Book Review: Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members by Sherrie Campbell

Title: Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members

Author: Sherrie Campbell

Page Count: 224

Publish Date: April 1, 2022

Publisher: New Harbinger Publications

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Synopsis:

Cutting ties with a toxic family member is a crucial step away from a legacy of dysfunction and toward healing and happiness. This compassionate guide will help you embrace your decision with a sense of pride, validation, and faith in yourself; and provides powerful tools for creating boundaries, coping with judgment, and overcoming self-doubt.

Do you have a toxic family member? Do you feel like cutting ties with this person—even as painful and scary as that may sound—would dramatically increase your well-being and improve your life? You’re not alone. Severing ties with a family member can be devastating; and cutting this toxic person out of your life may bring up feelings of guilt and uncertainty—especially if you feel judged by others regarding your decision. Fortunately, you can free yourself from this toxic family member in a healthy, responsible, and liberating way.

In Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members, psychologist and toxic-family survivor Sherrie Campbell offers effective strategies for setting strong boundaries after ending contact with a toxic family member, and provides powerful tools to help you heal from shame, self-doubt, and stigma. You’ll find the validation you need to embrace your decision with pride and acknowledgement of your self-worth. You’ll learn how to let go of negative thoughts and feelings. And finally, you’ll develop the skills needed to rediscover self-care, self-love, self-reliance, and healthy loving relationships.

Whether you’re ready to sever ties with a toxic family member, or already have, this book will help guide you, every step of the way.

Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members

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My Review:

When I first saw this book, I knew I had to read it, as I had been raised by toxic parents and have struggled for years because of that.

Right from the beginning, even the forward, had me nodding in agreement with what was being said. I didn’t expect things to click so quickly with this book, but they did.

The list of traits of toxic people was not something new, I knew a lot of them, however, seeing them all listed in one succinct list was eye-opening, especially when I realized how many of those things applied to the toxic family in my own life, like wow how did I get raised by these people? Some of these traits may not seem toxic to people, especially in small doses, it may even seem normal, and yet they are not. Seeing this list, even if you have little to no experience with toxic people, is a good idea, that way you know when you do encounter toxic behaviors in others – or yourself.

One thing that really stood out was that the author speaks a lot about her personal experience with a toxic family. That alone makes me feel that this book was worth reading. This wasn’t some random person with no experience trying to talk about something they only know about from reading about it. She has been through it herself, and that speaks volumes. Only those who have this experience can truly understand how difficult it is to sever ties with those people and the proper ways to do that.

With each page, each chapter, I found myself feeling seen, heard, understood, and most importantly, validated in my own decision to cut ties with a toxic family.

These decisions were not taken lightly and there is a process to overcome that loss of relationships and properly grieving that, and that is one thing I lacked, but after reading this book I feel that I have been able to properly start dealing with the grief that I didn’t even realize I was carrying with me over this.

Through sharing her own experiences, plus a few tidbits of client experiences, the author does a fantastic job of sharing the many steps of realizing you have a toxic family, what that means, how, when, and why you can and should cut ties with them, and how to move on after that. None of this is an easy process, but this book can help a ton to those who are still dealing with a toxic family and those who have severed ties but aren’t sure what to do now.

Another highlight were these little ‘moments of insight’ that allowed the reader to stop and think on what they had just read and apply that knowledge to their own life and experience with toxic people, and there were often questions following these that can work as journal prompts to get your thoughts and feelings down on paper and help you process everything you have experienced.

Never in my life have i wanted to highlight and annotate a book as much as this one, however, I had borrowed the book from the library so I had to resist that urge, however, I plan to purchase a copy for myself to add to my shelf, reread it, get that itch to highlight out of my system and make even more notes and answer those journal prompt questions in deeper detail – I did get to some of them in my initial read but had to put a pause on that due to the limited time I had the book.

This book may not be the easiest to read for those who have or are dealing with a toxic family. For those of us who have cut ties and attempted to move on with our lives, it will dredge up some unpleasant memories. However, it will also offer a beginning or continuing point for our healing journal.

For those who still deal with their toxic family on a regular basis, this book will help you see that it’s not okay but that you aren’t alone and will set the foundation for severing those ties, dealing with the grief from these experiences, and setting the way to healing.

I highly recommend this book to everyone, even if you haven’t dealt with a toxic family; it will be an eye-opening experience. However, for those who do have a toxic family, this is a must-read, it will help you in so many ways and hopefully allow you to finally cut ties with those people and improve your life.

I hope you enjoyed my review of Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members. Have you read this book?

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