Negative Self-Worth Because Of Negative Parenting - Dr. Sherrie Campbell

You've spoken about hidden abuse when it comes to low-effort families. Can you explain what that is exactly and why it can be so destructive? It's the passive-aggressive digs. It's the not showing up when you were supposed to show up. It's not following through when you said you would follow through. Um it's it's the silent treatment, especially is is very hidden. The silent treatment is so incredibly painful to be on the other side of because you can't manage it and it's so awkward and it's designed to get to you to close that gap. It's trying to force you into going back to somebody who's treating you very poorly because the silence makes everything so uncomfortable.

Um and hidden abuse is just that, knowing that you're not chosen. When you can watch your family members be nicer to strangers than they are to you, that's also a form of hidden abuse because you're watching that they are completely capable of giving love to other people or kindness, but they just don't give it to you. So, I think that when we're going through hidden abuse, we can't see it and other people can't see it, but we can feel it in our bodies. Our body's telling us the silent treatment is wrong. Saying you're going to do something and then not doing it is wrong. It's hurtful. It's it's abandonment. There are deep deep attachment issues and traumas that are going on and you've never been yelled at and you've never been hit. And so, that's what I call hidden abuse.

>> Can you talk about going low or no contact with low-effort families? What are the behaviors that commonly lead to it? How do they usually react to it? And what should someone who's decided to go low or no contact keep in mind as it's happening? When you go low to no contact, I actually cover this in very, very deeply in my book, You Are Home. It's not necessarily that their behavior gets worse. It's that their behavioral patterns are not changing over time. So, in my book, You Are Home, I have it set up as there's a porch, a yard, a fence, and barriers. So, when they're on your porch, you know, they're very close to you. They're the closest to the inside of you that anyone could be, just like on a house.

But, when you start to recognize that they're leaving a mess all over your porch, and you come to them and you say, "Hey, when you leave this mess on my porch, it makes me feel XYZ." And they look at you and they go, "Well, it's your porch." So, when there's continual disrespect, however that shows up in whatever form of abuse that is, whether it's gossiping about you, criticizing you, um not being supportive of you, emotionally abandoning you, giving you the silent treatment, being cruel to you, calling you names, when you say, "Hey, these things really hurt me." And they go, "Well, I mean, I'm not going to change." So, then you move them to your yard.

Under the idea of, "Okay, I just had high contact. That's not working. We're fighting all the time. I'm getting my feelings hurt all the time. Um I tried to set the boundaries so that they can stay on my porch, which is where I would want them to stay." But, they are basically saying, "That's ridiculous. It's your porch. You need to clean up my mess that I'm making on it." So, you kind of think to yourself, "Well, maybe with a little more distance, we could get along better." So, you demote them to the yard. Metaphorically, that means they can come to the barbecue, they can come to the family events, but they just can't come on your porch anymore because they were too disrespectful of you to stay there, and they didn't want to respect your boundaries to be able to stay in that position in your life. So, it's like on the porch you have all this empathy for them, they're your family, you want them close, they run you out of empathy. They can actually do that. It's so frustrating when you are in a required to have an unconditional tolerance to

their disrespect so that they can have their role in your life. So, you think, "Well, I can't empathize with them anymore, but I could sympathize." And you have all this hope when you move them to the yard thinking with greater distance we will have a better relationship. So, here's the great thing about the yard. Is the yard does kind of tell you if your parent is simply emotionally immature, um and can stay in your yard. They might make a little little mess here and there, but you're very well aware that they aren't self-aware enough to know that they're doing that. And when you approach them and you say, "Hey, you kind of left a mess in my yard the last time you were here." And the immature parent goes, "Oh my gosh, I did not realize I did that. I am sorry that I did that. I will try not to do that again." Because they're emotionally immature, they're probably going to do it again. But each time you approach them, they are apologetic. You can sense that that is sincere. So, you then don't really mind cleaning up that mess cuz the mess isn't massive.

Or, like in the family like that I grew up in, they get into the yard, they destroy your yard, they turn everyone at the family event against you. It turns into a gossip fest. They complain that they can't be on the porch. They start calling you dramatic, too sensitive. They even start using your yard people as flying monkeys to try and talk you into letting them back on the porch. And so you go to them and you say, "Listen, I'm having you over under the hope that we could get along better with a little distance, and now you're doing XYZ in my yard, and I need you to stop doing those things so that I can feel safe at my own house party, my own barbecue, and um I want you to continue to come." And when they say, "Well, it's your yard and you're overreacting," now you know that the pattern that you saw on the porch is going to transition right into the yard. Um I would say that I kept my family in my yard for at least a decade and a half trying

to just keep them there because I didn't want to move them off my property and behind a fence. Um I didn't want to face that reality that that these patterns were just so deadly to me. So, I definitely took a lot of abuse for decade and a half in that way. They don't respond well to the boundaries, um especially the more firm the boundaries get and the further away from the porch they get. They're very resentful uh because they feel so entitled because they have the role of parent in your life that they should be able to be a very bad house guest in your life and ruin things for you. So, that just isn't how it works. Um I think when I moved them from the porch to the yard, there wasn't a noticeable difference until they got into the yard and realized where they were and where they were before getting into the yard. That is sort of when it all went haywire because uh they noticed the difference and that I was maintaining my boundaries. Me maintaining my porch boundaries made

them more messy in my yard, unfortunately. I don't have just your very simple emotionally immature parents. So, at that point, you get to a point as I did and many of you have, where you don't have any choice now but to move to cordial contact, which is putting them behind the fence and you you know, communication stays far more superficial. There's no depth. They're not at the parties, uh but they are definitely trying to break in. They're having fence break-ins and they're very angry that they're there. So, again, it's not that their abuse necessarily gets worse, but they get more resentful and bitter the more you set the boundaries on their very basic behavioral patterns of being disrespectful.

>> You must work with many people who struggle with low self-esteem or the fear of being seen. What can you say about how toxic families breed these types of feelings and what can we do about it in adulthood, practically speaking? So, low self-esteem is um definitely not something that a toxic family curates in you. In fact, they do the dead opposite by intent. They want you to have very low self-esteem so that you never find the confidence to confront or to leave, and that allows them to maintain uh their power positions as your parent. Any parent who wants to be the sole source of power in your life, power over your decision-making, who and how you become as a human being, is not a healthy parent. Um separating and individuating should be happening all across the the lifespan more and more and more as we age, and toxic parents really uh don't like that. Um we learn how to love

ourselves by how we are loved by our parents specifically. So, if you never really felt loved by your parents, you loving yourself is kind of a ridiculous ask. Like, people will say, "Oh, you just need to love yourself." Well, I mean, that's great. But I can say, you know, that many of my clients, me included, I was never given any worth to lose my self-worth. I I I started in the negative because I was parented in such a negative way. So, that low self-esteem then carries itself through you and into your life and into your relationships, and what we most often do is we either avoid relationships at all cost and become very isolated, or we end up dating, marrying, becoming friends with, having bosses that are repeating the patterns of trauma that we grew up in. Um over the course of life, I think we can learn to see those things as a gift um in the fact that our pattern is being repeated.

So, if it's our pattern, we have some amount of control over that pattern. Once we can name the pattern, then we can start to change the pattern. Um when you start to change the pattern, your self-esteem will raise because you will get to that point where enough is enough, um and you'll get mad at yourself for for continually repeating in this pattern because you'll tire of it. Um or if you don't get there, many people just become very hopeless and anti-relationship. They hate people. I see that in here. They think all people are bad. They think people are shitty. You know, no one can be trusted.

And if you live your life through that viewpoint that everyone's going to let you down, then everyone will let you down. I think coming out of a childhood where you have low self-esteem is you have to recognize that at the end of the day, your self-esteem is yours to create. Um just because you didn't have parents that created it doesn't mean that you can't. I think your journey to creating it will be a little more challenging, but I also think it will have far more depth. I think it's very important that we separate our wounding from the gifts we developed alongside that wounding that helped us survive. Those survival skills really are the things that can help lead you towards self-worth because those survival skills got you through.

Now, we want to look at the strengths under those, right? You might want to not people please as much, but you can certainly look at that name that and say, "Okay, I'm doing that too much and that's causing me to have trouble in my relationships because when I people please, people are going to use me and then I lose my self-esteem." All of this stuff carries through. Again, in my book You Are Home, I take you through the entire journey on how to be very mindful about what you're doing so that you can do things differently. And And that's the beautiful thing is that yes, there's the wounding and we never deserved that.

We never should have had had to go through that. But there is the strength that we developed alongside that wounding. And it's not a strength we should have had to have. However, it's important that we can use it now for good to continue being resilient going forward and I just think educate the hell out of yourself. Learn about self-esteem, what it is, how do you create it? Like never be afraid to ask for help, go to therapy, read books, and learn how to do it. Sometimes life is like building a plane and flying it at the same time, but it certainly takes a lot of skill to do that. And building your self-worth is 100% possible and you do learn that you never needed your parents to do that.

You have and are able to do that on your own. You definitely need to watch your mindset. You want to make sure that your mindset is not just so negative that when you know, a person isn't showing up perfectly for you the way that you want, or another human being lets you down, that you don't fall into that black and white thought that all people suck. Um all people are people. All people are human. And humans will all let you down, and you will let other people down, too. So, it's learning that difference between what is human and what is uh toxic. So, toxic people are bad people with good moments.

Healthy people are good people with bad moments. You've said that in low-effort families, rejection doesn't come through words, but through absence. What does that absence look like in childhood, and what are the internalized beliefs it creates in children who experience it? When absence is the method of abuse, you have to think is is love without effort really love? If you don't put effort behind love, how can anyone feel or know they are loved? So, I think what happens when there's absence, there's uh you're being pawned off on babysitters. Your your own parents are never picking you up. They're making other people pick you up. They say that they're going to show up somewhere, and they cancel last minute. Um it's almost like they feel like because they invited you, they saw you. Good enough for them.

Um or they'll do invites like uh so, when are we going to get together? Or why don't why why don't you tell me a time that we can get together? But they actually never initiate plans on their own. They they put it on to you like, "Oh, we haven't seen you in so long." Or "Hey, stranger." Right? This is more in adulthood, but you aren't being seen. You're you're being given some courtesy convitation con uh questions, but they're not curious about you. They cancel often. They're They don't show up to your important events in life, your moments. All of that absence creates a huge wound of abandonment and feeling like you're too much, you needed too much, um and you're too much effort for somebody.

And so, you end up in these relationships that are one-sided, um and you feel lonely, and you feel drained, and you feel sad, and you can't figure out why other people can't care about you enough to put in the same kind of effort into you that they would someone else. Really low-effort people don't put effort into anybody. Uh if anything, they're they're much more performative around strangers, but they're not into effort, you know? So, love without effort really is not love. It's abandonment, um and it really does damage to your attachments. You You start to just feel like you are too much of something bad, not enough of something interesting enough for them to spend time around, and that you're a task on their list.

Like, "Well, called Sherry today, asked her how she was, gave her a fake invitation. Done." Um what I suggest in those situations is to match the effort. You should never have to be the one to carry a connection alone. If you are carrying a connection alone, it is not a connection. It's emotional slavery, and you are doing all the work, and in those relationships, you are left feeling more and more empty rather than more and more full. We've spoken before about parents using the silent treatment as punishment against their children, and it's something a lot of adults continue to experience. Could you please share a message directly to the parent who believes this is an acceptable response to conflict?

>> So, to the parent who really believes that the silent treatment is some sort of a healthy intervention, um you are making your children feel like their existence is not important. Um, we all need a mirror up to us that we exist and that we are special and that we are important. To ostracize somebody, to isolate them, cuz that's really what the silent treatment is. It's isolating and humiliating. Um, if this is your way of of teaching your kid a lesson, you're going to throw them into abandonment so that they come back to you out of fear of losing the connection, rather than coming back to you from a feeling of safety and wanting a connection.

You are abandoning your children. And then you get curious later in life as to why the relationship isn't good. You're not teaching them any lessons by making them feel like they don't exist. You are damaging them and you're ruining the relationship that you could have with them single-handedly. What can you say to people who are stuck caring for elderly parents who mistreated them? How do they get through it without being continuously wounded by it? And for those who choose not to do it, how do they deal with the guilt that may come up both internally or from siblings or other family members? So, I've treated a lot of people in this position. I think each situation is unique. Um, but a lot of times in the elder care, um, the parent it just sort of continues to get worse.

I mean, personality disorders are considered progressive. In other words, they get worse over time because they continually get better at manipulating over time. Uh, elder care isn't any different. The amount of abuse that I've watched some people take is just wild and disheartening. Um, many people feel they can't step away, especially if they're an only child or if their other siblings are otherwise incapable of doing it, so they get stuck with it. So, what I encourage them is to use whatever programs they can to have outside help, like, you know, moving the parent not into your home, but maybe into a assisted living type of facility, or if they have to be in your home, you know, getting the support of having a caretaker, so the burden is not just on you. It's a financial burden. It's an emotional burden. It can be very thankless.

Um when the elderly are at that age and they never heal, they will spit on you. They will violently verbally attack you, just call you, start yelling at you. All of these things are very common. Um and it's it's a level of abuse, and here you are walking them to death's door, you know, which is a great gift for them to have, and they don't appreciate it. Um it's really hard. You have to recognize that um some of their behaviors could just be due to aging and dementia and other things, um or their will to be abusive is just so incredibly powerful that they become just wicked at that time. Now, I've also had people find their very abusive parents and diabolically abusive parents kind of soften in fear at the thought of death, and um have become a bit nicer, and they go through a confusion of I'm sort of having this experience with my parent that I always wanted as a child, and now I have it now, and now how am I supposed to feel about my childhood? So, I let those people know it's still the same person.

Vulnerability for some walking to death's door can bring out maybe a softer side of them, but that does not dismiss all the abuse that you went through through your life, and maybe there's a way that you can be thankful that you had some good moments before this person died, you know, your parent died. Um if you choose to opt out of the elder care, um and because the abuse is so bad, I think that what you'll find is they are as abusive to the staff as they are to anyone else, and you can be very grateful that you did not do that. Um you don't have to do that. Um I don't know how, you know, in each family, each person finds the care that their parent needs. Um but there are many programs out there that assist in that that can help you if you just need to get them in that type of care so that you can back away.

But if there are other siblings more than willing to step up and do that because they're still enmeshed or whatever, then let them do that. Um and if they start calling you out for not participating and you're not going to get anything in the will and blah blah blah, you've really got to measure the benefit cost ratio uh on that uh situation because if you do stand against something financial and if that makes it worth it for you to have some contact or do some help, then you need to know why you're doing that. And you can go in and do it from that space. If you want no ties at all because it's just too painful, it's not a crime that you take care of yourself, and that's not something that you should feel guilty about. That would be maladaptive guilt. That means that you're feeling guilty for something that you're not doing wrong. You protecting you um should never be looked at as you're doing something wrong. As far as people giving you feedback on your relationship or how you choose to handle elder care or as your parents getting near to death, you know, their opinion really shouldn't matter. They didn't walk a

moment in your shoes in that relationship. And they can all look at it from a very global place. You're going to regret this when she dies and blah blah blah, you know, you will or you won't. Um I don't think you should ever regret protecting yourself regardless of what stage you're in. I did not see my dad before he died. I did not go to his funeral. Um his last words to me were incredibly violent and threatening and he had many, many years to mend that before he hit the one yard line of his death when he was calling on me. I had to realize like I'm not his maker.

It's not my job to go there at the one yard line and what's he really going to say? Um I felt like if he had something to say to me, he could write me a note. He was very famous for writing nasty letters to people. So, he didn't write a note. He didn't do anything. I'm very glad I didn't go. I took care of myself. I protected myself. Um and that decision proved to be very healthy for me. So, what I will say to sum this up is there's no right answer. You have to look at what the benefit cost ratio is to you and what you can and cannot tolerate and make your decisions all based on that.