Are toxic family relationships costing you your peace? Because that’s too high a price to pay. This episode explores why dealing with toxic family members affects your mental health so deeply, and how to deal with them without losing yourself in the process. So, let’s talk! So, Let’s Talk About Mental Health!

---

Jump into the episode
(or scroll down for overview and transcript):

Or find it on: Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Other platforms

---

Episode Overview:

Toxic family relationships can leave you feeling drained, confused, and stuck between protecting your peace and trying to keep everybody else happy. So how do you deal with toxic family members when the people hurting you are the same people you’re told you’re supposed to love, respect, and stay loyal to?

In this episode of the Let’s Talk About Mental Health podcast, I’m talking about toxic family: why toxic family relationships affect your mental health so deeply, and how to deal with toxic family members in a way that’s honest, calm, and grounded in self-respect. I explore the difference between difficult and toxic behaviour, why family dynamics can make you doubt yourself, and how guilt, manipulation, and old roles can keep you stuck in patterns that harm your peace of mind. You’ll discover practical guidance on how to recognise the emotional cost of toxic family dynamics, decide what access people should have to you, communicate more clearly, and make healthier choices without jumping straight to an all-or-nothing solution.

If you’ve been struggling with toxic family relationships, setting boundaries with family, or working out what to do when enough is enough, this episode will help you feel supported and much clearer about what needs to change… and how to make those changes.

👉 Ready to protect your peace from toxic family relationships? Then let’s talk!

💡 TL;DR: Sick of toxic family dynamics draining your peace? In this episode I explore toxic family relationships, why they affect your mental health, and how to deal with toxic family members with greater clarity and self-respect. 🙂

New here? Hi! Let’s Talk About Mental Health is your weekly dose of practical mental health advice for real life. I’m Jeremy Godwin (hello! 👋) and I keep things simple, honest, and doable so you can feel more in control of your life and your mental wellbeing. If you’re not already a free subscriber, sign up below to have episodes and transcripts land in your inbox every Sunday:

---

Episode Transcript:

Toxic family relationships: when enough is enough

Let’s talk about toxic family relationships.

Because when the people who are supposed to love you are also the ones who keep hurting you, manipulating you, or draining the life out of you, it can leave you stuck in a miserable space between guilt and self-protection; you know something’s wrong, but you’ve probably also been taught to minimise it because, well, they’re family… and you’re supposed to just put up with it.

But love is not disrespect.

So the real question is not, “How much more of this should I tolerate?”

The question is, “When enough is enough, what do I do next?”

And that’s exactly what we’re going to get into today.

So, let’s talk about… how to deal with toxic family relationships.

Hello! I’m Jeremy Godwin and this is the Let’s Talk About Mental Health podcast, full of practical tools for better mental health.

In this episode, I’m going to talk about what toxic family relationships actually are as well as why they affect your mental health so deeply, and how to start dealing with them in a way that protects your peace without just jumping into an ‘all or nothing’ solution.

Because this is one of those topics that people either avoid, or oversimplify, or turn into some sort of ‘all or nothing’ debate.

On one side, you’ve got the “but family is everything!” crowd… as though DNA is some kind of lifetime permission slip for poor behaviour. It’s not.

And on the other side you’ve got very black and white advice that can make it sound like the only strong option is to immediately cut people off. But it’s not.

And real life is far messier than that ‘either/or’ option.

Real life is full of history, guilt, pressure, grief, role expectations, hope, confusion, and the occasional family gathering that feels like a hostage situation with potato salad.

And that’s why I wanted to make this episode as a companion piece to last week’s episode on family estrangement. Now, in that one I talked about what happens when family relationships break down completely. This episode is about the space before that; the messy middle, if you like… the place where the relationship still exists in some form, but it keeps hurting. It’s the place where you’re trying to work out what is difficult versus what is toxic, what can change, what probably won’t change, and what you need to do so that somebody else’s behaviour stops costing you your peace of mind.

Because being family does not give anyone the right to treat you with disrespect. It does not mean you have to absorb harmful behaviour. It does not mean you have to keep playing a role that hurts you just to make everybody else feel more comfortable. Because if nothing changes, then nothing changes… and we’re going to talk about how to change things in a moment. But first, let’s start with being really clear about what we’re actually discussing, and let’s talk about…

What are toxic family relationships?

Now, when I say ‘toxic family relationships’, I’m not talking about every disagreement, every annoying habit, or every relative who’s… I don’t know… a bit emotionally clumsy. I’m not talking about somebody being imperfect, or difficult, or moody, or stubborn, or a bit much after two glasses of wine. I’m talking about behaviour that is consistently harmful. Behaviour that leaves you feeling belittled, manipulated, controlled, disrespected, devalued, unsafe, confused, or emotionally exhausted.

In other words, this is not about whether or not somebody frustrates you. It’s about whether the pattern of how they treat you keeps causing you harm. And that distinction really matters, because ‘difficult’ and ‘toxic’ are not the same thing. I just talked about dealing with difficult people in Episode 325, and I’ll leave it linked in the description.

And while difficult behaviour can still be unpleasant, toxic behaviour goes a lot further. The distinction between difficult and toxic is really important because they are not the same thing. Toxic behaviour repeatedly chips away at your peace of mind, your confidence, your sense of safety, and your ability to really, truly be yourself. It often involves criticism, control, guilt tripping, manipulation, emotional volatility, intimidation, humiliation, rejection, boundary violations, or pressure to keep accepting harmful behaviour in the name of ‘family loyalty’ or ‘family tradition’ or that whole, “Well, that’s just how they are” mindset.

And one of the reasons that this stuff gets so confusing is that toxic family dynamics are not always loud and obvious. Sometimes they are. Sometimes it’s all shouting and chaos and cruelty and emotional explosions and full blown drama. But often it’s a lot quieter than that. It’s criticism disguised as concern. Control dressed up as care.

Guilt disguised as love. It’s being expected to stay quiet, to smooth things over, to keep the peace, to not make a fuss, and to just quietly swallow things that were never your responsibility to carry in the first place. Just to be clear, this episode is not about slapping labels on people for fun and it’s not about encouraging you to write people off at the first sign of conflict. It’s about behaviour. It’s about patterns. And it’s also about being honest about what the emotional cost is of those patterns.

And that honesty is really important. Because when you grow up around unhealthy family dynamics, or you spend years inside them, they can start to feel normal; not good, not healthy, just normal. You get used to walking on eggshells. You get used to managing people’s moods. You get used to having to be the bigger person, to overthinking every interaction, to keeping your mouth closed about your own perspectives on things, to shrinking yourself so that things don’t escalate.

And after a while you can lose sight of the fact that this isn’t just irritating or inconvenient, it’s harmful. So if you’ve been wondering whether what you’re dealing with is bad enough to count, I just want to bring it back to something much simpler: What does this relationship do to you?

Because if contact with somebody repeatedly leaves you feeling anxious, ashamed, guilty, angry, drained, even just emotionally flattened, all of that matters. And it matters a lot. So with that in mind, now let’s talk about…

Why toxic family relationships affect your mental health

Family is not just any other type of relationship. Family goes deep. It is often tied up with our identity, our sense of belonging, our history. It has all of these things around attachment and safety and memory. And of course there were the roles that you learned to play before you were even old enough to question any of it, or understand what it meant.

And so when a family relationship becomes unhealthy, it doesn’t just annoy you; it gets right under your skin. It goes to the core of who you are. It can affect how you think, how you feel, how you see yourself, and how safe you feel in your own body and mind.

It can leave you feeling anxious before contact with someone. You can feel tense during that contact, and afterwards emotionally drained or emotionally hijacked… or both. It can make you question yourself. It can make you second guess your reality. It can make you minimise yourself so that you’re making other people feel comfortable if they don’t like who you are, or the choices that you’ve made, or just some aspect of your perspective.

It can leave you replaying conversations, trying to work out whether or not you were too sensitive, or too harsh, or too needy, or too… whatever. This stuff is…. it’s ridiculous. Family can make you feel guilty for having needs at all. And these types of relationships can train you to override your own needs and your own instincts in favour of keeping everybody else comfortable.

That’s one of the most damaging parts of toxic family relationships. They can teach you not to trust yourself. You minimise, you rationalise, you tell yourself, “Oh, it’s not that bad.” You compare your experience to somebody else’s and decide, “Well, I have no right to complain.”

Maybe you focus on the good moments, and try to ignore the pattern of toxicity. Perhaps you keep hoping that this time things will be different. You keep trying to explain yourself more clearly, act more carefully, be more patient, be less reactive, be easier to deal with… and meanwhile, your nervous system is screaming that something is not right.

And that’s the heart of the matter. Something’s not right.

If contact with someone repeatedly leaves you feeling small, manipulated, unsafe, or emotionally exhausted, then this is not just some family stuff that you need to toughen… toughen up and tolerate. It is affecting your mental health, and it deserves to be taken seriously. So the first thing that I want you to remember, really loudly and clearly, is this: “This is costing me peace.”

Not, “Maybe I’m overreacting.” Not, “Maybe I just need to try harder.” Not, “Maybe this is normal.”

“This is costing me peace.”

Your peace of mind is not some optional extra. It is a significant and fundamental part of your wellbeing. It’s part of feeling safe. It’s a huge part of being able to think clearly, to make good decisions and actually show up in your life without being constantly knocked sideways by somebody else’s behaviour.

That’s also why boundaries matter so much, and I talked about why family boundaries often don’t stick in Episode 312. One of the hardest parts of changing family dynamics is that the ‘system’ keeps trying to pull you back into the same old role. And so changing that takes a lot of work.

Toxic family relationships affect your mental health because they often train you to betray yourself in the name of family loyalty… which is not healthy, and it has to stop somewhere. And we’re going to talk about how to make it stop right after this quick break.

[AD BREAK]

And welcome back! Now let’s get into the ‘how to’ part of this episode, and let’s talk about…

How to deal with toxic family relationships

Now let’s discuss what to do when enough is enough. And I want to approach this in a way that’s more useful than just a random list of tactics… because dealing with toxic family is not just about finding the perfect sentence, or delivering that one great boundary line and then cue the closing credits. It’s so much more. This is about changing your relationship with the pattern. It’s about moving consciously from confusion to clarity, from automatic reactions to conscious choices, and from self abandonment to self-respect.

So let’s discuss how to do that, starting with…

Tell yourself the truth.

The first step here is honesty. It’s not about dramatic honesty; not storming into your next family lunch with a PowerPoint presentation and a laser pointer. Quiet honesty; the kind where you sit with yourself and admit what you may have spent years trying not to say out loud:

This relationship keeps hurting me. I keep dreading this person. I keep leaving these interactions feeling worse, not better. I keep abandoning myself to keep the peace.

So that’s where I want you to begin. Name what this is. Because until you tell yourself the truth, you will keep trying to solve the wrong problem. You’ll keep looking for better wording, better timing, better techniques, better excuses, better ways to make them understand you… when, in reality, the deeper issue may be that the relationship itself is operating on unhealthy terms.

Honesty is powerful, and self-honesty is the most powerful type that there is because it breaks denial… and denial is often what keeps toxic family dynamics going; not just denial by the other person, but your own denial as well. It takes two to tango, and so if you’re involved in the relationship, you are contributing. The little ways that you explain things away because the truth feels heavy, right? Like when you tell yourself, “Oh, it’s not that bad.” Because naming it properly would mean that you’d have to do something about it.

So, start there. Name it. Name the pattern. Name the impact. And name the cost. Because when you name it, that’s when you can see it for what it really is. OK, next…

Focus on impact.

The next step is to get specific: really, really specific. What actually happens? What do they do? How often does it happen? What tends to trigger it? What role do you end up slipping into? Do you go quiet? Do you over explain? Do you try to keep the peace? Do you wind up feeling like a child again, even though you’re a fully grown adult with bills to pay and a life of your own?

Because when you get specific you stop getting lost in abstract questions like, “Are they technically toxic?” And that’s when you start asking a much more useful question: “What is this costing me?” So ask yourself, what is it costing you before contact? Are you feeling dread? Anxiety? Do you go through mental rehearsal?

What is it costing you during contact? Is it tension? Silence? Self-censorship? And what is it costing you afterwards? Is it guilt? Rage? Rumination? Emotional exhaustion? Whatever it is, take the time to understand it. Making this shift matters because the impact is real. Impact tells the truth. And impact is often what reveals whether a relationship is just difficult or actually harmful. Next…

Decide what access they get.

This is the next major shift, and for a lot of people it’s a really big one, and it’s about understanding this: access is earned, not guaranteed… which means that not everyone should have the same level of access to you. Right? Now, that might sound obvious logically… but emotionally embracing that idea can be absolutely revolutionary.

Because many people dealing with toxic family dynamics have been taught that family automatically gets access to their time, attention, personal energy, emotional energy, personal information, and availability… no matter how they behave. But that’s not a healthy relationship model. Access, regardless of who you are, should be shaped by behaviour, not just biology. And a healthy relationship is one that is mutually respectful, mutually supportive, and mutually beneficial.

So ask yourself: what level of access feels safe, manageable, and realistic for you right now? That might mean deciding on shorter visits, or fewer calls, replying more slowly, having more distance, more structure, not discussing certain topics, only seeing them in group settings, taking a break so that you can think more clearly… whatever helps you to feel safer, calmer, and more in control. Look, be fair and respectful here, but don’t sacrifice your needs to spare someone else’s feelings.

The point here is not to punish anyone or to make them see things your way or to believe what you believe. The point is to stop handing someone unrestricted access to you when they’ve shown that they don’t handle that access well. If you walk away from an interaction with someone feeling drained and disrespected, they are not handling that access well.

This is also where last week’s episode on family estrangement sort of sits in the background as a companion piece because sometimes, depending on where you are in this, after a long period of trying to manage access in healthier ways some of you may eventually realise that the relationship is just way too harmful. Now, to be clear, this episode is not about jumping straight to that place. I firmly believe that family estrangement should be an absolutely last resort because there are so many consequences that come with it, but for some people, myself included, it is the only right choice, right? It’s about recognising that access is adjustable and you’re allowed to make choices before you reach breaking point. Alright, next…

Say less, mean it more.

So once you start changing someone’s access to you, you also need to change how you communicate. And that means finding your voice and using fewer words. This is where assertiveness comes in. Assertiveness is not aggression. It is not cruelty. It is not snapping back, or becoming emotionally hard and unyielding. It is clarity. It’s about being direct without being nasty. It’s saying what is true without performing emotional gymnastics to make it easier for the other person to accept. You can be respectful about how you do that.

You have to be aware of this because one of the biggest traps in toxic family relationships is over explaining. You think that if you just explain yourself kindly enough, or carefully enough, or thoroughly enough, that they’ll finally understand. But when somebody benefits from having too much access to you, your explanation often just becomes more material for them to argue with.

So, shorter is often stronger when it comes to communication: “I’m not discussing that.” “That doesn’t work for me.” “I’m not available for that.” “I’m happy to talk when things are calmer.” “You don’t have to agree, but this is what I’ve decided.”

Now, none of that is about being cold. That’s about being clear. And yes, if you’re used to smoothing things over then that is going to feel extremely uncomfortable at first. Of course it will! You’re stepping out of an old role. But discomfort is not always a sign that something is wrong. Sometimes it’s a sign that something is changing. And if you’d like to learn how to be more assertive to help you through that, check out Episode 242. OK, next…

Expect pushback without taking the bait.

Now here is the part that we need to talk about a lot more often, and it’s that when you change, the family… the system… often pushes back. But pushback does not mean you’re wrong. It usually means you’ve stopped being convenient. If somebody is used to guilt working on you, they’re probably going to ramp things up. They may use more of it if they feel like you’re trying to change things. If they’re used to having easy access, they may push harder when you limit their access. If they’re used to you saying yes when you mean no, they may be very upset when you stop doing that.

They might attack you. They might call you selfish, difficult, dramatic, cold, ungrateful, disrespectful, or whatever else they need to say to try to pull you back into the old pattern. So a big part of protecting your peace is expecting some pushback and preparing for it so that you don’t cave. Things very likely may get tougher before they get better, and you have to be prepared for that.

That preparation helps you to stay steady, to stay calm, and to stay focused. So be clear about, and really know, what you’ll say, what you won’t discuss, when you’re going to leave, how you’ll calm yourself afterwards… all of those things. Don’t walk into a situation just hoping that it will all somehow magically be fine if you just stay cheerful enough because that’s not going to work and it’s not realistic. When you plan for the most likely outcome, you can make smarter choices to protect your peace. Preparation is self-respect in action. Next…

Redefine what ‘family’ means to you.

So this is the deeper work underneath all of this practical stuff, and it’s about remembering that love is not disrespect. A lot of us have been taught that family means loyalty at any cost: endless tolerance, unlimited access, permanent obligation… but that is not a healthy definition of family. A healthy relationship, family or otherwise, should involve mutual respect, mutual support, and mutual benefit. Not perfection, not compliance, not zero conflict.

Mutual respect.

Love is not disrespect. Love is not control. Love is not humiliation. Love is not manipulation. Love is not expecting somebody to bend to your will so you can get your own way.

So, over time, one of the biggest shifts for you to make is to deliberately ask yourself, does this relationship have enough respect and emotional safety to remain close? That question changes everything… because it brings you back to your values. It brings you back to self respect. And it reminds you that being related to someone does not automatically make the relationship healthy.

Conclusion

So here’s what I want you to take away from this episode. If a family relationship keeps harming your peace, then that harm deserves to be taken seriously.

Being family does not give anyone the right to disrespect you, manipulate you, control you, or leave you carrying the emotional cost of their behaviour while everybody else pretends it’s normal.

You’re allowed to be honest about what’s happening, and to decide what access people have to you.

Because when you boil it all down, protecting your peace is about being honest with yourself on what you will and will not keep carrying.

So, ask yourself this: where in your relationships do you most need to stop abandoning yourself? Let me know in the comments, and let’s talk about it.

Each week I like to finish up by sharing a quote about the topic, and I encourage you to take a few moments to really reflect on it and consider what it means to you. This week’s quote is by an unknown author, and it is:

Family should be a place of peace, not pain.

Unknown

Let me repeat that:

Family should be a place of peace, not pain.

All right. That’s it for this week. For more straightforward tips, grab a copy of my book Life Advice That Doesn’t Suck; it’s linked in the description. If you’d like to support my work, you can find out more about my Patreon at ltamh.com. And if you found this episode helpful, please leave a rating or review on your favourite podcast platform because it helps more people discover the show.

Thank you very much for joining me today. Look after yourself and make a conscious effort to share positivity and kindness out into the world… because you get back what you put out. Take care and talk to you next time!

Join me next week when I talk about navigating freeze mode and shutdown. And check out my episode on dealing with difficult people next; it’s linked in the description. I release new episodes every Sunday, so follow or subscribe to never miss an episode.

Let’s Talk About Mental Health is an independent program. Discover more at ltamh.com.

---

SUPPORT MY SHOW!

Let’s Talk About Mental Health is an independent program written and created by me (Jeremy Godwin… hi! 👋), and I rely on people like you to help with the costs of producing my show each week. If you’d like to show your support for what I do (which I’d really appreciate), you can become a paid subscriber on Patreon for early access to ad-free episodes. Thank you!

Huge thanks to my wonderful Patreon supporters (in alphabetical order): Amanda D., Amanda K., Ashley, Belinda, Brittnee, Carol B, Charlie, Elizabeth, Janis & Steve, Kaiulani, Karen, Keith, Lenka, Maya, Michael, Monte, Nikki, Patricia, Paula, Rachel, Roxanne, Sonia, Stacy, Susan, Tatiana, Taylor.

Click here to become a Patreon supporter:

---

TOOLS & RESOURCES FOR YOUR MENTAL HEALTH

I offer simple digital products that will help you improve and look after your mental health.

• Start your day with focus and intention with my Daily Affirmations
• Transform your mental health in less than 15 minutes a day using my Daily Reflection Tool
• Get the most out of the Daily Reflection Tool with my Reflection Masterclass video (also available as a bundle with the tool itself, saving you 20%)

Click the links below for your chosen product(s):

---

Donate

Feeling generous? Make a secure one-off or recurring donation below (payments processed by Stripe).

---

Click here for details of mental health resources in most countries.

---

SUBSCRIBE

Sign up here to have episode transcripts and video/audio land in your inbox each week:

(I hate spam, so your information stays private. I may send you the odd email to update you about something new I’m working on, but other than that you’ll be receiving episode transcripts with embedded video/audio).

---

---

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Find more content at www.ltamh.com

Let’s Talk About Mental Health.
Making Mental Health Simple.

Let’s Talk About Mental Health. © 2026 Jeremy Godwin.

The information provided in this episode is for general awareness on the topic and does not constitute advice. You should consult a doctor and/or mental health professional if you’re struggling with your mental health and wellbeing. You’ll find additional information on the Resources page of this website.