[Purple Heart]

To people from dysfunctional families.

What do you do with family contact?

I read and seen a lot of Youtube videos where survivors go no contact due to horrific abuse and dysfunction. They see this as their only way to stay safe and live a happy life.

While others go low contact. They contact their families sometimes but keep distance. They observe, not absorb, if that makes sense. This is my solution.

Then I have heard a relationship therapist on Youtube say that you should 'reconnect' with your family and even participate in family gatherings. He seem to suggest cutting out by going no contact with family members as immature. But I think reconnecting can be potentially dangerous to your already fragile ego state that could inflame your mental illness.

What are your thoughts and what have you done in relation to your family?

PH

I have low to no contact with my family. I just can't cope with them, and they only ever tell me how awful I am anyway. No idea if that's the healthy approach or the right thing to do though- that's just how I deal with things- am the queen of head in the sand!

[Parva]

I have no contact with family anymore. I don't care if it's healthy or not. They never were much of a family anyway, so what really have I lost?

[starfruit504]

Originally Posted by Purple Heart

He seem to suggest cutting out by going no contact with family members as immature.

Some therapists have this absurd theory that everything can be hashed out. You can't hash out a personality disorder. You can't change other people, you can only change yourself. It's not "running away" from a problem, it's leaving an abusive relationship. If your abusive parent was your spouse, they'd be all for you cutting them off.

I have no contact with my father -- he was my abuser. I have a relationship with my mother (she's divorced from my dad, they don't speak) and my older brother (who has little to no contact with dad). I don't have contact with any of my father's other relatives, but that happened organically. We were never close; it's a loose knit clan of walking personality disorders.

It's hard to find anything on the web that supports cutting off the family. My father is a narcissistic sociopath. So when I learned Peg Streep (author of Mean Mothers, she also blogs on Psychology Today) cut off her mother when she had her first child, I finally followed my gut and did the same. It was extremely difficult. My emotions fought me on it every day. It's because I was taught to ignore my feelings and put my father's first. I was taught to be dutiful and sacrifice self for the needs of other (mainly him). He's controlled me my whole life, so much so that I lived in denial of having been sexually abused. Cutting things off felt much like breaking up with someone (where it's obvious to me it's been over for years, but he doesn't get it because he takes responsibility for nothing he's ever done).

I still have to remind myself of why I went no-contact. Some innocuous memory will pop into my head and I'll think about my dad for a minute, then I have to pull the sheep's clothing off and say: "There. There's the monster." I have to remember that wherever he is right now, he is emotionally abusing and controlling someone. If he was here, he'd be doing it to me.

I learned to accept the fact that if I ever come up, he certainly says terrible things about me and accuses me of using him/abandoning him/being ungrateful. The truth is no one in the entire world has ever hurt me or treated me as poorly as my father and having a relationship with me is a privilege. Not a right.

An excerpt from Mean Mothers:

Therapists, it should be said, generally also adhere to seeing maternal cut-off as the choice of last resort. Many therapists believe that resolution or healthy attachment needs to be accomplished within the mother-daughter relationship, not outside of it. While some therapists will advise their patients to go on a temporary break, few will ever initiate the recommendation that a patient break with her mother. Even self-help books tend to advocate that daughters be "fair" in their assessment of their mothers; as one writer puts it," The danger lies in tipping too far, either toward blaming the mother or toward dismissing the daughter's suffering. An important task of a wounded daughter is to see the mother-child relationship from both sides."

[Purple Heart]

Thanks for your posts!

I realise some of you have made a courageous choice to cut ties or low contact. For me at the moment it is low contact. I find it very difficult my situation. For starters I have severe PTSD and constantly have flashbacks of sexual abuse from childhood of what they did to me. So I find it difficult to turn around and have a amicable conversation. But now they rarely abuse me, so what do you do?? But yet I don't feel I want to fully return to family contact, events because there is just so much pain and anguish after realising the enormity of what they did to me. Also how they ignored me as an adult when I had major depression. So I have low contact. Please share your thoughts and any advice you may have for me.

PH

I don't know which category I am in. I still live with my parents (I'm 18) but I don't trust them and don't rely on them if I have any choice.
But I'll never go back to my primary abusers (= an institute/hospital-y thing).

[Parva]

Originally Posted by Purple Heart

Thanks for your posts!

I realise some of you have made a courageous choice to cut ties or low contact. For me at the moment it is low contact. I find it very difficult my situation. For starters I have severe PTSD and constantly have flashbacks of sexual abuse from childhood of what they did to me. So I find it difficult to turn around and have a amicable conversation. But now they rarely abuse me, so what do you do?? But yet I don't feel I want to fully return to family contact, events because there is just so much pain and anguish after realising the enormity of what they did to me. Also how they ignored me as an adult when I had major depression. So I have low contact. Please share your thoughts and any advice you may have for me.

PH

I didn't realize I had been abused and neglected until I was well into therapy. How's that for F-ed up? For me, it was just my life. Living in constant terror and being alone as a kid became my way of life, so I suppose I developed ways to cope with it. Through therapy, I slowly started to see my childhood through new eyes. It was then that I lost the ability to interact with my family, especially my parents. They both steadfastly insist there was no abuse or neglect, and then turn around to blame the abuse on the other one. Like you, both my parents ignored my needs as an adult, seeing only what they wanted to see. Because if they saw what was really there - depression, aloneness, messed up attachment, suicidality - they would have had to accept that their vision of my childhood was BS. As they aged, they both wanted, in their own ways, for me to take care of them and absolve them of the sins they insist they didn't commit. So my choice became this: Tell them my whole story in graphic detail and say "This is yours. Own it or not", which of course isn't possible, right? Their own shame in their lives could never allow that. By not owning it, they would be hurting me all over again. Making me re-question my right to be scarred up and hurt, to be in therapy, to be valued and loved; it would make my issues a reflection of my weakness, not their abuse. Feed my shame. The other choice is to accept my life and their role in it, and to struggle to calm the scars down. Within that struggle, I find no healing role for my family.

I'm not trying to convince you one way or another. I'm just sharing this part of my story to help you understand that you're not alone in what you face.

[marmaduke]

No contact is the best thing to can do if your family is toxic, simple.

On going contact with destructive family keeps you connected to an abusive past, painful scenarios play out time and time again.

Leave them firmly in the past, get as far away as possible and start a new healthy life.

[marmaduke]

Purple heart.
That 'therapist' sounds like a raving Narcissist, loony tunes keep away!!
So he is in effect saying, no matter how much someone abuses or hurts you keep going back for more!
WTF!
Remember, there is a sprinkling of PDs amongst therapists. They cause more harm than good with their warped thinking

[Mrs. Mania]

I'm low contact but have gone no contact for almost 2 years once. I'm actually going home this weekend and am having major anxiety. My older brother was the main abuser growing up, I haven't seen or spoken to him in 13 years. Every time I go home my parents make an issue about us all being together and have even tried to sneak him into get togethers. Ever since they did that, trips home are stressful and less enjoyable as I'm now on guard the entire time.

[marmaduke]

Mrs Mania.
Why. Why are you going to see them this weekend?
If you get major stress visiting them go no contact.

[TerriLynn]

I am low contact with my step mother (abuser), she cant touch me anymore, but she is still emotionally abusive.

I am no contact with my sister, she is an alcoholic and is super toxic. The problem is that we go back and forth. I haven't spoken to her in more than a year now, but we were in regular contact for probably 8 years, and no contact for a year before that. There is usually a big blow up where she is physically abusive or is just the meanest person you could imagine. Saying things that I KNOW in my head are untrue, but she says them just for the purpose of hurting me. She tells lies and is very manipulative and I just cant do it.

I text with my dad regularly. I rarely call him, but if I do I call his cell so I don't have to talk to SM.

[Mrs. Mania]

Marmaduke,
My sister, the only one who ever looked out for me(to the best of her ability) has been diagnosed with MS. It's her birthday and she is so desperate to see me that she offered to pay for me to come to her party (this makes it a big deal as she is VERY tight with her money). I don't feel like I can turn her down. She also is no contact with my brother and even has a restraining order on him so I do feel safe at her house....somewhat. I just have to avoid my parents house and comments.

[Cat_Lover_58]

I currently have no contact with my mother. She lives less than 2 miles away and some days the guilt is really consuming. I have to remember why I cut ties. She glorifies my abuser, beats me down emotionally, and has now started to knock my daughters down. They are 21. They don't much like her either. Mom is 80 but uses her so called old age to act like she doesn't remember things. Yes, but you can remember the dress your 3rd grade teacher wore on a certain day...hmm...wth?

[starfruit504]

Originally Posted by marmaduke

Mrs Mania.
Why. Why are you going to see them this weekend?
If you get major stress visiting them go no contact.

I really appreciate how much Marmaduke is cool with NO CONTACT. I wish I had more people around me who felt that way! I would've been free 10 years ago.

[Purple Heart]

Time and time again I've thought about no contact but just can't. Yes my family has caused me heart-ache my entire life but I have a history that I just can't cut-off. Low contact seems for me the 'middle way' but I can also understand those who go no contact. It's a very personal choice I guess.

PH

[tinyrabbit]

I am no contact. There's something immature about accepting that you can't change people and deciding not to tolerate abuse just because society tells you family is important.

[Unrigged64072835]

I went low contact with my family as soon as I left home. I didn't see them for years until my mom was dying. It sucked because of my daughter, but I wasn't about to be abused again and I wasn't going to expose her, either.

[WibblyWobbly]

My father was my abuser. He has five siblings and only one is in contact with him. None of the rest of my immediate or extended family has anything to do with him. His one sibling keeps tabs on him and we have an understanding that information will only be passed along if asked for. Everyone has a lot of respect for each other's feelings and the different ways we have of coping.

My immediate mom, siblings and I have dysfunctional relationships due to the abuse, but the one thing we agree on is that my dad is a piece of crap. If I ever had to see him at family functions my family would never see me. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones. My situation may also be different because my dad went to prison for what he did. I've known many people who were abused but I've never met anyone IRL whose abuser went to jail. I think it probably affects the family dynamic.

[Shapechanger]

I have been no contact with all family for 14 years. I did it on the advice of my Psychologist. It was very difficult for some *years*. I had a lot of guilt for cutting them out - the guilt was because I was not following the beliefs and requirements of my own Fantasy Bond.

After a few years, I began to feel very free. I stopped having any guilt. I stopped hoping they would change. I stopped hoping they would admit wrong. I stopped hoping they would begin to care about me.

I left them behind. I am walking down a path, in my life. And my choices are the routes I have chosen - I cannot go back and retrace the route, and end up where I would have been. I am here, as you are where you are, because of my choices.

Before I cut my family out, I believed things were painful but okay - okay in that they might improve sometime.

Now, 14 years later, I realize that I was living a Fantasy. I am SO MUCH happier now, and have been for many years. This was one of the harder things I have ever had to do, but for me at least, it is one of the very best.

Where before I hoped family might change, might show some evidence of care or love, I would behave like someone who perhaps bought a lottery ticket and had this ridiculous anticipation that they "might" win. By not buying that lottery ticket, you can't win what you weren't going to win anyways. Now I could accept reality. I could accept things as they way they REALLY were. And so accepting the true facts on the ground, and not my fantasy bond, I was able to move forward in my own life.

By moving forward, I mean to say that I could then see clearly enough to then make the personal changes I needed to to better institute the actions in myself that I had always desired from my family.

I am immeasurably a better and happier person for it. I can't speak to you, or your life, or your history. I can only speak to mine. For me, it was not easy, and it took bravery. I also learned, that in 14 years, they made almost no effort to reach out - I thought perhaps they might. I never took a bite of the temptation to reach out to them however, and ruin it.

It's just really paid off, personally. Paid off in myself, in my kids, in my marraige. And it wasn't easy, we also moved away then, 1500 miles away. And raised kids on our own in a strange state, without any support network. But it has been SO VERY worth it to start over from scratch. Just can't emphasize it enough.

[tinyrabbit]

Originally Posted by tinyrabbit

I am no contact. There's something immature about accepting that you can't change people and deciding not to tolerate abuse just because society tells you family is important.

That was meant to say NOTHING immature!