Breaking up is hard to do. Especially when you’re family.
Toxicity abounds. It is in our water, our food, fast fashion, professional sports. All toxic in their own distinct ways. But the most insidious kind, and that which people are least likely to bounce from their lives, is familial toxicity. Sick, abusive, controlling, manipulative family. We break up with colleagues, friends, and romantic partners for indiscretions and — let’s be honest — simple mistakes we just can’t let go; yet many of us allow this behavior from family because, well, they’re family.
I recently learned of an alternative meaning to the phrase “blood is thicker than water”. This definition evokes the kind of baptism in trauma that bonds people together, such as that experienced by combat veterans, people of color, survivors of abuse, mass violence survivors, or war-torn refugees — the kind of knowing only people within that experience can fully grasp. It usually goes something like, “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the blood of the womb”.
Early in my clinical practice I felt puzzled by those who “chose” to remain in contact, sometimes closely, with abusers. Through my years of training, education, and guidance from a top notch clinical supervisor, I learned about trauma bonding, the myriad ways in which it can occur, and how it affects perception, allegiance, enmeshment, co-dependence, and continued abuse. In a nutshell, the classic trauma bond is created by the abuser through a revolving door of abusive instances peppered with pleasurable experiences, upon which the recipient enters the cycle of abuse, leading to feelings of confusion, shame, guilt, dependence, and ultimately, forgiveness. If this seems far fetched, imagine the dog who is beaten by his human only to be fed a righteous steak after winning a fight. To whom is that dog most loyal?
The notion of blood being thicker than water took on new meaning when I found my birth family in 2018. I have seen and felt acceptance from those who instantly viewed me as family because of our shared blood tie, and I would say those moments have felt reciprocal, organic. I have also felt indifference when there is no shared historical context or experience upon which to build a realistic or healthy relationship. And then there are the innumerable experiences shared by others. Along this spectrum, I have experienced the most wonderfully bizarre self-recognition among family, both physically and in spirit, and I have yearned for that connection among others, only to feel blocked, perhaps protected, from that relationship.
Protected. Lately, that word has been ringing in my ears when I hear clients, friends, family — my own inner dialogue — lament the ways in which our world is making us sick. Our culture, our government, our families, our work. The news, materialism, addiction, ethnocentrism. The abundant lack of real and meaningful connection, vulnerability, and joy. It keeps that revolving door in motion, and if you are feeling trapped — like I am — now is the time to exit.
So do it. Break up with whatever, or whomever, is making you sick. When dignity and respect are not reciprocated and your well runs dry, as it will — and you will know it when you cannot lift your head, or when you feel as if you are walking through water, or when you feel utterly alone in a world full of people and noise and sparkly distractions — fill your well with faith, with your family and soulmates. Fill it with your wildest dreams and desires, adventures and rituals. Fill it with well wishes for those who remain broken. But most of all, fill it to the razors edge with your own voice. It is the one that knows you best.
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National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800–799–7233 (24/7)
Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: 988 (24/7)
National Child Abuse Hotline: 800–422–4453 or live chat chidhelphotline.org
