Feeling guilty about having boundaries with Family

This question says, I have issues with my parents. I need to take space from them, yet when I do, I start to feel guilty. I see them as fundamentally good people, but yet there are things they do that are unhealthy for me to be around. How can I take space and have boundaries with parents without feeling guilty? So, very common question and a very important part of healing very often is the need for space from certain people, family members perhaps. People think about going no contact with their parents, it's a thing that's talked about a lot more now. It's actually something that is being advocated more nowadays from therapists and so on. It's not, it doesn't have the same level of, you know, that's not, that's a no-go zone, you can't possibly do that. At times it can be the thing that's required to do, but very often there is that sense of, you know, well I'm in therapy, I mean, here I go and I'm blaming my parents for everything and I don't want to start blaming them. But yet there's that sense of, yeah, but I get negatively affected when I'm around them. So, one of the things that can be helpful for this is to, if you have that aversion or that sense that you don't want to start blaming them for your life or how you're feeling, you can separate your parents from the thoughts that your parents are attached to. So, what you're really taking space from and having boundaries with isn't necessarily your parents, it's the thoughts, the relational modes, if you like, the belief system that they are attached to. So, when you're taking space from them and having boundaries with them, you're really taking space from that mentality that they're attached to, not them as people in themselves. That can help us a great deal with that sense of guilt when we take space from family members. And I have noticed in working with many, many people that taking space from family members is often essential. Whether that's no contact, that's another question, it's a deeply personal question that requires nuance for the person to make that call. But when a person does stay around the ideas that their parents are attached to, maybe not necessarily, you don't have to think about it in terms of the parents themselves, but when that person is around the ideas that they're attached to, healing is like one step forward, one step back, two step forward, three steps back, you know. It really does tend to toward our efforts towards healing. So, boundaries are essentially important, especially if we want to speed up our healing process, taking space for ourselves to have the freedom to just process things in our own time. Without that, it becomes a lot more challenging to do. So, but think about it in terms of, you know, because what we're doing, therapy is a very individual thing. It's about the person who is in therapy, right? So, if you're in therapy, it's about you. We explore the past, we explore our relationships with our family of origin and and other things in our life, not necessarily to look for objects of blame or sources of danger. What we're really looking for is where the ideas and values and beliefs that I currently hold come from. What is their origin? And it is helpful to do excavation into the past to find out what the origins of those things are, so we can clearly identify that wasn't my assumption. That wasn't my belief. I was told this. I was taught this. And it becomes a lot easier then we can start to say, okay, this isn't me. I can start to separate myself from this this belief system or this thought pattern or whatever it might be. So, that's really what we're doing in therapy. When we're exploring the past, it's not necessarily to look for objects or sources of blame, right? Typically, what we'll be doing is which is where some of the guilt in this question comes from. But you taking space can be an essential thing. I would say it is an essential thing, but frame it as I'm taking space from that narrative. I'm taking space from that belief system. Those thought patterns, not the people themselves. You can separate them and it's a healthy thing to do, even for yourself, because if you can start to separate, what we're doing in therapy really is we're trying to separate ourselves from the thought processes that are going on quite often that are often unhelpful and negative and realizing that there's me and then there's that that's going on. And I can start to separate what's really me from all of that. So, if we're doing that with other people, that'll help us in that process with ourselves too. But you shouldn't feel any guilt about the need to take space, right? That's a personal choice everybody needs to make. Very often it's an essential choice that people make. And it can bring up a lot of those feelings of guilt when we do it. That's pretty standard. Very often when a person does take that space from their family of origin and they have those boundaries, you know, without them there's often anxiety and there's drama and there's chaos and that's why we need to take the boundary. Very often when we start to do that and put in those healthy boundaries, those necessary boundaries for ourselves, we will go into, very often it can be a guilt or depression that can start to show up. Really the depression is about coming to terms with, when you do take the space, you start to realize the nature of the beliefs that you have been exposed to for a long time. And it's a very depressing experience sometimes. But it can be a necessary one in the right direction. Come into terms with the nature of the relationships that we have been in for so long. So, just to answer this question, it's a little insight, but see it as separating yourself from the thought processes and the belief systems that you've been exposed to. And you do need a boundary with those, not necessarily the parents, right? Because parents, technically speaking, they may be very unlikely to do so, but technically speaking, they themselves can separate themselves from their own dysfunctional thought patterns. If they were to do that, it would be a lot easier for you to be around them. The issue isn't them as people, it's what they're attached to psychologically. And that's running in their lives and that's probably getting projected onto you. So, don't feel guilt about it and see it as stepping away from those thought patterns so that you can start to work on yourself and start to see yourself in the way that you want to see yourself. And it's essentially important to take space to do that. So, I hope that's useful. And if you have any questions yourself, you can send me an email on my website and if I can answer it all, I will. Thanks for being with me and I'll see you guys very soon. Take care. Bye-bye.