The High Cost of Toxic Relationships on Health, Wealth, and Peace of Mind

Narcissistic relationships are parasitic in nature. Toxic personalities often drain others of their time, money, attention, and resources.

In this podcast, Lisa Sonni joins me to discuss the high and sometimes hidden cost of narcissistic relationships.

Reference: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van de Kolk: https://amzn.to/3AtGt6z

Ready to heal from narcissistic abuse? Join Lisa and my upcoming Healing Strong live group coaching. Groups limits to 8 and the next group begins Jan 9, 2024. Secure your spot here!

Looking for direction on what first steps you should take to heal from a toxic relationship? Become a Substack newsletter subscriber and get immediate access to this week’s Podcast Extra interview. Get your access here: substack.com/@breakingfreenarcabuse

Did you know you don't need to wait a week for your next podcast fix? For only $5/month, sign up for weekly podcast extras!  Join me on Substack! 

Follow Dr. McAvoy!

• YouTube: @kerrymcavoyphd
• Instagram: @kerrymcavoyphd
• Facebook: @kerrymcavoyphd
• E-mail: hello@kerrymcavoyphd.com
• Newsletter: https://breakingfreenarcabuse.substack.com/ 
• Website: https://www.breakingfreenarcissisticabuse.com/

Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D., a mental health specialist and author, is an expert on cultivating healthy relationships, deconstructing narcissism, and understanding various other mental health-related issues. Her memoir, Love You More: The Harrowing Tale of Lies, Sex Addiction, & Double Cross, gives an uncensored glimpse into the dynamics of narcissistic abuse.

As an Amazon affiliate, a commission is earned from qualifying purchases.

Wedding Wednesday Pod
We're spilling ALL the tea on wedding drama, horror stories & the craziness of planning!

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Chapters

• 12:04 [Ad] Wedding Wednesday Pod
• 12:43 (Cont.) The High Cost of Toxic Relationships on Health, Wealth, and Peace of Mind

Transcript

Kerry: [00:00:00] Staying in a toxic relationship can be a costly decision. In this vulnerable episode, Lisa Sonni and I talk about how our decision to maintain a relationship not only impacted us financially but also physically and mentally. Lisa, I think most of us don't ever sit back to think about what being in a highly abusive relationship cost us. So, what did it cost you to be in that narcissistically abusive relationship?

Lisa: You know, I try really hard not to do the math because it was so much money, and I know that's not what you meant, but I think, you know, obviously there's a huge financial impact for many people who are coming out of these relationships, and honestly, the answer is like hundreds of thousands of dollars, but you can earn that back in theory, right? What it really cost me was my sanity. I feel like it cost me my sense of self. I lost who I was; I became a person that I think personally is [00:01:00] unrecognizable. And when I came out and started talking about what happened to me, the people in my life were absolutely shocked, could not imagine that I, of all people, would ever have put up with what I did. And so, it cost me the respect of the people around me, and just sitting with the shock was really hard. The look on people's faces—I found that really hard to deal with in person. It was so much easier for me to tell the story online than it was to tell the story in person.

Kerry: Yeah, I mean, I agree. It cost me credibility. I felt like I was waiting for people to say, "I told you so." I remember when I first got into that relationship and started posting online about it. It felt like a fairy tale, and it was embarrassing for me to then share that not only was it not a fairy tale, but it was a nightmare. It was a terrible nightmare. I felt like people thought that I was smarter than that, and that I had to live with the fact that they thought I was smarter than that, and now they know that I'm not. You know, the other thing it cost me—and this is just coming up right [00:02:00] now—is that because I got married again, my late husband's family... I never really had a firm footing with them, and because I got married, it felt like I abandoned them. I struggled to regain any type of connection that I had with them before. Now it feels like they've jumped over me, that I've become incidental and not really part of the McAvoys anymore. I've kept my late husband's name—I never gave that up—and I feel strongly identified with it, but I'm not sure they identify me as family anymore. And that really chokes me up, because I didn’t want that loss, you know? But yeah, financially, it was a horrific amount of money, a shocking amount. In fact, I had a conversation with one of my kids yesterday about finances and the future and stuff. One of them said, "I expect that I'm going to have to help as you get elderly and need more care; I expect that I'm going to have to step in," and it's humiliating to have your kids anticipate that you've hurt yourself financially enough that you're going to need them [00:03:00] because you won't make it to the end of your life. Anyway, yeah, it cost me a lot. A lot. Did it cost you health? Did you get sick in the relationship?

Lisa: So, something that I truly didn't really even connect until after, which is so shocking. Sometimes I look back and I think, "Man, it was so obvious, right?" But you don't know then what you know now. So don't hold yourself to that standard. But I remember feeling something in my chest. I couldn't make sense of it—just an increased heart rate and this kind of heaviness in my chest. I went to my doctor—I was pregnant at the time—and I described it, and he was like, "That's anxiety." And I said, "What? Get out of here, no, it's not." And then I realized, yeah, that's exactly what it was. I couldn't figure out what was causing it. Was it work? Was it home? I mean, we argue sometimes, but everybody does, so what could this possibly be? My partner convinced me that it was his family that was causing me the anxiety. His family was so crazy, so bad, so awful, that they were causing me to be [00:04:00] anxious. And it made sense. In hindsight, the real realization is that it was him causing it and attributing it to his family to create a divide. The anxiety was debilitating. I remember my doctor suggested I go on anxiety medicine, and I remember asking about the side effects since I was pregnant. He said there are no studies on anxiety meds with pregnant women because nobody's willing to do that study, obviously, but he said there have been no terrible side effects for the baby, you know, that we know of. He said what's definitely proven is that anxiety and stress while pregnant are bad. Taking the medicine? Not bad, so you should take it. And I did, and it helped, but it didn't stop the anxiety. It got worse and worse to the point where I had to up my medication. It was truly debilitating. In certain situations, especially when it came to him or his family, I was like, "Oh my God, I can't breathe." I would have full panic attacks. I could [00:05:00] never trace it back to, "Hello, you're being abused." That was the root cause of it. It was always like, "Anxiety is my problem." I felt like it was in my head. Now I know stress and anxiety affect your whole body—your immune system, your digestion, your sleep, literally everything. So you may be holding onto that. Of course, it reminds me of The Body Keeps the Score, the book. So many health issues are linked to being abused.

Kerry: Yeah, I know somebody who was actually cracking teeth. She was gritting so much, even at nighttime, that she was destroying her teeth. And how many people do you and I know who have autoimmune diseases? In fact, I wish there was a study done that would look at people who survive these types of relationships and the connection to autoimmune because I know there's a strong correlation. The number of people that I know that have some kind of either arthritis or they have lupus or just all sorts of inflammatory diseases, asthma—there's just a whole host of them that's really, really severe. My sister had MS, and she was in one abusive relationship after another, and [00:06:00] she ended up getting pneumonia, but there were multiple problems, multiple system problems, and it just caught up with her. I know that her mental health played a piece of it, that she was getting so hopeless and so discouraged that she just didn't feel like there's a really solid way out, and that she gave up. And I think that has a cost on us too—that psychological impact of feeling like we can't find a way out and can't build a life. Because one of the things that happens in these relationships is that just getting out doesn't necessarily mean it's over. We continue to be abused post-separation. So this is this perpetual cycle of abuse that we get into that's very hard to get away from this person, get a life free from this person.

Lisa: Ah, man, it's so true. The amount of things, you know, I'm kind of even thinking, I had a lot of sleep issues, and as a general rule, it takes me six minutes to fall asleep, according to my Fitbit, and I'm a good sleeper. I don't struggle with that, but I did struggle to sleep. I was awake, and I am now realizing a lot of abuse happened in the middle of the night. When you really look at the impact on your health, [00:07:00] anxiety, depression, PTSD, sleep disorders, headaches, migraines, digestive issues, cardiovascular issues, autoimmune issues—it’s literally endless. But on the subject of sleep, it drains you and you feel exhausted, and I think that is often on purpose and contributes to just how run down you feel, making you more susceptible to gaslighting and, frankly, compliance and submission, which is in many ways exactly what they want.

Kerry: Right. I have a circle of people that I work with. I would say probably it's definitely under a hundred people. So just to give you perspective, within that hundred people, two of them have suffered heart attacks.

Lisa: Wow.

Kerry: And both of them are under 50.

Lisa: Wow.

Kerry: One is in her 40s. She's a 40-year-old woman who suffered a heart attack. It's insane. I was very ill. It's hard to know the reasons why I was ill because there's suspicions that I may have been being poisoned as well. So how do you tease out what's what? But right after I got out of that relationship, I needed two total hip replacement surgeries. You think, what degree did that play a piece in my— I mean, I know I went into the relationship already having problems with those joints, but what degree did that speed it up? I also had severe insomnia. I was struggling with my weight. My weight would fluctuate pretty wildly. But my life was chaotic, and I think that was the other part that was really hard: I never quite knew what to expect. I couldn't predict even what time we’d eat. I felt like because of the course of control, which he really controlled our schedule, I didn't even know when we'd be getting up, when I’d be able to go to sleep. I lost the most basic things. I remember losing control even over being able to make a private phone call. I didn't even have the privacy to do that because everything was kind of lived in front of him. We just had no separation. So these relationships, to me, felt honestly suffocating, really, really suffocating. I can't imagine even just the consequence of that— not having privacy, not having control.

I remember even doing the simplest things, like putting groceries away and being critiqued about it. Or hanging clothes up and being [00:09:00] told that I was doing it wrong. I just felt like I had no autonomy, no way to just breathe and be myself. That can't be good for anybody when we live under that kind of loss. You mentioned, though, something about the loss of self. Can you say more about how you felt you lost yourself in that relationship?

Lisa: Oh, I lived for him. In hindsight, like, that's what they want. That's the goal. That's the conditioning. But I definitely didn't see it at the time. I think, if anything, I actually believed that that's what we were supposed to do—two people become one in a relationship. And so, the decisions that I make, who I am, I identify with him. We are an “us.” That made sense to me. But I don't think I ever really put a lot of focus on being an individual. And I still had my own individual life. He worked a lot. I had a whole friend group outside of him. I had a whole personality outside of him. I was a certain way at work. But I also wonder sometimes, in hindsight now, when I look back, I was very assertive at work. And I [00:10:00] wonder if there was even a bit of compensation for that—like, I had no power at home, so I would be more powerful at work. But I know who I am. I know who I was. And I would look at myself in the mirror and just be shocked, like, how are you in such a bad relationship? And I didn't know it was abuse at the time, despite the very obvious things. But who was I? Am I the kind of person that would be in an abusive relationship? Of course not. And yet, here I am. So what I would tell myself was, it’s not abusive. Because I would never. I’m too smart for that. As if you could outsmart an abuser. Of course, what we know now is that it’s not about intelligence at all, but in the moment, it was like, I would never be in a situation like this, so it must not be that bad. It must be me. I was willing to accept that it was me, despite, like, I would wake up in the middle of the night and wonder where he was, because he would say, like, "Hey, I’m on my way home," in a text.

And then, on my way home is, depending on where he worked and what stage of our relationship, somewhere between five and [00:11:00] twenty minutes to get home. And, like, seven hours would pass, his phone's off. And I tell you, I was probably two years out of the relationship before I realized he was cheating. I’m stupid. That was—you know, and I was so in love and so committed and so “we’re an us,” and he would never. I was blind to it. I thought he was out partying, which possibly was true, but I think there was a lot more going on. I think he was cheating for a lot longer with a lot more people, and I just had no idea. Because that was the one thing I was so sure he would never do, no matter what. I was so invested and so committed, and I trusted him implicitly. And I say this with not, you know, I don't feel any shame to say this. Pride is definitely not the word, but I say it to help other people. I genuinely would never have left him. He had to leave me. People say you're strong, especially my screen name, I'm stronger than before. I’m stronger than before because I had no choice. He left me. I would never have left him. And I am grateful every single day that he left to teach me a lesson and to get me to beg him [00:12:00] back because it didn’t work. And I don’t think I would have had the courage to leave on my own. I’m not sure.

Kerry: Do you think that the criticism and the gaslighting played a massive role in your loss of self and your loss of confidence in yourself?

Lisa: 100%. I am an incredibly confident person, and I even was raised with sort of like a "fake it till you make it" kind of mentality, so I can even present in a confident way even if I’m unsure of something. But when it came to him— and this is so true of, like, a covert abuser— is that they’re not necessarily going to say, like, "You are a b****" or to really overtly put you down. I know some do, and actually, covert narcissists can do that too. They used to do it in private. Mine was much more like, "You know how you’re not good with money, right?" And then sort of follow it with that, or like, "You just don’t understand." Or it was insults spoken as truth. And it was maybe something that I was like mildly insecure about, or I could believe that it was a problem. I [00:13:00] started to believe that I was the problem spending in our relationship. Meanwhile, he had eyes on what I was spending; I didn’t have eyes on what he was spending. And for him, it was like, "Oh, cash, you know, it’s normal." It was normal. He was spending money on drugs and alcohol. And I was spending money at, like, Starbucks or whatever, but I was also making at least double what he made. Not to say my spending necessarily needed to match that, but he convinced me through probably years and just sort of this subtle, "You know how you’re not good with money, you know how you overspend on Starbucks, you know how," and it was just presented as the truth so many times. And because I trusted him, it was like, "Okay, I see. You’re better at money. You, you get it. You’re good at this." And in hindsight, like, no, this guy's, like, bankrupt. He has no idea about money. He lies about money. He hides money. He overspends. He never thinks about saving for next month. It burns a hole in his pocket. But I'm the problem. But I believed it. And that was a part of what destroyed me, was that I bought into this pitch of his, that I was the issue, or that I [00:14:00] was wrong, or responsible for our financial ruin, and that was never true. But I have to look at myself and question, like, what made me believe those things? Was my sense of self ever strong? And I don’t think it was. In hindsight now, it’s better. I think the good thing, if there can be a good thing about being destroyed, it’s that you can build up. And become even stronger and really have a really strong sense of self.

Kerry: I got criticized for things like how I wrote letters or my—because we were running a vacation rental business—so how I communicated with guests. I would be critiqued about simple things like how I did laundry or did groceries or even why I spent what I spent when I spent it; everything came under scrutiny. And then you’re right, that’s the subtlety. The comments were, so one of the things that I’m insecure about is my self-esteem, my self-image. And so he would do subtle things like nickname me "gorgeous," but then never tell me that I look pretty. It wouldn’t matter how I dressed up or what we prepared for, I would never get any kind of compliment. And then he would make sure that when we’d go shopping, he [00:15:00] would point something out that he knew I wouldn’t fit and then try to make it public that I couldn’t try on this outfit because it wasn’t carried in my size or something. There were all these ways of just sort of making me feel aware. And then when I did start to lose weight near the end of it, he commented that he could tell I was losing weight, but he had to let me know that I still had that double chin and I needed plastic surgery. But then he would sabotage the diet by making sure my favorite snack was in the house so that I would struggle to resist it. I mean, all this stuff just to kind of create doubt and chaos and confusion. And what it did for me was I found, for example, Lisa, I started to stutter. I would struggle to even say things to people because I would listen to myself. It made me so self-conscious that I couldn’t even speak because I was afraid of saying it wrong. And I struggled at times with mutism, where I couldn’t even speak at all. I would know that I needed to speak up and say something, but I’d get wishy-washy because I was afraid if I’d take a stance, he’d turn it into a fight. Or if I didn’t take a stance, later I’d hear about it and ask why I didn’t do something about it. I mean, I always felt like there was a right way, and whatever [00:16:00] way I was doing it wasn’t the right way. So then I just got increasingly insecure. Even today, you have hangovers from it. Do you find you do? Sometimes I still feel like somebody's sitting over my shoulder reading my letters. When I respond to somebody’s email or when I type in a text, I, like, really think about it.

Kerry: Like one time he said to me, "I don’t know why you have any friends with the way you maintain relationships." He’d just say weird stuff like that, or, "You’re the kind of driver that makes people have accidents." Like, no, I don’t see people having pileups behind me; I don’t know what you’re talking about. But it would be these kinds of comments that make you feel like, well, what am I doing wrong? Am I doing something? So you start to, like, double-check yourself again.

Lisa: Yeah. He would always tell me that people don’t like me. But not all people, just some people, you know? And then he’d add, "That’s okay, right? Not everybody has to like you." Why say that? I mean, no, not everybody likes everybody. And this is what’s so crazy-making about it—it’s true, sure. But then you’re not allowed to get mad at the truth because he didn’t say anything wrong. He just said the truth. But then, why do I feel so insulted by that? Right? It was the context, and it was—why say that? That’s an obvious thing about any person. You want me to know that some people just don’t like me, or that I have conflict with everybody that I meet. He’d say, "There’s always one person." He would make a comment that everywhere I worked, there was always one person that I just could never get along with. Which is kind of true, in fairness. And that’s the part that makes it so hard, is like, yeah, well, there’s always going to be one person who doesn’t like an authoritative, smart, intelligent, powerful woman, always. And it wasn’t just a man. In fact, it was often women that I would have sort of a conflict with, but nothing outrageous. I mean, I don’t mean, like, arguing with people at work, but just—but it was always like, but it’s you, right? It would never be presented as if the other person could be part of the problem or part of creating the conflict or that they were in any way threatened. It was always my personality that led to that. "You understand, right? It’s just who you are. But I like you."

Kerry: Oh, yeah, I exactly had those kinds of conversations. You [00:18:00] reminded me, in fact, because I just traveled, I was really aware of this, and I actually asked my sons what they would do. You know how when they load, on some planes, they load you by groups? And I don’t even know how they select the groups. To me, it almost feels like, oh, well, she’s group three, and he’s going to be group six, or what? It almost feels random. With Southwest, you want to be grouped early because you pick your seat. But a lot of these, the seats are already selected. So it’s not like it’s going to change where you’re sitting on the plane. You’re still sitting where you bought your seat. So when we weren’t grouped together and he was ahead of me, he would go ahead and then leave me behind to get on with my group, even though we’re sitting next to each other. Why couldn’t he just stand with me and walk on together? We’re not losing the seat. It affects nothing. Why do we care what group we would go on? But it would matter. He would make sure he’d leave me. He’d do little subtle stuff like that. So I was even asking my sons, what would you do? They’re like, well, we’d walk on together. If it mattered, we’d walk on together. Who wouldn’t do that? But yet these are the things that they do. And what they do, though, is it deliberately makes you feel less than, invisible or [00:19:00] replaceable. Or they play off that you’re being paranoid. "Why are you questioning so much? Why do you need to know that? How come you’re asking me?" So it makes you feel like you can’t just be a person with needs. You can’t be a person who ever has insecurities, but somehow all of this becomes dangerous, and you have to guard against it so that you don’t get hurt by this individual. And the thing that’s so hard about this is, what I see, Lisa, is that this damage, whether it’s to your health or to your psychology, to your mental health, it lasts. It lingers and continues to go forward with you into the future. These are things that I’m still trying to untangle and get out of my personality because I feel like it’s got a hook in me, a barb in me. So I really, actively, have to let go of this stuff. Is this something you find you’re working to try to heal from too? Has it had some lingering effects?

Lisa: Yeah, it absolutely has, and I even think in the context of, like, you know, I talk about how he used to work a lot, so we didn’t spend a lot of time together. But when I would say, like, "You know, I haven’t seen you in days, and I want to spend time with you," he’d be like, "What are you talking about? I just saw you yesterday. What [00:20:00] are you talking about? We live together. We spend time together all the time." We don’t. And I’m not even talking about, like, we’re on the same couch, the same show is on—that’s not time together. I mean, like, literally, we’re not even in the same room; we’re not in the same house. You are at work, and I am at home, or I’m doing my own thing, but we’re not together. But every time I would say, "I want to spend time with you," it was like, "Why are you so needy? Why are you so clingy? Why are you so..." And it made me want less and become smaller. But now, when I have moved on and, you know, even express that I want to spend time with my partner or friends or anything, I’m always like, am I being needy? Am I asking for too much? Because he groomed me to believe that any needs I have are too much. So when you’re trying to get yourself mentally well after this— and you know, I was taking anxiety medication—when can I stop? Right, and luckily, I’ve been able to stop. But I also recognize that some people are never able to, and there’s no shame in taking medication. Plenty of people take it forever, and that’s okay. But I [00:21:00] wanted to be better and feel better and get over these scary things. I mean, honestly, I remember once an ex of mine couldn’t find his keys, and I remember thinking, "Oh my God, I have to help him find his keys." No, I don’t. He lost his keys. But because if my abuser lost his keys, the whole house had to stop immediately, and if you weren’t immediately helping, you’re lazy, what’s your problem, you never do anything, it’s your fault that I’m late. Meanwhile, like, I never touched the keys. To get over some of those trauma responses and those beliefs about yourself that you’re unlikable or insignificant, that’s really hard to get over. It takes a lot of work.

Kerry: It does. It really does have a hangover, and I find that it has changed me in some ways, in ways that I’m not all happy about. Maybe I’m self-conscious about some things. And here’s another change that I see in a lot of people is that they start to develop some mild form of agoraphobia. Meaning that they start to find it hard to go out and do new things, meet new people, take on new risks or new challenges. That, in a way, in order to create [00:22:00] increased safety, you’ve let your world get smaller. And it’s very hard for you to, like, feel that freedom or that confidence to go out and take that risk again. But I think there’s a couple reasons. One is I feel like sometimes we blame ourselves for picking this person. I should have seen this. I should have realized this person wasn’t safe for me because I made an error there. What other errors am I making so that I don’t want to make more mistakes in the future? But I also think they undermine us, and they make us question ourselves. Question reality, even our abilities, so then we get hesitant to take those types of risks. But the number of people I see who walk out of these relationships with some form of struggle is so, so huge.

The statistics are when you normally have a traumatic event in your life, only 40 percent of the population struggles and needs help. Sixty percent of the population does pretty well, finds the way to get back on their feet. But 75 percent of people who have been in a narcissistically abusive relationship struggle to get back on their feet. The majority of us struggle. So this is a really common problem. I would love us to talk about the fact that [00:23:00] you and I offer coaching called Healing Strong, but I also want to then talk about what we’re going to get into on the podcast extra. But why don’t you tell them a little bit about Healing Strong? I know our next group is going to be in January. We also have a group in February as well as in April. But what have you really liked about this 12-week live group coaching program?

Lisa: So I think the biggest thing is that you get this sense of community, and the one thing that I really hear that's such a common thread for people is that they’ve been isolated and that their friends and family don’t understand, and they feel really alone in what they’re going through. And this is something that Healing Strong offers— is the community aspect of talking to other people, hearing other people’s stories, and I cannot even describe to you how validating it is. I remember when I first started talking on TikTok and started making a page, and you’re seeing these comments like "me too," and "oh, mine did this." It’s like, wait a minute, I’m not by myself in this. You also made the same mistakes and you also believed the same garbage, and you feel so connected to people. So I think that’s [00:24:00] really helpful.

But ultimately, you see all these people that are like, "You know, I got myself out of the relationship, but I still feel stuck, or I’m still ruminating, or I just can’t stop crying. I go to the grocery store, and I have to, like, ditch the cart and go home." You feel so stuck. And people are missing the actual skills that need to be built and some of the conversations that need to be had about closure and grief and the anger because people will tell you, "You can’t be angry." Society doesn’t give you permission to be angry. But how do you process that when nothing and no one around you lets you? So it’s such a safe space for people to go through the 12 programs and really build the skills and release what you need to release in a safe and small community of like-minded women.

Kerry: I think it’s also cool that it’s live and that you and I both take turns leading it so they get to know me as well as they get to know you, and they get to be able to ask us questions and build a relationship with us while they’re building a relationship with each other. I also love just the personalized attention to it. So, yeah, if people [00:25:00] want to know more about it, I’m going to make sure to put the links in the show notes so that you can sign up for one of the upcoming sessions. But let’s jump over to the podcast and talk about the first steps to healing from these long-lasting consequences of being in a narcissistically abusive relationship. And thank you so much for joining me today, Lisa, as always.

Lisa: Thank you.

Kerry: Well, that’s a wrap for this week’s episode. Are you following me on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube? Find me at Kerry McAvoy, PhD. And whether you’re in or out, considering leaving or have left a narcissistic relationship, find community support at my Toxic-Free Relationship Club. You can learn about this resource as well as others at KerryMcAvoyPhD.com, and I’ll see you back here next week.