Tips for Cutting Out Toxic Parent

Post date: 2022-08-05 11:30:32

I have a toxic, dry alcoholic mother. Since I have recognized my childhood for what it truly was and been working on my codependent nature in therapy, my relationship with my mother has been very tough for me. Therefore, the past few years I have maintained limited contact, and with a few exceptions it was going pretty well. Now she has leukemia.

With the leukemia came the end of my blissful limited contact. Every interaction causes me stress and anxiety. It sometimes makes me physically ill. There are issues I am working on forgiving her for, but forgiveness is a long way away. I am starting to accept that it does not matter if she is drinking or not, she will never be a mother to me, she will never be able to give me what I need from our relationship to feel fulfilled. I set boundaries and she stretches them as far as they can before breaking. She is not intentional, malicious, or hateful which really only makes it worse. It makes it harder to do the thing that I know I need to do for my own well-being. The leukemia makes it even harder.

Does anyone have experience with cutting out a parent? How did you go about doing it? How did you cope? How did you handle the backlash? I have a therapist that I am working through everything with, but I yearn for validation from peers.

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