Most people do not understand going “no contact” with an abusive family member. Everybody seems to believe that just because the person abusing you is family, you have to keep that person in your life. That thinking only perpetuates the cycle of abuse and makes everything worse for all parties involved.

Which I fully understand this mindset. That’s how we’re conditioned and raised, and the pressure from other family members is immense. They won’t understand either, and it will likely create tension between you and the rest of the family. This pressure is even greater when the abuser is a parent. Everyone thinks you owe something to your parents because they brought you into the world and potentially raised you, but you don’t. Parents have a much higher obligation to their children than the other way around. In fact, I’d argue parents bear all the obligation. The only thing a child owes a parent is respect, if it’s given. Just because you are the child of an adult, that doesn’t mean you are obligated to put up with any form of abuse from that adult.

When you go no contact, people typically see you as the one that’s overreacting, and that you’re the sensitive, irrational, and abusive one. I’m here to shed light on why someone might go no contact with a family member and explain how keeping the perpetrator in their life only hurts that individual.

I think this is common among familial victim-perpetrator bonds, but one of the central reasons I went no contact was because of emotional dysregulation. Just having my mother “in my life”—which means not even having to be around her physically, just her having access to me (phone call, text, family, etc.)—would prevent me from being able to regulate my emotions in a healthy way. When people hear about “regulating emotions,” they typically only think about having issues regulating emotions in the extremes—like being really mad or sad.

But what most people don’t realize is that we are purely emotional beings. Every decision you make during the day is based on emotions. You can’t turn off emotions; you can’t not feel emotion. Even when people detach or suppress an emotion and claim they are numb to it, that’s still an emotional response.

So, for me, not being able to regulate emotions with my mother in my life meant that every moment of every day, whether I realized it or not, I was behaving in ways beyond my control. This is partly how people with personality disorders control their victims. When you’re emotionally vulnerable like that, the abuser can get you to behave and react in the way they want you to, in order to get what they want out of you. That’s basically what living in this dysregulated state is—you’re just being highly reactive, responding to everything, always feeling like you can never catch your breath. Not feeling in control of yourself or your life at all… because you’re not. And that was the absolute worst part of the abuse for me—not being/feeling in control. Because of my trauma, I rely on my sense of control to feel safe and secure. And I’m not talking about physical safety, but a deep psychological safety—the kind that’s especially vital for someone with childhood trauma.

When a person loses this sense of safety, it can lead to hypervigilance, anxiety, difficulty trusting others, or even dissociation. Their nervous system stays in a perpetual state of fight, flight, or freeze, making it hard to relax, form healthy attachments, or feel at ease in everyday situations. All of which I experienced. I lived like this for decades with my mother in my life—in this constant state of fight or flight, reacting to every little thing, unable to trust, unable to connect, unable to grow. I felt all of this and was conscious of it.

That’s what led me to seek therapy originally. I knew what I was feeling and how I behaved wasn’t right. I just didn’t realize how bad and extreme it really was until recently—not until after going no contact for ~3 years. In that survival state, there is no healing, there is no growth—there’s just stagnation and being stuck in adolescence.

And again, all of this I would feel without having to physically be around my mother. Just her having access to me is enough to induce these feelings and this state. That’s what people really don’t understand. It hurts me on a very deep level (my soul) to have her in my life. I will have no peace, contentment, or delight. No healing or growth. No connecting with others, only pushing people away. That’s what I did to all the innocent people in my life—pushed them away with my behavior because I was hurt and didn’t know any other way. I was a terrible person, a monster even. I tried to make people either see this deep pain I felt or tried to make them feel the pain I felt. I did this by lashing out, by being violent and reactive, and/or by actively trying to hurt people like I hurt.

Then there’s the concept of mirroring. The more I was around my mother, the more I became her. And this was by design. She engineers situations to provoke reactions that mirror her own behavior. Again, the more I was around her, the more I would become her. People don’t realize that in order to be in someone’s life who has a serious personality disorder, you have to live in their world on some level and adopt their behavior. You have to feed into their delusions, play their games, and sign off on their actions for you to be in their life.

As Elie Wiesel said, thinking you’re staying neutral, not choosing the victim’s side, is to promote the abuse, support the oppressor, and encourage the torment. Simply put, you have to accept and adopt the perpetrator’s behavior and support them on some level to be in their life—period. And to minimize your role in the abuser’s life—along with their behavior—makes you complicit and either naive, a coward, or both.

These are just a couple reasons why an individual may need to go no contact. The list goes on. Even without all of this, the bottom line is that if someone is abusing you, they won’t take any responsibility, and they aren’t changing their behavior, you do not need them in your life and have every reason to go no contact.

My mother has only ever taken from me. Going no contact has been the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. My rage is disappearing. I am getting to a point where I no longer have to actively “regulate” my emotions. The rage just doesn’t come for me to even have to regulate it anymore. I have peace in my soul and a stoic way of Being that I could have never imagined or thought possible. I can actually heal because I’m no longer in survival mode. I raged because I wanted people to see or feel how deeply I was hurting from the abuse. Now that the abuse is gone, so is that urge. What remains are automatic behaviors I need to unlearn and to learn new ways of Being.

So, consider this a PSA. If you are stuck in an abusive family dynamic—if you have an unshakable feeling of being “off” or “not right”—if you feel stunted and stuck, if you feel hurt and want others to hurt the same, if you have difficulty regulating your emotions and are constantly pushing the innocent people you love away in your life—there’s a way out. You can go no contact. You will never be able to heal when you’re allowing someone you love to abuse you. You may not realize it now, but it really is soul-crushing. You don’t owe your abuser anything; you don’t have to stick around. But you do owe a lot to yourself and to the innocent people you love.

And if you hear that someone has cut off a family member (or their entire family), don’t be so quick to judge. Know that the decision wasn’t made on a whim. It took me a year of weekly therapy sessions to realize no contact was even an option. After a lifetime of knowing what my mother was doing to me was wrong. Then it took a situation that showed me—without a doubt—that my abuser only wants to destroy me and everything I love instead of being the loving mother she claims to be.

People in this situation already feel alone and misunderstood. Don’t add to their pain with more judgment. You may never fully understand their decision—and that’s okay. Just like I can’t understand what it’s like to have a loving mother.

Judge people by their soul, who they are now, and how you know them to be—not by what they had to do to get to here.