Why Do We REALLY Stay? Answering Your Fan Mail

This week’s fan mail dives into two powerful questions about surviving emotional abuse.

First, Dr. Kerry explores what it means when you stop crying—and why emotional shutdown can be a survival mechanism in toxic relationships. Then she tackles whether the sunk cost fallacy is really what keeps us stuck with a narcissist, or if something deeper is at play.

Submit Your Question!

If you would like your question addressed on air, please respond here!

 ****************************************

Stay in Touch Dr. Kerry!

• Youtube
• Instagram
• TikTok
• Facebook

More About Dr. Kerry

Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D, a retired psychologist and author, is an expert on cultivating healthy relationships and deconstructing narcissism. Her blogs have been featured in Mamami, YourTango, Scary Mommy, and The Good Men Project. In Love You More, Dr. McAvoy gives an uncensored glimpse into her survival of narcissistic abuse, and her workbook, First Steps to Leaving a Narcissist, helps victims break free from the confusion common in abusive relationships. She hosts the Breaking Free from Narcissistic Abuse podcast and offers trauma-related advice on social media.

Transcript

It feels like they really care, but we often feel like they're using us a whole lot. It could be that it's a form of emotional, psychological shutdown. There's a lot of intermittent reinforcement happening in those relationships.

Welcome to fan mail. A space where I answer your real questions about toxic relationships, narcissistic abuse, and the long road to healing.

Thank you so much, Sean, for asking this really great question on YouTube. And Sean asks, what does it mean when you no longer cry?

I had several reactions to this question. One is that it could be that it's a form of emotional, psychological shutdown from chronic fight or flight state where you have learned that numbing your emotions is the best survival mechanism, or you're so overwhelmed that it's the only way that you can cope is just to not feel, because there's way too much to feel that you sort of like almost dissociated from yourself.

But I had two other possible thoughts of why this may be happening. Sometimes, toxic or narcissistic people see emotional displays as forms of manipulation. So if you were to have a reaction to something that's very powerful, very big, and they just saw it as manipulative. Exploitative that would feel extremely invalidating and minimizing so you'd learn over time that it's just safer not to have any reaction at all, because to have it mislabeled almost is more painful than to just cope with it on your own. But also could be because you have had chronic experience of someone in your life labeling some emotions, maybe not all of them, but some of them as either wrong or weak or shameful, either by an authority figure, like a parent or someone that you deeply respected and so you've learned that it's just better to not cry. That to in order to be respected or seen or not be weak around this person, you've learned to just shut that part of yourself off. So whatever the reason is, it's really important for you to create safety within yourself to feel what you're feeling. Maybe for a long time, you're not gonna cry, but that doesn't mean you can't acknowledge that you're having a hard emotional experience that maybe you're feeling sad or lost, or frustration, upset, and to find a way to express it in other ways. Maybe you turn on softer music, maybe you reflect on it and take a walk. Maybe you journal, but for you to acknowledge it with a form of gentleness and support, so you may not have to express it literally physically with a visceral reaction, but it doesn't mean that you can't find ways for you to create safety and validation for yourself because bottom line, you deserve to have an emotional life and an emotional self. And the all emotions have a place. They have an important place in our lives. I see them as like warning signals on a car's dashboard. They give us more information about what's happening and how we feel about what's going on in our life.

So crying is not a weakness, it's just more information and a way of expressing your humanity. So thank you so much for this question. I hope this answer helps.

So here's another question that I got on YouTube about narcissistic relationships, and the commenter wrote, it seems like sunk cost fallacy is a huge impediment for many. What might be tips to understand its falseness?

So there's a couple points being made here. I wanna first start by defining what sunk cost fallacy is. According to chat GPT's definition, it is the mistaken belief that you must continue investing time, energy, or resources into something because you've already invested so much, even when it's harmful or no longer viable.

But the questioner is making the assumption that it's because of a sunk cost that we've put into this relationship is the reason what we continue to stay in the toxic relationship. I actually think that's not the primary reason that we stay. It's the secondary one. I think the primary one is because we're confused because a toxic person does not really reveal what their actual level of investment is. It feels like they really care, but we often feel like they're using us a whole lot because they're deliberately muddying the waters by showing just enough goodness or just enough remorse and affection at just the right moments to leave us feeling hopeful and encouraged when there actually is no hope, encouragement at all, that it's just that goodness that we're seeing is actually a form of manipulation.

We gotta remember there's a lot of intermittent reinforcement happening in those relationships, which leads us to not for sure what's true or real, whether or not they're actually love us or whether they're just using us. So it's clarifying the confusion to me is the biggest hindrances to why we can't get outta these relationships.

But I do think sunk cost fallacy plays a role once we're in, and we've been in it for a long time because we feel like we've invested so much. We might as will just stick it out and keep with it. I've heard people, as they start to get older thinking, well, I've already spent 30 years with this person. How do I start over? Isn't it just better to sort of finish this, let it trail out naturally because I've, I have so much investment. Maybe the way through this is to ask yourself this question, and that is, if I stay in this relationship, what do I keep from being able to invest in instead? In other words, if I was to get out, what possibilities might I really actually have with a new future starting over? And we can also ask ourselves this question, if I met this person today, would I choose them knowing what I now know? I think that if we start to realize that we have a future, even if it's a future that maybe feels limited because of age or resources or access, it doesn't mean it can't be a better, more empowering or peaceful future. And often we put so much into these relationships, we stack so much of our hopes and dreams that we forget to invest in ourselves.

So thank you so much for this question. It was really fascinating. And if you want me to answer your questions, please just put it in the comment or where I invite those types of questions coming in 'cause I'd love to answer it and I deeply appreciate you guys watching and being a follower of mine. So if you haven't, be sure to subscribe and let me know what you would like me to address for our next fan mail question.