Cutting Ties With Toxic Family Members After Childhood Abuse

Clients often ask me this: When do you cut ties with toxic family after childhood abuse? This question doesn’t have a single answer. Each client found a different option. There’s no single right answer. If you are asking this question, though, something still doesn’t feel right about the relationship in the present.

I had this question myself. I found my own answer. That doesn’t mean you’ll have to find the same answer. Some clients asked this question in their 40s or 50s. Others made this choice when they were 19.

For survivors of childhood abuse, the question can be particularly complicated because we often learned very early to adapt ourselves to family relationships to survive. We learned to explain, minimize, accommodate, forgive, manage, or wait for things to change.

It’s also a difficult question since cutting ties with family comes at a social price, like stigma and loss of social safety nets.

I don’t tell my clients what to do; I support them in finding their answer.

Before deciding whether to leave, look at what is happening.

I cut ties with my father when I was 28. I was his possession. He never stopped badmouthing my mother – even though she died when I was 19. We never had an honest conversation. Every word he didn’t want to hear, he answered with a brainwashing session. I was never allowed to have my own opinion. His manipulative behaviour was familiar. At first, I hoped his hatred would stop. 9 years after her death, I gave up.

For some people, caregivers or parents with abusive behaviours change and become healthier. For others, the behaviours soften, and the adult children find more distance. And for some people, the abusive behaviour of the parents never changes towards their adult children. That has nothing to do with your “unresolved trauma.” Healing childhood abuse doesn’t mean that you tolerate toxic or abusive behaviours. Your parents are responsible for their behaviour.

Finding answers to cutting ties today isn’t about whether what happened to you was bad enough; it’s often about what the relationship is like right now. How do your parents or family members treat you today? Look at the current dynamic; be honest about what’s really going on. Educate yourself about abusive behaviours. Label them as they are.

Though you are never obliged to maintain a relationship with caregivers because the other person has changed. You choose who you have contact with. Nobody can tell you what your answer is.

Childhood abuse can make understanding someone feel like a responsibility.

I experienced this in my own relationship with my sibling. I understood what they had lived through because we grew up together. I recognized where some of their behaviours came from. I saw them as the child I knew. I understood the pain they had lived through.

They weren’t the only one with unhealthy behaviours. I took a hard look at myself and my behaviours. I improved my behaviours towards them. I went to counselling to heal past relational injuries. I worked towards becoming the sibling I wanted to be.

At one point, I realized that by looking at myself, I ignored my sibling’s behaviour towards me. A part of me was minimizing it. It explained away what they were doing because it understood the pain that caused it. I suddenly could see the blame and contempt. I realized that my sibling had grown into an adult with toxic behaviours. The childhood pain explained it, but it did not erase accountability for it.

When activated parts can cloud your judgment

My experience with my sibling taught me how easily understanding can turn into minimization. When we know someone’s story, and we care for them, it can become easy to focus on understanding why they behave this way. We often forget to acknowledge how we are impacted by their behaviour.

Minimizing is often connected with activated parts. Maybe there’s a part that explains hurtful behaviour away because it’s scared to lose the person. Maybe deep down, there are parts of you that believe it’s all your fault, and if you’d just give enough or change enough, it will work out.

If we grew up in toxic dynamics, we learned many different ways to survive because that was our only choice. These adaptive patterns, which I also call activated parts, may cloud our judgment on what’s really going on in the relationship. Not because you do something wrong. As a child, you couldn’t survive without your caregiver. Now you can. You need to take care of them so they don’t take over. Then they need to learn what a boundary is. You’ll find new options that you haven’t seen before. Read more: Parts work for adults with childhood trauma.

My sibling used to tell me that I don’t love them enough. This activated a part within me that did everything it could to prove to them that I loved them. It also caused me to neglect my boundaries.

What are you minimizing?

Understanding our patterns is important, but it shouldn’t become another way of taking responsibility for everything that happens in the relationship. You can only control what is yours. Your activated parts can influence how you behave, but they don’t explain away the other person’s behaviours. Once you understand your patterns more clearly, you can start looking at the relationship itself. What is actually happening between you? And how safe is the relationship?

Safety is more than the absence of violence.

For many survivors of childhood abuse, physical safety is the first thing that comes to mind. Is the person physically violent? Could they cause physical harm?

Physical and sexual abuse are more recognized in our society than emotional or psychological abuse. Emotional and psychological safety can become more visible once physical safety has been established. The absence of physical violence is not a guarantee of emotional or psychological safety.

In my relationship with my sibling, I had found ways to manage physical safety. I knew that I shouldn’t spend more than a couple of hours with them. I knew that if I set a boundary, I needed to be mindful. I wasn’t afraid that they would physically hurt me.

Though our relationship wasn’t emotional or psychologically safe. There was manipulation and guilt-tripping. It was difficult to disagree without my perspective being dismissed or turned against me. I tried to explain that we just had two different perspectives, and my sibling insisted that their worldview was the only one that counted.

So ask yourself more than whether someone could hurt you physically: Can you say no? Can you disagree? Can you have a different perspective? Can you set a boundary without being punished for it? Can you express your emotions without it being used against you?

Your answers today may look different than your answers in 2 years. If you learned as a child to keep the peace, adapt yourself or manage others’ emotions to keep yourself safe, those behaviours can feel normal even if you are an adult.

Safety is not only about physical hurt. It’s also about whether there’s enough emotional and psychological safety for you to exist in the relationship as yourself – or, as a more realistic starting point: are both partners willing to work towards that. Listen to: How to create safety after childhood trauma.

When love means to stay in toxic dynamics

I’d say one main trait I recognized in myself, and in many of my clients, is that love often means enduring dynamics that were never healthy in the first place. Staying helped us survive, but it may also have taught our bodies to stay longer than is actually good for us.

I grew up hearing, “You have to accept them as they are.” Acceptance can be incredibly useful when it means recognizing that we can’t control others. Acceptance goes both ways: accepting the other and accepting ourselves. Acceptance and self-abandonment are not the same.

Parts of us may believe that they will heal if we love them enough. If we understand their wounds, if we give enough patience, compassion, or forgiveness, the person will change. However, they are the only person who can change their behaviour.

We can love somebody and still recognize that the relationship isn’t healthy for us. We can have compassion and still assess whether they take responsibility and make meaningful efforts to change their behaviour.

Love may be limitless, and relationships need boundaries.

Cutting ties isn’t the only possible boundary.

When we talk about toxic family relationships, it can often feel like we only have two options: staying or leaving. However, boundaries can take many different forms.

You may stop talking about certain topics. You can limit the time you spend together. You may stop sharing parts of your life with them. You may use self-protective statements like “I agree to disagree” or “That’s your opinion” when they criticize, guilt-trip, or disrespect you.

Sometimes the boundary is about changing the relationship rather than ending it. If you have never set boundaries before, you can start setting them. Some family members with toxic behaviours change when boundaries are set. Others may not.

My boundaries became clearer when I stopped asking myself what I needed to do to make the relationship work and started asking myself what I was tolerating that was not okay for me.

A boundary isn’t selfish or about controlling the other person. You can’t make someone stop criticizing you or respect your perspective. You can decide how you will respond when those things happen. Read more: Boundaries after childhood trauma.

Sometimes, the boundary may eventually mean no contact. This can be a valid choice. But it doesn’t need to be the first choice you consider, and choosing a different boundary doesn’t mean that you aren’t taking your healing seriously.

The question isn’t only, “Do I stay or do I leave?”

It can also be, “What kind of relationship, if any, am I willing to engage in?”

What happens if nothing changes?

Setting boundaries gives you information about the relationship. The other person may learn to respect them. They may become defensive. They may make an effort to change. And sometimes nothing changes.

My relationship with my sibling did end. I finally told them: “Either you go to counselling or I cut ties with you.” They weren’t willing to go to counselling, so I left. Not out of anger, but because I was finally healed enough to respect myself more than to be treated in a way that was not okay for me. This decision came after many years of trying to find a healthier connection.

When I look at whether a relationship can become healthier, I pay attention to whether the other person takes accountability for their behaviour and works towards changing it. They won’t immediately become healthy, but you can see meaningful change over time.

In my work with clients, I have realized that it can sometimes be easier to cut ties with parents than with siblings. With our siblings, we may be very aware of what they lived through. We witnessed how they were treated as children. When we grew up with childhood abuse, there can be a particular bond between siblings who experienced the same family environment.

Sometimes, the healthiest thing is to release the hope that they will ever change. Not that you stop loving them, but that you stop waiting for them to change. That you stop allowing the same behaviour to hurt you again and again.

Sometimes, it is safer to love someone from a greater distance.

Cutting ties with family members can come with grief. Grief for how the relationship should have been and for how it really was.

The boundary can change as you heal.

The boundary you need today may not be the boundary you have forever.

My relationship with my sibling fit many of the stereotypes of toxic family dynamics. I cut ties with them when I was 19 because they were physically violent. We reconnected in my late twenties. The relationship felt much better when I was with my partner. The dynamic shifted again after that relationship ended, and the relationship never really recovered. The more I healed, the more I realized that I did not want to be treated that way. I learned to respect myself.

Healing will change us. It can change our boundaries and how we view the world. But it doesn’t have a predetermined outcome.

I’ve seen many examples where siblings who grew up in abusive homes created healthy relationships. Some parents took responsibility and changed. Others did not. What the other person does or doesn’t do is theirs.

Healing doesn’t mean you will cut every family member out. Sometimes, it reduces the impact of the dynamic in the present. You won’t become a rock, but the hurt may be less intense.

You don’t have to decide today what your relationship with your family will look like for the rest of your life. You can make the best decision you can with the information, capacity, and needs you have today.

The price of cutting ties with family

If you cut ties with toxic family members or your entire family, you may be targeted by social stigma. Our society is built around the idea that families are supposed to be good. It’s not socially accepted to sever these bonds. For example, the parents of my ex-partner judged me for not having contact with my father, who had been abusive.

Gender may also play a role in how people respond. Sometimes, people seem to find it easier to acknowledge abusive behaviour from a male family member. The role of a mother is often seen as inherently good, which can make maternal abuse or neglect harder for others to understand. People may not believe you. They may judge you. They may see you as the scapegoat. You can’t change those social dynamics. You can learn to protect your privacy or say “I disagree.”

You’ll lose a safety net. If you cut ties, you may no longer have family to fall back on if things go seriously wrong in your life. Losing it requires grief.

Cutting ties with family after childhood abuse an also come with disenfranchised grief. It is a loss that may not be socially recognized or supported. You may experience loneliness and shame, even when you know that the relationship was not healthy for you.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t integrate the loss. You can. But integrating it healthily means allowing yourself to process the grief rather than pretending that the loss doesn’t hurt.

And sometimes the answer comes with grief.

Whatever answer you find, it will likely bring up grief.

You need to grieve the family you deserved and did not have as a child, whether your family members change or not.

You may need to grieve the relationship you wanted if you find more distance. You may need to grieve the relationship if you cut ties.

You may also grieve the moments when you are targeted by stigma. When the holidays remind you who isn’t there. When you realize that there are people who may never approve of your choice.

Staying may also result in grief. You may grieve the relationship you wish you had while continuing to have contact with someone who cannot give you that relationship.

Grief doesn’t necessarily mean that you made the wrong choice. It means that something mattered to you and that you have lost something, or something you hoped for.

Healing doesn’t mean that you won’t grieve. It means that you can begin to make space for the grief without letting it decide what you do next.

You don’t have to figure it out alone.

You don’t need to know whether you want more contact, less contact, or no contact before you reach out.

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