Episodes

There comes a moment when loving harder, explaining better, or trying one more time simply isn’t enough. A moment when you realize that healing may not look like reconciliation — it may look like reclaiming yourself. Welcome to Sherapy Sessions: The How’s of Healing Family Trauma — a powerful evolution of the show that has supported thousands of listeners navigating painful family dynamics. While the heart of this work remains the same, the focus is expanding. This isn’t just about cutting ties...

🌱 Episode Overview Many parents were taught that love means constant involvement, fixing, and sacrifice. But what happens when care turns into control and closeness becomes pressure? In this episode, Dr. Sherrie sits down with Randi Crawford, a certified life coach who helps parents, teens, and young adults build healthier relationships rooted in autonomy, trust, and real connection. Together, they explore how stepping back doesn’t mean abandoning your child, it means allowing them to grow. T...

Today’s episode brings you a powerful and deeply needed conversation with David Weeks — a survivor of complex trauma and sex trafficking who has turned his lived experience into advocacy, education, and hope for others walking their healing path. 💛 David survived all ten Adverse Childhood Experiences before the age of fourteen. His early life was shaped by profound family dysfunction, chronic trauma, and emotional abandonment — the kind that leaves a child questioning their worth and humanity. ...

Parallel parenting isn’t about being distant or disengaged, it’s about protecting emotional safety when co-parenting isn’t possible. In this episode, we explore how high-conflict dynamics, unresolved trauma, and control patterns can spill into parenting after separation, and how parallel parenting can interrupt generational cycles instead of passing them down. This conversation focuses on coping through the process, staying regulated under pressure, and intentionally raising children who don’t...

What happens when the truth you uncover about your family changes everything you thought you knew about love, loyalty, and belonging? In this powerful conversation, Dr. Sherrie sits down with Rich Boerner, author of A Son Confronts Family Secrets, to talk about what it means to face generational denial, uncover hidden truths, and reclaim your voice from the silence you were raised to protect. Rich opens up about his journey from compliance to confrontation—how unraveling the lies at the center...

Have you ever felt like you're living in someone else’s life script—following invisible rules, walking on emotional eggshells, and carrying pain that doesn’t fully belong to you? Do you wonder why, even after cutting contact, your toxic family still seems to echo in your mind, body, or choices? Survivors of enmeshed, narcissistic, or otherwise toxic family systems often live in what Jerry Wise brilliantly calls “the family trance”—a psychological and emotional programming that conditions our p...

In this episode, Dr. Nicki Monti joins us for a deeply honest and often jaw-dropping conversation about how a life filled with chaos, addiction, sex, loss, and self-sabotage became the foundation for her transformation as a therapist and healer. From starting a phone sex business to facing addiction, two divorces, and the death of her husband, Dr. Monti has lived through it all, and come out wiser, lighter, and with zero shame about the lessons she earned. We talk about the dark humor and huma...

Survivors of narcissistic abuse often carry clarity, grief, and strength at the same time. Adriana has built a powerful platform by telling the truth plainly, no sugarcoating, no appeasing. In this conversation, we talk about boundaries, energy, enablers, and what healing actually looks like when you stop performing for people who never showed up. ✨ In this episode, we cover: 1️⃣ What moment made Adriana realize this work was her calling, and why survivors often know long before they’re ready ...

When you separate from an abuser, the abuse doesn’t always end, it often shifts to the courtroom. In this powerful episode, Dr. Sherrie sits down with Courtney Gilmartin, a Family Court Strategist and certified Trauma-Informed Coach, to expose how toxic individuals manipulate the legal system to continue their patterns of control, power, and psychological abuse. We dive deep into DARVO: the tactic of Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender, and how it plays out in real-time during custod...

In this episode, singer-songwriter Nick Hames joins us to share the story behind one of his most vulnerable songs—a track that dives deep into betrayal, longing, and the painful realization that some people will never be who we hope they are. We talk about the inspiration behind the lyrics, the power of repetition in “that’s just not who you are,” and how music becomes both a mirror and a release when writing about heartbreak. Nick opens up about balancing poetry and melody, the lessons he’s le...

Menopause is often framed as a breakdown, but what if it’s actually a breakthrough? In this episode, we dive deep into how the hormonal shifts of midlife don’t create problems; they reveal them. We explore how menopause strips away the “people-pleasing filter,” resurfaces childhood survival roles like caretaker or peacemaker, and forces women to confront toxic family dynamics they may have tolerated for years. Our guest, That Menopause Guy, shares his personal story of growing up with an abusi...

In this powerful conversation, Dr. Sherrie sits down with Bridgette to explore what it means to transform toxic family patterns and step into the role of a sacred ancestor. Drawing from Bowen’s Family Systems theory, genograms, attachment work, and experiential psychotherapy, Bridgette offers a path toward breaking cycles, healing shame, and creating freedom for future generations. What You’ll Learn in This Episode: 🍏 What it means to become a sacred ancestor and why mapping family systems can...

In this deeply resonant episode of Sherapy Sessions, Dr. Sherrie Campbell welcomes Tamarin Michel, a clinical psychologist turned holistic healer, to explore the profound impact of toxic family dynamics, navigating complex in-law situations, and the transformative potential of somatic healing and inner child work. Topics include: 🍏 the power of somatic healing 🍏 how we hold trauma in our bodies 🍏 family dynamics are the common denominator in the creation of trauma 🍏 why reparenting ourselve...

In this eye-opening episode, Dr. Sherrie sits down with Chantal Contorines to unpack the hidden realities of parenting with or after a relationship with a narcissist. Chantal brings deep wisdom, compassion, and clarity to one of the most complicated and painful dynamics families face today. What we cover: 🍏 What led Chantal to specialize in narcissistic abuse and parenting after trauma 🍏 Why “co-parenting” with a narcissist isn’t actually co-parenting—and what to do instead 🍏 How humor and s...

So many of us spend years, sometimes a lifetime, chasing love, validation, or approval from family members who will never give it. In this episode, we talk about how to see the pattern for what it is, why it’s so hard to stop, and what it really takes to walk away from the chase. In this episode, we will cover: 🍏 Why we keep returning to toxic or emotionally unavailable relatives, even when we know it hurts 🍏The signs you’re stuck in a cycle of seeking approval that will never come. 🍏The fi...

Have you ever felt like no matter what you did, it was never enough for your family? Have you carried the heavy burden of criticism, manipulation, or indifference, always trying to fix what you didn’t break, always hoping that one day your love would be enough to change them? Many survivors of toxic family dynamics wrestle with this painful reality, often staying far longer than they should out of guilt, duty, or the desperate hope that things might improve. 🌿 Passive-aggressive, overly criti...

Living someone else’s script—performing the role your family assigned while quietly losing touch with who you are—makes the shift to authenticity not just an emotional transformation but a full-body reckoning. This episode explores the fall from “golden child” to scapegoat, the link between unresolved trauma and chronic illness, and how reclaiming authenticity fosters true mental, physical, and spiritual healing. 🌿 What is mind-body healing? 🌿How our physical bodies alert us to dysfunction th...

Have you ever felt like you're living in someone else’s life script—following invisible rules, walking on emotional eggshells, and carrying pain that doesn’t fully belong to you? Do you wonder why, even after cutting contact, your toxic family still seems to echo in your mind, body, or choices? Survivors of enmeshed, narcissistic, or otherwise toxic family systems often live in what Jerry Wise brilliantly calls “the family trance”—a psychological and emotional programming that conditions our p...

Are you beginning to realize that your healing started the moment the noise stopped? The moment you cut ties with your family? If your healing journey has felt spiritual, psychological, and deeply physical all at once, it's because it should be. Spiritual teacher and empath mentor Jennifer Pilates, shares the embodied path of healing after cutting ties with a toxic family. Because healing after family trauma isn’t just a psychological process; it’s a full-body, soul-deep return to yourself. 🌿...

Have you ever questioned whether your neurodivergence played a role in the trauma you endured—and perhaps even helped you escape it? Was it the trauma that caused the ADHD, or did the ADHD cause the trauma? In this powerful conversation, let's explore how living with undiagnosed ADHD made Angie, an ADHD coach and fellow survivor of a toxic family system, the perfect target for scapegoating—misunderstood, mislabeled, and chronically blamed in a family that punished difference instead of embraci...

Has your relationship with your mother brought more pain than comfort? The mother wound is real, painful, and often invisible to outsiders—but healing is possible. Join me and Stephi as we unpack the deeply misunderstood journey of women who recognize the “mother wound”—emotional enmeshment, manipulation, and conditional love—and make the toughest choice: breaking free. 🌿 Key behaviors that signal a toxic maternal relationship, and how you can l identify them in your own experience 🌿 The var...

Have you ever felt responsible for a parent’s emotions—like it was your job to keep them happy, calm, or stable? Were you praised for being the “mature one,” even though you were silently falling apart inside? Do you ever struggle to know where your needs end and someone else’s begin? If so, you may have grown up enmeshed. In this episode, let's explore how enmeshment, adultification, and complex trauma converge to distort the victim's identity and long-term relational health. 🌿What is enme...

In many toxic families, the scapegoat becomes the emotional and psychological sponge for everyone else’s dysfunction, pain, and projection. It’s a trauma-inducing role that is often misunderstood, dismissed, or mischaracterized as “drama.” But for those who live it, scapegoating is a profound and persistent form of psychological abuse. One of our bravehearts, LaToya Rice, shares her personal experience as the scapegoated twin in a toxic family system. Our conversation explored the depth of this...

You are more than a toxic family abuse survivor—you are a cycle breaker. And there is a powerful difference between the two. In this episode, find out what it means to move beyond the pain of being the “scapegoat” and step into the empowered identity of a “cycle breaker.” 🌱 What is a cycle breaker? 🌱 How each cycle breaker’s story is uniquely their own but also similar to the story of other survivors 🌱 The devastation of being discarded by a parent 🌱The grueling process of giving up how 🌱 ...