Many people hold the belief that “family is forever” and that “blood is thicker than water”.
This makes the decision to go No Contact with a family member VERY difficult to make.
If you are facing this within your family, I deeply feel your heartache and confusion.
You’ve probably tried everything to stop their nastiness. You’ve most likely tried to reason with them on countless occasions … and have even taken some distance … but the relationship just doesn’t get any better.
How can you take your power back and NOT feel guilty about saying “No More!” to this person?
There is a way for you to honour yourself and stop getting hurt because it isn’t right to let a family member (or anyone for that matter) get away with abusing you.
Find out how in this very important Thriver TV episode, which I know, if you are suffering from family narcissistic abuse, will help you so much.
Video Transcript
I don’t just talk about relationships that are romantic in this community because I know many of you are also dealing with narcissistic family members.
Today, I want to talk to you about how you can work out whether or not to go No Contact with this person. Of course, it’s really normal to have the beliefs of, family is forever and blood is thicker than water.
But is this really true? Is it right to let a family member abuse you? Is it noble to allow another person to hurt you because they are a family member? Or do you have the right to value yourself and say, “No more”?
Is It Right To Let A family Member Abuse You?
I just want to jump into the deeper truth right from the start here, by explaining something very important and powerful to you. It relates to Quantum Law of so within, so without. Meaning, whatever you’re being on the inside to yourself is what you’re going to receive from the outside.
It’s a very powerful law. It’s as absolute as the law of gravity. In regard to family and everything in your life, what it means is that if you honour your life, then life and others who have got the capacity and the desire to be honourable, will honour you.
What does honouring your Soul really mean? It means listening to your Soul.
How does your Soul speak to you? Via your emotions.
The most correct action, as a human being, is to honour your Soul to honour everything and everyone, because then not only are you honoured by life and others, you are also honouring life and others in the most honourable ways.
I know you may believe that your obligation and your love of another is your duty, regardless of whether or not you’re being abused by them. I really love something that I read years ago, and it’s always stuck with me, Neale Donald Walsch said, “To allow another to abuse is an act of abuse in itself.” I really want that to sink in.
Think about this, if people detached from narcissists, including family members, empowered themselves and took the stand, “I’m not going to interact with you unless you respect my values and my boundaries,” narcissists would have no one to interact with. They wouldn’t be able to play out their narcissistic behaviour because they wouldn’t be enabled to do what they do.
If you apply this truth to every person in your life, including your own children … and actually, especially your children, because these are the sort of boundaries we should all be having with them … you’re granting these people in your life an opportunity to experience cause and effect.
In other words, “If you behave like this, well, I’m not going to have you interacting with me.” Then they would have an opportunity to take responsibility for their behaviour and actually change if they wanted to.
Honouring Yourself To Make Your Life Work
To make your life work, which is your highest responsibility, you have to honour yourself. The most important aspect of all of this, regardless of what this person or is or isn’t doing, is that you have taken the responsibility to change what you’re doing.
You now have taken a stand about the truth of your life and how you will live it. In this stand you’re stating, “If this works for you … in other words if you want to be respectful and decent and a kind human being … then come and join me. And if this doesn’t work for you, if you don’t want to, then don’t.”
I want to help you understand the three choices that you have with family members, which are actually the three choices you have with anybody in your life who’s hurting you.
Choice number one:
Say and do nothing differently and continue on with the same trauma that you’ve been experiencing with this person. That’s choice number one, which really isn’t a great choice, and we’re going to go into it deeper in a moment.
Choice number two:
Do the inner healing work on yourself, which you can do with shifting out the traumas that this person triggers within you with Quanta Freedom Healing, which is the NARP program, so that you’re less triggered, you can be more detached, and you’re going to be able to experience Modified Contact with this person more comfortably.
Choice number three:
State your boundaries – what you will and won’t accept. Mean them and live them determinedly. Then if this person crosses the line and doesn’t respect your boundary, then you go No Contact.
So these are actually your three choices.
Now, let’s go more deeply into option number one, which is saying nothing and not laying boundaries.
Saying Nothing And Not Laying Boundaries
So this is coming, of course, from the normal human feelings of, “I don’t want to rock the boat.” You’re probably trying to avoid issues with other family members who might judge you for taking a stand.
The thing is, if you’re honest with yourself, I hope you understand that by doing the same thing and that hoping that you will get a different result is probably the definition of insanity – as we know. It means that you’re hoping for something else to change or somebody else to step in for you, or that person to do something differently. That’s actually the definition of powerlessness, waiting for something outside of you to give you the change that you want to live and not feeling the emotional pain of what happens around this person.
There’s a very simple saying that’s so powerful, “Nothing changes if nothing changes.” Nothing is going to change in your life unless you change. Because you’re going to continue to be traumatized, abused, and be losing your Soul to this narcissistic family member. You’re going to keep obsessing about what they do to you and feel awful about it.
Or you might just try to stay away, without actually saying or doing anything different. The truth of that will be that you are still going to have the guilt, the feelings of trauma, the abuse, the unrequited love. Not receiving from this person what you would like to, and all the other deep wounds that come from this family member are going to continue to gurgle painfully within you, without reprieve, even if you stay away.
Let’s look at option number two, which means working on your internal triggers.
Working On Your Internal Triggers
Now, this is a great choice that you may try before going onto number three, if you have to. It means doing the inner work on what’s triggered within you. So it’s a recognition of, “I can’t change you, but I can change how I feel about what you’re doing.”
This is composed of going within, self-partnering … and NARP’s so powerful for this … and letting go of the painful emotions regarding what this person does or doesn’t do to you.
Maybe they abuse and ridicule you, or they invalidate you and it’s very painful. Maybe this person doesn’t love you and acknowledge you the way you would love this family member to be with you. You may feel really traumatized because of what you’ve missed out on from this person.
When you do that inner work … which is about loading up the traumas and releasing them and replacing them with True Source and resetting yourself … what happens is you’re going to fill up with that love and that confidence and that wholeness and that solidness. NARP takes you through these powerful shifts, and it can happen very quickly and powerfully.
Then the pain of what they do or don’t do is going to dissolve away, it’ll recede a lot or even completely disappear. It means that your expectations of this person are shifted, they’re relieved. You’re no longer trying to get something from this person that they don’t have the desire or the capacity to give you and it doesn’t feel nearly as personal.
From this place, you can be around this person in a reduced relationship. You don’t expect to have a close, intimate, meaningful, validated relationship, because they’re just not capable of it. And yes, this person may still be clumsy and lack a filter and even try to be abusive, but you may be able to just shrug it off – it doesn’t impact you anymore. It’s just their stuff. You know who you are.
If this isn’t an option because the abuse is too horrific, or you try it and you work with it and you come to the place where you realize that you can’t keep your Soul healthy around this person, then the next option, and really the only sane empowered option, is number three, which is laying boundaries and meaning it.
Laying Boundaries And Meaning It
I want to share with you a story about a friend of mine. I’ve talked about it before, but it’s such a good example. She had a narcissistic father who was in a nursing home, and he was a train wreck. He was highly abusive. He was a gambler. He used to get money from her. He used to talk to her shockingly, invalidate her, abuse her. All sorts of things.
When she first started working with NARP, she had a lot of trauma. She was doing number two. So she was, “Well, I have an obligation. I have to go in and see him at the nursing home because I’m the only really responsible sibling who looks out for him. I’ve got to go see him.”
So, she did step number two. She did a lot of work on her inner traumas. A lot of letting go of wanting him to be a normal dad. She was able to rid herself of those feelings and longings, and she was able to fill with more of her own power and solidness and self-love from Source.
So she went into the nursing home and she was nowhere near as triggered, but he was still very abusive and really nasty with low blows and out of line. She realized she needed to go to step number three. So what she did is she sent her dad an email which, because he was on his phone gambling, he got. This email was what she would accept and what she wouldn’t accept.
He wrote her some cryptic rubbish back – taking zero responsibility. But it didn’t matter, because she had decided and stated what she would and what she wouldn’t accept. She’d said to him, “If you do what I won’t accept, if we’re on the phone, I will hang up. If I’m in person, I’ll walk out the door. I won’t be around it.”
So, she went and saw him. And, of course, he played up. He couldn’t help himself. She walked out the door. Later he reached out to her and said, “I’m missing you.” So, she rang him and he did it again. She hung up on him again. Then he didn’t contact her for a while. She went through all this guilt of, “He’s old. What are my brother and sister going to think of me?”
She had more work to do. She let go of the guilt. She let go of the fear. She did the NARP work on it. She did a lot of Module Six work. And she also did a lot of Module One, and Source Healing and Resolution work with NARP, to keep letting go of everything that arose. She got more and more and more solid on it.
What eventually happened was her father became trained, like a small child or an animal, literally trained to not act out around her because she would take herself away from it. Her siblings, two of her three siblings caught on, they caught on and actually followed her lead and congratulated her for it.
Now, she was very, very clear. This is the part about needing to lose it all to get it all. She was very, very, very clear that, “If you’re abusive and you cannot respect me, I will not be around you.”
She was 100% prepared for No Contact.
In Conclusion
I really want you to know that I’ve worked with thousands of people over the last 10+ years that are going through this. Family members who have thought, “Well, it’s a family member (and sometimes it’s even their own child) what can I do?”
Of course, if your child is young and they’re living with you, well, then you really need to practice what my friend did. If it’s somebody who you’re not living with, even if it is your own child, you really have to be prepared to lose it all to get it all. There have been people in our community with family members who have had to go No Contact.
The thing is, please understand this, by speaking up and laying a boundary, you’re not saying, “I’m never going to see you again,” you’re actually putting it back on them, you’re saying, “If you can be decent, of course I will. And if you can’t, I won’t.”
Can you see the difference? You’re honouring yourself and you’re inviting them to honour you. If they don’t, you have every Soul right to say, “No more,” no matter who this is in your life. There is no point in drowning with somebody who is pulling you underwater and drowning you. You’re not helping them, you’re not helping yourself or your missions, and who and what you love. You’re no good in life if that’s what’s happening to you.
I really hope that this has sunk in and I really want to encourage anybody, if you’re hearing this and if this is relating to you, go and check out NARP. There’s so much in there to help you with family members and any narcissist in your life.
Remember to like and share this video with people that you know it can help. We all know people out there struggling with family members, especially coming into Christmas time.
I thank you Mel for teaching me the right and only way to take my life and soul back. My daughter, she has 3 minor children and yes I went no contact with her and no longer see my grandchildren. In my heart I know when they are old enough to come see me they will. Because my grandchildren and I have a deep meaning relationship of the heart that nothing can take away, not even their mother.
I 100% agree with your Sally!
So much love to you and yours!
Mel 🙏💞🦋
Once again Melanie ,well said,
Laying boundaries,and STICKING’ to them is essential.
As you said , very empowering for self …..and the other person can either take it or leave it. Maybe not instantly,but when changes are implemented ,doesnt take long to see a CHANGE 👍
Very important to value self….❤️
NOTHING CHANGES,IF NOTHING CHANGES,!!!…..sure is true
Once again Mel,thank you for your pearly wisdom🌹
Bless Fay!!
Mel 🙏💞🦋
Great and very powerful advice. You really nailed it , ““There is no point in drowning with somebody who is pulling you underwater and drowning you. You’re not helping them, you’re not helping yourself”.
Thank you so much Mel.
It’s my pleasure Fifi!
Mel 🙏💞🦋
Love u Mel
I have been awaiting this article from u….
I went thru a horrible on and off long distance relationship with someone older and u have been a source of encouragement for over 8years now.
Now I deal with a chemically dependent sibling who is vicious and slanders me against my mother and father. What a lovely estate event I have to look forward to in the future. Lol (not really)
It’s like a nightmare, I finally broke free the crazy girlfriend in 2016 and now my sister has taken her place. The similarities are utterly scary.
I do take comfort in your advice tho, as these life experiences continue to reveal my real self and wisdom within. Yea it’s hard but
I say it’s (don’t take the bait)
These people drain our energy and souls.
Maybe I’ll trust another woman someday. If not, I’m now becoming comfortable with my own boundaries and values.
All the best… Thank you.
Hi Kyle,
I am so pleased this spoke to you and I really hope it helps.
Mel 🙏💞🦋
Thanks Melanie, I’ve been following your podcasts for years now. After 30 years marriage I left a covert Narc (staying an extra ten years to get my daughters to 21 years of age – paying to finish their private education, & both with degrees, then I thought now it’s my turn to save my heart and soul). Once I left the marriage leaving both my daughters 21 and 23 turned on me. It nearly sent me crazy, I wanted to scratch my skin off. I struggled for years with behaviours and scapegoating.
I went through breast cancer and was told it was nothing and how dare I expect support. Two years ago I went to my youngest wedding, I stood by while their dad was given a hero’s speech and I was never mentioned as being her mum.
I went no contact 18 months ago. Recovering well only to hear from my ex I was to become a grandmother. I respectfully told him he no longer needed to be our go between they needed to grow up enough to contact me. My grand-daughter was born, so in law phone led and I was told when I asked an address for an address to mail a baby gift (I had to do therapy with a therapist chosen by then before I could mail a gift).
I said well that’s your choice I won’t be doing your form of controlled therapy. Six months I never saw a photo of the baby. Then on my birthday 12 photos were released only to Hoover me back on. In seeing your podcast on how they Hoover you back in, the techniques were exactly as you explained.
I’ve gone no contact and feel amazing. No longer am I trapped, no longer are they trying to bait me. I no longer have the feeling of being like the caged animal. They tell family friends “mum always walks away and we really miss her”.
Most know they truth, most have carried me to safety, when I’ve been too weakened by the trauma. It’s been just on ten years and finally I feel the freedom of having done the work. I miss them or I miss who they were as my little darling baby girls. Mostly now I feel really sorry for them. I’m 58 a survivor of 30 years of being with covert Narc, a breast cancer survivor and every day I build a beautiful sadly without my daughters or my baby grand daughter in it. I just give to those around me who are worthy of me and they give me back joy in return.
I feel fortunate to have survived.
Thank you for helping me Mel.
Hi Sadie,
sweetheart you have been through so much, and my heart goes out to you.
One of the hardest things as parents we need to learn and heal is that our self-sacrifice for others, including our children, often doesn’t inspire their love and dedication – and the HUGEST path to wholeness with ourselves and even them, is to honour and heal self.
Then it can be incredible how “more” may then come from them.
Are you working with NARP Sadie? http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/narp
Miracles with healing and reconnections often happen in this community with NARPers, even after years of separation.
At the very very very least NARP expands your journey to even higher levels of freedom, truth, health and love.
Continued blessings, healing and love to you
Mel 🙏💞🦋
Thanks for this. I’ve been working with NARP for a few weeks and have never again felt as wretched as I did and I can see and feel things shifting in me. I’m a solo Mum with a teenage daughter, finally understanding this year how my family has affected me. My lovely Mum died 6 years ago and am left with my covert narc Dad and sister, I couldn’t make sense of this feeling I had of being left without her to deal with them till I got clarity on these dynamics this year. I’ve struggled to believe it but can’t deny it, it’s really obvious. My daughter’s Aussie Dad has never wanted to set eyes on her (we’re in the UK) so we don’t have his family involved and my Dad and sister have had a huge influence on my daughter. I’m so angry at how they’ve treated me in front of her over the years and it’s all the covert stuff, triangulation, dismissing me as having much value and the likes. You could never call it out because it’s subtle and I’d be ridiculed as per usual. I’ve reduced contact a lot and that will not be changing. It leaves us very much on our own which is hard, tiring and unfair but better than before. I’m strengthening which I know is helping her too. I’ve never really had the support I thought I would when I knew I’d be a solo parent but hopefully I’ll find my tribe and we can have some non-blood family to be in our lives. I have a few good friends, tho dont see them so often. I feel like I’m scraping myself up off the floor sometimes and NARP is helping a lot. I wish I could give my daughter a fun Xmas with people to feel love and belonging with, I guess I want that for me too. But at least we can avoid the toxic crap to a good extent and better days will come. Thank you for addressing this Mel and the reduced contact.
Hi Janet,
condolences for the passing of your lovely Mum those years ago. Big hug to you and her in heaven.
I’m thrilled for you that NARP is helping so much and that you have found your way to this wonderful community.
Love and Blessings to you
Mel 🙏💞🦋
Thank you so much Melanie, NARP has helped me in profound ways to find my Self! Seeing an abusive family member for the sake of another family member is no longer something I’m willing to do to myself. Much gratitude to you.
Hi Jonathan,
please know how welcome you are!
This is brilliant that you have chosen you!
Mel 🙏💞🦋
Since my elderly husband died in august 2021 this year I don’t have to deal with my former older stepdaughter coming up to MY flat anymore, she’s not in my life anymore she told me “I don’t want you in my life” but there is uncertainty about closure and the hoovering so I am already prepared and waiting in anticipation for any hoovering attempts in the future made by her as she might change her mind later on as she and other Narcissists like her never keep their word, always breaking their word, I have my late husband’s ashes in a safe place in my home and I’m waiting for the tables to be turned where through 3d physical reality in the world will mirror her true, authentic self instead of her false self through everyone else back to her and that the world will be completely turned against her to unlimited degrees on every level in private, personal and public ways and on social, societal platforms and where she will get so much negative but truthful private, personal, public, social and societal recognition and where she and every aspect of her life will be destroyed – not by lies, deceit, deception, false allegations, false accusations, slander, defamation of character, libel, smear campaigns, character assassination or exaggerations or down-playing or playing-down but, by the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and brutal honesty – because she deserves it to the full, to the maximum, justice will be served she will get bad karma whilst she is still physically alive in her own 3d physical reality and in her own life here in this 3d physical reality/realm through this world and everyone else and through sets of circumstances, situations, incidents and events and everything I said here also applies to her “mutton dressed as lamb”, old, worn-out, wrinkled, haggard, ugly, unattractive and repulsive-looking old hag of a biological mother and my former stepdaughter’s female best friend too because all 3 of them deserve it to the full, to the maximum, justice will be served they will all receive bad karma, them, every aspect of their lives, their reputations and private, personal, public, social and societal images, identities and personas will all get destroyed by the truth and brutal honesty whilst they’re all physically alive in their own 3d physical realities and in their own lives here in this 3d physical realm, the tables will all be turned I have so much fire, power, authority and clout in and through my words – the stepdaughter has already suffered a massive, major narcissistic injury already just through MY husband dying, he was her grade-A best and primary source of narcissistic supply that she ever had and now she’s lost that best primary supply source forever, she’s defeated and suffering now she’s most probably suffered narcissistic rage, narcissistic mortification, narcissistic collapse, narcissistic decompensation already – all of these things have happened already and it is already done!!! There is natural, normal, irrefutable facts and evidences of all of these things which have happened already and of which is still naturally unfolding and playing out which is still happening already happening
My eldest daughter did her last Narc trick in October 2019 at her daughters wedding, my eldest granddaughter.
She’s always had “moments” as I used to call them but the way she screeched at me 15 minutes before the ceremony was the final straw and I haven’t spoken nor contacted her since.
When she “comes a callin” I’ll be polite but distant because I know for at least 12 years now how much like her father and his mother she was but even though I knew they were Narcs, after discovering Melanie, I didn’t/couldn’t put her in that same boat.
Well the wedding scenario really proved just what a “nice” person she wasn’t and I didn’t deserve any more of her disgusting behaviour, I already had been through 2 lots of it and that was enough, actually 3 when you count her Narciness.
NO! I don’t grieve her non-prescence because I haven’t had that since she was around 16yo so what is there to be missed? At this point she’s hiding behind her second husband letting him be the scapegoat, don’t we all know that one.
I’m lucky in that here children are in their late 20’s and early 30’s and even though they’ve been lied too and fed utter BS about me we do have a reasonably good relationship and I’ll see them both on Boxing Day for some hours.
I can’t wait as I have had a Great Grandie born in early May and due to CV-19 I haven’t met her yet. So lucky me I’ll get to see them all without the Narc trying to divide us.
I still love the great bits of my daughter, but not for one moment do I miss the second guessing I had to do to work out what I had done wrong, if I had done anything wrong. It was like life with her fathers mother but the only difference was the grandmother used to go silent and my daughter screams and yells.
The feeling of being at one with yourself that you get when you get past a Narc is so wonderful it’s like floating on air even though at times you hit rock bottom when you surface that wonderful returns.
Hang in there and do the work and you’ll be amazed at how much you enjoy your own life and how content you will become. NO, it’s not easy and YES you’ll fall down but then you’ll pick yourself up, dust yourself off and enjoy life even more.
If I can do it after 42 years with the father, and a further13 years before I ditched her then anyone can do it.
I hate to think where I’d be without NARP and Melanie to navigate this soul destroying thing with my children. I’ll spare you the big story but for having followed her advice, I can vouch it’s the way to come out the other side with your sanity and a life worth living with or without your children. So grateful for having been shown the way because it really is not an obvious one.
Thank you Melanie. In my case the narcissists are my mom and my older brother and I only discovered it two years ago, when I was 57. I haven’t seen him for 18 years; fortunately I took the decision of breaking with him forever even when I had no idea why he criticized me and hurt me so badly. Of course he hasn’t stopped doing is best to devaluate me and put the rest of the family against me. The thing is I don’t want to stop seeing my mom now (even if I have, several times, for years) because she is 91. Fortunately now she sees how ill and damaging her son is because he can’t hide his ambition and need to control. The idea that my beloved brother died many years ago and was replaced by this soulless person, has helped me a little to suffer less. Much much love an thanks to you <3 <3 <3