|
Dec 04, 2010, 06:18 PM
|
|
|
|
Member Since: Dec 2010
Location: Over the Rainbow
Posts: 62
|
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by googley
I gave in. I'm going to visit. But I'm not staying with my parents. I'm staying with friends. I will have a couple of meals with them and spend Christmas with them. But really I'm going because I will be able to visit my friends. My dad didn't freak out when I told him that if I came I wouldn't stay with them. So that was nice. He thought I would stay with my brother, but from my understanding he doesn't have room. So I will stay with a friend instead. I couldn't say no. Why do they still have so much power?  |
Googley,
I'm happy happy happy that you'll be staying with friends and not with them.  Try to focus mostly on that. At least you won't have to live in a house full of tension for the time that you're there. Think of this as training them. You're sending a clear message that you're not willing to get sucked in just because they're paying for the travel.
Try not to be so hard on yourself. It takes time to un-enmesh from emotionally abusive parents. They make it extremely hard. As I wrote previously, these aren't people who deal with situations in a healthy way. By pressuring you into acting like everything's OK, they can deny that they're doing anything wrong.
There are so many different reasons why it may be difficult to draw boundaries. I think that at least one of them is self-respect. How can we expect to respect ourselves when we received no encouragement to do this? We essentially have to learn to re-parent ourselves. I think your insistence on setting up alternative arrangements to stay with non-abusive people shows self-respect, so you're not as compliant as you may think! 
Give yourself time. It took me years to learn to draw some boundaries, and even then they seemed like minuscule accomplishments. Without realizing it, though, each time I did, I was laying down one small part of a stronger foundation of identity. I really think that's what your choices for the holidays are doing for you (although it may not seem like it).
Stay strong!
Rainbow
|