When you realize one day that your family is not your main source of support but your main source of pain there is a tendency to want to break away from the immediate family. Many people have bade goodbye to their families of origin and moved on with their lives while others choose to stay and take the abuse while resenting the need to be so close. There are all kinds of ways to defend yourself against an abusive family. Your comfort with each level of interaction is bound to determine your level of family of origin involvement. There are issues that you can choose to never heal and there are families who seem so out of sorts that there doesn’t even seem to be a source of healing.
Breaking away from a family of origin is a personal decision and one that your friends and significant others might not understand or agree with. There is a common notion that family is everything and you don’t turn your back on your family. Yet an abusive family can cause indelible pain through an adult life. The basic question that you have to answer is whether or not the pain is worth it. What do you receive from contact with your family of origin other than pain? Does anyone in the family even recognize the present or past abuse? What are your emotional alternatives? Families do not get to be abusive simply because you all were born into the same last name and grew up in the same home. Families are made up of people, fallible people, and not all the people in our life are healthy for us. Some of those unhealthy people are even family members.
