Cutting Ties With Toxic Family

[ms spock]

Either way you pay a high price. The price of having my family in my life left me totally bankrupt on every level.

It is a very personal heartfelt journey.

 

[jmni]

My forgiveness was my way of saying "I want nothing from you. You owe me nothing. I owe you nothing. Go away because you get nothing." And I cut the cord with the forgiveness.

This kind of forgiving is a writing them off, cutting your loses, steering away, and not looking back. I think I forgave my mother so I could let go of her more fully, releasing her from our biological bond and saying "Thanks but no thanks." Somehow we make our own peace with those who didn't love us properly and stop asking "Why me," and start answering "No matter; time to say goodbye." Forgiveness is a parting ways, a clean break, if you will. Not because they are deserving, but because I'm going my way on a good note.

In the Bible, the disciples were instructed to shake the dust from their sandals when leaving the home of an evil doer. It's just that, leave it all behind. Don't even take their dust with you when you go

This is very beautiful.

When I get very hurt by someone who is clearly just selfish I feel the best thing is to turn away and not look back. For me it doesn't involve any forgiveness. It's more like a rejection or a decision to not care about them anymore. Once someone disrespects me somehow they are almost less than dirt.

 

[Philippa]

I find the same. I never would have thought I'd get to my age and find that my father is dead to me, but that is what happens when you push someone to that extent over the years. Did he really expect that he could continue to speak down to me and disrespect me, and I'd just let it continue, like mum did. He felt so entitled to my time and energy and that I'd just put up with the crap and still hang off his every word. f*ck that.

I ate it up for years, and bit my tongue so many times, when I'd already concluded that he didn't deserve me years ago. Years later, and he had piled on even more of the crappy behavior, something just snapped in me. I felt my heart actually break in Sweden one day when we fought, and wanted to strangle him at one stage and run off and disappear in Europe never to return. I didn't do it that way of course, but I really wanted to.

I like the attitude you've shown here. I feel like I have gotten to that stage with my mother because I have started to think to myself "I want nothing from you, I owe you nothing and you owe me nothing, and you get nothing now, so go away and leave me in peace." rather than it being from a place of anger and pain. Maybe I have processed the feelings associated with our last interaction, and have moved past them now?

 

[Powder]

Yes, Phillippa, and I think there is something to the Mother-bond, that even if you had a mother who was sort of there for you, selectively, and sort of never there for you, not really (like mine) and who couldn't really be bothered with you, there is only a biological bond from infancy to cut away, like an umbilical cord.

For me, the trauma of the mother-bond as impotent in the familial traumas and abuses has been even more soul-ripping than the abuse itself (not sure really). It's like having two black eyes and wondering which is uglier!

However, I cannot understand/forgive the abuse (father), so I turn to the mother, someone I could possibly forgive, and go from there. I do it for my body and soul, never for them. I don't feel responsbile for them; never did. They never accepted responsbility for me or my sibs beyond what society saw as doing their "job."

Thanks for sharing!!
Muse

 

[LhasaLover]

I just found this thread and found myself reading every post! Pencil, your post resonated with me. I've been out of touch with my mother and brother. Recently, I spoke to my brother who told me he was going to be a father and wanted me in his child's life. In the same conversation, he acted self righteous and refused to even acknowledge the difficult time I have inevitably had over the past year and a half which was partially his doing. Having been in a better place, I was completely taken aback and forgot about any chance that we may actually ever have contact. It is obvious that he and my mother are talking with my father about me in my absence. It seems they cannot unload enough guilt on me by attacking my character, even when I am not around or speaking to them. Honestly, how dysfunctional is this behavior they are displaying?

They never even so much as checked in on me during my lowest points, only asked for money... what is new?!

As it turns out, this whole "keep the peace" position my father takes I believe that he is getting something out of otherwise he would not do it. If I am not talking to you, why reach out to my relative to talk about me? Do I ask questions about them to anyone? The answer to that question is a definitive no. I do not want to even know what is going on in their lives as usually it is disturbing. It really did bother me in therapy yesterday claiming he was "in the middle" of my brother and I, because he could choose not to discuss me and not be in the middle. Blaming me for his choice to be a connection to me for my brother and mother is his choice. If they truly cared about my father, they would not put him in the position they do. This dysfunction goes on and on... never skips a beat...

The fact that would accept me back "gleefully" I find so discouraging. The same family dynamics are getting old.

It really would be nice to see him stand up to them and tell them to go beat a dead horse elsewhere, but it's not going to happen. Apparently I live on as a legend without having contact with them.

During my recovery, they have felt like vultures feeding on my corpse. It is such an isolating feeling as you try to build up new healthy relationships...

 

[Pencil]

Blaming me for his choice to be a connection to me for my brother and mother is his choice

What comes up repeatedly, in this thread and others, is the issue of boundaries, and it seems that boundary issues are at the core of family dysfunction, abuse, and .... Perhaps it would be a good idea to make a list of the areas where boundary violations play a central role.

LhasaLover, what is interesting in your post is that it illustrates a new variation on the theme of boundaries, in the sense that your father is refusing or neglecting to establish a boundary, and somehow this now becomes your problem or, even more insanely, your transgression.

What IS it with dysfunctional families - or individuals - and boundary issues? I know that in my family that what lies at the root of it is a simple premiss: 'You do not have the basic right to boundaries.' All individual arguments, wars, episodes revolve around the healthier/healing individual claiming this right, and the family seeing this assertion as a gross violation of THEIR rights, and then all hell breaks loose. And no matter what the drama is all about, look at the root issue: boundaries.

I think I'm beginning to see why therapists start with building block 1: BOUNDARIES. (Anthony, I concede.)

 

[Eleanor]

Why do they keep going - because "you can't get enough of what you don't really want."

"If I just have enough money I'll be happy!"

"If the movie star will just marry me, then I'll be happy!"

"If I can just become a best selling author, then I'll be happy!"

"If only my family would do what I tell them, then I'd be happy!" and then they do. And you are not. So... you try try again and exert more and more and more control until... someone is gone, dead or in prison. This is just a really really extreme version of what people habitually do when they look for happiness, peace, satisfaction outside themselves.

Yes. Boundaries. If you have them then these are a possibility: Respect. Responsibility. Compassion. Fairness. Honesty. Without them, fat chance. If you are working on boundaries - then these values can help you place them.

 

[Pencil]

"If only my family would do what I tell them, then I'd be happy!" and then they do. And you are not. So... you try try again and exert more and more and more control until... someone is gone, dead or in prison. This is just a really really extreme version of what people habitually do when they look for happiness, peace, satisfaction outside themselves.

This nails it!

 

[ms spock]

My family would never stop being abusive and intrusive, but I get the above sentiment.

 

[ms spock]

It is an ebb and flow thing with family. It comes and it goes. Some days you are okay with it. Some days you are wistful. Somedays you are a little wistful that other people have families. Some days you have some grief.

But I could have been born a Buddha, Mohammad or a Jesus Christ in my family and they still would have annilated me. There was no pleasing them.

Nothing you could do with my family would ever get it right with them.

 

[LhasaLover]

Nothing you could do with my family would ever get it right with them.

Ms Spock, quite honestly, if I ever did "get it right" with my family, I would be worried!

 

[Philippa]

I've been feeling pretty at peace with the situation for the last few days, and I'm not thinking so much about how they have spun this but I'm sure I did not come out in the best light, to their friends anyway. How dare I put them in this position where they have to deal with friends asking about me, and them having to tell them that their "poor daughter has lost the plot and abandoned them due to her being mental and just atrocious." which I'm sure has been the story. I'm sure they have received much sympathy for being the 'victims of my callousness.'

What I can't believe is that they would want to maintain contact with someone they so obviously have such little value and place little importance for. Yet, I do hold an important role in the family unit, mainly as the scapegoat, so that's why they want me there. Me as an actual person in my own right though...not much good to them.