“My Family Hates Me”: Tips For Setting Boundaries And Rebuilding Relationships

Medically reviewed by April Justice, LICSW
Updated October 10, 2024by BetterHelp Editorial Team

It can be challenging to know how to move forward when you think your family hates you. If you’d like to take steps to try and repair the relationship and it’s safe to do so, there are a number of strategies you might consider that could help you. Whether or not you’re interested in salvaging your familial relationships, therapy can be a useful tool to help you delve into your experiences and emotions and begin to feel more comfortable and confident in yourself, your boundaries, and your relationships. See below for tips that could help you in healing family relationships.

Tips for healing family relationships

If you’ve had strained relationships with family members in the past, you may be thinking about how to repair them going forward. If it’s safe to engage with your family members and you’re looking for ways to heal together and regain some closeness, the following tips might help, provided that they are also interested in reconnecting.

Define your boundaries and stick to them

An important part of repairing your relationship with your family often includes learning how to set boundaries and stick to them. You and your family members can both do this, and it may help you find healthier ways to interact with each other. If you’re looking for support in figuring out what healthy boundaries look like for you and tips on enforcing them, meeting with a therapist can be helpful.

You can set boundaries around things like:

  • How often your family can call you
  • Having to ask before coming over
  • How long they can stay
  • Rules around not disturbing you at work
  • Saying no to events you don’t want to go to

Spend a little time together and increase it gradually

Oftentimes, the road to repairing damaged or distant family relationships will involve spending small amounts of time together at first. One reason for this is that it can give you the chance to end a gathering before it gets to a point at which you may become frustrated. If you go this route, you might also choose to meet up with family members in public places where arguments and conflict may be less likely to occur.

After a while, if your relationship with your family starts to improve, you might be able to increase the amount of time you spend together. This is generally only recommended if your family members have been respectful of the boundaries you’ve put into place. If not, it can also be fine to keep the distance as it is. It can also be okay if you realize that you don’t desire to spend much time with your family. Paying attention to your own needs and comfort level is often key in determining what you’d like your relationships with family members to look like.

Aim to embrace vulnerability

Before you embark on the journey toward establishing a meaningful relationship with someone, it can be helpful to look at your own emotional boundaries and limitations. Both of these may impact our ability to be emotionally vulnerable with others, which is often the basis for healthy, communicative relationships. 

After years of hurt or distance, we can sometimes create an invisible shield between ourselves and others that can block our ability to be vulnerable. In unsafe situations, this can help us guard ourselves. In safe situations, however, it may come to represent a rigid and limiting boundary. Sometimes, to let others in, we must engage in some level of flexibility and letting ourselves be seen. Setting boundaries and being honest about who we are and how we feel are two potentially helpful forms of vulnerability that could be appropriate in some situations on the road to repairing family relationships.

Remember that vulnerability is not the same as giving up your boundaries or putting up with inappropriate or harmful behavior. In many cases, reconnecting with family members can involve finding a healthy balance between guarding yourself and letting others in. 

Reach out for professional help

Feeling like your family hates you may impact your life in a variety of ways. You may have trouble forming other relationships, show signs of self-doubt and low self-esteem, and/or experience symptoms of anxiety and depression, for example. If any of these are the case for you, working with a therapist is one way to unpack your experiences and begin to move forward. If you’re interested in improving your relationships with family members, a licensed mental health professional may help you create an effective plan for doing so. Even if not, they can offer you a supportive space in which to work through complicated feelings about family.

Sometimes, attending therapy sessions in person can be challenging or uncomfortable. You may not feel at ease speaking with a therapist face-to-face or worry about the cost or the logistics of finding transportation to and from the therapist’s office. Online therapy can be a helpful alternative in cases like these. An online therapy platform like BetterHelp can empower you to connect with a licensed therapist from anywhere you have a reliable internet connection. Research on the topic suggests that online therapy for individuals is usually as effective as traditional in-office therapy, so you can typically feel confident pursuing this format if it’s more convenient or comfortable for you.

Takeaway

If you find yourself thinking, “My family hates me,” it can be hard to know where to go from there. If you’re interested in trying to improve your relationships with family members and it’s safe to do so, establishing healthy boundaries and sticking to them, limiting your time together at first and gradually increasing it if things go well, and embracing vulnerability when safe and appropriate can all be helpful. If you’re interested in getting professional support along the way, meeting with a therapist online or in person can be useful as well.
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