With Strong Reinforcement Boundaries Can Work Sometimes!

[zachira]

I have been in the process of going no contact or low contact with most of my large extended family for several years now. Some of the flying monkeys are now honoring the fact that I will not be reestablishing contact with my sister with NPD or putting up with the abuse of other family members. It has taken constant reinforcement and reminders when they have committed terrible transgressions like being told by one flying monkey I deserved to be abused in front of the whole family because I was talking badly about the family when I wasn't. From my experiences, there are basically two kinds of flying monkeys: 1) people who are as abusive as the main abusers whom I have ended up having no contact with as I am no longer invited to any of their family functions or contacted by them, which I am fine with. I don't reach out to them either. 2) people who are capable of changing their behaviors with constant reinforcement and my educating them about how abusive certain family members are.

[Methuen]

To add Zachira's comment, my experience with boundaries is that:
1) they can be emotionally difficult to set (for example setting boundaries for my own mother has been difficult)
2) the other person is going to react to them with extinction burst kind of behaviors and that is more difficult to navigate than setting them in the first place
3) if you can get through the extinction bursts, it does get better.  But in my circumstance where it's my mother and she lives so close, even when it gets better, it never goes away, meaning even with my boundaries, her behaviors don't stop.  But they have lessened for me, especially now that she's in assisted living. Somebody else gets to deal with her and make decisions.

Right now she's choosing to eat like a bird, and then send me texts about how she is losing weight.  She says she doesn't like the food.  The truth is, she never liked any food (anorexic).  And so even when I used to bring her food, she would give it away or throw it out.  Sometimes she would tell me hers tasted better.  So I eventually stopped bringing her food. When the text comes about losing weight, I roll my eyes and move on.  She's an adult.  She's a nurse.  She makes her own decisions.

So boundaries do make things better, potentially significantly better, but it's still a roller coaster at times.  And they never stop finding ways to blame us.  She is blaming me less than she used to, but that's because I only see her once a week, and no longer go alone to these visits.  Those are some of my boundaries.  So for the newbies on the site, this is an example of how boundaries are for US, and not for the other person.

How are boundaries working out for others?