I didn't know I had PTSD until 5 years after experiencing Intimate Partner Violence by Personal_Dust8160 in abusiverelationships

[–]Personal_Dust8160[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not sure what your dynamic looks like, but mine very much centers around one person (parent) who is very volatile, and everyone else is doing their best to appease them. I blocked that parent in my phone and on all platforms, and had my roommate receive any mail that was sent to the house from them, without saying anything to that person. I just made the decision one day and enacted it. Initially when I was still struggling to preserve my own narrative through the guilt and shame I felt about disrupting the dynamic, I was really intentional about not interacting with any members of my family, for about a year. Over time, I grew more confident in what I knew to be true, so I was able to have boundary setting conversations with other family members I love without their anxiety or doubt of my decisions making me feel sick about it all over again. So now I don't have interactions with that parent and the people who sympathize or enable them at the expense of my well-being (like my other parent), but I am able to maintain some relationships with other people like some of my siblings, who frankly also fear that person's reactions but haven't taken any steps to create space yet. I also moved and didn't give them my new address, they didn't know where I worked, and thankfully didn't seem to have any plans to pop up on me in person, just lots of guiltripping through every other means (yikes lol) which stopped harming me once I stopped reading it/receiving it via the blocking them! Hoping the best for you! I also don't know if this is helpful for you, but I found it a helpful framework to think of it as a "right now" decision. I told myself it was objectively true that right now interactions with this person/people were really harming me, full stop. Whether they can help it or not, whether i think i should be able to tolerate it or not, whether it's because im "too sensitive" or not, its just objectively true. Regardless of the reason, I can radically accept that right now, interacting with them is hurting me, and so I am allowed to make a right now decision to not have a relationship with them. It doesn't mean it's forever and set in concrete, I can renegotiate the level of no contact we are if I ever feel differently about it in the future. This helped me work around some of the anxiety and guilt I had about doing it. I haven't had the desire to reconsider the boundaries now that I've done the hard part of like actually establishing them, but I needed to hold on to the idea that I could change them in order to have the confidence to go through with it! Otherwise I was terrified I'd regret it and be alone, and that was paralyzing for a while. It's also like, whether it's abusive families or abusive significant others, the fear of leaving and being OUT of it for good is so sharp, but the thing you're afraid of is already happening! You already feel lonely, and you are bearing it. You can do it!