I don t talk to my family

It's been building up for a long time. From childhood they taught me to be independent. I was an ordinary child, I was engaged in circles. They weren't particularly interested, and I didn't really let them into my life. I didn’t need support, I always came home on time, I could always cook something for myself and I didn’t have to constantly beg from my parents, so to speak. And if some clothes were needed, for example, they saw for themselves, because I was in front of them.

When I left, I felt that I had disappeared from their apartment, disappeared from line of sight. And their interest in me also disappeared. My parents had the opportunity to help me, because in principle they allowed themselves to spend money on some things that were not essential, so to speak. They could have fun, plan a vacation abroad, and at this time I needed tenths of the funds that they spend. I was dependent, I did not have the opportunity to provide for myself during my studies. I stopped feeling this support, stopped feeling that my parents somehow remember me, think about me.

They only sent money on request. This amount was only enough for a short period of time - a week or two. For food, basic household needs. I had to borrow, think of ways to get through this moment somehow. Winter has literally come, I don’t have winter shoes, I call my parents, but this was not part of their plans.

I told my parents about my life, problems with peers, and so on. But I didn’t see any interest from my parents, I didn’t hear any questions about what and how.

When I graduated from the university, I found a job, and in principle everything was in order, I even figured out housing. And in one of the conversations with my mother (she called me, congratulated me on my housewarming), she asked how to help me. I said I need a washing machine. She said: “Good,” but then she disappeared and there was no further news from her. For the next couple of months, she did not communicate with me, did not get in touch.

It's not about money, it's about attitude, attention. At first they created such a situation that I could not rely on them, count on them, were not interested, did not try to share my difficulties, to support me. And then they began to be offended that we didn’t have such a warm relationship, that I had my own thoughts and we didn’t communicate much. They think I just need to grow up. They attribute this to some kind of childishness, to the fact that I have not grown up yet and behave like a teenager.

In my opinion, the only way to maintain communication is for me to find a psychotherapist, for my parents to find a psychotherapist, to work through this situation, to study it thoroughly. I don't see a way out of this situation on my own. For my part, I do not feel the need for any warmth. I have my own circle of people, I have my own family that will always support me, I am sure of it.

But at the same time, I understand that sooner or later the time will come when we will have to contact somehow. I love my parents, I think that my parents also love me in a certain sense. But here they are hindered, it seems to me, by the problem of how they were brought up, the problem of their childhood, namely psychological problems. My love is not unconditional either. It would also be nice for me to work through this moment, to reflect on this state in order to understand why I love them somehow not in the way they need it.

But in our culture it is generally not customary to turn to psychotherapists. Parents think it's overkill. I think that if this is not worked out, then communication will completely stop. So far, over the years, there has not been such a thing that I did not pick up the phone and cut off all contacts. But we call each other only a few times a year, on holidays. As a rule, this is a short formal conversation.

One of the signs of parental abuse is a persistent sense of guilt

Photo: Alexander Oshchepkov / NGS

Share

Olya Dankeshen, 38 years old. Doesn’t communicate with mother for 1.5 years:

“I didn’t talk to my mother for 1.5 years, and before that, for half a year, I minimized contact very much. We couldn't talk properly. Even when she called me to visit, she began to find fault, to break down, she became ill, she began to freak out. Even on the phone, none of our conversations could end almost normally.

I have a whole range of psychosomatic diseases , which are typical for all children of abusive parents. At a certain point, when I had already begun to work with my brains, I began to understand that as soon as I saw a call from my mother, I just started having wild back pains. Abuse is some explainable things, and inexplicable things. What is recognized by society as violence is being thrown out into the stairwell, some spankings, some screams. I remember this from the age of five. She often had temper tantrums.

As a child, I thought, did she really give birth to me? To say that mother's love was not felt is a very mild description. There was hatred. I remember myself from the age of about a year. I cried, no one approached me. I have 80 photos in the album where I cry. My first memory is of her teasing me for hours. I want to grab, see, but she won't let me. When she gave it to me, I had such a feeling of anger at a young age, I broke this watch.

My mother pretended to be a victim — that she pulls us, that she gave birth to us, she is a saint. You live with it and do not understand that something is wrong. I studied well, went to circles myself, had good relations at school, at the university, at work. Nevertheless, my mother convinced me that I was not normal.

From the age of 13, it can be said that anger and rage increased. After the divorce, she began to have absolute power. She took me to every occasion. If it's a birthday, then she will beat me to such a state that I sobbed in front of my guests. For example, hot was delayed for 15 minutes. In principle, nothing terrible, but I was humiliated in the kitchen in front of a friend, there was some kind of verbal abuse. There was always a feeling that someone was hanging over you and ready to fuck you at any second: you are such a scoundrel, a disgrace, a shame, and so on.

When her father was around, she could mutter something, but she didn't thrash very much. Once I didn't have time to tidy up the apartment for her arrival. And I also had a puppy, he piled up somewhere behind the curtain, I didn’t see. Mother arrived early. She beat me and beat my dog. I somehow got used to my beatings, and the beatings of the dog terrified me so much that I just scooped up the puppy and went somewhere else, did not spend the night at home.

I was always reproached for being like my paternal relatives, as if I could change that. My mother hated my grandmother, I could see her pain on her face when she noticed it.

When I was 18, I decided it was time to leave . And then my mother changed tactics. I still don't understand what came over her. When I went abroad, she started calling me every day, she was affectionate. I thought: now, it turns out, what kind of mother I have, worried, probably just strict, but she loves me very much.

Abusive parents get mad when you become free . Because a joyful person is relaxed and this is something negative, they make it so that there is a feeling of guilt. Ultimately, you get used to not being happy yourself or not showing your joy. I even started hiding when I started doing something, some kind of hobby, so that they would not tell me anything, because it was like some kind of hypnosis.

Mother controlled my leisure time - come and weed my garden. All children are like children, and you are freaks - you do not help. As soon as I began to have some success, she began to have anxiety. Of course, there are some good moments. Any evening when you can talk, even if you got a little shit. It seems like it's okay, we're kindred. It's like having a cake with a little potassium cyanide thrown into it.

I minimized communication for six months, then I went to therapy. When I was told not to communicate with my mother, I thought that a year is fine, but five years is a lot.

Parents are often traumatized children themselves, so psychotherapists advise both parties not to neglect professional help in resolving conflicts

Photo: Vera Salnitskaya

Share

During our penultimate meeting, she hit me on the head. At that moment, my mother was doing my hair and wanted to spray it with varnish. And I have an allergy, I said that my head would itch and I shouldn’t do it. But she was not interested, and I insisted on my own. And then it hits me in the head with all my might. I didn’t even have anger, I realized that this marginalism goes beyond all boundaries and there is no more strength to forgive. I just said that's it, I went.

I don't know how she reacted to the fact that I stopped communicating with because I immediately blocked her completely. At first I did not want to break off her communication with my child, but nevertheless I decided that it would be better this way.

The psychotherapist diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder. It's like war veterans. Very many people who grew up with toxic parents have this diagnosis. And I initially did not really believe her that my health and affairs would improve if I stopped communicating with my mother.

After I stopped communicating, even my hormones began to return to normal. A year went by and I got better. My nerves, my health began to improve. Gradually, a picture of what was happening to me began to take shape. I feel that some kind of poison is gradually coming out of me, in some doses, as if this dysfunction is exfoliating, my brain is being rewired.

Technically you can communicate again, but this toxic upbringing is at the level of reflexes. Mother, her voice, her look, some intonations. They can act depressingly on a person. I already perceive her as a stranger, she, in principle, has always been a stranger to me.

There are people whose parents died in an accident, nothing can be done about it.

If we meet by chance, I will take her like any other woman on street. No, I won’t come, I have nothing to talk about, I don’t want to say anything anymore. I still have the feeling of being released from prison after 20 years in prison. I look at healthy people, how they live. I begin to painfully learn step by step how normal people live.

After separation, it happens that the image of the mother is stratified . Because there are both negative and positive aspects. She cooked something, called for dinner, bought some beautiful thing. There is still a craving for glimpses, but I realize that this has nothing to do with a real person. I have closed the need for parental love, because I understand that this connection will never happen again.

Breaking up with loved ones: misconceptions, causes and possible benefits

• Christine Roe
• BBC Future

April 6, 2019

Sign up for our Newsletter “Context”: it will help you understand the events.

Image copyright BBC/Getty

Being a stranger to your family is more common than you might think. For society, such relationships are often like a stigma. However, according to psychologists, sometimes life away from your loved ones is much healthier, and sometimes it's the only way out.

Nanditi Godbole had a breakup with the rest of her wealthy Indian family over... food.

Godbole writes books about how to cook, but her relatives, who are used to hiring a cook to cook, consider her passion unworthy. And when her last book came out, in which Godbole delved into the history of her family, the discord became even more pronounced.

Relatives felt that by telling about what outsiders should not know, Godbole went against the traditional family hierarchy. Some even stopped talking to her.

This story, of course, is unique in its own way, but what Nanditi Godbole experienced because of the break in relations with her family is not at all uncommon.

Family alienation can be described as alienation and loss of attachment that deepens over the years (or even decades) within the same family.

At the same time, it is not always possible to understand in which direction the situation is developing - towards deterioration or improvement. For scientists, this is a relatively new area of ​​research.

But this phenomenon is very common. For example, the British charity Stand Alone, which provides support to those people who suffer from a broken relationship with loved ones, believes that this happens in one out of every five families in the United Kingdom.

Image copyright, BBC/Getty

Disagreements with loved ones are discussed more than in previous years

Skip the Podcast and continue reading.

Podcast

What was that?

We quickly, simply and clearly explain what happened, why it's important and what's next.

episodes

The End of the Story Podcast

An American study found that out of more than 2,000 mother-child couples, 10% of mothers are in a situation of alienation with their adult daughter or son.

Another study (also in the US) found that more than 40% of participants experienced alienation within their families at some point in their lives. Moreover, in certain social groups, this is almost as common as divorce.

Stand Alone founder Becca Bland (who has her own experience of living at odds with loved ones, she does not communicate with her parents) notes that this topic is now being discussed much more widely than before - even five years ago.

This is also confirmed by Google Trends query statistics: people are increasingly entering words in the search box that describe the situation of alienation - this happens primarily among users in Canada, Australia and Singapore.

Bland believes that Megan Markle helped this to a large extent when she entered the British royal family.

Prince Harry's wife, the Duchess of Sussex, who won first place in search queries in the British Google (and second in the US) in 2018, spurred public interest in intra-family conflict situations due to her difficult relationship with her father.

• How breaking up a relationship will affect your personality
• How life in marriage changes your personality the same interest was received by the recognition in an interview in 2018 of the famous actor Anthony Hopkins, in which he said that for 20 years he had hardly spoken to his daughter.

  Such details from the life of celebrities, as a rule, help ordinary people to digest their own difficult life experiences and try to explain it for themselves.

  Although examples of alienation can be found in any country in the world, it happens more often in a certain type of society or state.

  One of the determining factors is how much support the government provides to citizens. In countries with a developed welfare system, people simply do not need strong family ties and the help of relatives to such an extent. And so they have a choice - whether to maintain a relationship with one or another family member.

  For example, in Europe, the farther to the south, the more parents and adult children tend to have close relationships, since in the countries of southern Europe state assistance is scarcer.

  Image copyright, BBC/Getty

  Image caption,

  The out-of-family phenomenon is more common in countries with well-developed welfare systems

  Financial factors intersect with others, such as race or education. For example, in Germany, the higher level of education of older children often goes hand in hand with a higher level of conflict with parents.

  It is assumed that family members who have received a good education are usually more mobile geographically and need each other less financially.

  A study by Megan Gilligan and her colleagues on conflicts in American families over family care showed differences in the experience of adult children depending on race.

  However, isolating the influence of culture or class can be difficult. Gilligan, a gerontologist at Iowa State University, notes that in the US, ethnic minorities tend to rely more on the support of family members.

  In Uganda, where in the past it was important to stick to each other, to keep in touch with one another, to survive, family alienation is rearing its head, says Steven Wandera, a demographer at Makerere University in Kampala.

  A recent study by Wandera and colleagues found that 9% of Ugandans aged 50 and over live alone. For this African country - a surprisingly high figure.

  Of course, this is not exactly the same as alienation. But as families become smaller, more nuclear, and urbanization increases, the percentage of Ugandans living in constant conflict with relatives will rise, Wandera says.

  This will not happen quickly. "Cultural norms are still strong and it will take time until they weaken," he stresses. But, in his opinion, in 20 years everything will change.

  Image copyright, BBC/Getty

  Image caption

  As families become smaller and more urbanized, the phenomenon of exclusion will become more common

  This does not mean, of course, that governments should reduce financial assistance for the elderly people to force families to maintain strong ties.

  For example, Spanish family culture has always been considered more "compulsory" than, for example, Norwegian, where intergenerational relations are usually more friendly, because they are chosen voluntarily, and not for financial reasons.

  Why this happens

  The reason for the loss of family ties is often the divorce of parents - and in such cases, the relationship with the father suffers especially.

  A common reason is also a broken relationship with a relative belonging to a marginalized minority (sexual, religious, etc.).

  But quite often such a break occurs calmly and without much drama. As Gilligan explains, it usually happens gradually, rather than due to any one major event.

  The people she interviewed often said, "I can't say exactly how it happened."

  Image copyright, BBC/Getty

  Image caption,

  Often, the breakup between close relatives is gradual and reflects long-standing tension in a relationship.

  Those families whose members would like to restore relations, reconcile, should be aware that their conflict is unlikely to be the result of an isolated incident. They will have to study their own past more closely.

  For those who want to reconcile or prevent alienation, we can recommend: do not rush to condemn the other.

  Gilligan's study, which involved mothers, 10% of whom lived without contact with their adult children, showed that the most important factor in their alienation from each other was a mismatch of values.

  For example, "if a mother valued her religious beliefs and practices, and the child openly disregarded them, the mother found it really offensive," says Gilligan.

  Of course, this is not only about religion. Another mother, who highly valued truthfulness, broke off relations with her deceitful son. Another woman who placed great importance on her own independence stopped talking to her daughter, who seemed to her mother to be too dependent on a man.

  Image copyright, BBC/Getty

  Image caption,

  Growing up children often recall emotional tyranny in the home, but their parents rarely talk about it norms - say, if a child committed a crime.

  Moreover, according to the study, common values ​​were more important for mothers than for fathers. Mothers just couldn't get over it.

  Well, as often happens, the parties (parents and children) gave a completely different interpretation of the same situation.

  In the UK, adult children, for example, most often mentioned emotional hurts that led to a break with their parents - about constant attempts to control through humiliation, criticism, etc.

  But parents were much more likely to talk about things like divorce or mismatched expectations.

  "An adult child and his mother usually don't talk to each other about what makes them sad, so I think they are on different pages of understanding the same situation," she says.

  Well, naturally, if one of them takes a defensive position and does not want to listen to the other, then these two people are not able to explain something to each other.

  Bland this seems to be the result of generations having completely different conceptions of family life.

  Image copyright, BBC/Getty

  Image caption,

  Different generations have different ideas about what a family should be like

  According to her, in post-war Britain there was a very conservative idea of ​​what a family should be like. People used to think of family life in terms of duty and self-sacrifice, which sometimes led them to put up with emotional and even physical abuse.

  For the children of that generation, the mismatch of values ​​or expectations also plays a role. And another important factor is parental favoritism.

  Positive aspects of alienation

  But everything is not so simple. Just as traditional taboos regarding divorce have kept women in violent and exploitative marriages, so a dogmatic belief in the permanence and sacredness of the family can mean unnecessarily suffering for someone.

  As Gilligan points out, "if relations between relatives are full of conflict, if they cause such suffering, then perhaps the best way out for both parents and their grown children is to break off these relations."

  And people understand this. According to Stand Alone, for more than 80% of people who choose to break up with loved ones, this is associated with at least a few positive things - such as freedom and independence. It's a way to overcome the past.

  It is also important to note that the break is not necessarily permanent. People can restore relationships, get closer again.

  Yes, and conflicts do not always arise immediately with all other family members.

  For example, in Vietnamese families, despite the fact that LGBT or transgender affiliation is unacceptable for parents, brothers and sisters are much more tolerant of this.

  Alienation in the family is also painful because it is not clear how long it will last and whether it will end at all.

  Photo credit, BBC/Getty

  Photo caption,

  For more than 80% of respondents, the breakup of a relationship was associated with newfound freedom and independence in the eyes of society," Gilligan said.

  For example, in an article in an online publication for pensioners, the author blames alienation on individualism, divorce, psychotherapy, and the "immaturity of children. "

  And even psychotherapists often blame their patients for not communicating with one of their close relatives. Women are especially easily ostracized for this. Some people even have to minimize their social contacts, just to keep others from their family problems.

  But, as experts emphasize, people who are already isolated from their families should not be driven into a corner, aggravating the situation.

  Another aspect: from the point of view of scientists, such ostracism makes it difficult to understand how many people are actually alienated from their families.

  This is especially difficult to find out in those countries and cultures where it is considered unacceptable to discuss family conflicts.

  The author of books about tasty and healthy food, Nanditi Godbole, knows all this very well. "I've come to terms with the fact that people will take time to reconnect with me. And some may never do it," she says.

  ---

  Learn more
  • 
    Domestic violence triggers
  • 
    Introvert extrovert lyrics
  • 
    How to handle controlling husband
  • 
    Prayer in stressful times
  • 
    Poly pellets joann
  • 
    How many teenagers have depression
  • 
    Keep to yourself quotes
  • 
    Emotional intelligence benefits workplace
  • 
    Genetic influences on eating disorders most likely involve
  • 
    Match com free to look
  • 
    Why does he want to control me