Five Stages after going No Contact

1(800) SUICIDE

I went No Contact approximately ten years ago. Your experience may not be like mine, so I would like to hear how it went for you.

The five stages of grief following the pronouncement of impending death are: Denial, rage, bargaining, depression, and -- finally -- acceptance.  You may go through these very stages following cut-off.

Denial: I'm their child: their flesh and blood.  They can't possibly be treating me that badly...can they?
Rage: Why the fck are they treating me so badly?  I don't deserve that.
Bargaining:  If I give you what you say you want -- one more holiday, or choose this career path over that one, or show you that my marriage doesn't mean I am abandoning you -- you'll lighten up...right?
Depression: You're never going to accept me and my decisions, are you?
I really have to cut you completely out of my life in order to save myself, don't I?
Acceptance: self-explanatory.


The five stages following No - Contact (NC) for me are: Rage, Second-guessing, Peace, Sadness for others, Transcendence.

Rage: Self-explanatory. I went through every possible phase of yelling at people who aren't there, bending my husband's ear with, "Don't they know how much time they are wasting?" cursing, taking it out on loved ones; you name it.

Second Guessing: "If I had just said it this way, it might have gotten through,"
"If I had said this, at this time -- right after the incident -- it might have worked,"
"If this..."
"If that..."
Never once did I question going No Contact; everything had reached an impasse. I questioned letting things get that far gone. That was clearly something I could control, since I was the only thinking human being in the room...right? If I could climb into my way-back machine and correct their bad behavior immediately instead of rewarding it by smiling and putting up with it one more time, could I have nipped it in the bud?

Peace: Through all the second-guessing, time passes. And with the passage of time, knowing that I don't have to spend one more Christmas with them, wherein they insult my gifts, or one more holiday, where I am sick to my stomach two weeks ahead of the event, or...well, everything. A type of peace settles over the household.
In between devising ways to screen email and phone calls, and saying "heads up" at places they might gather, there is peace. There are longer and longer stretches of time where there are no demons riding along in my head. One heals in those stretches of time. Much like not picking a scab, it finally heals and falls off, leaving the scar. The peace quells all the second-guessing.

Sadness for others: Once I got over feeling sorry for myself and all the time that was lost, I could finally begin to see -- with mounting horror -- that time is still being lost for them. Buckets-full, barrel-loads of precious time are thrown away by them as they wait, plot and plan to get me back into the fold. They didn't move on with their lives, as I did. They are frozen in time, getting older, but not feeling it, because they think they have forever.
 And I realized they will go to their graves that way.
Their house falls into disrepair, their marriages fail, their children move away, they don't make out any wills or trusts -- not the least being the ones saying where they would like to be buried, or have their ashes scattered.
 Sadness -- and horror -- settles in when I realized how pathetic they are.
I have peace and they have...pettiness.
 It is this realization that brings great sadness.


Transcendence: This is the stage I resented the most.

Cutting them off not only saved my sanity and my soul, it suited my deep-seated need for revenge. Who cares if they suffer and decay? I was their victim, and I suffered. Eye for an eye.
Then I started to realize that abuse is generational.  I know for a fact that my grandparents were abusive to my parents, and I can only assume that the abuse echoed down through the generations.

For whatever reason, I was the firewall.  The abuse stopped with me.

But once you see the ripples within ripples, and if we know an Evil Parent can take an innocent little child, and destroy his sense of normalcy, all the while looking like a pillar of society -- giving that child no where to turn -- don't you think the child (who became my parent) is going to be very, very angry, indeed?

This realization didn't cause me to forgive them -- taking it out on me was unforgivable.  That's why I never go through the "acceptance" stage: I'll never "accept" what they did to me.
But this bit of insight helped me to turn my back on them without so much rage inside.