117 – Dr. Sherrie Campbell-Having the Courage to Separate from Toxic Family Members .mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe

Ruthless Compassion is a podcast about how you can turn your emotional shit into fertilizer for success and see your darkest moments as opportunities to transform into a powerful kindness warrior. If you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review wherever you listen.

Welcome Dr. Sherrie Campbell to the Ruthless Compassion podcast.

Thank you. I'm super excited to be here.

Yeah, I'm very happy to have you because I think your topic is so important and it's certainly come up a lot in my psychotherapy practice, and I'm very interested to see how you handle it in yours and all the different kinds of projects you have arisen from it. But first of all, I thought it would be best for you to introduce yourself to the listeners.

So I'm Dr. Sherrie. I'm a clinical psychologist with a PhD in Southern California, and I am a social media influencer. I talk on the niche specific to Toxic Family and even more specific to the opportunity to cut ties if necessary. And I have a giant Facebook following and I have a podcast, Sherapy Sessions: Cutting Toxic Family Ties. And I just really love doing what I do. Time continues to tell me that telling my own story as an expert was really the best thing. It's really done a lot more than I would have anticipated. So that's a nutshell on who I am as a professional.

So you say that telling your own story has been important. Why don't you share what you can share today about your story?

I was raised I don't know if it's unusual anymore. It certainly felt unusual to me in that I had two highly toxic character disordered parents. Typically there's one, there's usually a very dominating parent and a passive parent. And I had two very dominating parents who the marriage didn't last long, but the parenting certainly did. And they both married multiple times. My mom four. I think my father, by the time he passed away, was on his fifth, so just really brought through a tremendous amount of instability and cruelty, isolation. I was the scapegoat, so I was the child that all the symptomology of the dynamic I was in. And I suffered and I suffered for years to find myself and to figure out how to find happiness and what would that mean? And I tried everything to stay connected to my family because the most important social group you can possibly belong to is your family. But it became for me, around age 45, truly unlivable. And there were no experts. There are no experts that allow the cutting off option. It's very allowed in romantic love, but it certainly was not allowed or promoted in family because I think many are afraid to have the cultural kickback.

But I knew at some point that for me to find happiness and to remember who I was and rediscover and rebirth and get on my own path and begin to tell my own narrative, the truth of my narrative, I couldn't have any vein of connection to my family. And so I cut off from them. And I've been taking that journey ever since.

What you say about how there's very little or no social support to disconnecting from family, I completely agree with you because in my psychotherapy practice, which gosh, I've been doing since early nineties, I feel like one of the things that keeps coming up over and over again is that my patients came from a very dysfunctional family, but it's very hard for them to disconnect. And I always say that if you had a happy family life, you're not going to walk through my door. But on the other hand, if you had a dysfunctional family life, it's very hard to let them go because there is so much stigma attached to not being part of your family, to having, quote unquote, rejected your family.

There really is. And I think that stigma is hardest coming from child to parent. Not to minimize the feelings of what a parent may feel around cutting off from a toxic adult child, but because there's a natural asymmetry running from parent to child of power, the child really isn't allowed to cut off without being mistakenly judged as spoiled, entitled, bratty, reckless rather than smart, wise, intelligent to the truth of the abuse. And I believe that culture is very afraid to call out bad parenting for what it is. When a child such as myself is externalizing the family pain into behavior, the very last thing anyone looks at is the parents. They look everywhere else. They'll start off with your mentally unwell down to nutrition, gaming, music, politics, your culture, your generation. But the very bottom of that list is the parents. And I think it's quite sad that we are afraid as a culture to tell parents when they need to do better.

Well, I think we live in a narcissistic society where bad people taking responsibility for their behavior, their hurtful behavior, is not a trend. Right. It's always blaming the victim.

Certainly, it is not a trend. And when you're the child, you believe what you're told as well due to that natural asymmetry between parent to child. They are our leaders, so we believe what we're told. And we will make up a story about our parents casting ourselves as the bad one due to wanting to maintain an attachment, we are not allowed to see them as bad. It's too scary. So we don't understand the brain is not developed quite well enough at those young ages when we're already creating that story that it must be us that is bad.

Right. Exactly. So you're talking about different kinds of toxic family relationships. And one of the things I've noticed, and I bet you have noticed this as well, is that when you have very toxic parents, it really disrupts the sibling relationships as well.

Oh, tremendously. Yes. Interesting. My sibling and I were close growing up as we were surviving. But he was the golden and I was the scapegoat. And so they had already created the conquer and divide quite well. And I believe that toxic parents do this to weaken the resiliency of the bonds between all other family members, because the most toxic person in the family wants that control. Further, the most toxic person in any family dynamic is the least confronted. So you don't want to go against the one that has the power to hurt. And as I got older and became more successful, my sibling could not tolerate that and cut me off.

That's really sad.

It is sad, and I look at it as quite sad for my sibling in that insecurity has been driven so deep in the fear of there could only be one star in his family. He didn't want to lose his position. And so I don't think it's lovely being the golden either. I think it can be quite painful and confusing. And he's very toxic at this point in his life, have taken on the worst traits of both of my parents. I don't think he necessarily cares. I think that he likes his position and they have an incredible way of not caring, but they do know what they're doing. If there's anything that I get my brother and my parents, they definitely know what they're doing. We do know right from wrong, but because what they do works for them, then it works for him to not be connected to me, because it keeps him in the limelight and he doesn't have to hear any other version of the story of his life other than his own and that of which my parents tell him.

When you said, it can be painful to be the golden, I always think back to my own practice and how the golden child is always the child that has higher expectations and has to please the parents. If you're the scapegoat, you have a certain amount of freedom because you're bad already, so you don't have to please them and try to stay connected. But the golden child, because there's some kind of attention being paid, they have more responsibility to please their parents. And the strange thing is that the attention is not real love. So they're constantly getting attention, but starving for affection.

Yeah, I do think that although I think as a scapegoat, I certainly wanted to please them, it just wasn't made possible for me. I think most of what I did was designed it fitting and pleasing and trying to measure up, trying to be good until the rejection was just so intense. I don't know that I felt freedom. I felt so alone. But I do feel that the golden also has the guilt as they watch their sibling be abused and that they participate in that. I've treated many goldens that come back not realizing that they had been doing that. You know what I mean? And then as they become adults or the parental system passes away or they just find some distance from that, they begin to feel some level of pain that they joined in, not really knowing, but being groomed to do so. I think both kids hurt. I do. I think both kids hurt.

Yeah. I didn't mean that you felt free in the moment, but I feel like it ultimately gave you freedom to separate because there was nothing in it for you right there.

Correct. Correct.

There is nothing coming to you.

Correct. Yeah. Totally agree. I think that the golden child never gets the opportunity to question the system, whereas you're spot on in that it's so painful for the scapegoat that we have no other choice but this sort of thing is this right? And we question the system. I think that sometimes future forward, if the scapegoat can escape, the scapegoat has a much better shot at life and finding authenticity because the enmeshment isn't quite as deep and the pain is so great that you leave and you can find a new life. I feel like the scapegoat is nearly just muddled and mired into the tentacles of codependency.

Yeah. And I think, like you said, you can see the truth about your parents more easily if you're the scapegoat because the kind of rose colored glasses are off. Whereas the golden child still wants to idealize that the parents in the hope that there's something coming from them.

Yes, correct. And I think it's hard too, because when you grow up, the golden I do think you like it. You recognize there is a difference in treatment and you certainly wouldn't want to be treated as the scapegoat then as the scapegoat, you just feel so utterly unlovable and there's such a yearning to be the golden child, a yearning to get what you think is love. But I think as we grow, I don't think the golden child is loved either. I think the golden child is just simply manipulated with a different flavor.

I totally agree. I always felt like if a parent is cruel enough to abuse one child, they're not capable of loving another. You can't have that kind of different way of treating your children and there be any love to be given.

I agree. And I also feel, at least in the case of my sibling and the enmeshment with one of my parents, is that some of their relationship is just keeping the lies of the other. And so what a dangerous space to be.

It's sad.

It's sad because all based in fear.

Yeah. One of the things that I have seen a lot with my patients with these toxic family dynamics is that they don't want to step away because there might be somebody that they really love who is naive or ignorant. Like a grandparent or a beloved aunt or uncle who they really want to connect with. But that person is allied with one or both of the toxic members of the family. And so if they step away, they also lose this beloved family member, and so they stay because they don't want to make that sacrifice. What do you say to somebody like that?

If that other family member is worth tolerating abuse, then I do think some make that I'm very fluid in this way because everybody's dynamic is so unique. For me, any vein to that abuse was abuse, and any family member complicit to my abuse was contributing to my abuse. I believe if a family member genuinely loves you, they will be wise enough to see that there's abuse involved and never ask you to tolerate that. I think there's in between phases where it is worth it for some people to stay in that connection. For myself, it just wasn't an option. But adult survivors of toxic family members kind of covers every scenario, Marcia. I wanted to write to the every person who does want to maintain. So some of those boundaries that I define is with those middle people. I still think you can cut ties with your abuser and say, I love you. I want this relationship with you to the beloved aunt, for example. But the topic of my parents needs to be off the table.

I thought it might be a good idea for you to give some examples of behaviors that toxic family members might exhibit.

Oh, goodness. I can come up with a host. So for your reader and what I ask for my following and what I ask for my podcast listeners is to certainly Google the Cluster B personality disorders. It is not mental illness that we're discussing here. This is not bipolar. This is not major depression. This is character. Whenever character is involved, there is certainly choice, because otherwise everyone raised under parents like mine would just be really sick people. Now, a lot are, but because some aren't, this is where there's some level of choice. So these people bully. They lie. They're grossly immature. They have to be the center of attention. They tend to ruin all major events and holidays. The world needs to stop at their demand. They expect you to be 100% accessible to them at all times, regardless of this is possible or not. They don't really want to be close to you, but they want you to be close to them. I believe that they are bad people who have good moments. I do not believe they are good people who have bad moments. They gaslight. They twist the story. You are always wrong.

They are always the victim. They rewrite narratives. There's no winning. There's no apology. There's no empathy. They look at their children if we're talking about parents from a place of ownership where truly parenting should be a concept of leadership, and you are forever indebted, and you owe and you owe always. And I think they cause us to live in extreme states of maladaptive guilt. We're feeling guilty for things we did not do. We're apologizing for things we did not do or say, and we start pleasing to simply just save our lives. These types of parents is really psychologically deadly.

Sounds that way. And what kinds of responses would we have in being in the presence of people like that of toxic family members? Like, what kinds of feelings or experiences would we have that we would know my family member is toxic most likely.

Well, extreme anxiety, never feeling safe, not wanting to leave a room. I remember when I was growing up, if I had to use the restroom, let's say it's during a holiday, I would count how many family members were in the room to time when it was best for me to go to the bathroom to come back with the least amount of knives in my back. I think you just feel you're never good enough. I think you feel repulsed by them, often angry, frustrated to maddening levels because there's just no way to truly function, and you're always wrong, no matter what. And so Scott Pack, the incredible author of The Road Less Travels and Road Less Traveled and also The People of the Lie, describes it perfectly. That even clinicians, there's a sense of revulsion when a toxic person is in your presence. And we have that antenna or of that instinct for a reason, and that is for protection.

I remember saying to some colleagues that there have been a few patients, not that many over the years, but I felt physically ill when they were in my office with me.

Correct. And toxic people were lucky as clinicians in some way, but sad that the real patient never gets treated. But they don't stay in therapy. No, they are above reproach, so they don't have any desire to self examine.

So this is a situation that can be extremely, extremely harmful. So why is it that obviously there's all that stigma, but what do you think is the real key to people remaining in these toxic family interactions for years and years?

Well, I think for me, I mean, I was 45 years old when I cut the final tie. I also think the years between 38 and 44, especially according to Ericsson's psychosocial theory of development, which I go over in adult survivors, is it's sort of the time of the second crisis in life. And for me, enough was enough. And at that point, I could fund myself, of course, I was a mother. I was really starting to see through my own parenting of my daughter and how much I loved her that my loving her would never allow me to abuse her. Made things very clear for me. And I was completely annihilated for writing my first book that I self published, and that was it. And the abuse was so grotesque and so cruel that I didn't make this decision out of confidence. I made this decision for survival. It was so savage and so cruel. And I had written this book hoping for more, like an Oprah moment, thinking that if they had heard my story, that they would have felt something about it, that they would have felt bad, that they would have apologized or had wanted to do better.

And they made my book about them rather than hearing me. And they were so savage, so sadistic. It wasn't a choice I made. It was something that ended itself because I realized I had no more energy to mend that sense. And it is scary. So I have so much compassion and so much empathy for those who stay connected, even with one string to that abuse. Because there certainly is a feeling of being alone that I will experience for my life, because no one can fill the whole of our family. No friends, no nothing. There's lots of love in my life, and I'm the luckiest in all the land. And I still wish I had a mom, and I still wish my dad would have, so that's just something I've learned to carry, and it doesn't go away, and nor does it hurt every day anymore. It's just a different life, I guess.

The pain of not having parents is way less hurtful than the pain of the parents that you had.

Absolutely. I wish I had a mom and dad, a loving one. I do not miss Tom, Jeff or Gracie, so to speak. Right. I miss what I should have had. That is what I miss. I don't miss who I had.

Yeah, for sure. Well, to miss that would be a very strange response. Right. To miss that kind of abuse.

Yeah. And, you know, there are certain things, like the way my mother smells, like her perfume. I remember that memory fondly as a little girl. That smell today, I don't know. I won't smell it, but, you know, I once danced on my dad's feet to My Girl and I was three. And I have memories of my sibling that I will always treasure. But again, it comes down to that. Abuse doesn't work without doses of intermittent kindness. You need something to keep you addicted to the abuse. And so whatever those memories were, whether they were manipulative or just a good moment and a bad person, I don't know. But I know that that isn't who I would choose as my parents, a friend or a lover. So if I wouldn't choose them for a friend, I don't feel like I should have to be abused by them because they have a title of family.

I always used to tell my parents that those good moments don't mitigate against all the abuse.

No. And also the way the brain works is trauma or negative emotion is much bigger for the brain and much harder, therefore, to break down. So it is processed in a completely different part of the brain. So if your parent is a bad person who only has good moments, then when you look back on childhood and a healthy brain, a person who had good parents with bad moments, their memories are going to be very different. There's going to be a lot less work to break down. And the way I grew up is I couldn't survive one attack before another one was already occurring. So how does a person heal?

Like, here you are, you're a wife, you're a mom, you're a therapist, you're functioning. How does the person heal from that level of toxicity?

Well, I don't think healed. You didn't say that. But I always tell my people, you're not going to have an end date to this. This is an ongoing, nearly spiritual journey of self-love. And people you to tell me, just love yourself. And I just thought how offended that made me feel because I'm like, okay, so do you have the manual for that? Because how do we learn to love ourselves as to how our parents love us? They are our first teachers and role models. So I try to love myself as if I am my own child the way that I love my child. And if you don't have a child, how you would love your friends or your pets or anything, right? Be good to yourself. Be patient in your journey. And for me, journaling and writing have saved my life because I was able to write myself back into existence as the person that I always knew that I was deep down. The person in there that would fight for me instead of cower. I think getting outside, opening your heart to love, being an educated empath, which is something I teach in my book. I had to learn that not everybody deserved my empathy because I came out with quite the pleasing habit, and I had to get rid of that.

But just time and patience. And I think because healing doesn't feel very good, sometimes we think we're not doing it right. But I don't think healing feels good all the time. In fact, I think it feels quite horrifying a lot of the time. But you feel you deal and you begin to heal.

As you're talking. I was thinking about how when a person is growing up and their model of love is so abusive, it's very common that they're drawn to friends or romantic partners who mistreat them as well.

I did that.

So how do you break that pattern of being attracted to the familiar?

Well, it's been a journey. The interesting thing for me anyway, in my own journey about pain is we do reach levels of enough is enough. And when I found that I was the common denominator in choosing toxic people, I got into therapy. And I am a therapist who will always see a therapist because I think it makes me a better therapist. But I got into therapy, and I just thought I'm the common denominator, and it doesn't serve me to just make everyone around me accountable, but not me. I have some terrible habits that I learned. Every habit that I learned that drew toxic people into me were the defenses I used as a child that actually did help me survive. What I learned about that was the pleasing habit helped me survive as a child. But I never outgrew that defense because it certainly sunk me as an adult. So I didn't say no as a child because it got me into some very unsafe spaces. So then as I became a friend or a partner or a lover to somebody and I didn't know how to say no, it was that in me that was making me sick to myself.

And I do think it requires quite a bit of humility to go through and recognize that maybe the things that saved your life as a child are now the things that are kind of killing you as an adult. And you need to learn different skill sets. And adult survivors is so full of one skill set after another skill set that I've had to learn in my life, and I am genuinely very happy in my life at this point at 51, just really in a good space, and those habits of mine are very well cleaned up, and they do take a lot of practice. It's not enough to read a book and then be like, oh, cool, I got some great skill sets. You have to live those. You have to really live on purpose to get better and to change those habits.

Absolutely. I want to cycle back to what we talked about at the very beginning, about how people don't want to talk about your childhood these days. They want to give you some medication or do some cognitive behavioral therapy. But it's hard for people to, even as therapists, address really bad childhoods. And it seems like the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction away from looking at our past and in terms of why we're struggling, why we're suffering. What would you say to therapists in terms of helping their clientele heal and have better lives in terms of that?

Well, one thing that I can tell you that I get feedback on from patients who have come from other therapists. In fact, I'm going to start treating a therapist who reached out to me that no other therapist in her life has ever gotten it. A lot of therapists play a role in the room, and I don't know that they all bring a genuine self in. And I come in as me, and I self-share when appropriate. I'm affectionate with holding up ethical boundaries, of course, but these are human beings walking into my office, not somebody with a pathology who needs CBT. I do not look at people that way. I look at their heart. I look at their soul. I look at their path. I look at their tears, I look at their pain, and I dive deep into what is causing it? Where did it start? And I don't use any fancy words. I'm a fan of the cursey words, if anything, because I think when people are really going to heal, they just want someone real on the other side. They want to know that that other person, their therapist, knows what they're doing from the point of a survivor, not an expert.

I want my book survivor approved, not expert approved. What we do in our office every day, it's just so real. It's not my job to fix people. I don't have that power. There aren't any fancy tricks that are going to do that. But when you bring your heart and you bring empathy and you create a space, that client will start to heal themselves. And they are so far more powerful than they think. And I try not to interrupt that space. And when I have questions, which I have a lot of questions I ask, and those questions seem to lead to the healing that they are looking for.

That sounds very helpful.

Yeah. I think that there's a fear maybe needing to fix people that some therapists have, and I don't think we even have that power. I think that's a very prideful way to look at being in this field. I think we're here to help and to create space and that the client is responsible for their healing. And I'm simply responsible to ask for guidance and ask questions. And I love the things my books I've coined some of my own terms because nothing in our diagnostic and statistical manuals seem to match for me. I've coined foundational anxiety, some different things, because I think it's okay to grow this field as well. I think it's important.

It's so interesting what you're talking about because it's very much similar to my own practice as a psychotherapist after so many years. And I think about my own patients and how they all came with some level of childhood dysfunction or trauma or toxicity. And they internalized so much of the negative self-talk and the lack of self-esteem and the dysfunctional coping strategies and the shoving down their feelings through addiction. And then the way for them to heal was to first of all face the truth, which is super hard, and then to grieve their losses, and then to, like you said, love themselves and to pursue things that are more positive. But when you think about therapists, right, as a therapist, one of my supervisors talked to me about this when I first started being a therapist and how.

You have to be able to face yourself if you want to help your patients or clients. Because if a therapist is afraid to look at their own trauma, they're certainly not going to want to open up that field with their own clientele. So maybe these other therapists who aren't going there are just afraid to face whatever is locked up inside of them. And since so many therapists have their own history of dysfunction and go into therapy maybe wanting to fix people because they want to fix themselves vicariously, if they could overcome that fear, they might be more effective therapists.

Yeah. And can they put down their pride to do so? No matter what, pride impedes progress. Just because you have a degree and a title, you have to think about how do you internalize that? Do you feel that you know more because you have this degree or you are a therapist? Because I just don't think that we know more. I've learned so much from my patients and their wisdom and their courage and their bravery. And I mean, I just get goosebumps thinking about how incredible the human beings are that are walking into my office every week. And I stand in such admiration of them. I feel like the luckiest in all the land that they chose me. And you can laugh in therapy, you can cry in therapy. For me, there isn't a miracle in every session. It is the cumulative effect of a healthy relationship long term on another person.

Yeah, I totally agree with you. I totally agree with you. People who are waiting for the big ahas might be disappointed, but those little incremental shifts that suddenly they notice that they're doing things differently or feeling things differently or thinking things differently, that's real change.

It is real change. And it's so precious watching somebody when they're out in their inner critic, talking horrible to themselves and you can say, Whose voice is that? And they're like, oh my God, I sound just like my dad to myself, or I sound just like my mom to myself. I'm like, okay, well, what would you want to hear if you were your own child? Right. So I just think it's a creative space in that office, I'm sure you agree. And every person is so totally different, even if they have similar issues. And I feel so lucky to sit with these people. They add to my life as much as I add to theirs.

Like to say, it can be a very spiritual experience.

It can be educational as well.

For sure. So you've been doing a lot of writing and you've written quite a lot, and you have a recent book which maybe you'd like to talk about a little bit.

Yeah, the book is doing absolutely incredible. So much reach out to me on this one. I'm just lucky. I feel so lucky. But it is called Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members. And it gives you tools to maintain boundaries, to deal with cultural criticisms, and to heal the shame. Toxic shame is something really I do a deep dive and also in grieving and then ending in becoming selfreliant. And what a gorgeous, phenomenal, beautiful state that is to be to be self-reliant because when we are abandoned emotionally as children, we should have been able to be reliant on a structure at the foundation, which would be the parents. And if you don't have that, it is something that you can gain. And this book leads you all the way to getting there.

Well, that sounds like a really positive thing because I agree. I think so many of my patients have this fundamental insecurity from not having had that strong base growing up.

I agree. Yeah. And I define foundational anxiety for the readers. It is not in our manual. Very little is in the diagnostic manual from abuse victim syndrome coming from toxic parents of children. So I'm starting to define that myself in the literature. And again, I want my book survivor approved, not really expert approved. Lots of experts love the book. It's got five star ratings, so I'm really happy there. But more than anything, I'm trying to reach survivors because it's a silent epidemic, family estrangement, and we all feel so alone and they're not alone.

That's a nice thing to have, is to have some support. And you also have a podcast that you're doing called Sherapy, which is a cute little.

My clients named me that over the last 25 years or so. They're like, oh, I'm coming to Sherapy. And then I thought it was so cute. And so it just kind of has landed. And I was writing for Entrepreneur for years and Huff Post for years and many other online sources. So it just turned into Sherapy. And almost all my clients call it that now. And I call my Thankful Thursday videos that. So, yeah, it's called Sherapy Sessions: Cutting Toxic Family Ties and never had an intention to do a podcast and it's ranked worldwide. It was in the top 130 podcasts just recently in the United States. So pretty exciting.

Amazing. Well, that's a great thing to have. Where can people find you if they're looking into all the things that you're doing?

I would have them go to Drsherriecampbell.com. And if you sign up on my email list there, Jack Canfield, the amazing author of Chicken Soup for the Soul, chose my book in a contest to have me interviewed with him. And that interview is a gift if you sign up. And it covers all kinds of stuff on Toxic Family and Jack himself opens up, which is a beautiful thing. And all my sources are on there in terms of what's coming up next, all the media that I've done or I'm doing, what new books are there somewhat that are on the way, all of that good stuff.

That's amazing. Well, what a wonderful conversation this has been. And just before we end, I thought maybe you could share a call to action for the listener apropo . Of all the things we've been talking about today.

Everyone wants to know how to handle a toxic person. And what I will tell you is that silence is Your superpower. I'm not asking you to lose your voice. I'm asking you not to waste it.

Well, very well said, and I 100% agree, because like you said, there's no winning with people like this. So don't bother.

Yes, don't bother. You're going to get in the gauntlet, and you won't win. It won't matter. If you have the right facts, the right PowerPoint, the right time of day, with the right tone of voice in the right outfit, it won't matter.

That's such a fantastic call to action. Silence is Your superpower. Wonderful. Well, that's a great note to end on. Dr. Sherrie Campbell.

Well, thank you so much for having me and for doing such an incredible service to the world with your work and your podcast, and it's just thank you for all you do.

Well, my pleasure.

This is Dr. Marcia, sirota. Thank you for listening. Please leave a review and your comments wherever you listen to podcasts. And don't forget to sign up for my free newsletter at Marcisarota md.com, where you'll learn about upcoming online events as well. Also, we love getting referrals from our listeners about future podcast guests, so please email us at info at marcia Cerroda, Md.com.