My family issues are different than yours, but I can relate to them from my own experience. The first two years I was in therapy, I was still engaged with my family although distantly-- I lived on the other coast, and saw them infrequently (once/year) and spoke on the phone maybe 1/month.

I'm not sure that you're making a distinction between your "own" issues that you want to work on as completely separate from the issues that are generated by contact with your family, but for me they were definitely interconnected. Relating to my family was often good data for understanding some of my difficulties in other areas of my life, so it was actually useful in some ways to be connected to them.

Then I confronted my parents about some of the problems about our family and I didn't speak to anyone in my family for about 8 years (technically, they froze me out, but I didn't reach out to them after they wrote me some scathing letters in response). I was in therapy for about 3 of those years and didn't "waste" much therapy time on family issues. Being free of their nuttiness did definitely assist me in moving forward on some issues, particularly those related to intimacy and relationships, that I don't believe I would have had the emotional space to work through if I were still connected with them.

I was surprised when my mother reached out to me pretty much out of the blue, after 8 years. I had been married for awhile and was pregnant with my son (she knew neither of these things), still living far away from them. I worked things out with them as much as they were capable of dealing with them, and then decided to move forward on reconnecting with them (about a year later). I found myself in a different place with them. I was able to sidestep the nutty family dynamics (by either physically removing myself when I was with them, or by changing my behavior/response in the moment with whoever was doing the nutty thing). The nuttiness was all around me, but I was aware of it and let it pass me by. I was able, and still am mostly able, to deal with them in the present without dragging up and through old stuff. Most of the time, I feel positive about my relationship and connection with them, as if I have figured out how to both be myself and avoid dealing with them in a nutty way. I don't believe that they have really changed at all, but like with many relationships, when one person changes, the others change as a result. And it's not, just to be really clear, that they've admitted that the problems in our family are actually there. It's as if we've agreed to disagree about this issue, and moved on from there.

Even now, being connected with them still evokes some issues and therapy time for me. I have found that this has been a positive thing. It's like being challenged by something-- if you don't allow yourself to be in that situation, like running a marathon or something, then you don't develop the skills (stamina) to be able to confront it in a way that is useful to you. I'm not sure this is clear-- let me try to explain it a different way. The things that have driven me nutty that are provoked by my nutty family: by dealing with them and developing coping skills as a result-- I've been able to use those skills in other areas of my life. I guess now I've gone full circle in essentially saying that if you can change the way you deal with your family so it doesn't make you nutty (not sure that this is always possible), it may benefit you in other areas of your life.

Anne