Unintended MC to NC shift

[Mons]

I've been using MC with my NPD sis for 2-3 years and was in as good a place as possible given the circumstances (ie. still rubbish but drama free rubbish).

I hate the festive season and have been withdrawing from social media/phones over Christmas/New Year weeks for probably 6-7 years. The thing is, this year I just don't feel like getting back in touch with her. Not in a malicious way, or even a deliberate NC, I just don't feel I want to. Probably because I've been talking about her in therapy lately and it's opened it all up again and ruined my sense of detachment via MC. I guess therapy highlighted that within the MC I've still enabled her to behave badly. But I know the only way to deal with NPD is by abandoning all hope of the person behaving and to focus on yourself.

I have lots of other things to talk about in therapy so perhaps I need to close the topic of my sis and get back to the MC level with her. But there again I'm perfectly entitled to not want to get back in touch with her right now. Just because in previous years I switch my phone back on on the 1st or 2nd of Jan it doesn't mean I can't take extra time this year. But I'm afraid of causing unnecessary drama. I know nobody can tell me what to do but an outside perspective that isn't my therapist (idk how helpful my therapy has been on the sis front, it seems to have opened a can of worms I'd already shut once) would be appreciated

[walking on broken glass]

Hi Mons!
I can relate to this. I recently blocked my uBPDsis on WhatsApp and the silence that followed was so liberating. I didn't feel like unblocking her and getting back in touch with her. I ended up doing it because I would speak to her and see her over Christmas and I didn't want it to be super awkward.

In cases like this often what stops us from acting in the way we want to act is the fear of the fallout, what may happen. Before going into low contact with sis, I worried about the pushback from her and my parents. But somehow it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Before blocking her on WhatsApp, I was scared that the drama would be unbearable. Yet it turned out to be manageable. What I am trying to say is that, if you feel worn out and you don't want to talk to your sister, as you would be expected to after the holidays, maybe listen to how you feel and don't talk to her. Maybe the drama won't be as bad as you think. Maybe the peace this decision will bring you will outweigh the costs. Maybe this is an extra boundary you are ready to put in place. Think back to other boundaries you have set: wasn't it always the case that you were worried and scared of the repercussions? But you did put them anyway and were all the better for it. In the end, there is nothing she can do to really affect you if she can't reach you.

[NarcKiddo]

Since starting therapy I have been peeking back into several cans of worms I thought I had shut. Over time this has been helpful because it has enabled me to understand my feelings about the people concerned a little better, plus shed light on the overall picture of my life. If the worms are banging on the can my personal view is that it is worth re-examining them at some point.

[moglow]

Ya know, sometimes we don't get in touch because we simply have nothing to say or share. For me, pushing past that and calling because I thought I was supposed to rarely ended well. And honestly, my mother could pick up when I was vulnerable and she'd gaff me with something hurtful every time.

Let's face it, if she wants to talk to you she can also call. I'm not being petty but genuine. Why's the onus on you to perform?

[walking on broken glass]

Let's face it, if she wants to talk to you she can also call. I'm not being petty but genuine. Why's the onus on you to perform?

This is very true. The problem, in my situation at least, is that my sis takes the stance 'I am always available and I don't want to disturb you, so you call me when you can'. This automatically puts the burden on me to get in touch. If, on the other hand, I tell her 'why don't you get in touch when you want to talk?', she will message me every weekend to arrange a Skype talk. They don't understand what boundaries or reciprocal conversation means, and this is why it is hard to be in the mood to have a chat with them. If you get nothing out of it, it is a chore and who wants to do chores?

Not that you don't know all those things, of course.

[moglow]

I get it. I hated tippy toeing through what I considered safe topics, watching my words and how I used them and supposed "tone" and and and. You don't want and don't *have to* talk every week, I bet that's way less common than some would have us believe. We've got to learn how to stop apologizing and excusing living our own lives!

[Mons]

Thank you all for the replies.

@walking on broken glass- I'm sorry to hear you're in a similar scenario. My sis is a nightmare to communicate with. If I text her I'm lucky if I get more than an emoji back most days, she calls me once every 2-3 months (I gave up initiating phone calls a while ago), and I physically saw her 3 times last year- 2 of which were not just the two of us. The sad thing is we used to be best mates and now I don't know how I'd define us- distance siblings? low contact?

@NarcKiddo- You're right. That's the whole point of therapy. Weirdly enough, the last time I was in therapy (pre-covid) I cut contact with her for a few months too.

@moglow- I have to do that too and I also get sick of it. Medium Chill and Grey Rock are great techniques but they take a lot of energy on a daily basis. There are so many nicer things in life to spend that energy on. And you're right, she could always get in touch with me. 

[walking on broken glass]

@moglow

You don't want and don't *have to* talk every week

I progressed from every week to every month to once every couple of months to (now) only Christmas and birthdays. I certainly don't miss the more regular conversations!

But @mons, don't beat yourself up about how things are. The shift in the relationship happened for a reason. You still are siblings: it's just this word denotes varying levels of friendship and affection for different people

[treesgrowslowly]

The thing I've learned about LC / MC (low contact) vs NC (no contact) is that with low contact, you're always re-negotiating your boundaries or having to re-assert them over and over. Unless the person happens to accept the level of contact you establish, you are always going to have to repeat yourself. Like they want you to visit for 3 days and you have to insist on 2 days instead. That sort of thing. So maybe you got tired of having to re-assert your boundaries, and then the holiday break gave you a chance to see what life is like when you're not having to manage her expectations of you. 

When people have a narc personality style, they use the people in their life for supply. So our new boundaries (low contact, medium chill) might just result in them using us less often for supply, but as you said in your post, you realized you're still stuck enabling her bad behaviours, even with MC. She's still narcissistic; all the boundaries did was give you more time in between contact points with her right? Your boundaries didn't result in her gaining new self-awareness. She's the same person she was before.

The problem I ran into with low contact / medium chill is that the other person is staying the same. My new boundaries didn't make them any less narcissistic, all it did was change the way that I dealt with their demands of me. Instead of agreeing to 3 visits a month, I agreed to 1. But in my case that didn't solve any of my problems...because the rest of the month I had to hold my boundary by repeating it over and over to this child-like relative who refused to accept it. That got tiresome.

I think that the question you ask is very familiar to a lot of us here. When we go MC, it can work for a while. Then we get to a place where we don't want to manage the MC anymore. Especially when we know that drama can ensue at any moment because as soon as they get upset, there's going to be drama. If that is the case for your sister, then I am not surprised that you are feeling the way you're feeling lately. Always on alert to keep the drama low is exhausting!

IMHO it's actually really healthy to get to a place where you no longer look to a PD sibling or parent for connection. Like you said, you have not felt like being back in touch with her. For most of us, due to how trauma bonds work, we're stuck yearning for connection with the PD who can't give it. To be free of that yearning is healing. In my view.

My understanding of low contact / medium chill is that it should be for a reason. There should be something you get out of it. When the medium chill was to keep the narc happy, that is when it has an expiry date in my view. We can only give to a narc for so long before we run out of energy to keep giving giving giving in to them.

A lot of us on the forum have discovered that having long (ie. months) of break from the PD in our life, enables a lot of healing to happen inside of us. That constant contact with the PD can make it harder to stay focused on us, especially during early years of healing from PD abuse.

Some people re-estabish low contact after they get more healing under their belt. And some of us realize we've outgrown the desire to manage the PD's in our lives. Both are valid.

Trees

[Mons]

She's still narcissistic; all the boundaries did was give you more time in between contact points with her right?

Exactly. And as you said, when connection is what you really want deep down the breaks in contact aren't really a break because the situation plays on your mind whether you interact with them or not.

Our relationship for the last 2 years has basically been that we live in different areas, we text each other to say good night every day- sometimes we text more than that, sometimes it's just 'good night', and any more than that (a phone call, meeting up) I stopped initiating because it sets me up for rejection. But if she suggests a call or meet up then I agree, as I said in my previous post this is talking once per 2-3 months. 

When I told my therapist this his view was that it sounded like the "good night" texts and particularly the sparse invites to call/meet come when she's feeling insecure/isolated (she lives far from all the family) and needs superficial reassurance at that point in time. This may or not be true, I'm not a mind reader, but the basic observation that she's still snapping her fingers and getting *something* from me- even if now it's every couple months vs. every week- and then she gets on with her life and doesn't even bother with my birthday or with Christmas is an accurate one.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't still want a connection with her, and that the fact we were so close before she dropped me like a ton of bricks and turned into a narc when she got in a relationship isn't incredibly traumatic and I'm still not over it. But I do understand that that connection has gone and will not return unless she changes, which she won't. And that's a big first step.

I definitely now need to take some time to focus on myself and do some healing. It was the right thing not to get back in touch after Christmas and if anything the fact it's followed on from my annual Christmas hibernation could have done me a favour, like it's not being all dramatic and cutting off it's just not getting back in contact after a safe/expected break?

[treesgrowslowly]

Hi Mons,

The person I've learned the most from regarding NPD, is Dr. Ramani and her youtube videos. I cannot recommend them enough for the sorts of questions you've raised here about relationships with narc relatives.

I was raised by two narcissistic personality types. They didn't ever change. They couldn't change. When I listen to Dr. Ramani's youtube videos, she is describing the stuff I lived with my entire childhood. She's describing my parents and other narcs I've met. We want the bond with them - as you said, but we can't really have it. Not the safe bond we want. We can have a bond with them, but it is iffy. As you well know from how you feel these days about your sister.

You can be in contact with your sister, but the more your understand about her narc personality style, the better for you. You'll understand why she treats you the way she treats you. You'll see, if over time, you want to keep tolerating it or not. You'll feel your way through it and see if it is worth the anxiety.

I feel like anxiety is the tax we pay for being around narc family members. How much tax we want to pay can change, especially as we go through more therapy.

Is your worry about being dramatic a concern that comes from your own idea? A fear that you don't want to be a dramatic person? Or is it because you know that this is what she will eventually accuse you of - that she will tell you that you are being dramatic?

Being raised by narcissistic types, I had to learn how much of their projections end up in our self-concept. It is ok to take breaks from people, and it isn't dramatic to focus on your own healing for a few months. Your concern that this is dramatic, my guess is that this comes from an external source- someone has convinced you that taking care of yourself and your healing is 'dramatic'.

I was told I was being "dramatic" every time I had emotional needs....by a narcissist parent (who never stopped being dramatic). There is a lot of irony in these relationships.

Trees

[Mons]

Thank you for the recommendation, I'll check out Dr.Ramani.

Is your worry about being dramatic a concern that comes from your own idea? A fear that you don't want to be a dramatic person? Or is it because you know that this is what she will eventually accuse you of - that she will tell you that you are being dramatic?

Being raised by narcissistic types, I had to learn how much of their projections end up in our self-concept. It is ok to take breaks from people, and it isn't dramatic to focus on your own healing for a few months. Your concern that this is dramatic, my guess is that this comes from an external source- someone has convinced you that taking care of yourself and your healing is 'dramatic'.

I was told I was being "dramatic" every time I had emotional needs....by a narcissist parent (who never stopped being dramatic). There is a lot of irony in these relationships.

Trees

You are right, of course. I was also told I was being "dramatic" every time I had emotional needs- by my parents, my sister, the turbulent friends people like us seem to attract, my ex, etc. When I was younger I did used to end up shouting and screaming at the frustration of it all and confirming these people's opinion of me, and internalising it all as "wrong". I stopped responding in that way as I got older but in this type of situation I'm still accused of silent treatments, sulking, and so on. But I'm realising that it's not my job to change other peoples' opinion of me, whether toxic family members or otherwise.

[treesgrowslowly]

Hi,

Dr. Ramani is very good at explaining the stuff that happens to us when we are around a narcissistic person.

One of the things that has happened to a lot of us, is that we get accused of over-reacting, when our reaction is actually a pretty healthy response to being treated like crap - by a narc!

The narcissist doesn't think we have the right to react to how they are treating us. In their view, we are doing something wrong by having a reaction to their narc personality style.   

Healing takes time but it is worth it. Keep going with your recovery work.

Trees

[moglow]

The narcissist doesn't think we have the right to react to how they are treating us. In their view, we are doing something wrong by having a reaction to their narc personality style.   

... all the while, having their over the top reaction to us being human and daring to say "enough" even if only within ourselves. Ugly cycle.

[Mons]

It's been 2 months and I still haven't made contact. I didn't even send a birthday card recently because it's communication. So I think this is a good point for reflection...

I needn't have worried about drama, there was none. She hasn't tried to get in touch with me. The only person she could use as a flying monkey is our narc mother who would only get involved if there was something in it for her, so a temp flying monkey not a full time one.

As for healing, I've had two realisations so far:

1. There are two sides to my sister- i) a person with multiple conditions that every doctor she sees dismisses and this is genuinely awful, and ii) a person who dropped her friends and family like a ton of bricks to swan off in the sunset with her boyfriend, and given I was her closest friend and closest family member I still haven't recovered from that trauma and in almost 12 years she hasn't acknowledged this. For sis it's all about i) and people therefore needing to cut her some slack. But the reality of the situation is if a doctor waved away i) with a magic wand it wouldn't change our relationship one bit because of ii). There have been many cases of her being well enough to be his girlfriend but too ill to be my sister.

2. The good night texts, sparse calls and even sparser meets are supply. They enable her to pretend ii) never happened/that it's all about i) and people not understanding this/cutting her slack. Meanwhile they keep me frozen in the trauma of what happened 12 years ago and that's why every time I have therapy I end up in a period of NC with her.

So you know what, it's no longer "unintended" NC. I'm deciding I've had enough.

[LemonLime]

We support you, Mons.  You're clearly very self-reflective and having great insights.

I'm in a similar situation to you with my uPD sib.  And I am now dealing with what might be expected....grief that she seems to have now discarded me.  Of course, I WANT her to discard me, but it hurts that she is able to do this so easily.  Yes, it really hurts.
Reminds me of wanting to break up with a boyfriend, and then when I finally do he frolics off to immediately establish a relationship with another woman.  No, I don't want a relationship with him anymore.  But it hurts that he can live without me so easily.

Hopefully you won't feel this grief with her, but if you do, it's normal.
And just something to be worked through.  I think maybe the way to treat it would be the same as if they died.

Keep going.  You're doing great!!!!

[mary_poppins]

Dear Mons,

I wish I was able to go NC with my NPD brother but I can't yet. I think I'll need some therapy first in order to detach from him. I was able to go NC with NPD parents in the past but my brother is different because he has never truly abused me, he's just a sad, depressed and mean/angry person who just pushes people away with his bullying.

You're in therapy so you already have a great support system. If your instinct tells you to stop getting in touch with your sister, do so. The instinct is also related to the inner child. If our inner child wants something from us we will have visual representations of what it wants. I often dream or see in my mind's eye being away from all my family members and them getting desperate about the fact that they can't reach me.

When these fantasies pop up I know that it's a cry for help from my inner child. These NPD people are not well and our mental health will suffer if we continue to let them in our lives-even through minimal/low contact.

[mary_poppins]

The narcissist doesn't think we have the right to react to how they are treating us. In their view, we are doing something wrong by having a reaction to their narc personality style.   

Wow! Thanks to the person who wrote this. This is exactly what's happening in my PD family. It makes me furious!