What to Say Instead of Blocking
Someone told you to block your person’s number.
Maybe it was a therapist. Maybe an interventionist. Maybe a well-meaning friend who watched you flinch every time your phone buzzed. And honestly? It’s not bad advice. When every text makes your chest tight and you’re checking your phone at 2 AM terrified of what you’ll find, blocking gives real relief.
But—what happens next?
You and I both know what happens next. You block. The fear builds. What if something’s wrong? What if they need me? So you unblock. They text. It’s hurtful. You engage anyway, desperate for any contact. Then you regret it. Then you block again. With each cycle, the distance grows, and the resentment grows on both sides. And you’re still not protecting yourself. You’re just creating more chaos while feeling like you’re doing something.
The advice wasn’t wrong. It was incomplete.
What You Can Actually Control
Blocking is, at its core, an attempt to control their behavior. If you can’t receive the messages, you can’t be hurt by them. That makes sense. But you can’t control another person’s choices—no matter how desperately you want to, no matter how much you love them. And trying to control it keeps you reactive. You’re still letting them set the terms. You’re just powerless from a distance now.
What you can control is your own response. Your own boundaries. Your own recovery work. This is where Parallel Recovery® comes in. Your person has work to do. So do you. And your work isn’t fixing them or managing their reactions. Your work is learning to show up in this relationship differently.
A Different Kind of Message
A mother came to me after several rounds of the block/unblock cycle. An interventionist had referred her, and she was exhausted. I invited her to unblock her son and send him a message. Not a message demanding change. Not a message explaining all the ways he’d hurt her. A message that modeled what she wanted the relationship to become.
“I have had you blocked because I didn’t know how to manage my reactions to your messages. That’s not how I want our relationship to be. I want to communicate with you, and I can’t do that when it feels angry and attacking. I will respond to you when it feels like we have decent communication, and when it doesn’t feel that way to me, I won’t respond. What you have to say is important to me, I just need to be able to hear it, and I can’t when it is mean.”
Read that again. Notice what it does.
It owns her part. She didn’t know how to manage her reactions. That’s on her, not him.
It names what she wants. Connection. Communication. A relationship where she can actually hear him.
It sets a clear boundary. She’ll respond when communication feels safe. She won’t when it doesn’t.
It maintains connection. What he has to say matters. She wants to hear it, just not like this.
This message isn’t about getting him to behave better. It’s about her taking responsibility for her own recovery—for how she shows up, what she accepts, and what she models.
This Is Harder Than Blocking
He might test it. He might send another hurtful message to see if she meant it. He might ignore it completely. Your job isn’t to control his response. I know that’s terrifying. Every part of you wants to manage this perfectly so nothing terrible happens. But managing his responses hasn’t kept him safe. It’s only kept you exhausted.
If the next message is decent, you respond. If it’s not, you don’t. No explaining. No blocking. You just practice the boundary you said you’d hold. This approach requires you to do your own work. To notice your reactions, manage your impulses, and stay grounded when they’re testing you. It requires you to believe that you have the power to change this dynamic, even if they don’t change at all.
But it’s also sustainable. The block/unblock cycle proves that blocking isn’t. To be clear: you shouldn’t accept abuse. No one should. But you have more options than “accept it” or “cut off contact.” You can set boundaries while staying in the relationship. You can protect yourself without giving up on connection. You can do your recovery work while inviting your person to do theirs.
This is what Parallel Recovery® asks of families: to recognize that everyone has work to do. Their work is theirs. Your work is yours. And when you step into your own recovery, when you model what healthy boundaries and honest communication look like, you create something new between you.
Not perfect. Not pain-free. But real. It doesn’t start with them changing. It starts with you showing up differently.
With strength in the hard,
Lisa
— This piece was written in partnership with Antedote Lab, a treatment center in Los Angeles, CA.