The Oprah Podcast - Oprah and Experts: Setting Boundaries with Toxic Family Members

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

The Oprah Podcast on estranged families going #NoContact reached more than five million viewers and listeners and sparked widespread conversation across social media and online opinion platforms. In this episode, Oprah addresses some of the alternative points of view raised on Social Media. She invites the experts back for a discussion exploring new questions and additional ways of coping with this painful and sensitive issue. After award winning journalist Jemele Hill saw the original episode, she was inspired to share with Oprah her own family estrangement story for the first time publicly. Oprah also speaks to a woman who cut off contact with her sister and a married couple seeking advice for repair with their estranged parents. BUY THE BOOKS! 'Rules of Estrangement' by Dr. Joshua Coleman: 'Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents' by Dr. Lindsay Gibson⁠: ⁠'The Balancing Act' by Nedra Glover Tawwab: 00:00:00 - Recap of No Contact  00:00:00 - Welcome Tania, critic of Oprah 00:08:20 - Oprah wants to know how to do better 00:12:30 - Welcome Dr. Joshua Coleman, Dr. Lindsay Gibson, Nedra Glover Tawwab 00:19:14 - Welcome Jemele Hill who is no contact with her father 00:28:18 - One-third of gen-z go to therapy  00:32:35 - How individualism relates to estrangement 00:39:50 - How to stop judging your own need for emotional safety 00:43:20 - Working towards reconciliation Additional Resources: 'Uphill' by Jemele Hill: Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: https://www.instagram.com/oprahpodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey/ Listen to the full podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0tEVrfNp92a7lbjDe6GMLI https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oprah-podcast/id1782960381 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So now Oprah is shocked by the aftermath of estrangement after being one of the biggest voices pushing it for decades. Oprah, the biggest plot twist in the entire family estrangement crisis, while everyone is applauding her for finally discussing estrangement. Very few look at the irony and the contradiction. Oprah was one of the strongest voices pushing the normalization of family cutoffs and not by accident, publicly, repeatedly, and openly. I don't feel that I contributed to the culture of estrangement in the way that you're saying. Hi, everybody. I'm happy to be here with you on the Oprah podcast in gorgeous New York City. So right before Thanksgiving, we did an episode about the growing number of Americans choosing to go now contact with their parent or their adult child. And it reached over 5 million of you. Thank you so much. And millions more reacted on social media.

I did not fully appreciate this issue would hit such a raw nerve. And then in the middle of Thanksgiving with my own family, my phone is born. up with comments and articles and debates online. And I wanted to show you just a few of the most reposted moments from that no-contact episode. So you didn't grow up in a world where you thought about, you know, removing yourself or distancing yourself from your parents. Where did the idea even come from? I don't think there was one moment. I think it was very incremental.

Do you miss the contact with them? I love my life. I'm just not being walked all over, actually. So it's, I know peace for the first time. There's always been estrangements, right? Forever there's been estrangements. But it's new the way we think about family. I do understand she is my mother.

However, it's like we just, we don't have that relationship, you know? And so it's just like she was never there for me. It's such a thin line between like what's appropriate and what's gone too far. Because as therapists, we do see our clients suffering. I am estranged for my 30-year-old son. by choice. When a mother decides to go no contact with her child, she's demonized. Mm-hmm. And that's been my experience. In our generation, way, we grew up. You know, you loved your parents no matter what.

Yeah. They're not doing that no more. I just wanted to mention that this is not the world of 30 years ago. I think it's a very interesting thing you just said. The days of the role being the almighty in the relationship, because it's not about the role. It really is a about the relationship. Some of you said you felt seen and understood for the first time. Others felt that the language and the framing of our conversation missed the mark. So I'm here today to try to unpack this and dive a bit deeper if we can.

On this episode, our three experts will be back as well as more people who have chosen to cut ties with their parents and even ties between siblings, which hits a very different nerve. But first, one social post really caught my attention, so much so that I responded to it. Watch this. So now Oprah is shocked by the aftermath of estrangement after being one of the biggest voices pushing it for decades. Oprah, the biggest plot twist in the entire family estrangement crisis, while everyone is applauding her for finally discussing estrangement. Very few look at the iron and the contradiction. Oprah was one of the strongest voices pushing the normalization of family cutoffs and not by accident, publicly, repeatedly, and openly.

and this started as far back as the 90s, and it continued for decades right into 2025. And look at the trail. She wasn't neutral. She wasn't asking questions. She amplified the very messaging that contributed to millions of parents and children walking away from one another.

Estrangement isn't entertainment or a trending conversation piece. It's real families, real grief. Parents dying without hearing their child's voice. Generations are now breaking. Let's talk about what repair talks and what that means and what repair actually takes because that's part that no one.

teaches you and that's exactly why I'm here. Tanya, thanks for being here to talk with me. Hi there. Hi, Oprah. Hi. You believe that I and so many others have helped to promote this concept of going no contact over the years. You're right, yeah.

Now, whether it was intentional or not, Oprah, speaking directly because this conversation didn't just recently start, I was one of those people that cut off my mom in the name of healing because I put you on a pedestal for so long and I was watching your episodes and I've watched you talk with Nedra, which is awesome to have her here today, where the language is about protecting your peace and having the boundaries and empowerment, which was freeing in the moment. But there was no path to repair after that. And so when I saw this topic come up now, I was kind of like,

huh, this isn't new. Well, I thank you for bringing that to my attention because what I thought was new, certainly is new culturally in the African-American community, which will be talking about, I think, later on. with Nedra and other people is that the idea of cutting off your parents has just been an unthinkable thing. And I can see why you might think that I was strongly endorsing people having no contact. What I felt I was doing was allowing people the opportunity to remove themselves from abusive relationships. So what I remember is all of these.

various shows that we did where people are being abused by their parent. And I believe when you have to reenter a situation where you have suffered abuse or you have been, you know, severely mistreated in that way, that divorcing that situation for many people is, is the best recourse. So that's what I have in my memory. But I don't feel that I contributed to the culture of estrangement in the way that you're saying. But I can hear. why you feel, I can hear why you feel that way. I want to say I appreciate you bringing presence to the abuse part because my content is never about the abuse. That's when distance is necessary. I think what happened is because that language was learned and pushed so much, it started

to become. Which language in particular, Tanya? Like the parting, the distance, when you should go no contact, your parents are toxic. Even the terms of your parents are abusive, now it might not be coming directly from you. That language became so normalized, Oprah, that it's now being used for everyday hardships, not necessarily abuse. I would agree with that. And that's one of the things that I learned in this most recent show that we did, that what I, in all the years of doing the Oprah show, saw as abuse, people feel now when somebody hurts their feelings or somebody doesn't agree with them, that that is now abuse. I see abuse as it has been defined for years in the culture. Someone is sexually abusing you, emotionally abusing you, saying things on a constant basis.

that make you feel small and make you feel less than valued in the relationships. That's what I see as abuse. So someone having a disagreement with you and you're not, you know, feeling like they are necessarily in your corner, to me, that isn't abuse. And I think from my point of view, what I have done is tried to get to people to look at the truth of their lives. If this person is toxic to you, which I know is a word that's overused now, then you, you need to create some distance.

You know, in my own family relationships, as you referred to, I had some toxicity. And it didn't mean I completely estranged from my family because of it, but I had to set up some boundaries because of it. So I think there's a difference between setting up boundaries and having absolutely no contact. Yeah, I wanted to add on that because boundaries are such an important tool. And that's where I appreciate it, NEDRA, because I think boundaries are so important when someone has never had boundaries before and knew how to say. they know. But what happened is boundaries is staying in relationships that aren't safe are essential. And it stops the bleeding by setting these boundaries and it creates that space to breathe. Where the conversation often stops. Okay, say that again. Staying in relationships that are unsafe.

I think the distance is necessary in those instances that you don't stay in the relationship when your safety is an issue. But what happens is the conversation is stopping with boundaries when boundaries are treated as the end goal of healing, healing rather than the beginning steps. And that's essentially why I talk about that, because managing pain through distance is not the same thing as resolving the emotional wounds underneath it. And so healing is what creates freedom. Boundaries is what creates that first line of protection, two very different things. Tell me, Tanya, what do you think, because I'm always interested in evolving, growing, making things better? What do you think was missing from our episode? I think it was lacking the depth,

because obviously this conversation runs deep. And so when I say depth, I mean, It's one thing to understand your pain. But for me, when I really uncovered emotional healing, there's three stages to it. And I feel like this kind of covered stage one, which is stage one is really unpacking the wounds, bringing it to the surface, attaching your pain and your insecurities and all of that

to what happened to you in your childhood and your upbringing. But that's just stage one. Stage two is really about now how do I reframe that? And for me, that's saying, okay, the villain in my story from stage one, I need to now rewrite their story so that I'm no longer just holding on to the resentment and the pain that I have, but I need to be able to understand their perspective, not to justify the pain that happened to you, not to excuse it in any way, shape, or form, but to allow you a level of compassion to say this wasn't about me. This was about them and their character and what they've gone through and how they've grown up

that deflected that onto me, and it's not me. So that's stage two. there was no conversation around that, let alone stage three. About how to repair. About how to repair, how to understand that they didn't mean to necessarily hurt me. By the way, there's, of course, some terrible people in the world that don't have that intention, but there was no repair. Actually, I think that that's a whole completely different conversation and show.

I think for myself and I think for the producers who brought the idea to me in the first place, actually, the idea came because I have a friend who was going through it who called me up one day and said, do you know about this no contact thing? Then I mentioned it to a producer, and then we started this whole thing, and they said, oh, yeah, a lot of people are going through this. So I think our initial intention, because we always talk about what is our intention before we do anything, was to make people aware that this was happening in the world. Now, I know you live in a world where you're very social and you know this, but there are a lot of people who didn't know this was even happening, including my best friend Gail, who's like, I didn't even know people

could do this, you know? So the initial show was just to let people know this is happening in the world. And I think, I think you're right that we didn't delve into how to repair because we were just trying to let people know this was actually happening. So what's the third thing you think is missing? The third thing is now rewriting your own story. Yeah. So once you've found the compassion, the understanding, now you write your own story and say, okay, I'm not going to be stuck in stage one. I need to be able to work through that level of compassion and say, since I'm aware now that the triggers and the people who activated them and everything was not a direct correlation with my worth and who I am and everything, it's time for me to rewrite my own. And I love that you say this

because this comes from your own experience, right? Because I read that you went no contact once yourself. I did. That's the thing is I, you know, oftentimes you say it's to protect my peace, but for me, I learned that it was actually protecting my pain. Because as long as I wasn't around the thing that was triggering me than I felt peaceful. But really, for me, real peace came when I was no longer triggered, which I don't like to use that term so loosely because I feel like it's another common word now. Once I learned how to be around my mother or the person that was triggering me and still stay calm and grounded, that was a different level of peace. That is the real definition of peace. Okay. So, Tanya, I really thank you for sharing your point of view with us and giving me

and all of us on this team a different perspective. We're going to move on to my other guests, but I want to make sure you had a chance to say what you wanted to. Is there some final thing you wanted to share with us? No, I think it's important to have that open dialogue, and I appreciate you actually commenting and being open to it, because sometimes we do have an effect that could create a ripple effect when our intention was not to create that. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, and you've given me ideas for at least three or four other conversations. All right? Thank you. All right. Hope to talk to you in the future. After this quick break, our listeners have a lot of questions and comments for our experts. Plus, Emmy-winning journalist Jamel Hill saw our episode and

joins us next. She explains why she is ready to share her own no-contact story for the first time. Stay with us. Welcome back to the Oprah podcast. A few months ago, we produced a podcast on this statistical rise in family estrangement in the United States. And that episode really struck a nerve with millions of you. So we have updates and more questions for our experts. Let's get back to it. Okay, so now I want to bring in our three experts into the conversation. Dr. Joshua Coleman, you will remember, is a psychologist, bestselling author known for his frequent contributions to Ask a Therapist column in the Washington Post. And Nedra, who you also just mentioned, Nedra Glover Taub, is a therapist in New York Times bestselling author.

Hey, Nedra again. And Dr. Lindsay Gibson, psychologist and also New York Times bestselling author. Welcome back to you all. Dr. Coleman, you've seen Tanya's post and you share. some of her sentiments. How so? Well, I share many of the sentiments that people are way too quick to cut off loving, decent, involved parents, and they're using the language of therapy and abuse. And part of that is just the way that the thresholds for what we consider to be abusive, harmful, neglectful, traumatizing behavior have lowered. So the generations are really talking past

each other. And one of the problems that we have right now in our culture is that, that, you know, just about every day there's some article about somebody who's cut themselves off from a truly abusive parent, where any of us could agree that it's a reasonable, understandable thing for that adult child to have done. But you know what's missing from our culture are the parents' stories. And parents aren't out there talking about their stories. You know why? Because they're terrified that if they do that, that's going to decrease the chance of their... Further estranged. Further estranged their kids.

It's going to further estranged them. So you have this great disparity between who's kind of running the narrative here. And so people often say things like, well, you know, nobody cuts them, cuts off a parent unless they have really good reasons. And yeah, I agreed that they might not cut them off unless they have good reasons. But that reason may not be parental abuse or neglect or harm. It could be because they don't get along with the spouse that their child is married to. It could be the parents' mental illness, but could also be the adult child's mental illness or addictive issues. So there's all these different pathways to estrangement that can happen with good, decent, loving parents.

And that is not enough in the media in our conversation right now. Nairjo, what do you want to say about the reaction that you've been seeing online about this episode? You see so many messages about the title. And one of the things that, you know, I mention is, one, I do not label and market Oprah Winfrey's episodes, right? I had nothing to do with the title. And also, if we are being technical, a trend is something that is popular. So if you look on Twitter or threads or TikTok, they have a list of 20 or 10 trending topics. So if this happens to be a popular topic of this time, then that is what the episode was labeled.

I don't think it was labeled in a manner to say that we are doing something to make it more popular or we're doing something to say that this has never been a thing. But it really is something that more and more people are talking about. I think the word trend made a lot of people feel marginalized. Trend was in the labeling of this episode. I never called it a trend, but I take responsibility for what it's labeled because I approve everything. And so I didn't know that that word would cause a stir or cause people to be upset. Let me just say, I apologize for many of you that word felt insulting and it did not actually reflect the immense pain and the grief behind the decisions that you all have made. So I apologize on behalf of myself and my team.

I want to say I thank you all for the correction. I stand corrected. And I think people think long and hard for many days and nights and often years before they make a decision like this, long and hard and are tormented by it for a long time. So any implication that it's anything else was certainly not intended by me. And what I wanted to talk to you about is that in the African American community, this was unheard of. I have seen so many people in relationships. the African-American community where you at least needed to set some boundaries. You at least, but the idea of divorcing or dismissing or no longer having contact with somebody

who has done severely harmful things to you was just unheard of. And now that is happening. That is happening. Yeah. And I would say in many instances, it would have been healthy to happen many years ago. We would have saved some generations from trauma. You know, to Tanya's point, the real abuse part of it, some people are suffering real abuse for years and years, particularly in the black community, because we have this, I don't want to put it out there that this person is doing that. I don't want to bring shame to my culture.

I don't want to say anything and disrupt the family programming. So people are dealing with real abuse. I would have to say, if I, Oprah Winfrey, personally know three people who are, who. who have been in abusive relationships and have now grown up and their mothers are still with those men. And they feel like they have to continue a relationship in that family. If I personally know three, I know that there are at least three or four million out there who are doing the same thing. And the pedophiles in the family. And the pedophiles in the family, yeah.

The pedophiles in the family or the verbally abusive. aunts and grandparents and all sorts of things, that it's just been something we've tolerated. And now that people have the education and understanding that that is actually abused, they are taking a stand. So Dr. Gibson, what's the response been like for you? Yeah, for the most part, all the responses that I've gotten have been very positive. This is, you know, coming mostly from colleagues and friends,

but also people that have posted stuff as well. So it was very positive in the sense of it being experienced as a well-balanced show, something that showed the point of view of several different situations, you know, whether it was parent-child, child, child-parent. Yeah, okay. There were so many posts I responded to Tanya's because I just popped into my feed and then I realized everybody else was saying all kinds of things. I just couldn't keep up.

But Jamel Hill posted this. I watched Oprah's episode about going no contact with family, and I have a personal connection that I don't feel comfortable sharing. And then someone posted something pretty rude, and Jamel clapped back, thank you, and wrote, maybe you should watch the episode before having such a strong opinion. It was a very good episode, and the point of it wasn't to say, look at this new thing happening, but to also highlight and have hard conversations about how the no contact is happening

for a variety of reasons that sometimes don't include obvious abuse. Well, thank you, Jamel. Thank you so much. Emmy Award-winning journalist, author, and the Atlantic contributor. I love the Atlantic so much and all that you say there. Great to see you. Thank you for watching and supporting us. What struck you the most watching it and caused you to have that response?

Well, if you will allow me to name drop your best friend, Gail, the episode struck me so much because I have a few personal connections to it, I have two very dear friends in mine who have gone no contact with their mother. So I thought about their situation. And I was so struck and drawn to this episode that I texted Gail because I know her socially and through some other channels. And I said, listen, I know you're not Oprah's messenger or her administrative assistant, but if you could pass along to her that this episode was really one of the best

that I'd ever seen in terms of addressing something that was so deep and painful for a lot of people, but I was struck by people's courage, by their vulnerability, and another part of it that I hadn't considered, because you had a woman on who had decided to go no contact with her son, because that was a part of this movement. I don't want to use the word trend either, or part of this growing awareness that isn't really covered. Like, I don't, I think on some level, it may not totally surprise people if children decide to do that with their parents because of all sorts of different reasons, abused, not liking a spouse or significant other host of things. But to hear parents saying that they decided to go not, no contact with their kids was especially

stark. Yeah. Powerful because I thought her testimony was really profound saying, I've been abused for years by my own son and have taken it and have done everything. And what happens in those relationships is the other children in the family end up suffering because all the attention goes to trying to solve this problem with a child who is abusive and not getting along with the rest of the family and everybody ends up suffering. So I think the fact that people, particularly parents, come to that conclusion,

isn't even more daring and thought-out process than it is for kids in many cases. Well, in 2022, I recall, it was right after the pandemic was subsiding, you released your acclaimed memoir uphill. And if you're watching or listening and you haven't read uphill, well, let me just tell you, it's a fearless and inspiring story written in Jamel's voice.

And in the book, you shared some unforgettable truths about your own family dynamics. I know it was probably hard for you to share a lot of that, also cathartic. What do you want people to know now? Well, you know, as I alluded to it in that social media post that you referenced, I said I had a personal situation that I was dealing with. And I have never disclosed this publicly because it's sort of relatively recent.

But I've been no contact with my own father for almost going on three years. And it is interesting to mention my book because my book played a role in the reason why I decided to go no contact. And I didn't even know that was the language for calling it that. But my father was upset about my book. And if anyone has read my book, I certainly did not tear down my father. we had a very sort of difficult path in the sense that we were estranged for some time. We sort of came together, you know, renewed a relationship. We were estranged because my father, early on in my childhood, was addicted to heroin.

Both of my parents were addicts and they have thankfully recovered. And so because of that early absence, it was a lot of stops and starts in terms of how to grow our relationship. And I did the best that I could, certainly on my end. And I know my father was trying to do his best. But with this memoir, came out, he took to Facebook and was upset about some of the things that I said about him and my memoir. Actually, he wasn't upset about what I said. What he told me, Oprah, was that he was upset that he wasn't in it enough. And my immediate thought was, you would have had to be into my life more to be in the memoir more.

Okay? And so, and he disparaged my mother. And he has always sort of blamed her for the first. that our relationship has been, again, stops and starts and kind of awkward. We've certainly had good moments and good times. And I think it was NEDRA who said this, is that when you're trying to reframe the relationship with your parent when there has been hurt there, is that maybe they're not supposed to be the parent. Maybe they're just supposed to be a really good friend. So I was trying to put him in sort of the dynamic of like, my dad can't be the dad in the way

that dads are typically dads just because of the estrangement and the time lost and those kind of things, but he can be my friend. And I thought we were on the pathway to that until he decided to publicly say these things when he has my number and he could have called me if he had anything that he took issue with with the book. And so between that and some other instances, and Oprah, I know you can probably relate to this of asking me for money. And I mean, it was just like a whole thing.

And so finally, I just got to a point where considering the pattern of our relationship, and I had certainly put to bed the things that did not have to be. in childhood, like all that stuff was dead to me. Like, I wasn't carrying that at all. I was all about, let's reframe and be onto this new relationship, but it was such a lack of accountability and awareness, and I felt like I was pouring more into it than him. And I got to that point.

Can I say this too? Since you brought this up, this is for all the people who are the first in their family or one of the only in their family to succeed, particularly when you've come from, challenging circumstances, difficult backgrounds. We all become the first national bank to our families. And that's a very difficult thing to accept. And I know people think, well, you got money, you should be able to share it

and give it to everybody in the family. It's a difficult thing to accept when you're not seen for being a person, you now just become a resource for them. You become the bank. You're no longer even like human to people. So I so get that. and I hear for a long time you were hesitant to even share this part of your story. Why is now the right time?

Well, I was hesitant, and it was something that you have alluded to earlier with some of your previous guests, because we know that, especially as black women, we're carrying a different responsibility when it comes to how we speak about our community, how we represent our community. And there are so many bad... There is a black tax, yes. There is a black tax, correct. There is such a negative stereotype about black men and especially about black men in their presence in the home, that we hear all the tropes and all the negatives and all those kind of thing,

and that they have tried to make black men the face of absenteeism and of, you know, not being the parent that is there. And so I was very hesitant to share the story because I didn't want people to then. So you're piling on? Yeah, start piling on and run with that narrative. And frankly, the other part, I didn't want either. I didn't want a whole bunch of people who ain't got any degree with a PhD or anything behind trying to diagnose me as somebody who is, oh, you're just another bit of black woman,

or, oh, you got daddy issues. I'm like, trust me, I do not have daddy issues. There's been a long line of black men who may not have been my biological father. My mother was married twice. I had two good stepfathers. I had other really positive black male role models in my life. Like, trust me, that is not my issue. And so I also didn't want to have to deal with that part of the conversation.

But your episode really was the... one that gave me the courage to say like, oh, there's a lot of people that are actually going through this. I'm not the only one. And it helped to frankly validate some of what I was feeling about why I arrived at what is, as you said, and it's very true, a very difficult decision for anybody to do, especially when it comes to a parent. Well, thank you so much. And I hope everybody reads that memoir. It's hard to write a memoir as good as yours, because one of the things it's really powerful about your story is that your story makes me think about my story. And that's what you do for everybody in that book. So thank you so much. Thank you so much for that. Thanks,

Jamel. I appreciate your support. And I also thank you for sharing more of your story here with us today. And I know you speak for so many others. And after all this, I am wishing you peace. I'm wishing you peace. Okay. Time for a quick break, you all. Up next, experts answer some of the most common questions from our listeners, like why is family estrangement on the rise? Do therapists encourage families to go no contact? And how can generations bridge the gap? Stay with us. Thanks for joining me on the Oprah podcast. Research says that there's a rise in the number of families, cutting off ties and becoming estranged. It's a sensitive and painful issue. We are exploring further because so many listeners have more questions. Let's get on it. So I read that over two out of five members of

Gen Z are in some form of regular therapy. Isn't that, that is an incredible number to me, y'all. You know why? Because when I first started the Opa Show, in 1986 nationally, I remember audience members standing up and said, I will never go to therapy. I mean, I think therapy is for like people who are crazy are out of their minds. So the idea that now two out of five are going to therapy, it's a case for older generations

who grew up in a time when mental health treatment was absolutely taboo. At my school in South Africa that I opened in 2007 and we had, you know, three therapists on board at the time, we could get none of the girls

who had been severely traumatized to even go to therapy because it had been so stigmatized. So Dr. Gibson, how do grandparents, parents, and their children bridge this gap? Yeah, I mean, because of the explosion in self-help books and self-awareness and self-development, there has been a similar increase in the interest in therapy. So that's a cultural fact now. But, you know, when older generations talk about not understanding all this therapy,

stuff or why it's okay now to go to therapy or what's the importance of boundaries or why are people making such a big deal out of this. I think that there is a real blind spot toward children and toward the younger generations that really is something that needs to change. What I mean is that I don't care what generation you are, boomer, millennial, whatever. You're a woman. You, you're, you You know what boundaries are. You don't say certain things to your boss. You don't cop certain attitudes toward authority figures. I mean, we know we humans are a hierarchical group of beings, and we understand that there are

boundaries and there is a need for tact, and there are things that we can and can't say to other people and get away with it. But somehow when it's our children, there is a sense of them being a part of us. And so we feel it's sort of a right or an entitlement to tell them what we think. Not only that, but Nedra could speak to this too. In the African-American community, I remember growing up and hearing quite often, you know, I brought you in this world, I can take you out. I mean, there's this feeling of my black photographer, right?

now, cameraman is like laughing. Have you not heard that before? I don't know if y'all heard that in your white families. I brought you in this world and I can take you out. But that's how we grew up. Like, you are mine to do with whatever I want. You know what I'm speaking about, right, Neddra. Yeah, I'm hearing that and I'm like, I should say that to my kids and see if they even know what that means. Yeah, I brought you in this world. I can take out. Because that has not been a part of their blackup bringing. They would be like, what? What did you just say, Mom? What does that even mean? talking about. But yeah, I heard that. And I also heard this bottomless plea to tolerate abuse,

this bottomless plea to accept more from people. You know so-and-so is that way. You just have to avoid this with that person. If so-and-so comes over, you need to stay away from them. You know, so there were also things going on that people were aware of. And it was put on the child or the victim to protect themselves. And I think that's also one of these things that we're now seeing people say, well, I don't want to be a part of the family reunion if so-and-so is going to be there.

I don't want to show up for family dinner if nobody else is taking a stand with me against this thing. Yes. And this may not surprise you. The United States ranks as the most individualistic nation, y'all, in the world where personal goals outweigh collective ones. Dr. Coleman, could our American way, this individualism, thinking about your own self, empowerment for yourself, which is good in many ways? Could this be contributing, do you think, Dr. Coleman, to the estrangement?

I think high rates of individualism absolutely is a pathway to a stranger, because our whole continents where estrangement is considered to be a completely bizarre or foreign idea. The idea that you'd cut off your family or a parent is considered completely wrong. And, you know, I think this moment there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that adult children now have the power to cut off truly abusive parents. The bad news is that a lot of parents were getting caught off today weren't necessarily bad or abusive or difficult, but they're being treated in some ways like they were. Yeah. They haven't been abusive, but they have offended their child. They've engaged with them in a way that the adult, that now adult child finds difficult.

Here's the problem. Okay, so here's what I'd like to clear up, and I want all of you all to speak to, because I want to know, for all of the people we're listening, people hearing about this for the first time, when do you as therapists feel that it is appropriate to have no contact or cut off relationships? When is it appropriate? Dr. Coleman, then I'll go to you, Nedra, and you, Dr. Gibson. Well, Oprah, I'm happy to answer that question. But I think before I answer that question, I want to stress that even when it's justified, even when I go, yeah, go ahead, you need to do that. I get it. A Strangman is a cataclysmic event in every family system.

Today, if a parent is cut off, they also cut off access to the grandchildren. That's a tragedy and a trauma, not only to that grandparent, to that grandchildren. Also, siblings get cut off. It's typical, this is true, some of the guests today and last time, that one sibling's going to line up with the parents. Others are going to line up with the estranging sibling. But my ask also is that people don't do it forever. You know, maybe you need to go no contact as a way to set a limit. Maybe you do it for six months.

Maybe you do it for a year. But what about after that period of time coming back and telling the parent, look, I need things to be really different with you if we're going to have a relationship. Either you need to get into therapy or we need to get into family therapy or I can't be in relationship with you. Okay. Nidja, what do you say? With adults, the only time that I have talked about someone estranging from a parent and or sibling is when there is an active physical or sexual abuse issue or if there is a physical or sexual safety concern. And those things for therapists are reportable by law. Outside of that, our clients are typically coming to us with this ideal on their own. or they have spoken about it so much that they make this decision and I may support them in it. I don't direct that path for them, though.

I don't say, have you ever thought about cutting your mom off? Would you stop talking to her? How long are you going to tolerate this? I don't say things like that because I truly believe they have to live with the consequences, which is guilt, which is other family cutoffs, which is, you know, feeling shame and all sorts of things. So I don't want to direct that path for you, but I will listen, I will support,

if that's what you choose, but it's never a thing that I need to present to a person for their life. Dr. Gibson. Yeah, I totally agree with Nedra. I mean, that is my position as well. However, I just want to add here that more often than not,

people are coming to that conclusion themselves as we're going through the process of therapy and self-awareness and self-growth. They end up feeling like they need some space, some separation, in order to get their feet back under them to, you know, see where they stand with things before maybe reentering the relationship with the parent or even knowing what it is that they want to ask for from the parent to get clear about that. But, yeah, I don't bring up estrangement as a solution to anybody's problem. But as Nedra said, they often come to that or they come into the therapy session with that on their mind.

Having written the book on adult children of emotionally immature parents, do you recommend them trying to come to some understanding of what it means to come from an emotionally immature parent? Yeah, I mean, if you look at my book, I have at least one chapter on trying to understand what happened to these parents and what has made them so defensive. Yeah, that's what happened to. Yeah, and then I also have an extensive chapter in there about how to deal with them in a way that you protect yourself and you have boundaries and you maintain that connection with yourself instead of giving everything over to, you know, the parents' opinion. Got it. I wanted to bring Tanya back. Tanya, thanks for joining us again because you expressed earlier that you had separated, no contact because you were looking for peace, but it only ended up causing you more pain. I want to know, how did you get to a place of reconciliation? And how long did it take? I mean, I was estranged for two years. Myself, I was strange for two years. So when it really came to my estrangement, what helped me is learning first. I want to say that my, I had a therapist too, by the way. And they're right when they're saying, we come to that decision ourselves. When I was talking to a therapist, it was very uncovering everything that happened.

You know, okay, so tell me what happened. How did that make you feel? So I was building this villain image around my mother in particular, and it compounded. So when I cut her off, I was my unhealthiest, though. I had chronic anxiety, insomnia. I was trying to deal with all of it. And I was obviously blaming it on her. Until I really understood, like they talked about, stage two and three of my healing journey,

it really came when I rewrote my mother's story, Oprah. That's what happened. I said, okay, she was the youngest daughter, the 15th of 16 kids. Her dad died when she was three. Her mother definitely neglected her in unintentional ways. And so when I rewrote that and I started to have more compassion, I said, okay, to her, even though she failed my emotional needs and needs in a lot of ways, she did literally the best that she could.

And that's not to say that, you know, everyone is doing the best, and you can use that as an excuse. But for me, when I really understood that, I said, I cannot expect her. to be this incredibly emotionally mature person when she never had the tools that I'm now presented with at her age. Got it. So you rewrote her story, and in rewriting her story, it ended up rewriting your story or your narrative with her. Exactly.

Exactly. Thank you. Thank you for that. After the break, a woman who has gone no contact with her sister and how estrangement is different for siblings. And a couple estranged from their parents asked them to watch our episode, and they share how that changed or didn't change anything. That's next.

Welcome back. Our experts have advice for anybody wrestling with distance, boundaries, or estrangement with family. If you know someone who may need to hear this, please don't hesitate to share this link to this episode. Here's more. All right. We're moving on to other guests. Tricia is joining us. She hasn't talked to her sister in nearly a year.

Tricia, thanks for being here. What's going on? Thank you. This isn't something I ever saw myself talking about so publicly, but I feel it's really important, so thank you for this. We grew up in a household where it was very controlled and religious. Our father was a preacher, and family roles were very clearly defined. And as preachers kids, there's kind of like a spotlight on you, and people look at you,

and our parents wanted us to model outward perfection. Yeah, be perfect, yeah. And my sister, she's the first born. She's the oldest. So that came easy to her. That was right in her field. She was the responsible one. She was the one we modeled ourselves after.

I'm the middle child. I'm a little more emotional. I'm the peacekeeper in the family. I handle everyone's emotions. And then my brother is the youngest, and he's the baby. He kind of got attention only for being the only boy. And as we got older, those roles just followed us into adulthood. and we had a lot of layered family trauma happened to us.

So there was a lot of change in our family system, the roles, the dynamics, there was confusion. I'm estranged from my sister, and her and I haven't talked in a year, but I still have a relationship with my brother. Okay. Do you have a question for one of our experts? I do for Ms. Gibson. When choosing emotional safety, because that's what I did, when choosing emotional safety, I had to greet. of a version of myself that was always accommodating to people and always available to people, how would you tell people to honor that grief without shame or without self-doubt? Good question. Yeah.

That part of you, the part of you that wants to be accommodating and collaborative and wants to do nice things for people, that is a precious part of your personality. That's kind of the open joy. child part of you. Now, that may have been commandeered to become sort of a pleaser of your parents or of your family members. And in that way, it may feel like it's something that you need to get rid of. But it's really your superpower because who do people like to work with? Who do people like to be around? Who do people feel energized by? They're people that have those characteristics of being receptive to other people and being accommodating and so forth.

So that's not something that we want to get rid of. We want to celebrate that in you and also raise it like a precious child of yours. That, you know, honey, I know you want to please them or give into them or agree with them. But maybe that's not going to be the best thing for us this time. Yeah. So just hang back. back and let me handle this. You can do that kind of different part of yourself work where you don't have to get rid of or lose that lovely part of yourself, but you also don't have to let it drive the car,

so to speak. You as the adult get to do that. I love that. Thank you. Yeah. I love that. And also rewriting, as Tanya was saying earlier, rewriting that part of your story, rewriting that narrative for yourself. You get to write another. story about yourself. Yeah. You do. Thank you, Trisha. Erica and her husband David are joining us, and I hear you watch this episode together. How did it impact each of you? Well, for me, yeah, it was very validating. We felt very seen, similar to what other people had shared since, even though it's becoming more aware and obvious to other people, it still feels very lonely within our own communities and with our friendships.

So it was nice to have some contacts outside of ourselves. And this is because you have been estranged from or no contact with whom? My own father and now my mother and my sister. And then David's family as well. Really? And you both are no contact, yes. Yes. But the episode really impacted me directly because it talked about how there can be some room.

for the future and reconciliation and moving forward. The father, I think his name was Aaron, I talked about a lot of the self-reflection meant a lot. And after watching the episode, actually forwarded it to my own father, who we are still in contact with him, but then he shared it with our other family members that were not necessarily in contact with and they didn't even want to take the time to listen.

And that's what really kind of hurts us a lot, is that we're not being heard. We're not getting listened to. I know, which is one of the most important, I think, experiences that everybody needs to have is to know that you were heard and that you were seen and that what you had to say mattered.

And so if you're going to be just dismissed, I hear you would both like to begin, as you just said, to repair the estrangements. So let's ask our experts, what's the advice on what to do, beginning with you, Dr. Coleman. Well, first of all, I applaud your hand, for it to try to give your family a way to work towards reconciliation.

And I sort of wish a lot more adult children who were estranged would do that, whether it's by giving them my book or somebody else's book or some other pathway to reconciliation. So the task, I think, you know, it's very, very hard. And I can say this is a parent whose daughter had cut him off and we eventually did reconcile. It's incredibly hard for a parent to hear the ways that they'd fail. their child. We're going to get defensive. You know, we're going to feel hurt and we may respond with anger. We may try to shut you down and we're shutting you down because of the ways that we feel hurt or ashamed or embarrassed or humiliated. We feel like we're failing at our most very important

task. And so I think the more if your goal is reconciliation with your parent to really let them know that your goal in raising these topics isn't to shame them to hurt them to criticize them to make them feel bad about themselves, it's really an expression of love. And it's really an expression of a desire to feel closer. Do they know why you're estranged? Yes. I've had many conversations and even my dad has relayed the same information of how he wants to support.

And I think his most recent comment was even just sit down and listen to him and get up and don't even say anything. And unfortunately, my mother doesn't want to even do that. She can't listen. It always has to be a tit for tat or. what about you type of situation that makes it really hard to reconcile because there's just no self-awareness. There's no self-reflection of what did I do to this situation or what am I contributing to this problem? Yeah, in reality, some parents just don't have that capacity and some

adult children don't have a capacity to communicate. I think capacity is a really powerful word because of the person doesn't have the capacity. It's like, you know, rolling a boulder up a hill. You never get it there. You just never get it there. and at some point you have to accept or resolve within yourself that I've done everything that I can do and there's nothing more to be done. I don't know when you reach that point. Nedra, do you have some thoughts on that and Dr. Gibson? Yeah, what I'm thinking about here is it sounds like someone has to concede. Yes.

Because if your mother is unwilling to hear any other way, I think there has to be some acceptance on your end that some of your your needs may not be met. And you will have to tolerate this to the extent that you can. I don't think this sounds like a situation where you go back into it and all parties leave happy with what they're bringing to the table. So there will be some concessions in this situation. And you'll have to sit with yourself and say, you know, if I am in this relationship, how can I manage it differently? You know, and you don't want to leave it. It sounds like you really want to be in it, but it does sound like something that needs to be managed in a different way this time. May I just say to you all, Erica and David, that Dr. Coleman's use of the word

capacity struck me, and I'm always struck by that word because years ago I read a memoir in which somebody was talking about their family relationship, and they realized that their family member didn't have the capacity to fulfill the needs that they had as a child. nor as adult. And when I read that, it was just so eye-opening to me because I realized, oh, all this time I've been pushing uphill and struggling and resisting and resisting what is in my face with my own family relationships.

Oh, the person doesn't have the capacity. And when I recognized that particular word, you know, struck me and opened me in such a way that I realize, oh, I'm never going to win this. I'm never going to be able to convince somebody who doesn't have the capacity to receive it, that's when I was able to find peace within myself and have the boundaries or set up what I needed,

you know, to best survive in that relationship. When you realize that the person doesn't have the capacity, that's a huge, huge place to get to in terms of acceptance. I just wanted to share that, how profound an impact that word has had on my own life and my own relationships. When you're dealing with somebody who doesn't have the capacity, it's hard. Yeah, and that's been our experience as well.

And I appreciate you sharing that because it took us a while to get to that point to be able to accept where their limitations were. And that did give us more, I guess freedom might be the word. Yeah. But also we could stand firm in why we had set the boundaries the way that we did, that we're good and meet for our family and our own needs, not demanding anything of them that wasn't realistic. We've just offered resources or attempts at solutions, like through mediation,

and they have just shown no interest in that. But I will just say, you're coming to terms, as Nedra was saying, you're coming to terms and accepting, accepting that they don't have the capacity brings you peace so that you're not in resistance to still pushing and hoping and wishing and trying and giving and not receiving. it's the acceptance that they don't have the capacity. Dr. Gibson, what do you want to say? Yeah, along those lines, I'm reminded of a client I had who just couldn't seem to grasp that her mother was as superficial as she was, and it drove her crazy that her mother seemed

to oversimplify everything, seeing it in black and white. You couldn't reason with her because of that very limited perception. perspective. And we talked a lot about her mother's limited complexity, that her mother just didn't have the tolerance for ambiguity. She didn't have a complex enough personality structure to really take things in and think about them deeply. And what if she thought of her mom as someone who saw the world in 2D, where she sees it in 3D? Could she still relate to her mom at some level across some common ground in the 2D world where her mother lived. And that was very helpful to her.

And the other thing that I would mention is, you know, along with the acceptance comes a different form of goal for the relationship. That is, instead of trying to have an intimate relationship between two people who are capable of a complex relationship, how by just trying to relate to them as people who are very, different, I mean, humanly different from you in terms of what they can tolerate and what they can think about, what they can reflect on. And if your goal is to have, you know, a pleasant enough interaction or to relate to them in that way, that may be much more achievable than trying to have this relationship where they are, you know, where they feel understood by the parent,

because that may not be able to happen. And I think many times, too, we're holding on onto this idea of what we think the relationship should be. Well, I mean, they seem like they should be able to do that. Yeah, it seems like you should, but you're not going to have that. If you're wise about some things, it seems like they should be able to do it. But it gets back to that point about the acceptance. That is not the reality. Not the reality.

Eric and David, thank you. And listen, it makes us all who work here on the Oprah podcast feel really good that you watched it and shared it with other family members and that it actually impacted you in a way. that made you think about doing things differently. Thank you so much, and we wish you the best. Thank you. Thank you. Bringing light to the matter.

It's something that's hard to talk about, but much needed. Yeah. Let's keep talking about it. Thank you all so much. And thank you to all my guests. Thank you, Jamel Hill and your beautiful memoir uphill. Thank you, Tanya and Tricia. Thank you.

Thank you, Tanya, for that post. Thanks to these experts, all of you, all three of our experts, for returning to this conversation. Dr. Coleman's book is Rules of a, estrangement. Dr. Gibson has an upcoming book on how to raise an emotionally mature child that comes out in April. And Nedra Glover-Tawab's book is The Balancing Act, Creating Healthy, dependency and Connection without losing yourself. It's in stores right now. And I hope this

conversation has opened up even more space for a little compassion, some understanding for yourself or maybe someone you love who's going through this. We'll keep talking. Go well, everybody. See you next time. You can subscribe to the Oprah podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.