“But It’s Your Family”: Why That Sentence Keeps So Many People Trapped, and How to Finally Walk Away

A deep dive into But It’s Your Family… by Dr. Sherrie Campbell

There’s a sentence that keeps countless people locked in relationships that quietly harm them, year after year: “but it’s your family.” It’s said with good intentions, usually, but it carries an unspoken rule underneath it: that blood ties override everything else, including your own wellbeing. Dr. Sherrie Campbell, a licensed clinical psychologist who has spent decades working with people untangling themselves from harmful family dynamics, wrote But It’s Your Family… to directly challenge that rule.

Her book is a clear-eyed, compassionate guide for people who suspect, or already know, that a relationship with a parent, sibling, adult child, grandparent, or in-law has become genuinely harmful rather than simply difficult. It doesn’t treat estrangement as a last resort to feel guilty about. It treats it as a legitimate, sometimes necessary act of self-preservation, and it walks readers through how to actually do it: what to say, how to grieve it, and how to build a life afterwards that isn’t defined by the relationship you left behind.

This deep dive breaks down the book’s core arguments and offers ten practical, example-backed tips for putting them into practice, whether you’re actively considering cutting ties or already navigating the aftermath of having done so.

Who Is Dr. Sherrie Campbell, and Why Does Her Perspective Matter?

Dr. Sherrie Campbell is a licensed clinical psychologist with more than two decades of experience providing therapy, and she has spoken publicly about growing up with toxic parents and siblings herself. That combination, professional clinical training paired with lived experience of the exact dynamic she writes about, gives the book a rare mix of empathy and clarity. She isn’t approaching estrangement as an abstract clinical concept. She’s approaching it as someone who has sat across from hundreds of clients, and lived through it personally, working out what actually helps.

She’s built a career specifically around helping people navigate cutting ties with toxic individuals, and she’s written and spoken widely on the subject through outlets including the Huffington Post and Entrepreneur.com, as well as her own radio show. Her clinical background means the book doesn’t just validate the decision to go no contact, it gives readers concrete tools for identifying genuine toxicity, communicating the decision, and healing afterwards.

The Core Idea: Toxic Family Abuse Has Two Layers

Campbell’s central framework is that toxic family abuse is always two-fold. The first layer is the original harmful treatment itself, the manipulation, criticism, neglect, or control. The second layer, often more damaging over time, is the denial that surrounds it: the family’s insistence that it isn’t really that bad, that you’re overreacting, or that airing it would betray the family. This second layer is what keeps people stuck long after the original harm, because it makes trusting your own perception of events feel disloyal.

A key distinction Campbell draws throughout the book is between family members who are simply flawed, imperfect in ordinary, human ways, and those who are genuinely toxic, meaning the relationship consistently damages your ability to function, feel safe, or trust yourself. Not every difficult relative needs to be cut off. Campbell is careful to separate normal family friction from patterns that are genuinely corrosive over time.

Perhaps the most freeing idea in the book is her separation of love from relationship, and forgiveness from reconciliation. You can love someone, in the sense of wishing them well as a fellow human being, without maintaining an active relationship with them. And you can forgive someone, in the sense of releasing your own resentment, without ever reconciling, because reconciling, in genuinely toxic dynamics, often just resets the abuse cycle.

10 Practical Tips From But It’s Your Family… (With Real Examples)

1. Learn to Tell the Difference Between Flawed and Toxic

Before making any decision about a relationship, Campbell encourages an honest audit: is this person imperfect in ordinary, human ways, or does contact with them consistently leave you feeling unsafe, diminished, or destabilised? The distinction matters, because not every difficult relationship needs to end, but genuinely toxic ones rarely improve without real accountability.

Example: A sibling who’s blunt, occasionally forgets your birthday, or has different politics is flawed, annoying at times, but not corrosive. A sibling who consistently belittles you in front of others, denies it happened when confronted, and escalates whenever you set a boundary is showing a toxic pattern, not just an imperfect one.

Try this: Write down how you typically feel in the hours and days after contact with this person. Consistently drained, anxious, or smaller is different from occasionally irritated.

2. Recognise the Second Layer of Abuse: Denial

Campbell’s two-fold model highlights that the denial surrounding toxic behaviour, being told you’re too sensitive, that it never happened that way, or that you’re the difficult one, is often what keeps people stuck longest, because it erodes trust in your own memory and perception.

Example: Someone who brings up a specific hurtful comment a parent made, only to be told “that never happened” or “you always twist things,” is experiencing this second layer directly. Recognising it as a pattern, rather than genuinely doubting your own memory, is often the first real step towards clarity.

Try this: Next time your account of an event is flatly denied by the person involved, write down what you remember immediately afterwards. A written record, over time, makes the pattern much harder to argue yourself out of.

3. Separate Love From the Obligation to Maintain a Relationship

One of Campbell’s most liberating arguments is that loving someone and staying in relationship with them are not the same thing. You can wish someone well as a fellow human being from a genuine distance, without that requiring regular contact, holidays together, or ongoing access to your life.

Example: Someone might genuinely hope their estranged parent finds peace and happiness, without that hope requiring phone calls, visits, or continued exposure to harmful behaviour. Both things, care and distance, can be true simultaneously.

Try this: If guilt over ‘not loving them enough’ is part of what’s keeping you stuck, try separating the two questions explicitly: do I wish this person well as a human being, and separately, is staying in relationship with them safe or healthy for me?

4. Uncouple Forgiveness From Reconciliation

Campbell is direct that forgiveness, releasing your own resentment so it stops controlling you, doesn’t obligate you to reconcile. In many toxic dynamics, reconciliation without genuine accountability simply resets the same cycle of harm.

Example: Someone might do real internal work to stop carrying active anger towards a toxic parent, genuinely forgiving them in a personal, internal sense, while still maintaining no contact, because nothing about the relationship’s underlying pattern has actually changed.

Try this: If you’re wrestling with pressure to ‘forgive and move on’ as code for reconciling, get specific: what would genuine accountability and changed behaviour from the other person actually look like? If you can’t picture it happening, that’s useful information.

5. Get Clear on What No Contact Actually Means for You

Campbell emphasises that no contact isn’t a single, universal rule, it’s a boundary you define based on what actually protects your wellbeing. For some, it means complete silence. For others, it means limited, structured contact only in specific settings.

Example: One person might choose full no contact with a parent, including blocking phone and social media. Another might choose to see a toxic relative only at large family gatherings where others are present and the dynamic stays more controlled, as one reader described using visits only when others are around specifically because the person behaves differently in front of witnesses.

Try this: Write down exactly what level of contact, if any, actually feels safe and sustainable for you, rather than assuming it has to be all or nothing.

6. Prepare How You’ll Explain the Decision to Children

Campbell devotes real attention to helping readers explain estrangement to children in an age-appropriate, honest way, without over-explaining trauma details a child isn’t equipped to process.

Example: A parent might tell a young child simply that “Grandma and I don’t get along well enough to spend time together right now, and that’s a grown-up decision, not something you did,” rather than either hiding the estrangement entirely or detailing every specific harm.

Try this: Draft a simple, age-appropriate explanation in advance, before a child asks, so you’re not improvising an answer in an emotional moment.

7. Expect to Grieve, Even When the Relationship Was Harmful

Campbell is clear that estrangement, even from someone genuinely toxic, usually still involves real grief, for the relationship you wished you’d had, for the family narrative you were raised to believe in, for the version of this person who could have shown up differently.

Example: Someone might feel real relief after finally going no contact with a controlling parent, while also crying at unexpected moments, a holiday, a birthday, a stranger’s warm relationship with their own mother. Both reactions are normal and not contradictory.

Try this: Give yourself explicit permission to grieve the relationship you wanted, separately from being confident the decision to leave was right.

8. Release the Guilt Tied to ‘Family Loyalty’ Narratives

Much of the book addresses the specific guilt that comes from cultural and family messaging that blood relationships must be maintained no matter what. Campbell argues this loyalty narrative often protects the abuser more than the family unit itself.

Example: A family member might frame someone’s decision to go no contact as “tearing the family apart,” when in reality, the original harmful behaviour is what damaged the relationship long before any boundary was set. Naming that reframe explicitly can help loosen the guilt’s grip.

Try this: Next time you feel guilt framed around ‘family loyalty,’ ask directly: whose comfort is actually being protected by me staying silent or staying in contact?

9. Build a Chosen Support System

Campbell encourages readers to actively build relationships, friends, mentors, community, chosen family, that provide the support and connection biological family failed to provide, rather than waiting for the original relationship to somehow improve.

Example: Someone estranged from unsupportive parents might deliberately cultivate close friendships and mentor relationships that provide the encouragement, celebration, and steadiness they never got at home, effectively building a support network by choice rather than by biology.

Try this: Identify one person in your life who consistently makes you feel genuinely supported, and make a deliberate effort to deepen that relationship this month.

10. Treat Self-Love as the Real Work of the Aftermath

The book’s subtitle, loving yourself in the aftermath, points to Campbell’s real focus: cutting ties isn’t the finish line, it’s the beginning of a longer process of rebuilding your relationship with yourself, often for the first time without the distortion of a toxic dynamic shaping how you see your own worth.

Example: Someone who spent years absorbing a parent’s criticism as truth may need real, deliberate work afterwards to separate their actual self-worth from that inherited voice, therapy, journaling, or simply noticing when the old critical narrative resurfaces and consciously countering it.

Try this: Notice one specific belief about yourself that traces directly back to a toxic family message. Write down a more accurate, self-compassionate version of that belief, and return to it when the old one resurfaces.

Bringing It All Together

But It’s Your Family… makes a case that’s simple to state and genuinely hard to live: blood does not automatically entitle someone to ongoing access to your life, especially when that access consistently causes harm. Campbell’s framework, distinguishing flawed from toxic, separating love from relationship, and forgiveness from reconciliation, gives readers real language and real permission for a decision that culture rarely validates outright.

None of this makes the decision easy, and Campbell doesn’t pretend it does. Grief, guilt, and doubt are part of the process, not signs you’ve made the wrong call. What the book offers is a way through that process: clarity about what you’re actually dealing with, practical tools for setting and holding boundaries, and a genuine focus on rebuilding your own sense of self once the noise of the toxic relationship is no longer drowning it out.

🎙️ Unlock More Secrets on the Mind Set in Stone Podcast

If you’re eager to dive even deeper into But It’s Your Family… by Dr. Sherrie Campbell and uncover more practical ways to apply its teachings, tune into the Mind Set in Stone Podcast! We explore the principles of boundaries, healing, and loving yourself after difficult family relationships in a way that’s both insightful and entertaining. Listen now on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube to start reclaiming your own peace of mind.

Test Your Knowledge: The But It’s Your Family Quiz

See how much you’ve picked up. Answers are at the very bottom, no peeking early.

1. According to Dr. Sherrie Campbell, toxic family abuse is best described as:

A) A single, one-time harmful event

B) Two-fold: the original harmful treatment plus the denial surrounding it

C) Something that only applies to physical abuse

D) A concept that only applies to parent-child relationships

2. What distinction does Campbell draw between ‘flawed’ and ‘toxic’ family members?

A) They mean exactly the same thing

B) Flawed relatives are imperfect in ordinary ways; toxic relatives consistently damage your wellbeing

C) Toxic only refers to financial issues

D) Flawed relatives should always be cut off immediately

3. According to the book, does loving someone require maintaining a relationship with them?

A) Yes, love and relationship are inseparable

B) No, you can love someone as a fellow human being from a genuine distance

C) Love is not discussed in the book

D) Only romantic love allows for this distinction

4. What does Campbell say about the relationship between forgiveness and reconciliation?

A) They are the same thing and must happen together

B) Forgiveness can happen internally without requiring reconciliation

C) Reconciliation should always come before forgiveness

D) Forgiveness is not addressed in the book

5. How does Campbell describe ‘No Contact’?

A) A single universal rule that applies the same way to everyone

B) A boundary that can be defined differently based on what protects your wellbeing

C) A legal term with no personal flexibility

D) Something that only applies to sibling relationships

6. What advice does Campbell give about explaining estrangement to children?

A) Never mention it at all

B) Give a full, detailed account of every harmful incident

C) Offer an honest, age-appropriate explanation without overwhelming detail

D) Let children figure it out entirely on their own

7. According to the book, is grief a normal part of cutting ties, even from a toxic relationship?

A) No, grief only applies to healthy relationships

B) Yes, grieving the relationship you wished you’d had is common and normal

C) Grief indicates the decision to leave was wrong

D) The book doesn’t address emotional responses

8. What does Campbell suggest ‘family loyalty’ narratives often actually protect?

A) The wellbeing of the person setting boundaries

B) Often, the comfort of the abusive or toxic family member

C) Nothing, the concept doesn’t apply to toxic families

D) Only financial family interests

9. What does Campbell recommend building after cutting ties with toxic family?

A) A chosen support system of friends, mentors, and community

B) Complete isolation from all relationships

C) A new biological family exclusively

D) Only professional, not personal, relationships

10. What is Dr. Sherrie Campbell’s professional background?

A) A family law attorney

B) A licensed clinical psychologist with over two decades of experience

C) A social media influencer with no clinical training

D) A physician specialising in physical health

Quiz Answers

1. B
2. B
3. B
4. B
5. B
6. C
7. B
8. B
9. A
10. B