Metaphorical distancing via name change

[woodsgnome]

  Good way to go, for now, songbirdrosa. See how it fits, and most important, how you react as some time passes.

[green tree sky]

Songbirdrosa: that sounds like a great plan! I agree with woodsgnome, see how you feel over time. Sounds like perfect timing though, early in your career.

[melere]

I can attest to mulling over the same idea RE: changing one's last name. I went NC in June and definitely considered it as I don't want the name and it's also awkward-sounding anyway. For the time being, I created a Facebook with a name of my choosing and I'm liking it a lot so far. I'm hoping to get published at some point (once I, you know, finish my book . . . eventually . . . lol) and all the "cool kids" get a pen name, so I've been considering for even longer what that would be--but who knows? I might change it by then. It seems simple enough of a process and takes a bit of mental weight off.

[LittleBird]

It might help you, it might not.

I thought about it once, but to be honest, it felt alienating for my situation and it didn't help me feel any safer.

[sj]

I legally dropped my family name when I was 24 (I'm 43 now). I was in early stages of what I later realised was a trauma induced mental breakdown, as well as early stages of my first time going NC from my FOO (in second time going NC/MC now, since 2015). I kept my given names, as I think they are beautiful names and couldn't imagine coming up with a whole new name to be called by. I saw it as 'keeping the gifts and getting rid of the baggage', which had a certain empowering sense to it and was helpful for me to feeling psychologically cleaner about what I was doing - it seemed a constructive, non-wholly-rejecting way to frame it all. But, of course, there was a great deal of naivety involved in my thinking I could cut the baggage loose through that (I knew the name change itself would 'fix' everything, but I think I did have a sense it was the beginning of a process I might work through in a couple of years .... hmmm).

I'm glad I did it and have absolutely no regrets. It did help me to make a significant, if still small, dent in the enmeshment and help me take a stand to assert my independence and identity separate from them (even if this is still a work in progress :/).

With some recent retraumatising with my controlling and abusive, golden child brother interfering negatively in attempts at contact with my nephew/ his son (who I had been strongly bonded with), I realised how much the scapegoating has been passed down through generations, and how disgusted I am with my parents and whole family. There is a part of me that just wants to spit the poison of them ALL out of my system, which made me contemplate changeing even my given names. I think I'm unlikely to do that as by all my long-term contacts have known me by this name for so long that it would be really awkward to try and change what they call me, plus I can't see anything else feeling right - I', too well settled into this name, now.

Maybe I would change my last name again - something of my choosing - if I ever reached a final decision to go completely NC.