Family estrangement describes what happens when family members, often an adult son or daughter and their parent(s), become emotionally or physically distant from one another in a way that is not mutually agreed. Often it is the son or daughter who instigates this distancing. Sometimes this involves a gradual reduction in contact but in other cases, the son or daughter may decide to end contact with their parents altogether.
The reasons for estrangement can be complex. A son or daughter may feel that, over many years, their parents have failed to understand them, recognise their emotional needs or accept them for who they are. They may carry longstanding feelings of hurt, disappointment or resentment, and come to believe that maintaining the relationship is damaging to their emotional wellbeing. Creating distance can then seem like the only way to protect themselves from further distress. These decisions do not necessarily happen in isolation. Partners, friends and sometimes therapists may influence how they respond to difficulties within family relationships.
Changing Attitudes Towards Family Relationships
The wider cultural context in which family estrangement occurs is important to recognise. Over recent decades there has been a significant change in how we think about family relationships, personal wellbeing and the importance of establishing boundaries with others. We are increasingly encouraged to pay attention to our emotional needs, to recognise relationships that may be harmful to us and to take responsibility for protecting our mental health. These ideas can be fuelled by social media, influencers and the ready availability of validating opinions.elsewhere online.
It seems something of a shift has occurred away from the attitudes that were perhaps more prevalent just twenty or thirty years ago when there was perhaps a stronger expectation that families should remain in contact despite their difficulties. Expressions such as "blood is thicker than water" reflected the belief that family relationships, although not of our choosing and sometimes difficult, were nevertheless worth preserving.
There are undoubtedly families in which parental abuse, aggression, addiction or violence, sometimes extending across generations, make continuing contact harmful or unsafe. In these circumstances, distancing oneself from family members may be entirely necessary. However, in my clinical work, the circumstances surrounding family estrangement are often considerably less clear-cut.
The Pain of Estrangement
Parents whose adult children have chosen to distance themselves can experience profound distress. They may feel bewildered, rejected and deeply hurt, particularly when they believe they have done little to justify being excluded from their child's life. For some, estrangement also involves the painful loss of contact with grandchildren, adding another dimension to their grief. Parents may spend considerable time trying to understand what has happened, revisiting events from the past and questioning how a relationship that once seemed secure has become so fractured.
The adult son or daughter may also be experiencing considerable emotional pain. Their decision to create distance may follow years of feeling misunderstood, criticised, invalidated or unable to communicate their unhappiness in a way that feels heard.
It can be that parents and adult children have profoundly different understandings of the same family history. What a parent remembers as an ordinary disagreement, an attempt to offer guidance or a well-intentioned intervention may have been experienced by their child as criticism, rejection or a failure to understand them. These different experiences can become entrenched, with each person feeling that the other is unwilling to recognise their point of view.
How Can Therapy Help?
My approach to working with family estrangement is informed by systemic psychotherapy alongside the work of American psychologist Dr Joshua Coleman, who has written extensively about estrangement between parents and their adult children.
Systemic therapy is interested in identifying and understanding the patterns of interaction that develop between family members over the years which serve to maintain relational difficulties. In families experiencing estrangement, I often find that what is needed is a different kind of conversation from those that have taken place before. For parents, this may involve learning to listen to their adult son or daughter’s experiences in a way that they have perhaps not previously managed. This can be particularly challenging when the child's account of family life seems unfair, inaccurate or inconsistent with the parents' own memories and intentions.
The understandable temptation is for the parent to defend themself, correct perceived inaccuracies or point out the ways in which their offspring has also contributed to the difficulties. Unfortunately, these responses can reinforce the very feelings of not being heard or understood that may have contributed to the estrangement in the first place. Rather than focus on events and the ’truth’ about what happens, it is important to recognise that the same event can be remembered in very different ways by different family members. There may be more than one ‘truth’
Instead, understanding the emotional impact that particular experiences have had on the adult child is the best place to start.
This does not necessarily mean that parents must agree with everything their child says, accept every criticism or abandon their own perspective. Rather, it involves recognising that their child's emotional experience is real and significant, even when their understanding of events differs. A parent may have acted with the best of intentions, while their child experienced that behaviour as hurtful or dismissive. For an adult child who has felt misunderstood over many years, having a parent listen to, acknowledge and genuinely try to understand their experience can be enormously significant.
Towards Reconciliation
Reconciliation, when it is possible, is rarely achieved through a single conversation. It usually involves a gradual process of developing greater understanding, rebuilding trust and finding ways of relating that feel different from those that led to the estrangement.
For parents, this may involve tolerating the discomfort of hearing painful criticisms without immediately defending themselves. For adult children, it may eventually become possible to recognise that their parents' intentions, limitations and experiences were more complicated than they had previously understood.
There is, of course, no guarantee that reconciliation will happen, nor is restoring contact necessarily the right outcome for every family. Sometimes the work involves helping people come to terms with the relationship as it is, rather than how they would wish it to be.
If you are experiencing difficulties in your relationship with an adult child or parent, or are struggling with the pain of family estrangement, therapy can offer a space to explore what has happened, understand the different perspectives involved and consider what might be possible moving forward. Sometimes work happens with both parent and adult child, but if that is not possible it can still be useful to meet with parents alone.
By Chris Osgerby, UKCP Accredited Counsellor/Psychotherapist (Registered)
Chris is a Systemic Psychotherapist with over 25 years working in mental health services. He specialises in working with couples, individuals, and families, bringing extensive expertise in evidence-based therapeutic approaches.