No Contact Advice/Tips

[laurabee]

Hello everyone,

I'm struggling to maintain my decision to keep no contact with my mother. The main reason why I'm finding it difficult is because of the toxic shame and guilt that I feel. I have been undergoing therapy since September, which has helped me identify some codependent behaviors. However, breaking the habits and choosing myself over others is a challenge.

I am seeking some support and advice on maintaining no contact. Currently, I plan to take it month by month and assess how I feel. I have blocked my mother's number, but I'm overwhelmed with guilt and fear because of it. I understand that it's the best way to protect myself, as with low contact, my mother would bait me with things that would trigger me to get attention.

With that being said, what are your best tips and advice for maintaining your strength in no-contact?

[zachira]

Deciding to go no contact with a close family member, especially a mother, is an extremely courageous decision that often comes about after trying everything to have a healthy relationship with this person and finding it impossible. I am currently no contact with my sister with NPD, many relatives and enablers from my large extended family, and low contact with many others. My best advice is to be very careful about with whom you share your decision to go no contact with your mother and with whom you share any information about the no contact. From my experiences, most of the people who have chosen to maintain a relationship with the person we have decided to go no contact with are what are known as "flying monkeys", people who enable the disordered person's behaviors and do not accept the decision of another human being to go no contact. If you google "flying monkeys", you will find plenty of information on this subject. It is often the flying monkeys who hurt us the most when we decide to go no contact with a disordered close family member.

Know that with time, you will get stronger and feel less guilty about going no contact with your mother. With a mother, it is especially difficult to go no contact, as there is this erroneous belief that all mothers are loving mothers who deserve to be venerated by their children.

[Pilpel]

I cut contact with my NPD sister in law about 5 years ago, after over 10 years of trying to keep the peace or reason with her without any success.  For me, it was over 10 years of regular cycles of stress almost every time I had to interact with her.   I thought through it for years before certain events caused me to cut ties.  There were a lot of questions about how this would affect my immediate family, my family's relationship with SIL's kids.  Ultimately, I had to go with my gut.  When I examined my own values, I realized that if I treated my own kids the way she treated me and other members of the family, I would think they had every right to cut me off. So in the "do unto others" value, I wasn't treating the NPD SIL in the way I would expect to be treated at all.  I don't treat people the way she treats people because I would expect consequences.  Yet somehow she is so forceful in pushing her false reality that she gets away with mistreating people over and over again.  

Over the years of being NC, I initially got some flack from some other family members.  Like I'm just not trying hard enough.  I just need to keep talking things through.  When my mother would have a good experience with her, she would try to urge me to reconcile.  But recently the family found out that she was diagnosed as bipolar a couple years ago, and that she was off her meds.  And this is bad because the mania just makes her more filtered and rage-y.  And she's burning bridges everywhere.  

[zachira]

Pilpel,
It is amazing how disordered people can sell their false persona for years on end and only sometimes does the mean side of this person finally get uncovered. I have found that one of the best ways to protect myself from disordered people and their flying monkeys is to pay attention to whether I am dealing with some one who is phony nice or is genuinely nice.

[alphabeta]

I've been NC/ LC with my mother for the past six years. Initially I had a lot of guilt of leaving her alone - I'm an only child, and we have no relatives in the country.   However, my feelings of guilt have eroded after time, because my time away from her has allowed me to see how she's shaped my extremely low self esteem and my son's treatment of me - he has learned some of her bad behaviors like being entitled around me.

In retrospect I wish I had gone NC sooner as I endured over 40 years of her verbal abuse while feeling obligation to parent her.

I only went NC after trying to patch our differences with six different therapists with the last one urging me to ensure my safety and stay away from her - my mother had threatened the therapist.

The flying monkeys in my family have shunned and shaped me, and I've lost quite a few friends.

Nonetheless I feel a sense of freedom I never had before,  and it would take a lot for me to relinquish it.

I wish you the best.