Before You Cut Ties Read This
I used to ghost people before the term ghosting was a thing. It was a defense mechanism that helped me protect myself from truly toxic people when I was in my teens and early adulthood. At that time cutting people off was integral to my physical, emotional, and mental safety because my environment and the people in it were extremely harmful to my wellbeing. As my awareness of that toxicity grew and I started to seek more healthy relationships and spaces, it also became integral to let go so that I could re-build myself and grow.
Nowadays, I am learning that If I continue to cut people off (without explanation) I’ll only stunt my ability to develop healthy relationships, communication, and conflict resolution skills. For some people, this may be common knowledge but from where I’m coming from, healthy conflict resolution wasn’t a thing. And many of the ways I’ve responded to conflict and relationship challenges were learned from people and environments that also lacked awareness, tools, and the general know-how to have healthy relationships. I also realize that over time ghosting aka cutting people off has caused me to become conflict-avoidant. When I zoom out and I look at the way we do this on a macro level with cancel culture, I realize that me doing this on a micro-level, leaves no space for feedback, forgiveness, reconciliation, or improvement — even if I’m not around to witness those things.
With that realization and my current investigation and re-learning of how to do relationship and conflict came some additional insights about why cutting people off isn’t always the answer if I want to grow and build beautiful connections.
Insight 01 — We stunt everyone’s growth when we bite our tongue.
I don’t believe that every little mistake or wrong needs to be addressed. I do believe that we need to apply wisdom and discern so that we know when to speak up in moments and situations that are non-negotiable for us. For example, when someone consistently drains your time or doesn’t respect your boundaries or when someone doesn’t check first before dumping the weight of their problems on you. In instances like this, if you decide this is too much for you, it’s important to practice addressing them. We’re not helping anyone grow when we let important learning moments slide. Practicing compassionate and poised feedback creates room for understanding and hopefully improvement.
Insight 02 — If applicable, distance is an alternative to severing ties.
Sometimes we’re in a grey space with people — we’re unsure about how we want to be in a relationship with them because they’re not exactly toxic and they’re not exactly nurturing, so it doesn’t feel right to just end things. We can also be in a grey space when we feel like there’s so much history behind us and we feel like so much is on the table if we walk away. In moments like this, it can be helpful to create space from these connections so that you can gain clarity. If the connection is worth keeping, maybe it simply requires the dynamics to shift. The example that comes to mind in my personal life is when I was wrapping my days as a “party girl” and I wanted to cut off the relationships and environments that would enable me or trigger my old ways going forward. The trouble was that I had some solid people that I loved and valued and wanted to continue to grow with, but I wasn’t sure if the relationships would survive outside of that environment. The relationships that did survive, did so because we were able to adjust to the dynamic shift and together we found new things to connect on. Sometimes, however, the distance doesn’t always bring clarity and the dynamic shift doesn’t always work. Sometimes things just naturally fizzle out on their own and the ties sever on their own.
Insight 03 — Be mindful not to reject yourself when you reject others.
With enough awareness in our relationships, we’re able to see things about ourselves that may be hard to see when we’re alone. Those things can be characteristics or behaviours that we admire or dislike. Because our emotions are complex and take time to understand, without knowing, we often end up projecting our issues/shadows onto others. For example, maybe you can’t stand that one of your friends is super inconsistent and unreliable; it turns you off and causes you to resent them a bit. When you turn the lens on yourself, you might notice that the qualities you are rejecting in another person, you have a hard time acknowledging or accepting within yourself. Maybe it triggers your trauma or pulls back the veil on your dark side? Maybe there are limiting beliefs operating that need your attention? Whatever it is, if we are quick to cut people off, we miss an opportunity to sit with the things that are being called to our attention for our healing.
Again, I want to emphasize that I believe that we must use wisdom and discernment when it comes to our relationships. After all, as individuals, we are ultimately the meaning makers and we decide what feels good for us and what our limits are.
