Dr. Flo on Toxic Life Experiences™: Naming the Silenced, Reclaiming Power

What Are Toxic Life Experiences™?

In 2019/2020, I coined the phrase Toxic Life Experiences™ (TLEs) to give voice and verbiage to what many women who have lived through hell and are now reclaiming their power endure, but often cannot name out loud. I noticed that whenever I used terms like “abuse,” “domestic violence,” "workplace harrassment," or “violence against women and girls,” they often triggered interesting, and telling, responses: shame, shaming, silence, blame, or even defensiveness. Especially in spaces where healing is desperately needed.

As a phrase, Toxic Life Experiences™ offers a softer, yet no less powerful, umbrella for holding space and engaging in the much-needed discourse around deep emotional wounds and societal harm as it affects women and girls, without losing the truth of its impact. While terms like “abuse”, or “violence” are widely used, they are often met with discomfort or denial. This phrase invites honest dialogue without evasion, allowing us to name pain in ways that dignify experience, reclaim power, and foster healing. This is not to dilute its gravity, but to make space for truth to be heard, and is both radical and compassionate.

The 3 Classes of Toxic Life Experiences™

1. Interpersonal Toxicity

2. Structural, Systemic & Institutional Harm

3. Existential Betrayal & Identity Fracture

Class 1: Interpersonal Toxicity

This form of Toxic Life Experience™ takes place in the most intimate spaces, within families, romantic partnerships, and close relationships. It’s the pain that comes when the people who were supposed to love, nurture, or protect you instead cause harm.

It includes:

• Intimate partner violence: Physical harm, threats, or control inflicted by a romantic partner, often hidden behind closed doors and dismissed as “relationship problems.”

• Emotional, verbal, or psychological abuse: Constant criticism, gaslighting, name-calling, or manipulation that slowly erodes a woman’s confidence, safety, and sense of reality.

• Narcissistic or coercive control: A partner or family member who isolates, intimidates, or dominates decisions, demanding loyalty, obedience, or silence at the cost of a woman’s wellbeing and freedom.

• Familial abuse or neglect: Parent–child, sibling–sibling, child–parent, or grandparent dynamics. Includes parents who withhold love or use shame and silence as control; siblings who bully, betray, or scapegoat; and elders who enable abusers in the name of “keeping the family together.”

In today’s world, a heartbreaking reversal is emerging: children who abuse their parents—especially mothers. Matricide, utterly abhorrent and once unthinkable, is rising in incidence. Because of the sacredness of the mother–child bond, matricide is often considered a hallmark of severe psychiatric disturbance. In forensic psychiatry, it is most commonly associated with paranoid schizophrenia, psychotic breaks, and unresolved intrafamilial trauma[1]. In legal and criminological contexts, it also reflects extreme antisocial behavior, systemic failure to intervene, or profound emotional fragmentation[2]. These fractures, when ignored, don’t just impact families, they unravel the moral and emotional fabric of entire communities. Violations such as these are often hidden behind closed doors, dismissed as “private matters,” or normalized in cultures that ignore, dismiss, or silence women’s voices.

This deserves our attention now because Interpersonal Toxicity is often hidden, normalized, or outright dismissed. It is the root of many unspoken/unseen traumas. Minimized or ignored, these experiences fracture self-worth, boundaries, and trust. Without naming, there’s no way to truly heal.

Class 2: Structural, Systemic & Institutional Harm

This class of TLE describes trauma caused not by individuals, but by systems (legal, medical, religious, academic, or social institutions) that were built to protect, but often fail, exploit, or erase the very women they claim to serve.

It includes:

• Medical gaslighting or dismissal: A woman’s pain is minimized, her symptoms labeled “stress” or “malingering,” or she’s denied adequate care, especially during childbirth, chronic illness, or post-trauma.

• Gender, racial, or cultural bias: Being overlooked for leadership, spoken over in meetings, punished for being assertive, or misdiagnosed due to systemic bias.

• Abuse of power and harassment in organized spaces: A trusted spiritual leader uses their authority to silence or shame; a professor or supervisor demands “loyalty” in exchange for advancement or “protection”.

• Legal disenfranchisement: Courts granting custody to known abusers and perpetrators; or law enforcement officers failing to respond adequately to legitimate reports, often retraumatizing women cycle-breakers who seek justice.

These forms of harm are especially insidious because they’re baked into the structure of society. Women are often forced to remain in contact with these systems because they need them to survive, even when those systems are causing further harm[3].

This deserves our attention now because Structural, Systemic & Institutional Harm causes deep wounds that are rarely acknowledged since they’re seen as “necessary or due process”, or “just the way things are”. Without intentional truth-telling and systemic change, the cycles of harm persist. Women are left struggling to thrive while still entangled in the very systems that hurt them.

Class 3: Existential Betrayal & Identity Fracture

This class of TLE occurs when a woman is deeply wounded by the very people, places, or beliefs that once gave her identity. It’s the heartbreak of being shunned, disbelieved, or cast out by institutions she once revered and served.

Imagine the church you grew up, got married in, or poured your loyalty into turning its back on you. Being dismissed by religious leaders, community elders, or long-standing alliances that prioritize appearances, traditions, or perpetrators over truth. I call this the §deification of institutions: when systems like marriage, religion, tradition, or the abuser’s career/reputation are held in higher esteem than the very lives of women and children.

It includes:

• Cultural erasure or spiritual invalidation:  Being told our traditional beliefs are “backward,” our cultures are “superstitious,” or our language, appearance, and customs must be abandoned for us to be accepted or “successful”.

• Generational trauma or inherited silence: Familes where pain is never spoken of, but abuse, loss, or injustice is passed down as emotional patterns, fears, or silence rather than truth or healing.

• Betrayal by community or trusted life-long institutions: Being blamed or silenced by the very systems that raised you.

• Isolation from one’s voice or truth: Feeling unsafe to speak, trust intuition, or pursue one’s calling.

  
  

When trusted institutions deny or distort a woman’s reality, this can create identity fracture and soul-level dissonance. For many women of color, this is often layered with spiritual invalidation and racialized trauma[4].

This deserves our attention now because these fractures don’t just cause pain, they sever identity and belonging. Silent suffering lingers for years and, if not treated and healed, will be passed down from generation to generation. This is why naming and tending to Existential Betrayal and Identity Fracture is not only urgent, it is sacred work.

A Deeper Truth

We live in a world that covertly, and sometimes overtly, teaches women to endure quietly. But endurance is not healing. It delays it. It disguises it.

Toxic Life Experiences™ gives name to what has long been known but hastily silenced or fragmented, despite the existence of established terms like “abuse”, “trauma”, or “Adverse Childhood Experiences”. These often carry stigma, legal rigidity, or clinical detachment. TLEs, as a concept, offers a more empathetic, nuanced language for the lived experiences of women and children navigating invisible wounds, structural betrayals, and soul-level harm.

This framework has helped me immensely, personally.

And in my work with women, mothers, professionals—queens who’ve survived hell and dared to keep living—across cultures and disciplines. Many didn’t realize they’d been broken until this language gave them permission to feel, remember, and begin again.

A Call

Whether you’ve survived one or all three classes of Toxic Life Experiences™, know this:

You, Dear Queen, are not too broken to thrive.

You are not alone.

You are not to blame.

Naming the pain is how we begin.

History is the way forward.

Strategic Thriving™ is the map we follow.

I invite you to explore this language. Share this framework. Use it to create space for healing and truth.

With Love and Power,

Dr. Flo

Footnotes and Citations

[1] Green, R., & Manoharan, M. (2013). Matricide in forensic psychiatry: A case series and review of the literature. The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology, 24(3), 385–396. Read here

[2] Bourget, D., Gagné, P., & Labelle, M. E. (2007). Parricide: A comparative study of matricide versus patricide. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 35(3), 306–312. Read here

[3] Boulware, D. R., et al. (2022). The systemic silencing of women’s pain: A review of diagnostic delays and gender bias in healthcare. The Lancet Women’s Health. Read here

[4] Menakem, R. (2017). My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Central Recovery Press. Read here

Further Reading

1. Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. Basic Books.

2. Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex. University of Chicago Legal Forum.

3. van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.

Trademark & Usage Notice

The terms Toxic Life Experiences™ and Strategic Thriving™ were lovingly coined and developed by Dr. Florence Ene, MBBS, PhD, and are protected under intellectual property law.

Dr. Flo invites you to explore, reference, and share these concepts in alignment with their original spirit: to support, protect, and uplift women navigating healing and transformation.

However, commercial use, adaptation, or reproduction of the terms, frameworks, or related content without express written permission is strictly prohibited.

Please honor their origin and protect their integrity by always giving clear credit, using quotation marks and the ™ symbol, and linking back to www.drflosplace.org where possible.

Downloadable Reference List Here