Navigating whether to choose MC vs NC

[pizzagirl1013]

Hi all, new to this forum and not too savvy on the different acronyms I'm seeing on what I read. So apologies if this is longer than normal for lack of using those.

Those of you who have chosen MC or NC how did you navigate which to choose? My mother is uQPD (does that mean undiagnosed queen borderlinePD?) we live about 500 miles apart and MC has mostlyy worked the past few years. However this entails us really not talking much and keeping it very surface level when we do. When conflicts arise (as they have recently in the family) the emotional/verbal abuse (including major lack of boundaries) starts up pretty quick. Some recent stuff in the fam has caused her to start re-employing these tactics on myself and my aunt (her sister whom I consider emotionally safe). It is putting me back in the inner conflict all over again, do I go NC or not? (I went through this conflict a lot in my early 20's when she had greater control over me). It seems like NC is really hard and lonely in a lot of ways, but I also am wondering how healthy it is/if I am constantly being put back in a state of hypervigilance, to engage with her at all. I know when we are in hypervigilance, healing is much harder if possible at all. Let me know thoughts, anecdotes, etc. I'm grateful to have found this community.

[Rebel13]

Hi pizzagirl, welcome! There are so many friendly, wise, helpful people here who will have great thoughts and suggestions to share.

To make a long story short, I lived many, many miles away from my mother and did minimal contact for the last 20-ish years -- phone and video calls, mainly. The last few years I dropped it back to Mother's Day and birthday because even just chatting with her (actually, being chatted AT by her) for 15 minutes or so would wind me right up, even if she was in a good mood and there was no drama. It sometimes took me days to recover from a short call.

Then, due to some events in my life, I decided to visit her for Mother's Day. She had a total meltdown before I even arrived at her place, due to a "reason" that she had completely made up. The distress her behavior caused me, made me realize there was nothing to work with, in terms of making any kind of decent relationship with her. She is, and always has been, completely focused on herself, and I'm supposed to be focused on her as well, to the exclusion of my own wants and needs. That relationship was no longer acceptable to me (keep in mind, I'm in my 50s! This has been going on for my entire life.) and I was just DONE. I've been no contact for over a year and half, and haven't had a moment's regret. There is no there there. I don't miss her, and I certainly don't miss the stress of worrying about upcoming video chats and then the process of de-stressing afterwards. She's made a couple overtures -- notably, without any kind of apology for her behavior the last time I saw her, even though she's heard since then from my sibling about the life events that prompted my visit -- but she's more of an abandoner than a chaser, and I've had no problem ignoring her.

I wish you all the luck in figuring out what kind of relationship YOU want, what kind of behavior YOU expect, and what you will do if you don't get it.

[pizzagirl1013]

Rebel 13,

Thanks SO much for your reply and sharing your experience. This sounds very similar to my experience (being in my 30's now). I think ultimately the NC is what will happen. I notice that I reach out to her sometimes still, without ever getting anything in return (a lot of talking at me as well), and I think it comes from a place of thinking it "may" be different or holding on to the very few moments she does feel supportive. I wonder if NC would be better as I could finally let go of that and start healing. Again, I appreciate your words and definitely will be spending some more time reflecting <3

-pizzagirl1013

[bloomie]

pizzagirl1013 - welcome to Out of the FOG! What an important question you ask right out of the gate! We are always careful here to support whatever level of contact (LOC) someone chooses because you are the only one who knows what is best for you!

Something I learned about when coming here to Out of the FOG is that it is sometimes very important to take a time out. Stepping back and resetting is a good option when you do not want to engage with chaos and drama someone is kicking up.

I never went NC with my high conflict, drama bound, Queenly mother. But, I did take some time to really examine what did and did not work for me in terms of engagement and to implement that. I made progress in distancing myself and removing myself from toxic situations crafted by her. And took some time outs as well.

Sometimes the occasional surface interactions is all we can manage and even then, we know that contact brings an undertow that can pull us back if we do not plan to have time to heal and process afterwards.

The thing I will say that I have come to understand is that in doing the work I needed to on my side of the street to get real with what I could handle in terms of contact, it allowed me to as consistently as possible communicate with my own mom. Consistently holding to what worked for me and living out my boundaries  - not flopping back and forth in response to my own mother's manipulations and scare tactics, was the kindest, most loving thing I could do for myself and for her. 

Keep coming back and sharing! Keep learning and growing and taking important steps and I promise you, things will get clearer and you will know what you need to do! Again, we welcome you!! Looking forward to supporting you!

[Call Me Cordelia]

Welcome!

And sometimes, a simple timeout turns into long term NC as it did for me. I like the thought that you don't necessarily have to decide for forever. You get to just do what works best for your circumstances today, or say you'll revisit the question in a month, or whatever is right for you. Takes some of the pressure off. I love how Rebel said all decisions around this are for YOU. What relationship YOU realistically want to have with the mother you got.

[Sidney37]

Hello Pizza Girl
My experience might be different than yours, but I'm happy to share.  I, too, live about 500 miles from my uPDm and en or uPD dad.  For years it was recommended to me that I set boundaries with my mother.  When in college I went 48 hours without calling her (she expected a call at 8 AM and 4:30 PM daily). So she "punished" me by not telling me that a nearby relative died.  She told me weeks later so I missed the funeral and missed sending condolences in a reasonable time to the other relatives.  When that didn't work? She'd threaten to get me kicked out of college or my car repossessed.  As a married adult, when I didn't give her as much attention as she demanded she'd threaten not to tell me if my grandmother died and suggested I take out a subscription to my hometown newspaper and watch for the deaths of relatives that way. 

When I finally had kids and my child's therapist suggested that the anxiety issues my child was having were partly related to these issues with my mother (she was making similar manipulative threats to a tween), I read the book "Boundaries" by Townsend and Cloud and came here to figure it all out.

With all that being said, I tried to go MC or as Bloomie suggested, a time out.  I tried to wean her off of my attention and supply.  It blew up spectacularly.  She acted like I was heroin and she was an addict.  She sent terrible texts, emails, voice mail message.  Gaslit my dad into believing that I had said and done horrible things to her.  They never happened.  They posted lies about me on social media with pictures of my kids.  I had to contact Facebook to have them removed.  All of this from elders in their church.  All of this while they told me I wasn't acting like a Christian.

So for me, I couldn't go back to MC which was my goal because the reaction to MC was explosive.  If I didn't have kids I might have continued to try MC or time outs, but when my kids were dragged into their drama, NC was the only choice I felt I had.

[Liketheducks]

Pizzagirl1013, welcome to the club.   I've been NC, VLC, and MC.  Being here with these wonderful fellow travelers has given me so much insight.   Ultimately, if nothing else, you're not at all alone.  No one here is going to hammer you with "but they're your parents".

The thing about the varying levels of contact is that you get to decide what makes you feel safest.  It can be as fluid as you need it to be, and you don't have to tell them or state how or why.   I don't mean that to waffle on decision making, but that you are the adult in charge of your safety and your FOC's safety.   

For me and my parents, the lack of boundaries became abundantly clear that I had none.   Boundaries are yours to own.  As in "I need a moment to myself" when things become heavy and "I won't remain in this room if you continue to speak to me with that tone" and for me "I'm going to need for you to be gentler with me or I'm going to leave".   The boundary is me saying what I need and leaving if I don't get that.   

For so long their mere presence was enough to put me into flight or fight.   I've come to a place where finally in middle age, 1. I'm much more in tune with my feelings and the thoughts behind them.  2. I can FINALLY recognize that I'm no longer the child hiding under the dining room table while dad tries to break mom's arm. (Doesn't stop that feeling but I can remind myself of where I really am) And 3. I have reached an age where I really no longer care what they think of me.   They're going to think badly of me anyway if I don't toe the line of what they think I should be.   That there is enormously freeing.  That not caring or rather sometimes enjoying that they're going to think or say ill things about me no matter what, gives me a little jolt of the giggles.  Because my not caring is what absolutely makes the Narc head spin.   In all fairness, I do care...probably too much.  But that is better left for when I have time to process the interaction and space to ground myself and make myself better.  Lawd knows I didn't get that from my parents as a child, I'm not going to get it from them now.   They lack that capability and emotional intelligence.


One thing that I've treasured from being here is that we're not alone.   Believe it or not, there is estrangement of some type in most families.   I'm so grateful that we're learning to do better.

[Liketheducks]

One more thing.   It was during my periods of NC or VLC that I was able to take a step back and see a lot of this.   You wouldn't tolerate a stranger abusing you, we don't have to tolerate that from people who you'd think would be the safest of all.   

[TimetoHeal]

Lots of good comments and scenarios so far.  You can see that it is very personal, and that it is often not static, as in you make one decision for all time and it never changes. 

I often wish I had gone NC with my uQueenBPD/NPD mother when I was much younger, like right out of high school.  It would have been a lot easier then.  But at the time, I really didn't understand what I was dealing with or that NC was even an option (this was the early 90's after all).  Also, I would have missed out on the relationship I had with my father, which was precious.  Anyway, now my mom is elderly and I am the only one she has, so I have made the decision to stay Low Contact and use MC when I have to interact with her.  It's VERY superficial, and the topics that we can discuss without her having a meltdown or having something negative to say grow smaller by the year, it seems.  Hence, the Low Contact.  Every so often, such as the recent holidays, she starts her toxic stuff up and I consider very strongly going NC.  But I've found that taking a time out, like Bloomie mentioned, usually helps me recover enough that I can assess what new boundaries I may need to implement or how to be more firm in enforcing the boundaries I already have.  I may be reading into it, but it also seems to signal to my mom that she has gone "too far" and is in danger of losing the one person who still gives a darn about her.  This is in no way an ideal situation or a relationship I would choose to have with anybody else.  But I don't think there is an "ideal" when you have people like this in your life.  There is fallout one way or another.  We just have to choose what we can live with, and that may change from day to day, month to month, year to year.

[SpiritedChange]

After 5 years of very, very low contact I can now see that NC is my only option. It is clear to me that any contact at all is very detrimental to my wellbeing. I am no longer willing to keep torturing myself like this. Luckily my parents are divorced so I will be able to keep my half-safe father in my life, but I am willing to let go of our relationship too if he attempts to play peacemaker. Wishing you all the best as you make a very difficult decision.