Self Care for Going No Contact with Family Members

hi everyone my name is Jerry Weis I'm a life and relationship coach and I've been doing this work for about 40 years or so and this particular video is entitled self-care forgoing no contact this is a third video in a three series video set that I made this is the last of this series and I wanted to share my perspectives on going no contact with narcissistic families or narcissistic family members and that sort of thing from a family systems perspective and that's why I wanted to share that I've seen other videos and other folks who talked about going no-contact and I was trying to think of the healthy ways to go no contact healthy ways to maintain the sense of self if you choose to go no contact because in family systems thinking it's very important how we do our self differentiation work because we might blindly or unwittingly feed into the dysfunctional pattern and the family's super self thinking we're doing something good but actually we're just doing something that maintains the status quo or the dysfunctional system and maintains it within us in a negative way and so that's why I like to use a family systems perspective so I have a better idea of - how to be myself how to choose to go no-contact what do I do with no contact is it just reactivity which just feeds into the family dysfunction or is it an intentional mature detached and neutral a choice and I think that makes a lot of difference because while it may still be an improvement to go no contact with abusive toxic malignant narcissist or poor cluster B type of person it may be useful to do that but if we do it out of reactivity and we don't do it to work on neutralizing up them within us then we're going to spend years struggling with the relationship even though we're not in it we're still going to struggle with it and so the goal is to not be in it physically and not be in it emotionally that's what I wanted to share in these videos and this video I wanted to talk about going about doing self-care after you have chosen to go no contact so you've already chosen to do it you're already in it you're already not having contact with the family members or family member that that you've targeted who has been the target of your abuse or the one who has been user and so now you've decided to go no contact you know and how do we and when do we do the self-care and what do we do that's self caring for us and I wanted to share a number of tips on that first of all we definitely want to work to resolve our internal relationship with the target of our no contact whether that be the narcissist the borderline person the abusive friend the hateful and manipulative ex and so we want to work on our attachment to them emotional attachment and often our enmeshment with them because when abuse is involved and when there's this toxic kind of relationships just like we you've heard the term trauma bonding toxicity and negativity tends to bond us to other people into other emotional relationship systems we want to release and let go of that bonding and let go of that in measurement that attachment that trauma bonding all that kind of emotional unhealthy connectedness and to work to get them out of us we physically gotten them out of our lives now we have to work and want to work to get them out of us we can do journaling letter-writing therapy meditation crying facing our feelings accepting our feelings which is very important and accepting our feelings about them those feelings have been there for years for most of us and in accepting our feelings we also accept the lost dreams we had about those relationships the lost fantasies that we had about those relationships that we were going to have this wonderful family I just talked to clients today this one I'm gonna make this family be what I've always wanted them to be you know and she was having difficulty doing that today and she was coming to realize you know it's really not working for me to make this family be the family I've always wanted and it's very frustrating for her and she feels resentful and hurt and sad and Damned but it's actually her dreams and fantasies that's keeping her pain alive it it's it is more problematic to have a fantasy about somebody or a group of somebodies and work to try to change them and make that happen in terms of the relationship I want that's more traumatizing more difficult than just accepting the fact they can't you know they're not going to it's not going to happen well it may be disappointing and it may be sad I think it's not as traumatic and difficult as keeping that going to try to make that happen but it is hard from my own experience it and I know it's true it is hard to let go of fantasies and dreams about relationships and what you hope to have happened to have the mother and father you've always wanted to have their sibling relationships you've always wanted to be close to that cuds cousin who you've always wanted to be close to and it just never happening and so we do work on giving up our dreams and our illusions as a part of self-care for going no-contact we really want to give up those illusions because we'll be healthier happier facing reality though hard is less hard on you than not facing reality and and sometimes it doesn't feel like that though it does not feel like that and I well know that secondly we do want to face and resolve our hurt our anger and our fear and again we want to accept those feelings of hurt anger fear even that the hurt and anger about I'm angry that I have to go no contact you know I'm hurt and sad that I have to go no contact why do they make me do this and then we also many times turn those feelings on ourselves in a negative way that why have I been so stupid to stay in this relationship for so long and we turn to self-hate and self rejection and self-criticism once we go no contact then we go why shouldn't done this a long time why was I dumb for for taking this this long and again it turns back around on us negatively and we want to avoid that what we want to say is I do feel sad for I'm giving an example I do feel sad that it would have been great had I done this ten years earlier but I can't know what I don't know time and the universe moves and functions as it does and if you're a spiritual religious person then God has a plan and that I could only be ready when I was ready and I wasn't trying to be belligerent then I just didn't know what I didn't know I didn't know I should do this I thought I should keep trying to work hard to make this relationship work and to keep in it when actually it wasn't and it actually was abusive so we want to be kind to ourselves when we get to those feelings remember during no contact and you'll hear this in other videos and this is a part of self-care remember to remember the bad keep on to keep on a solid no contact strategy and path it's okay to remember the good the dreams and the fantasies which is easy to do but we must remember the bad and remind ourselves of wait a minute even though they gave me that nice gift once and that was the nicest thing they had done that that doesn't mean I should be in a relationship with them because they're very toxic even though they can do a nice thing I also try to help people with when they have gone no contact as a part of self-care it's like a toddler whose parents has dry have dropped them off at a house for to babysit them the parents leave and the toddler of course gets very upset angry crying her you know life is over you know for the toddler at least the way they and I remember those experiences were my son was growing up and Susan and I would babysit for other people and other people would babysit for us and when they bring their kids over it'd be all when they left it was like we knew it was gonna be mass and so the I remember Tommy was the one that he was just very young and his parents had left and he was very upset went to our bait we had a bay window in a living room and went over the bay window and you could see out to see the cars and and he would then do the pining and the pining away for as they drove off he then pines for them yearns for them and that's what a toddler will do well we as adults do that too and I'll come back to that so there's a pining kind of experience and and so he's crying he's hysterical he's upset and all of that and then we go okay well when is he gonna calm down and it's probably not helpful to discipline them to be mean to them and I see some parents doing that it's not gonna be helpful to do that probably would be more damaging they're just pining away because they don't have object permanence in other words when their parents are there their parents are alive when the parents leave the parents are dead so they don't have object permanence they don't go oh well they'll be coming back you know we know they'll be coming back and we know they're not dead we know they're going to show up again the toddler doesn't the toddler goes they're gone forever this is no object permanence they're they're erased and then there's this panic and then we have a task as a toddler can we turn that pining and turn to find the red truck and then we shift our attention over to the red truck and we feel better the red truck is now has our interests and we're having fun with the red truck truck and we forget the pining away experience and that we must learn as toddlers that's a very important developmental emotional developmental task that Erik Erikson talks about where we can shift that pining to soothing ourselves and same with going no-contact if you have lost some family member or lost some part of your relationship system due to no contact we want to work going from pining for them to what red truck do we turn ourselves towards we need the red truck and we need the other focus and that's not denial that's being able to soothe myself and shifting - how can I take care of myself and but we will pine particularly if we've you know given up some family members or a family member then again they've always been there for a sense we were babies you know and they've always been around and did not have them at around we will we may tend to pine for them because there's a very strong attachment and enmeshment often often in addition to that process we we want to work hard on our inner bonding because if we've lost them we want to bond with ourselves and we work hard on inner bonding and learning to love ourselves our inner child or inner adult we want to get to know them and Margaret Paul's books doctor Margot Paul's books are great inner bonding and healing your aloneness or two books I recommend because it is a way to focus on you and you can become the red truck and and that's what I I could think that's the point I wanted to make is that if we're pining we can turn to ourselves to be the red truck and the focus of taking on the work of loving us knowing us and caring about us and that can take us away from the focus of but what about them what about those parents I don't talk to what about that sibling I don't talk to because they're so toxic and they're so narcissistic and mean know another part of self care foregoing no contact would be practicing self power self retention self power retention we're gonna retain our power and not give it away we have learned to give away our emotional and mental power to others we want to identify and resist giving away our power we want to stop giving in to what others think what others believe what others judge to be true and we want to give up doing for others just to control them out of fear we want to increase our tolerance for other people's feeling their own feelings and believing their own beliefs no matter how irrational I remember when I worked in a psychiatric practice and I would work with schizophrenic patients and it is it is easy to get caught up and wanting to change the psychosis you know and feeling triggered by them being irrational and so I needed to increase my acceptance and tolerance of craziness so that I could actually help them so I needed to increase that well that's what we want to do when we're going no contact we're increasing our ability I can let you be crazy I can let you be as irrational as you want to be and that doesn't have to affect or change me and I work with clients to strengthen this important personal I think sixthly choose and keep close to a support anchorperson a part of self care as I think choosing the red truck of yourself and then choosing the red truck of support or an anchorperson focusing on your own self-care there anchor support groups ACO a coda codependent Anonymous al-anon there are even some adult children of narcissists groups in different parts of the country though I think they're more rare and so we can use that as a part of our support getting a sponsor in twelve steps can be a part of the support as well having a coach a therapist amateur best friend amateur pastor or Imam people that will be supportive of you while you go through this process 7 remember that self-care during going no contact the goal is to work towards emotional neutrality growing ourselves up like the books by Jenny Brown called growing yourself up declaring self and learning to be yourself and to differentiate Harriet Lerner has good books on like the dance of anger the dance of intimacy all of her books are based on a family systems approach and then of course doing that work of self differentiation is so important during I think a no-contact work and there's Andrea Shara Roberta Gilbert and there's some other folks that and I have resources if you want to send me an email I'll send you a list of all those books feel free to send me your email I'll put you on my email list and i'll send you all the resources I've got a bibliography of a whole bunch of readings you can do that are on family systems so that you can learn to self differentiate which means I can stay connected while being myself and I want to do that work with the toxic narcissist I want to be myself while not staying connected because it's too toxic to stay connected in that regard but I can there's even some I can't even talk more about that I'll do that in another video but I like I'll just leave it at that point eighth remember going no contact is not running away from your family if you go no contact with family members it's not running away from them running away is done by the wounded inner child and the frightened paralyzed inner adult no contact is done by the loved inner child and the loved inner adult and it is a move of self differentiation not a move of immature emotional cutoff Marie Bowen who's a theorist that I admire greatly stated in his family systems therapy classic he says the person who runs away from his or her family of origin is as emotionally dependent as the one who never leaves home they both need emotional closeness but they are allergic to it and in general what I just said is true that's why we don't want to go no contact as a running away we want to go no contact as an adult choice in a relationship we're not running we're choosing again running is not choosing running is reactivity well let me talk night about the benefits of going no contact with a narcissistic family or family members and this article I love it is by Sheree sha RIE dr. sherry Stein STI NES and I really like a part of self-care in going no-contact is truly celebrating and enjoying the benefits of going no-contact one of them as she describes is freedom we first have freedom and that we now realize we can maybe be ourselves without someone you know constantly causing you to feel guilty hurt ashamed you have some liberation and you have some freedom and that's one of the benefits secondly peace as many of you have found in going no contact you don't have to argue all the time you don't have to put yourself in constant drama regarding a narcissistic or malignant family member that just is so painful it's time consuming and emotionally draining you don't have to feel confused or defensive with every human encounter and we're we believe that we're finished living in the House of Pain and I believe that self-care acknowledges I'm not gonna live in the house of pain and here's another benefit which I really like everything is as it seems there's no more cognitive dissonance you're no longer being Gasland lied to manipulated you no longer live in a state of mind that's just always in question you get up in the morning have your day go to bed at night and there's no hidden agendas constant implications of your ineptitude everything just is your relationships are as they seem you know whereas with the narcissist they're not as they seem and it's always a fog in the relationship another benefit is having yourself you get yourself back to be yourself to learn who you are and to hold on to yourself and you know how longer have to give yourself away all the time your intuition you can actually pay attention to your intuition and value what it says to you red flags are no longer ignored and they're no longer excused or rationalized away and if someone tries to challenge your reality you're not swayed another benefit is having healthy relationships our relationship with the narcissus was toxic and now you want nothing to do with toxic people or anything that resembles unhealthy relationships and you realize you don't have to you could be in relationship with people are healthy happy care about you have empathy have concern for you and and then we're able to begin to connect with others on a real level that's effortless in many ways and then I know many people realize the benefit of no longer walking on eggshells we're no longer walking on eggshells worrying about our over comment our every phone call our every text our every email our every how often do we talk to them how often do we not talk to them if I email them this or text them this well they think that will they get upset will they be upset because we never know what they're gonna be or how they're gonna feel and it's nice to not have to walk on those eggshells because we don't want to be in relationships in much in which we always must worry about the outcome of the encounter I don't want to have friends that I don't know how this encounter is gonna work out and all we're doing is going out to eat you know I don't want to have fur I don't want to always have to worry about what the outcomes are gonna be and it's nice to have the relationship and even if I'm insensitive or mess up I don't want to worry about the outcome they may say well Jerry I didn't think that was very kind and then you say you know I wasn't and I'm very sorry I wish I hadn't done that you're right it's okay but they don't freak out reject you call you names are abusive and tell everybody in the world how evil you are and no more navigating emotional landmines that's another you know remember those days of wondering what will he or she do or think if I da da da well you have disentangled yourself from the typography containing these landmines by going no contact you walk in a different neighborhood now one that does not contain booby traps everywhere we also can celebrate and in the self-care we celebrate the benefit of having fewer or having somatic symptoms disappear these are these physical symptoms we've experienced migraine headaches stomach's in knots eczema shingles mysterious ailments and the like all our examples of how difficult am at emotions and stress were being expressed physically we find that depression is lifted you know after years of narcissistic abuse you've lost yourself dissociated from emotions and have conditioned have been conditioned to a state of learned helplessness and then we go into that deep depression and when we go no contact we can enjoy and begin to enjoy that that depression begins to lift for us and then we enjoy the drama-free interactions which I've already mentioned how it's just not drama and turmoil in crisis and and you know worrying about this and worrying about that all the time and then lastly is empowerment once you realize you're free from the opinions of manipulations of the narcissist you find inner strength and capacity for self agency and self advocacy you've learned and begin to learn to set boundaries and have gotten yourself free from the narcissus web this experience has taught you self Trust and personal empowerment what I found that people believe they're not able to set boundaries and they're fearful that they can't do it but they're doing it with very they're doing it with malignant narcissists and narcissists and then they wonder why they can't set boundaries well because you're trying to set boundaries with people who don't accept boundaries at all so it's not your ability to set boundaries it's not you know it's not your skill of setting boundaries it is who you're trying to set boundaries with are people who don't accept nor set nor receive boundaries at all nor do they value them they just want you to do what they want you to do and to be I hope that you will get an anchorperson for your process and for your work I'd like you to join my youtube channel you can find me at www.abloomnova.net scumming up and it's going to be posted on my website and if you'd like to participate with us please feel free if you would like to work with me one on one you can contact me and we can work that out again thanks for watching and I hope you have a great day

Channel: Jerry Wise

Views: 41,800

Keywords: self-care, narcissistic abuse, self-differentiation, detachment, Jerry Wise, jerry wise relationship systems, Going No-Contact, Gray rock, codependency, freedom from family of origin, cutting off from family, Murray Bowen Family Systems, Life coaching, relationship coaching, sponsorship, Twelve Step Groups, rejecting abuse, abusive relationships, toxic families, Family systems approach to No Contact, practicing non-attachment

Id: 0VvuPVJhRSM

Length: 32min 9sec (1929 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 31 2020