But It's Your Family . . .: Cutting Ties with Toxic Family Members and Loving Yourself in the Aftermath

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The Maddening World of Manipulation

Toxic people. Who are they?

Is everyone toxic? No, not everyone is. That’s the good news.

Can toxic people be our family members? Yes, they absolutely can. And that’s the bad news.

Toxic can apply to our mother, father, siblings, grandparents, other extended family members, and even our own children.

None of us is perfect, that’s for sure. We all have our flaws, but having flaws and being pathological or toxic are vastly different. Toxic people are hard to differentiate from other people because their toxicity isn’t easy to discern to the ordinary observer, and this includes us as their family members. We assume that if our toxic family members appear good, they must be good. But that assumption is false. Appearances can betray the reality of what lies underneath, below the surface, out of the public eye. Toxic, in fact, is an internal state—the condition of a person’s true character, mind-set, and will. And it can only be witnessed through the consistency and persistency of manipulative behavior.

When we’re flawed, we have no problem owning up to our personal and relational foibles. We are able to laugh at ourselves when we make mistakes, and are more than willing to admit wrong and apologize whenever necessary. We seek peace, connection, clarity, and our own development rather than conflict.

People with pathological personalities, on the other hand, respond more like regressed, stubborn, vengeful bullies. They are never wrong. They are above apologies. They never question if they could have or should have done anything differently. And everything in their lives is an embellished drama of how they have been victimized by others.

With healthy persons, we are dealing with individuals who operate with a sense of balance and composure. They are self-reflective, logical, collected, and able to listen to others with an openness to learn.

But with a pathological person, we are dealing with the emotional immaturity of a two-to five-year-old in the body of an adult. The very reason toxic people are so frustrating to deal with is because we’re looking at an adult but dealing with a toddler. The majority of us grew out of our two-year-old narcissism as a function of normal development. When an adult still responds from this regressed level of self-centeredness, it is very difficult for the visual and auditory parts of our brain to put a toddler’s emotional response system inside of what looks and sounds like an adult, let alone when this adult is our parent. Like toddlers, toxic people base all their decisions on what they feel rather than on what is right. The thought of any consequences of their actions pale in comparison to getting what they want in the moment. Contrast this with healthy people: they think before they act and are mindful of how what they do may negatively impact themselves or others.

Toxic people cannot tolerate consideration of others. When trying to have a conversation with them, they are self-referential rather than self-reflective. When you share something about yourself with such people, they immediately turn the account into a story about them. The self-referential side of toxicity turns toxic people into the greatest one-uppers, name-droppers, and liars you’ll ever come across. You cannot have a mutually beneficial conversation, where there is a natural back-and-forth flow. Sharing does not exist when communicating with toxic people. Of course, healthy flawed people sometimes do some of the same things that toxic people do. The difference, however, between ordinary and toxic lies is in the subtleness, persistence, and consistency of a toxic person’s behaviors.

Healing Moment

Different Flavors of Toxic People

Toxic people come in all flavors. There are those who are overtly toxic and easy to spot (which makes them somewhat easier to deal with). This was my father. He is the classic Jekyll-and-Hyde personality. One minute he’s loving and the next he’s emotionally violent. Whenever we confront an overtly abusive person, he or she will tell us we deserved what we got.

Covertly toxic people aren’t nearly as obvious, and therefore they are more baffling to deal with. Covert psychological abuse is sly, conniving, and confusing, making it extremely hard to spot and to know for sure if we are causing the problem or if it is truly the toxic person who is. My mother is this way. She is a passive-aggressive person who can say something that may on the surface appear benign but in reality is a dig into a core wound or sensitivity of mine that she created. I can best compare my mother to the character Mother Gothel in the movie Tangled. She abducted Rapunzel when she was a baby. In one scene, Mother Gothel and Rapunzel are standing in front of a full-length mirror. Mother Gothel says, Rapunzel, look in that mirror. You know what I see? I see a strong, confident, beautiful young lady. She then looks over at Rapunzel and says, Oh look, you’re here too. Upon seeing the confused and hurt look on Rapunzel’s face, Mother Gothel quickly retorts, saying with a sweet laugh, a finger bop on Rapunzel’s nose, and an innocent smile on her face, Oh, I’m just teasing. Stop taking everything so seriously.

When people are covertly toxic, they are masters at feigning innocence, of playing the victim, pretending to be less fortunate than others, and claiming that life has treated everyone better than it has treated them. Their emotional abuse is done in a secretive, undetectable manner where it’s impossible to notice what’s happening until it’s too late. Anytime we try and confront covertly toxic family members, they are utterly appalled we would ever think they could do any of the things we’re questioning them about. They immediately insinuate that we’re the crazy ones. This is what Mother Gothel does to Rapunzel throughout the movie.

Shannon Thomas, author of Healing from Hidden Abuse, teaches that covert psychological abuse is similar to putting clear toxins in a glass of water. Once we drink the water, we cannot see the injury wreaking havoc inside of our body until our body starts reacting to the continued exposure to the poison. This is just how it happens with emotional abuse. The abuse is so covert and well hidden that we cannot immediately identify our emotional injuries. So we justify them and move on until it’s too late and the poison has already created a deep wound in our psyche. As our relationships deepen with our toxic family members, so does their ability to manipulate us. If we are their children, their abuse started on our first day of life and will only deepen as we age or for as long as we remain connected to them.

Healing Moment

Our toxic family members have a strong, impenetrable repulsion toward having to take responsibility for their actions. Scott Peck, psychiatrist and author of The Road Less Traveled, states that the majority of healthy people assume too much responsibility for the wrongs in their lives because they want to be the first to own their mistakes when it is necessary, whereas a toxic person won’t take enough responsibility. Peck explains that when healthy persons are in conflict with the world, they automatically assume that they are at fault, but when toxic people are in conflict with the world, they automatically assume the world to be at fault. This is why our toxic family members are impossible to penetrate when we confront them about what they have done to us. They simply do not see themselves as the source of their problems. They see the world or us as the source of their troubles. So they fail to recognize their need for change.

Scott Peck also explains that healthy people who desire to take responsibility for their lives are said to drive themselves crazy while toxic people drive everyone else crazy. This could not be more true. Having been raised in a toxic family and watching myself attract one toxic person after another into my life and now treating patients in my office and thousands on Facebook (www.facebook.com/sherriecampbellphd), I have come to realize that toxic people will never take accountability for their actions. This is just the way it is with them, and it is this that is the missing piece that drives us all crazy. Accepting accountability for one’s actions is what a healthy person does to help resolve a problem. This is an easy fix in the mind of someone who’s healthy. But in a toxic person, this fix is out of the question. A toxic person is never at fault—or so he or she thinks. Therefore, accepting responsibility is not an option.

Here are some of the common traits of toxic people. See if any of these are present in the people you know, especially in those individuals who are closest to you.

•Nothing you can say or do is enough

•Believe they are perfect and never wrong

•Have to be the center of attention

•Ignore or engulf

•Rewrite history

•Invalidate you

•Rage at you

•Conflicts never get resolved

•Ruin special days and events

•Love your tragedies

•Separate and drive wedges between you and other family members

•Rigid and single-minded

•Low frustration tolerance, quick-tempered

•Little respect for differences

•Egocentric

•Self-preoccupied or self-involved

•Love their illnesses or injuries

•Comment on the smallest flaws or perceived imperfections

•Drag up your past and use it to hurt or embarrass you

•Leave you feeling guilty and ashamed of who you are

•Leave you feeling beaten, wounded, battered, bruised, and torn

•Violate your boundaries and never respect no as a response

•Show no empathy

•Do not care about your feelings and like to see you suffer

•Believe they are innocent and become offended at any evidence to the contrary

Notice that none of the traits of toxic people have anything to do with love. All of these traits are based in immaturity, selfishness, and manipulation, which is why being raised in toxic families is so confusing, empty, and painful.

Healthy people value consistency, predictability, connection, and communication when it comes to loving self and others. They feel horrible if they have inadvertently hurt another person, and they are willing to do whatever it takes to fix things.

Unhealthy people, on the other hand, are impossible to predict. There is always something hidden going on behind their back, there is no consistency in who they are from one moment to the next, and their actions rarely match the grandiosity of their words. They are word-magicians who pride themselves on being in control and unaffected by the needs of others.

People who are genuinely good-hearted will be kind to everyone, not just to the individuals from whom they stand to gain something. Genuine persons are not built on a set of false pretenses where they change personalities as a way to get what they want.

If you are living in constant confusion and feel as if your relationship with someone boils down to a delicate egg-shell walk, you are not in a relationship with a healthy person. You need to make some serious changes.

Healing Moment

The one thing that all the traits listed above have in common is selfishness. When we are with toxic family members, we will find that the entire trajectory of our life has to be, without choice or flexibility, all about their schedule, their needs, their feelings, their goals, their ideas, their illnesses … their everything. They are so controlling that before we even realize it, we are frantically living our life around their every whim and need because, if we don’t, the consequences for us are disastrous. Toxic people cannot fathom that other people have needs of their own.

Being around my mother for five minutes is enough to wear me out. Within that short time, she’s making the world all about her—her hypoglycemia or some other fictitious illness or injury of hers, and how these needs of hers have to control my schedule and dominate my life. She thinks of no one else but herself. Life functions around when she wakes up, when she eats, what she eats, being rigidly on time, what time she goes to bed, and how hard her mattress is. Even when we stay strictly on her schedule, she complains throughout the day that she’s not on schedule. It’s absolutely maddening. And on top of her overtly controlling nature, she gets frustrated with me for getting frustrated with her demand arsenal. If we get off her time schedule by even five minutes, she starts manifesting physical symptoms that have to be taken care of right now or else. Yet, she can travel across the country to different time zones and adjust, but the one-hour time difference for her to my home isn’t doable.

It’s these hypocrisies that tell me my mother’s unreasonable and childish demands are manipulations she uses to become the center of everyone’s focus. She is at the controls, dictating how and when we all do anything, and all of this is based on her needs and demands. I have learned, as have many others, that there is no amount of bending, flexing, or being perfect we or anyone else can do that will ever be enough for these types of people. The more we give, the more we try, the more the toxic person in our life discredits our efforts and demands more. Toxic people operate more like a funnel than a waterproof bucket. Whatever we give seems to go right through them rather than filling any part of them for more than a few minutes. Their behavior and expectations are absolutely mind-boggling. Before we know it, we are left exasperated, exhausted, defeated, and frustrated beyond belief, with no hope that anything about who we are or will ever be will ever be enough. Then, to top off the situation, they accuse us of being selfish when all we have done is tried to meet their incessant, irrational, and self-centered demands. This is the maddening world of manipulation that toxic people create.

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What Is Healthy Love?

Our toxic family members insist that they love us. But if they are unhealthy, then whatever they believe about love must be unhealthy too. What, then, is healthy love?

Sadly, a large majority of us are more experienced with unhealthy love than with having any idea or clue about what healthy love is or even looks like. Many of us question if we would recognize healthy love if it hit us square in the face, and if it did, would we like it? This is especially true for those of us who were raised in toxic family environments. When we start life without knowing healthy love—including what it is, what it looks like, and what it feels like—we find it incredibly challenging to find healthy love later in life. After all, we don’t even know what we are looking for.

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. If we feel consistent anxiety, a lack of trust, paranoia, like we’re walking on eggshells, that we can’t be ourselves, and feeling as if we would rather avoid talking so as to avoid arguing, we are not in a healthy love dynamic.

Healthy love happens when two givers come together. When this happens, it’s like magic. It becomes a connection of you nurture me and I will nurture you and together we will grow. Healthy love is fun and lighthearted. Can you imagine it? This is what we all deserve: to have our hearts held as something deeply precious in the hands of those who raised us.

When we are brought up in toxic families, healthy love is hard to fathom, but it is available and achievable. We just have to know how to find it and how to create it in our own lives. Here are some clues regarding what to look for when looking for love:

•When love is present, there is very little chaos.

•When love is present, there is conversation.

•When love is present, there is no gossip or backstabbing.

•When love is present, there is support and nurturing.

•When love is present, there is acceptance.

•When love is present, there is ease and room for joy.

•When love is present, there is clarity.

•When love is present, we feel stable.

•When love is present, we can be ourselves.

•When love is present, we are not consumed with worry.

•When love is present, we have a sense of community.

•When love is present, we feel happy.

•When love is present, we live in a state of trust.

•When love is present, we experience contentment.

Do Toxic People Know What They’re Doing?

Because we love our family members and want desperately for them to love us back, we choose to believe they don’t mean to treat us the way they do. When we rationalize and justify their mistreatment of us, it is called reverse projection. Bree Bonchay, author of I Am Free, explains that we relate to our toxic family members as if they are normal healthy people who possess a conscience, self-awareness, and a sense of integrity. Because of this inherent trust in them, we believe their words. We know that we don’t lie or manipulate so we believe our toxic family members would never lie to or manipulate us. We give them the benefit of the doubt because we believe they genuinely love us. Because we believe they truly love us, we cannot believe they could ever or would ever do anything to intentionally hurt us. When we believe in this way, we are essentially projecting our own good qualities or character traits onto the toxic family members we love. So when they don’t respond in the ways that a loving, kind, healthy person would, we are left feeling hurt and confused and questioning ourselves, believing we must somehow be to blame for their lack of love and understanding.

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Reverse projection keeps us in a place of denial and with the problem in our hands. As long as we believe we are the problem, we hold the false belief that we can fix or solve the problem. If we can change ourselves to be better, we believe we will have the power to fix things.

But consider this: if we are not the problem and the real problem actually is our toxic family members, then we have no shot at changing the dynamic.

Moreover, the reality is that we cannot change anyone but ourselves. Once I came to this realization in my own therapy, I felt a deep sense of sadness before I felt any relief. It felt hopeless to me when the problem wasn’t in my hands or my responsibility to fix. I had to start the process of grieving the loss of my hope—the hope that kept me going back again and again for my family’s love. And that’s what I never received even though I worked so hard for it. I was continually discarded.

Best-selling author Shahida Arabi says to the claim that our toxic family members don’t know what they’re doing or that they don’t know any better is completely false. She says that anyone who has the intellectual capacity to blame-shift, gaslight, project and stage a smear campaign to escape accountability has the intellectual capacity to be aware of their own blame and to process it when the victim says ‘this hurts’.²

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H. G. Tudor, in his remarkable and eye-opening book Manipulated, teaches that toxic people do not care about the results of their actions because they are driven by an all-consuming need for fuel. This need for them is so overwhelming that any consideration of the results of their actions falls a distant second to their need to secure their fuel. Our toxic family members leave behind a legacy of pain, chaos, and confusion. They want our focus to be on them at all times. They crave, need, and want this attention. Without our emotional reactions, our fears, or our tears, or without us pouring our love and neediness all over them, they cannot experience their own existence.

So what is their fuel? Tudor sums it up in two simple concepts: emotional reaction and attention.

How do our toxic family members secure our emotional reactions and consume our attention? Manipulation.

Our toxic family members may believe inside themselves that they love us, but ultimately, they live through us to use us. They feed off of having the power and authority to manipulate, degrade, and create insecurity, fear, sadness, neediness, guilt, feelings of obligation, hope, and rage in us. This is their fuel. This is what they live on. They use us to keep themselves going.

When I was growing up, my mother made me feel emotions I can only describe as fury. The feeling I felt inside was beyond anger, frustration, or annoyance; it was pure, unadulterated fury. I felt like there was an emotional tsunami swirling inside of me, but I couldn’t pinpoint the exact reason why. What I didn’t know at that time were all the subtle ways in which she was passive-aggressively baiting me to rage. Once I would get to that point, she would then accuse me of being the abuser and claim her role as the victim. All I ever felt growing up under her was head-spun.

Healing Moment

—Shannon Thomas

It’s Not about Love or Hate

Here’s the reality, the truth of the matter: Our toxic