My Mother Was Sadistic - Psychologist Dr. Sherrie Campbell

Dr. Sherrie Campbell. Tell me about your mother when you were a child. What was she like?

My mom was popular externally. Big personality. Center of attention. Very performative. But at home, she was far more critical, very moody, emotionally unavailable, and very gossipy. And nothing felt fair. Everything sort of felt like it bothered her. Especially me. I just wasn't someone that she really wanted around.

So, I feel like I was sent outside a lot, sent to my room a lot. And there was just this overall feeling of just get away. She wanted to be more social with her friends, out with men. I mean, men were a huge part of her life, coming in and out of mine.

But she was just childish. And looking back now, she was just very childish. I feel like she's regressed to the age of a 14-year-old mean girl type of personality.

Tell me about the mean part. Gossipy, shaming, like if she had a friend over, I would always want to be with them. Like two girls. My mom used to macrame back in the day. They would be having girl talk, and it was always, "You need to go. I'm with my friends." I was always told to go.

And so, I felt rejected all the time as a kid. She just really did not want me around. And very punitive. If I was in trouble, she'd point in my face and talk down to me. A lot of sarcasm was used, which I didn't understand.

She was very edgy and very cruel to me.

I liked who she was socially. I wanted that part of her personality to be the one I had at home, but it was not who she was at home.

I've heard you call her sadistic.

Mhm.

What are the memories when you hear that word? What are the memories that come up?

I don't have any memory of any birthday past like 8 years old. I felt shamed all the time. I was talked about in front of me. Like I could not enter a room without walking in on her talking about me to her friends, to other family members out loud that I was just difficult and, "You know how Sherrie is."

"Sherrie's crazy."

I was sent to therapy at 16 years old, which is probably the worst decision she ever made because I kind of got seen in that therapy office. That woman was a remarkable crossroads for me.

Here's a very shaming situation: I was anorexic for two years. And I got caught in my anorexia at school. There were lots of rumors going around about me packing honey in a Tupperware. Like that's what I would eat. But I would check my bones before gym class and I got caught doing that. So, they called home. And anybody who knows anything about anorexia knows you're kind of phobic of being fat and my mom said to me, "You have no idea how lucky you are that you can be fat."

"I can eat whatever I want and I'd only gain a pound. I'd just stay tiny. You don't have any idea how hard it is for me to be this tiny."

And I was like, "Oh my God, I'm actually fat. She's actually telling me that I'm fat." I was panicking because I knew they were going to start forcing me to eat.

That's how my mom handled finding out that I had an eating disorder. Like that's sadistic.

There are so many things she did post-separation with gifts being sent to my house broken and then no fragile packing, no gift receipt. Those were her ways I suppose to continue to abuse me but to get me to break my no contact.

So one of the gifts was like a bronze. I don't know if you know what a bronze is but it's a very solid statue that you'll see in mountain towns. So she sent a mother swinging around a daughter that was broken in half at the base.

There was the symbolism, and there was no gift receipt, and it wasn't packed as fragile. So my brain has to think so hard on what to do.

At first I didn't get it but then my boyfriend got it. He saw sort of what happened and he's never met her so it's been one of his first times of really seeing me abused.

And I was like, "If I send it back, she's going to tell people I broke it to be mean to her." She's going to do that. So, I can't send it back. I just threw it away.

So, she did that for 5 years. So, those are just very sadistic things or saying in front of a whole group of my friends and their moms, "Don't worry, honey. Someone will marry you." As if I was like the most disgusting, unlovable person there ever was.

One of her favorite comments to me is, "You know, I'd be willing to sell you on a street corner for 25 cents or best offer." And then she'd say it was a joke.

So, that was the daily language that came from her toward me and I do think my mom hates women just in general. And I think as I became more womanly, like more adult, more developed, I think she began to hate me even more.

Was she ever physically abusive or was it entirely emotional and psychological?

Totally emotional. She didn't even yell. Everything was a joke, a cutdown or an eye roll. She was more famous for using the silent treatment, which to me was harder to read and to process than actually being yelled at. My dad was a very violent yeller, but my mom would just treat me like I was disgusting.

And in many ways that was far harder to process and more painful for me. It put me into a lot of guessing, more than anything certain.

Jekyll and Hyde. Lots of drugs. One minute things would be absolutely fine and honestly very fun. And then something in him would snap and it would turn physical.

So, for example, he was tickling me when I was like seven. He did smoke something in a pipe that looked mushy. Today I'm assuming it's maybe hash. I'm not sure, but he was tickling me very hard and my dad didn't understand that not all laughter is actually fun because it was sort of torturous when he tickled us.

But I think he misinterpreted the laughter as us liking it. So, I was wiggling to get out, right?

So, I accidentally kicked him and he sat up and he grabbed me and said, "You kicked me." And he was like, "Ah!" and I was like, "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. You can hit me back." And he punched my lights out. So, I landed on the ground.

And I remember not crying at all, but there was like what felt like water going down toward my ear and I was swallowing it and I didn't know that was blood. I was like only seven. I've never had a bloody nose, so I was tasting it very metallic. And I think I was so consumed with that feeling that everything sort of felt like slow motion.

Then he grabbed me and put me down on the couch very hard and he put an ice pack on my face. And he left me there by myself and went to his room.

So, I felt so bad that I kicked him. So, I walked down the hall and he had locked me out. And I could hear him kind of like breathing or crying. I don't know. But I opened the door and he was sitting there.

And I put my arm around him and I told him I was sorry. And then he told me if I had told anyone that I would send him to jail.

So, we made up a story. And he beat other people up in front of me.

Like we were driving home one day and where I grew up there was lots of snow plows and the snow plow must have hit a rock that it couldn't see on the other side and it veered him towards us so my dad went into the ditch.

And my dad got out pulling his own hair out, expletives everywhere. And this little guy was so scared and my dad was calling him every name in the book and he tried to make the guy push the car out by himself and he couldn't do it and my dad was beating him up. And there was just like blood on the snow. And I just started shaking in the car.

Back in the car, he was lamenting on and on about this guy and he said, "Why are you shaking?"

And I just said, "Oh, I'm just cold." And I was not cold. And he just went on and on just no consciousness about anything that I might see or feel.

It was like living with a bolt of lightning. I didn't ever know when he was going to strike. It was really hard.

When we spoke earlier, you said to me, "I cried a lot as a kid, more than a kid should cry." Facing everything you were facing, all the different forms of abuse and neglect, what was it that was going through that little girl's head as she was crying all those days?

I used to have this daydream that my parents would die together in a car accident. And that I would be at their funeral and someone would want to adopt me. I cried out of such lonely feelings, not feeling safe or liked. And they were really the mean people in my world and so it was hard.

And I feel sorry for her still to this day.

I'm so grateful that I was born with an incredible imagination. And so I was able to come to life with all my stuffed animals and my little girl heroes Laura Ingalls, Pippi Longstocking, Anne of Green Gables, Anne Frank, I had a lot of superheroes.

I was just a really sad kid. Very abandoned while living in my house. So it was a really hard life. But only on the inside because you couldn't tell from the outside.

What about school? Did you have many friends? Were you comfortable in who you were at that time?

Mhm. I had so many things working for me, but also so many things working against me. So, I was a prodigy athlete in figure skating, so I had some other influences that were good for me and I was really good at it like Olympic training center good at it. But I got bullied by my peers there. Adults just never protected me.

I had juniors in high school come up to me and I was in eighth grade and throw me up against a bathroom wall telling me that I think I'm hot [censored] blah blah blah. And I called my mom bawling for her to come pick me up at the rink and she wouldn't. So, my brother was protective of me at that time.

But my parents just did not advocate for me or they weren't on my side. It was just like get over it. At school, I think the bullies knew that I was broken. I don't think it was hard for people to see that I was very broken.

And so I think I was just sort of an easy target. So, I kind of got it everywhere, really. I didn't have any self-worth for years and years and years.

What was your first experience with the world of psychotherapy?

So, I was 16. I got caught ditching school by my mom's best friend. And she's like, "You know, if you want to come over later and talk, you can come over." And I'm like, "I'm going to have to." So, I went there and this family was really a remarkable part of my healing, to be honest. And she's like, "Do you think that your mom loves you?" And I was like, "No, and you know she doesn't." So, I don't know why we're having this discussion. So, I started therapy.

And I didn't trust the therapist at first because my mom chose her. And the way that my mom was is she would always prepare people for what a nightmare I was. And so I didn't trust her at first because I figured my mom had already turned her against me.

Like before I even got into middle school, I feel like my mom had already accomplished her smear campaign with teachers. Right? So, I think that was already accomplished.

And so, her name was Candy and I just loved her. And she said, "You're not the problem. You're just a symptom of the trauma." And that's the first time I ever heard that it wasn't my fault.

And so, that was a first and that was really healing for me. As was the family who helped get me there.

Why did your mom put you in therapy in the first place? What was she trying to accomplish?

Impress her best friend. But I really believe she wanted to send me to therapy so the therapist could make me easier for her. She didn't send me there truly for my own healing. I think that she sent me to therapy so that I could become a better girl, a better daughter. And so, I think she just shoved off all her parenting onto a therapist.

Because when I was really healing, she didn't like that. That's not why she sent me to therapy.

What was it like being seen for the first time and when she labeled it as abuse, how did you internalize that?

I felt like she thought I was smart. In so many ways, not directly, but in so many ways, it was insinuated I was dumb.

I have ADHD, and I'm 55, so back then it wasn't really even recognized. But there was no interest. You know what's interesting to me is both of my parents were educated at a master's degree level as teachers.

And I almost failed three grades. How is that possible? I have no idea, except there was a lack of interest and effort toward me. They kind of wanted me to just function on my own. And I do think that my sibling did much better at that than I did.

But the therapist definitely made me feel like I was very smart. This is the first time I was ever called old soul or intuitive. It was all very new language for me.

And my self-esteem started increasing and she had me read Jonathan Livingston Seagull. So that she could help me to see that I had potential, that sometimes being different is the greatest gift that you've got.

She was incredibly instrumental for me. And I was with her for 5 years. So, she helped me transition out of the anorexia gently and we understood why I did it, because I didn't really have an understanding of why I did it. And so she helped me to sort of cure some of those issues of control that I was grappling for.

You've coined this term low-effort family. What does that mean to you and how is it different from a toxic family?

I think it's a type of toxic. Not following through on your word is very low effort. It's almost like if you say, "Oh, I'm going to do that." The fact that you said it doesn't mean that you did it.

And my parents were very much if they said it, then that was as good as if they did it. Like, "I might come to your graduation" meant that he came. Awfully cruel to tell me to look for him because I think he always knew he wasn't coming.

But you have to be of your word if you want to have good relationships and you want to feel connected to somebody.

And they didn't ask any questions. It was never, "How are you?" It's, "Hope you're well." You know, there was never any real interest. And so, that was hard because no one was interested in actually like knowing me.

And I was really made to feel that no one did want to know me because I just was a pain in the ass. Like my core belief growing up is that I was a pain in the ass. Difficult to be around. It's not how you should feel.

Having those ties cut finally gave me the space I needed to breathe because even when I was trying cordial contact with her, one phone call with her can make me depressed for 2 weeks. So, any little bit of that poison in my psychological system and it would just be really hard for me to recover from.

So, I think ties were really cut between 42 and 45.

With my mom, I was 45, but I don't think I was really able to recover until they were fully out of my life. I couldn't heal in the same environment that was still very poisonous to me.

Tell me about your stance on going no contact and who it's right for.

I think it should be your last choice. I wasn't left with another one. And they cut me off. But that was always the game in my family. So, the silent treatment was one of her main tactics. I just didn't mend the fence this time. If I was going to be getting abused over the smallest infractions publicly at a restaurant in front of my daughter and ex-husband, it was just over for me. I knew I was never going to mend the fence, and I knew she wouldn't.

Because we had been no contact once before and her comment to me was, "I never thought we'd talk again." So, that tells me she was never going to fix it. It was going to have to be me.

And so, with that memory coupled with this last thing that they were angry with me about, I just knew it was over.

So, I would hope that no contact isn't for everyone. And I would hope that you would explore every option before you take that step. But I can tell you that you will know if you're one that has to go no contact because you will be pushed so far past what you can tolerate that it will be done.

It's almost like there's a bandwidth and you don't think it can break because you are so good at over-functioning. So, then they don't think they can break that bandwidth and that's the big naivety from them is that it can break. And mine broke.

And so, I think people have to get to that line on their own. I don't think I could ever answer that question with any black and white clarity because I think every situation is going to take its own journey. But I can promise you, you will know when. Your body will just know.

Critics say that no contact is a trend or that people on social media are pushing kids into it and dividing families.

In your experience, can people be pushed into no contact?

No. Cancel culture, if they want to cancel you to manipulate you to get something that they want, sure.

But that's very, very different than no contact. No contact is protective estrangement. It is done for one sole reason and it is that you have no other choice and you want a shot at life. You want a shot at happiness. And so, trending it's just hysterical. No one in their right mind would want this.

In your therapy practice, what are the patterns you see most consistently in adult children of toxic parents?

Shame, guilt and obligation. I think we get manipulated as adults by being guilted into an obligation relationship rather than having any real connection, and there's a lot of owing. You know, they'll do, "I'm getting older, so you need to..." or there are all these ways they guilt you.

Then there's this shame, this fear that if you tell people that you're no contact that there's going to be this just horrific judgment to come at you and that people will then reject you for taking care of yourself because they just won't understand how someone could ever do that.

That's not wholly untrue. But I always tell my patients to be patient because over time if someone really gets to know you they will begin to understand your story.

And that's been true for me. In fact, I have found far more support than I've ever found rejection. Which is why I wanted to write about it because I really thought I couldn't tell anyone. I thought I should feel ashamed that I'd made a decision to protect myself from my parents.

Talk about that shame that people feel with this kind of background. How does it manifest and how do people get past it?

I think it manifests as isolation because you get this fear that if anybody knows that you've gone no contact that they're going to immediately judge you as selfish, immature, cruel, grudge-holding, unforgiving, immoral. And so you end up feeling like you have to hide this big secret.

Then that will hold you back from getting to know any new people because you don't want to have to tell your story and everyone identifies you by your family. So very early on people would be like, "Oh my gosh, where were you raised? Where are your mom and dad?" Like that's how we identify people.

So I think a lot of people in my life look at me and think, "Oh, she must have had an incredible family." So then they attribute success to your family rather than to you. Right?

So we just make these assumptions that if you're good, you must have had a good family. You can't be really wonderful and come from a horrible family. If you really came from a horrible family then you should be a criminal. And that isn't how it works. Very good families can raise criminals. What if that child is born a psychopath? Right? So the judgment is very concrete.

But I do think it's fair socially that you can feel a little bit ashamed that you don't have contact for a long time. To my partner I'm like, "Just don't say anything." Because his family's more religious and I was like, "Just don't say anything. Just don't talk about it." And eventually they just come to know.

One of the first things his mom asked was whether my mom was healthy. And I was like, "Physically?" Like how do you answer these questions? And I can't lie. So, I think for a time his family really did struggle.

But then one of their friends ended up following me and she posts everything I post and then that made them be like, "Oh, Sherrie's actually doing something good." And my partner was able to explain some things, but even he struggled at first. He thought he could fix it. Because everyone wants you to be connected to your family.

And I do get it, but when you resist, you also risk them being like, "Why is she resisting? She should want to be connected to her family." And maybe she's unforgiving. Maybe she has got bad character. Right? So, I think all of that shame is not coming without some validity. Because you will face some of that.

But then you really get to learn who can be in your life and who can't. And the path narrows as you grow.

You're a mom. Tell me about that. Do you feel you understand your parents more or less after having a child?

Oh, much more. I don't think I was able to clearly name what was done to me by her until I had a daughter of my own. And she used to tell me, "I hope you are cursed with a daughter just like you." And I was. Best gift I've ever had.

I used to have this feeling when my mom would hold her that she was getting my daughter dirty. Like I didn't want her energy touching my daughter. I thought, "Wow, but I'm so mean. I can't believe I'm thinking this way."

I was in therapy and I talked about it in therapy. My mom was always there for the presentation of something.

She was the big gift giver but really had no interest in my daughter as a person.

She shamed my daughter once very hard, pointed in my daughter's face. I got to watch her do to my daughter exactly what she did to me. After she shamed my daughter, I was like, "What are you doing?" And London was bawling in my arms and my mom stormed inside, slammed the door, and then she didn't speak to me for the next 2 days.

Then we got into a really big argument on the way to the airport. So bad that I left my keys to my apartment in her car.

I landed in California. No way to get into my car, into my home. I was so frazzled. And at that point I'm like, "I'm never going to go home."

And so, if I did go, I was going to go for much shorter trips and then the trips just decreased. They went from twice a year to once a year.

It woke me up to what happened to me very deeply, which gave me a great compass for what I never wanted to be to my daughter and I never have been, ever.

What can you tell me about your relationship with your daughter?

Oh, God. I don't even know how to put it into words. She's the absolute love of my life. She's my why for everything. I know her deeply.

If I can encourage any parent out there to do anything, it's to know your children deeply. Know how they feel. It's better to know how they feel than to care about what their grades are. I know her very deeply and the bond that I share with her is just indescribable.

She's very independent. She's very different than I am. I accept all of her differences and never tried to make her an athlete. I just always wanted her to just unfold.

And I was going to have her in a little frame and that frame would increase in its expansion each year that she aged and I think that we have a very strong mutual respect. I respect her first so that she could learn how to respect me back.

And I think respect is learned. I think too many parents think like it's like born. And if that were true, then there could really only be perfect children. How do you get your child to love and respect you? You have to love and respect them first. Show them what that looks like.

And I never focused on not being my mom.

I hear a lot of that in my office, like, "How do I avoid being my mom?" I think, well, instead of focusing on that, maybe just focus on really loving your child. And I think that would take care of everything because the one thing you were missing was consistency and love. So I have been very consistent and very loving with her.

A lot of people say that they don't want to have children because they don't want to repeat the patterns of their parents. What would you say to them?

I think that's probably a good decision. My best friend didn't have kids for that exact reason.

And I think she made the right decision.

Or if you really want children, but you're afraid that you'd be a bad parent, really go get into some therapy and really study parenting. It's vital to me if you just study something, just go study it. You will be good at it. I don't think parenting is always natural. I've read so many parenting books. And I've read so many self-help books because I wanted to be just prepared for all of that.

But I really wanted to be a mom. And I don't think my best friend really did. And so I think sometimes that's a really wise decision.

Why bring a child in if you don't trust that you can love it? I trusted I could love her.

You told me that you spent a lot of your childhood afraid.

Mhm.

What are you afraid of now and how do you work through it?

I would say that I suffer from the fear of the bottom falling out.

The problem with me is my worst-case scenarios always happened. Everyone will tell you like, "Oh, it's your worst-case scenario. Those things never happen." Oh, yes, they do. They always happen. When your parents have nine marriages between them, the kind of change that I was put through is unimaginable.

I was expected to love all these people as my parents. And I hated most of them. And not many of them were very nice to me. And no one ever even asked my permission. How would I feel if they got married?

For example, I was on a week-long road trip like with my school to Zion in Utah. Field trip, that's what it was. And I was on a bus for 8 hours sleeping on gym floors. And we get back to the high school and no one said they would pick me up. I've been on a bus for 8 hours so my friend's mom dropped me off.

And I see my dad's car in the parking lot. I was sent to live with him because I was getting bad grades. So I went up to the door and I knocked and no one answered. And I'm like, "Okay." I knocked again. He opens the door crack. His hair's all slicked back. He's got like a suit on and he goes, "What are you doing home?" I'm like, "I'm home from my field trip."

He's like, "Fuck." He's like, "Go and get changed. I'm in the middle of getting married." I walk in. I see a strange lady in a wedding dress in my living room that I've never met.

"Hi." And her friends and I'm like, "Oh, red sand all over me." I'm like, "What the hell?"

I went and I sat on my bed and I just started crying. And I had to throw rice at them when they left the house.

He had no idea I was coming home. He didn't pick me up. And he's marrying some crazy person I've never met in my living room. "Hi." As I walked in. "What is going on?" It's crazy.

And then it's like when I hear that my parents say that I'm making all this up, like, you genuinely think I'm this creative? Like, how could I make something like this up? Also, why would I want to?

How does any of this serve me? Doesn't serve me. I didn't matter.

And so, the fear of the bottom falling out is very real for me. I don't trust people inherently. And the closer I get to them, the more of a risk they feel to my bottom falling out.

And so, I have to work through this a lot. Because I am a lover. And so, I want that feeling.

But it's hard for me to feel it wholly. And I don't know if I ever will. And I don't have any goals for that. I'm just healing in the step that I'm in.

And I encourage people to just be where you're at. Don't worry about how that's going to turn out. I'm learning a lot from where I'm at now.

When you picture little Sherrie that day in her room crying on her bed, or any of the other days that you did that, what do you want to tell her?

I'm coming for you. Just hang on. Because I have really come for me. And I've done a really good job at being the best person to me that I can be.

When people would say, "Oh, you just need to love yourself." I'm like, okay. Like, I've never been loved to know how to do that, by the way. So, we kind of learn how lovable we are by how our parents love us.

So, if you don't have that, telling someone like me to love yourself feels very flippant. It's like, "Okay, yeah. I'm going to get right on that."

But I had to think, "If I were my own child, would I do this to me?" And that is how I third-personed myself to myself to be able to develop that relationship with myself.

So, I would just tell her, "Hang on. I'm coming." And I did. And I have and I do and I will. And I have survived so much.

And I do love myself a lot. And so, I can cry for myself. I can laugh with myself. I can do all kinds of things now and I know myself better than I ever knew that I could and I'm still in that process and I hope it never ends.

I hope my inbox on getting to know me is full when I die. Because my most passionate pursuit now is this healing journey and really living it out of this life and loving me through it.

And I don't look at confidence as not including all of my wounding. It has to include all of it.

I will give tours of my basement now. You want to come in? I'll show you every box without any shame. Because I didn't do those things.