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Removing myself from family bonds, but not having anyone to turn to.

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Caligal22

New Here
Good Morning,

A few days ago, I posted about my dad dying and having his funeral to attend. I wrote to you all about my place (or lack thereof) in my family of origin and how I am struggling with how to practice self-preservation while still properly honoring my dad. The funeral is this afternoon. I can only hope that I get through it without feeling like I need to call an Uber and fly home to GA in the middle of it.

What do you do when you considering severing your relationship with your family of origin, but you don't have any true support to take its place? I'm not a religious person so going to a member of the clergy wouldn't be an option. I wish I had faith in God, but I just don't right now. I couldn't imagine a God knowing the swirling feelings of pain and loneliness that go through my head and not intervening.

I know that the right thing to do is figure out a way to honor my dad. I really wish that I knew how I could fill up the hole should I decide that my family of origin is just too painful a bunch for me to have anything to do with.

Caligal22
 
I understand you are not a religious person, but the illustration I am going to use is Biblical - but it is only to help explain the idea I'm trying to convey. Years ago it was a very "in" thing in churches to discuss "Who are your stretcher bearers?" The concept is based on the Bible story about the friends of a paralyzed man who bring him to Jesus to be healed. The Lord is inside a home surrounded by a crowd of people seeking his attention. Unwilling to give up, the friends make a hole in the roof and lower the man on his stretcher down into the house to Jesus. These wonderful friends were the paralyzed man's stretcher bearers. This led to that question, who are YOUR stretcher bearers?

Are you getting where this is going? Each person was to sift through the people in their life and figure out which ones would carry their stretcher in times of emotional or physical need. The next question, of course, was always, who in your life would choose you to be their stretcher bearer? Whenever this discussion came up my first reaction was always, "OUCH!"

Even though I had a huge cast of characters in my life, as a child abuse survivor who had a steady stream of negativity about my self-worth beating in my brain, I would question whether any of those people would truly want to help me in my time of need.

So, first question, do you already have supportive people in your life, but you doubt they want to take on that role for you? You may already have a support network that you are overlooking because of your PTSD thinking.

Now do a 180. Who do you encourage and support? If you are someone else's stretcher bearer, chances are they are yours also.

If you sincerely don't have any stretcher bearers, I can honestly attest there are other people with that exact hole in their lives that would be thrilled if you found each other. They can be found through forums like this one...or in your city in groups of people that share similar interests - book clubs, spin classes, volunteer groups. My daughter met her best friend on a bus trip to the zoo. Smile. Reach out. And don't be quick to dismiss the great friends you meet online. I started building online relationships back in 2006, and they are truly some of the most incredible people in my life.

I truly do "get" what you are sharing. I cut off my entire birth family decades ago. They were toxic to me and continued to damage my mental health. My husband and I also questioned the safety and well-being of our children. My kids never knew their aunts, uncles, and cousins from my side of the family. It was the best decision we ever made.💜
 
I understand you are not a religious person, but the illustration I am going to use is Biblical - but it is only to help explain the idea I'm trying to convey. Years ago it was a very "in" thing in churches to discuss "Who are your stretcher bearers?" The concept is based on the Bible story about the friends of a paralyzed man who bring him to Jesus to be healed. The Lord is inside a home surrounded by a crowd of people seeking his attention. Unwilling to give up, the friends make a hole in the roof and lower the man on his stretcher down into the house to Jesus. These wonderful friends were the paralyzed man's stretcher bearers. This led to that question, who are YOUR stretcher bearers?

Are you getting where this is going? Each person was to sift through the people in their life and figure out which ones would carry their stretcher in times of emotional or physical need. The next question, of course, was always, who in your life would choose you to be their stretcher bearer? Whenever this discussion came up my first reaction was always, "OUCH!"

Even though I had a huge cast of characters in my life, as a child abuse survivor who had a steady stream of negativity about my self-worth beating in my brain, I would question whether any of those people would truly want to help me in my time of need.

So, first question, do you already have supportive people in your life, but you doubt they want to take on that role for you? You may already have a support network that you are overlooking because of your PTSD thinking.

Now do a 180. Who do you encourage and support? If you are someone else's stretcher bearer, chances are they are yours also.

If you sincerely don't have any stretcher bearers, I can honestly attest there are other people with that exact hole in their lives that would be thrilled if you found each other. They can be found through forums like this one...or in your city in groups of people that share similar interests - book clubs, spin classes, volunteer groups. My daughter met her best friend on a bus trip to the zoo. Smile. Reach out. And don't be quick to dismiss the great friends you meet online. I started building online relationships back in 2006, and they are truly some of the most incredible people in my life.

I truly do "get" what you are sharing. I cut off my entire birth family decades ago. They were toxic to me and continued to damage my mental health. My husband and I also questioned the safety and well-being of our children. My kids never knew their aunts, uncles, and cousins from my side of the family. It was the best decision we ever made.💜
When a work friend of mine was losing her mother to cancer, I knew that she had burned through her PTO in having to care for her mother and was getting by on miniscule paychecks. When she told me this, I brought a meal back for her after I returned from my lunch break. When I would see her at work, I would always ask her how she was holding up. So, yeah, I get how valuable it is to be a "stretcher bearer".

I have a habit of reaching out to others, even when this is far more often than others reaching out to me. I would participate in meal trains with people who had just had children, even when I wasn't asked and even when the "mommy group" she belonged to never really welcomed me. I would not have known what to do with myself if one of them invited me to an outing without having to ask first if I could ever participate with their activities.

Jesus, I so get how beautiful it is to have stretcher bearers, but this just does not seem to ever happen for me. I am a good-hearted person. I do not understand why.
 
When I left my family, I adopted CS Lewis as kind of a stepfather. I read his books over and over to let his wisdom sink into my mind. In life situations, I'd pretend he was with me, and ask what he wanted me to do. There's one surviving audio tape of him talking. Sometimes I play it just to hear his voice. I know what you mean about having no support. You can't click with others, don't get invited out, have to do all the talking yourself. How many times did I do extravagant things for others that were never reciprocated. The truth is, most people out there, behind closed doors, are as messed up as your family. CS Lewis never let me down.

Why do you think Jordan Peterson is so popular? Thousands of young people use him as an imaginary father.

I didn't have a real friend group until my late 30s. I've stumbled upon three people in this crazy world, three people who are healthy and supportive. One is my hubby, and the other two are my best friends. Yet even to this day I'm guarded with them. One of them I've known for 15 years, and he has no idea I'm in therapy.

It takes a LONG time to build a replacement family. You can meet understanding people in the trauma/abuse world, but bonding is another matter.

This advice may sound trite, but it's the truth. Work on yourself, love yourself, keep yourself clean and safe so you don't need much from others, and just live your life until the right people organically come along. They eventually will. And it doesn't hurt to have a role model.
 
I didn't want to talk faith - I avoid the word "religion" because I hate it - because you said it wasn't a part of your life. I respect that. I just want to very briefly give a snapshot of how I survived the worst season of my life.

At a time when my life appeared to the outside world to be "charmed" (a word someone used to describe my life) I had a horrifically ugly emotional breakdown at my place of employment - a church. "Good Christians" don't have breakdowns or icky mental issues. I ended up resigning from my job and losing the friends I'd had for over 35 years. Stigma is a painful thing. The pastor referred to me as the "devil's disciple." My family left the church we had attended for decades and where almost all of our relationships existed. I was shunned, abandoned, and judged. All this while trying to recover from a breakdown which revealed a past I never wanted to see. My stretch bearers all took a hike. I was alone.

I'm trying to keep this brief. All I had was my faith. Actually, I still marvel that after the terrible way the congregation and staff treated me after my breakdown, that I still had that. If I was ever going to abandon God, it would have been then. He was the only One who did not abandon me. I know that must sound all Pollyanna. It took time, but we now attend a different church, I have new friends, and I continue to heal. I had several dark, lonely, terrifying years where I battled thoughts of suicide and raged at God, but sometimes it is okay to wrestle with God. Especially when for that season of your life, He's your only stretcher bearer.
 
What do you do when you considering severing your relationship with your family of origin, but you don't have any true support to take its place?
If severing is the right thing for you to do, for your own recovery? Then you do it anyway. And you work on building the tools you need to support yourself. Part of building those eventually leads to making relationships outside yourself.

Look, I didn't have anything in-place when I finally had to stop talking to my mother and father. All I knew was that feeling I kept getting when I tried to interact with them was getting worse and worse and had been growing for almost 40 years. And I realized that every time I brought myself back into contact with them, it was pulling me backwards and downwards, back into a headspace that I spend many of my waking hours working very hard to combat.

It's not necessarily an easy thing to do....but when you know in your gut that it's necessary - then listen to your gut. You can always change your mind later. But just commit to removing the family from your mind entirely for at least six months. Just, stop considering their day-to-day existence, or any guilt you might feel about separating. At the end of six months, if you have just a little bit of internal relief? Then you're doing the right thing for yourself.

These are just my thoughts one the subject.
 
I cut ties with my family of origin in my early 20s. Best decision I ever made.

But... I get what you're saying. It's so tough.

I often don't notice it anymore... For me it's "normal" to go through life without a family of origin.

But then, when I struggle with quite minor incidents and blame/ shame myself for not being more resilient, I realise "Oh, other people have a family to support them through this and you're doing this all alone." It's tough basically being an orphan. Cos although it's a self-made choice made for self-preservation reasons, basically being an orphan sums it up.

When I feel lonely trying to cope with a life stressor on my own, I try to remind myself of how my family would have responded. They would've made the incident worse. Would've used it to belittle me and trash my self-confidence. Would've "helped" me and used it against me and guilt-tripped me and made me feel obligated to let my boundaries be trampled over in return for the "help" they offered.

And I try to remind myself that many other people have families like I do and some, like me, have severed ties, but many have not. And it "appears" as if they are getting the support from their families that I wish I had, but behind the scenes they're getting the belittling, the guilt-tripping, the boundary trampling that I'm not seeing, because it's happening behind closed doors, as it used to do with me and my family.

I'm 46 now and I notice I'm getting softer with age... I used to be quite tough in my younger years but ehhh I'm becoming a teary softy these days... sigh... I'm trying to honour this sense of "being an oprhan" these days... because it's there... right underneath the tough no-fuss exterior of "I'm fine doing this on my own, always have and always will."

You do meet people who are your replacement family... but they are few and far between in life and they are very precious... sometimes you don't even realise it at the time...
 
Just thinking about this a bit more...

You do pay a price for the choices you make (or don't make)

I've paid a high price for choosing freedom over a toxic family of origin.

But I've also seen friends and acquaintances pay a huge price for taking the other path... for never managing to sever ties with their families.

Rather than doing the painful tearing off of the bandaid in one big move and then letting the wound heal... they've chosen a path where that wound festers over and over and over, seeping them of their strength and their power over many decades.

You pay a price, either way.
 
I have an amaaaazing / “totally normal” family.

We …often… don’t see each other for years. Because, life.

The only people I’ve ever known to be so trauma-bonded that normal life is inconceivable? Are exactly that.
 
Just thinking about this a bit more...

You do pay a price for the choices you make (or don't make)

I've paid a high price for choosing freedom over a toxic family of origin.

But I've also seen friends and acquaintances pay a huge price for taking the other path... for never managing to sever ties with their families.

Rather than doing the painful tearing off of the bandaid in one big move and then letting the wound heal... they've chosen a path where that wound festers over and over and over, seeping them of their strength and their power over many decades.

You pay a price, either way.
But doesn't that mean you made a great decision for yourself, your mental health? I did the same. The worst part is missing some of them even though they hurt you. I am lonely as hell, but it's better than constantly having my heart broken and feeling the "fakeness" they give.
 
If severing is the right thing for you to do, for your own recovery? Then you do it anyway. And you work on building the tools you need to support yourself. Part of building those eventually leads to making relationships outside yourself.

Look, I didn't have anything in-place when I finally had to stop talking to my mother and father. All I knew was that feeling I kept getting when I tried to interact with them was getting worse and worse and had been growing for almost 40 years. And I realized that every time I brought myself back into contact with them, it was pulling me backwards and downwards, back into a headspace that I spend many of my waking hours working very hard to combat.

It's not necessarily an easy thing to do....but when you know in your gut that it's necessary - then listen to your gut. You can always change your mind later. But just commit to removing the family from your mind entirely for at least six months. Just, stop considering their day-to-day existence, or any guilt you might feel about separating. At the end of six months, if you have just a little bit of internal relief? Then you're doing the right thing for yourself.

These are just my thoughts one the subject.
This was helpful to me as well thank you for this
 
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