Hello dear Family Mental Health readers. Due to an inclusion in an Everyday Health newsletter, my blog post “Can You Step Away From a Hurtful Family Relationship?” post got a tremendous response. If you are now a new reader because you saw that post and have come back for more, “Welcome.” Stay a while and take a look around the blog.
First, WOW. So many of you are enduring very difficult family dynamics. Mean behavior, family favoritism, verbal and physical abuse, legal issues, flat-out crappy petty behavior, and more. My heart goes out to you who are either working your lives around that or have maybe decided you’ve had enough and backed off. That’s a lot of stress and pain to put up with.
Another topic that struck me was about being there for family. A few people also brought up unconditional love. I like somebody’s response that made the distinction between your loving feeling toward that person and your tolerance of awful treatment. You could feel love out of sentiment that they were your child, mother, or whomever, but it didn’t mean you needed to become a martyr for them. You didn’t need to subject yourself to constant punishment just because you shared blood ties with them.
I think this is an important point. Yes, in many ways, family is there to be a safety net, a group of people you could count on for support because you shared a history and connection. And in an ideal world, unconditional love and an incredible amount of patience would be present between all family members. I mean it. Acceptance, a soothing presence, demonstration of affection - these would go a long way towards creating safe havens for everyone.
Being loving, considerate, responsible, selfless, courteous, respectful is generally learned behavior. If the family isn’t capable of teaching all that, chances are good that each generation will have lots of problems. There are some stand-out people that make it through a difficult family and still turn out well. But many don’t, and they haven’t the foggiest clue how to have a joyful satisfying life.
If you have a toxic destructive family member and you feel badly that they are alone, understand that to some degree they have earned that. If you are feeling sad and compassionate for them, a quick visit or phone call once in a while is fine. But you don’t have to be at their beck and call or listen to lengthy rants about worthless you are.
What gets people into trouble is that they hold on to expectations that their cruel father or their spiteful sister will someday be filled with peace, understanding, and benevolence. I saw that some of you had realized what your faulty expectations were doing to you. When you let them go, many of you found relief. However, some of you struggled with the thought of being alone if you cut people off. That has made the
prospect of separating much more difficult.
Learning how to truly accept the truth can be so hard. But it is often the way people can finally achieve a balance with their difficult family members. Accept that your bitter resentful mother will never be a warm accepting “Mom”. Accept that your son has decided to be a brat to everyone and he will have to come out of
it on his own. Accept that your Dad has talked trash about you to your sister for years, and she may never know you as you really are.
Thank you all so much for sharing with each other, giving support, and telling your stories. I hope that everyone who reads that post and the comments comes away with something helpful.
Related Posts
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
From Psych Central's World of Psychology blog:
Best of Our Blogs: November 6, 2009 | World of Psychology (November 6, 2009)
I have a sister that is toxic and she has whined to my family and now have them upset at me for having a relationship with my father (my sister does not). I stressed about this so much it made me very ill. I have multiple sclerosis and the stress caused me to go into relapses, attacks 4 times in last 10 months. I realise that I need to do something and if the rest of my family is going to succumb to her rantings and not speak to me for talkng to my father then I need to let them go.
I like the points you make, especially the overarching one that we do best when we balance our responsibility to ourselves with responsibility to family members.
And if someone isn’t “doing” first for him/herself, then “doing” for another is not likely to be truly helpful.
I don’t know which hurts most: the uniquely painful abuse only adult children can dish out or a parent’s heart-rending sorrow of “what might have been.”
My father died from kidney complications about two years ago. Due to many factors, a complete lack of rapport, my own sever helath issues, the craving to speak my truth and be heard was frankly an impossible impediment to meeting on common ground. He was born, lived and would die within the patterns he used to survive his childhood abuse(severely narcissistic). Frankly ,there was no room for me to have any needs whatsoever. Accepting this made my choice to not visit him during his last days easier. It did not do away with whispers of guilt and wondering what if..that still come up. I find myself having to simply block all feelings off. The child inside is not capable of tolerating both the love and the rage simultaneously. I am hoping to have some mastery in this area of relationships. Not tolerating the intolerable, but tolerating the transitory moods which sometimes possess myself and others. Main act of mastery is showing my own self Mercy, and avoiding all narcissists, once identified. Mercy is all I can wish for my dad wherever he is, he is no more energetically accessible in death than he was in life! Learning how not to love is worth this life of mine.
Anapurna and others…one way of overcoming the sadness and pain and point of view that becomes locked in by those traumatic memories & experiences is EMDR. You can greatly speed up your progress through using it, and I have DRAMATICALLY changed my emotional landscape through this experience. Find a good practitioner that you connect with and have confidence in, and who is certified to perform it. Be sure you connect with your therapist or get a different one. I only wish I had done it sooner, as I am now 55. It’s not easy or free, but what a change. I am married to a psychologist (someone else was my therapist!) so I can tell you I know alot about therapy in general. My change has been profound, emotionally, physically.
Thanks for the supportive comment and suggestion. The last part of my note could be misconstrued to sound as if I am walled off from all feelings and love. What I meant to say is that I am identifying toxic love for what it is and getting away much faster than in the past.I learned I am better off without any wishful thinking. “How NOT to love”– in unhealthy ways!!
I used to have a therapist who did EMDR technique, it is indeed miraculous.Then when I went on Medicare at 52, we got split apart as her license is LCSW, and the Fed program in CA will only cover MFCC. Despite the parallel qualifications. I lost her after seven years of working together and had to start over. I have gone thru 3 of the four therapists in the available program and finally feel I have a reliable compassionate witness. No EMDR unfortunately. If I could manage the costs to heal, especially with the incredible selection of modalities in my area, I am sure I would be in much better shape on all levels. Carrying on in the low, (to nonexistent), levels of services, while being advocating and learning how to navigate the system and helping others to do same, is definitely an exercise in empowerment!!
I am so happy to have found some explanation for the way I have been treated by my family my entire life. I am truly going to try and set some new strong boundaries. I am 34 years old and tired of feeling insignificant. Here’s to a new beginning. Wish me luck!
You are wonderful thank you for your input and help.Ted Walner
Copyright © 1992-2009 Psych Central. All rights reserved.
Site last updated: 21 Nov 2009
|
