Get Your Life Together!
OLD FRIENDS AND ENEMIES
It might be time to say goodbye for good. When you decide to cut someone out of your life forever it can be quite a delicate task. Do you simply stop contacting the person and not answer their phone calls? Do you invite the person out to dinner and have a formal goodbye? However you decide to do it, the decision to officially omit someone from your life can be a heart wrenching, yet sometimes freeing. Before erasing someone from your life, however, you need to figure out if you are doing this out of spite or if instead it is truly the best thing for you to do. Some people are exhausting…their presence can drain you of all your energy and in some cases they have an effective way of making you feel bad about yourself. These are the kinds of people who you should lose contact with when you are attempting to get your life in order. If a friend is more often than not doing you more harm than good, set them free and find some other friends who will not drag you down. It will certainly make your social life a lot more pleasant.
There is a dilemma when the toxic person is family. Family relationships are tricky. Your mother, for example, might be the most evil and vindictive person in the entire world, but you will probably always yearn for her approval and love simply because she is your mom. On the one hand, you may want to give her a big speech about how she has fashioned you into an insecure mess, but at the same time there is probably a part of you that wants to leave the option open for someday being able to get along with her. If you are in a delicate situation like this, you should realize two things: first that parents (and other family members) are not infallible and they do not, in themselves, secure your success or failure in life; secondly, severing ties with a cruel parent or other family member does not make you a bad person, no matter what other family members say. Of course, there are varying degrees of hostility people can experience from their family members. Passive-aggressive family members might be annoying and at times quite frustrating, but they are no match for family members who are downright mean and out to do harm. Before you decide to sever ties with a family member, think about the eventual effect it will have on you and the rest of the family, and also analyze if the family member who is hurting you emotionally is doing so intentionally. There are some instances when you and the family member can have a rational conversation and upon realizing the harm they are doing, they will change their ways, though this is not always the case. You know better than anyone if there is a chance for you to salvage your relationship with your family member, and if you know there is little hope for resolution, you may simply need to accept the fact that life without that family member is better than life with the family member. It is never a simple task to stop contact with a family member, especially if it means ending your contact with the rest of the family, but if it is what you need in order to live your life happily, it is something that you may need to do.
Proper goodbyes can be therapeutic. If you make the decision to break ties with a loved one, whether the person is a relative, friend, or significant other, you may want to plan a proper goodbye. It does not have to be a formal goodbye, especially since this might make the situation all the worse. Instead, you might keep the thought in your mind that when you say goodbye to the person for the night that this is actually a goodbye forever. Having a moment like this can be your closure, and also will be a memory you can reference. For example, if the person you have decided to sever ties with is your emotionally abusive father, then maybe one night when you are over visiting your parents you can go to your dad, give him a hug, and say "Goodbye, dad." To him this moment may be nothing more than a usual conclusion to a visit, but to you it is the end to a destructive relationship. Every time after this when you feel lousy about yourself as a result of the various things he has said to you over the years, you can stop your thought process and remind yourself that you said goodbye to that portion of your life, and you no longer need to be concerned with what he thinks of you. Essentially, you are granting yourself peace.
|