How to Limit Your Interaction With Toxic Family Members
I limit my interaction with toxic family members. I really just started doing this last year, and the benefit to my mental health, to my very life, has been amazing!! I would recommend this to anyone who has family like this.
Something that has helped me with maintaining or setting up boundaries with my family and just in general my mental health is to get involved in my own life. Striving to be the best Trula I can be helps me not to worry or get over-involved with family members who want to wallow in unfulfilled lives. I stay busy, I don't allow myself to brood on them and their problems. I used to have a problem with depression until I realized just how much of that depression was linked to/based on my crazy family issues...now I do not allow them to set me off or upset me and when they try to draw me into bullcrap family drama and I feel unable to speak up about them leaving me alone, I cite some work I have to do or project or whatever and they back off. Like my family knows I garden, I sew, I write, etc., and they tend to respect me saying Look I have to go weed the garden more than Look I don't want to talk about cousin/brother/sister so-and-so's drama or Look keep me out of it. LOL!
Basically try to keep in your head that whatever their problems are, it doesn't have to become your problem. You don't have to be crazy or have other serious issues just because that may be something other people in your family are dealing with. With my family, being normal feels strange to a lot of them. They are so used to craziness and drama that they feel bored or unsettled unless something bizarre is going on. But you don't have to live like that and it's ok to make a choice not to live like that. They will fight you tooth and nail, talk about you like a dog, tell you that you think you're better than them, all that, just in order to force you to have them deeply involved in their disturbing lives. You don't have to!
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Something that has helped me with maintaining or setting up boundaries with my family and just in general my mental health is to get involved in my own life. Striving to be the best Trula I can be helps me not to worry or get over-involved with family members who want to wallow in unfulfilled lives. I stay busy, I don't allow myself to brood on them and their problems. I used to have a problem with depression until I realized just how much of that depression was linked to/based on my crazy family issues...now I do not allow them to set me off or upset me and when they try to draw me into bullcrap family drama and I feel unable to speak up about them leaving me alone, I cite some work I have to do or project or whatever and they back off. Like my family knows I garden, I sew, I write, etc., and they tend to respect me saying Look I have to go weed the garden more than Look I don't want to talk about cousin/brother/sister so-and-so's drama or Look keep me out of it. LOL!
Basically try to keep in your head that whatever their problems are, it doesn't have to become your problem. You don't have to be crazy or have other serious issues just because that may be something other people in your family are dealing with. With my family, being normal feels strange to a lot of them. They are so used to craziness and drama that they feel bored or unsettled unless something bizarre is going on. But you don't have to live like that and it's ok to make a choice not to live like that. They will fight you tooth and nail, talk about you like a dog, tell you that you think you're better than them, all that, just in order to force you to have them deeply involved in their disturbing lives. You don't have to!
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Labels: Family, Positivity
posted by Trula at
6:27 AM
2 Comments:
ugh I know just how you feel. I have my sisters on holiday only contact because I just can't handle their craziness. I am done, just done.
dottie I'd love to hear more about how that is working for you!
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