We have to avoid the family and all the things they want and yet somehow they do not understand why I don't want anything to do with them. Are they all dissociated? Do they really have no idea what went on? Why is it that I have to take full responsibility for this. I will now appear as the bad child for rejecting the family and yet I cannot accept them in my life any more. Their toxicity and the silent denial of that which is never mentioned is too destructive for my system.
On one side I have friends and therapists telling me to bin them. Apparently there is no reason to keep working to fulfil their requirements. On the other I have the family expecting me to play along with birthdays and anniversaries and Christmases and Easters and really - I mean really - not understanding why I do not want to be near any of them.
Do I say, once and for all "I don't want to see any of you ever again"?
I cannot work through the memories in therapy and then happily spend 2 hours on the phone to my mother like she was not an enabler of the perpetrator's abuse.
"Never underestimate the power of denial."
Ricky Fitts. American Beauty 1999.

sometimes people really need the obvious spelling out to them.
ReplyDeleteI managed to keep a relationship going with my mother even though she was one of the main contributors to my depression - I explained I needed to have a break in contact and then when I was ready I came back - but the boundaries were set out in stone, so far it's working.
Hann x
Hello! Not sure mine understands the concept of boundaries. I could say it's "all or nothing" and the nothing suits me just fine but she doesn't quite understand the concept..
ReplyDelete