Navigating Family Estrangement for Men and their Partners

For men, estrangement may bring up feelings of resentment, outrage, or anger versus the traditional emotions of sadness, guilt, and shame in women. This could be in part due to men not feeling the same kind of pressure to win their mother’s approval or be in helpful or caregiving roles to parents the way women are expected to be. The common expectation for men is that they will grow apart from their mothers in seeking partners and creating families of their own. Estrangement can occur for various reasons, including financial strain, relational conflict, mental health, and trauma. It’s important to recognize that men may choose estrangement because of partners or spouses as well. Perhaps the partner or spouse is encouraging a man’s estrangement from his mother in believing the mother-son relationship is unhealthy. A man may pursue estrangement if his family does not approve of his spouse, feeling that he must choose between them. He may justify estrangement for this reason, stating he no longer wants to hear the criticisms or slights he perceives are being made against his spouse or partner by his mother or both parents. 

A final area to emphasize is a gender difference observed by Agllias (2016) in her research on estrangement. Men and women respond differently in how they move toward acceptance of estrangement. Women tend to be more emotive in order to grieve and process the loss associated with estrangement, whereas men are more likely to respond with problem solving and intellectualizing what happened, in order to help them move on from an estranged relationship. There is also a societal expectation that men will “get over” things more quickly than women, which could include relationship rupture. As a support person, be sure to honor their experiences and meet them where they are, just as we would any person going through the process of estrangement. Asking clarifying questions and helping them connect with their emotions can be impactful in helping men heal. 

Helping Your Partner

Recognizing how painful the process of estrangement can be for your loved one, here are some things to consider as the compassionate partner or spouse of a person who has experienced a relationship rupture with their mother. 

1. Know That the Holidays Can Be Heavy
Holidays are challenging for folks for a variety of reasons. This might include family conflict, death, trauma anniversaries, and toxic relationships. When it comes to estrangement, the cultural expectation of holidays being focused on family can feel ostracizing to an estranged person. If your partner is not currently connected to family but is subjected to movies, advertisements, and events catered to holiday family fun, they can experience additional or elevated grief and loss. 

2. Recognize That the Body Remembers
Trauma events have a way of sticking with us, not just in our memory but at a deeper, cellular level as well. As a therapist, I’ve had dozens of clients over the years come into sessions reporting they felt symptoms of depression, dread, anxiety, or loss seem- ingly out of the blue and couldn’t pinpoint why. When I asked them if there was any significance to the season, month, or day, oftentimes they would identify a trauma they hadn’t consciously tracked, but that still had a tremendous impact on them, such as a family member’s death, a car accident, sexual assault, suicide, or natural disaster. They weren’t actively recalling these events, but their body remembered and responded by recreating some of the emotions or sensations associated with the trauma. 

3. Acknowledge Cultural Expectations of Family
In addition to holidays being heavy, a cultural expectation of the importance of family can increase your loved one’s feelings of shame or guilt about their estrangement from their mother. This occurs because of messages about the importance of family such as “family comes first,” or accusations of adult children being self- ish and dishonoring their family by straying from their family’s values or sphere of influence. Additionally, your loved one might interact with a person who reiterates these messages, arguing that they should reconcile with their mother or risk significant regret, such as when their mother dies. Cultures that emphasize family over individuals can bring up self-doubt in your loved one about not trying hard enough to repair the relationship, or can intensify feelings of failure that they weren’t successful in healing the relationship with their mom. It’s important to recognize how every day, normed portrayals of family can be triggering for your loved one in not having that expected dynamic. 

4. Follow Your Partner’s Lead
When walking into a scenario where discussions of family systems or dynamics come up, allow your partner to lead the conversation. Support them in their decision to disclose as much or as little as they need to in order to interact with others in ways that feel safe to them. If they decide to not disclose their estrangement, they have their reasons. If they choose to name their current status as an adult estranged from a parent, that’s their choice too. Showing up in solidarity for whatever response might come next from others will help your loved one feel sup- ported by you, especially if the other person’s response is unsympathetic, argumentative, or unintentionally hurtful. 

5. Ask, “What Do You Need?”
When your partner or loved one finds themselves triggered by people, places, media portrayals, or memories, there is one powerful question you can ask them as their partner. Couples’ therapists would agree with me when I say this question has saved relationships! Try asking your loved one, “what do you need?” Or ask, “what do you need in this moment?” These questions can be especially helpful because they give your partner permission to advocate for what might help them best. Perhaps they want a hug or to be left alone. Maybe they want to brainstorm or are asking for your help to fix things. Oftentimes, they actually just want to vent by expressing their thoughts and emotions in ways that leave them feeling seen by you as someone they trust. 

6. Encourage Chosen Connections
As a partner, it’s not expected that you be the one and only support person to your loved one. It’s not fair to them and it’s not healthy for you. Putting all of our needs on one person is a recipe for disaster because it can result in inequality, resentment, codependency, and burnout. Therefore, it’s recommended that you encourage your partner to develop additional healthy relationships, including some with parental figures if appropriate. Similar to folks who describe their chosen family as people who love and respect them, can your loved one cultivate this kind of relationship with another mother-like or father-like figure? Can they lean on friends, colleagues, mentors, or family members as needed? Chosen connections such as these can have healing qualities for an estranged person. By exploring and building their support network alongside them, your loved one will feel they have options without over-relying on any one person, including you.

We encourage you to take a deeper dive into the thoughts, feelings, and decisions of nine women who pondered the difficult decision to cut ties with their mothers in our book Understanding Ruptured Mother-Daughter Relationships: Guiding the Adult Daughter’s Healing Journey through the Estrangement Energy Cycle and access all our therapeutic tools for adult daughters available for download at estrangementenergycycle.com.

Four Signs of Readiness to Reconcile with your Estranged Adult Child

You want to reconcile with your adult child, so what do you need to consider or do to make that happen? What needs to be in place for efforts to reconcile to be successful? Let’s take a look at four aspects that might support your process of re-engaging your adult child.

1. Identifying Readiness to Reengage

Consider the following tough questions regarding your readiness to reconcile with your adult child:

1. Why do you want to reconcile? Being honest with yourself is the first step. Do you want to repair the relationship? Do you want to feel heard and validated in your choices? Are you looking to get even? Do you want a relationship with your grandchildren? There are any number of reasons why a parent wants to reconcile, and being prepared with a response for yourself and your estranged adult child should they ask would be an important first step.
   

2. What are your expectations of the reconciled relationship? As humans, it’s not uncommon to hear folks say they want everything to go back to the way it was, or to start over, both of which would be problematic for the estranger/adult child who made this choice reflecting that something wasn’t right. Going backward or to sameness would be a significant issue for them. What do you want the reconciled relationship to look like? Recognize that the relationship could be better or worse, but most likely just different. 

3. What steps will you agree to for reconciliation? As you attempt
   to reengage your adult child, what offerings or compromises can you accept? Are you open to phone calls to start? Are you willing to have a relationship with your daughter-in-law but not speak to your estranged son? Are you pursuing a relationship with your grandchildren, even if it means you aren’t on speaking terms with their mother? Knowing your own boundaries in the reconciliation process will help both you and your adult child navigate the testing phase of reconciliation. 

4. What can you take responsibility for? In other words, have you done your own reflection of what happened? Are you prepared to accept your adult child’s accusations and avoid arguing? Can you clearly name the offending actions prior to estrangement being pursued? Are you clear on the priority being repairing the relationship over determining whose memories of events are right? 

Several authors say reconciliation is possible by owning your behavior and acknowledging your adult child’s experience. Although it’s tempting, arguing about the accuracy of their memories of trauma or abuse isn’t helpful. This is their experience as they know it. Even though you may remember something completely different, arguing about what happened will further drive the wedge between you and your adult child. Instead, consider family therapy. Consider focusing on the future instead of the past. Be accepting of their hurt and resulting caution in wanting to take it slow to see if the relationship is mendable. Be prepared for tests from them to determine your truthfulness and authenticity. Several authors emphasize that reconciliation can take years. 

2. Pinpointing Parent Dynamics 

What about when one parent is still talking to their estranged adult child. Is this a good idea? In my experience, it’s rare to have one parent in contact with their estranged adult child because of the assumed unification between parents who are still in a committed relationship with one another. Your estranged child might worry that their information will be shared with the parent they are choosing not to be in contact with. The experience of one parent being talked to by an estranged child may be more common with divorced parents because your lives are separate. In this situation, an adult child might feel it is safer to connect with one parent without the risk of information being shared with the other without their consent. 

3. Recognizing Shared Grief 

It may be difficult to imagine that your adult child is experiencing their own grief and loss reaction in response to the estrangement, but they are. Although they may look calm, even relieved, Agillas (2016), author of Family Estrangement: A Matter of Perspective, shares that survey respondents indicate similar grief responses and symptoms to the shared estrangement status, including anticipatory grief when considering the decision to estrange, and post-traumatic stress symptoms for weeks or months after. Adult children report symptoms of sadness, helplessness, anger, and shock when choosing estrangement. Unlike grief and loss as the result of a family member’s death, there isn’t a sense of finality or closure when it comes to grief associated with estrangement. This experience of grief emphasizes how difficult the decision to become estranged from a parent can be, especially when the adult child indicates they are having to choose between several hard choices to protect their physical or mental health. 

4. Supporting Self-Awareness 

A significant part of reconnecting with your adult child or healing and moving toward acceptance of the estrangement is doing your own work. How can you gain clarity on the parts you played in the relationship rupture? What contrasting evidence do you have for healthy familial relationships? Where can you bridge the gaps to show up as your healthiest, authentic self for possible reconciliation? What reframes can you discover in the estrangement to help you heal? Agllias (2016) describes the pursuit of enhanced self-awareness as a critical part of the process of learning how to live with estrangement. Although we can’t predict the final outcome of your efforts, the hope is that any self- awareness work you complete will benefit you at this stage of your life, regardless of the final relationship status with your adult child. 

Another strategy to consider in your own estrangement healing is to recall the positive qualities or memories of your adult child’s younger years. Although you may not be speaking at present, which is incredibly painful, can you feel more connected to them by recognizing the values you both share? For one family I spoke to, the shared value was a never-wavering commitment to their spouses, regardless of what their family members thought of them. Instead of focusing on being angry that they were not on speaking terms, the parent was able to uncover respect for their adult child who had conveyed a strong message of loyalty and commitment to their partners or spouses, in response to scrutiny or judgment by the family. With some time and space, this parent found themselves admitting this response was admirable because they, too, would feel compelled to defend and align with their spouse as well. 

As a parent of an estranged adult child, you are riding waves of uncertainty on if reconciliation with your adult child is possible. Fortunately, there are several books available to take a deeper dive into the reconciliation process or that focus on healing from permanent estrangement with your adult child. Check out the following books written for parents: 

• Rules of Estrangement by Joshua Coleman (2021);
  

• Done with the Crying by Sheri McGregor (2016); and
  

• Estrangement of Parents by Their Adult Children, revised second
  edition by Sharon Waters (2019).
  

Your efforts to reflect and grow from the estrangement can be empowering, while also supporting reconciliation efforts with your adult child should they choose to reengage you to explore repairing the relationship. Although we can’t predict your outcomes, we do believe reconciliation is possible if both parties come in with authenticity, communication, and open hearts.

The Human in the Helper: My plans went so sideways

Christie is a mom, published author, therapist, and creator of The Partnerhood, a digital community for supportive parenting strategies and connection. It’s creation is partly inspired by her own journey into motherhood of two children. “Both times rocked my world in different ways,” Christie named. The first time was marked not only by a traumatic birth experience, but also by undiagnosed postpartum anxiety and having no network of local support outside of one friend and her husband. She spoke of the experience of becoming a mother in isolation and with limited support, something many mothers can understand from their own, similar experiences. In addition to a traumatic birth experience with her first child, Christie identified that starting her private practice while pregnant wasn’t an easy task. “I wouldn’t recommend it,” she teased. “It was like having two babies at once.”

Her second child was born in November 2019, with COVID following close behind. “I felt like I started off with a strong plan. I had recently gained more friendships with other moms, was in a good place mentally, my business was flourishing, but after only a few weeks into getting my daughter into daycare, everything shut down. I felt so isolated. It threw me into a deep depression.” Christie shared how the pandemic took away her already limited support network and left her home by herself with her two young kids. “My husband was able to leave the house every day for work, almost like normal. Meanwhile, I was thrown into homeschooling a kindergartener, seeing clients virtually, and caring for my baby.” Her depression symptoms deepened to the point where she was experiencing suicidal thoughts and wanted to give up. “I started looking for a therapist, but had little luck.”

Christie identified how difficult it was to find a therapist at that time because it was the height of COVID-19 in 2020, when many folks were looking for support. “I even called the crisis line, knowing I needed to talk to somebody.” She was finally able to start working with someone, although it was a process to feel more like herself again. “I was resentful. I was ragey with my kids. I had to ask myself, what do I need?”

Working on her needs post-pandemic included prioritizing external supports and including regular meetups with friends, quiet time to herself, therapy, and activities like yoga, hiking, and reading. Many parents can relate to the effort of taking care of themselves as well as their families, and learning how to juggle it well. “I don’t like the word ‘balance’ because it still symbolizes piling things on to get it all done. You can technically ‘balance’ a really heavy load, but that doesn’t mean it’s healthy. I prefer ‘work-life harmony’ instead,” Christie shared.

What is work-life harmony? Christie describes it as taking care of ourselves, our loved ones, and our businesses with a grounded satisfaction that leads to feelings of happiness and fulfillment. Having solid supports and self-care are part of this equation for Christie, who said, “Parenting is hard. Having a solid foundation of support makes a huge difference.”  She hopes others will cultivate supports as part of their own mental health and wellness journey, and she has plans to re-launch The Partnerhood as another avenue of support and connection for other overwhelmed parents. “Loneliness is magnified without support and quality support eliminates isolation.”

Things happen to us as humans, even as we support our clients as professional helpers. Do you have a story you want to share the mental health community? Email us at croswaitecounselingpllc@gmail.com to learn more about the Human in the Helper Series!

Five Reasons Adult Children are Choosing Estrangement from their Parents

A common theme I see online is bewilderment by parents who find themselves estranged from their adult children. They report feeling confused, hurt, or angry by their adult child’s choice, and indicate they aren’t sure why the estrangement happened. Although each adult child’s circumstances are uniquely their own, here are five reasons adult children might make the difficult and oftentimes emotional choice to estrange from their parent(s).

1. Attachment Trauma 

Attachment trauma is a common theme I’ve witnessed in my work with various adult women in therapy who are considering estrangement from a parent. I’ve sat across from women who’ve expressed how they wanted to believe that they deserved to be loved unconditionally by their mothers. They desperately wanted the support, love, and protection of their mothers when they were young, and continued to question why they weren’t “good enough” to earn love and safety when they needed it most. As we can imagine, this can contribute to the Type 2 Helpers of the Enneagram, with women seeking to be the most helpful or thoughtful of others to earn the love, affection, or admiration they’ve missed in childhood. Gibson (2015) describes this type of person seeking love and affection in adulthood through people-pleasing as an Internalizer. Internalizers put the needs of others before their own and seek validation from outside sources. This can be especially damaging when paired with emotionally detached mothers or mothers who are the perpetrators of abuse. 

2. Trauma

How about traumas of other kinds? It’s important to emphasize how trauma is defined by the person who experienced it, meaning it is not our job (or a parent’s job) to classify what is and is not trauma. When experiencing a traumatic event in childhood, does the adult child feel they were supported and protected by their parent? Was the parent present and reassuring in ways that helped a child discover resilience after the fact? What if the trauma happened at the hands of their parent? What if trauma was the result of a parent’s struggle with mental health challenges or addiction? What if they were the perpetrator of abuse?

3. Abuse 

Significant or repeated abuse may increase the likelihood of estrangement in adulthood. Dr. Kylie Agllias, author of Family Estrangement: A matter of perspective (2016) identified how abuse situations can contribute to a child’s feelings of instability within the home, including lack of safety and messages that indicate devaluing their role within the family system. There are five types of abuse to remain aware of when exploring the factors of estrangement: 

physical abuse

sexual abuse

verbal abuse

emotional abuse

financial abuse.

Physical abuse includes acts of violence or discipline that cause physical harm, such as hitting, kicking, pinching, pushing, slapping, grabbing, punching, or throwing objects at another person. There is a real possibility of leaving a mark from these acts, in addition to delivering messages of low value and self-worth for the recipient.

Sexual abuse involves unwanted sexual contact, oftentimes with perpetrators using force, manipulation, or threats against individuals who do not or cannot give consent. 

Verbal abuse describes weaponized words that are repetitive, cruel, and critical in nature. This can include insults, ridicule, humiliation, and put-downs that are meant to hurt or create negative beliefs and experiences for the targeted individual. Emotional abuse comes in a variety of forms, making it the most difficult to hold perpetrators accountable for because of discrepancies in how it can be measured. 

Emotional abuse embodies a series of words or behaviors that are meant to coerce, manipulate, or exercise power and control over another person. This could include gaslighting, minimizing, and scapegoating.

Financial abuse has been added to the list of abuse types because of the equally emotional and physical toll it can take on the victim. Financial abuse describes the withholding of finances, limiting the victim’s ability to access funds, concealing money or assets, or demanding paychecks be turned over to the perpetrator due to their desire to maintain control over money and thus the person. This effectively traps the person in a cycle of power and control and may reflect an adult child’s experience over an early childhood experience due to the nature of this behavior. 

4. Neglect 

Whether physical or emotional, neglect can contribute to avoidant attachment in childhood and an increased possibility of estrangement in adulthood. Physical neglect describes a parent who is absent from the home, such as one who abuses substances, a parent who pursues a new partner while leaving their kids at home by themselves, a parent who is incapacitated by chronic pain or frequent migraines, or a parent who had to work multiple jobs to put food on the table, as several examples. 

Emotional neglect can describe a parent who is suffering from serious mental illness such as chronic depression or crippling anxiety that prevents them from being present and attuned to their children’s needs. It can also represent a parent who is emotionally detached from their children, such as a mother who suffers from postpartum depression or a parent whose own trauma prevents healthy attachment due to them operating out of survival mode or having unmet needs of their own. The lack of meaningful connection can contribute to an adult child describing a childhood that was lonely, uncertain, and painful, making estrangement that much more possible due to them reporting detachment and distance from their parent(s) for years prior to enforcing estrangement. 

5. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) 

In recognizing the mental and physical impact of abuse and neglect, it’s also important to acknowledge the long-term effects of trauma on children. The adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) study shed light on the significance of trauma and adversity within a family system, including its impact on children who developed greater risks for physical and mental health concerns as they aged. Conducted by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a relationship was identified between events that challenged a child’s sense of safety, stability, and bonding from birth to seventeen years of age, and the eventual development of chronic health conditions and increased mental illness that followed them into adulthood. 

Examples of events that would be categorized as an ACE include (Croswaite, 2021) 

• experiencing violence, abuse, or neglect; 

• witnessing violence in the home or community; 

• having a family member attempt or die by suicide; 

• substance misuse; 

• mental health problems; and 

• instability due to parental separation or household members
  being in jail or prison. 

While the number of adults reporting that they’ve experienced one or more ACEs in their childhood is growing, it’s important to remain mindful of the possible connection between negative childhood experiences and eventual estrangement. 

These five reasons capture the complexity and resulting relationship ruptures we know of between adult children and their parents. We encourage you to take a deeper dive into the thoughts, feelings, and decisions of nine women who pondered the difficult decision to cut ties with their mothers in our book Understanding Ruptured Mother-Daughter Relationships: Guiding the Adult Daughter’s Healing Journey through the Estrangement Energy Cycle and access all our therapeutic tools for adult daughters available for download at estrangementenergycycle.com.

The Effects of Estrangement on Adult Children

What if I told you that the experience of estrangement often feels like someone has died? At least initially. It’s not an easy decision for adult children who estrange from their parents (as one example) and experts have discovered that the grief and loss response to estrangement is similar to our anguish or pain response when someone we love dies. Dr. Kylie Agllias (2016) recognizes that “estrangement is a particularly difficult loss to accept because it has no predetermined outcomes or end points.” Within her research, Agllias (2016) describes a grief response to estrangement where a person is mourning someone as if they have died, which can feel painfully accurate when permanent estrangement occurs and reconciliation isn’t an option.

Symptoms of Estrangement

Even with personal agency to end a relationship through their choice to estrange, many adult children can’t predict the significant reactions and emotions that will arise with their decision, resulting in feeling a sense of shock when they are fully immersed in it. They struggle with grief and loss symptoms, some of which include:

● Sadness

● Anger

● Shock

● Helplessness

● Shame

● Guilt

● Loss of identity

● Feelings of blame

● Feelings of failure

● Social avoidance

The estranged adult child may report strain and mistrust in other relationships due to the circumstances of their estrangement. They may report difficulty trusting others or leaning significantly on their partner or other family members to prove that estrangement is not the fate of all their family relationships. An adult child may report symptoms of anxiety or trauma responses, such as:

● Muscle tension

● Headaches

● Hypervigilance

● Sleep disturbance

● Difficulty controlling thoughts

● Avoidance

● Rumination on all that happened prior to estrangement

● Flashbacks

With prolonged symptoms and repeat triggers for grief, the stress of the relationship rupture can result in chronic stress symptoms for some adult children, especially women including:

● Hair loss

● Weight gain

● Inflammation

● Moodiness

● Elevated cortisol levels

● Adrenal fatigue

● Thyroid conditions

● Sleep disruption

● Water retention

● Brain fog

● Headaches

● Fatigue

It’s not hard to imagine how reporting these symptoms to a medical doctor could lead to a diagnosis of anxiety, depression, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). However, are we missing the mark in not asking about relationships and their contribution to an individual’s symptoms? It could generate a clearer clinical picture to ask a client or patient to describe their current relationships by asking questions like, “How are your relationships right now? Who are you closest to in your family? Who do you rely on for support?” By asking several questions about family dynamics and relationships, professional helpers begin to explore the physical, emotional, and relational impact of estrangement on an adult child’s mental health presentation when seeking support or starting therapy. 

It’s important to emphasize that not all symptoms listed above have to be present, nor do they have to be severe or long-lasting. Some folks will have the symptoms they experience from estrangement lessen over time, similar to other grief and loss experiences where symptom intensity may be reduced with time and space. Some healing happens in a process we’ve named the Estrangement Energy Cycle.

The Estrangement Energy Cycle

The Estrangement Energy Cycle starts with a pattern or cycle of abuse. This may be the culmination of various attachment traumas from childhood that were not acknowledged or addressed by a parent, or it can be a series of events that have happened more recently in the adult child’s life.

After gaining awareness about an abuse cycle, an adult child can move into a stage of questioning. This can reflect their ambivalence about the parent-child relationship, including questioning their own part in it not feeling healthy or good enough. This stage can also represent an adult child wondering if they try harder or communicate more effectively, maybe they can get through to their parent.

If an adult child determines that the cycle of abuse and dynamics within the parent-child relationship are damaging to their health, they may then move into relationship rupture. This is a painful stage where the processing of the abuse and the implications for how it’s shaping the adult child’s life in the present cannot be unseen or ignored any longer. Typically an internal process where they recognize the impact of abuse, they may have epiphanies about poor boundaries and people-pleasing, or identify a connection between their quest for perfection and seeking approval and love from a parent. Relationship rupture can also occur from an additional event of hurt or violation from the parent in question, that pushes the adult child from contemplation to preparation for estrangement in wanting the repeated abuse to end. 

From a painful relationship rupture comes the active choice to become estranged. The choice is a challenging one, resulting in a move toward grief and loss. The grief and loss stage includes finding space for the adult child’s emotions and self-doubt about their relationship with their parent. After extensive grief and loss work, an adult child can move to discovering a new sense of self. How will they define themselves now that estrangement from their parent has occurred? What will other relationships look like with healthy boundaries in place? An adult child may seek new communities of connection and new hobbies or interests in feeling unburdened from the unhealthy relationship or repeated conflict with their parent. 

The deeper work comes with the support of others, whether it be a spiritual congregation, wellness-focused community, or engaging in ongoing mental health therapy. An adult child may recognize that they’ve done all they can on their own to heal from this estrangement, but find they need additional support and guidance to continue the work. The final stage of the Estrangement Energy Cycle is redefining self- worth. Through hard work, reflection, and developing healthy relationships with others, an adult child can begin to regain self-worth separate from their parent. This may be finding the bandwidth to set boundaries with others, challenging people-pleasing urges, and practicing saying no, as just a few examples.

Each adult child’s journey is different in how they heal from estrangement, however we have some ideas from the clients we’ve served in therapy for the last twelve years. Check out our book Understanding Ruptured Mother-Daughter Relationships: Guiding the Adult Daughter’s Healing Journey through the Estrangement Energy Cycle and access all our therapeutic tools for adult daughters available for download at estrangementenergycycle.com.

Challenging Ten Assumptions about Estrangement

As the author of a book on mother-daughter relationship rupture speaking to adult daughters and the therapists that serve them, I would be doing women a disservice if I didn’t name and challenge the assumptions others make of estrangement. The community at large, as well as a handful of authors, have taken it upon themselves to be the voice of estranged parents everywhere. These parents, in an effort to understand the causes of their estrangement, report a number of similarities in their children that they feel contribute to why they have chosen to disconnect from their parents, which has led to the following assumptions:

1. Selfishness

The first assumption is that adult children who choose estrangement from their parents are selfish. They are accused of being self-centered, narcissistic, and focused only on themselves. We argue that adult children who choose estrangement from their parents do so for a variety of reasons, none of which are solely selfish in nature. Rather, the choice to estrange comes from an effort to protect themselves, partners, and children from further pain or trauma from their parents. Therefore, this difficult choice may be for the well-being of others in addition to themselves and doesn’t omit them from their own grief and loss response when disconnecting from a parent.

2. Suddenness

Many parents of estranged adult children claim that the estrangement came on suddenly, sometimes without warning. Upon further reflection, parents are usually able to pinpoint signs that their sons and daughters were not happy with the relationship, but perhaps didn’t feel it would result in estrangement. Although it may feel sudden, the process of deciding to estrange from a parent takes significant time and energy for an adult child. Contrary to assumptions that choosing estrangement is easy for adult children, many spend significant mental energy evaluating and re-evaluating their options in not wanting to miss an opportunity to improve the situation.

3. Therapist Recommendation

Another assumption is that therapists are encouraging or championing estrangement for their adult clients. Oftentimes found in the same breath as the word ‘boundaries,’ parents and professionals alike feel that therapists are pushing an agenda for adult children to be estranged from their parents in response to trauma. As a mental health professional myself, I can see where certain clients may seek out advice or interpret a conversation about boundaries as permission to cut off a parent. However, a quality professional will remain neutral and help their client explore the implications of remaining in a relationship cycle that feels healthy or unhealthy, reaffirming that the client is the sole decision maker within their own life.

4. Exaggerated Trauma

Trauma remains a primary theme for exploration of estrangement. Several authors lament on how adult children may exaggerate their experiences of trauma to reinforce their decision to become estranged from their parents. To serve as a means to vilify and justify cutting off a parent. The challenge here is that society fails to recognize that trauma is defined by the person who experiences it. It is not our job to argue about what is and is not, trauma. Instead, trauma work remains an appropriate modality in the therapy space in order to explore healing and goals for adult children seeking change in their lives.

5. Refusal to Reconcile

Parents want to believe that reconciliation is an option, and yet for some, it will not be a choice. Rather than seeing this refusal to reconcile as a ploy for power and control by an adult child over their parent, it’s important to explore the circumstances for when reconciliation isn’t appropriate. For families damaged by repeated physical or sexual abuse, for example, reconciliation can feel like wishful thinking. How do we acknowledge the damage a parent-child relationship can suffer when subjected to repeated physical abuse? What supports reconciliation when a mom aligns with a boyfriend who is sexually assaulting her daughter? Each adult child’s choice to reconcile or not is to be respected because reconciliation remains difficult to near impossible for some individuals.

6. Too Much Toxic

The word ‘toxic' has shown up frequently in media for at least the last decade if not longer. As it became associated with relationship dynamics, this word has been seen alongside the words ‘estrangement’ or ‘family estrangement’ more often. Some folks believe that adult children are using this word to justify their decision to estrange from their parents and to seek sympathy from others by painting themselves as victims. This viewpoint only serves to discount the actual harm victims of abuse have suffered. Toxic as a word, has encouraged folks to cleanse themselves of toxins, including unhealthy relationships. What if describing a relationship as toxic is a means of simplifying something immensely confusing and painful? Toxic may serve as a label for an experience that we don’t have the emotional energy or desire to explain to someone else because of the stigma, judgment, or emotions it stirs up when talking about it. 

7. False Memories

A common disclosure found in interviews and surveys of estranged parents is that they have been accused by their adult children of neglect, abuse, or of being a bad parent. Additionally, parents can claim that their adult children possess false memories of abusive or unsafe situations that did not occur per the parent’s recollection, leaving parents baffled and confused. Trauma has a way of being stored in people’s memories in different ways with different things being the focus, which can mean one person’s recollection can look completely different than another’s. It’s a similar phenomenon to why eye-witness testimony doesn’t hold up well in court. You can interview three witnesses and get three completely different recollections of the events that took place. Parents are left feeling angry that their children are subscribing to false memories in order to validate their decision to separate or abandon a parent when in actuality, an adult child’s reports of mistreatment, however inaccurate to the parent, deserve curiosity and compassion if there is to be any hope of repairing the relationship.

8. Mental Health Problems

Another common culprit in the blame-game of estrangement is mental health. The seeking of mental health diagnoses or labels placed on either the adult child or parent can be problematic and stigmatizing. In several books supporting estranged parents, authors argue that adult children may have undiagnosed mental health issues such as Bipolar Disorder that cause them to seek estrangement from their parents. Which, as a mental health professional, feels like dangerous ground because of how simplified it sounds. It’s possible that some adult children have mental health challenges or diagnoses that make them more likely to pursue estrangement. Equally possible, however, are times where a parent’s mental health could be a factor in why estrangement is pursued when their children grow up. Perhaps it’s severe depression, PTSD, or a personality disorder that prevents a parent from attaching or showing up consistently for their child. By no means is mental health the only factor to consider in the research on estrangement, and if we are going to look at mental health within the family, it’s best to look at the mental health of both adult children and their parents in our quest for answers on the growing rates of parent-adult child estrangement.

9. Control Over Grandchildren

An increasing concern for estranged parents is access to their grandchildren when their adult child chooses to estrange from them. One assumption we saw reinforced in several books on the subject was that adult children use grandchildren and withholding contact from those grandchildren as punishment for parents' poor choices. Although this is a possibility for some adult children who are angry about the mistreatment they’ve felt they’ve received from their parents, the clients I’ve served over the years are more likely to limit contact between grandparents and their grandchildren when they are worried that the abuse or neglect they experienced in their own childhood could be repeated with their kids. In an effort to protect their children or to break an unhealthy relationship cycle, they may prevent contact between grandparents and grandchildren.

10. Pettiness

Our last in the list of assumptions about estrangement is the accusation of adult children being petty in their refusal to reconcile or re-engage in a relationship with their parent(s). The underlying theme of most media representation that sides with parents conveys a concern that adult children are refusing out of spite. To punish their parents. To hold power over them. As you might guess, this remains another narrow view of the complexities that contribute to family estrangement. It may very well feel this way to a parent who is confused or hurt by their adult child’s actions. However, it can also serve as an opportunity to get curious about their adult child’s viewpoint on holding rigid or strong boundaries. What would their adult child say when asked what they need to repair the relationship? 

Assumptions of estrangement are widespread. This could be because of the emotional charge it leaves in both adult children and their parents, as well as the limited research to date that could shed light on why estrangement is being pursued more often in response to family conflict. By challenging these assumptions, we can find ourselves successfully providing a compassionate, judgment-free space for ourselves and others experiencing estrangement in their families. We invite adult daughters to check out our book Understanding Ruptured Mother-Daughter Relationships: Guiding the Adult Daughter’s Healing Journey through the Estrangement Energy Cycle and access all our therapeutic tools available for download at estrangementenergycycle.com. 

What is the Estrangement Energy Cycle for Adult Daughters Estranged from their Mothers?

Would it surprise you to know that 1 in 12 people is estranged from at least one family member (Agllias, 2016)? With estrangement on the rise, further exploration is needed to best understand the complexities that contribute to making estrangement possible in families. As a mental health professional, I first wrote about estrangement and adult daughters in 2020, asking my therapist colleagues if they too were seeing a pattern in women who were contemplating estrangement from a parent in their clinical work. From that blog, I felt called to take a deeper dive into the cycle of events adult daughters may experience when considering mother-daughter estrangement, a cycle I came to call Estrangement Energy.

There are various stages a daughter may work through by herself or within therapy as she explores her relationship with her mother. Let’s take Gina* as one example. Gina sought out therapy for processing her divorce, expressing interest in grief and loss work as well as reporting feelings of depression and failure when attempting to meet her children’s needs. As Gina moved towards deeper work on her relationships, she began to question why she allowed multiple people in her life to exert power and control over her. She discovered that the start of this relational pattern resided with her mother.

Cycle of Abuse

Gina engaged in a personal narrative that helped her to recognize her mother’s behaviors as physically and verbally abusive. She had learned to cope with her mother’s volatile mood swings by reading her body language, voice, and mannerisms to best determine if she should engage her mom or go hide in her room until the emotional storm blew over. 

Questioning

Having made the connection between an unpredictable and oftentimes unsafe childhood and her honed skill of reading others’ moods, Gina uncovered suppressed feelings of anger and outrage at her mother’s behavior. She began to question her current relationship with her mother and the long term effects it was having on her mental health.

Relationship Rupture

Gina wanted to talk to her mother further about her childhood and the impact on her life, yet every time she attempted to share her memories and feelings about events, her mother told Gina she was exaggerating and remembered things wrong.

Estrangement

Feeling devastated and minimized, Gina determined that she needed some distance from her mother. She started by reducing the amount of time she spent with her, claiming her work and her daughters kept her busy, which were partly true.

Grief and Loss

As the contact between Gina and her mother dwindled, Gina felt a mix of sadness and relief. On one hand, she felt she had more time and energy to give to people in her life who valued and appreciated her. But on the other hand, Gina was grieving the loss of the mother she wanted and needed—one who could respect her and love her unconditionally.

Discovering Sense of Self

Amidst her grief, Gina found herself seeking new experiences that left her feeling vibrant and alive.

Deeper Work

As Gina began to discover herself and her identity without mom, she found she still struggled with the idea of dating and intimate partner relationships. Her latest therapeutic goal was to address underlying fears of intimacy and connectedness, which resulted in uncovering negative core beliefs of being unworthy, unlovable, and not enough.

Redefining Self-Worth

Gina’s therapeutic journey left her feeling stronger and more present that she had in the past. She celebrated having stability at work and solid relationships with her friends. Gina took her role as a mother seriously, wanting something completely different for her daughters than what she’d had with her own mother.

Each client’s story is unique, and yet Gina’s story is one inspired by multiple clients seeking therapy at a critical point in their relationships with their mothers. Estrangement is a challenging and emotional choice that oftentimes leads to an adult daughter seeking therapy for additional support. Whether her goal is reconciliation with mother or full estrangement, having a solid understanding of the estrangement process and stages, as well as tools that can support her on her journey supports each woman in doing this deep and oftentimes difficult work.

For more on mother-daughter estrangement and the Estrangement Energy Cycle, check out our book Understanding Ruptured Mother-Daughter Relationships: Guiding the Adult Daughter’s Healing Journey through the Estrangement Energy Cycle and access all our therapeutic tools available for download at estrangementenergycycle.com. 

The Human in the Helper: I’ve had it happen twice

Caitlin loves her job and it shows. She works with youth involved in the juvenile justice system and has loved that system for over 15 years. It’s a career choice not many colleagues would commit to, especially when working with a population that assumes greater risks of loss, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma. Even though she finds her work rewarding, Caitlin has also experienced every Adverse Psychological Event (APE) known within our field, including the not often talked about ones, like client violence directed towards others. “I had two clients murder people in the community.”

Caitlin is willing to share her story to help others while also acknowledging how difficult it can be. “I had four deaths in an 18 month span,” she recalls. For her two clients who killed people, these tragedies happened after they had closed out of services. “The support I received around this happening was different because they weren’t active clients.” Caitlin reflected on how the support was minimal in supervision and consultation because of the clients not being active on her caseload. She named how it felt like leadership was relieved to not have to staff these cases, and redirected her to focus on her current caseload of at-risk kids. She heard messages like, ‘It sucks that that happened. What are you doing for your current suicidal kids?’

Although Caitlin understood the focus of leadership on current clients, this messaging didn’t help her healing process as a person. She found herself questioning if she’d done enough for her clients. If there was something she missed. And then there was the grief. “I was surprised that I felt so much grief for the kids who engaged in violence. I thought things must have been pretty bad for them to do this.” Caitlin’s compassion confused colleagues, who did not hold compassion for her former clients at all, instead labeling them murderers and engaging in black and white thinking. “They are still traumatized kids,” Caitlin named.

A trauma lens helps Caitlin remain in this work with her clients, as well as her abundant compassion for what her clients have been through.  Even so, the losses still took a toll on her. She felt acute symptoms of grief in the first month, with flare ups anytime she saw her former clients in the news for their trials or sentencing. She had recurring nightmares with her clients in them. “They were always calling out for help. Someone had to help them.” What helped Caitlin most was having one colleague who understood what she was going through, because they worked with the same population. “One time I came into her office and cried,” Caitlin shared. “My mentor said, ‘Caitlin, you are working with people through some of the darkest moments of their lives. That doesn’t always mean they come out of the darkness by following your light.’”

Caitlin reflects on the importance of having a colleague or mentor who can hold this heaviness with us. Someone who aligns with our beliefs and gives us space to heal. Someone who supports the ugly cries and the dark humor. Someone who reinforces we aren’t alone. She also encourages colleagues to do their own psychological first aid, making sure to eat, sleep, and move their bodies. “You will want to freeze. Honor all your feelings. You will experience every stage of grief.” Caitlin doesn’t have any plans to pivot from this population because she operates from a belief that what we do as mental health professionals still matters. “For every horrible thing that happens, there are 10-20 that don’t end up that way. Those horrible things are still the minority.” Caitlin’s story provides a beacon of hope in light of something that feels so heavy and so powerless. We feel honored to be able to share her messages here.

Things happen to us as humans, even as we support our clients as professional helpers. Do you have a story you want to share the mental health community? Email us at croswaitecounselingpllc@gmail.com to learn more about the Human in the Helper Series!

The Human in the Helper: I was too busy to feel anything

Keiko is pursuing her doctorate in social work. When she’s not serving mothers and women in her private practice, she enjoys spending time with her two children. Although Keiko has big goals for herself, they were accelerated after her diagnosis with breast cancer in her late 30s. She shared how she and her doctor caught it at an early stage, but it was happening at the same time she’d joined a group practice and was building her caseload. “How do I deal with this?” Keiko reflected, “there’s no good time to have cancer.”

Keiko understood that as a small business owner, she couldn’t take time off or slow down without the risk of lost income. “I think I was in shock at first, then I was too busy to feel anything.” She recalls how she focused on making each doctor appointment and continuing to work. “I had to wait 1.5 months to get answers on what my treatment was going to be.”

After that stressful waiting period, Keiko was told she would undergo radiation and hormone treatments, but not chemotherapy. She elected to not tell her clients what was going on, especially as she was still unclear of the outcomes. “I didn’t want to worry them or have them caregive me as the result, “ she shared. Keiko also recognized some survivor’s guilt in her experience. “I didn’t go through the same process (chemo) as them, I can’t be glad in front of them.”

What helped Keiko most was doing her own therapy work with an oncology psychotherapist. “Cancer is weird, it was nice to work with someone who understands it.” She was grateful to connect with peers and cancer survivors as well, who continue to give her hope for her future.  Keiko has spent time reflecting on her priorities. “I want to see my children graduate, get married, and live happy lives.” So she evaluated her next steps and decided to pursue a doctorate in social work. “We think cancer equals death, and that’s not true.” Keiko is hopeful that her story will inspire others to fight cancer and pursue their passions. “It’s almost like having cancer can make us think, ‘let’s do this,’ giving us permission to do the things we want to do.”

Things happen to us as humans, even as we support our clients as professional helpers. Do you have a story you want to share the mental health community? Email us at croswaitecounselingpllc@gmail.com to learn more about the Human in the Helper Series!

Why Financial Therapists Like Loud Budgeting

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

Have you heard the term “loud budgeting” in 2024? It’s trending and describes the phenomenon of naming out loud when you can’t afford something, or more accurately, when you have enough money but don’t want to spend it on the thing that’s being asked of you.

Financial therapists know that words have power, so we aren’t about asking people to keep saying “I can’t afford this. I can’t afford that.” That self-talk has a negative effect on mental health and often keeps people living in scarcity. In contrast, loud budgeting is about saying no to spending.

So how do financial therapists see loud budgeting working? What if it can serve as an empowerment tool? What if it names out loud your values and priorities for saving and spending. Loud budgeting from this perspective could sound like:

I don’t want to prioritize that right now.

I don’t want to spend money on that.

That’s not a priority.

I have other goals in mind right now.

I’m saving my money for xxx.

I’ve already met my budget this month for (coffee/eating out/shopping/etc).

No thank you.

Meeting your money goals AND practicing boundaries with others sounds pretty good doesn’t it? So here’s your invitation to experiment with loud budgeting from a place of owning where you stand. It can serve as tool that isn’t about reinforcing your ability to afford something but focuses on not wanting or choosing to afford something, stating it isn’t a priority right now. It’s a new response to financial peer pressure, and I think financial therapists couldn’t be more excited for folks to try it out.