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/ 

Another free, bonus episode! 

In this episode, the silent epidemic of cutting off with family will be covered along with the common reasons why people make this choice. 

✅ The silent epidemic of family estrangement.

✅ The reason we know so little about the lives of those who have been forced to cut off from family is because cutting off is not accepted in the larger culture. 

✅ Because family estrangement is seldom talked about, due to its taboo nature, it is also widely misunderstood. 

✅ Statistics on family estrangement.

✅ Common Toxic and Situations which lead us to cut off from our toxic family members. 

✅ You don’t owe anyone an explanation for cutting off. You are doing it to save your sanity and your mental health. 

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

Facts are there are many many families that are just so toxic that they set out to destroy our lives. 

In today’s bonus podcast episode, you will learn: 

• Our toxic family members insist that they love us. But if they are unhealthy, then whatever they believe about love must be unhealthy too. 
• The difference between flawed and toxic
• The first place to start when trying to determine if what we have is healthy love is to look at how we feel around someone the majority of the time we are with him or her. 
• What is healthy love? 

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

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.

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 podcast, you will learn solutions, strategies, and deeper understandings in dealing with your toxic family members.

In each Sherapy Session, you will be educated and validated, which will help you have more control over your choices and have a more meaningful life beyond your toxic family.

Take this journey with Dr. Sherrie Campbell, a worldwide recognized psychologist, a best-selling author, a media darling, and the leading expert in the nation on the topic of cutting ties with toxic family.

But most of all, she is a survivor of a toxic family.

See you inside, Bravehearts!