Can you help me word a text asking to be left alone?

[Rsue90]

Very toxic family which I have managed to untangle myself from bar one person who just will not leave me be and keeps pushing to maintain a connection to me and DC.

They are what's known as a 'flying monkey' and completely entrenched with a parent who is the worst of them all. All contact results in me feeling stressed as the conversation always gets steered toward my parents, by them, and all information about me and DC gets fed back to my P's.

I'm not good at asserting myself (that's what years of conditioning has done and im about to start counselling) but would like to make it abundantly clear that I don't want them to contact me, or turn up at my house anymore, which they will probably do when I screen their calls.

I want the least amount of drama as possible and can't rule out them turning spiteful so don't want to be seen as too provocative.

Can you help me word a reasonable text/email that I can send to them making it clear that I don't want any further contact and they're not to turn up at my door?

I agree with posters who have suggested brief and to the point. No please, no sorry just do not contact me again or visit my house. You are telling them not negotiating so don't give them anything to try to argue with. You are enforcing a boundary not seeking permission to have a boundary.

You have said you are worried about repercussions, if they are likely to become violent or aggressive I would have a fairly low threshold for calling the police if they try to visit you and I would tell them that in the text.

I wouldn't worry about whether they think you're an arsehole. If you achieve what you want you will never know and would it really matter anyway? You don't have a good opinion of them so why would you need them to think we'll of you. Let them think what they like as long as they leave you alone.

I agree with those who’ve advised block and ignore. I’ve had a similar situation with my brother and his family. I have blocked them everywhere and completely ignore. This drives a a narcissist round the bend imo. I feel so much happier now I don’t have toxicity and drama in my life, in fact I’d forgotten about him until I read this post!

Factual not emotional. Do not mention they are feeding info. Anything you put will be shared do do not feed that fire.

Remember no matter what you put they are unlikely to go quietly as they probably use this as a status. Whatever their reaction is totally their choice and has nothing to do with you.

'I do not wish to have contact from you, or anyone else related to x. This includes telephone calls, texts, email and home visits. All attempts of contact will be blocked and if you, or anyone else, continues I will report it as harassment to the police'

Then block

Thank you for the replies there is some good advice here. Unfortunately I don't feel able to just tell them to fuck off as it would seem too out of the blue. Our last contact yesterday was civil on my part and a sudden "fuck off" is going to be too inflammatory. I'm going to draft a brief and concise message asking that they don't contact me for the foreseeable.

Hi OP,

I would keep it brief and to the point.

Don't apologise or think that you need to justify your actions. You have already told them what you wanted and why and they are ignoring your wishes.

Now tell them what you expect them to do (never contact you again) and what will happen if you don't (you will consider this harassment and report them to the police).

Send a letter or an email rather than a text. Then block this person and whoever else you want to keep out of your life from now on.

I would say something like.

'' I am writing to you to make it clear one last time that I wish to have no further contact from you either by phone, email or in person. I am expecting you to respect my wishes . I made the difficult decision that I no longer want to stay in touch with relatives, and this includes you, to protect my mental health. Should you fail to comply with my explicit request to be left alone I will consider this to be harassment and I will have no choice but to report the matter to the police''.

I think you also need to work on your self-confidence and counselling will help you.

Because unfortunately toxic family will cause drama and cutting people off will always involve some disruption/upset and there isn't really a ''nice'' way to cut people off your life. These people won't understand what you want to do but what you want is be in a place where you focus on yourself and move forward and not worry about what the toxic people who were in your life think/want.

I understand, you want to phrase it carefully, that's a good idea. You don't want to give them any tinder for continuing smear campaigns. I think you could say something like ''not at the moment but I'll get back to you''. Nothing that can be construed as YOUR manifesto of what you won't tolerate. I did it all wrong. All I did was give them more ammunition to discuss me endlessly while never ever looking at their own behavior.

So, everything I do to protect myself is seen as proof of my wickedness because they know the lens through which I'm operating now. It doesn't penetrate their defensiveness though. KNOWING THE REAL reasons I can't cope with them doesn't make them look inwards and change, no, it just gives them evidence of my madness. I must be mad not to come back for more. That's the only way they are capable of viewing it.

My brother told me that I was my own worst enemy which he thought was such a great assessment of what was going on, but I told him that it wasn't good for me to be around people (my parents) who keep telling me that I'm paranoid, sensitive, angry, a shouter, entitled, detached from reality, insane (all of these and more). He seems to think that I'm not serving myself by not going back for more! It's bizarre. so i told him I would like a supportive emotionally mature family who wouldn't but that's not what I have, so I need peace more. He rolled his eyes of course.

I don't know who the flying monkey in your situation is but I have told my brother what I really think and of course he's just taken it as more proof of my madness. They all sit around talking about how mad I am and wonder why I won't come back to heel.

So keep your text as bland as possible, grey, oh we''ll do that, I'll get back to you.

I think this is good. ''I need to work on my boundaries''

I asked my mother not to let herself in to my house. She did this regularly and for me, the one ''over step'' too far was that she left what she'd brought back on my bed!

I don't even walk in to my daughter's room and leave stuff on her bed. Maybe I'm attributing too much to a mere bed, but if I leave clean clothes in her room I leave them on her chair near the door!

And I don't need to let myself in with my key and go upstairs.

9 times out of ten when you defend a boundary, all hell is going to kick off. My own mother accused me of ''nasty behaviour'' (I was in my 40s) when I politely asked her not to let herself in and put stuff in my room. I spent ages trying to make the text as non-inflammatory as possible.

I should have started with ''I need to work on my boundaries'' as that suggests a failing in me not her and perhaps she could have lived with that. Perhaps that wouldn't have injured her ego so much.

I personally would state

”I feel that I would benefit from taking time out/away and would appreciate no further calls or visits from you. take care and stay well”

it’s civil, polite but to the point.

Please stop contacting me. If you turn up at my house I will contact the police. Goodbye.

Yeh, I wouldn't do that!

What you want to do is fade away and give them as little as possible to use to smear you with.

Take it from somebody who did it all wrong.

I thought i was defending myself in court. And they had really hurt me, and had behaved terribly, but it's all so pointless. All I did was upset myself more by placing them in a situation where the gloves came off and I saw the depths they'd sink to in order to avoid a moment's self-reflection.

Everything has to be my fault. That was a really sad realisation for me. To witness the lack of emotional maturity in my FOO, and to witness just how ENTRENCHED the rules of the dysfunctional family are. It's not like this is cheerful stuff. When you realise omg, there is no chink in this family system for receiving feedback, it's really depressing.

So my advice would be to be as bland as possible in your texts.

If they do that and they won't accept that and turn up on your door demanding an EXPLANATION, they won't listen to the explanation.

What's the one thing you would like them to hear? Fantasy here, they'll never hear. But I wish I'd handled it this way so that when they had come to me looking for answers, I could have said you won't listen to me so I'm not playing the part of daughter, as written by you.

By the time I had that clarity in my head, I'd tried to get them to understand the injustice of shutting me down and then judging me for being angry. Of course I was angry. I am not heard in the family and never will be.

I think I can cope with them all slagging me off, in the wider family, but I don't relish it either. I don't want to play up to the new roles they've written for me (mad, angry, unhappy) so I want to give them as little as possible. Although, it's too late. I did it all wrong.

I think you’ve got some good suggestions on here. I agree with the others saying be direct and certainly don’t apologise. Be clear enough to say if you come to my house I won’t be answering the door. (Do you have a spy hole or video doorbell?)
good luck op.

yes this is good because it's not an accusation. ''I would benefit''.

Even though I have done it all wrong first, I can still learn from these suggestions for text.

@Rsue90
Dear X
I know we only saw each other recently but whenever we meet my stress levels later go through the roof, which is not good for me. I’m sure you can work out that it’s tied up with my family relationship and I need to take some time away to work on this stuff. Because of this I am requesting that you wait to hear from me and don’t initiate contact yourself, either by phone, text, email or in person. Please respect my wish and I will be in touch.
best wishes
OP

The rules of family dysfunction are indeed so deeply entrenched and I too am "never heard" by my lot. I have become the scape goat, in fact I think I always was.

I'm glad I posted before sending anything as what I was going to send last night was along the lines of "please don't take this as a reflection of you but I'm going to withdraw from contact for a while as every time we talk you steer the conversation back to the parents, or they are there in the background, and I come away feeling upset and stressed" but that would have been pointless as I've told them time and time again that any relationship we might have needs to be completely independent of P's.

I've asked her not to mention them to me or relay anything about me back to them but she always does.

The catalyst for me wanting to go NC with her came about yesterday when she called and we was having a chat. She asked about my DC and I said she was taking part in something, didn't give too much detail, and her response was "oh you'll have to let me know when it is so me and parent can come along"

This is despite me being explicitly NC with parents.

I said no, you know how i feel about them, and she just laughed. Making a mockery of my boundaries.

I have a spy hole in my front door but my DC make it difficult to pretend we're not home as whenever they hear a knock they're up the window looking through the blinds 😂

I would text and put.
I am having a few issues. Please do not contact me again as I am blocking you. Don't come to my home as you are not welcome. Please just back off and leave me alone.

Do you really have to send an actual message? They don't respect your boundaries and will use anything you write down against you. I haven't seen our spoken to one of my brothers in 6 years (and he lives walking distance from me). I just stopped responding to any texts, screened his calls to voicemail and on the rare occaisions he turned up I was short with him and said I was going out. It worked but no one in the family can say I sad mad or irrational or going off on one etc. I know why you want to send a message because you still hope you will get a normal response (an apology) but you won't and you'll just give them more ammo. It's not easy but I think you'll get better peace in the long run.

I was going to say would she be aware of the reason if you just said 'do not contact' but given your update, I think it's makes it easier.

'I've asked you repeatedly not to pass information about my DC and I on to parents, which you continue to ignore. Given you laughed at me yesterday, you really do not take this seriously therefore please do not contact me again.'

Just stop responding to their texts. Then block.

Don't let her in if she calls round.

Dear X, I’m afraid that you are too deeply entrenched with the rest of the family, with whom you know I wish to have no contact, for me to be able to engage with you at the moment. Any future contact will have to be initiated by me, so I will not be responding to any call, message or attempt to visit for the foreseeable future. I am sorry that we are all in this position, but you know why, and must understand that I will from now on be completely firm with my boundaries.

Dear X
I don't want any further contact with you.
Don't call me or message me.
Don't come to my house.

RSue90.

I understand why you feel anxious right now and feel a response is required now but they don't know when the event is do they? Just don't tell them. Don't text to tell them that you're not telling them.

My brother makes a mockery of my right to protect myself too. He thinks I have hurt mum, by not just happily, politely and willingly submitting to her narrative that I'm paranoid, angry, insane, sensitive, the list goes on. I must just ACCEPT all of this projection. If I don't, it hurts mum, and the whole family shuns me.

Total scapegoating. Have listened to all of Patrick Teahan's videos on youtube, Jay Reid, Jerry Wise, the crappy childhood fairy. There's a lot online that has really helped me. I have listened to a few of these videos more than once. Like Patrick Teahan's Are they threatened by your emotions. (I think it was called)
It was very soothing for me to listen to that. I felt less mad while that video was playing so I played it on a loop.

The irony is I've healed enough to see the dynamics and trust in my own interpretation of what I see, but I haven't healed enough not to be severely emotionally disregulated by the injustice of what I see.

It's a real half way there situation. ten years ago when my parents called me paranoid and then when I defended myself called me sensitive and then when I pointed out the injustice of that, called me ANGRY, I just felt sick and frustrated inside but eventually just let it go. I cannot seem to do that anymore and don't want to.

But I'm not healed enough to be around them (yet)

Maybe one day I'll be strong enough to be around them, united in their scapegoating of me and not feel emotionally de-regulated. But at the moment, this expectation they have that they can label me however they see fit but that I can have no visible reaction to that or I'm ANGRY ..... I just cannot do it right now.

Maybe if I spend another four grand on therapy (well worth it btw) I'll be strong enough to be around them and not be triggered by all the shit they project on to me.

My father actually went to a psychiatric hospital when I was a teen, he had depression and paranoid delusions and he's been on seroxat ever since. His hospital stay was ''allowed'' but I'm not allowed to have a reaction to them casually labelling me paranoid for about 35 years. My therapist helped me see that I was not being unreasonable to find this an unacceptable double standard. I am not and never was paranoid, I'm too trusting as I was not raised to believe I had the right to have boundaries. So, it's the clearest cut case of projection I can imagine! but still they think I'm crazy. They genuinely believe I'm crazy.

Apologies for this hi-jack but I think it helps to know other people are going through the same thing.

She does have a habit of turning up out of the blue hence me wanting to make sure she knew not to.

I've tried the slow fade before by not answering calls and ignoring texts and she just turns up at the door. My DC always bolt to the window so then whoever is in, either me or DH, have to atleast show our face otherwise she'd probably conclude that we are leaving the DC home alone. She's batshit like that.

How about,

As you know any relationship that we have needs to be independent of my parents, unfortunately at the moment you aren't about to keep them out of the conversation so I need to cut contact. Don't turn up at my house as I will not answer the door.

I will reach out when I'm ready, in the meantime please respect my wishes and stay away.

Then block them and if they turn up don't answer the door.