Good Life Project - Healing Family Estrangement: What To Say, And What Never to Say.

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

Between 10 and 15 percent of mothers and 1 in 4 fathers are currently estranged from a child. If those numbers feel shocking, the harder truth might be this: most of the moves parents instinctively make once estrangement begins are the exact moves that keep the door shut.Dr. Joshua Coleman has spent more than four decades as a practicing psychologist and is a Senior Fellow with the Council on Contemporary Families. His own daughter once cut off contact with him. That experience, and everything he has learned since, shaped his work helping families find their way back to each other. He is one of the most trusted voices in the country on family estrangement and reconciliation.In this conversation, you will explore:Why estrangement rates are at historically high levels and what massive cultural shifts are driving themThe five defensive moves parents make that almost always make things worse, including why fighting for fairness is the most damaging trap of allWhat a genuinely healing apology actually sounds like, and why most apologies miss the mark entirelyWhy radical acceptance and hope are not opposites, and how to hold both at the same timeHow the principles of repair transfer to sibling estrangements and to grandparents cut off from grandchildrenIf someone you love has pulled away and you cannot figure out why, or if you are the one who has needed distance and are wondering what repair could look like, this is the conversation for it.You can find Joshua at: Website | Instagram | Family Troubles Substack | Episode TranscriptNext week, I am going solo, actually for the entire week, for a two-part midyear summer series about really taking a fresh look at where we are right now. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss it.Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the WheelVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So what do you do when your child wants nothing to do with you and refuses to even communicate anymore? Most parents believe that if they just explain themselves clearly enough, the door will kind of magically reopen. Decades of research say the opposite. The moves that tend to feel most natural when estrangement begins are almost always the exact moves that keep it going. In this conversation, we talk about why estrangement is at historically unprecedented levels and what specific cultural forces are driving the search. We talk about the five traps that parents tend to fall into almost universally and why, quote, fighting for fairness may be the single most damaging one.

We explore what a genuinely healing move actually requires word by word and how to hold radical acceptance and real hope at the same time without letting either one hollow you out. Our guide is psychologist and senior fellow with the Council on Contemporary Families, Dr. Joshua Coleman. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. And we'll jump right in after the break.

Talk to me about the state of family estrangement today. What are you seeing now? And how do you feel like it's changed in recent years? Yeah, I mean, we have to assume that there's always been estrangements, but probably never at the numbers that we're currently seeing. You know, one study said that something like 26% of dads are estranged from a child, and between 10 to 15% are estranged from a mother. And that's probably historically new, even though we've only recently begun to track it.

And I think it's in part because of the way that there's been this huge cultural shift away from the sort of structure that families had for really millennia, honor thy mother and thy father. Families forever respect thy elders, which is very similar to what most cultural. in the world still have. And it's shifted much more into this kind of notion that family is just one more group of people that can either interfere with your mental health or promote it or your identity or your happiness. And when that becomes the case, not only can you cut out a family member, but you should cut out a family member. So there's a bunch of other contributing factors that amplify that. But I think that's the most important thing is this huge cultural shift. It's interesting, right? Because when we think about family estrangement, and this could be whether it's a parent or child or siblings or grandparents, and we'll dip a little bit into each one of those different contexts. I feel like when an individual experiences, we're not thinking about the big cultural context here. It's like this is horrific. It's angst-ridden. It never leaves your heart and your mind and your body and this is your day. And what you're describing is there are bigger shifts. Like this is not just something that's happening within the family unit, within two people or three people.

There's a much bigger cultural context here that's behind this. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if we think about the pathways to estrangement, for example, you know, people often think, well, people only cut off a parent, for example, if there's been abuse, and that is certainly a pathway to estrangement, verbal abuse or physical abuse. But also today, people get estranged over political differences. You know, a survey I did with the Harrisville, we found a significant people became estranged just from the last election.

That's historically new, right? I mean, 20 years ago, if your kid was going to marry somebody from the opposite party, you'd say, well, as long as they love each other, that's the most important thing. Now it's like people from the opposite party are considered the enemy, and the idea of treating them even violently is considered somehow legitimate. The role of therapy would become much more of a therapy culture. Therapists have become the new high priest in terms of determining who should be kept in or outside of our lives. and therapists have become what the sociologist Alison Pugh calls detachment brokers, meaning they're people who sort of help us to detach from people that in other generations we'd feel obligated to be involved with.

So therapy and therapists as being one of the primary ways that we make sense of our relationships has also become incredibly important. And alongside of that Instagram influencers, social media influencers, where people kind of collect and form communities and increasingly fractured, society, high rates of divorce is quite common, rising rates of individualism. As a society, we have the highest rates of individualism than any other culture on earth. And individualism is important because with an individualistic culture, you're preoccupied with my own identity, my own personal happiness, my own personal growth, and getting rid of the people who stand in the way of that.

So there's been this kind of confluence of factors that have really been. served as amplifiers of estrangement. Yeah, I mean, that makes so much sense to me, which brings up a question. You shared at the top of our conversation these kind of shocking statistics, you know, like potentially one and four dads are strange from kids, potentially somewhere around 10 or 15 percent of moms estranged from kids. Yeah. And the way you're laying it out, though, I guess my curiosity is the initial knee-jerk reaction,

you know, for me, especially as a parent, I'm like, it's horrific. That's the, it's just like absolutely traumatizing. It's, you know, like it's a fracturing of culture. It's a fracturing of family. Underneath that number, though, is it actually all bad? Well, no. I mean, I think there's a good news, bad news here where prior generations couldn't really legitimately. And in many cultures still couldn't cut out a legitimate, abusive family member because there'd just be so much social pressure.

And people who cut out a truly. abusive family member, even in our society, still will experience some pressure from either siblings or grandparents or whatever. But today, people have many more advocates to support them in their estrangement. They have therapists. They have online communities. They've got books, et cetera. And that is, that is a good thing that people aren't obligated to be close to or expose themselves to people who are truly hurtful and destructive. So it's not an unambiguous, terrible thing,

but it's a good news, bad news, kind of a change. Yeah, I mean, that lands with me. You know, there's more opportunity to actually withdraw yourself from a situation which is truly harmful. Right. And find other ways to feel supported in that decision.

Right. At the same time, I wonder if, you know, as you mentioned, the internet and influencers, you know, there tends to be this pop psychology slash influencer lens that says anybody who does not immediately support you, your dreams, your vision is the way you want to be in the world,

jettison them from your life. They are not for you anymore, no matter who they are. Right. That's problematic too, isn't it? I'm incredibly problematic. And it's all part of being this individualistic culture where we're very preoccupied

with our own boundaries and happiness. and when that is the case, then cutting out people becomes this kind of virtuous act of self-protection and assertiveness and I'm being the kind of person that I want to be and I'm getting rid of toxic people and it sounds really good on the face of it. But at the same time, we have record high rates of mental illness and loneliness and social fracture and social isolation and people not having the same number of friends that earlier generations had in part because we have become so preoccupied with what makes me happy, who makes me happy, et cetera. And I think that that is a good. a quite serious problem in our society.

Yeah, I wonder if part of what we've all seen happen, I feel like in the last generation, if not a shorter window, maybe the last five, 10 years also is, it also becomes an excuse to remove people from your life who do not believe the thing you believe and see the world exactly as you see it, which from a societal standpoint is not what we want. Like, we want the friction.

We want the engagement. We want to actually figure out how to hash it out. Right. Yeah, I mean, you know, the cognitive behavioral therapist say that the best way to resolve somebody or something that you're afraid of isn't to withdraw or avoid it. It's to engage it. And I think that's also true in the social and in the political, this idea that people who disagree with you and your values and your beliefs are somehow the enemy is really just making us much, much weaker as a society and individually. We become stronger through engaging with people, learning how to tolerate their differences, learning how to learn how to learn from them if they are different from us, learning how to stand up for ourselves and protect ourselves certainly. But if your main go-to move is to cut people off and withdraw from them, then you're not really making yourself stronger. You're just becoming more and more avoidant. Yeah. And you're surrounding yourself without any opinions that would make you actually

consider who you are in the world and how the world is, which I think is a big part of why the world is the way it is right now. We exist in our own curator. bubbles. So if I zoom the lens out for a second, we're seeing increases in the rate of estrangement. Some of this may actually be not a good thing on a number of different levels. Some of it, there may be an underlying subtext here that says, you know, part of that is people actually feel more empowered and supported to do something that is healthy and constructive and safe for them. So it's complicated. It's complicated for sure. Yeah. Yeah. When we We've used the word estrangement a number of times now.

When we talk about estrangement, what are we actually talking about? Yeah, when I think about somebody being estranged, I think of a real cutoff, not just somebody who's more distant than we'd like. It's a relationship where that person basically says no contact. I don't want any contact with you. I mean, maybe if it's an adult child, maybe they reach out on the parent's birthday or something, but otherwise there's nothing, and that can go on for years. So when I think about a strange, but I'm thinking about people who are, there's really a severing of the relationship.

Let's dive a little bit more into what I would imagine is really one of the primary circumstances or the primary relationships, a parent and a kid. Yeah. A lot of our community are parents, you know, in the middle season of life. And, you know, things don't always go smoothly. No, they don't. Talk to me about the parent who shows up in a situation where you have a kid, there's been a lot of tension, there's been a lot of friction, and it ends, maybe let's not use the word end, actually. You're in a moment of estrangement. One or both of you have completely pulled back. There's no interaction anymore. And then you have the parent who shows up maybe on your doorstep in your clinical practice saying,

I feel like I did everything right. And genuinely bewildered that their kid has, quote, turned their back on them or abandoned them. Yeah. Zoom out here. And what often is really going on that is not right there on the surface? Well, every case is different. But one of the things I've learned is that there's basically five pathways to,

to an estrangement. You know, as we were talking about earlier, there can be abuse or neglect. When the adult child gets married, a survey of 1600 estranged parents, and a significant, 70% of them weren't estranged until their child got married. So marriage can be a flashboy, particularly if the son-in-law or daughter-in-law doesn't like the parents and says something like, choose them or me, you can't have both. Mental illness in the parent or addictions in the parent are common, but is it a strange, but also in the adult child, bad therapy.

Therapists have sort of assumed that every problem in adulthood comes from a dysfunctional family, which is just simply not the case. Divorce is huge. Also in my survey, it was a significant percentage of the people who became estranged, had a divorce in their past. And sometimes it's just normal separation, individuation, that causes the adult child to need more distance from the parent. So when I meet with the parent, typically it's the parent.

And typically it's the parent that reaches out to me because, and typically it's because the adult child is the one who's done the estrangement. And you're right. Often, not infrequently, they're like, I have no idea. I was a really good parent. And they'll show me a letter that just a year before said, best mom or best dad ever. I'm so grateful for you. And now they're rewriting history. And again, there can be those various pathways to cause an adult child to land with that kind of a narrative.

So my method is really to help the parent to deepen their understanding of the adult child's reasons for the estrangement, to show empathy, to take responsibility, to find the kernel, if not the bushel of truth in the reason that the child is estranged, which can be hard for parents, but there's really no other pathway back. And the reason for that is that nothing compels an adult child to date to have a relationship with a parent beyond that adult child's desire. So if the parent isn't really willing to, quote, do the work, which means being more self-reflective, more psychological, more egalitarian, then the adult child is going to say, of this relationship just doesn't work for me. You're not respecting my boundaries. You're not respecting my ideals of what, to me, constitutes a good, loving relationship. You're not taking responsibility for the past. So I have no interest. So a lot of my work with parents is really helping them to understand how the adult child came to see the parent in the way that they did and why they believe that being estranged from them is really the healthiest thing for them to do. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So if I'm hearing you correctly, then part of this is this cultural generational difference in expectation. Yes.

You know, where it sounds like what you're saying is the parent kind of shows up saying like the way it is and the way it has always been with parents and kids is you respect us, were your parents. Right. You know, you've heard the word come out of parents' mouths. Like, I gave you life.

And now you have to actually like show up and be here for me and respect me. And the kid is looking at the parents saying, times are different, man. You know, like I owe you nothing. I didn't ask to be here. I'm here now and I'm my own human being and I need to do the thing that's right and healthy for me. Exactly. How do you even begin to bring to?

break to that. Yeah, well, I mean, helping parents really just understand this enormous cultural shift is really helpful to parents, because a lot of them don't understand that there's been this profound cultural shift. And they do sort of, and a lot of these parents who are strange now actually were better parents than their own parents were. You know, they gave their children a life. They wish that somebody had given them. And when their adult child comes to them and says, oh, you were emotionally abusive, or you're an emotionally mature parent, or you neglect. me, the parents often feel like, what the hell are you even talking about? I would have killed for your childhood. You consider that neglect. I wish I'd had that kind of a neglectful childhood.

But it's really a matter of helping educate parents, just that their children are being raised in a time, which is a very different era. And that alone is helpful to parents. But I also, you know, will cite the study done by the Australian psychologist Nick Haslam that was done in 2000. 16. And one of the things that Haslam found was that in the past three decades, at least the three decades leading up to the study, there has been an enormous expansion or an enormous lowering of the threshold of what gets labeled as traumatic, abusive, neglectful, harmful behavior. So younger generations have been reared in that kind of belief system, which is a much lower threshold for what constitutes abuse or harm or trauma. Whereas the parents, you know, boomers

and gen Xers are raised during a time where the standards for what gets called abuse was just much, much higher. So helping educate parents that the times have changed and that what your child has been raised in is very different. Parents will often say to me, well, I didn't raise my kid like that, and I'm like, no, your kid wasn't just raised by you. They were also raised by the internet or by their therapist or by the culture at large. And so helping them kind of learn how to become more fluent in that language, and more importantly, to see that nothing compels the child to have a relationship with them unless the parent can get fluent in that more contemporary language, which was certainly not the culture that the parent was raised in. There's a lot of value there, but it can also be

completely misused and misunderstood. I don't think that the younger adults who are saying they were harmed or lying about it or even manipulating. I think that that's the culture that they were they were raised in, but it doesn't necessarily serve them, and it certainly doesn't serve the people that they're accusing of harming them. Yeah, I mean, it is really interesting, right? Because there's this really gray line, it sounds like what you're describing, between discomfort and harm.

Yeah, yes. You know, discomfort being this thing, we're all going to feel it. We're going to feel conflict. And in the right circumstances with the right amount of psychological safety, it's actually important for us to stay in that. and work through it together, but it can tip into this place

where it's actually not safe anymore. It's not appropriate. And it's so subjective, right? Well, that's the problem, is that it is so subjective. You could have identical twins, one emerging saying that the parent was really critical and abusive

and the other one saying, no, they weren't, because even with people who have a similar genetic presentation, they're still going to experience the parents differently in some kind of way. And that's why I tell parents getting into their rightness

or the wrongness of it in general doesn't really serve you. Really learning how to empathize with what your child's experience was is far more important. So commonly an adult child might say you emotionally abused me. And if the parent has no understanding of that or doesn't think that reckons with what their own experience of their parenting was, I encourage parents to say, well, it's clear that I have blind spots as a person or as a parent that I wasn't aware that that felt emotionally abusive to you. But I'm glad that you let me know.

and is that's something we can work on together in family therapy, or if there's things you would like me to work on in my own therapy, I'm open to that. So, yeah, the subjective state of the person who's accusing the other of being hurtful or abusive is important because it's, you know, even if objectively somebody doesn't seem like they're being abusive for the person who's saying they felt abused or harmed says that, then the person who wants that relationship with them has to be interested.

and understanding how they arrive there. They're never going to prove them wrong. Right. So they have to be, that's why empathy and understanding and curiosity are so important as features of healing, because the more that they can really deepen their understanding and show curiosity and interest, the more that person's going to say,

okay, well, you really, you care about me. Otherwise, proving somebody wrong feels like an act of uncaring. I'm curious about the idea of an inciting incident or a rift, a moment, a something, a trigger that sets in motion the estrangement. I would imagine that oftentimes, you know, if you can get two people to show up in your office or when you've just seen this through all of your work over the years,

that oftentimes people will point to something. Like, this is when the thing happened. Yeah. Is that true? Or is there something else going on here? Both can be true that it is a sort of a line that gets crossed or precipitating incident. And it can also be true that it's just sort of a slow erosion in the relationship or some other

outside factor. You know, so for example, if, you know, let's say dad yelled at his son's wife or something, that might be the final straw for the son. It might be such an egregious act if the son just cuts them, cuts them off. Or, you know, people who didn't like Trump rejecting the parent because they voted for Trump. I have a lot of those people in my, a lot of those parents. in my practice. So those can be, in some ways,

what the researcher Carl Pillamer calls a volcanic act, something that just where there's a big explosion or a big fight. But that isn't the only, there's often more sort of slow erosion or can be kind of a death by a thousand cuts. Let's say it's a

parent who's critical, is very aware of their being ongoing, critical and an ongoing way or insensitive about it and where the adult child just feels like, I've just, I've had enough. I can't tolerate being around you anymore and I just need need to have the space. Yeah. Do you see friction happening where one person is pointing to the thing? And the other person is like, no, this was just the straw that broke the camel's back. Like this is not, yes,

this is a pattern that's been going on for months or years, maybe decades. This is a much bigger thing. And one person just says, no, it was this one thing. And where one person wants to solve the thing, the moment, the crack, and the other person is like, it's almost like we're speaking two different languages. Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. And that's why people who are estranged over politics, and it's, you know, usually the adult child cutting off the parent, I tell their parent, widen your lens, you know, assume that it's not just about politics, even though I do think that politics these days can be enough of a reason. But in the service of deepening the relationship, say, well, maybe there are other complaints that you have about

me. Maybe it's not just my political values. Maybe there's things from childhood that are also bothering you, or there's other parts of my personality that you find difficult. So when I encourage parents to widen the lens, it's just the way of saying, go deeper, but it's sort of a way of showing more commitment to the other person and more caring for them and more of a concern for them. That doesn't always work. There's nothing I can tell any particular person that I can say with confidence. Just do this, you know, do Coleman's five steps and you're guarantee. because people are so different and are motivated by so many different factors. But in terms of general principles, particularly for the parents, being able to show empathy,

interest, compassion, taking responsibility, being self-reflective, being willing to go to therapy for themselves or do family therapy. Those are really the key ingredients. One of the things that comes to mind also, and this is something you speak about and you write about, is this notion of, yes, it would be lovely if every parent that showed up. And, you know, you explain this to them, would say, like, okay, tell me how. I'm completely willing. I'm open to this.

But we are human beings. Yes, we are. When we feel not just the sadness or the grief of a rift of a loss of estrangement, we also often feel anger. Like we as a parent, as an adult, are going to feel maybe as a tact, if not more, than the child. You write that parents often make these five kind of predictable mistakes once estrangement is on the horizon.

I would love to, not in like an extraordinary death, but kind of walk through them because each feels like a trap that a parent can fall into. And maybe let's start with the one that feels like it's kind of underneath everything else. You say a lot of parents are operating on the notion of, quote, fairness. Why is fairness of all things, the thing that just sinks everything from the beginning? Well, because if you feel like something is unfair, you're probably not going to communicate in a way that your adult child needs you to communicate. You're going to tell them that they're not being nice or they're not being mean or that they're being mean

or cruel or unfair. And that's just not going to persuade the adult child who feels like estrangement is in their best interest to feel like you're really trying to grapple with what it is that they're complaining about. They obviously feel like it is fair. So just saying it's not fair feels to them like you're completely missing the point. point. Yeah, I mean, which has got to be really interesting also for, I was going to say, for the parent who has as one of their sacred values, fairness. But then I would imagine if you have both the kid and the parent where fairness is sort of like the, at the top of the value chart for them, and they both see themselves as being the arbiters, the bastions of fairness in this conflict,

that's got to be tough. Oh, it's tough. Yeah. And parents have to kind of take the high road. First of all, because they're parents. And from my perspective, you know, the book stops with us as parents. So if anybody's going to take the high road, it should be. Ideally, I want everybody to take the high road. But in a family therapy reconciliation environment, you know, I tell parents, particularly if we're doing family therapy with the parent, the adult child, that this isn't, this isn't marriage therapy, you know, where you get an equal claim about what the relationship is going to look like, how much time you get to see your kid, how much time you get to be with your grandkids. It's more like you were married and your spouse left and they're willing to give you another

chance. It means it's going to have to be much more on their terms and you're going to have to be sensitive and open and responsive to what feels good to them or what they want in a relationship. And no, it's not, it isn't fair. I'll just say I get why that doesn't feel fair to you. It sounds like you were a dedicated parent. Your kid may disagree with you or me, but it sounds like you were a dedicated parent. And in a fair world, yeah, you'd be able to, you know, negotiate a kind of relationship that you really want. But once somebody has estranged themselves, you know, all bets are off. It's going to be much more on their terms as a kind of a cost of reentry. Yeah. Do you also see this almost sort of like second tier of fairness come up where, okay,

there's the initial fairness around like whatever the, the riff. was, but then there's this other thing saying, okay, for us to actually have any hope of bridging this, there's going to need to be a certain level of emotional labor. Why should it be me? As the parent, you mean? Yeah. Well, the answer is because your child's not going to do it. I mean, it goes back to this fundamental principle that, you know, that nothing's compelling your child to be back in contact with you. For the adult child's perspective, a strangeman's working for them. I mean, they may have guilt about it. They may have sadness. They may have regret, but they wouldn't be doing it unless they thought it was in their best interest. And in fact, when I tell

parents to reach out, the adult child, I tell them to say, I know you wouldn't do this unless you felt like it was the healthiest thing for you to do. Now, the parent may not feel like that, but the adult child does, and unless the parent can really position themselves in that way, then no good is going to come of their communication. Yeah, no, that makes sense to me. So fairness is sort of like the top of this list and maybe the bottom and the through line through much of it. Yeah. Let's kind of briefly walk through the other floor, because these are moves that, like defensive moves that kind of probably feel natural and reasonable to a hurting parent to quietly make it worse. Yeah. Motivating through guilt is one of them.

Right. Yeah. Yeah, used to be, you know, I'm Jewish and my, you know, I had a Jewish mother. when I moved to California, she could call me up and say, oh, so Mr. Fancy psychologist, you know, you're too busy to call your poor mother in Dayton, Ohio, you know. And I wasn't going to label it as, you know, emotional abuse on her part or narcissism or whatever. It was just kind of how she communicated and people of that generation communicated. But that ship has sailed. Now guilt tripping your kid, using guilt as a motivator is going to be experienced to the adult child as a form of emotional abuse or gas-sliding them or a boundary crossing and it's just not going to get you what you want. The adult child is going to come back into contact with the parent of their own volition.

They have to feel like it works for them. It's not going to be, if guilt worked, they probably wouldn't be estranged. But it wouldn't work because the adult child needs to feel like the relationship is something that really feels inviting and safe and reasonable to them. So, yeah, guilt just doesn't, is not persuasive. Another of these defensive traps that parents can fall into returning fire with fire. Yeah, that's a big one. It's a mistake that I see a lot of parents, a lot of therapists of the estranged parent make,

which is, well, you need to set limits on your adult child, and you need to tell them what your boundaries are, and you know, you need to not let them talk to you that way. And, I mean, there's a place to be assertive about ones, you know, how one's being spoken to. But for, you know, the adult child, even if they're not being appropriate in their anger or feeling, how they're expressing themselves. For the parent to kind of meet them there, it really won't work. A parent has to come from a position of, you know,

loving or at least enough of an affectionate authority if they want to be persuasive towards a reconciliation. Returning, if you can't get mad at you and you get mad back, you're probably only going to persuade them that you're not safe to be with. They may not be able to take responsibility for the ways that they're being disrespectful. Pause for a second. Say that again.

that first part because I think it's really important. So if you're the parent and you're returning fire with fire, there's a huge threat to your child's feeling safe. First of all, they may not be even aware that they're being as aggressive as they are or even how that's impacting you. And so when you respond equally or even worse, that's just going to make them feel that much more threatened and unsafe in your presence. And it's going to cause them just to withdraw even further. Objectively, when you're pulled out, we're having this rational conversation with this all sounds, well, of course, when you're in the heat of the moment, it's a very different thing. Your mistakes that every parent makes, and it's what I call getting into the quicksand.

As soon as your kid estranged you or starts to estrange you, you're going to make all of them because you're just part of human nature. And most parents haven't really been educated about how to talk in this way because it's a, you know, comparatively more recent phenomenon. Yeah. And also, you know, like there's a certain assumption that, quote, cool heads will prevail. Right. Like, you need the skills and the practices to be able to access, quote, you know, those cool heads in the first place or else rationality goes out the window.

Completely, and particularly if you as a parent actually came from a truly traumatic background. You probably just don't have the reserves and the resources to respond appropriately. So, yeah, that makes it harder. Makes a lot of sense. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Assuming that a reconciliation that the repair, we'll just kind of like you can snap your fingers and all will be good. It can happen really quickly.

Not a good thing. Well, no, what I tell parents is you have to have one foot in radical acceptance and one foot in hope. You know, hope statistically, something like 80% of children return to mothers, 70% return to fathers in a study I did with Phil and Carolyn Cowan at Berkeley. We found that couples who stayed married had a better chance of an eventual reconciliation than those who worked. So, you know, significant percentage of these, of young adult, adult who cut off contact do eventually come back into the fold.

So it's reasonable to have some foot in hope. But you can't live there because there's such a thing as pathological hope and radical acceptance. If you're in the midst of an estrangement, is a much better position psychologically because you're not white-knuckling it through life. You know, you're not telling yourself, oh, God, I can't live again unless I see my, have my child or my grandchildren in it. Now, you have to have some acceptance that this is the way that it is and may continue to be. Yeah.

The last defensive move here, for lack of the better phrasing, assuming that the distance is all about you. Right, because by the time we have adult children, you know, they're front and center of our consciousness, and particularly if we have grandchildren. You know, we're thinking about them all the time in one form or another. But for our adult children, they're not thinking about us all the time. I mean, I think of my parents, they weren't really front and center of my mind in the way that my children and grandchild is for me.

And, you know, so, and I just assume that's true of my adult children and other people's adult children as well. People, younger generations are preoccupied with their own marriages or their divorces or raising their children or their careers or their social lives. Parents, you know, are pretty far down the list. So a lot of what parents personalize these days may not have anything to do with the relationship. But a worsening aspect of that is just cell phone use has made it that the parent can feel rejected. There's thousands of ways the parent can feel rejected. If they send a text or they send an email or, you know, and there's not an immediate response, it's like, what does that mean?

Is my child hate me? Why aren't they responding? And I wrote them, you know, 12 hours ago. I still haven't heard back. You know, whereas in older generations, there just wasn't that kind of vehicle of a potential closeness or potential rejection. And that also heats up all these dynamics. Yeah.

And that, again, brings in this whole, you know, like different generations have different expectations about the way we communicate, the mode of communication, the timing of communication. And what seems completely natural, I'm just crazy busy one week with, you know, like, on a deal or on a job or traveling, you know, to the other can seem like just an indefensible offense. you know, like it just, it couldn't possibly be anything, but like there's something awful happening here. Right, exactly. Well, the other thing that's happened in the more recent past is that parents' expectation

of closeness with their adult child has also escalated, that parents raising children in the past, you know, three decades or so say that they want to be best friends with their children over the life course. I mean, I don't think my parents, I'm a boomer. I don't think they particularly wanted, I mean, you know, they were nice people, but I don't think it was their aspiration to be my best friend, and it wasn't my aspiration that they would be. You know, and some perhaps many parents are very close to their adult children, even best friends with them. And it's nice work if you can get it.

But the way that these expectations have escalated means that some adult children just feel like, you know, get your own life. You know, I don't want to be or everything, particularly for divorced parents. You know, they feel like, I, you know, you need to have other interests than me. And part of that is that in the past three decades or so, parents have given up on hobbies and, you know, outside activities and even friendships and it all got kind of sucked up into the nuclear family and redistributed to the children, which, you know, in some ways has been a net gain for children. But it makes parents have expectations which aren't always in line with their adult children's needs. It can be abridden to the child. And every single letter from every single adult child I ever see says, you need to respect my boundaries. You know, I mean, there can be different things that they want to respect in terms of the boundaries, but I think part of it is just, you know, back off mom or dad.

Give me some space. Give me some distance here. You're too much, I'm too important. I'm more important to you than I want to be. And that's particularly true with the mothers and daughters that I see in my practice where their daughters feel like way too responsible for moms' happiness and mental health and the like. And that can also be a cause of estrangement. Yeah. So if I understand this, and we as parents, we often have this almost like an instinct to defend.

It often shows up in these five different ways we just talked our way through. But taking any one of those stances, let alone piling them on top of each other, it isn't just unhelpful. It's that the specific thing that keeps the door shut that the kid wants, because the kid is kind of testing what you'll do with their pain, is not debating the facts, is not trying to defend, but actually just dropping the shields and getting curious. Yeah, it seems sort of almost counterintuitive, and it is human nature, particularly if you feel either wrongly accused by your child or their memories are different from yours.

As a parent, it's human nature to want to defend, to want to explain, to want to prove them wrong, but it doesn't really work. It just makes the child feel unseen and unheard and ultimately, uncared about. And the thing that works better than anything is interest and empathy and taking responsibility and being open and willing to find the kernel, if not the bushel of truth in the child's complaints. And if you don't know what they are to say, well, it's clear that I have blind spots as a person or as a parent that I don't have a better understanding of why you need to do this. But I really want to learn. And I hope you'll let me know. And I promise to listen

and not not defend myself. So can we work on this together? kind of thing. Let's deepen a bit into what that actually looks like. You know, so we're moving out of the, there's a rift, there's an estrangement, there's a lot of pain on both sides, maybe you spend a lot of time defending or fighting or going at each other, and it's just, it's not working. And now you're saying, okay, you want to invite a different approach. You want to invite people both sides, but probably starting with the parent to step into this in a very different way. What does that look like in a more granular way for them. Yeah, I think I look, well, first of, I mean, if I'm just meeting with a parent, then it's a

matter of taking a thorough history. I'll often want to see the correspondence between them and the adult child. Sometimes parents will say, well, I have no idea. And then if I see the correspondence, I'll feel like, well, it's actually right there on that last email to you. So I'm interested in how the parent communicates, but also how the adult child communicates, just as a matter of kind of an analysis of the problem. And kind of ask what is the adult child wanting from the parent?

What are they wanting them to acknowledge? Is the parent capable of acknowledging it? If they disagree, are they capable of setting aside the way that they disagree for the time being and just being interested or compassionate? So let's say, for example, the adult child says, well, I learned in therapy that you're a narcissist. You know, let's say the parent knows that they're not a narcissist. They're not going to get

anywhere saying, look, I've been in therapy. Nobody's ever accused me of being a narcissist. You're full of crap or whatever. It's just not going to work. They're far better off saying, well, I wasn't, I haven't been diagnosed with that, but perhaps you're right. It's just something you'd like me to read. But more importantly, what are the behaviors in particular that you find difficult or challenging or problematic? Because there's accountability in that. And then the parents much better prepped to say, is that something we can work on together? Or since this is a blind spot, is it something you can tell me the next time it comes up? Again, it's all in the service of showing this kind of more 21st century form of engagement, which is being willing to be self-reflective,

to take responsibility, to show empathy, et cetera, because nothing occurs without those ingredients. Yeah. And again, as you're describing this, I have to imagine some people joining us for this conversation, some parents who may be, maybe in the middle of a moment like this, some of them will be like, okay, I'm in enough pain now and there's enough suffering on both sides. I'm willing to actually try this, and others will be thinking to themselves, you're asking me to lie down, but I'm right. Yeah, and I hear versions of that in my practice. And when I tell parents it's about humility, not humiliation. And you can either be right or you can have your kid back in your life, but you can't have both. It's kind of similar to marriage, you know, in our

romantic relationships. We can fight till the end of the day about trying to prove our spouses or partners wrong, but it doesn't really work. What works is empathy and responsibility taking, you know, and the like. So, but it's hard. I mean, it's nothing, nothing about these methods that are easy. But what I find with person, particularly parents who have made significant mistakes and who hasn't as a parent, it actually is therapeutic for them because what stays in the dark grows in the dark, you know, the more that we can kind of accept and acknowledge the ways that we are flawed. I mean, for example, I came to this work, Jonathan, because my daughter had cut off contact with me when she was younger. She's in her

40s now. Unfortunately, we reconciled and it had to do in many ways with my becoming remarried and her feeling like I chose my marriage over her in many ways and feeling, and feeling in some ways abandoned by me. And, you know, when she went to talk to me about it in her 20s, I was very defensive and not kind of try to explain it away and blame other people. And it really wasn't until I kind of learned how to do what I'm telling other parents to do, which is not, it's not remotely easy. But that's when things really, really began to shift for us.

And, you know, I think for the majority of parents that I work with. Talk to me about the role, if any, in this process and sort of like the mend. the repair process of the apology. You know, I would imagine that a lot of parents I should probably think, well, in some way, shape, or form, I actually have apologized, maybe repeatedly. But maybe they actually haven't, or it hasn't landed, or maybe it's not actually the apology that the kid is waiting for.

Well, first of all, I mean, I just want to emphasize that a parent could write the most perfect a man's letter in the adult child may still not open the door. So I don't want anybody out there listening to the same. think, oh, if I only do it right, my kid will come back to me because there's so many reasons that an adult child may decide that they aren't open, even if the parent does write the best letter. A good apology, particularly between a parent and an adult child, is in some ways harder than it might be with a friend. You know, with a friend, you could probably do an apology that

maybe doesn't hit every note, but it's sort of the spirit that counts. Whereas for an adult child, they're kind of listening for every single word. So parents will often say things like, well, maybe I wasn't a perfect parent. You know, or I did the best that I could, or things were different back then, or they'll blame other people. Well, you know, your mother tried to alienate you from me

or we didn't have any money back then. Or I had to work two jobs. Or they'll blame the kid. You had learning disabilities, or you had to go to rehab, or none of those things are going to work. The only thing that works is a heartfelt apology. that acknowledges the parents' flaws.

You know, I have close family that are in AA, and one of the things that I've learned through them is the fourth step, which is you make a searching, a fearless and searching moral inventory of your character flaws. And I think it's such an important sort of framework for parents because we all have flaws,

and the more that we can kind of just say, yeah, I get that, you know, I was, I mean, in my own case, with two of my three kids, they've, you know, both my daughter and one of my twin sons has confronted me about being really impatient, when I was raising them. I mean, you know, now that I'm an older dad, I'm not so impatient,

but when I was raising them, I was. And it's true. I was very impatient and irritable and reactive. And, you know, and so for me to say, no, I wasn't, you're overly sensitive. That's not true. You're being unfair. I mean, it's just not, it's not a compelling response.

It's far better to say, no, you're right. That is one of my character flaws, and I'm really sorry for the ways that that impacted you. I mean, I'll sometimes tell parents there has to be more blood on the tracks. You know, that's why you can't just say if there's anything that I did that offended you or hurt you. I'm sorry. It's not really an apology. An apology really requires that the person see that you're really struggling with something that's difficult for you

and that you're committed to some form of repair. That for the adult child often means you're willing to do your own therapy, you know, or ideally do family therapy. But some kind of a statement of a desire for repair. Yeah, and so it sounds like a statement of a desire for repair bundled with some version of, I acknowledge that you're hurting, that something I've said or done or the way that I've shown up has caused you pain. Right. And that's real. And I acknowledge that.

And there's a way that I have been in our relationship that has been responsible for that. It's not saying, I'm so sorry you feel the way you feel, which is a disaster, I think. we all kind of like know that at this point. But oftentimes it's kind of the way that we, it was like, no. Like you're in pain. I acknowledge that. It's real. And there's something about the way that I interacted with you that caused that.

And you're bringing it to my attention now. And in a way, thank you. I really want to sit with this. I want to explore it. And if there's work to be done between us or just me individually and maybe someday between us, I'm raising my hand to say yes. Like, I'm here to do it. And I hope that at some point that will help us come back together.

Is that sort of like the general gist? No, that's beautiful. That's really, really well said to really speak to the pain and to speak to you as the creator of that pain. And very, you know, very directly to acknowledge it. Yeah, I'm really sorry for, you know, the way that, you know, my anger or impatience or divorce or abuse, whatever it is impacted you. And I could see why that might have made you feel like taking distance from me was in your best interest. And I'm really committed to doing it better in the future if you're open to giving me that chance. But I am really sorry.

So I think the way you summarize, that's exactly right. Yeah. So this also brings up something. If we are willing to not just say that in the name of repair, but own the fact that it just might be true. Right. Right. We're not just saying it because we want to, like, heal the riff, but damn, maybe there is something that I need to actually work on. Self-compassion has to really enter the equation there, right? For sure. I mean, you know, we all have blind spots, you know, as parents, as adult children, as spouses, whatever. So being able to have some serenity around that is so important because if you don't, if you can't acknowledge that what the person is seeing in you might not have. a kernel or grain of, you know, a grain or a bushel of truth to it, then the chances of repair

are very, very low. So being able to go, yeah, I guess that, I mean, you know, again, to use my own example, like in my own experience, my impatience was like a level three of irritability. But, you know, to hear my son, one of my twins and my daughter talk about it is more like a seven. I mean, they experienced it as abusive in a certain way. So I had to kind of go, yeah, look, I, I'm really aware that to me, I feel like I was just annoyed, but I get for you and your, whoever I'm talking to, your sibling, it felt like abuse and I'm really, I'm really sorry. That's on me as your dad to take responsibility for that. I've heard you also speak about the weight of this often being born differently by moms versus dad, you know, that for moms specifically, there's this cultural thing

where the very thing our culture calls being a, quote, good mother, can be the thing that keeps them trapped in sort of like this cycle of self-flaim. Untangle that from me a bit. Yeah, I mean, the research on sort of the way that men versus women respond to hurt or rejection or even fear, men are much more likely to externalize through being aggressive in response or angry or rejecting or compartmentalizing, whereas women are much more likely to internalize. through shame, depression, self-criticism, et cetera. And so for mothers, they constantly feel like, well, there must be something else that I could do or should do. And that's why I'm at pains here to say, look, you may already be doing enough. And it's important to acknowledge that and not keep trying.

But often what made somebody a good mother in the first place are a conscientious mother, which is being really preoccupied with their child all the time and thinking about how to give them a good life or respond to their criticism. at some point has to be disabled if the adult child isn't responding. It looks like they're going to be estranged for a while. At that point, it isn't productive or adaptive for you as the mom to be constantly thinking about your child and what they need and what they want or whether there's some other stone to turn over. I mean, what I tell parents is you, you only have two cards in your hand to play. One is a, I mean, if your kid's not talking to you, one is to write a really good

a men's letter with all the features you and I've been talking about. And then to do a follow-up six to eight weeks later, which is just kind of a check-in, just writing to see if you had a chance to look over the letter. I'm sure the things I left out that would have been good to have included, but I wanted to see if it was possible to get a conversation started. Hope you let me know. But after that, if the adult child doesn't respond and they're not giving the parent other things to work on, I tell parents you should just stop trying for a year and then reach,

try again, you know, in a year because your adult child just needs time to sit with it and digest it and feel like you're respecting their limits, and it may cause them to miss you more, and you might not be constantly triggering them. Sometimes just an amends letter can be triggering and upsetting to the child really wants and needs distance. But all this is much harder for mothers to do than dads because it feels so unmaternal to the mother to just stop trying. Yeah, and there's this cultural, like, overlay and men baggage. There's a weight to it, which is different. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Let's broaden this out a little bit. So everything that we talked about has really sent our own parents and adult kids.

Yeah. What about, but estrangement isn't just limited to that. What about the siblings who are cut off from each other or the trickle up effect of grandparents who are potentially shut out of their grandkids' lives because of what's going on? How much of what we've been talking about here transfers to those dynamics? Like what's the same and what's different? Well, the vast majority, in terms of, I mean, a strange man, if an adult child cuts off a parent, even let's say you and I both agree that, yeah, they really need it to.

do that. It's still a cataclysmic event in the family system because typically grandchildren, even loving grandparents are going to get cut off from their grandchildren. Siblings not infrequently get divided in their loyalty. Some may be remain in contact with the estranged sibling. Others may say, screw that. You know, we don't like how you're treating mom and dad an ally with them. Ants and uncles may step in as parental figures, young cousins who were once close to their other cousins, nieces and nephews, you know, may lose contact. So it's a hugely cataclysmic event. And, you know, I think the studies are something like 20 to 25 percent of siblings are estranged in the U.S. or having an estrangement. And sibling estrangement is going to be more challenged

because often, you know, in order to get the ship off the shoals that it's kind of stuck on, you know, one person typically the parent has to be willing to take the high road and show humility, be willing to take responsibility. Our siblings often aren't willing to do that. They're like, no, screw them. They can come to me and apologize to me. I'm not coming to them. I'm not walking over the hot coals. My parents are willing to walk over. So sibling estrangements can be much harder to resolve for that reason.

Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me. If somebody's listening to this or watching, joining us right now, and they are estranged from a sibling, and they would really love to have it resolved. what's sort of like a first step in for them? It's similar to their parent. It's that you can't prove your sibling wrong if they've rejected you. You're going to have to find a way to empathize with why they've cut off contact with you or don't want to be close to you and take responsibility for that.

There's an interesting study that found that sometimes a sibling may feel like the parents preferred one of the kids over the other. And even if objectively that's not true, that sibling who felt like the other sibling got more of the other parent, that can have a long-term negative effect on that sibling's mental health. And it can impact that relationship. So a brother might say to his sister, well, you know, mom and dad always loved you more than they loved me. And a sister might say, well, that's certainly not true. But it's not going to get anywhere unless the sibling who wants the reconciliation can say, you know, know, acknowledge some version of that. Like, well, I didn't really see that, but it sounds like that was your experience,

and I'm really sorry, and I guess I could see how that could have felt like that, or something that shows a willingness to understand and empathize and show curiosity and interest in what the other person's saying. I mean, these principles in some ways seem so obvious, but they're actually so hard to do and to practice, right? Right, simple but hard. Simple but hard. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. If we sort of like zoom the lens out, looking at the full context of estrangement, like, no matter where it lands in a family. I would imagine there are moments, there are circumstances where there is a rift, there is an estrangement, there is an attempt at repair, maybe somebody even, you know, is doing all the things that you're suggesting to do and trying to avoid all the defensive moves that will only deepen the way. the divide. They offer amends. They wait a year and then, you know, they do the check-in. And it seems like this is it. Is there a moment where it makes sense to say, I wish with every fiber of my being this were different and we could be back together, but you need to let it go. Well, yeah, absolutely.

And then it's actually healthy to let it. go once you've done the few steps you can do because you can ruin your life by wishing it were otherwise. That's why radical acceptance is such a powerful pathway to mental health. You know, with radical acceptance, we're saying it is what it is. I've written an amends letter. I'm willing to go to therapy. I'm willing to do, you know, family therapy or do whatever, respect whatever boundaries they put before me. But if they're not willing to do that, there's nothing else that I can do. and I can't keep wishing it were otherwise because it's actually bad for me to do that.

So in radical acceptance, there is a kind of a decrease in stress that comes from that because you're not sort of struggling to fight, to wish that something were different than it actually is. Yeah, again, easy to say.

Yes, all these things are easy to say. Very hard to do in practice. Absolutely. Is there sort of a universal takeaway or reframe here that if you're experiencing some form of family estrangement, you're joining this conversation right now. Is there a mindset shift? Is there sort of like a not even the thing that you say or do,

but is there something that a switch that needs to be flipped to prepare you to step into this mode of repair that would be helpful? Yeah, I think acknowledging that we all have our blind spots, that trying to prove somebody wrong or incorrect or faulty in their reasoning is never going to win them over, that simple empathy and understanding and responsibility taking are actually far more powerful as agents who change them. They sort of seem. You know, we often feel like we need to do something really big and dramatic, but simply showing curiosity and interest and, more importantly,

empathy towards somebody's experience and even better taking responsibility. for how we contributed to their experience, those are really the most important factors that are true, whether it's a sibling estrangement or a parent estrangement or a friendship asstrangement. I may just think that those are really the key principles that can heal a relationship. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle

in our conversation as well. So in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase, to live a good life, what comes up? Oh, to live a good life. to have good friends, to have meaning, to have purpose, to care for other people. I think that those are really the key ingredients to a good life. Thank you. Sure.

Thanks for having me. So let's talk about some of the big takeaways from this conversation. One thing I keep thinking about is how counterintuitive the whole path back actually is. You know, when someone we love pulls away, the instinct is often, times to defend ourselves, to explain, to maybe even prove them wrong, to say this isn't fair, and it may not be. And Joshua is not saying those feelings are not real. They often are. But every one of those moves, he has seen it play out a hundred times. And they tend to just really further close the door. What actually creates the opening is the opposite.

Curiosity instead of defense, empathy instead of explanation, and an apology that puts more blood on the tracks, his phrase, than most of us are comfortable with, not apologizing for their feelings, acknowledging your specific role in their pain. He also drew a line, I think it's important to hold on to. You can either be right or you can have your kid back in your life, but you probably can't have both. That is not defeat. That's a choice about what you actually want. And for those in the middle of this right now, wherever the estrangement is, one foot in radical acceptance, one foot in hope. That's the place he keeps coming back to. It's not giving up. It's refusing to white knuckle your way through a situation that you cannot force your way out of. And hey,

next week, I am going solo, actually, for the entire week for a two-part mid-year summer series about really taking a fresh look at where we are right now. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcast so you don't miss it. And do me a quick favor, just a seven-second favor, share this episode with just one person who really needs it right now. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox, and me, Jonathan Fields, editing help by Troy Young, Chris Carter crafted our theme music. And if you've not already, please go ahead and follow us wherever you get your podcast so you never miss a conversation. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.