Weird Things That Happen After You Cut Off Contact With Toxic Family Members

If this is the first time you have visited my website, welcome! My name is Christine Elaine and this site is where I write about my own experiences with personal growth, ascension, astrology, tarot and more.

The content on this site is based on my personal experiences, observations and intuitive downloads and guidance. It’s not meant to be gospel, medical advice, financial advice or anything besides my own experiences and observations. I'm not a therapist, so please get support if you need it!

When things fell apart and I had to go stay with my Mom during the pandemic, it required me to move back to the area where I grew up.

Consistent with the themes of transit Pluto in Capricorn opposite natal Sun in Cancer transit (which is thankfully over), I learned a lot of hidden and suppressed things about my family of origin.

I didn’t go looking for this information, it was revealed to me through insights, downloads and observations.

I wish I was still oblivious to a lot of these realizations, because I don't know what the point of knowing was. It just makes me feel bad about myself.

Then again, it's also a normal response to a fucked up situation. It's really not about you, but it did validate my decision to cut my family off.

The weird things that happened were unsettling because I saw them with my own eyes. It's one thing to think something is going on. It's something else to know for sure that it's happening. And has been happening for a long time.

Here are some examples.

The first weird thing was that I learned that my toxic family were happy that my life had collapsed. There were some comments made that revealed a lot about their expectations for my return home.

My sister in law made a very interesting comment. She said, “You don’t look like you’re having a hard time.”

That was a big tell. She is usually the one to say things that are the most revealing, probably because she isn’t a narc.

The narcs in my family would never reveal their hand by saying something like that.

I was caught off guard by her statement.

I eventually realized that they were hoping that I would be in such bad shape that that I would have to beg them for help. I'd be forced to go back into the toxic family system and they could go back to having someone around to abuse.

I did not know we were not normal. I didn't figure out that they were toxic until around 2019.

I also figured out that I was supposed to be the scapegoat, the person responsible for shoveling the toxic family shit, but I was oblivious to that for most of my life. I thought it was normal to have a difficult relationship with your Dad and the men in your family.

However, I was too busy reading books and planning to get out of there as soon as I could. I was on a permanent lockdown, very similar to the one we all just experienced.

It's really interesting how, when you figure things out as an adult, then look back and see the pieces falling into place.

I laugh about it sometimes. In spite of what my Cluster B family wanted me to do and programmed me to do, I left. I wasn't even mad at them. I was going to live my life somewhere else.

As a kid, my Dad and enabler stepmother had a very strange dynamic and a lot of strange rules. My Dad and stepmother kept me at home under the pretense of preventing me from being another teenage pregnancy statistic. My stepmother was my Dad's henchman (enabler), doing all the work while he was checked out all the time.

I had zero intention of getting pregnant and getting stuck there. I can only imagine the abuse from them if I had been trapped by a teenage pregnancy.

Generally, until I started driving, I was not allowed to go many places. I had a lot of time on my hands, and I didn't get many chances to watch television because of my stepmother's "democracy" rules about who controlled the television. I never got to watch what I wanted to watch if both of my brothers were home (I was "outvoted"), so I finally gave up on TV.

It was easier to stay in my room, so I started to read. I read a LOT of books. I read things I probably shouldn't have, but my parents were too self-absorbed to pay attention what I was reading.

My Dad used to make fun of me for staying in my room and reading so much...but where exactly was I supposed to go? What was I supposed to do?

My Dad wasn't interested in anything I wanted to do with my life, and so he'd criticize everything. Eventually, he had done such a good job of managing down my expectations from him that I stopped expecting anything from him.  

So, when I arrived back in the Midwest in early 2020, my sister in law's comment made me realize that they were angry that I didn't seem to be having a hard time.

Was I supposed to be crying? Not taking care of myself?

Was I being inauthentic? I don’t think so. I was programmed by the narcs in my family to figure it out on my own, and not ask for help.

So why were they expecting me to beg for their help? I have no idea. I think they wanted to shame me for "failing" and having to come back after moving away.

I deprived them of the opportunity without even realizing it.

The next weird thing that happens is that if you have brothers and sisters who are still enmeshed in the toxic family system, they will act strange around you.

When you finally see your family for who and what they are, they can no longer abuse you. They are terrified of you.

Your siblings will especially be uncomfortable because you stood your ground, but they weren't strong enough to leave or set boundaries in the situation.

This is because they finally see that they too were abused, but adapted differently than you did. They're caught in the middle.

For awhile, my brother perpetuated the “crazy” narrative that my Dad had long ago made up about me. I was supposed to be the scapegoat after all – in typical narc fashion, my brother carried on the family tradition.

My Dad has been saying that I’m "crazy", that I have mental illness, that I should have been in a mental institution for decades.

My brother just parroted that same narrative, and he would have continued to say that stuff, until I started to stand up for myself.

I learned how to argue logic and reason in grad school, and it bothered my Dad and my brother. I eventually started calling them out on their nonsensical conclusions and even laughed at the way they thought sometimes.

I eventually realized that I was never supposed to move away and live my life, or do most of the things I did.

I was supposed to stay around and allow them to abuse me.

And later, after I was already gone, I realized they were abusive. When I went no contact with my Dad and told him to stop talking about me behind my back, that's when things got real.

If I had continued allowing my Dad and brother to treat me like shit, nothing would have ever changed.

In 2020, I heard that my Dad was still calling me crazy behind my back. Yet, no reasonable person would look at my external accomplishments and think I was crazy.

So why was my Dad still saying this? I figured out that my Dad is probably a covert narcissist. The covert ones act like they have been victimized by everything.

So, I finally sent him a text message to STOP.

And then some other pieces fit together. My Dad has a GED. He was pissed when I finished my masters degree, which made no sense.

I was an adult working full time, and not living with him. He didn't spend a dime on any of my education. Why wouldn’t he be excited and proud of me?

This is the obliviousness I was talking about. I thought we were normal.

Then I came to understand that we’re not normal. My Dad doesn’t have the capacity to be proud of me. When you outshine the narc, it makes them angry. When you succeed, it makes them look bad.

I also realized that all those things he used to tell me as a kid, about how flawed I was, never had anything to do with me. That was all stuff he’d made up about me. The mental illness and “crazy” narratives were just shit he’d made up.

The truth is, it didn’t matter to my Dad that I was his daughter. He’s a narcissist and they don’t care about hurting their family members. You’re fair game. The same was true with my Mom.

A Cluster B family will say things like “family helps out family” in order to get you to do more.

Yet, when YOU need help they don't help you. It’s a one way street.

When I needed help, my stepmother said they couldn't help. Yet, both of my brothers lived with my Dad and stepmother as ADULTS for years. My brother had a child while he and his family lived with them!

When the scapegoat needs help...they're on their own.

Another weird thing that happens is that when you look back, you realize many of the problems that caused things to go bad for you were created by them. You didn't figure it out until it was too late.

Sometimes, it's their programming to keep you stuck and small. Other times, it's because you just wanted to help and their maladaptive coping mechanisms wind up causing you harm.

As a result of my parents refusing to help me and my subsequent realizations that they had been treating me like shit for most of my life, I cut my Dad and stepmother off.

I hope they have long term care insurance. Don't call me to help you in your old age.

When I went no contact, my brother finally stopped saying all those nasty things about me. He also went to counseling and he understands that he was abused too.

Yet, he is also enmeshed with them still, and probably afraid to cut them off.

The only way things will get better for YOU is if you stop tolerating abusive behavior. Their feelings are not your problem anymore, because you are breaking the cycle of putting everyone else’s needs before yours.

Don’t make yourself smaller to prevent their discomfort. Let them choke on it.

When you stand your ground and leave the toxic family situation, it's like a gaping hole in the family. There is no one around to shovel their toxic emotional shit, so they have to do it themselves.

Finally, when you cut your toxic family off and they find out you are returning to your old life...they will scoff. This happened to me too.

When I told my stepmother that I was preparing to go back home, she scoffed (that "ungh" noise people make, with one hip thrown out to the side) and said, "What's there for you in Arizona?"

I had a snappy comeback and said, "What's here for me?"

I have more to share about my journey through my Pluto transit and transcending my family's legacy of toxicity and abuse. In the meantime, I hope this story gives you hope and courage in your own life.

It is possible for you to heal while you are still in the situation, and to use all the triggers to help you release all the emotional stuff stuck in your body.

There is so much assistance available to us in the unseen right now.

The evolutionary ascension process is helping us, even if it doesn't seem like help we want sometimes, (ha ha) to purge all that old trauma so that we can level up in our lives and in our consciousness.