The Art of Manliness - What's Behind the Rise of Parent-Child Estrangement？

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.580 These days, you hear more and more about parents and adult children being estranged from each

00:00:15.840 other. Some individuals have even decided to go no contact with their parents. They

00:00:21.120 don't want anything to do with their mom and or dad at all. To understand what's behind

00:00:25.460 this phenomenon, today I talked to Joshua Coleman, a psychologist who spent 40 years

00:00:29.860 counseling families and the author of Rules of Estrangement, Why Adult Children Cut Ties

00:00:34.760 and How to Heal the Conflict. Joshua goes beyond the typical one-sided narratives around parent-child

00:00:40.120 estrangement that tell the story of parents who got what they deserve or overly entitled

00:00:44.580 adult children who wrongly blame their parents to unpack the larger cultural context for why

00:00:48.800 these tensions have arisen. We discuss how society has moved from upholding and honor thy father

00:00:53.360 and mother's sense of obligation to prioritizing individuality and optionality, and why, despite 0.90

00:00:58.460 the fact we're more child-focused and psychologically aware than ever, familial estrangements are on

00:01:03.000 the rise. We get into the common reasons for estrangement, the role that expanding ideas of

00:01:07.900 what constitutes abuse and trauma an adult child's therapist can play in it, and how much

00:01:12.140 parents can really be blamed for how their kids turn out. And we get into what parents who

00:01:16.080 are estranged from the children can do to reconcile with them. Even if you're not personally estranged

00:01:20.300 from a family member, the discussion of the underlying dynamics influencing all our modern

00:01:24.180 relationships is a fascinating one. After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is

00:01:28.700 slash estrangement.

00:01:40.360 All right, Dr. Joshua Coleman, welcome to the show.

00:01:43.400 Thanks for having me.

00:01:44.040 So you are a psychologist who specializes in working with parents and adult children who

00:01:50.940 have become estranged from each other. And you've written a book about that called

00:01:54.540 The Rules of Estrangement. Let's start with definitions first. What is parent-child estrangement?

00:02:02.680 You know, people define it in different ways. The way that I think about it is when there's been

00:02:07.300 a complete or a near-complete cutoff between the two. So there's, you know, little to no contact.

00:02:14.880 Maybe there's the occasional birthday greeting or Mother's or Father's Day greeting, but otherwise

00:02:20.060 there's essentially no relationship.

00:02:23.320 Does estrangement have to be explicit? Like does either the parent or the child have to say,

00:02:28.560 I'm done with you, I don't want anything to do with you, or can it just be like a silent

00:02:32.800 distancing?

00:02:33.340 Yeah, sometimes it works that way. I have a lot of parents in my practice where all of a sudden

00:02:38.960 the adult child isn't responding to phone, texts, emails. Now they're cut off from social

00:02:44.460 media. Sometimes they move and don't tell the parent. So that's probably not the majority of

00:02:50.200 cases, but those cases certainly exist.

00:02:52.700 They ghost their parents is what they do.

00:02:54.280 Exactly. They ghost the parents. That's right.

00:02:56.000 It seems like more and more adult children are becoming estranged from their parents.

00:03:00.120 It seems like every other week I see an article about this somewhere or something on social

00:03:04.780 media about it. Is this a new phenomenon or is the media just covering it more so we just

00:03:09.980 hear about it more because you see it on the news or your Instagram feed?

00:03:15.100 Yeah. I think the extent of it is new. I mean, I, you know, I think we have to assume that there's

00:03:20.080 always been strained, distant, or even non-existent relationships between parents and adult

00:03:25.240 children, but I don't think it's nearly the numbers that we're, we're seeing today. You know,

00:03:30.940 a recent study by Wren Resnick at Ohio State and her colleagues found that some 26% of fathers are

00:03:38.100 estranged from an adult child. That same study found that 6% of mothers, but other studies

00:03:43.320 show between 10 and 15% of mothers. I don't think that those figures have always been the case.

00:03:49.560 I mean, one of the problems from a research perspective is that we didn't really, we don't

00:03:53.480 have a beginning, a start date to look at estrangement the way that we do other things,

00:03:58.400 say divorce, for example. But if we just use divorce, for example, as a start date, it's

00:04:03.520 clear that divorce is a really common pathway to estrangement. In my survey of 1600 estranged

00:04:10.320 parents that I conducted through the University of Wisconsin Survey Center, we found that 70% of

00:04:16.280 parents who were estranged were divorced from the other biological parent and didn't become estranged

00:04:22.900 until after the divorce. So we know that if we just use divorce as a starting point, I would assume

00:04:27.800 that there weren't nearly the numbers of estrangement that there were once we started making divorce a

00:04:33.520 more common part of, of our culture. Similarly, if you look at non-marital childbirth in the 1960s,

00:04:40.500 only 5% of children were born outside of marriage. Today, it's more like 40%. And those,

00:04:46.840 those families are very high at risk for estrangement, particularly for fathers. So just using those as

00:04:53.580 data points, I think those are significant. But then you add on to it, this identitarian moment that

00:04:59.160 we're at currently where one's identity has become much more in the foreground where the moral

00:05:05.820 framework that kind of animated families for millennia, honor thy mother and thy father,

00:05:12.040 respect thy elders, families forever, really in the past century has given way to this much more

00:05:17.640 personal growth, self-esteem, pursuit of happiness framework, where relationships are much more

00:05:24.980 constituted on what the British sociologist Anthony Giddens calls pure relationships, meaning that the

00:05:31.620 relationships that are purely constituted on the basis of whether or not the relationship is in line

00:05:35.980 with my ideals for happiness and growth and the like. And if they're not, then not only can I cut out a

00:05:42.140 parent or family member, I should do it. In some ways, it's an act of existential cowardice not to do

00:05:47.860 that. And, and I think that that's historically new. Social media is absolutely an amplifier. Rising rates of

00:05:54.220 individualism is an amplifier. So there's a lot of things that I believe are, are fanning the flames to

00:06:00.740 this. Yeah. You're the sections in the book where you kind of explore what's driving the increase in

00:06:06.780 estrangement. I thought it was, it was really interesting because you basically bring to the

00:06:10.740 foreground things that have been happening in the background and how it's affecting families. And so that,

00:06:16.000 that shift that you talk about from the framework of honor thy father and thy mother, sort of the idea of

00:06:21.800 filial duty that doesn't really exist anymore. It seems like the relationship between parents and

00:06:28.040 children is something different. Right. And particularly in, in Western societies, I think

00:06:34.300 that that is probably not nearly as much the case in say South and East Asian countries and large,

00:06:41.040 probably the majority of areas in the Middle East. So I think that it's mostly a Western phenomenon.

00:06:46.720 You know, I don't know if you've read Joseph Heinrich's excellent book,

00:06:49.780 The Weirdest People in the World, where WEIR is an acronym for Western educated, industrialized,

00:06:56.200 rich democracies. And one of the things that he found is that in those societies, people are just

00:07:00.880 much more oriented towards their own happiness and identity and personal expression and much less

00:07:06.680 oriented towards relationships. And that's just not the case in large parts of the world. So we don't have

00:07:12.460 good statistics about estrangement rates in other countries, but in my interviews with people in

00:07:17.220 other countries, I find that it's far less common. Yeah. And it seems like to the expectation of the

00:07:22.960 parent-child relationship, it's more like a romantic or a friendship relationship where it's a voluntary

00:07:28.480 thing, right? You have to work, each party has to work for it, but it has to fit for both parties.

00:07:33.560 And it's exactly right. That, that it's kind of predicated on the same principles as Giddens' pure

00:07:39.200 relationship. That if it's not in line with my ideals for happiness and personal growth and mental

00:07:44.240 health, then not only can I jettison that relationship, but I should do it. And to not

00:07:50.000 do it is an act of self-neglect. And one of the points you make throughout the book is that it used

00:07:55.720 to be that children had to earn their parents' love and respect, but now it's the opposite. The

00:08:00.160 parent's job is to earn their children's love and respect. And they have to continue to do that

00:08:04.520 throughout their children's adult lives. That's right. Well, nothing compels an adult child

00:08:09.840 to have a relationship with that parent beyond that adult child's desire to have that relationship.

00:08:15.300 So if the moral framework is shifted around families away from that parents are sort of owed

00:08:20.140 a certain degree of gratitude and obligation and responsibility and respect, and it's much more

00:08:25.620 predicated on whether or not the relationship is in line with the adult child's ideals and standards,

00:08:31.200 that really disempowers the parent in terms of their ability to negotiate the relationship and

00:08:37.680 greatly empowers the adult child. And this is partly a function of smaller family sizes,

00:08:44.120 the role of therapy that, you know, we used to think that difficulties in life would actually

00:08:51.260 make children stronger. But over the 20th century, we began to develop the idea that children are

00:08:56.580 fragile, that they're vulnerable, that they require a kind of hothouse parenting in order to thrive and

00:09:02.600 succeed. And in the era of personal rights in the 1960s, children's rights became very much in the

00:09:08.400 foreground. So the era of children being seen and not heard gave way to children really being

00:09:13.160 the center of family life. And today, I mean, I'm a boomer. And so when I was growing up, my stay-at-home

00:09:20.520 mothers spent less time with me than career mothers spend with their children today. So children have 0.77

00:09:26.360 moved much more into the front and center of family life. And that's really increased their authority to

00:09:31.800 sort of dictate the terms, both when they're young, living in the home, but also when they're grown.

00:09:36.400 Yeah. That's one of the paradoxes you point out in the book is that we're more child-focused and

00:09:40.680 we're also more psychologically aware than ever. Like everyone's read the books on how to talk to your

00:09:45.340 kid, written by psychologists. They talk to their kids in a very therapeutic way, yet estrangement seems

00:09:51.680 to be rising. Yeah. I think it's similar as to the kind of high stable divorce rates that were still at

00:09:58.460 around 50% divorce rates. And on the one hand, the good news about parent-adult-child relationships

00:10:04.520 is that, you know, if you look at some of the large surveys, probably the majority of parents raising

00:10:10.260 adult children or, you know, having relationships with adult children would say that they feel

00:10:15.080 closer to them than they believe their parents felt to them at a similar age. So in many ways, it's much more

00:10:20.860 intensive, psychologically aware, conscientious form of parenting, I think has in many ways

00:10:27.600 really increased the quality of relationships between parents and adult children. In the same

00:10:33.520 way that more egalitarian, psychologically intensive marriages and communication have made for better

00:10:39.920 marriages. But both sides, both marriage and parent-adult-child relationships are based upon

00:10:46.600 this much more kind of unstable quality, which is that if it doesn't feel good, you can leave. And

00:10:52.400 not only can you leave, but you should leave. So it's really the culture of both kinds of relationships

00:10:58.080 that are based on, framed much less around kind of the more moral, old school ideals around family

00:11:04.660 and much more around this identitarian, personal happiness, personal growth, personal expression,

00:11:10.080 orientation. So it sounds like there's pluses and minuses to this shift.

00:11:13.880 There are indeed. Yeah. And it isn't my position that nobody should or can ever estrange themselves

00:11:19.920 from a parent or any other destructive family member. I think in the same way that the liberalization

00:11:26.220 of divorce laws allowed people, women in particular, to be able to leave abusive marriages, I think that

00:11:32.700 our cultural shift that's more supportive of estrangement has allowed adult children who maybe in

00:11:39.020 other cultures or other times would have felt obligated to stay in contact with parents who are really

00:11:43.440 destructive to their self-esteem or happiness. They're allowed to separate from them. That's the

00:11:48.700 upside. And the downside is that it's so easy to do it that in the same way that making divorce so easy

00:11:54.740 to obtain means that a lot of people who probably could have and did in fact work their way through

00:11:59.600 difficult issues when they were married, when they really couldn't get a divorce or couldn't easily

00:12:03.860 get a divorce, they figured it out. The same, similarly with adult children who cut off parents,

00:12:08.540 that with more time and patience and effort, they might be able to work something through with a

00:12:15.140 parent that they now could easily discard. Yeah. I think a big source of contention between parents

00:12:20.920 and children is that parents and children, particularly older parents, like boomers,

00:12:25.760 they're both in two different worlds, like moral worlds when it comes to parent-child relationships.

00:12:30.900 Like the older parent might think, well, no, it's old school. Like you'd honor thy father and thy mother.

00:12:35.760 And like, you just got to come see me even if you don't want to, because that's what you're supposed

00:12:39.600 to do. Um, and then the kid's like, no, that's not how it is. And then the parent gets upset and

00:12:46.600 that's the source of tension. No, that's exactly right. And, and so much of my work is helping

00:12:52.600 because I'm, cause it's typically the parent that reaches out to me because it's typically the parent

00:12:57.340 is the one who's been estranged. Parents don't typically estrange their children. Some do for

00:13:01.960 religious reasons or they, they disapprove of their child's gender identity or sexuality or who

00:13:06.860 they married, but that's the vast minority. Typically if an estrangement happens, it's because

00:13:11.400 the adult child has initiated it. And a lot of my work is helping parents kind of navigate the way

00:13:17.180 that guilt no longer works. That ship has, has sailed the way that you can sort of guilt trip your

00:13:22.340 child into, into contact, you know, or making them, reminding them of all the things that you've,

00:13:28.680 you've done for them. And the other part and parcel of that, I know you had Nick Haslam on your,

00:13:34.220 on your show and he wrote, you know, I think one of the most important articles to explain this

00:13:39.320 moment, the notion of concept creep. And that is the idea that in the past three decades, well,

00:13:44.980 he wrote the article, I think in 2016, but there's been this enormous expansion over what we consider to

00:13:51.520 be harmful, abusive, traumatizing, neglectful behavior. So younger generations have been kind of

00:13:57.720 steeped in this, this framework and whether it's with their own therapist or self-help or,

00:14:03.140 you know, podcasts or Instagram influencers, TikTok influencers, ideas about who's a borderline

00:14:10.240 parent, who's a narcissist, who's a gaslighter, et cetera, why you should cut off your parent and the 0.55

00:14:16.420 value in doing that. Whereas older generations, Gen X and boomers, for example, were raised with a much

00:14:22.480 more, a much more conservative view of what constitutes harmful, abusive, traumatizing,

00:14:28.800 and neglectful behavior. So what often happens is that younger generations are coming to their parents

00:14:33.920 after, as a result of being in therapy or some other influence and saying, well, you emotionally abused me

00:14:39.060 or you neglected me, or this was emotional incest or, you know, any of the other terms that are so

00:14:44.000 popular. And the parent's response is often like, what are you talking about? That wasn't abuse. I would

00:14:49.800 have killed have had a childhood like yours. That wasn't abusive. And then of course, as you can

00:14:54.640 imagine, then they're off to the races. Then the adult child feels really misunderstood. They feel

00:14:59.580 like they've got evidence based on their kind of, you know, culture of information. Whereas the parent

00:15:05.720 feels completely disrespected and hurt and misunderstood based on their ideals of what good

00:15:12.380 parenting looks like. So a lot of my work is often helping parents to see how much the ground has

00:15:17.920 changed and really learning how to use the language that their children are using. So it's not so

00:15:22.860 incomprehensible to them. Yeah. As I was reading through that section about, you know, the shift

00:15:27.620 between duty bound to more intentional relationships between parents and children, it forced me to

00:15:34.280 reflect like what kind of relationship I want to have with my kids. And I think I'm sort of like the

00:15:37.860 new school. Like, I don't feel like my kids owe me anything. Like they didn't ask to be born.

00:15:42.420 Even though I've invested a lot of time and energy and money into them, like they've given me

00:15:46.640 meaning and joy and purpose. So it seems like, you know, neither of us owe each other or anything.

00:15:51.500 Like we both, maybe we both owe each other equally. And, you know, when I think about my kids getting

00:15:57.600 older and leaving the house, I, I want them to come back because they want to, and not just out of

00:16:04.320 obligation. I mean, I just, cause I just feel like it wouldn't feel good if it was begrudging and they

00:16:10.100 were just visiting me because they felt like they had to. Well, you might not feel that way if that was the

00:16:15.760 only way you could ever see your child or grandchildren again. I mean, the people in my

00:16:19.520 practice, the parents and grandparents in my practice are miserable. You know, I did a retreat

00:16:23.340 for estranged parents last year. There's 15 people in the room and one of the mothers was talking about

00:16:28.280 feeling suicidal. And I said, by show of hands, if anybody else felt suicidal as a result of their

00:16:34.520 estrangement and every single person raised their hands. Now those were mostly mothers. I think dads tend

00:16:39.480 to be better at compartmentalizing, but the amount of misery that these parents and grandparents are

00:16:45.420 feeling, I mean, to me, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world for people to, to show up

00:16:50.640 out of a sense of duty or obligation. I mean, obviously we'd all rather our children spend time

00:16:55.520 with us because they love us or want to spend time with us. So they think that we're so, so great.

00:17:00.800 But I think if I had the choice between seeing my kids, you know, multiple times a year and they

00:17:05.820 were kind of, I mean, assuming that they weren't just miserable acting miserably towards me while

00:17:10.020 I was here, but if I felt like the only way I could get them to come would be out of some sense

00:17:13.940 of duty and obligation, but they, you know, they could have a reasonable time. They weren't assholes 0.85

00:17:18.200 about it. Neither was I. Then I would kind of take that, take that deal because it would be better 0.98

00:17:23.260 than the absolute immiseration of never seeing them again, which is the fate that's facing so many

00:17:28.220 parents and grandparents today. So I actually do think that adult children owe their parents

00:17:33.180 something. They wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the parent. Neither would they have children

00:17:37.160 if there's grandchildren involved. Now, does that mean that they have to accept abusive behavior?

00:17:42.800 No. Does that mean they have to be as available to the parent as that parent wants them to be,

00:17:47.840 or that they can, the parent can just, you know, communicate as crappily as they want to and be

00:17:52.020 difficult or demanding or whatever? Absolutely not. The parent still has to do their part.

00:17:56.760 They have to show up in this 21st century way, right? They still have to be, you know,

00:18:01.460 somewhat conscientious about how they impacted their child. They have to be open to getting

00:18:05.220 feedback about the way that their parenting may have impacted their child. So I think both sides

00:18:12.100 owe, at the very least, they owe each other due diligence. So an adult child owes the parent

00:18:17.520 the opportunity to work through their issues and to give them the time to do that, to do family therapy,

00:18:23.040 to give them a pathway towards doing that, to see that the parent really did do the best they

00:18:28.620 could raising their child as a result of their own genetics or socioeconomic class or their own

00:18:34.500 childhood traumas or experiences or who they were married to. And a certain degree of compassion

00:18:40.120 should be brought to bear from both sides. At the same time, parents have to do a lot of work towards

00:18:45.720 taking responsibility and showing, you know, empathy towards their children for how they impacted

00:18:50.140 them. They can't just say, hey, I did the best that I could, too bad. The parent still has to

00:18:54.580 really be self-reflective and take responsibility and meet this moment where they do have to be much

00:18:59.160 more psychological.

00:19:00.680 In your work, what are the most common issues that cause parent-child estrangement?

00:19:06.880 Sure. I mean, if you look at the adult child's perspective, what they will say is

00:19:10.980 emotional abuse is probably the biggest complaint, values differences, sometimes physical abuse.

00:19:18.440 And that is certainly one pathway. And I do see that in my practice. But it isn't the only pathway.

00:19:23.820 Other pathways are divorce, as I mentioned earlier. That's probably the single most common pathway 0.86

00:19:30.180 to estrangement, particularly for fathers. Divorce can cause one parent to alienate the other parent

00:19:37.620 with the child. It may bring in new people that the child has to compete with for emotional or material

00:19:43.800 resources. It could cause the child to not like the new half-siblings or step-siblings. In a highly

00:19:51.200 individualistic culture like ours, it could cause the child, young or old, to see the parents more

00:19:55.800 as individuals with their own strengths and weaknesses, unless it's a family unit that they're

00:19:59.780 a part of. That's huge. When the adult child marries, that can be a trigger point. If the person that the

00:20:07.220 adult child marries doesn't like the parent or parents and says, choose them or me, you can't have

00:20:12.420 both. That's oddly not that uncommon. Mental illness on the part of the parent or addictive

00:20:18.800 issues on the part of the parent, certainly, but also mental illness or addictive issues on the part

00:20:23.600 of the adult child. Therapy, bad therapy or therapists assume that every symptom that an adult

00:20:29.240 child has comes from bad parenting and they support or encourage an estrangement. And finally,

00:20:34.960 you know, because parents have been investing much more in the past four decades or so in particular,

00:20:41.640 some adult children don't know any other way to feel separate from the parent than to cut them off.

00:20:46.120 In some ways, they've gotten too much of a good thing. So, I mean, in my, you know, since I'm a

00:20:50.980 boomer, I mean, parents in my parents' generation probably erred more on the side of being, you know,

00:20:55.700 sort of neglectful in a certain way, dads in particular. But parents of my generation and every

00:21:00.440 generation since, I think, if they erred on either side, it was towards being more intrusive, more

00:21:05.420 enmeshed with their children. You know, people have given up on their social, you know, my mother

00:21:10.320 used to play mahjong with the girls every week and my dad was at the Y playing scotch all weekend or

00:21:14.820 golfing and none of them worried about us feeling neglected. And that has largely changed where

00:21:19.640 children have really become front and center and people have given up on time with other people or

00:21:25.240 other interests. And, you know, again, it's, it's largely a net gain, but it also means that some

00:21:31.440 kids just get too much of the parent, particularly in the age of cell phone use where there's kind of

00:21:36.640 no escape. You know, I think a certain percentage of estrangers would never happen if it could just

00:21:42.280 have had the experience that so many of us had where, you know, we move away and maybe we

00:21:47.740 write our parents, you know, two weeks later, maybe we call them collect once in a while. Whereas,

00:21:52.820 you know, for my generation of parents in every generation since, you could just reach your child

00:21:57.720 from any point in the world. And I think that can just be somewhat intrusive for some kids.

00:22:02.440 Yeah. This kid feels suffocated in order to create some boundaries. There's like,

00:22:06.760 I got to cut you off completely.

00:22:08.460 Yeah, exactly. That's true. I mean, boundaries is the single most common word I see in every letter

00:22:13.700 from an estranged child. You need to respect my boundaries.

00:22:16.540 Yeah. You know, going back to that idea of abuse, you say abuse, whether it's a physical abuse or

00:22:25.240 emotional abuse, that's a legitimate reason to cut off your parents. But as you mentioned with

00:22:30.300 Nick Haslam's work, what constitutes abuse has changed. Like it's expanded. So, you know,

00:22:36.900 things maybe 30 years ago wouldn't have been considered abuse. Now it's considered abuse and

00:22:42.460 a reason for cutoff. Yeah. Abuse and trauma. I mean, trauma I think is grossly misused and

00:22:48.100 misunderstood. I mean, the research on trauma by people like George Bonanno at Columbia or Joel

00:22:54.800 Paris at University of Toronto shows that the traumatic experience doesn't necessarily have

00:23:00.360 the lifelong implications and deformations that were sort of made to feel like it has. Not to make

00:23:07.380 light of it, but 25% of people may have lifelong issues as a result of traumatic experiences,

00:23:14.280 but 75% won't. And I think our culture does a poor job distinguishing between distress and trauma or

00:23:20.960 conflict and abuse. And I think all of those get kind of blended together, which on the one hand,

00:23:26.300 I wouldn't care except that so many young adults are sort of using that as a reason to estrange the

00:23:32.220 parent saying, well, you traumatized me when I was young and therefore I don't owe you a relationship.

00:23:38.940 And so, you know, on the good news again about that is that it sort of provides people with a way to

00:23:44.240 talk about painful experiences and have a social legitimacy in talking about them that they might

00:23:49.120 not have had in other generations. But the bad news is that, yes, it has been so grossly expanded

00:23:55.380 that things that shouldn't really fall under that rubric get called that. And then, you know,

00:24:02.420 with the wrong therapist or the wrong set of information, that person is on the way to cutting

00:24:07.860 off a parent who was very good. I mean, there's a, the sociologist Eva Elluz says that today our lives

00:24:14.940 are plotted backwards. What's a dysfunctional family? It's a family where your needs weren't met.

00:24:19.680 How do you know that your needs weren't met? By looking at your present condition.

00:24:23.220 And I like that quote because so many young adults are coming into therapy or into adulthood and

00:24:29.180 thinking, well, I've got depression or anxiety or other serious psychological issues. I need to sort

00:24:34.920 of reverse engineer this and look at my childhood and figure out where the traumas were so I can

00:24:41.200 understand that. And, you know, a certain percentage of them, you know, likely were traumatized,

00:24:47.360 but another percentage aren't going to be. I mean, if we look at the research just on cohort effects,

00:24:51.620 the research of Gene Twenge or Jonathan Haidt, who showed that just the fact that you're a Gen Z,

00:24:57.080 that you're born between 1995 and 2012, roughly, means you're at far greater risk for depression,

00:25:03.160 suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, anxiety. And it's not because parents have suddenly become,

00:25:09.900 you know, worse parents and are traumatizing their kids left and right. It's because of the cohort.

00:25:14.580 It's because of what's happening generationally with cell phones and social media

00:25:17.940 and the like. So I think that parents are wrongly, you know, aggressively blamed in our culture. I

00:25:24.120 think my field does a lot of, of harm in that, that regard and sort of assuming that every adult

00:25:30.420 psychopathology has a problematic traumatizing parent at its helm.

00:25:34.760 We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:25:40.400 And now back to the show.

00:25:42.260 Yeah. That, that idea that, you know, you try to make sense of your life backwards. So if your life

00:25:46.560 is messed up and you kind of, okay, I'm going to go to the past and like, I figure out what happened.

00:25:50.280 Well, it was the way I was parented.

00:25:51.700 Right.

00:25:52.080 I've seen this instance in families where one kid, adult kids, like, well, my life is terrible. And it's

00:25:57.380 because the way our parents raised us as kids.

00:26:01.160 Right.

00:26:01.460 Then they have a sibling who was raised by the same parents, largely the same way,

00:26:05.980 and their life is great. And they feel like, well, I thought the way our parents raised us

00:26:10.300 was awesome. So there's a lot of subjectivity in how people remember their childhood or how they

00:26:16.100 attribute their state in life now to their parents.

00:26:19.980 Yeah, absolutely. And also what their experience was. I mean, one of my, you know, things I say to

00:26:26.240 parents is you have to embrace the separate realities nature of family life that you could credibly

00:26:30.800 feel like you did a good job raising your child and your child could credibly feel like they wish you

00:26:34.760 had done something different. I mean, even if people are growing up in the same family, they may have

00:26:40.680 very, very different experiences based on birth order, who temperamentally they're more alike

00:26:45.360 between the parents, what was going on in the home at the age that it, that it happened to them.

00:26:49.500 And so for, let's say, you know, constitutionally somebody's born with an incredibly sensitive

00:26:54.260 temperament, they're going to experience parental irritability or maybe lack of availability,

00:26:59.320 even if it's within normal limits, is far more influential and problematic than say a kid who's

00:27:05.420 born with a much more robust temperament. So kids who are growing up in the same home may have very

00:27:10.720 different experiences of the parents, more based on the kind of temperaments that they're born with

00:27:16.240 than the parents being so different in how they respond.

00:27:20.040 Yeah. I mean, I could, I can see that. So temperament is kind of like personality,

00:27:23.540 right? And so, I mean, I can see the case where a kid's personality, sort of inborn temperament

00:27:28.060 kind of rubs the parent the wrong way. And like the parent tries to do their best to work with it,

00:27:33.180 but you know, some kids are just annoying, but people don't want to say that. And so,

00:27:37.640 you know, the, right. It's true. Yeah. And so the parent, you know, the kid's annoying

00:27:41.800 and then the parent responds kind of like, ah, geez, this kid's annoying. And then the kid picks

00:27:46.180 up on that. It's like, oh, my, my dad thinks I'm annoying and then becomes estranged as an adult.

00:27:52.460 Well, right. And it is true. And, you know, we look at what research is called the child to parent

00:27:57.240 effects. It's like, what kind of behaviors induce what from parents? So we know that say, for example,

00:28:01.860 if a kid has ADD, attention deficit disorder, they're just harder to parent because they're harder

00:28:08.340 to organize. They're more distractible. It's hard to just to keep them on track. So they may be just

00:28:13.800 much more irritating to raise, you know, from the parent's perspective. And the parent may express

00:28:18.520 more of that irritability and that child may, you know, later in life say, well, you're always so

00:28:22.480 critical of me growing up. And the child realistically may not really even be aware of the challenges that

00:28:28.300 they brought temperamentally into the situation. And then they feel, you know, that the parent really

00:28:34.240 failed them because they didn't really provide them with the sort of more ideal kind of parenting

00:28:38.980 that they feel like they needed, wanted, or deserved. And then, you know, if a parent responds

00:28:44.620 with, well, it's because you were so difficult, you know, then they're just greenlit towards the path

00:28:49.620 of estrangement. And that sort of, you know, is another important aspect of this is that if you grow

00:28:54.680 up and you have severe mental problems that, you know, let's say that they're not parentally

00:29:00.140 induced, it's still tempting for people to blame the parent because it's such a powerful way of

00:29:05.300 directing the shame away from the self. I mean, it's a powerful story, right? It's a very appealing

00:29:11.800 way to feel like I could have been different than where I'm at now. If you're feeling like you're not

00:29:18.640 very happy with where you are now, it sort of allows you to preserve a sense of oneself as ideal or,

00:29:24.880 you know, of limitless potential if you were given the right set of circumstances. So it's a way of

00:29:30.120 saying, well, if you had parented me differently, my life would be so much better. And, you know,

00:29:35.400 clearly sometimes that's the case, but it's not always the case. And that's also another point

00:29:39.760 of concern for parents who believe and objectively seem like they did a really good job and their

00:29:44.200 child still turned out to have significant psychological issues, either because of genetic

00:29:49.140 vulnerabilities or socioeconomic class or random bad luck. I mean, there's so many different influences

00:29:56.340 of adult outcome that have very little to do with parenting that we as a society, you know,

00:30:01.880 again, are way too focused on parents and not on all these other influences.

00:30:06.140 You mentioned therapists can play a role in estrangement. Tell me about that.

00:30:09.900 Well, I think in over-attributing causality to childhood experiences and assuming that that's what

00:30:17.300 worries me about, you know, Gen Z, we're having all these psychological issues getting into

00:30:22.080 therapy is that if a therapist isn't more sophisticated about all the various pathways

00:30:27.260 to adult, you know, depression, anxiety, et cetera, then if they're kind of a one-note symphony of

00:30:34.960 everything is due to parental childhood traumas and family dysfunction, then that really just increases

00:30:42.080 the likelihood of an estrangement because then they might say, well, you know, you feel triggered

00:30:47.740 when you're around your parent and this is why, because of these experiences, maybe be better for

00:30:52.280 you not to be around them because we don't want you to be triggered by them. And so I just think

00:30:58.280 that too many therapists today are too quick to blame parents in part because of what we were saying

00:31:03.540 earlier, that it can feel sort of empowering to the person who otherwise is going to blame

00:31:09.320 themselves. You know, if a therapist says, well, it's not your fault, it's your parents' fault that

00:31:13.680 you have these issues, that can be kind of relieving. And I wouldn't mind if it didn't end up cutting off

00:31:20.140 parents who in many cases are quite workable and want to do the right thing. And in many ways,

00:31:25.340 we're very, very dedicated. So now I think therapists and many people in my field are doing

00:31:30.160 an enormous disservice to younger adults in general, to the extent that they're blaming parents for these

00:31:35.960 issues. It's not to say that that never occurs. Of course, you know, there's real traumatic,

00:31:40.160 there are traumatizing parents, absolutely, but not at the levels that they get blamed to be.

00:31:45.480 Yeah. And something else you talk about is when an adult child goes to a therapist and maybe they

00:31:51.260 start carping about their parent. Like the therapist only hears the kid's side of the story. They're

00:31:55.840 typically, they don't have the parents. So like sometimes, you know, a not good therapist,

00:31:59.220 a bad therapist will start diagnosing the not present parents. Well, it sounds like your parents

00:32:04.320 are narcissists and you need to stay away from them. Like you can't diagnose someone you haven't talked to.

00:32:10.160 And so that's, that's not good. Right. Well, you shouldn't. And not only that,

00:32:13.260 but diagnosis also provides a kind of moral framework to reject people. It's sort of like,

00:32:18.700 well, I mean, I've seen letters from adult children where they say, well, my therapist

00:32:21.660 said that my mother's a narcissist and therefore family therapy wouldn't work. And, you know, that,

00:32:27.900 that we've become kind of the new high priest that tell people who to be close to, who not to be

00:32:34.020 close to, who's problematic. And we really have replaced religious leaders in our culture in terms of

00:32:39.200 this sort of moral position we put ourselves into in terms of who it's okay to be close to and,

00:32:45.200 and what's, what should be considered even abusive behaviors, boundary crossing, what's gaslighting,

00:32:51.460 all of that. You know, we haven't too much authority in our society to make these kinds of

00:32:56.020 determinations. And most therapists won't interview the parent and they shouldn't be giving a diagnosis

00:33:01.820 if they haven't actually met the parent. I mean, you know, somebody might sound like a narcissist,

00:33:06.560 but the way somebody presents in therapy and what they tell the therapist isn't necessarily

00:33:12.440 going to be completely accurate, which is why when I'm working with a parent, I will always

00:33:17.520 see if I can talk to the adult child because I want to get their perspective. I'll ask for

00:33:21.320 correspondence from the parent and the adult child. Sometimes parents will say, well, my kid's

00:33:26.060 impossible and they're, they're a narcissist. And I'll see the correspondence and I'll think,

00:33:30.120 actually, your kid is really trying very hard here. And your responses to them are really

00:33:34.580 problematic. So, you know, families are systems. If you're only just looking at one part of it,

00:33:40.500 you're really not in that good of a position to, to know. I mean, at least when it comes to something

00:33:47.000 so consequential as cutting off a family member, I mean, we can have opinions, but if you're wading

00:33:52.140 into something as consequential and serious as encouraging an estrangement, you better know what

00:33:58.160 hell you're advising because you have an incredibly, you know, sad, lonely, broken parent or grandparent

00:34:05.840 on the other end that has to also be factored into your analysis. Are women or men more likely to cut 0.98

00:34:12.780 off a parent? There are huge differences, but in general, men are, that probably has to do with

00:34:20.420 the sociological concept of kin keeping that women tend to be more mindful of family relationships and 0.90

00:34:27.560 be more motivated to keep track of them and the like. So statistically, it's somewhat more likely

00:34:35.240 that a son would than a daughter would, but the numbers aren't huge. Something else you talk about

00:34:41.000 that can contribute to men becoming estranged from their parents more than women are ideas around

00:34:47.880 manhood itself. Can you talk to us about that? Yeah, I particularly see this in if a daughter-in-law

00:34:54.640 doesn't like the parents, then the son can take the position of, you know, it's what I call

00:35:00.720 performative masculinity. So I work with a lot of families where the son was close to the parents

00:35:06.340 prior to getting married and the son marries somebody who's somewhat troubled and basically

00:35:10.320 says, choose them or me. And, you know, the son engages by confronting the parents and saying,

00:35:16.120 you can't talk to my wife that way, or this is my family now, or I need to protect my family,

00:35:21.320 or they're my new priority, you're not. So it does all become kind of entangled with this idea of

00:35:28.640 masculinity, which can, you know, make the dynamic that much more tricky to unravel.

00:35:33.340 Yeah. And also you just see the sort of the cultural change of the relationship between

00:35:37.680 particularly sons and moms. So you talk about this, if you go back to Civil War times, you'd see

00:35:43.360 these letters from Civil War soldiers talking about, my mom's my best gal and I love you so much.

00:35:49.380 Almost like love letters. Right. And then a shift happened where it was like, no,

00:35:53.040 if you do that, you're a mollycoddle, you're a mama's boy. So you got to put some distance between 1.00

00:35:58.440 you and mom. Right. And so now, you know, men were like, well, I don't want to be too close to my

00:36:03.560 parents because then that's kind of, or particularly to my mother, because that's kind of weird.

00:36:08.540 Right. It's considered to be like being a mama's boy is a real epithet. It's not considered,

00:36:13.140 you know, an act of strength and, um, and value. It's considered like, if you're really

00:36:18.820 close to your mother, then somehow that makes you weak, like you're hiding under her aprons or

00:36:24.000 something. And you're right. Historically, that wasn't always the case that, that the idea that

00:36:28.980 you're close to your mother or want to be close to her was considered sort of a strength and in

00:36:34.960 earlier periods. So it really wasn't until kind of the early 20th century. And, you know,

00:36:40.940 there became more of a concern about masculinity and, uh, that, so that all began to change with

00:36:46.320 Roosevelt's Rough Riders and the likes. Yeah. And so, yeah, a wife can use that if she doesn't 1.00

00:36:52.860 like her mother-in-law or father-in-law, she can use that as kind of like a screw to turn and be 0.99

00:36:57.280 like, you need to stay away from them. And if the husband's like, no, I don't want to, I want to

00:37:01.880 have the relationship with my mom. I was like, well, you're just a mama's boy. Yeah. I think it's very

00:37:05.220 easy to humiliate and shame men around their masculinity. So I think if, uh, a wife was motivated

00:37:10.800 to get her husband, uh, either confront his parents or stop talking to them, you know,

00:37:15.800 she says, well, you're a mama's boy or you're weak or we're the, we're your new family now

00:37:20.060 and you need to prioritize us. I don't like how your parents talk to me. You need to stand

00:37:24.220 up to them more. How come you're not standing up to them more? For many men, that would be

00:37:29.340 a very hard message to resist. I mean, some could, but, but many couldn't.

00:37:35.240 When you work with parents and adult children who are estranged, who gets hit hardest? Like,

00:37:41.160 I mean, is it harder on the child or the parent? I think it's harder on the parent. I mean, for the,

00:37:44.920 for the adult child, there may be enormous upsides to the estranged, but they can feel like they're

00:37:49.900 pushing back against, you know, authority figures or destructive figures. They're protecting themselves

00:37:56.120 from, from more abuse. They're standing up for themselves. They're protecting their mental

00:38:01.120 health. So it's all can be tied to a very powerful narrative of individuation and separation and

00:38:07.000 self-protection and mental health, personal growth, et cetera. So there's enormous upside for the adult

00:38:12.880 child. For the parents, there's no upside. It's all pain, sadness, loss, guilt, anger, regret. So that

00:38:20.360 also influences who's going to be doing the outreach. I mean, sometimes parents will say to me, well, how

00:38:26.300 come, you know, they can reach out to me and I'm like, well, are they reaching out to you? I mean,

00:38:31.060 yeah, they can reach out to you, but it looks like if anybody's going to make a move in anybody's

00:38:35.320 direction, it's going to have to be you because your child wouldn't be estranged unless they felt

00:38:39.780 like it was, you know, had some value to them. Yeah. This is a, the dynamic in any troubled

00:38:45.000 relationship. It's the person who doesn't want to be in the relationship. They actually, they have the

00:38:49.960 power. That's true. Absolutely. So the person who really wants it more has to be willing to take the

00:38:55.980 initiative. And that's, that's typically the parent. How does it affect grandchildren?

00:39:01.080 I think it's terrible for grandchildren. I mean, particularly for those who are,

00:39:05.220 you know, a lot of the cases that I work with, the grandparent was very involved even by the now

00:39:10.580 estranged adult child's own reckoning. They were decent grandparents and that they're really a

00:39:15.000 casualty of the parent adult child relationship. I mean, certainly some grandparents get cut off because

00:39:21.260 the adult child doesn't like how they grandparent, but I don't think it's the majority. It certainly

00:39:25.540 isn't the majority of the cases that I've worked with. And I've worked with a ton of these cases.

00:39:29.900 Typically they're a casualty. And the way that the adult child often explains it is by saying,

00:39:34.780 well, it's not good for me and my mental health, and it's not good for my children. And that's just

00:39:39.340 not right. I mean, obviously if contact with your parent is so disabling to you that, you know,

00:39:45.660 you absolutely can't parent, then probably means you need to be spending more time in therapy if they

00:39:52.540 still have that kind of an influence on you. But you should be able to have conflict with your

00:39:56.900 parent and keep your child's grandparents in their lives if they're good grandparents. Because a lot

00:40:02.280 of parents will say to me, you know, I could maybe tolerate the estrangement from my child,

00:40:07.200 but I find so intolerable emotionally is not being able to have time with my grandchild who I was so

00:40:13.600 close to. What could they possibly be thinking? Do they think that I abandoned them? And the

00:40:17.760 grandchild relationship is a very unique relationship that offers enormous benefits to

00:40:22.540 both generations. There's enormous value to grandchildren to having a good, close-loving

00:40:27.420 relationship with their grandparents. And there's incredible value to grandparents. So this idea

00:40:33.840 that if it's not good for me, it's not good for my kids, it sort of reminds me of what some people,

00:40:38.100 you know, when I used to do a lot of couples therapy would say, well, if I'm not happy in my

00:40:41.820 marriage, then my children aren't happy. And, you know, it depends on how you're expressing

00:40:46.420 your unhappiness. A lot of people are able to contain their unhappiness in a certain way where

00:40:50.820 it doesn't have a deleterious effect on their children. The children much rather they stay

00:40:55.580 together than get divorced. So I think in our culture, we really overemphasize the importance

00:41:02.460 of our own happiness in terms of the way that it radiates out and affects other people in the family,

00:41:07.860 children in particular. You advise the parents who want to reconcile with their adult child to write

00:41:15.100 an amends letter. What is that? An amends letter is getting on the same page as the adult child.

00:41:21.720 It's putting aside all defensiveness and criticism and blame and obligation and duty and guilt and

00:41:28.080 really trying to come at it from the perspective that the adult child is doing something that they

00:41:34.740 feel is really important for them to do and has a lot of meaning to them. And so I always tell parents

00:41:40.140 to start the letter with, I know you wouldn't have cut off contact unless you felt like it was the

00:41:45.000 healthiest thing for you to do. Now, from the parent's perspective, they don't necessarily feel

00:41:49.820 like it's the healthiest thing for them to do, but their adult child wouldn't be doing it unless they

00:41:53.620 did. So saying that is kind of a way of saying, look, I'm desirous of entering into your world and

00:41:59.540 having a much deeper understanding. If there are things that the parents are aware of that really were

00:42:04.200 problematic about their parenting, they should say it in a very straightforward way. Yes,

00:42:07.700 I could see how that was really hurtful to you or I could see how that was traumatizing to you and

00:42:13.000 I'm really sorry and I'm willing to work on that in my own therapy or therapy together. Or I could

00:42:18.780 see why that might make it feel unsafe to spend time with me or triggering to you or distant or

00:42:24.360 why you might be mad at me. I mean, it's just a really deep dive of empathy into the child's

00:42:29.980 experience because nothing is going to happen unless the parent is able to do that. And if they don't

00:42:35.780 know and parents don't always know, then they should say something like, it's clear that I

00:42:39.440 have significant blind spots as a parent or person that I don't have a better understanding or that

00:42:44.760 I didn't know that that felt emotionally abusive or hurtful or traumatizing to you. But it's something

00:42:50.420 that I would like to learn more about and deepen my understanding and learn how to do better in the

00:42:55.940 future. That could be a hard pill to swallow. Oh, it's a very hard pill to swallow. Yeah. As I was

00:43:00.860 reading that, that you have to like, you know, right. I know that you wouldn't have come off

00:43:04.560 contact unless it was the healthiest thing for you to do. I'm like, I don't know if I could ever

00:43:08.380 like sincerely say that, especially if I saw my kid was just doing something destructive with their

00:43:13.380 life. Well, yeah, you're saying that unless you felt like it was the healthiest thing for you to do.

00:43:19.220 I mean, normally an apology shouldn't have you felt like, because that sounds like an avoidance,

00:43:22.840 but you're, again, you're just sort of trying to get into the child's state of mind and outside of

00:43:29.460 years. No, these letters are not easy for parents to write, but they're also kind of therapeutic for

00:43:34.100 parents to write because, you know, we all make mistakes as parents. So being able to,

00:43:38.640 maybe we don't feel like we deserve an estrangement as a result of it. We all make mistakes. So

00:43:42.720 being able to kind of get it out on paper and, you know, expose yourself to it and come to some

00:43:48.420 degree of acceptance over that. I mean, not only is it, I think the best tool towards a potential

00:43:54.260 reconciliation, but I think it's also good for the parents' mental health as well. You know,

00:43:58.400 in AA, they talk about the step of make a fearless in searching moral inventory of your character

00:44:03.700 for a while. So I think that can be really useful for parents as well.

00:44:07.460 Okay. So it's just, it's all about empathy. It's just trying to show that like, I want to

00:44:11.820 understand where you're coming from. And this may require you to, you know, put yourself in therapy

00:44:18.280 speak. You might not be comfortable with that, but you have to see, okay, I understand where you're

00:44:21.960 coming from with this. I mean, can you say, I disagree? Like, I don't see it that way and still

00:44:26.780 display empathy. I wouldn't do that in an amends letter. Maybe if you're into therapy and you're

00:44:32.280 like in the 10th session or something, there's a place to do that. But really, you know, the advice

00:44:38.540 is predicated on this principle that we were talking about earlier about the way that the family life

00:44:44.320 has changed. And it's a way to telegraph to the adult child. Look, I'm willing to navigate our

00:44:49.020 relationship and negotiate it from this much more 21st century principle that relationships are based on

00:44:55.400 the principles of mental health and personal growth and happiness. And that's why the parent has to

00:45:00.360 frame it in that kind of language. That's the way they have to say you wouldn't do this unless you felt

00:45:04.820 like it was the healthiest thing for you to do. That word is really kind of intentionally coded,

00:45:09.940 not in a manipulative way, but it's just kind of like, that's the basis that the relationship

00:45:13.720 is based upon. So yeah, it's all about showing empathy because empathy is the one thing that's going

00:45:21.360 to invite the adult child. First of all, to feel cared about, like the parent's really grappling

00:45:26.200 with something. Most adult children know that these letters aren't easy to write and they respect it.

00:45:31.040 Now, that's not to say that they always work because there's really nothing I can say to any

00:45:35.460 parent that I can say, oh, you know what? If you just do this, your child's definitely coming back

00:45:39.740 to you. There's a lot of reasons why an adult child might not come back or might not be ready to

00:45:43.980 come back anyway. They may be too negatively influenced by who they're married to. Their therapist may be

00:45:48.100 telling them it's a bad idea. They may be too brainwashed by the other parent after divorce.

00:45:53.140 They may still be too hurt or mad at you for things that did happen in the past and they're

00:45:56.800 just not ready yet to accept an apology. They may need to feel separate from you and aren't really

00:46:01.580 ready to move off of that position. So the tools that I recommend are based on a probabilistic model.

00:46:08.980 Probably if you do this, there's a better chance of a reconciliation than not, but there's almost

00:46:13.800 nothing in human behavior that we can ever say with certainty. Yeah, you know what? Just do this

00:46:18.660 and your kid will come back into your door tomorrow. Yeah. And again, the men's letter 0.91

00:46:23.440 isn't going to be the thing that solves it. This is just like the opening bid to a conversation that

00:46:27.640 might take, could take years. It could. If it's well-received, it shouldn't take years because

00:46:33.880 if the parent is sincere in the desire to learn more and to take responsibility and understand why

00:46:40.020 their behavior impacted their child in the way that they did, then, you know, both people are

00:46:45.200 able to communicate honestly and openly about it, then it shouldn't take years. But to your earlier

00:46:50.900 point, that doesn't mean that the parent necessarily is going to be able to disagree

00:46:55.140 with the child's perceptions. You know, we say, well, think about it from my perspective,

00:46:59.760 at least not early on. First, the adult child really needs to feel seen, heard, cared about,

00:47:04.880 and understood. Otherwise, the parent's voice is just going to be too big if they say,

00:47:09.160 well, I don't see it that way. Or you're wrong about that. Or that never happened. You know,

00:47:13.220 that's just going to shut the door down. And the goal is to open the door and keep it open long

00:47:17.860 enough for some kind of fresh air to go between the rooms. And a reminder, going back to what we

00:47:22.840 said, you know, if you're a parent who has an estranged adult child and, you know, you feel the

00:47:28.080 words getting stuck in your throat as you try to be like, I understand, you know, because you don't

00:47:32.340 believe it. You have to, just going back to the idea, like, if you want a relationship with your

00:47:35.880 kids, it's up to you to make the first step. Like, the kid is probably fine. They got their

00:47:41.300 own family. There's more upside for them for not having a relationship with you. So they're in

00:47:45.720 control. So you got to kind of be the one to make the opening bid.

00:47:49.740 Right. It's about humility, not humiliation. I mean, these letters can feel humiliating to the

00:47:53.720 parent. But, you know, from my perspective, you're just taking the high road as a parent. We are the

00:47:58.060 parent. We, you know, it is true what you were saying earlier. Our children didn't ask to be

00:48:02.860 born. And so it is incumbent on us to, to take the high road and take responsibility. And if we

00:48:08.380 don't really understand, to try to work hard to understand, it doesn't mean you have to agree that 0.99

00:48:13.060 you were a terrible, selfish, awful person. It's more that you're trying to more deeply understand 0.92

00:48:19.000 why your child has the belief or perceptions or memories about you that they do and not get into

00:48:24.540 the right or wrong of it. It's like couples communication. You know, if you get into the right

00:48:27.960 and wrong of it with your spouse or romantic partner, you're probably not going to get very far.

00:48:32.020 But if you seek to understand what they're saying and show empathy and take responsibility for the

00:48:36.700 kernel, if not the bushel of truth in their complaints or perceptions, then you're in a

00:48:40.620 much better position. When should a parent or a child give up trying to mend the relationship?

00:48:47.480 Well, for parents, what I typically tell parents is, assuming your child is an adult, that they

00:48:52.540 should write one really good amends letter and then maybe do a follow-up 68 weeks letter and just

00:48:56.680 see if the adult child got the letter and had reactions. If they get nothing back, then I

00:49:01.720 typically tell parents not to do anything for maybe a year or so because, you know, sometimes

00:49:07.840 adult children just really need the time and the space to come back to the parent. And once you've

00:49:13.000 written an amends letter, you're sort of showing and announcing that you're open to changing and

00:49:17.140 being more empathic and to seeing it from their perspective. But you should stop right away if any

00:49:22.700 of the following are happening. One is you're getting the police called on you or you're getting

00:49:27.800 letters or gifts sent back, returned to sender, restraining orders. And if any of those things

00:49:35.160 happen, you should just stop right now because it means that things are just way too inflamed to

00:49:40.000 try. And then you can try again in a year maybe to just give your child, your adult child that. For the

00:49:45.720 adult child, you know, I think that adult children should do a certain period of due diligence where

00:49:50.800 they carefully tell the parent what their complaints are. If you come to your parents and say,

00:49:55.020 well, I've learned in therapy that you're a narcissist or you're a borderline, you're not

00:49:58.960 going to get anywhere that way. If your goal is really to have your parent understand, you're

00:50:02.740 better off talking about what you did like or value about them as parents or people. It's kind

00:50:08.520 of the compliment sandwich. You know, you want to start out with something to just soften the blow

00:50:12.800 because for all parents, hearing the ways that they fail their children is really deeply humiliating

00:50:18.600 and scary. And so if you can say, I'm telling you this because I want to have a closer

00:50:22.960 relationship with you, but I need the following to happen. And here's what I need to have happen.

00:50:28.840 If you'd like to do family therapy with me, I would welcome that. Or these are the things

00:50:32.860 I'd like you to work on in your therapy. I hope you're willing to do that. And then don't assume

00:50:38.220 that you're going to have one conversation about it. I mean, it may take a while because it's a big,

00:50:42.120 it's a big ask, but it's typically worthwhile for both people if these things can be worked through

00:50:47.160 rather than just end it. I've seen instances where parents are estranged with their adult child and

00:50:52.780 they, you know, they really want that relationship with their kid, but then the kid uses the

00:50:56.800 estrangement kind of as a bludgeon over the parent's head where they just kind of, they kind of use it

00:51:02.500 as a weapon almost. And the parent will just keep taking, they just, they want to have some version

00:51:07.560 of their kid in their life, even if it is just, you know, being told that you're an awful parent and I 0.94

00:51:12.820 hate you. They feel like they can't give up on their kid. Um, as I imagine too, like the parent

00:51:17.820 who's wanting to reconcile, they have to take care of themselves as well through this process.

00:51:23.540 Yeah, I know. It's true that, I mean, particularly if a kid is mentally ill, then they're much more

00:51:27.780 likely to be disrespectful and abusive to the parent and parents whose kids are mentally ill. If 0.62

00:51:32.980 they're not in contact, that's torturous for the parent because they're worried about them. Not

00:51:37.480 only do they have the estrangement, but they're worried about where they are, whether they're suicidal

00:51:41.640 or whether they're on the street or living in a car or whether they'll ever hear from them

00:51:45.600 again. But if they're in contact, but abusive, that's tormenting as well because they want the

00:51:51.340 contact, but they have to sort of drink from this poison well in order to have the contact.

00:51:56.100 It is in my position that, that anybody should tolerate somebody being disrespectful to them.

00:52:02.940 So I think that parents can certainly try to set limits on the adult child's abusive or

00:52:09.580 disrespectful behavior. But it's, you know, typically if somebody is more troubled, it's a

00:52:14.580 matter of love and limits. Love because it, you know, really ultimately isn't their fault that

00:52:19.260 they have the mental illness or whatever it is that's causing them to behave that way. But limits

00:52:23.780 because, you know, some people, children or parents can be really destructive in how they

00:52:29.200 interact with the other and that has to be dealt with.

00:52:32.380 Last question. Parental estrangement is part of a larger trend of just cutting people off

00:52:38.880 in your life. Toxic people. You got to cut out the toxic people from your life, but is 0.88

00:52:43.000 there a downside to leaning too much into this approach to relationships? I mean, are there

00:52:48.260 benefits to learning how to deal with difficult people in your life?

00:52:52.440 Well, there's enormous benefit to it. You know, in cognitive behavior therapy, what we teach

00:52:57.340 is that you want to be sort of go toward the things that cause you stress and anxiety. And what

00:53:03.760 I often see in the letters from adult children is, well, you know, I've worked hard to get to where I

00:53:08.900 am today psychologically. And if I see you or talk to you, that's going to undo my years of how hard

00:53:15.660 I've worked on myself. You know, and my feeling is like, well, it really shouldn't. You should be

00:53:19.000 able to, if you've worked on these issues for years, you should be able to at least start to engage

00:53:24.080 your parent. I mean, obviously, if they're completely unrepentant and they're abusive and

00:53:27.920 they yell at you and they shame you and humiliate you every time you see them, then, you know, I get

00:53:33.540 it. I couldn't ethically support, you know, an adult child continuing to get into the ring with a

00:53:38.540 parent who's just going to bloody them psychologically every time they're together. But I don't think that

00:53:43.280 those constitute the majority of these kinds of dynamics. So I think there's enormous value. I mean,

00:53:48.620 there's no other path towards getting more resilient than to sort of face ourselves with

00:53:53.800 the people who are difficult in our lives. And typically the people in our families may be the

00:53:59.640 most difficult because there's just this whole reservoir of memories of hurt and disappointment

00:54:04.440 and conflict. But I, it sort of goes back to our earlier question of what do we owe each other as

00:54:09.780 generations? And I think that, you know, there is real value in just being engaged with people that

00:54:18.400 you have this history with and working on things and working to improve them or then learning if

00:54:22.800 they can improve, learning how to tolerate the parts of them that are more difficult and also

00:54:27.380 taking responsibility for your own, the ways that you may be difficult, whether you're the parent or

00:54:32.360 the adult child and learning from that. Well, Joshua, this has been a great conversation. Where can

00:54:36.600 people go to learn more about the book and your work? Sure. They can go to my website,

00:54:41.460 www.drjoshuacoleman.com. I do webinars every Tuesday night for estranged parents and a free

00:54:48.300 Q&A every other Monday at 1130 AM Pacific. And they can get my book there as well on the website

00:54:54.780 or, you know, at bookstores and et cetera. Fantastic. Well, Joshua Coleman, thank you for

00:54:58.240 time. It's been a pleasure. Yeah, thank you. It was. My guest today was Joshua Coleman. He's

00:55:03.180 the author of the book Rules of Estrangement. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores

00:55:06.460 everywhere. You can find more information about his work at his website, drjoshuacoleman.com.

00:55:11.160 Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash estrangement. We'll find links to resources

00:55:15.100 where you delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the

00:55:25.800 AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanless.com where you can find our podcast

00:55:29.180 archives. And while you're there, sign up for our newsletter. We've got a daily option and a weekly

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00:55:40.920 It helps out a lot. If you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a

00:55:45.000 friend or family member who you think was something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued

00:55:48.580 support. Until next time, I'm Brett McKay. Reminding us how to listen to AOM podcast, but put what you've

00:55:52.720 heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - November 18, 2024

What's Behind the Rise of Parent-Child Estrangement？

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