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

by Sherrie Campbell

The overall aim of gossip used by our toxic parents is to break us, their children, down little by little over time. They strategically manipulate in this. It’s the best way for them to keep us from questioning them and their actions while keeping us so deeply confused about what is going on that the only one we question is ourselves. They get us to question our own reasoning, our sanity, and our perceptions of reality. The more slowly and deeply they can keep us confused about who they are and questioning who we are, the more we gradually lose touch with our own sense of right and wrong. Problems are relentlessly blamed on whoever the identified patient is at the time. The more our toxic parents break us down, the less confidence we have to activate for ourselves because we’ve lost touch with the reality of who our toxic parent are—cruel and manipulative people.