Hurt by family but still want a relationship? Things to try before complete estrangement

This is for you who have a healing fantasy...

A healing fantasy is “The expectation and longing that a problematic relationship can be fixed or healed by changing oneself or the other person, particularly when dealing with emotionally immature or unavailable individuals”

If you still want a relationship with someone who has hurt you deeply and find it hard to reconcile this, having realistic expectations of the relationship by accepting it somewhere along the “Relationship Spectrum” can bring a lot of peace of mind. 

There are a lot of ways to relate to the person that go in between being incredibly close (healing fantasy) and being completely estranged. Oftentimes we believe that if they can’t meet this healing fantasy, that we will need to be estranged from the person.

Using The DBT Relationship Spectrum, it doesn't need to be this all or nothing.