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How do you have a healthy relationship with a toxic parent? Without boundaries, you don’t.
How do you have a healthy relationship with a toxic parent? Without boundaries, you don’t. At least that’s the case in my situation. My parent has been sober for a couple of years now, but the toxic, manipulative personality traits are still there. I now realize that the alcohol only manifested their traits louder and made them more persistent. The parent blames me for not letting them back in and they swear they’ve changed, but when they’ve spent 30 years of my life being an alcoholic jerk abandoning me over and over again, it’s hard to ever let those walls down. And truth be told a lot of those personality traits are still prevalent and are/were worse than the alcoholism. I don’t like who they are as a human. I don’t want them around my children. They manipulate, guilt trip, victimize themselves, lie, and never really show up when it matters. But society and everyone with an opinion repeats the phrase, “well they’re your mother”, when did being a “mother” give someone a free pass to be in your life when they are the reason behind all your trauma, abandonment issues, anxiety, etc? I use to long for a relationship and gave chance after chance after chance, but that ship sailed once I accepted that this is the way they are and quit blaming myself for my abandonment. So for now I put up big boundaries because it’s not just me I want to protect, but my babies too. This seems to make the relationship less stressful and in a sense “healthy”, but the only way these boundaries work is with consistency and lots and lots of therapy to constantly remind me that her actions are not my fault. #toxicparent #MentalHealth #Anxiety #alcoholic #Relationships #Therapy #boundaries #Trauma
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