I am overwhelmed by the response to my post last week, 3 Signs It’s Time to Cut Ties with Toxic Family.

Like OVERWHELMED.

Thank you all for the notes and the re-shares of the post–it honestly gives me a lot of peace knowing that there are others in the same situation and we have a strong community to lean on for advice, perspective, and support.  I hadn’t shared any aspect of this situation prior to this post–and it’s been going on for years!–so it was a nice experience to kind of unpack it in way with this group.

I did know that I wanted to give y’all some insight into what benefits have happened to me since I cut those people out of my life.  So here’s Part Two if you will–what amazing, positive, and peaceful things you can gain when you remove toxic family members from your life.

You will give yourself the gift of more energy

You free yourself up to a more energetic and vibrant life.  You no longer have to invest time, mind space, or physical energy to dealing with toxic people in your life.  You no longer have to do the mental gymnastics involved in navigating how to interact with your Aunt Sandra at Thanksgiving.  You no longer have to get caught up in the emotionally draining drama that always seems to come up when you get around your cousin.  Your sleep improves because you aren’t staying up with insomnia over the last text convo you had with your sister.  You know the one where she passively aggressively said you were a bad mom? Your stress level drops because you aren’t constantly flooding your system with cortisol.  By cutting out the toxic family members in your life you can focus your attention to the people, passions, and projects in your life that light your heart on fire.

Your self confidence will bloom

When you set and hold a boundary, you learn that you can keep a promise to yourself.  You learn that you can keep yourself safe, you can protect yourself, and you can practice self care. You learn that you can make tough choices, navigate hard situations, and ultimately your confidence will sky rocket. You trust yourself more implicitly because you’ve learned that you are perfectly capable of taking care of yourself. You gain a boost of independence and security in who you are as a person.

You learn that rethinking who we do life with in order to preserve our own peace and mental health isn’t quitting or a failure.  You learn that it’s survival, resiliency, and most importantly, necessary. And as your self confidence blossoms, you operate with the idea that red flags are no longer red flags–they are deal breakers.

Related: 9 Green Flags You are Breaking Toxic Family Generational Curses

You become comfortable being the villain in someone else’s story

Cutting of a toxic family member meant that I had to get really good with being the villain in their story. I knew I was going to be the villain simply because my actions didn’t match their plans. They’re the protagonist of their own story, and as my actions began to go against their desires, I found myself in the role of their villain.

But in my version of the story, I was assertive enough to pursue the best course of action for me, the hero of my own story, and that ruffled some feathers.

You learn to identify patterns faster.

You Protect Other People You Care About

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