Can mild PD behavior lower the importance of NC?

[Cat of the Canals]

I really dont know how people manage the VLC or LC , im impressed. As the PD individual  doesnt really  recognise boundaries with those they are close to. 

Having a substantial physical boundary helps: we moved 1300 miles from our FOOs. But before that, my MIL would routinely come to our house without notice (a boundary we'd specifically asked for), and my mother once threatened to show up on my doorstep if I didn't return her phone call (I was sick at the time...). So yeah. If we hadn't moved, the choice would have been to accept repeated boundary trampling (not acceptable to my myself or my husband) or no contact.

[MarlenaEve]

I really dont know how people manage the VLC or LC , im impressed. As the PD individual  doesnt really  recognise boundaries with those they are close to. 

When i stopped answering my fathers daily calls, i thought i had cracked it , but when visiting him in hospital he asked me when the " no phone calls " was going to stop. I think he just saw it as a phase i was going through and his illness would guilt me into it going back to "his normal".

YES! I don't really know how others manage LC either. I have attempted to instill LC in the past and the result was so, so painful. For me it's either Contact or No contact.

[blues_cruise]

Perhaps mild behaviour is easier to tolerate, though I imagine it still grinds you down and that LC remains difficult. I believe my father's behviour was quite extreme but I think if I lived many more miles away from him I would probably be VLC rather than NC. I would feel safer without the threat of him driving over to my house as soon as he was triggered, which was unavoidable when I started trying to put boundaries in place because he hated me asserting myself. With NC he's not triggered and largely just ignores me.

Saying that, I couldn't even tolerate a phone call with him towards the end so VLC would probably look like a Christmas card once a year and maybe seeing him at weddings and funerals. It would be extremely low contact. 

[Hazy111]

Physical distance really helps ( i got flying monkey visits from cousins who live close by , but that soon stopped i just didnt answer) and  changing all my phone numbers helped as well ( no more threats of calling the police, which of course demonstrates their real lack of love and concern)) .  I can appreciate the daily grind i just couldnt do it anymore. That daily fear of the call or text has gone . I got a couple of letters recently, but they didnt have the same effect.

They dont know my email address, I sort of instinctively knew not to share it.   

[Fortuna]

My mom is undiagnosed so I really don't know where she falls on the spectrum but for several years we were low contact. Eventually it got to the point where either she got worse or I was seeing how real healthy family dynamics worked now that we were closer to my husbands family and so was less willing to be a part of the nonsense.

For years we did a few days around the holidays and a phone call once a week or so. But it got to the point where she'd tell the kids they were going to do stuff with her without clearing it with me so I had to be the bad guy and tell them they didn't get to do it. Se also was completely dismissive of my eldests activist activities which is a big part of who she is. So I couldn't let her have unsupervised conversations with the kids. At one point I was making a pro/con list of how to handle her latest stunt, and realized I had been waiting for a big blowout kind of moment to go NC, but I kept have to deal with this paper cut level stuff. All.The. Time. It got to the point where I was either going to have to go NC or get a lawyer to draft when she could visit and what she could do with the kids, what topics were okay for conversation, and so on for every darn normal parenting decision because she kept weaseling around them, arguing about them, trying to guilt me, and undermining me at every turn etc.. So I went NC. (she has still sent letters/cards, a cake, and even changed her bank statements to my address without consent, so yet more boundary stomping.)

I kept giving her chance after chance because I was hoping it was a milder form of NPD, maybe just really ingrained traits and fleas. But it the end it didn't matter. She refused to change her behavior and treat myself and my family with any kind of respect. If you really feel your situation is milder, great, maybe with mindfulness therapy they can get better if they choose to work at it, or you can grey rock your way through visits without too many adverse effects. Every situation is different. If you keep finding that you have to either give in or make a firmer boundary every time, eventually it might get to NC. Or if it's mild, it might get to comfortable LC. That's a decision we each have to make for our unique circumstance.