Is Your Parent a Narcissist? (FBF)

what is up daddy gang it is your founding father alex cooper with call her daddy dr campbell welcome to call her daddy thank you for having me at the dad pad it's actually nice to finally see in person right so nice to see it in person and see you in person and your show's amazing thank you so much guys dr campbell is a clinical psychologist and author of the book adult survivors of toxic family members so today i want to discuss the impact of toxic parenting and how to navigate boundaries with family dynamics how do you define a toxic family member so like any narcissist their bag of tricks isn't really that vast but what a parent will do because seduction isn't necessary to create the bond the child is already present is there's a moral superiority so they use because i'm the parent therefore you don't have a voice you're treated more like a piece of property a thing to manage rather than a human being with needs and feelings of their own they don't apologize it's there's no discussion and you have to mitigate and navigate this moody scary unpredictable person with the skill set of a child so when someone's narcissistic and it's like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry you're afraid of your parent and you don't like your parent and then you feel guilty you are an expert on toxic family relationships but you also are a survivor what is your personal experience as a member of a toxic family so i was the scapegoated child i was the bad one i don't couldn't list one thing my mother would like about me so she had me but she didn't want me and children know when they're wanted or when they're not wanted it's sort of an unspoken feeling so in growing up like that i felt it was me i was convinced it was me and i was acting out because i wasn't getting what i needed then i would act out and it's like this vicious circle where it was always coming back to me so i was in a tremendous amount of emotional pain i lived in complete confusion but i think some things about survival are genetic and i think there was a truth inside of me that i kind of knew it wasn't me but i didn't know how to make that real and so it stayed there and it burrowed in but because she was so deeply ingrained in setting my self-worth you'd believe your parents absolutely also just to hear you say like i'm not going to do this i'm not going to do this i'm not going to do this i'm not i knew she didn't want me by the way she treated me did you have a relationship with your father he was very in and out so i grew up with hippies you know i think he was married five times she's on her fourth so he was very in and out he was violent and unpredictably violent something like tickling can turn into me having a bloody face so he just wasn't predictable for me and i was scared of him but in some ways his abuse of me was easier to tolerate because he'd feel bad after so sometimes with physical altercations the parent sort of feels bad after whereas with my mother which i think we need our mother in a different way than a father as well the passive aggressive really making me know that i wasn't wanted or i was in her way was savage to my ability to love myself so you're trying to figure out who you are and also trying to navigate why is the person that's supposed to be my support and my safe place making me feel so unstable so unstable and then i'm trying to tell her the truth yelling at her and i'm she'll tell me i'm abusing her so the gaslighting of the narcissist and i did yell and i was mad and i was telling her and then i believed i was an abuser when you talk about your mom as we know with the narcissist also it's so hard to pinpoint like what they're doing is there anything that comes to mind that you could try to remember a scenario that someone listening could paint the picture like i i have experienced that that's what that is so in in a public situation that we were in uh she was describing how hard i was to her friends and that she was haha she would sell me on the corner corner for 25 cents or best offer or another time she said don't worry honey someone will marry you so can i prove a tone of voice i really can't uh when i would try to prove the tone of voice or say well why did you say it like that she's like oh you're so sensitive i can't say anything if i acted out i was told i was acting like my dad you know and he was then cast out as the bad one as well every toxic family has to have a scapegoat i would maybe he would have to hear the words i'm sorry but it would be like well i'm sorry that you feel that way i can't control your emotions so not really ever willing to hear my feelings she was set to discredit me and i knew i had a truth but she picked me apart as a human like dismembered me dismembered my identity and i feel grateful that there's something in me that's survivor based absolutely because i want my books survivor approved i mean the book is now therapist recommended so this is the first book of its kind that is suggesting that maybe not all parents are good i also thought it was so interesting you wrote in your book about that how if i don't do what people want me to do i will lose their love and it's like through your parents doing this to you you realize like maybe if i just do what they want me to do then the fight won't break out then it won't get escalated then he won't hit me then she won't discredit my existence and speak negatively to me so it's like this constant cycle like that you're talking about you become this people pleaser because you just want to try to settle everything and not have it get to that level you have that need for love and belonging right well the most important social group you can belong to is your family no one no one wants to go in life without a family do you believe that it's the parent's responsibility to be the bigger person and reach out and resolve issues like this always right i don't parenting has been such a painful thing for me that i don't look at it as parenting i have a daughter she's 17 i look at it as leadership i'm her leader i want to lead her into her own self uh toxic parents want to define who you are they they want kids but they don't want the responsibility of a kid i ended up being my mom's friend her therapist also all the while her enemy um as i was aging and becoming more more womanly this was not okay you know you can't please but you want to because you're facing abandonment all the time also as a survivor you learn that they just keep moving the stick they keep moving the line so you can please as much as you can please but they find another thing to pick at you on because they can't not have conflict they are not alive or feel alive without attention and emotional reaction that they provoke having that perspective the fact that you know now you're like you said earlier silence they want the conflict and naturally you're trying to please your parents so you give it to them you're like mom but i didn't do that or mom what and meanwhile it's what they want they're getting off on the conflict it is like the greatest orgasm for a you know just fighting for their lives and you feel like you're fighting for your life because you're fighting for your truth and i don't want silence to be misunderstood either as losing your voice i think don't waste your voice be mindful if you're going to be an empath be an educated empath i had to learn all of that the hard way and there were no footprints in the snow in front of me i had to trudge this on my own because experts don't want to go up against the cultural value of family i am not breaking families up i'm saving families below the generations that are going to heal i'm stopping generational trauma from continuing to spin out the family's already broken do i face the reality that i don't have a family all the time i do and in ways that you couldn't even imagine for example when i'm with my boyfriend and his family and they're like oh when scott was 14 he did da da da or you watch them love on him and we're so proud of him and you as a person go i chose a really good person because like all these people love my person like i made a good choice and he's in my life and it's kind of quiet there are no stories about sherry from this age and there are no uh banter there isn't a family proud of me right so i miss out on all of that my person misses out on all of that right and these are these areas that that no one writes about no one has been able to write about or they haven't written about or they haven't survived it. and yes having that like hole in you of like god I still wished I of course I wish I had a family but the one that I had was abusive and so it's either you choose to stay in that pain to keep a family together for for who for for who okay let's address though because you made a really good point is if someone is surviving this like like like I have there's a secondary abuse in that other people outside of me think I haven't thought this through because I'm the child now when a parent cuts off a toxic adult child which I did just did a podcast show on in my own show but there are toxic adult children parenting contributes to that some very well-meaning parents can overindulge a child correct I mean this happens but they don't trust that I've asked all this to them and they don't trust that I've asked all this to them and they don't trust that they don't trust that I've asked all this to them and they don't trust that I've asked all this to them and they don't trust that I've asked all this to them and they don't trust that I've asked all this to them and they don't trust that I've asked all this to them and they don't all these questions that I've asked questions they would never even think to ask to reach this decision because I'm the younger party going against the asymmetry and therefore a moral superiority that's projected on me not just from my parents but from other people so I question and I've actually confronted and said I'm just not clear on why you can't be okay in your life with my family dynamic being what it is maybe perhaps that's an issue you should look at and maybe not doubt that I haven't this isn't a careless decision this isn't cancel culture where someone says one thing there's no history of any other thing and they're canceled but they're canceled and they're still kind of like poking and I cut ties not for a game I cut ties to save my life and I didn't cut ties to go back the minute that you can start to try to provide for yourself that's also the beginning of when you can decide if you want to have autonomy over your own life and begin to try to separate but it's like there's a period of your time where you have no option no so it's like you now have the choice which ironically that's just what women are trying to fight for right now having the fucking choice amen over our own bodies but it's like the choice was yours you didn't want this you didn't ask to be brought into this world and have a narcissistic mother and abusive father but you didn't want to be brought into this world and have a narcissistic but it was on you then in an amazing way to find the strength to put yourself first and like you said now you're going to be a leader to your daughter and you're going to learn from this had you not gotten out of that you may not be sitting here and being able to give your daughter that grace of being a leader for her in in that vein do survivors often have difficulty with assertiveness and setting boundaries oh yes because pleasing or fawning is the habit you I don't need to do so much because when you're seven eight nine like you had just mentioned your definition of love is defined by the way your parents love you you're not identified enough like in yourself to know if you are lovable or not so you're kind of looking out to the world like getting a reflection back and your parents should be mirrors well when they're emotionally immature moody unpredictable hypocritical and you're doing more work in the relationship than they are and you're at fault there's no path so you do tend to one toxic is very familiar to you on an emotional level unconsciously you tend to draw that in as shrinks we know that you marry your most toxic parent and uh it's you got to look at it as you're working through so each day for me is a day of improvement each day for me is a day of more reflection can you give an example in a day of more reflection and you're the one making the plans and and that's how I've set the norm to be then let's say something happens in my life and I'm a little bit disappeared I don't hear from that person and that person's like why aren't you calling me I don't know I mean the phone works both ways the last time I checked so I have to watch my balance and sometimes I've in my life I've had to learn that the hard way because when you're a kid without love it's a basic need it's fundamental to confidence it's fundamental to well-being and if you don't have that you search for it how does shame play a role in all of this shame is so deadly because shame doesn't move if anything shame sticks inside you like glue now a toxic person uses shame to blame but a healthy person absorbs it and believes it and so there's sort of a core wound that you just do feel like you're like the family fuck up like you're just fucked up like you're just pathologically like fucked up so even today at 51 if something goes wrong in my life I'm like man why am I such a fuck-up that language will still be there I can be playful with it and I can find humor and I can get through it it doesn't sink me but in my earlier life it would sink me like I'm not lovable I'm just not I'm fatally flawed growing up in a toxic household or with a toxic family member can unfortunately also have effects on your future romantic relationships what types of relationships do survivors normally attract they tend to attract people who pick on them in the same way that they were picked on because that is your norm like I was raised by two toxic adult children essentially so I married one and so I just got placed right back in that role and if I ever needed anything it was I was criticized for it and you just start to be like this is very familiar it's not up to anyone else but you to stop it and I've evolved and so my ability to pick people healthy for me no one's perfect but to pick people that can work through it with me I've successfully done that yeah it was interesting in your book when you talk about it's common for survivors to attract relationships with people who avoid emotional intimacy and inconsistent in their lovingness it's kind of what you're talking about and you get attracted to it okay like nakedness here I at one point thought I'm never gonna want to fuck a guy that treats me nice because I grew up in abuse but abuse doesn't work without intermittent doses of kindness so you get addicted right and so I learned to be addicted to intermittent reinforcement and I had to go through many relationships where that was happening for me to be like wow this doesn't make me happy I'm anxious I'm nervous because I was dating narcissists and so you can get well you can find intimacy I also think survivors are are very capable of intimacy in ways that people that didn't have as tragic of childhoods aren't so I don't look at survivors as we're some of the healthiest people what was not healthy was our background because I treat many people that had healthier backgrounds than myself and they're a lot more unhealthy their EQ isn't as high in other words they haven't dipped into so much pain that they know how to navigate pain so they can be very insensitive to others so there are gifts to being a survivor too totally it's like using it almost as your superpower of like you've seen things and felt things that some people in a short time sheltered world have not and so you've gone to the deepest parts of your core to find yourself but I was supposed to be in this life I was supposed to be in this way because I've turned my predators into my purpose and every woman out there and there are really good men out there too that get abused it doesn't have a gender but abuse makes us all feel confused desperate dismembered we're just lost to the self and it's it's just a savage thing how hard is it is it to take advantage of a child how hard is that that's not hard that's the easiest person someone way more vulnerable that you can take advantage of and you can be happy I I really am one of the most more positive if I'm in a dynamic with someone I'm almost the more always the most more positive person I think because we can't be happy with someone we can't be happy with someone we can't be happy with someone no joy if we don't know pain you know I think if we numb our joy with anything alcohol whatnot drugs we numb it we also numb our pain but we numb our joy we're gonna numb it all I live life on life's terms and it's it's been it has been a life yeah but I feel it I deal with it and I heal it you can stay stuck in a story I was victimized but I am I'm not a victim and I have so many superpowers because I was a survivor when we talk about relationships how might a survivor attempt to use a relationship in order to heal themselves in your book I loved how you wrote deep down I was taught to believe that my healing needed to come from someone else's love for me you know what my great awakening was in that moment that I wrote about I know exactly that part of the book I bawled my eyes out writing that I've learned over the course of my lifetime and it's been a this is especially important, I think, for women is that you're not by yourself. You're with yourself. I am the only person who has been there for me at the one yard line facing my emotional death and peeling myself up off the ground, like a fruit roll up again and again and again. And I did give other people, you loved and kissed me back to life. You healed me. And in some of those moments, those people were really hurting me, not seeing the hurt. And I had to take care of myself and make decisions I didn't want to make and hurtful decisions that made me feel abandoned. And I had to dive right back into that wound that now another relationship ended. Look, my family must be right. No one's going to love me. I'm too difficult. I want fairness in a relationship. I want to be a priority. So therefore I'm too difficult, right? That's what would go through my mind. And I just, it just kicked in. I was at the, I was at the bottom when I wrote that. And the bottom is a beautiful place, because there is wisdom there that has saved my life over and over again. And I did it. I did it. If someone's listening to this and they're like, Sherry, I love that you're able to do that. I don't know if I'm there yet. What are options for dealing with toxic family members that don't involve fully cutting ties? Okay. And I believe, and I want to make sure everyone knows, cutting ties is your last choice. And if you are there, you'll find it's not a choice. It just is. So I tried it all because I really wanted my family. And I was 45 years old. So this is not cancel culture. This was years of savage emotional abuse toward me, scapegoating. I tried low contact where I did sort of what I would call gray rocking. It will look just like people pleasing, but the mindset is different. So I think that makes it fundamentally different psychologically. So gray rocking is like becoming the most boring rock in the pile, deflecting the conversation back on the toxic person who loves an audience. And so I just appeased the conversation. I kept some remnant of the relationship. But when, when someone is so malignantly character disordered, and if they have any of other borderline or histrionic, they're going to kind of sniff up on that you're gray rocking. And they don't like that because they want the conflict. So then I went to cordial contact, which is like metaphorically, if they walked up to my fence, I'd be like, I can do it today. But they don't get to come in the yard or on the porch or let alone in the house. So caller ID became like an externalized immune system for me. I'd see my mom's name come up and I'd be like, I don't have it today. I visited home a lot less and spent less time hoping, truly hoping that that could at least give me a slice of a mom. And that works for a lot of people. And I can imagine it sounds like when you're able to set those boundaries for yourself, you've really reached your limit. So it is through almost experience of not allowing them to allow that abuse to get to you. Just no, no emotional reaction and no negative attention. It's what they want. And so gray rocking is brilliant. And, and I think that there really are people that can have very toxic parents, but that, but that only one parent is toxic. I'm amongst the 14% that had both. And then there were, you know, multiple marathon marriages going on that, that didn't help life at all. Right. Cause things were always changing for me. And so there are situations like, there's a passive toxic father to a very narcissistic mother say he doesn't stand up for the kids. They have a relationship in secret. It kind of defies logic because he's toxic by proxy, but he's afraid of her. He's afraid of the divorce and what, what that could do. Right. So they all stay together. So to have a relationship with dad, you have to see mom, then you should, you have to find a way to navigate mom. Say someone sets the boundary and they're trying. And I think a lot of it, it sounds like comes from, there's going to be some pullback, whether it's emotional or whether it's actual physical distance, seeing them less when someone asserts that boundary, what are common emotions that come with asserting those boundaries with that toxic person, like terror, guilt, and not being heard because see, they crazy make you and they're genius at it. I'm, I'm a super intelligent person. I will never out argue a narcissist. I mean, just don't. Like I, I'm too into the truth. And you know, they'll focus on parts of the argument that really aren't the point. And then you're, you're spinning down a rabbit hole. That's not even the point. It's not even the boundary. Now it's the way you set it or, or it's this or that. And it's like, but okay. It's so regressed. It's so immature that it actually dumbs you down. So they poke and poke and poke you. You finally have a reaction and they're like, oh my God. And it's deleted what they did. Just delete. Yeah. It's helpful to hear you. Explain that because I'm sure it is terrifying to even conceptualize setting a boundary and it's your parent. And so then you're looking at, I could lose them. If I set a boundary, what child at any age wants to lose, lose their family members for setting a boundary. So you know what you do is you suck it up, but then you can't, you cannot heal in an environment that is poisoning you. That has become so clear to me. Once I, I cut ties and really the first couple of years of cutting ties, I kind of sat next to the door that I shut. Like, well, what's going to happen? Like what's happening now? And a lot happened. Can you share the moment you decided this is it. I need to fully cut ties. So I'm going to describe it like a bag. My whole life, they've been putting rocks in this bag. And I kept trying as I was brain abled development enough to say, Hey, you know, like when you do this, it like kind of hurts my feelings and it's dismissed and gaslighted. The bag keeps being filled with rocks. So the last moment with my mother was I had gotten a really nice car and she doesn't like it. If I have nice things I've learned and they were going to follow me to a restaurant and they followed the wrong white car and she determined it's because I think I'm hot shit in my new car and I'm driving pathologically. Slow trying to call them on the Bluetooth to get them to the restaurant. And she attacked me in front of my daughter and called me disrespectful and insolent. And I am not as hot shit as I think. And I'm, I mean, I was like, Ooh, I saw red. So she cut me off. And this is by far not the worst. It's actually a pretty small thing compared to whatever, but when she cut me off and she then pushed out to my ex-husband she hadn't spoken to in 10 years and decided she was going to form a relationship with him to see my daughter behind my back and without my permission. And my ex-husband was going to go for it. I was done. Something inside me, Alex, died that day. That that betrayal was so unbelievable for my brain to get around. That she would use my daughter because she followed the wrong white car to a restaurant. There was no skillset. I used, there was no confidence. I was done mending the fence and that's it. The dynamic for you was the boundary needs to come now because now you're fucking with me and my daughter and you're fucking with my daughter. It's always to get to you. I knew an ex-husband of mine that she hadn't spoken to in 10 years that she couldn't, couldn't stand. So when you decide to cut ties, what did that look like for you? So those next few days were really painful because she had never text or sent my daughter any videos. And it was one video and one text from Grammy after another. And then I'm like, oh my God, do I have my daughter block my mom? Like, am I allowed to, I don't know the rules, but my job in my family for both my mother and my father, they'd fuck it up and tell me to clean up the mess. And I would, because I wanted a mom and a dad. So that day with the wrong white car, I was like, yo, I just don't have any more tools. And if they're going to get mad over this, it's going to be forever. I stayed quiet for a long, long time and just watched. My daughter's very wise. She asked me if she could block my mom because she's protecting her mom, you know? And I said, you know what, baby, it is up to you. I'm not going to make the decision for you though. I'm not going to be the person that takes away a grandparent. She wasn't a fan anyway, but I just waited and I didn't hear anything for many, many months until. until Christmas, so she would show up twice a year year with dew stained apples for me to bite into and my father's death was used in the same manner she used your father's death as another opportunity to say come on to get me to break my no contact she had someone tell me that he was sick and the guy said you know considering i'm going to give her such heavy information you know give me some detail and she's like nope she can call me if she wants detail and you didn't reach out no and i found out he died on google is that a hard way to find out yeah it's pretty callous the the person who reached out to me let me know that she was threatened not to tell me by my mother and sibling so this stuff is real and this stuff people don't want to believe can happen in families and so there's this this silent epidemic because you go out and you try to express that my family is is super abusive and it's this way and they will still go ah but maybe they just didn't mean it that way but it's your mom you know but you know it's your dad he did the best he could for where he was at what would you advise your patients who are insecure about the fact that they aren't close with their family and they're worried people might judge them because of the relationship they have with their family dynamic and how it's complicated like what would you say to them to say to people when they're asking so what i what i usually say is gray rock you know i i go for what what i usually start with is like oh my gosh that's such a different time for a different story like probably not good to unpack that one right now we're drinking wine who wants to ruin the night and i use humor okay if someone really starts going at me and this happened when i was out my boyfriend once one of his friends was just like so where do they live do you have siblings and i was like i just so appreciate your interest in me like it's so sweet and but i'm a unique one and i'm gonna actually have to start lying i don't want to so listen my family's really toxic and we're not very close and you know cheers cheers okay no and i think that's really helpful because i can imagine the shame of people maybe that are starting to set these boundaries and are crippled with anxiety of like i don't want to go out with my new partner and their family's gonna ask me and i don't want them to think there's something wrong with me and are they gonna think there's so you're trying to so i get what you're saying the humor of that's another one this is a cute story probably not for today and i think hopefully we are kind of starting to normalize like hey let's stop hiding from the fact that toxic families toxic relationships it's very possible and i hope people are a little bit more acclimated to the concept of being in public yes and when someone says that to you yeah you don't push when i try to hide it sometimes people are like what's in that corner you know as as somebody who's very in tune with other people and emotions body language and the things i was a general respect for privacy and it's amazing social media has sort of violated some of that too people feel oh oh your story doesn't fit in there's a part of me that doesn't still identify because i didn't create my identity i'm healing my identity parents create your identity and then it's your job to heal that identity also i'm not here to blame parents listen my parents are responsible for what they did to me it's mine now what would you say if someone starts a relationship and their new partner does not with that they have with their family so I've lived that my boyfriend has like I call his family the who's they're like who's they're like hi Christmas and I'm like you're like I never had this I'm like taking normal people notes he's come a long way he's come a long way there are things that he's noticed of my abuse that I didn't I I don't I I just feel like he's come a long long way to date someone like me you have to be pretty brave because I want to work it out I don't want pain and I will directly tell you as respectfully as I can where I'm at and why I feel this way and I don't know that he has the depth of trauma to always maybe have the insight into where I'm coming from or I'll bump into some of his defensiveness but I mean he's my person I love how you wrote in your book you said you grew up being manipulated to question your own version of reality so to have this re-triggered by others is hurtful if you are in a relationship with someone that is constantly questioning well was it you or was like was it your mom or was it really you like did you do something uh-huh that is a boundary you have to also set of like you need someone that's going to be there on your fucking team that's actually abuse that's abuse and that does happen all the time when we first dated he wanted to fix it and there were many times that he was not purposefully but very dismissive of where I was at but I met him the weekend after no the weekend before I cut ties with my mom and I don't know him I don't know his family yet and he's like you seem off and I'm like yeah it's probably something we should talk about later I'm a complete shit show and you know let me redeem myself so I didn't tell him for quite some time and we did come from very very very very different places and there's still a gap of understanding but once I started talking about it the pain was so unbelievable for me that that he felt like I was talking about it too much and so what the abuse victim heard in me is see everyone thinks I can't I can't talk I'm not allowed to talk and was I talking about it a lot I I was I don't know a greater loss than to lose your family you know so we've just come a long way we've come a long way together for someone listening that is dating someone that has survived abuse what is the role of that person and how can they be there for someone that has experienced this toxic family dynamic like is there anything that you're like that this is so helpful to do for your partner when they're when they're experiencing don't question and don't minimize believe what you hear what does it serve me how does it serve me to tell this story really it doesn't make my life better you know what I mean I would love to have a healthy dynamic and I'm creating one but minimizing someone's and that's any that's any person even if this is how you feel see the thing about feelings is they're not negotiable they are what they are we don't choose them you know our responsibility is to say hey it's how you made me feel and it shouldn't be an argument too often it is an argument and then then then the whole growth opportunity is missed you have to be patient I mean it's not their fault that they don't have trauma you should be damn happy for them yeah that they don't I think that victims what I see in my office the most Alex is that victims never had a voice so they're screaming and they're so afraid they're going to be with an abuser that they're seeing some stuff that isn't there so there's a paranoia of I'm not going to go through that again okay so someone's listening to this they're like Sherry you are truly like at this point I'm motivated I feel seen I feel inspired what are the steps to healthy and healing and healing and healing and healing and healing and healing and healing and healing and grieving of losing familial relationships a well-lived life should be a well-grieved life I will be sad about this for the remainder of my life I want my mom has no age limit distance limit or time limit and so healed isn't real but healing is so so practice being who you want to be people seem to feel some sort of resentment that we have to practice character but if you want good character I suggest you practice it practice composure practice discernment grieve have the ugly cry listen to music write in your journal go outside talk to a therapist talk to a trusted friend have pets we don't deserve them they're so perfect have pets you know we need to practice being who we are it's okay to cry but when you're an abuse victim no it's not think about what an amazing human you are to love yourself enough after having come from no love to walk away from people who abuse you set yourself free to wrap this up someone's watching this hanging on every word listening to you what is the advice that that you leave us with you're right it's real it's happening do something about it Dr. Sherry Campbell yes thank you so much for coming on call her daddy We'll see you next time.