Originally Posted by
tromboneliness 
I haven't officially gone No Contact™ with my extended family -- but I sure have gone Next To No Contact!
In this family dynamic, there's no need to say, "I am going No Contact -- henceforth, I will not see any of you." You can just let go of the rope. Don't answer the phone -- or take a long time to call back, and make sure you do it when there isn't much time to talk.
T
This is the way I did it. I never announced I was going no contact. As per someone else's response above, I finally just asked myself, why in the world would I want to spend holidays with people who treat me poorly? So I didn't go the next year. Of course, living this close, that made my intentions pretty obvious without speaking them out loud, but that couldn't be helped.
I have found in the last week or so that those voices in the head are diminishing. I can't even remember if it's been 4 or 5 years since I quit spending holidays with them, 3 or 4 years since I've talked much to my dad? I really don't know. And it's taken this long, but all of a sudden, I realized I'm going entire days without thinking about them.
I think Ginger is right. When we come to believe in our hearts that we weren't the problem, the need to argue goes away. Maybe as we come to fully understand there's no resolution, the need to try to get one goes away.
For me, I've put a lot of energy into pursuing the life I dreamed of, doing the things I always wanted to, and bit by bit, I've become so busy with those, I've forgotten to think about my parents and their ugly criticisms. By strange coincidences, I've ended up friends at church with some of the older women who have been my mother's friends for 30 years, and after years of worrying what all these women at church must think of me, given the things my mother says about me, I've come to find out that they're not too impressed with or swayed by her stories. It's sad, it's pathetic, to find out how your mother is regarded by others. It hurts to find your mother is the one nobody wants to sit by.
And yet...I think it is one of the things that has freed me, to discover that the rest of the world DOES see the craziness for what it is, and sees good in me. I have discovered I don't need to defend myself to my parents, because my life of integrity has spoken volumes without me ever saying a word to these people at church. I have found out my parents' words are backfiring on them.
It's sad, but it's freeing.