March 30, 2025 • 34 mins
Dr. Kerry Kerr McAvoy was already 20 years into her career as a psychologist with an academic education in narcissistic behaviors and counseling sessions with countless couples trying to navigate relationships through toxic narcissism. Still, her true education in narcissism didn't happen until she married a man with a God complex — a narcissist. "I definitely saw narcissists in my practice, and I'm sure I saw narcissistically abusive relationships, but I just didn't know what I was seeing at the time because that's not something they talk about in graduate school. They don't talk about the consequences of living with a toxic individual." In this conversation, Terry not only shares events from her nightmare marriage that resulted in her best-selling memoir, Love You More, and her popular podcast, "Breaking Free from Narcissistic Abuse," she also shares red flags women can look for when dating to hopefully avoid the pain and misery she unfortunately learned the hard way.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Virgin.
(00:02):
Beauty.
Bitch.
Podcast.
Inspiring women to overcome social stereotypes and share unique life experiences without fear
of being defiantly different.
Your hosts.
Christopher and Heather.
Let's talk, shall we?
Are all narcissistic men the same?
(00:23):
Are there other methods similar?
And most important, are there ways for women to identify and avoid becoming their victim?
These questions happen to be the expertise of a psychologist and writer who also happens
to be an expert on cultivating healthy relationships and deconstructing narcissism.
(00:45):
We welcome Dr. Kerry Kerr McAvoy to Virgin Beauty Bitch.
Welcome.
Thank you so much.
Pleasure to have you.
We are a leading expert on narcissism and toxic relationships, but your dictatorial degree
in psychology didn't prepare you for what you now understand as narcissism.
In fact, that education came from falling in love with a narcissist.
(01:07):
Yeah, yeah, unfortunately that's true.
Yes.
Tell us that story.
What, how did that come about in your life?
Yeah, so I recognized you as a narcissist too.
It wasn't that I missed the diagnosis.
So it was the fact that there wasn't any emphasis on the consequences of being in a relationship
with someone who has that diagnosis.
So a little bit about me, I have a PhD in clinical psychology worked for 20 years, 20 plus years,
(01:32):
in a general practice.
So all sorts of types of problems definitely saw a narcissist in my practice.
And I'm sure I actually saw a narcissistically abusive relationships, but just didn't know
what I was seeing at the time because that's not something they talk about in graduate
school.
So I thought the consequences of living and residing and being around a toxic individual.
So I had a good marriage, was married 30 plus years to an amazing guy who then had got cancer.
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And in a very quick period of time succumbed to it.
It was a terminal illness from the get-go.
We knew that he wasn't going to make it because it was a very extremely rare form of cancer.
And then my whole life turned upside down.
I stopped practicing because I was just not in the shape to see patients.
And really wanted the relationship that I had back because I, multiple things happened
at the same time.
(02:18):
I also became an empty nester at the same time he passed away and was preparing to move
into a retirement.
And all of that just sort of disappeared on me.
So I approached dating like a job and met a, you know, like it does feel like a job.
Met the person a year later.
And then a year after that we were married.
But what I didn't know, I mean, even though I recognized this person, it was pretty narcissistic.
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At the time I didn't go out of my way to diagnose him because you don't do that with loved ones.
But I recognized a lot of the toxic traits.
But I thought that they were survivable.
And I thought that it was just meant that he was larger than life than that he had to be
the biggest person in the room.
And honestly, I don't really care about that.
That doesn't matter to me.
So I thought that as long as I was okay with those pieces, that this was going to be
(03:02):
survival, but boy was I in for a terrible ride of my life.
What was the breaking point where you went, oh my lord, what have I done?
How did I get here?
Yeah, yeah, it was really clear.
The breaking point was like hyperdramatic.
So we took a delayed honeymoon.
We were moving to Mexico.
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He was a resident, but had lived his whole life in the United States at a green
card.
But I thought it would be really cool to go to Mexico and run a vacation, run all business.
Now why would I do that after being a psychologist?
I'd been a landlord for years and enjoyed it.
And always really liked the hospitality part and thought that that blended all the best,
(03:44):
see where I was, of practicing.
So I thought that blended all the best parts of my skill sets, my experience running, being
having tenants and managing property.
And then my skill sets with people.
And then the fact that if we lived in another country, it would extend the resources further.
And plus it just thought it really exotic, like an incredible thing to do.
And he was Mexican.
So he had the language.
(04:04):
So I thought, yeah, I have a minor in Spanish, but I hadn't practiced it.
So I thought I would lean into his fluency and that we would be able to do this.
So yeah, we were in that process.
I forgot the original questions.
Sorry, I got so caught up with it.
Just the breaking point for you.
Oh, the breaking point.
So yes, so we were about ready to get ready to go.
(04:24):
We took a delayed honeymoon because we were moving, packing, selling things.
So we took a honeymoon a month after we got married with family.
And on the honeymoon, I caught him the first night opting out of being physically intimate
for watching pornography and texting another woman.
(04:44):
That was my first brutal awareness that this person was into things that I'd already asked
about and he denied.
So it and plus just that that was a very harmful, hurtful betrayal.
But on the last night, when I thought we patched things up and things were a little bit better,
and the last night I woke up to a message from a woman saying, I guess the joke's not just
(05:06):
on me, but it's on YouTube.
I've been dating him for the past three months and then proceeded to describe things that
told me she'd been in his car, told me times and dates that I knew lined up with times and
dates where we had been, you know, she lived out of the city.
So I knew we'd been in her area that it was, I could tell this was a real story.
It was very plausible.
(05:26):
And then he shortly, his reaction told me it was true too.
So in that moment, when it happened, it's hard to describe my world shattered.
I actually lost consciousness.
I felt like there's a scene I saw years ago from one of my favorite sci-fi shows where
there is two worlds that are colliding and one world breaks and the other world does not.
(05:50):
And that's what I felt like.
I felt like there's two realities.
There's a version I thought we were living and then there's this version I'm just learning
about and I realized her version was the truth.
My version had been a lie.
And in that moment that facing the fact that I had been living a constructed lie that I
realized I knew nothing.
I didn't even know if I knew this person.
(06:11):
Everything then became a question.
Who is he?
Do I know him?
What's he actually doing?
Does he even work where I think he works?
What's true about his story?
What's true about our relationship?
It was just devastating.
Devastating.
Thank you for your vulnerability and in sharing that piece because it's wild how many people
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have been in a circumstance like what you're describing where it's possible, especially
with a narcissist to get wrapped up in the charm and the charisma of what they present
to be the reality of who they are and the story that they tell you.
And so when you do face that moment as you so well described of the collisions of two
(06:54):
worlds meeting where you're not sure anymore what really is reality since they've painted
such a vivid picture of someone that they're not, it lends to something that we explore
on this show which is the power of the bitch inside us, not as an insult, but as a woman
(07:16):
who knows herself and sets the boundaries or says no more.
But I'm interested with that moment.
What was that, like the first steps for you after facing these worlds that had collided
and from what you've said, I can appreciate losing consciousness because it's so drastic
(07:40):
what you're feeling.
But that process of reconnecting with your inner power to face the new reality or the reality
that has now been uncovered, what was that like for you?
Yeah, it actually was a two plus year process.
I would not say it happened in that moment.
(08:01):
The first thing that happened in that moment was the reality that I had two options in front
of me.
One was I could pretend I didn't learn this and things would go back to normal because
we were mid move.
I mean, you have to remember that mid move.
Like literally house is sold, car has been sold.
So my thought is, can I move to the new country without him?
(08:26):
I don't know, I can't do that.
How do I stop it when everything is like mid purchase down there?
Like literally financially mid purchase.
So it was like I was like in this leap that I couldn't get out of the leap that I had
to do something.
So I knew that.
I was facing with really some hard truths and I want to stop and say for a moment, this
(08:47):
is a common problem.
Narcissistic and other toxic people know that large transitions tend to trap people and
they like to utilize them as ways to keep people in these relationships.
So I recognize that I was in some ways stuck in a true financial way and that I needed
to make some massive decisions that were going to have huge consequences for me.
(09:12):
So my thought was, okay, I could pretend all this goes away, finish this move, then decide
what I'm going to do and I get there.
Or can I live with myself doing that and what does that mean?
Do I go ahead and confront this and then see what we can do to remedy it while we finish
the move?
That was my choices at the moment.
But there was a part of me, you know, you talk about finding the bitch part.
(09:33):
I had been so kind of trained and groomed through my life to be, you know, your words, virgin,
beauty of bitch.
I've been really hard words to deal with as a woman.
I mean, all of them are massive stereotypes that have lots of ramifications.
All of them I have very huge feelings about and that bitch part was something I was terrified
(09:55):
of.
And I still don't like that side or find no her very well.
So I was pretty compliant as much as I could and it wasn't until I got closer to the end
of the relationship that I found the strength.
It took two years and it took another massive crisis for me to get in touch and find more
strength because I made this dangerous assumption.
(10:17):
And I think a lot of women get taught this.
Unfortunately, to me, this is very, very frightening.
We should not be giving this message to our daughters.
And that is the me is served by the we.
It's served by the relationship that I will be good if the relationship is good.
No, no, no, no, it doesn't work that way.
You're in trouble when you set yourself up like that.
(10:39):
But I didn't know, I mean, it took two more years for me to discover I didn't have a self
outside of us, which is why I was moving so rapidly into the next relationship is because
without a relationship who am I, I couldn't really answer those questions very well.
So it was a massive process.
So the immediate reaction was just don't lie to myself.
By the way, I did not.
(10:59):
I confronted him right away.
Don't lie to myself.
Don't pretend nothing happened.
Something happened.
And I couldn't do the rest, which was to stop and say, okay, let's like assess what I'm
really going to do.
Let's invite people in and decide what's the next step I couldn't do that.
I went ahead and tried to make it work with this person.
Is that prides or fear of what people might think of you?
(11:22):
I think it was both.
I mean, definitely because here one of the things is a widow.
Widow is another nasty word.
I don't think we've talked, sit and talk much about what it feels like to own the identity
of a widow.
For one, people are terrified of you because you now represent the very thing that they're
afraid of, which is a collapse and the death of a partner, a loss of a relationship and
the loss of your life with that relationship.
(11:44):
So you're attached to death.
So it means you sort of represent, even think about we sleep dresser and black and we even
have like the black widow and we talk about all these things that sort of like associate
death with that identity.
The other thing about it is that there's a saying out there that widows come into money
often and that they are stupid and do really ridiculous things and make lots of errors.
(12:05):
So I had this trope that I was trying not to live out.
I didn't want to have come back and say, "Yep, I was right.
I invested and believed in somebody that shouldn't and it's cost me money."
And I feel really stupid about that.
So yes, there is pride, but there is also a tremendous amount of fear.
Another part of my story, and I didn't know until this is all over with, but I'm autistic.
And that's also been a very interesting identity to grapple with.
(12:29):
And what it's meant for me is being the outsider for most of my life, knowing there's something
different about me, the way I relate to people.
And I have experienced a tremendous part of my life very alone.
And my marriage to my first husband was like one of the big times in my life, like I felt
like it came home.
And I was hoping to find a home again in this new relationship.
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So to let go of that meant I had to embrace the isolation and the loneliness again.
And that just, I'll tell you for the longest time that the terror around that was so huge
that it just kept me from being able to take action in my best interest.
So many of things of what you've said here, I think, is what, again, I love these conversations
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because I personally, and I know so many other women have felt so isolated in how we feel
in these relationships.
And we feel so alone that it could be just us and it's the way I've been groomed in society
and almost like the questions of what's wrong with me.
So these conversations, I think, really help to open up that this is a commonality and that
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there are systems in place that lend to us feeling this way.
So for us on this show, self-trust is a huge theme because when you've been in a toxic
relationship, even your instincts feel suspect.
And society doesn't always give women the tools to recognize coercion, especially when
(13:56):
it's dressed up as love.
So I noticed on your website that you talk about love bombing and emotional manipulation.
I'm wondering if you could also share with us some early red flags that women should
listen to, especially when at times we silence or push down those gut instincts.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(14:16):
Often a lot of us are so accommodating that when we, one of the things that toxic people
are not afraid to do is put you in a bind that makes you feel mean, that you're forced
into it.
They call you out on something, force you into a decision or a truth that you're not really
ready to say that's that host civility or hospitality dictates we don't do that to
(14:36):
each other.
We're more indirect, but they are not their direct.
They'll say, so does that mean that you're letting me go because I'm a problem here?
And you're like, yeah, because you're the problem here.
You know, literally like challenge you with something that's terribly uncomfortable and
you have to like stare at them and either lie and deceive yourself and maybe even betray
yourself and deceptively definitely deceive them.
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Or you have to like own that, find that strength and then stand in the truth of that and know
that they're like, and then that makes you a bitch for doing that.
Yes, I guess in that moment I'm a bitch for selling you the truth.
So that's very uncomfortable.
So here's some of the things that I missed in that first day.
One was that he tested me and I didn't recognize it as a test.
(15:20):
He framed it as he was being kind and chivalrous.
It really actually wasn't.
It was a test.
And that is he, we got went to the beach and he took, loaded himself up with all the stuff
that I have.
I mean, I'm umbrella, several coolers of blanket.
Just tons of, it was like hunched over with all this stuff and I said, here, let me take
a few items.
It goes, no, no, it's about time someone else takes care of you.
(15:43):
That moment was, that's stupid.
I mean, you don't need to do that.
I could have helped out.
I was prepared to help out.
You maybe have to make me carry half, but you could have let me carry something.
So in that moment, I showed that I would be compliant.
So watch out for the test.
And then the other thing that happened is he typecasted me.
That's what comes out of Gavin Debecker's book called The Gift of Fear.
(16:06):
He says, you don't want to be one of those women who is, he had a word and it wasn't an accurate
word.
Like English was the second language.
So sometimes he'd say things that were wrong, but I knew what he meant.
He's like, you don't want to be one of those like independent women or, oh, stubborn women.
That's the word.
You don't want to be one of those stubborn women, do you?
And he was meaning like, I wasn't, except help.
(16:28):
And typecasting sort of paints this image that you don't want to own.
So you go out of your way to prove that it's not true and that then it becomes the form
of manipulation by me then giving in and like, no, no, I don't want to be that.
And then becoming compliant, then I was controllable in that moment.
So watch out for the typecasting.
(16:49):
It happens a lot.
Negging is a form of typecasting.
You know, they'll do something that kind of slightly insults you.
And then you have to go out of your way to prove that that's not true about you.
But it's a great way to get us to resist our natural instincts.
I think the other thing was it just was the future faking happened right away.
You know, wouldn't have you thought about me moving here?
(17:09):
Like on the first, his first date, dude, I've not met you before.
And I think that's a discussion six months from now, not a discussion we have the first
date, but watch for the rapidness of the relationship.
If it's, it's feeling too good be true.
And if they're talking about things that are too fast, it's then that there's a signal
that this person's rushing intimacy, rushing trust.
(17:31):
And we often talk about love bombing.
Love bombing actually is fascinating because there's three parts to it.
What they do is they align with you about some past thing that's happened in your life
and say they've been there too or it happened to them probably isn't true.
But they, like, you know, example I give is that you went to university in Chicago and
they go, oh, I've been there.
And, you know, I, it isn't that green area.
(17:53):
It's so amazing.
And you think, oh, yeah, they must have been there.
They walked across that.
And then you create this alignment of a similarity.
So you feel like you have a shared past, which makes them feel like you've shared memories
when you actually don't.
And then they'll do something about this moment like I've never met anybody like you who
gets me like this.
Or I've never met anybody who has so much in common with or I've never felt like this
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before.
So they'll do something that makes this moment feel extra special like you've created a
special present moment.
And then they'll create a future with you that actually will never happen, which is wouldn't
it be wonderful to go watch the stars at this park?
Can you imagine lying on a blanket and doing that?
And then now you're like thinking in the future with them.
So they've created this whole world of time as if you've always known them, this past,
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present, and future moments that actually not really don't exist.
So they do a lot of strategies to create rapid trust.
And I think if we could be a little more suspicious maybe, I mean, here's the thing.
People think this is, I get this all the time.
We need to stop blindly trusting people.
We need to make them earn trust and trust is earned over time, over consistency, over watching
(19:00):
them.
This person in lots of situations with lots of different people and challenges.
It doesn't happen in a moment, but we tend to think that if we're slow to trust somebody
that we're suspicious, no, you're not paranoid.
That's just being cautious.
So we need to like give ourselves time to let relationships build.
(19:21):
Don't let somebody rush us.
Are we slaves to love?
I mean, all the things you mentioned there are romantic ideals almost.
The person painting a future for you, having a similarity with your past.
These are all things we think of in romantic ways.
But are we a slave then to that ideology of what love is?
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Is everybody?
I don't think men are, but I think women are.
And that's one of the big challenges has been for me as a woman who's now, I mean my
60s and facing my later years of life and my new identity as a woman with that mindset
of if I do this alone.
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And if I don't have the things in my life that most women have that sort of defines purpose
and meaning, what gives me purpose and meaning.
And I think for a lot of women we've painted the idea that it's a family and a relationship.
That's purpose and meaning.
Think about we think their grandmothers, their grandmothers, they have kids over and they decorate
Christmas cookies.
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They have retirement, they focus their life around the events with their partner.
We don't really do a whole lot of future casting for women without these roles.
So I'm not for sure it's so much as a slave is that we just really haven't helped women
expand the sense that their identity could be a lot more things and found in a lot different
kind of situations instead of just being in a relationship.
(20:51):
That sounds to me like a new brain old brain.
Like the old brain is where these ideals past ideals are.
But women have advanced way past that in what they actually have accomplished and are
accomplishing in their lives.
But this old brain seems to over arch everything.
Yeah, I think what I watch is I interact with Gen Alpha, Gen Z, the millennials.
(21:19):
I don't have so much Gen X.
I think Gen X was raised a lot similar to the way I'm on the edge of the baby boomers.
I don't feel like I'm a part of the baby boomers.
I think there's a Tom Jones generation.
I'm in that.
I was born in the 60s.
So I don't feel like I really feel like my legs straddle both generations.
But what I'm noticing is I feel like we're teaching women new things.
(21:43):
I feel like the women who are coming after me feel more permission and are braver than
I was allowed to be or encouraged to be.
So I love that.
I think that's a really very much in the right direction, which we see in the rates of women
not getting into a relationship.
I think that's great that we're slowing that down or considering whether or not really
to have children.
I'm really glad that that's an option now.
(22:03):
Not something that just feels like it's a mandate.
But yeah, definitely my generation is, well, I think, Gen X and everybody before us that
are our safety and our sense of self was found in the context of family and in our romantic
relationship.
Yeah, what you just said, they're really hit home for me because I feel that for so many
women as you both articulated, it was a very definitive structure for what purpose and
(22:29):
meaning meant.
And so I feel like almost it's like your authentic self kind of rises out of the ashes of what
we were supposed to be or what could be fulfilling.
And sometimes those ashes are the thought of what love was supposed to be.
So I'm just wondering kind of, and I also got so much out of those red flags that you've
(22:53):
noticed in your experience, particularly the intense flattery or love bombing, moving
to fast in relationships to secure trust in a way that's rushed, controlling behavior
and your master's care and emotional volatility.
(23:19):
What you did after all of what you went through, which you created the group program, Healing
Strong, and of course you have your own podcast, Breaking Free from Narcissistic Abuse, which
I find just inspiring.
And it's an honor to talk with you because taking what you've gone through and being able
(23:40):
to help other peoples is so part of the fabric of what Christopher and I stand for as well.
So I'm wondering if you can chat with us a bit from the perspective of your podcast and
the people that you've worked with in Healing Strong.
What have the people that you've worked with done that has helped them reclaim their identity
(24:00):
when they feel similarly to what you have been through and so many of us have been through
when you're gut instincts don't even know reality, that reclaiming of identity.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Yeah, one of the things that I've discovered that I find extremely disturbing and I realize
that I was in a similar position, which is most of us don't know and cannot recognize
(24:24):
abuse.
We don't know what it is and we can't recognize it.
We have the big extremes.
Somebody assaults us physically, sexually or emotionally, "Okay, yes, we'll say yes, that's
violence, that's abusive."
But we don't recognize the subtle forms of abuse and then realize that we're being diminished,
invalidated, shut down, made into a very small person that essentially the other person
(24:48):
has become the person and the only person in the relationship.
So one of the things that I've seen by being able to have the podcast as well as do group
coaching as well as the club membership is to help people redefine what healthiness looks
like, how to really find true safety for themselves in relationship and to recognize that it's
in anything that diminishes you, that real love and safety should expand us, not shrink us.
(25:14):
And to me that's been the most powerful message is just to help us all as a society get better
and have an opportunity to speak into that.
One item that we talk about quite a lot and we will be exploring quite a bit moving forward
is this authentic identity.
And who is that?
(25:35):
How do I find that?
How do I connect with that?
How do I even identify that out of the ashes of who I've had to be in order to fit in?
Yeah.
And when you're in a narcissistic relationship that gets even worse because your identity
becomes the, you become the augmentation of the other person's identity.
(25:56):
You actually, your voice gets smaller and smaller as their needs and their demands and
impulses become larger and consume more space.
They're essentially emptying the worst parts of themselves out into you and then asking
you to manage and stabilize all their instability, which is, so that's why it's so hard to heal
when you get out of these relationships because you have to undo that as well as rediscover
(26:20):
yourself in a new way.
And often, the those of us who've been in these relationships do feel like our life and
our identity was destroyed.
That we do feel like we've left with ashes and that we have to rediscover who we are.
So it is, but that's an opportunity.
I see this as actually what I would call an adult developmental crisis.
(26:42):
Now Eric Ericsson years ago identified that there's periods of crisis in our lives and
most of them he put in childhood or teenage years, like realizing you're a person in adolescence
and discovering the identity or even realizing that you have autonomy when you're two years
old and you can do things.
I really believe that unfortunately and fortunately maybe that abusive relationships give us the
(27:03):
opportunity to discover another aspect of ourselves to rework these big questions.
Who am I?
What gives me purpose?
What's the point of my life?
Where do I want to head?
How do I want to reconnect with people in a different, safer way?
So I think it's actually an exciting time, but it's a challenge because people always ask,
well, how do you start?
(27:23):
How do you start to figure out who you are?
And I think, well, I say, I always tell them, start out with the simple things.
What do you like to eat?
You know?
What side of the bed do you actually want to sleep on?
Do you like the clothes that you're wearing?
What's your favorite color?
We start there and then just let yourself explore and grow and learn new things about
yourself.
Oh, I appreciate those starting steps.
(27:47):
It's really helpful to have examples.
We love to ask our guests if there's one of the names in our show that really speak to
you or if two or three of them are something that you have a perception of or a changing conception
of what it means to you.
We'd absolutely love to hear that.
Now, I find your name of the podcast fascinating and like I said, I have a conflictual relationship
(28:13):
with all of them.
And so I want to add a new name.
So that's what I'm going to do is add another name maybe to your repertoire, not to say
to change the name of your podcast, but Virgin to me suggests purity and innocence and
that's just really painful because we're not.
We're a human complex, great, full of lots of sides of herself.
So I don't really like the identity of Virgin.
I struggle with beauty.
(28:33):
I've never actually been a conventionally beautiful woman and that has opened doors and shut doors
for me.
So at times it's good not to be because then people don't assume things about you, but other
times it also means you don't have the opportunities that the privilege that beauty brings to you.
And then the bitch, I always found that side of myself extremely scary and uncomfortable
(28:55):
and not quite sure what to do with her strength.
So, but the one that I've been really working on a lot for myself is Crone.
So I've been really trying to step into the identity of what it means to be a wise woman, a woman
who has come into herself and has power and insight and maybe can give back to the younger
generations and has a place in society.
(29:17):
She plays a purpose on a role to society.
So I know that wasn't quite the question.
I didn't quite do the assignment, but that was my reaction to that.
That's perfectly, we are definitely always open to different perspectives on the words that
we put out there and anything any children that those words may have with other people.
(29:38):
We are definitely open to hearing that as well.
For us, these words were just provocative pieces.
Over the time that we have been doing this podcast, they have developed into a psychology,
philosophy of their own.
It's fascinating what these words represent to women, both on the positive and on the negative,
(30:03):
which is really fascinating.
Yeah.
I had a real strong reaction to Virgin because one of the things that I asked, and what do
you love about me?
He would kind of like they said, English was not a second language.
So he used to word, is not a word we use a lot in English.
He'd say, you're without malice.
What he meant was, I realize, you're gullible.
So to me, the association of words, Virgin, is you're dumb and gullible.
(30:28):
I just, none of these words, really, all of them actually, are stereotypes which get us
caught.
I love for us to be multi-dimensional, but yeah, they're hard.
They're hard words to navigate in our society.
The thing is, we chose those words simply because they are seen on the surface as negatives.
(30:49):
If you look underneath the surface, they're positives.
A virgin gives you an opportunity to reinvent yourself at any given moment and experience something
new in every single moment of the day.
Beauty is, how do I see myself?
Not how the world sees me.
How do I see myself?
Yeah.
And bitch, of course, is that, use the word strength when you said the word bitch.
(31:12):
And that's how we see it as a strength.
So there's immense positives to these words that we've made into negatives socially.
That's powerful.
That's fascinating.
Yeah, and we do need to hone them more.
And I would love to see us get good of age, seeing age as is not becoming irreplaceable and
(31:33):
invisible, but rather as becoming helpful, useful, gives back wise, informative.
Absolutely.
And some cultures that is the case.
And this has been a really satisfying conversation.
It really has.
I see you as a Phoenix.
Yeah, I do identify with that a lot, actually.
(31:54):
I've used that imagery.
And that is something that is definitely a value to others, to learn how to reinvent and
return back to life after the darkest times of their lives.
So we thank you for sharing that energy with us.
Appreciate that.
Thank you so much for having me on.
I really appreciate this conversation.
(32:16):
It's been honestly a pleasure from your wisdom, to your fire, to your truth.
And certainly we definitely want to let our audience know about your memoir, Love You More.
And also can you share with our listeners where they can find out more about you and the
(32:36):
work you do?
Sure.
I'm most platforms.
Not only when I'm not on is I'm not on X or Twitter.
I'm very active there.
But you can find me everywhere at Kerry McAvoy, PhD.
And then my website is Kerry McAvoy, PhD.com.
And yeah, I wrote a book.
So if those are curious to know what happened, it's not so much an insight oriented.
(32:59):
I'm not going to do it a big analysis of my experience.
But if you're looking for, like, am I the only one that's this happened to?
What does it look like to be in a narcissistic relationship?
Why is it so hard to get out?
Is there something wrong with me?
Then you can take comfort by reading my story knowing that no, I'm wears right there with
you.
And this is what it looks like to be struggling with the dynamics of a very toxic relationship.
(33:21):
So called Love You More, the heroine tale of lies, sex addiction, and double cross.
And you've written some other pieces as well?
Yeah, I have.
I've written a few devotional that I don't talk much about.
And then I also have two workbooks, one's called First Steps of Living in Narcissist.
It helps you kind of break through the confusion.
And the second one is surviving, it's surviving.
(33:43):
It's a six-step blueprint to healing and recovery.
And again, that helps you after the fact.
And it kind of ties in a lot with healing strong.
So healing strong is a 12-week group coaching program for those who are looking to just
recover emotionally, psychologically from these relationships and from their own confusion
about surviving a relationship.
Fantastic.
(34:04):
Wonderful.
Kerry, thank you for all your work.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me on.
And you have the listening tune.
The Virgin.
The Beauty.
The Bitch and the Chrome today.
(laughs)
The Beauty and the Beauty.
Absolutely.
You want to find us, like us, share us.
And then bring yourself up right on back here.
(34:25):
Become a partner in the VBB community.
And share us with people who are defiantly different.
Like you.
Until next time, thanks for listening.
(34:46):
(upbeat music)
Virgin.
(00:02):
Beauty.
Bitch.
Podcast.
Inspiring women to overcome social stereotypes and share unique life experiences without fear
of being defiantly different.
Your hosts.
Christopher and Heather.
Let's talk, shall we?
Are all narcissistic men the same?
(00:23):
Are there other methods similar?
And most important, are there ways for women to identify and avoid becoming their victim?
These questions happen to be the expertise of a psychologist and writer who also happens
to be an expert on cultivating healthy relationships and deconstructing narcissism.
(00:45):
We welcome Dr. Kerry Kerr McAvoy to Virgin Beauty Bitch.
Welcome.
Thank you so much.
Pleasure to have you.
We are a leading expert on narcissism and toxic relationships, but your dictatorial degree
in psychology didn't prepare you for what you now understand as narcissism.
In fact, that education came from falling in love with a narcissist.
(01:07):
Yeah, yeah, unfortunately that's true.
Yes.
Tell us that story.
What, how did that come about in your life?
Yeah, so I recognized you as a narcissist too.
It wasn't that I missed the diagnosis.
So it was the fact that there wasn't any emphasis on the consequences of being in a relationship
with someone who has that diagnosis.
So a little bit about me, I have a PhD in clinical psychology worked for 20 years, 20 plus years,
(01:32):
in a general practice.
So all sorts of types of problems definitely saw a narcissist in my practice.
And I'm sure I actually saw a narcissistically abusive relationships, but just didn't know
what I was seeing at the time because that's not something they talk about in graduate
school.
So I thought the consequences of living and residing and being around a toxic individual.
So I had a good marriage, was married 30 plus years to an amazing guy who then had got cancer.
(01:57):
And in a very quick period of time succumbed to it.
It was a terminal illness from the get-go.
We knew that he wasn't going to make it because it was a very extremely rare form of cancer.
And then my whole life turned upside down.
I stopped practicing because I was just not in the shape to see patients.
And really wanted the relationship that I had back because I, multiple things happened
at the same time.
(02:18):
I also became an empty nester at the same time he passed away and was preparing to move
into a retirement.
And all of that just sort of disappeared on me.
So I approached dating like a job and met a, you know, like it does feel like a job.
Met the person a year later.
And then a year after that we were married.
But what I didn't know, I mean, even though I recognized this person, it was pretty narcissistic.
(02:41):
At the time I didn't go out of my way to diagnose him because you don't do that with loved ones.
But I recognized a lot of the toxic traits.
But I thought that they were survivable.
And I thought that it was just meant that he was larger than life than that he had to be
the biggest person in the room.
And honestly, I don't really care about that.
That doesn't matter to me.
So I thought that as long as I was okay with those pieces, that this was going to be
(03:02):
survival, but boy was I in for a terrible ride of my life.
What was the breaking point where you went, oh my lord, what have I done?
How did I get here?
Yeah, yeah, it was really clear.
The breaking point was like hyperdramatic.
So we took a delayed honeymoon.
We were moving to Mexico.
(03:23):
He was a resident, but had lived his whole life in the United States at a green
card.
But I thought it would be really cool to go to Mexico and run a vacation, run all business.
Now why would I do that after being a psychologist?
I'd been a landlord for years and enjoyed it.
And always really liked the hospitality part and thought that that blended all the best,
(03:44):
see where I was, of practicing.
So I thought that blended all the best parts of my skill sets, my experience running, being
having tenants and managing property.
And then my skill sets with people.
And then the fact that if we lived in another country, it would extend the resources further.
And plus it just thought it really exotic, like an incredible thing to do.
And he was Mexican.
So he had the language.
(04:04):
So I thought, yeah, I have a minor in Spanish, but I hadn't practiced it.
So I thought I would lean into his fluency and that we would be able to do this.
So yeah, we were in that process.
I forgot the original questions.
Sorry, I got so caught up with it.
Just the breaking point for you.
Oh, the breaking point.
So yes, so we were about ready to get ready to go.
(04:24):
We took a delayed honeymoon because we were moving, packing, selling things.
So we took a honeymoon a month after we got married with family.
And on the honeymoon, I caught him the first night opting out of being physically intimate
for watching pornography and texting another woman.
(04:44):
That was my first brutal awareness that this person was into things that I'd already asked
about and he denied.
So it and plus just that that was a very harmful, hurtful betrayal.
But on the last night, when I thought we patched things up and things were a little bit better,
and the last night I woke up to a message from a woman saying, I guess the joke's not just
(05:06):
on me, but it's on YouTube.
I've been dating him for the past three months and then proceeded to describe things that
told me she'd been in his car, told me times and dates that I knew lined up with times and
dates where we had been, you know, she lived out of the city.
So I knew we'd been in her area that it was, I could tell this was a real story.
It was very plausible.
(05:26):
And then he shortly, his reaction told me it was true too.
So in that moment, when it happened, it's hard to describe my world shattered.
I actually lost consciousness.
I felt like there's a scene I saw years ago from one of my favorite sci-fi shows where
there is two worlds that are colliding and one world breaks and the other world does not.
(05:50):
And that's what I felt like.
I felt like there's two realities.
There's a version I thought we were living and then there's this version I'm just learning
about and I realized her version was the truth.
My version had been a lie.
And in that moment that facing the fact that I had been living a constructed lie that I
realized I knew nothing.
I didn't even know if I knew this person.
(06:11):
Everything then became a question.
Who is he?
Do I know him?
What's he actually doing?
Does he even work where I think he works?
What's true about his story?
What's true about our relationship?
It was just devastating.
Devastating.
Thank you for your vulnerability and in sharing that piece because it's wild how many people
(06:33):
have been in a circumstance like what you're describing where it's possible, especially
with a narcissist to get wrapped up in the charm and the charisma of what they present
to be the reality of who they are and the story that they tell you.
And so when you do face that moment as you so well described of the collisions of two
(06:54):
worlds meeting where you're not sure anymore what really is reality since they've painted
such a vivid picture of someone that they're not, it lends to something that we explore
on this show which is the power of the bitch inside us, not as an insult, but as a woman
(07:16):
who knows herself and sets the boundaries or says no more.
But I'm interested with that moment.
What was that, like the first steps for you after facing these worlds that had collided
and from what you've said, I can appreciate losing consciousness because it's so drastic
(07:40):
what you're feeling.
But that process of reconnecting with your inner power to face the new reality or the reality
that has now been uncovered, what was that like for you?
Yeah, it actually was a two plus year process.
I would not say it happened in that moment.
(08:01):
The first thing that happened in that moment was the reality that I had two options in front
of me.
One was I could pretend I didn't learn this and things would go back to normal because
we were mid move.
I mean, you have to remember that mid move.
Like literally house is sold, car has been sold.
So my thought is, can I move to the new country without him?
(08:26):
I don't know, I can't do that.
How do I stop it when everything is like mid purchase down there?
Like literally financially mid purchase.
So it was like I was like in this leap that I couldn't get out of the leap that I had
to do something.
So I knew that.
I was facing with really some hard truths and I want to stop and say for a moment, this
(08:47):
is a common problem.
Narcissistic and other toxic people know that large transitions tend to trap people and
they like to utilize them as ways to keep people in these relationships.
So I recognize that I was in some ways stuck in a true financial way and that I needed
to make some massive decisions that were going to have huge consequences for me.
(09:12):
So my thought was, okay, I could pretend all this goes away, finish this move, then decide
what I'm going to do and I get there.
Or can I live with myself doing that and what does that mean?
Do I go ahead and confront this and then see what we can do to remedy it while we finish
the move?
That was my choices at the moment.
But there was a part of me, you know, you talk about finding the bitch part.
(09:33):
I had been so kind of trained and groomed through my life to be, you know, your words, virgin,
beauty of bitch.
I've been really hard words to deal with as a woman.
I mean, all of them are massive stereotypes that have lots of ramifications.
All of them I have very huge feelings about and that bitch part was something I was terrified
(09:55):
of.
And I still don't like that side or find no her very well.
So I was pretty compliant as much as I could and it wasn't until I got closer to the end
of the relationship that I found the strength.
It took two years and it took another massive crisis for me to get in touch and find more
strength because I made this dangerous assumption.
(10:17):
And I think a lot of women get taught this.
Unfortunately, to me, this is very, very frightening.
We should not be giving this message to our daughters.
And that is the me is served by the we.
It's served by the relationship that I will be good if the relationship is good.
No, no, no, no, it doesn't work that way.
You're in trouble when you set yourself up like that.
(10:39):
But I didn't know, I mean, it took two more years for me to discover I didn't have a self
outside of us, which is why I was moving so rapidly into the next relationship is because
without a relationship who am I, I couldn't really answer those questions very well.
So it was a massive process.
So the immediate reaction was just don't lie to myself.
By the way, I did not.
(10:59):
I confronted him right away.
Don't lie to myself.
Don't pretend nothing happened.
Something happened.
And I couldn't do the rest, which was to stop and say, okay, let's like assess what I'm
really going to do.
Let's invite people in and decide what's the next step I couldn't do that.
I went ahead and tried to make it work with this person.
Is that prides or fear of what people might think of you?
(11:22):
I think it was both.
I mean, definitely because here one of the things is a widow.
Widow is another nasty word.
I don't think we've talked, sit and talk much about what it feels like to own the identity
of a widow.
For one, people are terrified of you because you now represent the very thing that they're
afraid of, which is a collapse and the death of a partner, a loss of a relationship and
the loss of your life with that relationship.
(11:44):
So you're attached to death.
So it means you sort of represent, even think about we sleep dresser and black and we even
have like the black widow and we talk about all these things that sort of like associate
death with that identity.
The other thing about it is that there's a saying out there that widows come into money
often and that they are stupid and do really ridiculous things and make lots of errors.
(12:05):
So I had this trope that I was trying not to live out.
I didn't want to have come back and say, "Yep, I was right.
I invested and believed in somebody that shouldn't and it's cost me money."
And I feel really stupid about that.
So yes, there is pride, but there is also a tremendous amount of fear.
Another part of my story, and I didn't know until this is all over with, but I'm autistic.
And that's also been a very interesting identity to grapple with.
(12:29):
And what it's meant for me is being the outsider for most of my life, knowing there's something
different about me, the way I relate to people.
And I have experienced a tremendous part of my life very alone.
And my marriage to my first husband was like one of the big times in my life, like I felt
like it came home.
And I was hoping to find a home again in this new relationship.
(12:49):
So to let go of that meant I had to embrace the isolation and the loneliness again.
And that just, I'll tell you for the longest time that the terror around that was so huge
that it just kept me from being able to take action in my best interest.
So many of things of what you've said here, I think, is what, again, I love these conversations
(13:12):
because I personally, and I know so many other women have felt so isolated in how we feel
in these relationships.
And we feel so alone that it could be just us and it's the way I've been groomed in society
and almost like the questions of what's wrong with me.
So these conversations, I think, really help to open up that this is a commonality and that
(13:35):
there are systems in place that lend to us feeling this way.
So for us on this show, self-trust is a huge theme because when you've been in a toxic
relationship, even your instincts feel suspect.
And society doesn't always give women the tools to recognize coercion, especially when
(13:56):
it's dressed up as love.
So I noticed on your website that you talk about love bombing and emotional manipulation.
I'm wondering if you could also share with us some early red flags that women should
listen to, especially when at times we silence or push down those gut instincts.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(14:16):
Often a lot of us are so accommodating that when we, one of the things that toxic people
are not afraid to do is put you in a bind that makes you feel mean, that you're forced
into it.
They call you out on something, force you into a decision or a truth that you're not really
ready to say that's that host civility or hospitality dictates we don't do that to
(14:36):
each other.
We're more indirect, but they are not their direct.
They'll say, so does that mean that you're letting me go because I'm a problem here?
And you're like, yeah, because you're the problem here.
You know, literally like challenge you with something that's terribly uncomfortable and
you have to like stare at them and either lie and deceive yourself and maybe even betray
yourself and deceptively definitely deceive them.
(14:58):
Or you have to like own that, find that strength and then stand in the truth of that and know
that they're like, and then that makes you a bitch for doing that.
Yes, I guess in that moment I'm a bitch for selling you the truth.
So that's very uncomfortable.
So here's some of the things that I missed in that first day.
One was that he tested me and I didn't recognize it as a test.
(15:20):
He framed it as he was being kind and chivalrous.
It really actually wasn't.
It was a test.
And that is he, we got went to the beach and he took, loaded himself up with all the stuff
that I have.
I mean, I'm umbrella, several coolers of blanket.
Just tons of, it was like hunched over with all this stuff and I said, here, let me take
a few items.
It goes, no, no, it's about time someone else takes care of you.
(15:43):
That moment was, that's stupid.
I mean, you don't need to do that.
I could have helped out.
I was prepared to help out.
You maybe have to make me carry half, but you could have let me carry something.
So in that moment, I showed that I would be compliant.
So watch out for the test.
And then the other thing that happened is he typecasted me.
That's what comes out of Gavin Debecker's book called The Gift of Fear.
(16:06):
He says, you don't want to be one of those women who is, he had a word and it wasn't an accurate
word.
Like English was the second language.
So sometimes he'd say things that were wrong, but I knew what he meant.
He's like, you don't want to be one of those like independent women or, oh, stubborn women.
That's the word.
You don't want to be one of those stubborn women, do you?
And he was meaning like, I wasn't, except help.
(16:28):
And typecasting sort of paints this image that you don't want to own.
So you go out of your way to prove that it's not true and that then it becomes the form
of manipulation by me then giving in and like, no, no, I don't want to be that.
And then becoming compliant, then I was controllable in that moment.
So watch out for the typecasting.
(16:49):
It happens a lot.
Negging is a form of typecasting.
You know, they'll do something that kind of slightly insults you.
And then you have to go out of your way to prove that that's not true about you.
But it's a great way to get us to resist our natural instincts.
I think the other thing was it just was the future faking happened right away.
You know, wouldn't have you thought about me moving here?
(17:09):
Like on the first, his first date, dude, I've not met you before.
And I think that's a discussion six months from now, not a discussion we have the first
date, but watch for the rapidness of the relationship.
If it's, it's feeling too good be true.
And if they're talking about things that are too fast, it's then that there's a signal
that this person's rushing intimacy, rushing trust.
(17:31):
And we often talk about love bombing.
Love bombing actually is fascinating because there's three parts to it.
What they do is they align with you about some past thing that's happened in your life
and say they've been there too or it happened to them probably isn't true.
But they, like, you know, example I give is that you went to university in Chicago and
they go, oh, I've been there.
And, you know, I, it isn't that green area.
(17:53):
It's so amazing.
And you think, oh, yeah, they must have been there.
They walked across that.
And then you create this alignment of a similarity.
So you feel like you have a shared past, which makes them feel like you've shared memories
when you actually don't.
And then they'll do something about this moment like I've never met anybody like you who
gets me like this.
Or I've never met anybody who has so much in common with or I've never felt like this
(18:14):
before.
So they'll do something that makes this moment feel extra special like you've created a
special present moment.
And then they'll create a future with you that actually will never happen, which is wouldn't
it be wonderful to go watch the stars at this park?
Can you imagine lying on a blanket and doing that?
And then now you're like thinking in the future with them.
So they've created this whole world of time as if you've always known them, this past,
(18:37):
present, and future moments that actually not really don't exist.
So they do a lot of strategies to create rapid trust.
And I think if we could be a little more suspicious maybe, I mean, here's the thing.
People think this is, I get this all the time.
We need to stop blindly trusting people.
We need to make them earn trust and trust is earned over time, over consistency, over watching
(19:00):
them.
This person in lots of situations with lots of different people and challenges.
It doesn't happen in a moment, but we tend to think that if we're slow to trust somebody
that we're suspicious, no, you're not paranoid.
That's just being cautious.
So we need to like give ourselves time to let relationships build.
(19:21):
Don't let somebody rush us.
Are we slaves to love?
I mean, all the things you mentioned there are romantic ideals almost.
The person painting a future for you, having a similarity with your past.
These are all things we think of in romantic ways.
But are we a slave then to that ideology of what love is?
(19:46):
Is everybody?
I don't think men are, but I think women are.
And that's one of the big challenges has been for me as a woman who's now, I mean my
60s and facing my later years of life and my new identity as a woman with that mindset
of if I do this alone.
(20:06):
And if I don't have the things in my life that most women have that sort of defines purpose
and meaning, what gives me purpose and meaning.
And I think for a lot of women we've painted the idea that it's a family and a relationship.
That's purpose and meaning.
Think about we think their grandmothers, their grandmothers, they have kids over and they decorate
Christmas cookies.
(20:28):
They have retirement, they focus their life around the events with their partner.
We don't really do a whole lot of future casting for women without these roles.
So I'm not for sure it's so much as a slave is that we just really haven't helped women
expand the sense that their identity could be a lot more things and found in a lot different
kind of situations instead of just being in a relationship.
(20:51):
That sounds to me like a new brain old brain.
Like the old brain is where these ideals past ideals are.
But women have advanced way past that in what they actually have accomplished and are
accomplishing in their lives.
But this old brain seems to over arch everything.
Yeah, I think what I watch is I interact with Gen Alpha, Gen Z, the millennials.
(21:19):
I don't have so much Gen X.
I think Gen X was raised a lot similar to the way I'm on the edge of the baby boomers.
I don't feel like I'm a part of the baby boomers.
I think there's a Tom Jones generation.
I'm in that.
I was born in the 60s.
So I don't feel like I really feel like my legs straddle both generations.
But what I'm noticing is I feel like we're teaching women new things.
(21:43):
I feel like the women who are coming after me feel more permission and are braver than
I was allowed to be or encouraged to be.
So I love that.
I think that's a really very much in the right direction, which we see in the rates of women
not getting into a relationship.
I think that's great that we're slowing that down or considering whether or not really
to have children.
I'm really glad that that's an option now.
(22:03):
Not something that just feels like it's a mandate.
But yeah, definitely my generation is, well, I think, Gen X and everybody before us that
are our safety and our sense of self was found in the context of family and in our romantic
relationship.
Yeah, what you just said, they're really hit home for me because I feel that for so many
women as you both articulated, it was a very definitive structure for what purpose and
(22:29):
meaning meant.
And so I feel like almost it's like your authentic self kind of rises out of the ashes of what
we were supposed to be or what could be fulfilling.
And sometimes those ashes are the thought of what love was supposed to be.
So I'm just wondering kind of, and I also got so much out of those red flags that you've
(22:53):
noticed in your experience, particularly the intense flattery or love bombing, moving
to fast in relationships to secure trust in a way that's rushed, controlling behavior
and your master's care and emotional volatility.
(23:19):
What you did after all of what you went through, which you created the group program, Healing
Strong, and of course you have your own podcast, Breaking Free from Narcissistic Abuse, which
I find just inspiring.
And it's an honor to talk with you because taking what you've gone through and being able
(23:40):
to help other peoples is so part of the fabric of what Christopher and I stand for as well.
So I'm wondering if you can chat with us a bit from the perspective of your podcast and
the people that you've worked with in Healing Strong.
What have the people that you've worked with done that has helped them reclaim their identity
(24:00):
when they feel similarly to what you have been through and so many of us have been through
when you're gut instincts don't even know reality, that reclaiming of identity.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Yeah, one of the things that I've discovered that I find extremely disturbing and I realize
that I was in a similar position, which is most of us don't know and cannot recognize
(24:24):
abuse.
We don't know what it is and we can't recognize it.
We have the big extremes.
Somebody assaults us physically, sexually or emotionally, "Okay, yes, we'll say yes, that's
violence, that's abusive."
But we don't recognize the subtle forms of abuse and then realize that we're being diminished,
invalidated, shut down, made into a very small person that essentially the other person
(24:48):
has become the person and the only person in the relationship.
So one of the things that I've seen by being able to have the podcast as well as do group
coaching as well as the club membership is to help people redefine what healthiness looks
like, how to really find true safety for themselves in relationship and to recognize that it's
in anything that diminishes you, that real love and safety should expand us, not shrink us.
(25:14):
And to me that's been the most powerful message is just to help us all as a society get better
and have an opportunity to speak into that.
One item that we talk about quite a lot and we will be exploring quite a bit moving forward
is this authentic identity.
And who is that?
(25:35):
How do I find that?
How do I connect with that?
How do I even identify that out of the ashes of who I've had to be in order to fit in?
Yeah.
And when you're in a narcissistic relationship that gets even worse because your identity
becomes the, you become the augmentation of the other person's identity.
(25:56):
You actually, your voice gets smaller and smaller as their needs and their demands and
impulses become larger and consume more space.
They're essentially emptying the worst parts of themselves out into you and then asking
you to manage and stabilize all their instability, which is, so that's why it's so hard to heal
when you get out of these relationships because you have to undo that as well as rediscover
(26:20):
yourself in a new way.
And often, the those of us who've been in these relationships do feel like our life and
our identity was destroyed.
That we do feel like we've left with ashes and that we have to rediscover who we are.
So it is, but that's an opportunity.
I see this as actually what I would call an adult developmental crisis.
(26:42):
Now Eric Ericsson years ago identified that there's periods of crisis in our lives and
most of them he put in childhood or teenage years, like realizing you're a person in adolescence
and discovering the identity or even realizing that you have autonomy when you're two years
old and you can do things.
I really believe that unfortunately and fortunately maybe that abusive relationships give us the
(27:03):
opportunity to discover another aspect of ourselves to rework these big questions.
Who am I?
What gives me purpose?
What's the point of my life?
Where do I want to head?
How do I want to reconnect with people in a different, safer way?
So I think it's actually an exciting time, but it's a challenge because people always ask,
well, how do you start?
(27:23):
How do you start to figure out who you are?
And I think, well, I say, I always tell them, start out with the simple things.
What do you like to eat?
You know?
What side of the bed do you actually want to sleep on?
Do you like the clothes that you're wearing?
What's your favorite color?
We start there and then just let yourself explore and grow and learn new things about
yourself.
Oh, I appreciate those starting steps.
(27:47):
It's really helpful to have examples.
We love to ask our guests if there's one of the names in our show that really speak to
you or if two or three of them are something that you have a perception of or a changing conception
of what it means to you.
We'd absolutely love to hear that.
Now, I find your name of the podcast fascinating and like I said, I have a conflictual relationship
(28:13):
with all of them.
And so I want to add a new name.
So that's what I'm going to do is add another name maybe to your repertoire, not to say
to change the name of your podcast, but Virgin to me suggests purity and innocence and
that's just really painful because we're not.
We're a human complex, great, full of lots of sides of herself.
So I don't really like the identity of Virgin.
I struggle with beauty.
(28:33):
I've never actually been a conventionally beautiful woman and that has opened doors and shut doors
for me.
So at times it's good not to be because then people don't assume things about you, but other
times it also means you don't have the opportunities that the privilege that beauty brings to you.
And then the bitch, I always found that side of myself extremely scary and uncomfortable
(28:55):
and not quite sure what to do with her strength.
So, but the one that I've been really working on a lot for myself is Crone.
So I've been really trying to step into the identity of what it means to be a wise woman, a woman
who has come into herself and has power and insight and maybe can give back to the younger
generations and has a place in society.
(29:17):
She plays a purpose on a role to society.
So I know that wasn't quite the question.
I didn't quite do the assignment, but that was my reaction to that.
That's perfectly, we are definitely always open to different perspectives on the words that
we put out there and anything any children that those words may have with other people.
(29:38):
We are definitely open to hearing that as well.
For us, these words were just provocative pieces.
Over the time that we have been doing this podcast, they have developed into a psychology,
philosophy of their own.
It's fascinating what these words represent to women, both on the positive and on the negative,
(30:03):
which is really fascinating.
Yeah.
I had a real strong reaction to Virgin because one of the things that I asked, and what do
you love about me?
He would kind of like they said, English was not a second language.
So he used to word, is not a word we use a lot in English.
He'd say, you're without malice.
What he meant was, I realize, you're gullible.
So to me, the association of words, Virgin, is you're dumb and gullible.
(30:28):
I just, none of these words, really, all of them actually, are stereotypes which get us
caught.
I love for us to be multi-dimensional, but yeah, they're hard.
They're hard words to navigate in our society.
The thing is, we chose those words simply because they are seen on the surface as negatives.
(30:49):
If you look underneath the surface, they're positives.
A virgin gives you an opportunity to reinvent yourself at any given moment and experience something
new in every single moment of the day.
Beauty is, how do I see myself?
Not how the world sees me.
How do I see myself?
Yeah.
And bitch, of course, is that, use the word strength when you said the word bitch.
(31:12):
And that's how we see it as a strength.
So there's immense positives to these words that we've made into negatives socially.
That's powerful.
That's fascinating.
Yeah, and we do need to hone them more.
And I would love to see us get good of age, seeing age as is not becoming irreplaceable and
(31:33):
invisible, but rather as becoming helpful, useful, gives back wise, informative.
Absolutely.
And some cultures that is the case.
And this has been a really satisfying conversation.
It really has.
I see you as a Phoenix.
Yeah, I do identify with that a lot, actually.
(31:54):
I've used that imagery.
And that is something that is definitely a value to others, to learn how to reinvent and
return back to life after the darkest times of their lives.
So we thank you for sharing that energy with us.
Appreciate that.
Thank you so much for having me on.
I really appreciate this conversation.
(32:16):
It's been honestly a pleasure from your wisdom, to your fire, to your truth.
And certainly we definitely want to let our audience know about your memoir, Love You More.
And also can you share with our listeners where they can find out more about you and the
(32:36):
work you do?
Sure.
I'm most platforms.
Not only when I'm not on is I'm not on X or Twitter.
I'm very active there.
But you can find me everywhere at Kerry McAvoy, PhD.
And then my website is Kerry McAvoy, PhD.com.
And yeah, I wrote a book.
So if those are curious to know what happened, it's not so much an insight oriented.
(32:59):
I'm not going to do it a big analysis of my experience.
But if you're looking for, like, am I the only one that's this happened to?
What does it look like to be in a narcissistic relationship?
Why is it so hard to get out?
Is there something wrong with me?
Then you can take comfort by reading my story knowing that no, I'm wears right there with
you.
And this is what it looks like to be struggling with the dynamics of a very toxic relationship.
(33:21):
So called Love You More, the heroine tale of lies, sex addiction, and double cross.
And you've written some other pieces as well?
Yeah, I have.
I've written a few devotional that I don't talk much about.
And then I also have two workbooks, one's called First Steps of Living in Narcissist.
It helps you kind of break through the confusion.
And the second one is surviving, it's surviving.
(33:43):
It's a six-step blueprint to healing and recovery.
And again, that helps you after the fact.
And it kind of ties in a lot with healing strong.
So healing strong is a 12-week group coaching program for those who are looking to just
recover emotionally, psychologically from these relationships and from their own confusion
about surviving a relationship.
Fantastic.
(34:04):
Wonderful.
Kerry, thank you for all your work.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me on.
And you have the listening tune.
The Virgin.
The Beauty.
The Bitch and the Chrome today.
(laughs)
The Beauty and the Beauty.
Absolutely.
You want to find us, like us, share us.
And then bring yourself up right on back here.
(34:25):
Become a partner in the VBB community.
And share us with people who are defiantly different.
Like you.
Until next time, thanks for listening.
(34:46):
(upbeat music)
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