those ways and I take care of him in my feminine ways. But I do love reading those books. I love intuition. I love that my brain is what it is, that I am more attuned to nuances in the environment than a man would be, because if he were, he would get distracted and killed. So I love that I get to raise a daughter, I love all the feminine energy and I just don't see it as weak. I see it as patient and I see it as articulate and wise, and I don't need to out-control, out-smart, out-do any dude for any reason. That doesn't make me feel more powerful, it doesn't, no? So those are some mistakes that I think are made. And then I think, you know, we lose ourselves and we keep trying to have control in these relationships because we really want to be loved, right? So it's learning to let go of control and switch out control, for allowing and allowing requires faith and patience and it doesn't usually happen in the timing that you'd like, right.

Speaker 1: 1:00:32

Yeah, so beautiful. This has been again amazing. Another mic drop of an episode. I can't thank you enough. Will you share with our community where they can best get in contact with you.

Speaker 2: 1:00:46

I would say my website, drsherrycampbellcom, links to my social media and my podcast. All that stuff is there. I'm very alive in social media. I'm very committed to it and it's very interactive. My particular following. They really love one another. They're friends outside of my following, which I love. Men and women alike are always welcome, and I love interviewing men too, because I get to hear their voice. And they've survived family abuse as well. So my podcast has a mix of all of that. So you know it's just a place to come, be loved and to fit in because you're not alone.

Speaker 1: 1:01:23

No, it's amazing. And that's how we connected and it's been such an incredible blessing since the fall, oh.

Speaker 2: 1:01:30

I adore you, I just adore you.

Speaker 1: 1:01:32

Thank you I love you so much. It's been a an incredible blessing since the fall. Oh, I adore you. I just adore you. Thank you, I love you so much. It's been a journey for us together. It has it's been wonderful, it really has. Well, as we close out the show today, is there one last snippet of advice or inspiration that you'd like to leave with us, if you're?

Speaker 2: 1:01:48

going to be inspired by anybody. Be inspired by you and your growth path. Find it inspiring instead of like harrowing. Find it inspiring. You know, great discomfort can lead us to the most magical places if you're willing to look at it and help yourself and learn. Just if you really want to love yourself, you have to figure out who you are. We don't really love people we don't know right. So know yourself, let that be your journey. That's been my journey. It's been just knowing me and I get to know me better every day and it's beautiful.

Speaker 1: 1:02:27

That's beautiful. Thank you, I love that so much. I love having you on the show. This has been so amazing. Thank you so much for bringing all the gems, your insights, allowing us to be here on your journey with you feeling safe to be so authentic and helping us to feel safe to know that none of us are alone and that we are truly all in this together.

Speaker 2: 1:02:49

You're welcome. Thank you for having me always. I just love you so much. Well, thank you Well.

Speaker 1: 1:02:54

hopefully we'll be back again at some point, but for now, these were our three amazing, amazing share-up-y sessions, and we are so grateful to have you. So, as we say, until next time, may you live an empowered life from within. May you live an empowered life from within.