How to Deal With Toxic Family - Part 1 My Story

I think more people deal with this than not. If someone doesn't think they deal with this, chances are, they're disillusioned. Very few people in Western society are healthy, loving, well, balanced people. And if you're not a healthy, well, balanced person, you're going to cause problems for the people around you. This is the reality. I'm not trying to be a downer. The number of people getting well is growing. There are beautiful families in which people feel loved and nurtured.

Most people deal with guilt or pressure or lying or abuse or being controlled to some degree. This is toxicity. Love is freedom. Love is caring. Please check out Do You Know How to Love Properly?. There's some toxicity in all relationships. Everybody has problems. Therefore everyone will be imperfect in relationships. The only question is to what degree is your family relationship toxic?

I'm sharing my story of dealing with toxic family.

On my paternal side I have mean spirited people. When I found out my dog died and I fell to a million billion pieces, they literally did not care. They didn't even flinch. Not even one hug. I was literally on the floor crying and they didn't even move from their seats. When my father's heart stopped for six minutes and he lived through it, his mother didn't even come see him because she had to prepare her taxes. My aunt slapped me across the face when I was little for spilling Kool Aid. She walked by her son on who was blowing a big bubble with his gum Christmas Day and slapped him right across the face in front of the whole family.

They're in the low stages of consciousness - probably in the adolescent phase before gaining any self awareness. They see things as black and white with no gray area.

On my maternal side there's a lot of mental illness. The illness comes from a complete lack of understanding of what's important in the world. They have been taught that money is the most important thing. How you dress and how beautiful you are and what your social status is and how nice your house and your furniture are says how valuable of a person you are. Literally. You have no value as a human being if you're poor or you don't "work" to their standards of what work is. The people in that family are deeply unsettled and empty. They have no understanding of what caring for people is. None of them care about each other. They compete with each other and see each other as threats. I would go so far as to say that it's closer to hate than love.

Yet I so badly wanted a family. I thought I could change them and make them care. I always felt left out and more unloved than the others because my parents and I had moved away when I was a teenager. I deeply longed for that feeling of love and belonging with a family. However, it had nothing to do with really, really liking who they were as people. I just wanted this idea like I saw other people had. I wanted to be nurtured and loved and valued. I wanted a place.

I cannot tell you how many countless hours I spent on the phone talking about how I could get this family from these people. I cannot tell you how much of my energy it absorbed.

And then it was time for me to move again. When I visited these people for the last time, something was different. I could not believe the emptiness I felt being with them. It was profound. My husband and I were also being judged very strongly for our "alternative" lifestyle. We had to leave.

There was one final blowout with my paternal side when they slung insults at me and told me to grow up. My maternal side literally didn't even care enough for there to be a blow out.

I was done. I had such clarity. It wasn't even a decision to stop talking to them. I just knew I had to save myself and make myself well again.

Family is a bond. Without caring there's no bond. There's nothing that holds people together. In the cases of both sides of my family what holds them together is toxicity.

So I have no blood family. I refer to them as relatives, not family.

I feel great, and I have healed a lot in regards to this toxic family situation. I'm at peace with the situation. In the coming posts I'll share how I did it and what my process was.

Everyone has totally different situations and experiences, so everyone will have to handle their own situation accordingly, but it's very helpful to get perspective from others.

People put family up on a pedestal. But it's a sad reality that in our culture most people do not have that. And it's time we talk about it and take care of ourselves.

This is a shameful topic. Often if you tell people you're not talking to your mother you'll get a look of either pity or confusion or judgment. People in other cultures would read this and be horrified by it. They would never understand our attitudes toward family life here in the US. But this is the reality in our culture.

Part 2 - To Go No Contact?

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