Family Estrangement Isn’t a Simple Story

Family estrangement has been having a cultural moment. It is showing up in major publications, podcasts, social media, Oprah, and, certainly, in therapy rooms. Like so many conversations about relationships and mental health, it can quickly become polarized.

Are adult children finally protecting themselves from harmful family systems? Have we become too quick to cut people off? Are boundaries healthy, or have we taken individualism too far? And now another question has entered the conversation: are therapists and “therapy culture” partly to blame?

I’m not particularly interested in choosing a side. I’m much more interested in what is happening underneath the estrangement, what has already been tried, what kind of relationship is actually possible, and what our choices are trying to protect.

Family estrangement also isn't particularly rare. In sociologist Karl Pillemer's national survey of more than 1,300 American adults, 27% reported being estranged from at least one family member, including 10% who were estranged from a parent or child. Another nationally representative study found that about 26% of adult children experienced a period of estrangement from their fathers and about 6% from their mothers.

Those numbers are significant, but they don't necessarily tell us that estrangement is suddenly exploding. Sociologist Rin Reczek has pointed out that we don't yet have the kind of longitudinal prevalence data that would allow us to make that claim. What we certainly have is a much more public conversation about it.

My Own Complicated Relationship With “Family”

I grew up as a child of divorce in the 1980s, when divorce still felt relatively nouveau. I remember being in the divorce-kids group and carrying shame about being different. I wanted what I imagined was a normal family.

My family would become increasingly complicated. There were step-parents and siblings, different homes, substance abuse, and varying degrees of access and connection to my parents. There were periods in my own adulthood when low or no contact became part of how I navigated those relationships while prioritizing my healing and the family I was building.

So I don’t come to the subject of estrangement believing there is a universally right answer. I come to it personally and professionally understanding how complicated family relationships can be, and how much shame, grief, guilt, anger, loyalty, and love can coexist within them.

There Are Times When Safety Comes First

I want to make one distinction abundantly clear. I am not suggesting that someone remain in an actively abusive relationship in the name of family, forgiveness, distress tolerance, or repair. When there is ongoing abuse, coercion, manipulation, violence, or another threat to safety, the work is different. We cannot ask someone to become more skillful at tolerating being harmed.

The territory becomes murkier when we move into relationships that are emotionally harmful, chronically disappointing, or shaped by emotional immaturity. This is often where I find people struggling with the question of what they owe their family and what they owe themselves.

“I Did the Best I Could” Can Be True

Many of the adults I work with were raised by parents who had limitations around emotional availability, accountability, apology, or repair. Some of those parents may genuinely have done the best they could. They may have given their children significantly more than they themselves received. They may have loved deeply and had good intentions. And their children may still have needed something different.

Increasingly, I see adult children wanting something beyond an explanation of intention. They are looking for a parent who can tolerate hearing about impact. Tell me how I hurt you. I’m here. I wasn’t able to be there for you then, but I want to understand now.

This requires a particular kind of emotional capacity. It means being able to tolerate discomfort without immediately becoming defensive, explaining, minimizing, shutting down, or collapsing into shame.

Family Estrangement and a Kinship Culture Clash

Sociologist Rin Reczek uses the idea of a kinship culture clash to describe something I think is particularly useful in understanding estrangement: competing ideas about what makes someone family and what family relationships require.

One understanding of family places significant value on biological connection, loyalty, obligation, hierarchy, and the idea that family relationships endure because family is family. Another places greater emphasis on the quality of the relationship itself: mutual respect, reciprocity, emotional safety, accountability, and a willingness to grow.

Neither set of values is entirely new. But when two people in the same family are operating from very different definitions of what family requires, there can be an enormous relational collision. One person may be saying, I am your mother. After everything I've done for you, how could you walk away? The other may be asking, But how are we actually treating each other now?

This is one reason I find the comparison to divorce interesting. There was a time when remaining married carried tremendous cultural weight regardless of the quality of the marriage. As our expectations of marriage changed, we increasingly began asking not only whether a marriage existed, but whether the relationship itself was working.

Perhaps some of that same cultural questioning is now happening around family of origin.

Is “Therapy Culture” Contributing to Family Estrangement?

There has been growing criticism that therapists, therapeutic language, and social media have contributed to family estrangement. I think this deserves more consideration than either immediately dismissing the criticism or accepting it completely. I don't believe my role as a therapist is to decide who someone should have a relationship with. I also don't think therapy should simply affirm every interpretation a client brings into the room without curiosity.

My work is to help someone understand what is happening inside them and around them. Is this relationship unsafe? What happens when you communicate your needs? What have you tried? What happens when someone disagrees with you? Is distance creating safety and clarity, or are there places where avoidance is operating? What are your values? What are you hoping will happen? What has this person actually demonstrated that they are capable of?

Sometimes therapy helps someone find the courage to create distance. Sometimes it helps someone develop enough capacity to stay in a difficult conversation instead of leaving it. Sometimes it helps someone soften a boundary, and sometimes it helps them strengthen one. The goal, at least as I understand it, isn't estrangement or reconciliation. It is greater clarity and greater choice.

Repair Requires Skill

These are vulnerable conversations, and vulnerability requires skill from everyone involved. Adult children have work here, too. Sometimes we believe our family should simply know what is wrong. We may think, They should know what they did. They should know why I stopped calling. They should know what I need.

If there is enough safety and a potentially willing participant, I think it is worth asking whether our wants, needs, and experiences have actually been communicated. Therapy can be a place to develop the skills to have those conversations. We can learn how to name hurt, make requests, tolerate someone else’s response, and invite another person into repair without abandoning ourselves in the process. Then we have to notice what happens next.

An Invitation to Repair Is Not a Guarantee of Repair

You can invite someone into repair. You cannot repair a relationship by yourself. You might communicate clearly and find that your parent becomes curious. They may struggle at first but keep trying. There can be defensiveness followed by reflection, an apology, or actual changes in behavior. Those things matter. But the response can also be continued denial, blame, minimization, or refusal. The same conversation may happen repeatedly without any meaningful change.

At some point, there is an important distinction between hoped-for capacity and demonstrated capacity. We can continue wishing for someone to become the parent, sibling, grandparent, or family member we need. But when there is no demonstrated effort toward change, that wishing can become another place where we hurt.

What Kind of Relationship Is Actually Possible?

Family estrangement does not always have to begin with the question, Do I stay or do I go? Sometimes a more useful question is: What kind of relationship is actually possible here?

Spending an entire weekend together might consistently leave me overwhelmed, while breakfast in a public place feels much more accessible. Holidays might be too loaded, while shorter visits allow for connection in a way that feels manageable. I might maintain a relationship with a parent while recognizing that providing childcare for my children is simply not something they can reliably offer.

There can be a lot of territory between closeness and complete estrangement. Part of discernment is getting curious about that territory. What happens when the amount of contact changes? What happens when the environment changes? Are there parts of the relationship that work and others that consistently cause harm? Is there a version of this relationship that allows for connection without requiring me to repeatedly abandon myself?

The answer may still be that no contact is what is needed. But it may also be a different kind of contact, a different frequency, different expectations, or a different understanding of what this person can realistically offer. This is where boundaries become less about controlling another person and more about getting clear about what matters to us and what we need in order to protect it.

Boundaries Begin With What Matters

When I work with boundaries, I like to begin with values. Boundaries protect what matters to us. And what matters most, or what requires more of our protection, can shift across different seasons of our lives.

Someone may have spent years managing a parent’s emotional needs and found ways to tolerate it. Then she becomes a mother herself, and suddenly the energy required to caretake her parent is energy she no longer has available. Someone else may have tolerated manipulation or volatility directed toward himself but feel differently once his children are exposed to it.

Parenthood can make these shifts particularly visible. Sometimes becoming a parent helps us understand our own parents with more compassion. Sometimes it brings our childhood pain into sharper focus. Sometimes it changes what we are willing to tolerate because we are no longer making decisions only about ourselves.

But parenthood is only one example. Partnerships, caregiving, illness, loss, aging, healing, or simply knowing ourselves differently can change what we need from our relationships and what we have available to give them. A relationship that worked in one season of our life may need different boundaries in another.

The question isn’t necessarily, Does this mean I should go no contact? It might be, What matters to me now? What am I trying to protect? And what does this relationship need to look like in this season of my life?

Acceptance Isn’t Approval

We can communicate, invite repair, change the conditions of the relationship then wait and watch. Sadly, we may discover the other person remains exactly who they have demonstrated themselves to be.

Acceptance does not mean deciding that what happened was okay. It does not require forgiveness or continued access. It means becoming more willing to see the person in front of us as they actually are, including their limitations.

I’ve heard myself say more than once in the therapy room, at some point, we have to ask whether we are continuing to go to the desert looking for water. The desire for water isn’t the problem. It makes so much sense to long for a parent, sibling, or family member to show up, understand, take accountability, or meet us in the ways we have needed. But if someone has repeatedly demonstrated an inability or unwillingness to do that, there may come a point when continuing to return with the same request becomes harmful to us.

This is where radical acceptance can come in. Not as approval, and not as a requirement that we stop longing for something different, but as a willingness to respond to what is actually available. Perhaps my mother isn’t the person I can call when I need emotional support. My father may be someone I can meet for breakfast once a month but not someone with whom I can have the emotionally intimate relationship I’ve wanted. My parents may have a place in my life while not being people I can rely on to care for my children.

Sometimes acceptance is recognizing that the longing can remain while we stop returning to the same place expecting it to finally give us what it has repeatedly shown us it cannot.

Acceptance Makes Room for Grief

This is where family estrangement and grief become deeply intertwined. A new mother may not only be grieving that her mother isn’t available to help with the baby. She may also be encountering the much older grief of never having had a mother she could reliably turn toward for care. Her child may not have the grandmother she imagined either.

As long as we are waiting for someone to become different, part of us can remain oriented toward a hoped-for future. People can change, learn, and find their way toward repair, but when there is no demonstrated movement, continuing to build our lives around the possibility of who someone could become can keep us from responding to who they are now.

Sometimes accepting the limits of the relationship means finally grieving the relationship we wanted. That grief can exist whether we remain in contact, reduce contact, or end it.

And Then We Build

If the person we hoped would support us cannot reliably do so, grief matters. But eventually there is another question: Who can? If Grandma cannot be reliable childcare, the work may become less about trying to make Grandma reliable and more about grieving what isn’t available and building support that is.

Reczek's research offers an interesting perspective here. In interviews with adults estranged from at least one member of their family of origin, participants often rebuilt the meaning and structure of family around relationships they experienced as safe and trustworthy. Friends, partners, community members, and relatives with whom they remained connected could take on meaningful kinship roles.

I think there is something important there. Sometimes the work isn't to stop longing for family. It is to expand our understanding of where family can be found. The imagined support system may need to be grieved so that an actual support system can be built.

Family Estrangement Requires Discernment

You may be considering low or no contact with a parent or family member and wondering whether you’re allowed. Someone in your family may have stopped speaking to you, leaving you confused and powerless. Or you may be somewhere outside a family estrangement, loving people on both sides and unsure how to navigate it.

These relationships are complicated because people are complicated. There isn't a universal formula for determining the correct amount of contact with a family member.

There are questions we can ask about safety, values, communication, accountability, willingness to repair, demonstrated capacity, grief, and what forms of relationship allow us to remain connected to ourselves.

The work can involve speaking honestly and listening differently. It can involve changing the terms of a relationship, accepting another person's limitations, grieving what isn't possible, or building a broader kinship network around the relationships that are actually available to us.

The goal isn't necessarily closeness or estrangement. It is greater clarity about what is actually possible, what matters to us, and how we want to participate in the relationships and the life we are building.

Therapy for Family Estrangement in Rhode Island

If you’re navigating family estrangement, considering low or no contact with a parent, trying to repair a complicated family relationship, or grieving the relationship you wish you had, therapy can offer a place to slow down and make sense of what is happening.

My role isn’t to tell you whether to stay connected or walk away. We can explore the experiences that shaped you, the values and relationships you want to protect, what has and hasn’t been possible within your family, and what kind of relationship feels possible now.

I offer individual therapy and EMDR for adults throughout Rhode Island, with in-person therapy in Cranston and North Kingstown and virtual therapy statewide. Learn more about my therapy services and how we might work together. If you have a question, please reach out here.