To heal from emotional and spiritual abuse, I learned to set boundaries. Setting boundaries is important. It helps me set basic guidelines of how I want to be treated. It helps me establish guidelines as to how others can behave around me. This helps ensure that relationships are mutually respectful, appropriate, and caring.
Setting boundaries also helps eliminate opportunities for me to be abused. I have used two methods: no contact and limited contact. No contact means I have no communication with the offender: no phone calls, text messages, emails, or visits. Limited contact means I determine the frequency and duration of all communication. I like to call it “small doses.”
It’s not easy to cut someone out of your life. Even after enduring emotional abuse, I often struggle with self-doubt, especially when the holidays are approaching. It seems to trigger questions as to whether I’m doing the right thing. I start to wonder if I’m the actual problem for the strained relationships with members of my family. When your family is enmeshed, it’s difficult to develop a sense of self, or trust your emotions, and not having any contact with each other is unfamiliar and foreign.
My decision to have no communication with members of my family was one I needed to make to find peace. I was emotionally and mentally exhausted from fighting to be heard. I cried every day because my feelings were not validated.
My parents treat me with disregard. Sometimes they are dismissive, sometimes they are verbally abusive, and when I attempt to address the issues or give examples of past bad behavior, they gaslight me, or use guilt and shame to silence me.
My parents feel entitled to treat me however they want, and they feel entitled to having a relationship with my children despite their bad behavior toward me. My children have witnessed the way my parents dismiss me and disregard me. The terrible part is I tolerated their behavior. I wasn’t strong enough to stand up for myself. Because I accepted the way that my parents treated me, my children received a specific message about me: Mom’s feelings don’t matter.
My kids saw their grandparents, and their aunts and uncles, treat me like I was not important. They saw that my feelings were invalid; that it was okay to treat people with disregard. My kids got the message that it was acceptable to treat their mother this way, too.
What I’m most ashamed of is that my kids witnessed me trying to please these people despite the way they treated me. I showed them it was okay to accept poor treatment. Why should I be surprised when my kids disrespect my authority? I allowed their grandparents to do the same thing. Why should I expect my children to be able to set boundaries, or respect my boundaries? I didn’t set any with my parents or my siblings.
Why would I want my kids to be around people who treat me poorly?
I want to believe my parents would never hurt my children. But I find myself asking why I think they would be so wonderful to everyone else and that I, as their daughter, was the exception to the rule. When it comes to the truth about who my parents truly are and how they treat people, I find myself facing contradictions.
I know exactly why I believe that my parents would never hurt my kids.
When I was a kid, I was convinced that I was the problem. I was brainwashed to believe that I was deficient, or somehow defective, and that if I wasn’t so “worthless” my life and my parents’ feelings towards me would have been different. I was convinced that if only I could have been the daughter they wanted, then I would have been loved.
I believed that my parents would have loved me if I was good enough. If I had been the daughter they dreamed of; smarter, prettier, more loving, more compliant, less of a burden, then I would have been treasured, loved, accepted, and secure.
I don’t see my children the way my parents regarded me, so I can’t imagine that my mom and dad would ever treat my kids the way that they treated me. I see my kids as wonderful treasures, so it’s unfathomable that my parents would ever judge my children in the same ways they judged me. Of course I wouldn’t see the danger of my children having a relationship with their grandparents, even if I decide not to have contact with them. It was ingrained in me to think I was the problem; that I was always at fault.
In enmeshed families there is a lack of boundaries. When I began to set boundaries they weren’t respected. My parents feel entitled to step around me to gain access to my children. Sometimes they contact my husband instead of me. Sometimes they enlist my siblings to have a talk with me to “set me straight.”
My siblings have said they fear that I am using my children to punish our parents, and them. They tell me that Mom and Dad love their grandchildren and I don’t have the right to cut off contact. This infuriates me. What is loving about treating a child’s mother with disregard and disrespect? Where is the example of love in that treatment?
Some parents and grandparents are narcissists. Let’s be clear: a narcissist is a narcissist no matter who they are dealing with. They are only interested in themselves and their interests. In that regard, what is their interest in a relationship with your children? I’ve thought about this for quite a long time. I believe that they want to be right so badly that they will try to discredit you when it comes to your children. Their sole purpose is to prove that they are right about you (and that you are wrong); so right that your own children have turned against you.
When making decisions about my children I cannot be blind to the truth. I am the parent. I have a choice, even though I had been brainwashed to believe that I didn’t. I have power even though I was convinced that I was powerless. I reject those lies. I’m taking control of my life. I’m taking back my power. I’m taking control over my choices.
I’m not obligated to do anything just because the word family is involved. People who don’t care about me are not good role models for my children. People who treat me as though I am nothing and call me crazy don’t have a place in my life or the lives of my kids. These people are going to communicate their judgments about me to my children, even if those judgments are non-verbal. I’ve experienced this before and sometimes these people are very convincing.
We might be accused of seeking revenge when we decide to have no contact, but when it comes to me, my husband and my kids, we are a package deal. If you can’t deal with me, you can’t deal with my kids. Accusations are not truth. Whose fault is it, truly, when we decide that it is best for our children not to see our parents? What situation or behavior caused us to consider this decision in the first place?
My decision wasn’t made to seek revenge. I sought peace. My motive for finally standing up for myself was to demand a relationship that is mutually respectful and kind, and to set an example for my kids as to how they deserve to be treated. The cycle of abuse stops with me.
Hey Dana Jane 
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