So, I'm finally gonna do it. I never thought it'd have to come to this but I have done my absolute best to ot let my parents trigger me or set me back emotionally. I can't do it. I need space. Space to figure out who I am without them both physically and hopefully psychically too. I dont want to doubt my life choices because I'll worry what they think, or be consumed by anxiety, fear or guilt. My therapist suggested I do this and while it sucks this is a reality, they haven't given me much of an option… my parents. They say they've grown and understand but their actions always speak louder. Just recently I was asked, of my mom to help my sister move to Orlando and babysit my niece, out of the blue, whilst I'm in recovery. This isn't "Like Water For Chocolate" and I'm not Tita! Just because I don't fit into their mold of what they think I should be at this point in my life doesn't mean they get to assign me to the eternally supportive, childlessspinster and care-taker role. When I moved out of the house my sister was pregnant and they immediately decided I would care for the baby while my sister worked. Me, a mother, AGAIN!!! I alreay raised the person who should have been my own mom. My father says he wants to be my friend and hear about what really bothers me and my true feelings but when I tell him, it's always the same, he freaks out and we end up fighting and he guilt trips me. I'm done. I really hope my sisters support me in this but if they don't, I'm going to have to cut ties with them too for a while. Hopefully it won't come to that but I must prepare. So far, this is what I've written and sent to my therapist for review before I decide to take the plunge. I also found this article, online which was like a "heaven-sent", at this time:
Prepare Yourself for Backlash When Going No Contact [Advice for Adult Children]
It really did remind me I have a valid reason for doing this. Any respectful feedback from your part is welcome, of course, or words of wisdom. This is so frightening to me, I am physically sick over it but maybe that too is a reason to remind myself how sick dealing with them and their drama truly makes me. Hopefully the therapist responds as soon as she can, although I'm probably going to have to wait until Monday, at least, now. I really wish I could do it tomorrow, then again, I'm not sure if that's just me being nervous and impulsive, since I do have my 1rst Art Therapy session with an added therapist my main one recommended, once a month. Maybe I should just focus on getting settled there first and then doing the family thing later. All I know is I can't go past the 1st week of next month without having set the rule. Here goes, to being free, re-claiming my Soul and believing my feelingsmatter!
NoContact letter for parents from me:
Dear Parents (dad& wife, mom&fiancee, paternal grandma& grandpa)<—they half-raised me.
I am writing this letter to let you know I have decided to embark on a therapeutic, self-discovering journey and I only need one request to be fulfilled, from you. For the next 6 months, I will choose to remain completely out of communication with you. After completing these first 6 months, I will re-evaluate whether I am ready to get in touch with you again or not. If I am, you will certainly hear from me. If I am not, you will not, until I am, in fact, ready. I ask that you please respect this boundary I am setting. This is for my own good. I want you to know that although it will be hard, this is not a permanent decision and that I love you, with all my heart. I am simply going to take care of myself in a different way than before.
I am aware there are holidays and birthdays that will occur between my time of introspective journey, so, for everyone who will celebrate, I say now, ahead of time: Happy Father's Day, Happy Mother's Day, Happy Birthday. Have fun and be safe. I will not be communicating with you even during these days. This is something I must do, for me, and I hope that, by the end of this chosen break time, I will have learned some things that perhaps I could not have otherwise. Thank you very much for taking the time to listen and hopefully respecting my own healing process. Please, take care of yourselves as I will certainly be taking good care of me. All my love, always. Until we meet again. Sincerely, Alex.
My gut feeling, based on my pain in the arse family, is that the moment you send a letter out like that, it's an invitation for them to all show up and try and mess with you. My suggestion is to tiptoe away very very quietly, go live away from them for a while, make sure your telephone has caller ID and basically lie low.
With luck you'll get through your six months without them even noticing you were gone. If they're drama queens like you say, you don't want to poke them. The only thing that such a letter would do is to draw attention to you and your 'needs' which would send any of your more self-obsessed family into a tailspin about what a douchebag you are being. They won't get it. They will jam you into a box of their devising, not yours. You'll probably get harangued for being a drama queen.
If you need time and space, make no noise. Make no fuss. Just become absent. Don't be totally absent: but be minimum. Be busy. Oh, so busy! Can't stop. can't come home for this holiday – love and kisses!… tiptoe away quietly.
It took me over 3 years. I think it has taken me 10 years. To escape the drama, to realise how much drama there was, to despise and become so utterly unused to the drama that I blast anyone who starts it. They will learn or they will stay away: either is acceptable although of course, learning would be nice.
Hmmm, thing is, I think I have tried that and this is more of a stand for myself too. I\'m done pretending for their sake. I really am. Wouldn\'t I be following their abusive rules by \”tiptoeing away quietly\”? Haven\'t I done that enough, in my life? You\'re right, they don\'t get it but I think I need to be brave, for me because too long I have \”lied low\”. I am allowed to have needs, actually. That\'s what their abuse wanted to tell me I didn\'t deserve. I will not live like they are right. Thank you. I respect your opinion but, seriously, I have done what you say and it hasn\'t worked for me. Time for the next step. Besides, I owe it to myself to use my voice to break the cycle of avoidance and secrecy they have perpetuated upon us, generation after generation. I refuse to be like them, that way or \”solve\” my issues in that manner. They can think whatever they like. I need to learn to get over the fear of their opinions, don\'t you think? 😉
At least that\'s where I\'m coming from.
\”If you need time and space, make no noise. Make no fuss. Just become absent.\” Doesn\'t this sound like an abuser value to you? 🙁
Why can\'t I take up time and space, on my terms? Why should I be quiet when I\'ve done nothing wrong? Why should I be absent in the process of actively changing my previously dysfunctional family role?
Why? Sincere questions here.
Well, if you are trying to change their behaviour, definitely make a noise. I am not convinced though, that you will change them in any way. It won\'t do anybody any harm for you to blow up the rats nest though. nothing like a good explosion to get things cleaned out.
I misunderstood the OP. I thought you were wanting time without them in it. Your letter does not make a challenge to anybody, it simply asks nicely for time and space: and my experience of asking people nicely for time and space is that this is the last thing you get.
I get the feeling you are emotionally tangled up in two ideas: wanting to escape, and wanting to blow the place up. I think you have to pick one for now, and do the other later maybe? but you can\'t have them both at once.
That\'s just my opinion though. I am just talking based on my experiences. 🙂
Well, I know I can\'t change who they are. I just want them to not contact me any more. I know, at first, there will be backlash but I am preparing for that and am seeking support from friends and my therapist. I\'ve dropped plenty of bombs before but they don\'t deal with them well. At this point, this is more for me and claiming my space, more than anything because, for example, my father tries to contact me almost every day and if I don\'t respond in 2-3 days he is quick to induce guilt. My mother suddenly recruits me for random andeavours to do things for others when I need to keep myself safe. All this time, I have sent the mixed message of making excuses or avoiding picking up. I need to make it known so that, yes, even if they do retaliate, at first, when they get tired oof it, the message sinks in. What they do after that is up to them but I need to match what I say and do with them with my real desires and stop pretending it\'s all fine when it isn\'t. I don\'t want to lie any more. I want to live authentically, for me. I write, nicely, from an \”I\” standpoint because it\'s my experience that the moment you do something differing, starting the you\”, people tend to get defensive, take things the wrong way or shut down. Thank you for sharing your experience, btw. How long did it take for your family to start leaving you alone?
Haha. I disappeared to one place at 35 and just sort of eased out of the scene. I became physically difficult to access and everything else slowly came into line with that. It's like weaning a baby. I needed to escape to get an identity of my own, the hive mentality was so strong and the mother was so domineering. She never would have seen herself that way – she just 'cared' and could never just be happy.
anyway i knew I needed space at 35 without really knowing why, and that's when I moved for family reasons to the country, about 100km away. By the time I was 40 I had created enough of an identity to realise that I deserved a better life than I had and marriage broke up.
AFter that I ended up 1000 miles away from family in another town, physically even further away, having a nervous breakdown which none of them had helped me with. My mum would phone occasionally, often drunk. We would have these terrible fights. I had been suicidal for years trying to live with her system: I had finally seen through her garbage and I was not even prepared to let her say it, so afraid of her ability to damage me I was. It was a survival issue. I tried to tell her. She couldn't understand.
Anyway that took another 3 years. 😀
And counselling. Lots and lots of counselling. It took the counsellor maybe 2 years to make me realise actually the extent of mum's issues, and that she had a disorder herself. We'd been raised with Mum As God. I'm not kidding. Like some kind of little sect. She means well, she loves us, but she is internally highly intrusive. There has been grief in the family and she was damaged without knowing it.
What you say about your situation sounds like you're ready for a bit of a backlash, but then if you can keep strong they will eventually give up. That will serve them right. 🙂 I would never have had the stamina to do it the way you are proposing to do. I could not have sustained it. I could not cope with the level of confrontation.
One really good trick that I am benefitting from now: get rid of your land line. Physically be 1000 miles away for a few years. Get rid of the land line, and only have your cellphone. That way it will cost them a fortune to contact you, and they will start to tone it down. 😉
Wow, Bridgie, thank you SO much for sharing your story. I really identified with the ordeal of having your mother in your head and feeling like, if you didn\'t agree with her, you were somehow wrong. I think that\'s why I really need to stop contact with them because, yeah, I can get physically away from them but you\'re right. They\'re still in your head, like rusty nails and they\'re so hard to get out! I want to do what you did. I want to build my own version of \”how the world works\”, finding out my own meaning to things without it being tainted by all of the dysfunctional ideas they\'ve embedded into my head for years and years and years. It\'s been nothing but just pulling me back from all the potential I feel I have inside and, it\'s like you said, sure they had good intentions but they never owned up to their shit or went to therapy and faced their issues the way they needed to and I want to be different. Part of me thinks it\'s going to hurt like hell, another part of me feels like I just can\'t wait to be free but sharing this experience through this blog and hearing stories like yours helps so damn much so, thank you really, from the bottom of my heart. I can\'t tell you how much it means for someone to respond so honestly and personally. It helps me be brave so, please, know your story matters and hopefully it\'s going to be fuel for my own liberation as well! Thank you. It\'s so funny that you mention the whole \”mom is God\” thing, the whole ethos of a sect. That\'s what I feel like I\'ve been in, a cult of the family! It\'s akin to detoxing. Like they train you to get addicted to their approval and that drug kills and I want to live! Thanks, again, Sister. The struggle is real but stores like yours give me hope. 🙂
I truly gained so much from both of you sharingg your stories…I broke away a long time ago it s the best thing i ever ever did..Thank you!!