In a society that often downplays or dismisses men's emotional struggles, Dave's willingness to share his story and engage in open dialogue is a powerful testament to the importance of breaking the silence.

In this episode, Dave shares how he navigated growing up with a narcissistic mother, married a narcissistic woman, found healing and reclaimed his life.

✅ All things toxic family

✅ The Value of No Contact when nothing else works

✅ Breaking destructive generational patterns of poor parenting

✅ Repeating patterns of abuse with romantic partners

✅ Starting Fresh

✅Healing childhood and marital wounding

✅ Establishing a strong sense of self through the setting of healthy boundaries

Dave, founder of @healing.after.a.narcissist on Instagram, is dedicated to raising awareness and providing education on narcissism and narcissistic abuse. Through his platform, he validates people's experiences and offers valuable tips on healing after encountering narcissistic individuals in all aspects of life. His mission is to empower others to navigate the aftermath of such toxic relationships and find healing and resilience.

Mentioned in the episode:

📌 [Book] The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté MD - https://bit.ly/3QMhCPY

📌 TEDx Talk Not All Parents Are Good by Dr. Sherrie Campbell - https://youtu.be/deyHwDkG7oc

📌 [Podcast] How to Effectively Co-Parent with a Narcissist on Let's Be Honest with Kristin Cavallari - https://bit.ly/3QNHZVP

Connect with Dave:

📌 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/healing.after.a.narcissist/

*****

NEW BOOK!!!

Adult Survivors of Emotionally Abusive Parents: How to Heal, Cultivate Emotional Resilience, and Build the Life and Love You Deserve - https://amzn.to/3UhURWI

*****

Books by Dr. Sherrie Campbell:

⚉ Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members: Tools to Maintain Boundaries, Deal with Criticism, and Heal from Shame After Ties Have Been Cut. - https://amzn.to/3L3sMuA

⚉ But It’s Your Family…: Cutting Ties with Toxic Family Members and Loving Yourself in the Aftermath - https://amzn.to/3tuNQEn

⚉ Your Pocket Therapist: Quick Hacks for Dealing with Toxic People While Empowering Yourself - https://amzn.to/3JBql1R

⚉ Success Equations: A Path to Living an Emotionally Wealthy Life - https://amzn.to/3uobd1u

⚉ Loving Yourself: The Mastery of Being Your Own Person - https://amzn.to/36mlXp5

Connect with Dr. Sherrie Campbell:

⚉ Website: https://drsherriecampbell.com/

⚉ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SherrieCampbellPhD

Check out the Sherapy Master Class: The Toxic Family

Join me in a powerful conversation with Laura K. Connell as she talks about her experiences growing up in a dysfunctional and emotionally abusive family, where she was subjected to a narcissistic mother and an emotionally neglectful father. And how she battled with alcoholism while addressing the deep-seated trauma she endured.

✅ How and why survivors turn to various addictions (alcohol, substance abuse, eating disorders, etc) to cope

✅ Feelings of relief from our emotional pain addictions initially bring.

✅ Ah-ha moments that awaken the need to change

✅ What triggers help us turn our lives around

✅ Both the growth and the grieving of toxic family dynamics are round/whole rather than linear

✅ It’s Not Your Fault -realizing your parents are character-disordered

✅ Going No Contact

✅ Stay the course, life gets better after definitive boundaries have been set on our toxic family members

Laura K. Connell is a trauma-informed author and coach who helps professional women discover the subconscious reasons they self-sabotage and how to finally have the fulfilling life they deserve and desire. She writes about the impact of dysfunctional family dynamics on her website, laurakconnell.com.

Her guest articles have reached millions through personal development websites Life Hack, Pick the Brain, Dumb Little Man, Highly Sensitive Refuge, the anthology Chicken Soup for the Soul, and national newspapers The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star.

She has helped thousands heal from dysfunctional family trauma through her popular online retreats. Her book It's Not Your Fault: The Subconscious Reasons We Self-Sabotage and How to Stop is available now at the Simon & Schuster website.

Mentioned in the episode:

📌 (Book) It's Not Your Fault: The Subconscious Reasons We Self-Sabotage and How to Stop - https://amzn.to/48Xpi8A

📌 TEDx Talk Not All Parents Are Good by Dr. Sherrie Campbell - https://youtu.be/deyHwDkG7oc

📌 (Book) Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life -

📌 (Book) A Million Little Pieces -

Connect with Laura K. Connell:

📌 Website: https://www.laurakconnell.com/

📌 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/soulminimalist

📌 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurak.connell/

*****

NEW BOOK!!!

Adult Survivors of Emotionally Abusive Parents: How to Heal, Cultivate Emotional Resilience, and Build the Life and Love You Deserve - https://amzn.to/3UhURWI

*****

Books by Dr. Sherrie Campbell:

⚉ Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members: Tools to Maintain Boundaries, Deal with Criticism, and Heal from Shame After Ties Have Been Cut. - https://amzn.to/3L3sMuA

⚉ But It’s Your Family…: Cutting Ties with Toxic Family Members and Loving Yourself in the Aftermath - https://amzn.to/3tuNQEn

⚉ Your Pocket Therapist: Quick Hacks for Dealing with Toxic People While Empowering Yourself -

While the holiday season is often associated with warmth, love, and familial bonds, for survivors of toxic family systems this is not the case. Toxic family members gift wrap holiday nightmares packaged as love. They ruin holidays for sport.

In this episode, you'll learn

✅ The time period between Halloween and Valentine's Day is the time when survivors of family abuse are subject to the most intense “hoovering” from their family.

✅ The holidays are a time we all want to feel love, safety and warmth, and not the nightmare of our psychologically abusive family members and all their attention-seeking antics.

✅ Holiday hoovering puts a fearful twist and gut-wrenching anxiety into our holiday season.

✅ Their hoovering is not occurring because they genuinely miss us. Nothing our family does is motivated by love. They are motivated by their own needs and feelings.

✅ Our family views the holidays as the “season of second chances.”

✅ Our abusers need us, transactionally, to uphold the image of “family” they desire to project into the world.

✅ Our family intentionally preys on our guilt during the holidays because guilt (and our natural sentimentality) are the easiest emotions for them to manipulate.

✅ Tactics of Holiday Hoovering

✅ How To’s and Boundaries to Set

Books by Dr. Sherrie Campbell:

⚉ Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members: Tools to Maintain Boundaries, Deal with Criticism, and Heal from Shame After Ties Have Been Cut. - https://amzn.to/3L3sMuA

⚉ But It’s Your Family…: Cutting Ties with Toxic Family Members and Loving Yourself in the Aftermath - https://amzn.to/3tuNQEn

⚉ Your Pocket Therapist: Quick Hacks for Dealing with Toxic People While Empowering Yourself - https://amzn.to/3JBql1R

⚉ Success Equations: A Path to Living an Emotionally Wealthy Life - https://amzn.to/3uobd1u

⚉ Loving Yourself: The Mastery of Being Your Own Person - https://amzn.to/36mlXp5

Connect with Dr. Sherrie Campbell:

⚉ Website: https://drsherriecampbell.com/

⚉ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SherrieCampbellPhD

Check out the Sherapy Master Class: The Toxic Family Sherapy Course designed to help people master toxic family members and turn their life around to one of freedom, peace, and empowerment. Click here https://bit.ly/SherapyMasterclass

Get early access to news, insights, and tips straight from your inbox. Subscribe to Dr. Sherrie’s email list, go to https://drsherriecampbell.com/

Join Dr. Sherrie in a candid conversation with Kimberly Shannon Murphy as Kimberly tells her story of survival from sexual abuse perpetrated by her family, as told in her book, Glimmer.

In this episode, you'll discover:

✅ The pain of being an unprotected child.

✅ Why family members tend to take the side of the perpetrator.

✅ Why self harm is so often involved as a way to cope in victims of sexual abuse.

✅ How to find your voice and set boundaries on all family members who choose to stay in the denial.

✅ How to liberate yourself and reclaim your voice and your body.

✅ The power of journal writing as an avenue to finding your voice.

✅ Coping with the multiple layers of betrayal trauma and feelings of abandonment.

✅ Breaking the cycle of generational trauma.

✅ Family members who don’t heal simply learn to abuse in different ways.

✅ Finding love and learning to thrive.

Kimberly Shannon Murphy is an Award-Winning Stuntwoman and the Author of Glimmer, A Story of Survival, Hope, and Healing.

Kimberly is Hollywood's Go-To Stuntwoman for Premier Silver Screen actresses. Her resume is loaded with top box office films such as Top Gun Maverick, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, Knight and Day, The Lone Ranger, Jack Reacher, Hunger Games, Savages, Men in Black 3, and the list goes on.

Mentioned in the episode:

📌 (Book) Glimmer, A Story of Survival, Hope, and Healing by Kimberly Shannon Murphy - https://amzn.to/3r431Ge

Connect with Kimberly Shannon Murphy:

📌 Instagram: @kimberlyshannonmurphystunts

📌 Facebook: @TheGlimmerSpace

📌 X (Twitter): @KSMstuntwoman

📌 Youtube: @StuntwomanKimberlyShannon

Connect with Dr. Sherrie Campbell:

📌 Website: https://drsherriecampbell.com/

📌 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SherrieCampbellPhD

Books by Dr. Sherrie Campbell:

📌 Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members: Tools to Maintain Boundaries, Deal with Criticism, and Heal from Shame After Ties Have Been Cut. - https://amzn.to/3L3sMuA

📌 But It’s Your Family…: Cutting Ties with Toxic Family Members and Loving Yourself in the Aftermath - https://amzn.to/3tuNQEn

📌 Your Pocket Therapist: Quick Hacks for Dealing with Toxic People While Empowering Yourself - https://amzn.to/3JBql1R

📌 Success Equations: A Path to Living an Emotionally Wealthy Life - https://amzn.to/3uobd1u

📌 Loving Yourself: The Mastery of Being Your Own Person - https://amzn.to/36mlXp5

Check out the Sherapy Master Class: The Toxic Family Sherapy Course designed to help...

Understanding the differences between the silent treatment and no contact can help you navigate your relationships with toxic family members.

Let's explore these topics:

✅ It is natural to have many moments of questioning ourselves around no contact because we never want to be like our toxic family members.

✅ The difference between the silent treatment and no contact comes down to intent.

✅ Signposts to when silence is being deployed for abuse.

✅ When we go silent we do so to stay silent. We have no want, need, or desire to hurt our toxic family members by toying with them in any way.

✅ How do we know we’re not the bad guy (toxic person) our family accuses us of being?

✅ What is going on when our family members call us the toxic ones for going no contact?

✅ How To’s and Boundaries to Set

—

Get my latest book! — Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members: Tools to Maintain Boundaries, Deal with Criticism, and Heal from Shame After Ties Have Been Cut. Get it here: https://amzn.to/3L3sMuA

—

Connect with Dr. Sherrie Campbell:

• Website: https://drsherriecampbell.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SherrieCampbellPhD

Books by Dr. Sherrie Campbell:

• But It’s Your Family…: Cutting Ties with Toxic Family Members and Loving Yourself in the Aftermath - https://amzn.to/3tuNQEn
• Your Pocket Therapist: Quick Hacks for Dealing with Toxic People While Empowering Yourself - https://amzn.to/3JBql1R
• Success Equations: A Path to Living an Emotionally Wealthy Life - https://amzn.to/3uobd1u
• Loving Yourself: The Mastery of Being Your Own Person - https://amzn.to/36mlXp5

Check out the Sherapy Master Class: The Toxic Family Sherapy Course designed to help people master toxic family members and turn their life around to one of freedom, peace, and empowerment. Click here https://bit.ly/SherapyMasterclass

Get early access to news, insights, and tips straight from your inbox. Subscribe to Dr. Sherrie’s email list, go to https://drsherriecampbell.com/

Our family members are famous for their pristine ability to play the victim.

Playing the victim can manifest in a variety of contexts.

In this episode, we are going to unpack:

✅ Our psychologically abusive family members get thrills off any opportunity they can create that affords them the opportunity to take the stage to put on their Oscar-worthy winning performance of the victim.

✅ They use this victim role to gain pity or sympathy, and to evoke compassion as a path to getting their way.

✅ They play this role publicly and privately to evade accountability by smoke-screening their abuse of you.

✅ The basic story your toxic family members tell of themselves is that they are the“good,” “caring,” “moral, “selfless,” person in the relationship, and you are the “bad,” “abusive,” “cruel,” “immoral,” “selfish,” “toxic,” one.

✅ Conversations with your family members that play the victim can never be about your feelings. It must be all about them.

✅ Family members who play the victim grossly embellish the untruths they tell about your “monstrous” behavior to create a more powerful narrative about how profoundly you have victimized them.

✅ Goals and payoffs of playing the victim

✅ Impacts of this emotional game on the targets

✅ How to’s and boundaries to set

Get my newly released book! — Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members: Tools to Maintain Boundaries, Deal with Criticism, and Heal from Shame After Ties Have Been Cut. Get it here: https://amzn.to/3L3sMuA

Connect with Dr. Sherrie Campbell:

• Website: https://drsherriecampbell.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SherrieCampbellPhD

Books by Dr. Sherrie Campbell:

• But It’s Your Family…: Cutting Ties with Toxic Family Members and Loving Yourself in the Aftermath - https://amzn.to/3tuNQEn
• Your Pocket Therapist: Quick Hacks for Dealing with Toxic People While Empowering Yourself - https://amzn.to/3JBql1R
• Success Equations: A Path to Living an Emotionally Wealthy Life - https://amzn.to/3uobd1u
• Loving Yourself: The Mastery of Being Your Own Person - https://amzn.to/36mlXp5

Check out the Sherapy Master Class: The Toxic Family Sherapy Course designed to help people master toxic family members and turn their life around to one of freedom, peace, and empowerment. Click here https://bit.ly/SherapyMasterclass

Get early access to news, insights, and tips straight from your inbox. Subscribe to Dr. Sherrie’s email list, go to https://drsherriecampbell.com/

In this bonus episode, we will explore one of the most deadly emotional games that our toxic family members play — the emotional game of gossip.

Key Takeaways:

✅ Not all gossip is created equally.

✅ Our emotionally abusive family members use gossip to avoid looking at their part in any negative interaction.

✅ Signs you’re being gossiped about.

✅ In psychologically abusive families, gossip is used primarily to expend negative energy where talking poorly about you or others brings your family members feelings of power and satisfaction.

✅ Psychologically Abusive family members who gossip about you feel totally empowered when trashing you.

✅ Psychologically Abusive family members love creating negative triangles between you and others.

Get my newly released book! — Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members: Tools to Maintain Boundaries, Deal with Criticism, and Heal from Shame After Ties Have Been Cut. Get it here: https://amzn.to/3L3sMuA

Connect with Dr. Sherrie Campbell:

• Website: https://drsherriecampbell.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SherrieCampbellPhD

Books by Dr. Sherrie Campbell:

• But It’s Your Family…: Cutting Ties with Toxic Family Members and Loving Yourself in the Aftermath - https://amzn.to/3tuNQEn
• Your Pocket Therapist: Quick Hacks for Dealing with Toxic People While Empowering Yourself - https://amzn.to/3JBql1R
• Success Equations: A Path to Living an Emotionally Wealthy Life - https://amzn.to/3uobd1u
• Loving Yourself: The Mastery of Being Your Own Person - https://amzn.to/36mlXp5

Check out the Sherapy Master Class: The Toxic Family Sherapy Course designed to help people master toxic family members and turn their life around to one of freedom, peace, and empowerment. Click here https://bit.ly/SherapyMasterclass

Get early access to news, insights, and tips straight from your inbox. Subscribe to Dr. Sherrie’s email list, go to https://drsherriecampbell.com/

In this bonus episode, we are discussing a controversial topic - toxic grandparents.

✅ Toxicity in a family doesn’t leave anyone out regardless of a person's title or role in your life, and this can include grandparents.

✅ As a culture, we place importance on having an extended family, with grandparents being a big part of that. When grandparents are healthy, this makes sense. When grandparents are abusive, it does not make sense.

✅ When you cut off from your parents this will often

include protecting your children from the negative influence of their grandparents.

✅ Not all grandparents are created equal and too often grandparents are perceived as harmless elderly folks who love to spoil their grandkids.

✅ How To’s and Boundaries to Set

NOTE: If you are on the other side of this issue, please listen to Episode 19 on Toxic Adult Children.

My social media pages and podcast episodes are not open to a host of non-productive commentary around topics that you may not agree with. Please share your thoughts on your own social media pages, and be respectful and kind to the people who are trying to deal with the issue the current episode is addressing. Thank you

If you want to go deeper on the topic of toxic grandparents, I cover it in more detail in these books:

• But It’s Your Family…: Cutting Ties with Toxic Family Members and Loving Yourself in the Aftermath - https://amzn.to/3tuNQEn
• Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members: Tools to Maintain Boundaries, Deal with Criticism, and Heal from Shame After Ties Have Been Cut on Amazon. Get it here: https://amzn.to/3L3sMuA

Connect with Dr. Sherrie Campbell:

• Website: https://drsherriecampbell.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SherrieCampbellPhD

Books by Dr. Sherrie Campbell:

• Your Pocket Therapist: Quick Hacks for Dealing with Toxic People While Empowering Yourself - https://amzn.to/3JBql1R
• Success Equations: A Path to Living an Emotionally Wealthy Life - https://amzn.to/3uobd1u
• Loving Yourself: The Mastery of Being Your Own Person - https://amzn.to/36mlXp5

Check out the Sherapy Master Class: The Toxic Family Sherapy Course designed to help people master toxic family members and turn their life around to one of freedom, peace, and empowerment. Click here https://bit.ly/SherapyMasterclass

Get early access to news, insights, and tips straight from your inbox. Subscribe to Dr. Sherrie’s email list, go to https://drsherriecampbell.com/