"no contact" criteria?

i am wondering about healthy and balanced criteria for breaking contact with people.

the mother who most probably has DID too doesnt work on her problem and leaves it to her kids to balance her life, her needy parts, her house work.... we quit contact about 3 years ago and it was a good choice.

we are still keeping loose contact with siblings. most of it small talk. but they do send pictures of family vacations that confuse us, they push meeting with us. we just had that difficult birthday and they seem to push it really hard, wanting to see us, not even asking how we are doing...
i am not sure if this is safe or if they are working for the abuser group.
last christmas, after H wasnt successful when a suicide programm was triggered, the brother gave us a set of knifes as a present. it felt like a message.
this year, after we did not react on the "return to abuser" programm and didnt kill ourselves the siblings go crazy, wanting to see us.

i dont know if i am seeing ghosts here. L is back to deep doubt, thinking she made everything up. i am wondering about the need for even more boundaries.
every single time there is contact with family we are struggling.
we have a set of very high values, one of them saying that we will work on healthy connection on our side and set boundaries when others dont.

i find it difficult to decide. any thoughts?

Sounds like limiting, or completely breaking all, contact sounds like the best choice. You need to take care of yourself, not worry about trying to please those who may be trying to harm you. If you do decide to meet with them, I would recommend keeping it brief, and in a public setting. Having lunch or coffee together somewhere for example. And then you can break off all contact if you decide that that would be best, and you wouldn't have as much of a possibility of guilty feelings since you did give meeting them a chance, albeit on your safe terms. All this coming from an outsider knowing very little of the situation; sorry if it's not all that helpful or relevant. Be safe and take care of yourself.

We just stopped contacting them and stopped accepting contact from them. Fortunately, they lived in a different part of the country.

The aforementioned "they" are now where they deserve to be, without an air conditioner.

We also block phone numbers as needed, keep our answering machine on 24/7, and don't answer a call if we don't want to answer it.

Good luck,

MDs

I'm a bit of a controller and perceptive. To the poster, maybe it is that your mom might not have DID since you are a teen protector does it remind you of yourself the awkward teen years we are all trying to understand even as singleton?

Annett, you have a duty to protect yourselves. Take any steps you can to end contact. You are not seeing ghosts. Trust yourselves. You know your family members are not healthy.

One possible way to sever contact is to write them that, for your own health, you must insist on zero communication from them until you decide to change that. They will likely ignore your wishes.

I have 3 sisters and love them each very much. However, I only have contact with one and only every few months with her. There are varying degrees of dysfunction in our family and my sisters are not healthy for us. They can be highly triggering, especially to many of the littles. I've also had to admit I may not be healthy for two sisters. In just being myself I endanger their fragile stability because I will not enter the different but related alternative narratives about our childhoods they're committed to.

They have a residual need to protect their own myth of our parents as being normal, which they could be but only part of the time. The two I don't have any contact with have been aggressive in their need for me to enter their alternate realities.

The gift of knives you spoke about sent a chill down my spine. In People of the Lie, the author M. Scott Peck describes a regifting of a gun by a parent to their child. It was the same gun they had given another son, who then used it to commit suicide.

Some form of programming of family members is common in families who abuse.

bottom line is to protect yourself. safety first.

if it is triggering and upsetting and you are getting knives as a present that doesn't sound good.

I am a fan of the fade away. less fuss.

personally, FAO
mother passed away
father no contact (alcoholic)
brother 1 passed away
brother 2 limited Facebook
brother 3 important messages communicated through his wife FB
brother 4 lives in Pacific. phone, letter and text. semi close.

I decided a long time ago that if my life is not BETTER by someone being in it then it is not worth my time and energy. and if my life is worse...than they can go ahead and get the hell on.

it takes a certain inner fire, strength, and determination to tell someone to get to stepping right out of your life. some people need that message loud and clear.

sometimes the case away with ignoring is best.

take care of yourself. always.

thanks for adding to my perspective.
i really want us to be safe. L doesnt want to mess things up with her siblings. she thinks that she will be all alone in the world without them. which is #######4. we still have each other and we have a couple of close friends. there hasnt been much contact before, she will hardly notice when there is no contact.

the mother keeps breaking the rule twice a year for birthday and christmas presents. she doesnt send them with the mail, she comes to our door to deliver them personally. she always writes weird stuff on it too. one day we will be able to just send it back.
one of the reasons we rather wanted to be in a clinic, to avoid her seeing us at the window, feeling stalked...

there is just facebook contact with the siblings. but they push us to do stuff we dont want to do. especially get in contact with the mother. but also meetings. the older sis wants to meet for pentecost.
maybe it is just so disturbing because H thought that she was that sister. she was told she is that sister, adopted her nickname, and an understanding of having to punish us when we dont act in line with old rules.
i think the system is distrubed because now we expect the real older sis to take over the punishing.

we cannot agree on anything that quickly. L is very emotional and in denial about stuff. so i guess i will make a decision for now, not seeing them now. and we will discuss everything else with the new T.
all our Ts have told us to go "no contact". i think i am right. but we need everyone on board to make this work.

You know, any decision is always "for now" anyway. That the Ts have recommended no contact is very telling. Siblings often cannot quit trying to rebuild the family dynamics, relationships, individual roles, and rules as they were established because a change in one creates an imbalance that can't be sustained.

An excellent book that explains this phenomenon is The Dance of Intimacy by Harriet Lerner. It's written from a woman's perspective but is applicable to guys too. Used copies online are cheap.

It also describes how to shift interactions you do choose to maintain so they aren't as reactive. Of course, multiples are going to have a harder time with this one, given our numerous reactions to stressful people, some coming from young alters.

Johnny-Jack wrote:You know, any decision is always "for now" anyway. That the Ts have recommended no contact is very telling. Siblings often cannot quit trying to rebuild the family dynamics, relationships, individual roles, and rules as they were established because a change in one creates an imbalance that can't be sustained.

An excellent book that explains this phenomenon is The Dance of Intimacy by Harriet Lerner. It's written from a woman's perspective but is applicable to guys too. Used copies online are cheap.

It also describes how to shift interactions you do choose to maintain so they aren't as reactive. Of course, multiples are going to have a harder time with this one, given our numerous reactions to stressful people, some coming from young alters.

I can agree on this. It's nice to see long time members who are still active

~Fisher

Hi Annett

'No contact' is a fairly drastic but incredibly powerful therapeutic stance. Anything that unconsciously or consciously triggers you, or just keeps taking you back to past feelings must be ruthlessly eliminated from your life.

It's a BOUNDARY that must be implemented and for it's duration it must be absolutely complete: no, oh, just this once; or I'll take this call; etc. For the period of 'no contact' it must be absolute.

But, I do understand how difficult it is to enforce this 'no contact' boundary, particularly if you're still living close enough to your relatives for them to arrive, unannounced.

To echo Johhny-Jack's sentiment: it's only celibacy, not a full vasectomy.

But when it's in place - 100% commitment.

Good luck... Brett