Withdrawing Contact: When Withdrawing Is A Healthy Choice

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

By Bethany Webster

Stopping communication is still a taboo

Separation from the parental family is still considered taboo, especially distance from the mother. Sometimes distancing is temporary, like quarantine. In other cases, alienation can become a permanent choice. It takes tremendous strength and endurance to do this.

What leads to alienation?

There are many reasons people make this choice. But the main tendency leading to withdrawal from contact is the realization that your mother's dysfunctional behavior requires a huge cost in your mental and emotional well-being, and you are simply not willing to pay that price anymore

I believe that this is not something frivolous and shameless. More often than not, it is a choice made after years of trying to use every possible means to maintain that connection and take it to a higher level. In this case, sooner or later you will come to an intersection where you will need to make a choice.

This may be the hardest thing you have ever done in your life. And it can also be the most inspiring thing for you.

Daughters Who Change and Resistance as Family Responses to Change

Families are complex systems in which everyone has a role to play. When one family member stops playing his assigned role, the system experiences imbalance or chaos. Conflict can help transform the system to a higher level if family members are ready and open to grow and learn new forms of interaction. Unfortunately, sometimes, trying to resist change, the family attacks the person who wants to grow. This person has a choice: stay and suffer from toxicity, or heal and leave an unhealthy system. The decision to end contact is often made when it becomes clear that it is impossible to recover by remaining in this family system.

Daughters often play the roles of family brokers, scapegoats, secret keepers, or emotional guardians. If a daughter follows the path of growth and wants to develop further, remaining in her usual role in the family, then she: sets tougher boundaries, expands her capabilities (improves the quality of her life), does not tolerate being mistreated. The degree of discontent and chaos arising from the rest of the family indicates how dysfunctional the family system as a whole is.

If each family member is relatively healthy, stable, and open, the family can find a new balance without much chaos. However, if family members are deeply injured or traumatized, the daughter's development can be perceived as a serious threat to the family system. This chaos can be very disturbing and extremely difficult to navigate. Support is important.

Don't make contact: the role of shame

In an unconscious attempt to maintain balance and resist change, family members may attack the daughter. A common and dangerous form of family response is “pathologizing” the daughter: representation of the conflict as a result of any pathology in the daughter. The message is: “Your unwillingness to continue to play your assigned role in the family indicates that what's wrong with you what- it’s not like that.” This shame-based statement excludes the responsibility of the mother and other family members for the conflict. The daughter's mental instability, her sexual activity, her past mistakes will be considered the cause of the conflict. Everything about her can be questioned and criticized, everything except for the role of the mother in the conflict.

It's amazing how violently people resist to objectively look at things and call them by their proper names. How long will they deny it, including banishing their own child? This unconscious resistance to change will manifest itself in the projection of the entire conflict, the entire family pathology, onto the person initiating the transformation of the family system. You need to understand that there is nothing personal here. This occurs when people who have not been concerned with their inner lives are confronted with their denied pain through a catalytic event, such as when a woman in a family transcends the prevailing dynamic that has kept the family stable for generations.

We cannot save our mothers. We cannot save our parental families. We can only be saved. To be completely healed, you do not need your mother (or other family members) to understand you.

Your family's refusal to change leads to your growth

The heartbreaking thing is the realization that your mother / family simply cannot or does not want to understand you. You seem to speak two different languages. They may unknowingly NOT understand you because it poses too much of a threat to their deeply rooted beliefs and values. Understanding you can cause a seismic shift to the very foundation on which they have built their identity and worldview.

For changes in your life, your own understanding and awareness is quite enough for you. Your assessment of yourself becomes primary. You realize that you can be okay even if others don't understand you.

What happens after the contact ends?

After you stop contacting, your life can start to improve in many areas. I saw how chronic diseases disappear, neurotic fears disappear and life stereotypes disappear. On the one hand, you start to enjoy life, on the other hand it becomes a problem for you. There is no way for you to satisfy the need for recognition. With each new level of growth in prosperity, intimacy, joy, freedom, the absence of your family around you will deprive you of the opportunity to share your joy with them. It is because of the inability to share your successes with your family that can cause a storm of bitterness. You have no choice but to feel this bitterness, experience it and allow yourself to move forward.

Grief doesn't mean you made the wrong choice. In fact, it is a sign of health and healing.

Keep yourself within the new paradigm that gave you the strength to let go of the toxic bond. If you don't, you may be brought back out of guilt or shame. It's so important to get a lot of support and give yourself time and space to process all the emotions that come with this choice. A conscious justification for yourself is important: why you are doing this, and for what. Use this as an opportunity to give birth to yourself in a new paradigm of your life.

1. Alienation is a launching pad for empowerment

You can discover something very profound that many people will never know: you will realize that you can survive the rejection of your mother. This can create a level of freedom and determination in you that can lead to a quantum leap in your life. This will provide an opportunity to achieve a radical integrity that extends to all areas of your life. This kindles a fire of truth in you that has always been there, but now it can be completely ignited. You feel your own source within.

2. Grief, grief and even more grief give way to FREEDOM

Grieving can occur every time you move to a new, higher level that your mother / family has never been to. It can be like sadness to the core, almost tribal or hereditary, the sadness of having to go forward without them. And it gets easier and easier over time. I believe that the more we lovingly allow ourselves to grieve, the more space is created in our lives for magic, beauty and joy. There is something deeply sacred about the grief that comes from this choice. This can serve as an opportunity to deeply connect with your truth and realize it at the deepest level. We need to comprehend this loss and use it to improve our lives in new ways. This is the key to long term healing.

3. Your honesty becomes a solid foundation for the rest of your life

“You cannot become poor enough to help poor people prosper, or get sick enough to help sick people recover. You can only rise to a position of strength, clarity and alignment. ~ Abraham

It's okay to walk away from toxic people in your life, including toxic people in your family.

The path to healing the trauma of generations can be a lonely path. But with the new space created, other relationships based on a spiritual connection will enter your life. Our need for affection is the strongest need people have. To face this total alienation is to oppose the value of your own life to toxic relationships. It means putting the value of your life above such an important human need as attachment. Our biggest fear is the fear of being alone. But the loneliness that we are so afraid of has already happened. Long ago, as a result of the trauma of our families … Rather, we are holding on to the illusion of family support and love. I am here to tell you that you are not alone and over time you will find your spiritual family, people who are able to see and appreciate you for who you are.

4. Alienated daughters are spiritual warriors

In a world where women are largely expected to remain silent in order to meet the needs of others, and where the dark side of the mother is not recognized, the experience of alienation can be the beginning of a new level of awareness that many people never receive.

The space has been cleared to allow your light to shine to its fullest. What will you do with this light burning within you?

There are many more such stories in which a woman has to break off a destructive relationship for her than you might think. In reality or on a symbolic level, they come together to form a new consciousness, a new mindset, a new maternal line, and a new existence for women.

You are not alone

5. Trust yourself and do what works for you

Withdrawal doesn't necessarily mean that you don't love your family. This does not mean that you are not grateful for the good they gave you. It simply means that you need space to live the way you want. Women who do not feel they can have this kind of space with their family choose to give up contact with their disadvantaged mothers. Sometimes a breakup is the only way to say, “Mom, your life is your personal responsibility, just as my life is mine. I refuse to be sacrificed on the altar of your pain. I refuse to be a victim of your war. Even if you are not able to understand me, I must go my own way. I have to choose my own life."

Healing Maternal Trauma: The Beginning of Independence

Healing a mother's trauma is a process of empowering herself as a woman.

Our patriarchal culture fosters a dysfunctional bond between mothers and daughters. Our culture does not offer women a ritual for the natural stage of development - separation from their mother and initiation into their own lives. (For men, this also does not exist.) Healing the mother's trauma is a process that provides the necessary dedication, whether you are in contact with your mother or not. I dream that someday in the future, maternal trauma will be very rare, as more and more women are cleared of the patriarchal messages of "less than", and both mothers and daughters are given the right to fully own their strength and potential, as free, independent personality. The daughter's personality will not pose a threat to the mother because she will love and appreciate both herself and her daughter.

By healing your mother's trauma, you are creating a new world for yourself, for the women of the future, and for the Earth itself