One sunny afternoon 12 years ago, I was in a good enough mood to call my mother. When we had exhausted the small talk, she paused and – as was her wont – said with relish something cruel and demeaning.
I can’t recall her exact words but I do remember what I said next: ‘If you can’t talk to me without being mean, then we just can’t talk to each other any more.’
She replied, sarcastically: ‘I suppose I have to watch every word I say to you!’
I said: ‘Actually, you have to watch every word you say to everyone. That’s what good people do. And you are not a good person. We’re done. Goodbye.’
Those were the last words I ever spoke to her.
With that call, I freed myself from 40 years of her tyranny, of the abuse – both emotional and physical – that had defined our relationship.
I felt taller, as if a weight had slipped from my shoulders. It was one of the most liberating, transformative moments of my life.
And when, seven years later, she died, I did not feel guilt or regret but a profound sense of relief.
There’s a taboo around ‘abandoning’ your parent. People insist that ‘blood is thicker than water’, suggesting that crimes committed against us by our parents should be considered mere misdemeanours.
Well-meaning outsiders urge us to repair the frayed ties, rather than help us do what many of us need most: to escape ongoing abuse.
My mission is to encourage anyone who has been abused by a family member to consider, without shame or self-reproach, the freedom they, too, might feel by separating from them.
Because I believe our species’ greatest evil happens not in battle but in millions of homes every day.
Eamon Dolan says he tried to fix his relationship with his mother, but it was ‘only through cutting off contact altogether that I found freedom’
Abuse by relatives has harmed more people than warfare or terrorism. And one of the main reasons that it so often goes unrecognised – even by its victims and survivors – has to do with how poorly educated we are about all its varieties.
The two kinds of abuse we’re most familiar with are physical and sexual. But psychological damage is much easier for survivors and society to dismiss. This covers a broad range of toxic behaviours: insults, intimidation, humiliation, persistent criticism, the silent treatment and more.
And it’s the most likely form of abuse to continue past a survivor’s childhood.
Throughout my childhood, my mother beat me regularly. Yet she also battered me and my siblings with hour-long lectures about our laziness, disrespect and other shortcomings. She gaslit, insulted and degraded us as often as she was able to.
Once I was old enough to leave home I hoped I could escape her damaging behaviour. But the truth is that for as long as you are in contact with an abusive parent, the abuse will continue.
Whenever we spoke, she would degrade me and my choices and remind me constantly that I owed her my love, as she was the only mother I had. I would come away feeling stressed, dejected and confused.
I tried to fix our relationship – but it was only through cutting off contact altogether that I found freedom.
Now I want to offer encouragement and advice to others in a similar situation. Since becoming estranged from my mother, I have done extensive research into the subject of parental abuse, speaking to experts and survivors.
These are the two key things that people like me need to know.
First, that those who insult, ignore, gaslight, belittle or harangue us most of the time do not love us.
This discovery relieves us of the obligation we feel toward those who claim to love us. And once we set aside the illusion of duty, we can start to examine abusive relationships with clear eyes, realising that they offer us few emotional benefits – and probably never will.
Second, your parent is unlikely to change. Their toxic behaviour usually arises from conditions that are very difficult to treat, chiefly narcissistic personality disorder.
We may believe we can handle it; after all, we’ve handled it so far. But ongoing exposure only increases the effects of abuse over time – and these are not just mental.
Regular contact bathes our bodies in stress hormones that make our immune systems overly sensitive (hence the higher risk of autoimmune disorders among survivors).
Our digestive tracts also endure inflammation that can cause irritable bowel syndrome.
The heart, brain and other organs suffer, too, as does our sleep, and even our joints and muscles.
So, if you think your life would benefit from some distance from an emotionally abusive parent, read on for my tips on how to proceed.
Remember that parting need not be a grand, irrevocable finale if you don’t want it to be. You can adjust the level of separation at any time as your needs or their behaviour changes.
TAKE A BREAK
In the first instance, try to avoid contact with your abuser for a couple of weeks. This will give you time to experience the beauty of life outside of their shadow.
In explaining your break, I’d strongly suggest you make up an excuse and not tell them you’re assessing whether to step away from them. Doing so would begin the journey before you’re fully prepared.
When I first considered estranging from my mother – long before that phone call – I went on holiday to a place with poor mobile reception where I’d be difficult to contact.
Weeks passed without contact. For the first time I felt lighter, less stressed and more energetic.
MAKE A LIST
Take some time during your break to write down your abuser’s transgressions, including patterns of behaviour such as gaslighting.
Add to the list the lingering effects of abuse on your adult life. Are you uncomfortable with happiness because it’s such an unfamiliar feeling? Are your romantic relationships toxic?
This exercise lets you view the effects of your maltreatment as the concrete realities they are. It also serves as a memory aid you can refer to whenever you find your resolve flagging.
MAKE THE RULES
Sketch out the rules your parent must follow to retain contact with you. A good place to start would be comparing how they treat you to how others treat you.
Make guidelines that you could fairly apply to anyone in your life. For example, you must not call me multiple times a day unless there is an emergency. Or, you must not make cruel jokes about me or others in my presence.
In my experience, it’s important that you do your utmost to salvage the relationship. It may sound counter-intuitive, but this will help ease your guilt down the line as you’ll know you’ve done your best.
STATE THE RULES
It’s time to share your rules with your abuser. Choose the medium you believe they will feel most comfortable with: phone, email or face-to-face. Begin by saying something like: ‘I would love to find a way to have a relationship with you. But when you do X, it’s very hurtful to me, it makes me not want to be around you.
‘If you’re doing something like X that I asked you not to do, I’m going to end the conversation.’
To get the best results, it’s best to not dwell overly on past transgressions or lay out all the examples of poor behaviour that you noted in your list. Through personal experience I discovered that this only antagonizes the abuser, which invites them to ramp up the very behaviours we hope to tone down.
CONSISTENCY IS KEY
Once you’ve laid down your rules with a parent, you have to be prepared to follow through and withdraw from them when they cross a boundary. You need to see if they can respond to your new boundaries positively, for your own peace of mind.
However, if you reliably enforce the rules and they still break them, then you know they simply cannot change.
Your goal is to inspire them to change their ways, but you cannot control their behaviour directly; you can only control your own.
PARENT YOURSELF
Children of abuse never got the parenting they deserved. But when you’re considering cutting ties with a parent, now is the key time to parent yourself.
The first pillar of ‘reparenting’ is emotional regulation, figuring out how to rein in volatile feelings and self-soothe in stressful situations.
The second is loving discipline, the kind of consistency we rarely experienced in the chaotic homes of our youth. Gently enforcing our new boundaries with our parents is good practice for this.
The third pillar, self-care, is about valuing your worth. And it’s exactly what you’re doing by assessing whether this relationship can be saved.
The fourth is play. Any activity that feels immersive and enjoyable, whether it be reading, cooking or dancing creates a ‘flow state’ in which our worries recede as pleasure takes centre stage. As we play more, we become better at silencing the obsessive, anxious patterns of thought that have been implanted in us.
POWER TOOLS
Through parenting yourself, you can develop your own ‘power tools’: awareness, patience and flexibility.
Now you’ve taken time to identify patterns of behaviour in your parent, you should be more aware of how they operate, their tactics and trigger points for cruelty.
Meanwhile, a defining feature of abusers is pathological impatience. They favour the quick fix, insulting us rather than regulating their own emotions, giving us the cold shoulder instead of discussing a disagreement.
Once out of their clutches, you can defuse conflicts at the off by remaining patient and not giving them a sparring partner.
My method isn’t failsafe, but it worked for me and is based on the experiences of countless survivors I spoke to in the process of writing my book
Your parent is likely to be inflexible and stubborn. But flexibility is a valuable and mature trait – it’s what got you this far, allowing you to adapt your relationship with your parent and switch your perspective. If you continue to be flexible and open to maintaining contact on new terms, perhaps they will follow our example and alter their own behaviour.
THE LESS SAID THE BETTER
In a situation where you can’t adopt a strategic silence, say as little as you can, as politely as you can: ‘I see’ or ‘that’s one way to look at it’. Statements like these acknowledge that you’ve heard them but cede no ground.
When my mother tried to break my rules, I saved my energy by turning her away with a few short sentences rather than trying to explain why her words were unkind. This is a great approach to take whenever our abusers break our rules because it gives them no inroads to generate more conflict.
A NEW FUTURE
My method isn’t failsafe, but it worked for me and is based on the experiences of countless survivors I spoke to in the process of writing my book.
At this point, you should feel peace in the knowledge that you have tried your best to nurture a healthy relationship with your parent. If you’ve ended the process in the same place you began, you can now feel guilt-free in estranging from them.
For me, a clean break was the best option. For others, a gradual ‘phasing out’ works better. It’s entirely personal, and remember that you define the terms of your estrangement, not your siblings, friends and least of all the abuser themselves.
Continue to apply the emotional tools you used during the evaluation process to help you remain consistent.
You might feel anger that the relationship just couldn’t be made to work. I certainly did. But I hope you’ll feel pride in this enormously brave decision, and unburdened by guilt. Most of all, I hope you’ll feel free.
Adapted from The Power of Parting by Eamon Dolan, out now (£20, Bluebird). To order a copy for £18 (offer valid to 19/04/25; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.
