“Do my family relationships nurture me?”: the tough questions
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We all face difficult decisions in life, depending on our circumstances. One of the most difficult ones I had to make was regarding my mother. The fear of judgment came with the pain from the decision, its context, and its meaning.
This might be an unpopular opinion, but you're allowed to cut ties with family members if you believe it's necessary for the sake of your own health and well-being. Yes, we can end toxic relationships inside or outside the family circle.
Our relationships impact our health
Health goes beyond what's on our plate, beyond the food we choose to nourish our body. Life doesn't stop at the edge of that plate, and what's past it also affects our body, mind, and soul. Therefore, it affects our health, happiness, and well-being.
Health doesn't include only physical health. When we talk about health, we need to widen our lens and look at it from a holistic point of view, in which all areas of life impact our well-being and our capacity to live, enjoy life, and develop our true potential.
Our relationships are one of those areas that can either drag us down and keep us stuck when we engage in toxic relationships or lift us and help us grow when we surround ourselves with a sound support system.
Just think about this: you have the 'cleanest' diet in the world, and you don't eat any processed food; however, you fear what's going to result from your visit to some relative, or your partner always talks down to you, or you have to walk on eggshells around someone because you're afraid of saying something that will trigger their anger. Do you think you'll be healthy and happy even though your diet is so 'clean'? I will tell you: you won't.
We're social beings, so we need healthy social interactions. It's been scientifically proven that when engaging in toxic relationships, the ones where we're surrounded by negativity, we need to measure our words and actions by fear of reprisal. Relationships where people criticize you or put you under pressure; those relationships impact the creation of new cells in your brain. The opposite is true, too: trusting relationships, bonding with people we care about and feel cared for, and having positive relationships lead to creating new neurons. The kind of relationship you have has a direct impact on your brain's health.
Family relationships
Sharing blood is not a synonym for getting along and having harmonious relationships. Even if we're members of the same family, we still are individuals with our personalities, ways of viewing reality and the world, interpreting situations, acting and reacting, etc. We might even hold different belief systems and values because we still process experiences differently, in addition to having different experiences (being family doesn't mean being together 24/7).
Being related by blood should not be an excuse to stay stuck in a relationship that hurts you and threatens your health and well-being after trying healthy ways to communicate, establish boundaries, and find a way for it to work that is supportive of the people involved.
Times have changed a lot, but even today, it can be taboo just to consider removing a family member from your life if your health and well-being are at stake. This means that, to the pain of making such a difficult decision, we can add the secrecy, shame, and judgment behind it.
Hearing things like 'family is everything' or 'blood ties us together' makes you think you're doing something wrong. Maybe because it's family, you should just put up with it, but there's no light at the end of the tunnel if everything stays the same.
If being around that particular person equals feeling unsafe, walking on eggshells, being afraid of the next drama, not feeling comfortable expressing your own opinions and/or emotions, or waiting until the next time everything goes south. It does not matter if they're a part of your family. What matters is your safety (physical, mental, emotional), your overall well-being, and your happiness.
Coping with it
When we're in a toxic family relationship, the least we can say is that there's an arousal of emotions from sadness to anger, frustration, guilt, and resentment. These emotions are uncomfortable so if we haven't learned how to sit, feel, accept, and deal with emotions, those will be even more difficult to process.
When we avoid uncomfortable emotions, we usually turn to something external to help us feel better, cope, comfort, fill a void. Some people spend money shopping, others turn to alcohol or drugs, and others find food to be their primary coping mechanism.
Food, as a primary coping mechanism, comes surrounded by the guilt and shame of our food choices, the feeling of being powerless because we feel out of control around it, and the feeling that we have a problem with food.
To the impact on health from our situation, we can add the struggles with food that affect our mental, emotional, and physical health.
My own experience
In 2015, I had to make the painful decision of cutting off contact with my mom. It was not an easy decision to make, even more because I had had her on a pedestal for most of my life, always trying to protect her and finding excuses for her behavior. I had a fusional relationship with her; I normalized every single thing she made us go through. I never told anyone because that would have been accepting she was not the perfect mom I wanted her to be.
When the pedestal broke, I could not find more excuses and had to face reality: my mom had hurt me the most. I had taken the responsibility of making her happy and maintaining her in a 'balanced state,' but with someone who takes everything personally, sees themselves as a victim no matter what, and acts to attract attention, disregarding the consequences, there was always something to be alert about.
After trying different things and suggesting solutions that favored her more than us but that we were willing to accept, my sister and I could not take the last drama and decided to cut contact with her. I then wrote her a letter to explain why the situation had gotten to this point, and I told her we could have contact again once she was willing to be my mom instead of my daughter.
Almost ten years have passed, and I haven't seen her since.
It took me a long time to admit the situation instead of pretending I knew how she was doing when people asked me about my mom. I felt ashamed for what I had done, even though I did it for my survival; I felt embarrassed because of how my family was now completely broken, and I couldn't fix it; I felt guilty because I had protected her for so long, enabling her toxic behavior.
The pain of this decision was so great that the only way I found to deal with it was food. But this time, it was different. I started to control food, follow very strict rules, and exercise twice daily, maintaining a discipline I had never known before. I became obsessed with food and exercise to distract myself from that part of my reality.
Your part of the work afterward
Getting to the point of cutting contact with a family member usually means the people involved have already been through a lot. It is not an easy decision to make. It is usually a painful one you've been thinking about for a long time.
You cannot control how the other person will react or whether they'll do the inner work needed to reestablish a healthier relationship in the future if that's something you're hoping for.
What you can control, however, is what you'll get out of the situation. If you have the right mindset, you can start working on healing yourself and making peace with whatever happened so you can transform anger, sadness, and resentment into understanding, compassion, and growth.
You might be thinking that it seems impossible to make that shift. And trust me, I understand because I felt that way too. The pain was already intense, but when someone would say, "But it's your mom," "You should take the first step," or "She did what she could," the anger grew as I felt guilty for not being able to see it that way and for being judged for my decision. Those kinds of comments would make me feel like I was exaggerating; I was a bad person for not being able to be that compassionate and accept how my mom was and keep her around me to help her.
But, at the end of the day, all those uncomfortable emotions you feel toward that person and the experiences you both share are hurting yourself only. You're entitled to feel that way, but it's your responsibility and your choice to stay stuck in' victim mode' or to take the opportunity to move through those emotions and learn about yourself, human relationships, and the world.
You had the choice to end the relationship. How that choice affects your present depends only on you: You can either feel sorry for yourself and your circumstances or work on understanding yourself better, improving, and growing.
It was only when I started working with a therapist, and while doing my coaching certification that I was able to do the internal work and understand that, yes, my mom did the things she thought were appropriate according to her way of seeing her reality and herself.
Bringing compassion, understanding, and forgiveness doesn't mean you'll go to that person and talk things through or behave like nothing happened. What you do with that healing is up to you. Only you know if you're ready to be in that relationship again. Maybe you don't know what you want, and that's okay. You must listen to yourself, no matter what society or people around you say. You don't have to justify yourself; you need to be true to yourself. You can forgive but still need the distance to preserve your well-being, even more, if you know the other person hasn't done the work necessary to create a healthy relationship.
To end
Our brain's job is to keep us safe, not happy. Although a toxic relationship might seem like a pretty good reason for change in terms of safety, the brain's outcome is unknown, which makes it not a safe choice. To this, we can add the societal pressure of how a family should be and stick together. Altogether, this can make ending a relationship with a relative a very challenging decision, even when we are at risk in one way or another.
Ideally, relationships are safe spaces where we can rely on and support each other, especially regarding family. But the reality is that relationships are more complicated than that. You and only you can assess how a relationship makes you feel and what you need to do for your own good.
Remember that family doesn't go first; you do. We are all responsible for our lives, so we need to take care of ourselves, even when that means estranging a relative.
Many factors contribute to our health and well-being, and different causes make us turn to food to cope. If you’re tired of feeling out of control around food, tired of how your struggles with food make you feel powerless, worthless, and unable to enjoy life fully, I’d like to help you.
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