"The last time I saw my mom, I didn't know that would be the last time I would see her. And no, she's not dead. We're just no contact." So begins a five-minute TikTok video. In it, a woman shares exactly what went down when she decided to cut things off with her mom for good: "I was fed up," the creator Ashley D. said. "I'm just done with it, I'm not about to stay here to take this mental and verbal abuse just because I'm scared to be by myself."
Ashley's story, sadly, is not unique. Going no contact—the idea of having limited to zero communication or interactions with a person—is the subject of hundreds of thousands of videos on TikTok. Whether it's adult children talking about cutting off their parents after years of mistreatment, therapists weighing in on why it happens and how to navigate it, or parents grieving their children's estrangement, the anecdotes keep rolling in.
It's fairly taboo in most cultures to just cut ties with your family. (Blood is thicker than water, yadda, yadda, yadda.) But, sometimes, ending a relationship is necessary to protect your peace. "[No contact is] ultimately a person saying, 'This relationship has become so unmanageable for me, and staying in contact is no longer an option,'" says Whitney Goodman, LMFT, a licensed psychotherapist.
In other words, no contact is kind of like a "break glass in case of emergency" option for truly toxic relationships. "A lot of people who do not have experience with it assume that people go no contact after one disagreement," says therapist Kristen Gingrich, LCSW. "The reality is that most of the time…it is after months, weeks, years of constant boundary violations, toxic behaviors, unsafe interactions, that have finally reached a peak."
What does no contact mean?
In its simplest terms, going no contact means that you're no longer speaking to someone, says Goodman. It's something someone does when a relationship cannot continue in its current form (or exist at all) because of how it's affecting your mental health and well-being, says Gingrich. She says it typically applies to family relationships, but it can also be used in the context of romantic relationships or friendships.
Keep reading to find out if going no contact with someone is right for you.
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