When trying to keep the peace with certain family members, are you finding it a futile pursuit? Does it make more sense to avoid all interactions than have any at all?
This article will help you prepare to deal with the not-so-friendly relatives you may have no choice but to deal with.
Family is the final frontier of personal growth and development. They are the ultimate emotional-trigger-test. Once you start growing into the person you want to be, improving and healing what needs improving and healing, some family has a way of spiraling you back down to who you were before you started your self-improvement journey. It’s like they don’t want you to grow and change.
How do you deal with family who doesn’t want you to be anything other than who you’ve always been to them?
Trying to keep peace with family members who resist your growth can feel like an endless struggle. Family relationships often serve as the ultimate test of our emotional triggers and personal development. As you work on healing and becoming who you want to be, some family members have a way of pulling you back into old patterns, almost as if they’re invested in keeping you exactly as you’ve always been to them.
When family members don’t honor your boundaries or support your growth, you may need to make difficult choices about how to interact with them. The key is remembering that you don’t have to submit to their expectations or compromise your well-being just because they’re family.
When you honor people who dishonor you, you’re essentially allowing them to take advantage of you.
When someone truly cares about you, they’ll want you to be happy and respect your journey of self-improvement. But when they respond badly to you honoring yourself, especially family who want you to remain in familiar patterns, it often means they’re uncomfortable losing their ability to influence or control you.
Healthy relationships involve mutual respect and the freedom to be authentic. When someone feels comfortable being themselves around you, they usually want to be around you more. The same applies in reverse. If you can’t be yourself around certain family members without facing criticism or resistance, it may be time to create some distance or change how you engage with them.
This isn’t about cutting people off entirely but rather about protecting your own growth and well-being. Sometimes, accepting that someone will never change allows you to move forward without staying stuck in hope or expectation. You can still care about them while choosing not to subject yourself to behavior that diminishes your self-worth or halts your personal development.
One effective approach is to treat difficult family members like any other person, releasing yourself from the emotional need for their approval or love. When someone in your life consistently makes you uncomfortable, hurts your feelings, or diminishes your self-worth, it creates significant hardship, regardless of their relation to you.
You can often predict their hurtful behavior, knowing when they’ll become argumentative, resistant, or mean. While some may not realize their impact, others are fully aware but simply don’t care about the hurt they cause.
These careless, selfish individuals can be incredibly challenging to be around. I once heard from someone who had to move far away from her parents because of her father’s abuse. He had been physically abusive during her childhood, then shifted to emotional and verbal abuse when she became an adult. She finally reached her breaking point and needed to escape to live her own life.
I’ve experienced this with my own relatives, particularly my stepfather. When he appears in my life today (which is very rare as I don’t live anywhere near him) and does anything that diminishes my status as a full-grown adult deserving of respect, it’s challenging. Even if he didn’t like me, I would prefer simple apathy and basic respect over hurtful comments or behavior. This level of basic respect should be expected from any adult in our lives.
It’s crucial to remember that you are now an individual, no longer the dependent child you once were. This becomes especially important when dealing with difficult parents or relatives because you deserve to be treated as an equal adult, not as someone under their control.
If you’re between 16 and 21 and still living at home, you might feel caught between childhood and adulthood. Your parents likely watch how you show up in the house, what responsibilities you take on, and whether you’re making decisions they consider good or bad. Not everyone makes choices their parents approve of, and that’s normal.
Your parents might view your decisions negatively, but remember they were your age once, too. Maybe you feel rebellious because they’ve been too restrictive throughout your life. Or perhaps they’ve given you plenty of freedom, yet you still want to do things that go against their values or that they believe aren’t good for you. You might find yourself doing these things anyway, often keeping them secret.
You might not want to tell your parents about your first kiss or other intimate experiences. Unless you have an exceptionally open relationship with them, you probably don’t feel comfortable discussing relationships, experimenting with substances, or many other aspects of your life. This is completely normal teenage and young adult behavior.
And as a teenager or young adult, you naturally want to make your own choices and experience life on your terms. You resist restrictions and what feels like oppression. You want the freedom to explore and figure things out for yourself. This desire for independence is a natural part of growing up.
Your parents might struggle to understand this, but it’s a normal part of your development. You’re in the process of discovering who you are and what you want from life, even if that means making choices your parents don’t agree with.
Eventually, we all reach a point where we take full responsibility for our lives, managing rent or mortgages, bills, jobs, and relationships. We create our own independent lives. When we become parents ourselves, it becomes crucial to recognize and respect our adult children’s autonomy and the individuals they’ve chosen to become.
Once our children are adults living their own lives, we can’t continue imposing restrictions on them. Well, we shouldn’t, in my opinion, unless they are still living under our roof. That’s a different story. “My house, my rules” might apply then.
It’s just important to remember that some adult children may want to distance themselves from the previous family structure, while others might want to maintain close family ties, still with mutual love and support. Both choices are valid. And when their choice is respected, the bond can be maintained and even grow stronger.
But as you know, even in healthy families, disagreements and occasional arguments can happen. The real challenge comes when family members, particularly parents, can’t adjust to seeing their adult children as independent adults. If this sounds uncomfortably familiar, keep reading.
“You’ll Always Be My Baby”
When a parent continues to treat you like a child, it can certainly be endearing… when it’s not dysfunctional.
My mom still sees me as her “wonderful son.” When we’re together, there’s genuine love and enjoyment in each other’s company. We maintain a good mother-son bond. But here’s what makes it work: she fully recognizes and respects me as a capable, independent adult. Our conversations flow naturally, with mutual respect and active listening. Neither of us talks down to or insults the other. We don’t cause offense or put each other down.
We have normal, adult conversations about family, life, and everything in between. It’s as natural as it can be when adult children return to interact with the people who’ve known them since birth. This balance of maintaining loving family bonds while respecting each other’s adult status creates a healthy dynamic that works for everyone involved.
Some older adults in our lives, particularly our parents, often struggle to accept that we’re no longer under their wing, guidance, or control. This transition can be especially challenging for them to process and accept.
Some parents, older (and sometimes younger) siblings, or relatives continue seeing us as young, incompetent, or incapable individuals who need constant guidance.
I once worked with a client whose mother still believed her daughter needed direction in everything simply because “I know more than you; I’m older.” Yet this client was completely self-sufficient, managing her bills, maintaining relationships, holding down a job, and even owning her own house. Despite her clear competence, she had to deal with a parent who insisted on controlling her life, always ready with instructions and directions because “I’m the wise parent.”
Parents who believe they’re automatically wiser in every aspect are, to be blunt, closed-minded. Though many have valuable wisdom in specific areas – maybe they’ve learned hard lessons about drinking excessively, or they’ve gained experience in relationships, or know the ins and outs of buying houses and cars. These life experiences could be life-changing or even life-saving! That’s if you trust the intent behind their “wisdom.”
Parents and older adults often share their experiences with younger generations for various reasons. Much of it comes from a place of genuine care and concern. But, sometimes, it comes from a need to maintain control, thinking, “What you do affects me, and I love you so much that I need to protect you from making mistakes. I’ll make sure you follow the right path to success.”
What can happen is that when we are getting “sage” advice from someone who’s been through a few things, we may be left dealing with those people’s limitations, insecurities, and lack of confidence in our abilities. Their need to control often reveals more about their own fears and anxieties than our capabilities.
Being in my fifties, as I write this and part of the “older generation,” I have a unique perspective shaped by my upbringing. My parents, especially my mom, trusted me from a very young age to make my own decisions, even in potentially dangerous situations. This trust gave me something special, something many others didn’t experience: the freedom to learn through rapid failure.
I like the phrase “fail fast” or “fail fast forward.” That means you fail, get up, absorb the lesson, and hopefully avoid repeating the same mistakes or accidents. Learning these lessons early in life was invaluable, though it certainly didn’t mean I learned everything. I’m still learning today.
But this early experience shaped how I view giving advice to young people now – younger than me, that is. Instead of being overly protective or controlling, I encourage them to try things and see what happens.
There Are Winners and Learners
Success is great. And it’d be wonderful if every piece of advice I gave to someone led to their success. But I’ve learned even if you don’t succeed, that’s okay, too. Every mistake and every failure is a learning opportunity.
During my training and studies over the past three decades, one powerful statement keeps me grounded and keeps me going:
There is no failure, only feedback.
I love this perspective. It’s one of the defining principles in Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and it’s one of my many mantras. It transforms every outcome into useful information. It means that whatever you do isn’t really ever a failure. It’s a lesson telling you what worked and what didn’t, allowing you to adjust your approach next time.
Yes, failure can be incredibly painful. The suffering that comes with it might make you want to avoid it at all costs. The fear of that pain can be so paralyzing that it prevents you from making any decisions at all, leading to the mindset of “If I don’t make a decision, I can’t fail.”
I hear from so many people who are so terrified of failure that they remain stuck in terrible situations. They choose the familiar pain over the unknown, refusing to make decisions that could lead to potential failure.
But this mindset is exactly what keeps you trapped. It’s like being that dog tied to a stake in the middle of the yard, running in circles, creating deeper and deeper ruts. You have a limited radius, maybe ten, fifteen, or twenty feet, where you just keep circling, digging the same groove deeper, unable to break free.
That dog desperately wants freedom! When finally unleashed, it’s likely to bolt with pure determination, ready to explore and experience everything it couldn’t before.
That’s what happens when you finally break free from the fear that’s been holding you back. You’re ready to experience the world, to escape that oppressive stake that’s kept you circling in place. Just like that dog, you need to break free from whatever’s keeping you tethered to your fears.
The world beyond that familiar circle, your rut, might be scary. But it’s also where real growth and change happen. The alternative is to keep wearing down that same path, going nowhere, staying stuck in situations that drain your spirit and hold you back from who you could become.
Older family members, particularly parents, often believe they’re protecting us by controlling our decisions. They think if they can shield us from making the same mistakes they made, we’ll have a better life. There’s usually love behind their guidance, suggestions, and even their control, but sometimes, unfortunately, it’s just about maintaining power over us.
These people might have experienced similar oppression from their own elders, passing down a generational pattern of control. Or perhaps their own life challenges drive them to be overprotective, desperately trying to prevent us from facing the same hardships they endured.
The “I created you; therefore, I control you” mentality reinforces an unhealthy parent-child dependency. When you continue viewing yourself as that dependent child who needs guidance from someone you perceive as smarter, more educated, or wiser, two significant problems arise:
- You seriously undervalue your own capabilities and wisdom. You don’t give yourself the credit you deserve for your own ability to navigate life and learn from your experiences.
- If that authority figure isn’t actually wise (or worse, if they’re hurtful, narcissistic, neglectful, mean, or abusive), following their guidance can lead you down destructive paths. You might start internalizing their treatment of you, believing there’s something fundamentally wrong with you rather than recognizing their behavior as the problem.
This can create deep-seated beliefs about being unworthy or unlovable, beliefs that have nothing to do with your true worth and everything to do with their limitations and issues.
When you leave the nest and step into your own life, you must claim your right to be treated as an adult. This means accepting that you’ll make decisions others might disagree with, and that’s okay. People can share their concerns about potential bankruptcy or divorce, but they don’t have the right to use these warnings as weapons to control you or make you feel inferior.
Others can share their perspectives and ask thoughtful questions like, “Do you think that’s the best direction for you?” They can present different viewpoints that challenge your thinking. But they don’t get to dictate your choices or shame you into compliance. Unless you’re specifically asking for guidance, they shouldn’t try to make you feel guilty or wrong about your decisions.
Your choices might be completely right or entirely wrong, but that’s not really the point. The real value lies in making those choices yourself and learning from the outcomes. When you succeed or fail on your own terms, those lessons stick with you in a way that simply following someone else’s advice never could.
If you never take risks because you’re paralyzed by fear, whether that’s fear of failure or fear of disappointing well-meaning advisors, you’ll never discover your own truth. You’ll just keep reinforcing the pattern of deferring to others instead of developing trust in your own judgment. The only way to build that trust is through direct experience, through trying things yourself, and learning from whatever happens next.
This journey of making your own choices and learning from them is what transforms you from someone who needs constant guidance into someone who can navigate life’s challenges with confidence and wisdom. Even if those choices lead to failure, they’re still yours to make, and the lessons learned will be far more valuable than any secondhand wisdom.
Embrace Your Imperfect Self
Becoming independent means learning to trust yourself as an adult, even when you make what might seem like foolish decisions. In reality, very few of our choices are truly stupid. Most decisions we make come from educated guesses based on available resources and information. We gather data, weigh options, and try to make the best choice possible with what we know.
Of course, we must be selective about whose input we consider when making life decisions. It’s easy to fall into that parent-child dynamic trap, automatically assuming that someone’s age or parental status equals superior wisdom. While older people often do have valuable insights, their age alone doesn’t guarantee they’re right. I know this first-hand, being of the older generation and humbled on many occasions!
Even when someone appears wise and intelligent, their advice isn’t automatically the best path for you. They might have more experience or wisdom in certain areas, but that doesn’t make their guidance infallible. The key is developing a relationship where you can thoughtfully evaluate their experience and apply it to your situation. Ask yourself if what they’re saying rings true. If it does, perhaps you need to reassess your approach. If not, trust yourself to make your own choice.
The challenge becomes especially complex when dealing with people who’ve been hurtful or toxic in the past. Even if they offer perfectly sound advice, their history of harmful behavior creates a barrier. You might not feel safe enough to truly hear them, trust their input, or follow their guidance. In fact, you might instinctively resist their suggestions, even when they’re pointing you in the right direction, simply because of that damaged trust and emotional safety.
It creates a challenging paradox when a toxic person offers potentially valuable advice. Our natural instinct might be to reject everything they say simply because they’re the source, even if doing so works against our best interests.
The situation becomes even more complex when we can’t separate the information from the person delivering it, especially when we don’t feel emotionally safe around them.
Like the person I mentioned earlier. They experienced physical abuse that evolved into verbal and emotional abuse as she got older. The police got involved, and the father lied through his teeth about his behaviors, making his daughter sound like the crazy one – Even with thousands of miles of physical distance between them, the emotional entanglement continues between this woman and her parents through ongoing conversations as they pressure her to move back home. Talk about terrible advice from an elder.
Is Blood Thicker Than Water?
When you’re living independently, you get to make your own choices as an adult. This includes choosing who gets to be in your life and how they get to treat you.
Think about this: If a friend or stranger moved into your house and started treating you the way some family members do, would you accept that behavior? Would you let them make you feel small or controlled?
It’s interesting how we often give family members permission to treat us in ways we’d never accept from others. We hear phrases like “blood is thicker than water” or “family comes first,” but these traditional sayings start to ring hollow when family members consistently hurt us or show little concern for our well-being. When family becomes toxic, we need to reassess what role they should play in our lives.
Real family, whether biological or chosen, shows you unconditional love and support and wants you to be happy.
Real family wants to see you succeed. And they’re there to help you through your failures. They’re the ones you can call at 3 AM, knowing they’ll answer because they want to be there for you and make you feel safe, valued, and respected.
If your biological family isn’t providing these fundamental elements of love and support, if they’re causing harm instead of helping you grow, it’s not only okay to create boundaries or distance; it might actually be necessary for your health and well-being.
Being related by blood doesn’t give anyone the right to mistreat you or make you feel worthless.
Your well-being matters more than maintaining toxic family connections that continually harm you. You should never feel obligated to keep toxic people in your life just because “we’re family, and we should stick together through thick and thin.”
Of course, not all family members fit into the same category. Some can be trusted with our deepest secrets, while others can’t be trusted to pay you back the few dollars they owe you.
I view family more through the lens of someone who actually embodies the qualities of caring, loving, and supportive behavior rather than just biological connection. And when someone doesn’t demonstrate these essential family qualities, they become just another adult in my life. Just another person who I don’t necessarily let into my trusted family “circle.”
We might be related, but that doesn’t automatically make them family in the truest sense. This perspective might challenge traditional views. But when family members stop behaving like I believe a family should act, they forfeit that special category in my life.
The key to surviving around particularly toxic family members is to maintain appropriate boundaries. As long as someone respects your space and treats you with basic human dignity without causing harm or hurt, interaction is possible. When you can be in the same room and hold basic conversations and maintain civility, that might be the extent of your relationship but at least it’s tolerable by most people’s standards.
It’s when family crosses those boundaries that you must remember your worth as an adult who deserves kindness and respect. This fundamental right to respectful treatment doesn’t change based on family titles or relationships. Your dignity isn’t negotiable just because someone shares your DNA.
When someone behaves in a difficult or mean way, shift your perspective and view them as any other adult, separate from family ties. Ask yourself how you’d respond to this behavior if it came from someone with no family connection. This mental shift can help you respond more effectively to toxic behavior and challenging relationships.
For instance, if my stepfather acts in a hurtful way, I can directly address it: “Hey, what’s the deal here? You need to back off. This is a problem, and I won’t accept this behavior.”
This kind of clear, firm boundary-setting didn’t come naturally. It took years to develop the confidence and sense of integrity to stay aligned with who I’ve become and who I want to be.
When someone disrespects you or acts hurtfully, remember that their behavior, regardless of family ties, places them in the category of any other adult in your life. They’re making choices that affect how you’ll interact with them. They are choosing how they want the relationship to be with you, which is why it’s so important that you choose what type of relationship you’ll allow with them.
I specifically use the term “adult” because dealing with children requires a different approach. I wouldn’t give you the same suggestions if you were dealing with a difficult child. But in your daily life as an adult, most of your interactions are with other adults (unless you work in childcare or a similar field).
Let me repeat what I said earlier:
Adults, whether family or not, need to treat you with basic respect and dignity. You deserve to be treated as an equal, capable adult, so embrace that truth and let it guide your responses to others’ behaviors.
If you’re in a relationship and your significant other treats you like a child or puts you down, you need to recognize this behavior for what it is: an attempt to control and diminish you. You’re an adult who deserves equal standing in your relationship. You might even need to firmly state, “I’m an adult. Don’t talk down to me or treat me like a child. Let’s discuss this as equals.”
While everyone might define adult behavior differently, certain actions clearly fall outside those boundaries. When someone throws a temper tantrum, hurls insults, or tries to make you feel inferior, they’re not acting like an adult; they’re operating from a triggered state, perhaps falling back into survival mode or coping mechanisms that involve controlling or demeaning others.
If they feel awful about something they did to you, they might try to maintain power by making you feel bad about yourself. This is a form of manipulation that can destroy relationships. Some people block their empathy and resort to these harmful behaviors because they want to maintain control, but you don’t have to accept it.
You deserve to be heard, validated, and treated with respect. If someone consistently makes you question yourself or feel like you can never do anything right, that’s not a balanced adult relationship. That’s one person trying to maintain power and control while making the other feel powerless.
When you start honoring yourself and telling people what you want, when they cross your boundaries, your relationships start to become more genuine. Meaning as you honor yourself, you show the other person how you want to be treated. And that’s something that anyone who cares about you would want to know. When someone cares enough about you to treat you the way you want to be treated, that’s a real relationship.
And as you honor yourself, you feel better because you’re standing up for yourself, showing yourself that you’re important enough to protect.
Some people won’t accept your boundaries, and that’s just something you might need to accept about them. You might lose relationships because you choose to be who you are. But that’s better than losing yourself. It’s better than compromising who you are just to satisfy someone else’s dysfunctional or toxic need to control or hurt you.
With this person who reached out to me about her abusive father, she may not ever be able to be around her dad again. She may need to make the choice that he is too dangerous for her and needs to protect herself by removing him from her life.
And I wonder if he has ever been anything but dangerous. Has she ever felt safe around him? I didn’t paste the email into this article, but she mentioned to me that she wanted to get away from both of her parents because she not only felt abused but also felt unsupported by the other parent.
This happens to a lot of people, unfortunately. They have one parent who is abusive and the other who doesn’t offer the support they need (sometimes because they are being abused as well, and that’s another deep topic for another article).
She didn’t share with me how she’s going to handle this relationship going forward. But if she were in front of me now, I’d tell her the same thing I’ve said many times in many ways in this article:
Remember, you’re an adult. You’re making adult decisions. You are in charge of your life now. You are taking care of yourself. You don’t need your parents to take care of you anymore. You are making decisions for you.
When someone enters your life who’s considered family, like a father figure who feels entitled to a connection, they still need to earn and maintain that relationship through their behavior. Once they cross certain lines, they forfeit their privileges as a parent or family member. That might sound harsh, but there comes a point when you’ve experienced enough mistreatment that you no longer want to consider these people family.
It’s important to embrace this perspective, especially if you struggle with the idea that family should get special permission to mistreat you or cause you harm. While family relationships might have more room for forgiveness than others, that doesn’t mean they should have unlimited chances to hurt you.
Yes, family can often work through difficulties and reconcile when there’s a foundation of love. If someone occasionally makes mistakes or shows disrespect, and there’s genuine care underneath, moving past these incidents is possible. But, sometimes, the situation goes beyond simple disrespect. Sometimes, people are fundamentally unsafe or dangerous to be around. And in those cases, the family connection doesn’t obligate you to maintain a relationship that puts you at risk.
When you realize someone consistently causes harm, regardless of their family status, you have every right to protect yourself by redefining or ending that relationship. Your safety and well-being take priority over family titles or obligations. Just because someone shares your DNA doesn’t mean they have the right to hurt you repeatedly without consequences.
When interacting with other adults, whether they’re family or not, remember that you’re an equal adult with the right to make your own choices.
By embracing your adult status, you gain the freedom to make decisions, knowing they might succeed brilliantly or fail completely. What matters is owning those decisions, regardless of the outcome. Take risks and accept that failure is possible. When you do fail, use it as valuable feedback to inform your future choices.
When someone comes along with an “I told you so” attitude, you don’t need to validate their righteousness or defend your choices. Instead, you can simply acknowledge the learning experience: “Yeah, I learned from it. It happens. My next decision will be better.”
You can maintain your dignity and autonomy without engaging in arguments about who was right or wrong. A simple response like “Sometimes I make decisions that work, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you’ll be right, and sometimes you’ll be dead wrong” acknowledges both your humanity and your right to make choices, even imperfect ones.
This approach keeps you in your adult power while avoiding unnecessary conflict or defensiveness. It shows that you’re comfortable with your decision-making process, including the possibility of failure, because each experience helps you grow and learn.
To the woman who reached out to me, thank you for sharing your story. Remember, don’t let childhood fears or not being loved or accepted stop you from stepping into your adult self. Healthy parents genuinely want their children’s happiness. That’s a fundamental truth we need to understand.
But when we’re dealing with mentally unhealthy people, recognize that their primary motivation often centers on control rather than supporting your happiness. While this doesn’t make them inherently bad people, it does mean they might not be safe to be around. There’s no need to seek their approval or try to prove yourself worthy of their pride.
Mentally unhealthy individuals typically operate from a self-centered perspective. Even when their actions seem rooted in love, fear often drives their behavior. They might believe they’re showing love, but their actions reveal otherwise.
These people tend to be difficult and selfish, focused on getting their way rather than offering unconditional love and support. Instead of wanting you to grow through your own experiences, they try to control your path and force you to accept their perspective as the only valid one. They don’t truly support your journey, especially when you’re heading in a direction they haven’t chosen.
Recognize that you deserve to live your own life, make your own choices, and learn from your own experiences. Don’t let anyone, regardless of their relationship with you, prevent you from growing into the person you’re meant to be.
Listen to the episode attached to this article for more specific suggestions on dealing with toxic or mean family. Stay strong no matter what you’re going through.
