Where Parents Talk podcast host Lianne Castelino speaks to Dr. Joshua Coleman, clinical psychologist and author about parent and child estrangement.
DR. JOSHUA COLEMAN
Clinical Psychologist
Speaker
Parent and grandparent estrangement thought leader
Author, “Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict’
Father of 3
“What people don’t realize is that estrangement is a cataclysmic event in a family. It’s not dyadic, it’s not triadic. It affects the whole family system. It’s typical that if an adult child cuts off a parent, they also deny access to the grandchildren, even if the grandparents were reasonably good grandparents. It can divide siblings against sibling. One sibling might ally with the parent, the other sibling might ally with it, with the estranged child. It may, if not break up marriages. It often strains marriages, particularly because of the different ways that in heterosexual marriages, men and women handle conflict and stress.”
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Welcome to Where Parents Talk. My name is Lianne castelino. Our guest today is a clinical psychologist, speaker and thought leader in the area of parent and grandparent estrangement.
Dr Joshua Coleman is also an author. His latest book is called rules of estrangement, why adult children cut ties and how to heal the conflict. Dr Coleman is also a father of three, and he joins us today from the San Francisco Bay Area. Thank you so much for taking the time.
thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Dr Coleman, how would you go about describing the current landscape? Where are we when it comes to children and adult children being estranged from their parents?
Well, from my perspective, I think it’s a kind of silent epidemic. You know, in there was a study recently done that showed that one out of four fathers is estranged from an adult child. They’re 22% even more likely to be estranged from a daughter. That same studies found 6% of mothers are estranged from a child, but other studies have put it closer to 10 to 15% which is where I would put it. So a lot of parents are being estranged today, and they’re also being estranged for reasons that weren’t, weren’t really in existence in the past. So it certainly weren’t common political differences, particularly in the United States, whereas the group, the glue that kept families together through millennia, Honor thy mother and thy father, respect thy elders, families forever, that’s been largely replaced by a much more identitarian perspective. If a relationship doesn’t feel good to me, then not only can I cut that person off, I should cut that that person off. Protection of mental health has become a big priority. So there’s a lot of adult children who are cutting off parents, certainly for reasons of abuse and and neglect, but also for reasons that are much more psychological, much more subtle, much more political, and that really is causing a lot of disruption in the families
when you look at that landscape, because you’ve just outlined so many different contributing factors, and you know, societal pressures, etc, contributing to this issue, like what concerns you most when you look at that broadly? Well,
what concerns me most is that, you know, I’m often interviewed and people say, Well, you know, at what point should you cut off a family member? And I’m always okay answering that question. What people don’t realize is that estrangement is a cataclysmic event in a family. It’s not dyadic, it’s not triadic. It affects the whole family system. It’s typical that if an adult child cuts off a parent, they also deny access to the grandchildren, even if the grandparents were reasonably good grandparents. It can divide siblings against sibling. One sibling might ally with the parent, the other sibling might ally with it, with the estranged child. It may, if not break up marriages. It often strains marriages, particularly because of the different ways that in heterosexual marriages, men and women handle conflict and stress. And you know, who’s willing to make amends, which is a big part of my my recommendation to parents, and who’s not. So it’s a cataclysmic event in a family. And you know, in the United States, and I think in Western societies in general, we’re becoming much more atomized, much more individualistic the US. We have a huge problems with social isolation, with loneliness, with rising rates of mental illness. And I think a big part of that is kind of the destruction of family as a source of identity and comfort and care.
So when you look at that whole picture, like, what are we supposed to take away from it? Because on one level, so much has changed. You know, what are your personal value systems? What was your communication and your family relationship like in the first place. And then you add all these other elements, like, where is somebody supposed to start if they actually feel that they want to repair and want to address the estrangement?
Yeah. I mean, you know, most of the estrangements that happen these days are from the adult child to the parent, probably in earlier generations that might have been the parent estranging the adult child because they didn’t like who the person was marrying or their gender identity or their sexuality or their career choice. But these days, it’s much more the adult child, and from that perspective, it’s typically incumbent on the parent to do most of the initiating of the reconciliation, because the adult child, from their perspective, it’s working. You know, they feel they might feel happier, they might feel less stressed out. Life might feel simpler. They don’t have to have the conflict with the parents that they had so but for the parent, there’s no upside. It’s all it’s all pain, it’s all sadness, regret, guilt, remorse, anger, fear of what kind of. Future they’re going to have without their children or grandchildren. So from that perspective, it’s typically incumbent on parents to make the first move, and what I always tell parents to do is to try to start by writing a letter of amends. Now, some parents are completely cut off from their adult children. They are, they’ve been they’re not cut off from social media. They’re blocked on cell phone, they have no access to them in any way if they’ve moved and not given them an address, and in those situations, parents are really at a loss. But many parents still have a way to contact their children, and even if they’ve been directed to go no contact, which is the common way that it’s explained today or characterized today, I still encourage parents to begin by writing a letter that starts with something like, I know you wouldn’t do this unless you felt like it was the healthiest thing for you to do. Now that’s what it feels like to the adult child to the parent. It might not feel that way at all. It may feel the in fact, the opposite, but the parent has to get psychologically on the same page as the adult child, and they also have to recognize this fundamental shift in values that today relationships between parents and adult children have to be more egalitarian. They have to be more psychological. They have to involve communication, and often that communication happens with the parent being open to hearing the ways that they fail their child, they hurt their child, they neglected them, they traumatized them. And for parents, that’s a big ask, but for those parents who can actually do that work, not all, certainly, but for many who can do that work, they can find a much more receptive audience in their adult child. Now the adult child’s in, you know, my My wish is that for the adult child, that they could see the parent in a more sort of three dimensional way, that that even when parents behave terribly, they’re typically doing the best that they can do given their own childhood traumas or when they grew up, or who they had to partner, or their socioeconomic level, or all the other things that affect parenting, and at least be open to repair from the parent and to accept that that the kind of mistakes that the parent made, however hurtful, weren’t necessarily intentional, and particularly if the parents willing to work on themselves and be in therapy or the like, to give that parent a chance to to repair and to heal.
You know, it’s interesting, as I hear you lay out that description. One thing that strikes me is that, you know, none of that is possible. That is to say, finding a solution to the estrangement, if there isn’t a degree of awareness on the part of both parties, right. And when you throw in generational differences and all the different things you outline that could be factors that you outlined initially, it becomes really complicated. And in many cases, one side or the other may not have the capacity for that awareness. So in terms of stumbling blocks, how does one address it? If that is the issue? No,
I think that’s really well said. And when I do family therapy with parents and adult children, yeah, best case scenario, both are willing to be self reflective, to show empathy, to communicate well, to be psychological, to look at the other in a kind of more three dimensional way. But you’re right. Not everybody’s able to do it. Sometimes the parent isn’t able to do it, and they just can’t take my direction as much as I kind of sit on them and tell them to do it. And I warned parents before I get on the call with them, look, if I see you starting to sound critical or making your child feel guilty or being defensive, I’m going to going to correct you and let you know that you’re going down the wrong path, and this is why your child doesn’t want a relationship with you. And then for the adult child, I encourage them to communicate their feelings in a calm, constructive, non blaming, non critical, non name calling way. But you’re right, not everybody’s able to do that, and that does pose challenges. Typically the person who wants the relationship more, which is more typically, the parent, has to do more of the work, and that’s why so much my methodology is oriented towards helping the parent, because they’re typically the ones who are in much more pain about the loss of the relationship. But we all have to sort of take people where they are, whether they’re our family or our friends or co workers, and sort of work based on our own awareness, on what’s going to make that create the conditions where they’re going to feel the most compelled to communicate in a way that’s in line with our hopes, and typically, that’s communicating in a way that’s empathic. It’s not not critical, not negative, doesn’t invoke defensiveness in the other person. Those are typically kind of the key principles that promotes good communication.
Dr Coleman, what inspired you or led you or motivated you to writing rules of estrangement.
Sure? Why? My first book I wrote on this topic was when parents hurt, and I wrote that in 2007 and I wrote that because I had experience in estrangement from my own daughter in her 20s. I was married and divorced in my 20s, and adult daughter I’m very close to, and felt. Was doing much of her younger years, but but there were ways, when I got remarried, had twins from my current marriage, that she felt displaced, that she felt left out, that she felt hurt, she didn’t feel prioritized, and I didn’t initially respond very sensitively to that when she wanted to talk to me about it, so she eventually withdrew and stopped communicating with me. And at the time, it was easily the most painful, awful thing I’ve ever been through, and hope to go through ever again. And there was very little written to help me, and the advice that I got from friends and the therapist I was seeing were really counter productive, well meaning, but but counterproductive, which only made her feel less understood. So it really wasn’t until I kind of changed my method to, you know, just working on, just hearing it purely from her perspective, not defending myself, taking responsibility, finding the kernel, if not the bushel, of truth in her complaints, that really things began to turn around. And we eventually reconciled. And I thought, Well, gosh, there’s no guidance enough that I should write a book on that. So I wrote my first book when parents hurt, and as a result of that, got a wide following of estranged parents, both in the US and in other countries. As a result of that, developed a webinar series that I’ve been doing for the past 12 years for estranged parents. And because I got so many emails, I started doing a free Q and A every other Monday, which I still still do for estranged parents, because I just cannot respond to all the emails that I get. And then, based on that, I wrote my more recent book, rules of estrangement, and that was probably based on a study I did out of the Wisconsin University of Wisconsin Survey Center of 1600 estranged parents. And so I looked at things that I didn’t talk about as much in the first book, such as the rule, the way that a son in law or daughter in law can produce estrangement, mental illness, certainly in the parent, but also in a child, the role of divorce, the effect on grandparents, the role of therapists as being agents of estrangement. So that’s kind of the personal, the way the personal began to transform the professional. In this case,
really interesting, lived experience there. What would you say that you learned through that journey, that you yourself as a clinical psychologist, experienced as a father, that you wish you’d known when you were going through it earlier into that process? Perhaps,
yeah, I mean, it’s what all the estranged parents say to me when they read my book, I wish I’d read your book sooner, and that is to seek to understand and be curious and be empathic and don’t be defensive, even you’re going to feel misunderstood, you’re going to feel hurt, you’re probably going to feel unappreciated, you’re going to want to talk your child out of their feelings. And all of that is counterproductive. It’s just going to make your child feel unseen, unheard, hurt like you don’t really care about them. You’re just trying to prove yourself, right? I think in general, dads have a harder time with this than mothers do, which is partly the reasons that so many dads are estranged versus mothers. Of course, divorce is also a big cause of that. But I think that those are really, those are really the key elements, and really, you know, the statement that I tell parents to make at the beginning of their men’s letters. I know you wouldn’t do this unless you felt like it was the healthiest thing for you to do. You know, I’ve had a lot of parents write back that their adult children responded really well to that, because from the adult child’s perspective, you know, they don’t really want the parent to feel shamed or criticized or humiliated or belittled, belittled in the way that the parent does, particularly the healthier one, somebody who’s really troubled might, but even underneath that, they really want the parent to understand and do a better job in reaching out to them and caring about them. So really helping the parent to I mean, I learned that being defensive doesn’t help trying to persuade my daughter. Didn’t help reminding her of all the ways I was a good parent. Didn’t help trying to prove her wrong. All those things just make the other person feel alienated. And those are sort of general principles that are true also in marriage or other family relationships, the more that we can just empathize, shut the hell up. Try to be empathic, try to take responsibility, try to find the kernel, if not the bushel, of truth and the person’s complaints about us, the better we do. But I think that one of the reasons, and this wasn’t true for my daughter, but but one of the reasons so many parents struggle today is that what gets defined as abuse, trauma, harm and neglect is really generationally different so and there was a study by Nick Haslam, out of the Australian psychologist who developed the notion of concept creep. And Haslam found that in the past three or four decades, there’s been an enormous expansion over what gets labeled as harmful, abusive, neglectful, traumatizing behavior. So so many adult children are writing their parents saying, you emotionally abused me, you traumatized me, you harmed me. And the parents are going, what I gave you a childhood I would have killed for you know, which, again, is not the right thing to say, but, but from the adult child’s perspective, they’ve been raised in. An environment where this is what’s getting labeled and diagnosed with abusive behavior, which for the parent, none of that was considered or most of it wasn’t considered abusive. So that also can be really challenging for parents. And there I can tell parents to say, well, it’s clear that I had blind spots that I didn’t know that that felt abusive to you, but I’m glad you’re letting me know I’m open to working on this, either with you, or in therapy, talking more about it, etc. Anything that sounds defensive or is defensive is going to be counterproductive, is the biggest message I’ve got.
You know, it’s interesting because of of all the things that you’ve mentioned there in terms of contributing factors to being estranged from your parent. You know, it strikes me that fear of an individual or individuals in the family, or even guilt as a part of the conversation that you know maybe that’s how the parent approaches it are things that can also affect whether that relationship can be repaired or not. So my question then is, are there circumstances, excluding abuse, where maybe there is no solution for the estrangement?
Well? And by solution Well, I mean, I can think of certainly many cases of that. One is if there’s mental ill, severe mental illness in the parent and they just can’t help but continue to to traumatize the child, but mental illness or addictions in the adult child, I mean, that may remediate over time, but, but that can certainly be an enormous obstacle. I commonly see that a troubled son in law or daughter in law can tell the adult child, choose them or me, you can’t have both, and the cost to that son or daughter of defying their son, the son in law or daughter in law, is so high that they just say, you know, that they’re not going to choose the parent, because they just can’t live with the stress of their partner being so mad and angry at them all the time. I think therapists are doing a lot of damage. Not all therapists, really, but I think there’s a lot of untrained therapists who are assuming that every problem with adulthood has an Australian has a traumatizing parent in the past, and so they are telling the the adult child that it’s better for them to not be with the parent, that they’re continuing, going to continue to expose themselves. I sometimes see letters where they you know, they say, Well, your parents are narcissists, and narcissists can’t change and the parent actually isn’t a narcissist. So I think those situations are very, very difficult to change. Divorce isn’t necessarily an impossible one to change, but in my own research, 70% of the parents who contacted me, had a divorce from the biological parents. So there’s a lot of ways that divorce can make things much harder to heal, particularly with fathers and daughters, they’re the most at risk of all the Dyads.
Dr Coleman, speaking of research, I wonder if you could take us through the process that you undertook to write rules of estrangement. I’m sorry, what was the question? What is the process that you undertook to write your book?
Well, I did the study of 1600 parents, and looked at various things like whether the parent was married, quality of them, the marriage, whether Childhood Mental Illness, parent had mental illness, a whole bunch of different factors. So the book was largely, though, written by my clinical experience and exposure to really, literally 1000s of parents, whether it’s through my webinars or my Q and A’s or my private practice, and just kind of assimilating the different content areas that would cause somebody to be estranged. Kind of, what do I see the most? What does the research show that kind of thing?
Do you expect to continue to see an uptick in this space, in terms of ongoing growth, in terms of where we are as a society, where relationships are, where communications within families is these days, despite having more communications methods than ever in the history of the world. Is this something that we’re going to continue to see potentially increase, or is the pendulum going to swing the other way
again? Well, it is a paradox, as you say that that on the one hand, we’ve got better communications than ever, and in some ways, you know, on the one hand, I want to say worse family relationships than ever. But actually, that’s not, that’s not, that’s a mischaracterization. I mean, you know, estrangement is on the rise, and it’s also a significant factor, but, but other research shows that it’s not in contradiction. It’s just a different observation. The majority of parents raising adult children today are actually in a lot of contact with them, and other surveys showed that the majority of parents feel like they’re closer to their adult children than they felt to their own parents at a similar age. So one ways to think about it is that the kind of much more close, psychological, parenting, intensive environment that we’ve been doing over the past four or five decades has largely produced positive relationships between. Between parents and adult children. Well, they’re actually in much more contact than they were in prior generations. But the downside to that is that for some adult children, they get too much of the parent. So, you know, certain percentage of a strange what’s actually happened, because the adult child doesn’t know any other way to feel separate from the parent, you know, and cell phones exacerbate that. Also that, you know, you can’t sort of have that organic evolution away from your parents, the way we could say in my generation, pre cell phones, where, you know, I could go for two weeks without talking to my parents unless I wanted to make a collect call back from San Francisco to Dayton, you know. And it was just it was easier to be out of touch without it meaning something, whereas now a parent can send their child a text or an email, and in two days like you haven’t responded to my email or my text, are you mad at me? You know, I just think that it makes the environment much more crowded and so on. The positive, yes, if things are going well, it’s great and exchange pictures of your grandchildren and talk about things and send funny texts, etc. But if it’s not going well, then all that becomes more fraught, and texts and emails or it can be grossly misunderstood, and just the way that this therapeutic narratives have really become the dominant narrative of our culture also just puts more parents at risk, because adult children have kind of they’re just much better armed from their therapy and the therapeutic culture to challenge their parents with their parenting, and parents haven’t yet caught up with the right way to communicate about all of that. So I think all of that really matters in these discussions. When
we talk about the word estrangement, and we think about it in terms of timelines, can you give us some perspective in terms of what are we looking at? At what point is a relationship considered as strange?
Is it days, months, weeks, years?
Yeah. I mean, I think that it’s, I don’t think if there’s any particular agreement about that, but I think that, you know, typically, you know, if somebody writes their parent a no contact letter, or say, I want you out of my life, but it’s not good for my mental health to have you in my life, that parents should consider themselves reasonably to be estranged. Now, sometimes parents are on the estrangement track before they even know it, and the adult child is sending all kinds of warning flares up saying, Look, if you don’t change this behavior, you don’t stop criticizing my parenting, or if you don’t take more responsibility for the ways that I felt hurt by you as a child, I’m not going to want to have a relationship with you. I mean, that’s a pre estrangement environment. I always tell parents to take that very, very seriously, because your kids giving you an opportunity to correct them. But some parents just don’t see the gravity of it, or there have been messages that the parents not seeing, or the adult child is really not communicating, communicating until suddenly they’re out of contact. The parents very confused about it. The research, I mean, this is the study done out of Ohio State by Ren Resnick, who found that 26% of dads are estranged from from their parents. She found that the majority of estrangements occur in the 20s, and she found that with mothers, roughly 80% resolve and closer to 70% resolve by father’s average length of time is between two to three years. And that’s I mean that squares with what I see in my clinical practice as well.
Dr Coleman, what would you like readers of rules of estrangement to take away from your book?
I think that there, there are methods to because most of the time it’s it’s parents who are reading the book of I’ve had a lot of adult children read it. I’ve had a lot of them send it to their parents as well. So I think the main message is a have compassion for yourself for the mistakes that you made as a parent, but be have compassion for your adult child, that even if you felt like you did a reasonably good job, or objectively did a good job, that your adult child may have a very different perspective about what they needed or wanted from you, and the more that you can embrace that and take responsibility and show empathy and compassion and not be defensive, the better the chances there are for reconciliation.
Dr Joshua Coleman, clinical psychologist, author of rules of estrangement, really appreciate your time and your perspective today. Thank you so much. Yeah,
thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.
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