How to cut off family

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I deeply resent my brother, who has mental illness and is basically an a**hole. He has hurt my feelings so many times I no longer care for him. However my parents seem to expect me to be always there for him, look out for him and help him whenever he asks (or they ask for him). This in turn made me resent my parents as well. I fantasize all the time about cutting off with them but don't have the courage. It's not like my brother and I ever got along even before his mental illness. We never liked each other. It's obvious he doesn't want much to do with me. When I visit him out of my sense of duty, he hide in his room and pretend to be sleeping. I hover around for 5 minutes and then leave. Then I write email to my parents saying yes he's alive and fine. I'm sick of all these and dream of being free. How should I go about doing it?

I was thinking of asking my parents' permission for me to not care about my brother. Is this a stupid request? Then I'll reduce my visits and start planning moving away to another city in the future. Hubby says I shouldn't run away from problems, but running away sure seems like a natural solution. What else can I do to cut off with him but maintain other family (they all keep talking about him all the time)?

When you find the answer to that, you let me know. I have a mentally ill brother, too. While I am not obliged to take care of him, oftentimes, I feel like my mom sometimes takes his direction, even though he has none. Same thing happened with my girl. It is through all of this that I have experienced the full extent of why mental illness gets such a bad stigma.

I walked away from my relatives due to the abuse from my alcoholic father, and my other relative's indifference toward that abuse.

Mom and I talk on the phone two or three times a year; and when she's finally gone, I'll likely have no contact at all with my siblings and cousins.

Sure, I have a longing for "what might have been"; certainly, I envy the Norman Rockwell images of the "Ideal Family"; and I do get a cold, empty ache in the pit of my stomach around the winter holidays; but there is no going back.

Besides, when I was homeless, jobless, and in need of just a little help, my relatives all turned me away -- even my mother -- so I had to join the military just to restore my credit, my credibility, and my physical health. Any success I have accomplished since then has been one my own, without any help from my relatives.

I owe them nothing.

Aside from the fact that I haven't joined the military and it was my siblings who were abusive, not my late parents, Fnord's story is exactly my story.

Including one point in my life of being homeless, jobless and was turned away.

All of this happened to me too.

I now have absolutely zero blood relatives in my life and have not for at least 20 years.

I too get the empty feeling inside at Holiday times.

I too have just had to build a life, and life goes on.

Frankly OP, if your family is toxic and you can exist financially independently, ie you have no reliance on them or ties for survival, you're better off without them.

I have felt terrible pain at not being part of a family, but when I remember just how toxic my particular existing family is, I'm actually thankful they are not in my life f*****g me up even worse than I already am.


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Last edited by BirdInFlight on 19 Feb 2014, 4:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Do what I did; move out, find a place to live a reasonable distance from your family, find an easy job that will pay the bills, and never look back. After enduring years of BS from my stepmother and stepsiblings, this is what I had to do to get away from them.

You don't have to go this far, they might be offended of you use this wording. Keep caring ABOUT him. However, just tell them flat out. He is my brother, NOT my son, I have my own children that I need to look out for, he is YOUR son. I am not looking out for him anymore. I have to live my own life because I have needs - even add that you do care about him but you can't care for him.

doing what you need to keep your sanity is not wrong. It is not being a doormat.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to avoid your family if you feel that uncomfortable about it.

At the same time, I would respect your parent's wish be writing to them saying something along the lines of..

" I love you both and my brother very much. At the same time, I don't think my brother and I are really that comfortable with one another. In fact, I really feel like my brother and I are not a good pair and that we bring the worst out in each other. I also feel that it would be wise if my brother found someone who he is comfortable with that he would like to have over. I also think it would be the best if I we don't contact each other for a while if that's okay with you."

The reason I am saying this about your brother is because of his mental illness and he could harm himself. So you might want to address your concerns.

you know...your parents know they're imposing on you. You just need to be firm and tell them that you can't do this anymore for them. You don't owe them an explanation for why; you can just say it's too much and you've helped out for a long time, and now you're done. You can point them to social services that offer professional help for people like your brother, who'll come and check up on him if that's what they want.

If they're normal parents at all they'll have spent a good deal of time worrying about what will become of him when they're gone, and are expecting/hoping/fantasizing that you'll step in to look after him. Make it plain that they need to make other arrangements. Maybe you can help in some other ways: help around their house while they're taking care of him, help pay for services, etc. But if it's bad for you, don't be involved in his direct care.

They may not take it too well -- or they may understand completely. If they don't take it well, understand that their reaction isn't really about you; it's about their intense worry about him. As upsetting as it can be to be the sib of a mentally ill person, it can be downright terrifying to be the parent. Is there a NAMI support group in your area?

I'd have to agree with this.....one of my aunts went through something similar with one of her brothers (he had cerebral palsy), and while I think it caused some hard feelings at first, eventually things settled down.

I cut them loose a long long time ago and have never regretted it. My father was abusive and my mother weak. My younger brother was the child they wanted and not me, the “defective one”, so I left them to it and moved out and away. It was the best thing I ever did for myself. Yes it was really difficult at times, but at least I was free from their toxicity.

I never missed the xmas or birthday get togethers, as that was always a charade anyway, a piece of Hallmark marketing that says this is how ‘proper families are’. I viewed that in the same way as I do other parts of society I have been required or expected to adhere to – Why should I? That isn’t me and never will be. You can face a fair bit of aggravation taking this stance, and sometimes you have to bend a little when it comes to the workplace etc, but I’d rather be true to who I am and be disliked than be accepted but feel a fraud.

It is very liberating and allows you to go and create a ‘family’ of your own with people you actually like and respect who like and respect you for who you are. Now mine might be a small family (and includes a number of four legged individuals), but it works for me!

I have taken my distance from them 15 years ago and I do not regret it at all. I left the country, started a new life far from all of them. I have been officially diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome last week, my parents and extended family were categorizing all my behaviours as whims, weaknesses that I was supposed to manage the hard way. No memory stuck from my childhood and it is likely a PTSD-like stuff. I am still in touch with them but phone calls are reduced to a minimum (I cannot stand phone conversations anyway) and they come by sometimes but all I get from them is usually how defective I am, be compared to someone who bullied for years and advised to follow her example, so I prefer to keep my interactions with all of them to a minimum.