We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - 159. Family Estrangement: Should You Repair or Run? with Dr. Galit Atlas

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

1. Cutting off contact with family is on a dramatic rise – how to know if there’s hope of repair, or if self-preservation requires distance.   2. How to have present, productive conversations with our parents about the past.   3. Why we grieve the loss of a family member even if we know it’s healthiest to cut them out.  4. Attachment styles, emotional honesty, and the difference between forgiveness and repair.  5. What to do and say – and what NOT to say – when attempting to reconnect with an estranged loved one.    About Dr. Atlas: Dr. Galit Atlas is a psychoanalyst and clinical supervisor in private practice in New York City. Her new book Emotional Inheritance was published in January 2022 and is being translated into 17 languages. She is on the faculty of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. A leader in the field of relational psychoanalysis, Dr. Atlas teaches and lectures throughout the United States and internationally.  IG: @galit_atlas

And I continue to believe the best people are free. Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Thanks for coming back. We came back to really, really excited about this day because we have one of our favorites, Dr. Galit Atlas, back with us today. You will remember Dr. Galit Atlas as the author of the international bestseller emotional inheritance, a therapist, her patients, and the legacy of trauma, which is freaking

amazing and has been translated into 23 languages. She is a psychoanalyst and clinical supervisor in private practice in New York City and is on the faculty of NYU's postdoctoral program in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. If you have not already, please go back and listen to episode 97 with Galit about how family secrets shape us, which we have heard back from so many people that it changed the way they think about their families and their lives. So thank you for coming back. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be today. Good, because we've got a really deeply important subject to discuss today,

which we thought you were the only person that we could really trust to talk us through this one. There you go. topic. We actually decided to do this episode in response to what so many people have called us to talk about. So let's hear from Catherine. Hi there. My name is Catherine. And I need to tell you about the hardest thing I've ever had to do. It's been almost a year. And there isn't good language for it, I say I broke up with my mother. It's been incredibly difficult, but I made a promise to my child's self that I would never let that vicious, malignant, emotional, and verbal abuse happen again. I want to say that if there was an alternative

where a safe relationship could happen, I would take it that I still love her and that this experience has been like having my mother die and not being able to talk about it. I would really appreciate being able to have a discussion with the we can do hard things community about that. Thank you. Catherine. Do you hear that story often? I do. I do. And I think lately even more. And I think that can't. Catherine presents here really one of the most painful struggles that comes with estrangement. And that is the ability to mourn your loss.

She's describing really how her adult self-protected her in ways that she couldn't do as a child, right? Yeah. And I'm sure, I'm sure that the big part of you, Catherine, it feels proud of protecting that child who used to. to be so helpless and alone as we always are as children, right? And of course, of course you would want to take any alternative option because I think deep inside we're all children who want to have good parent. And we forget that sometimes. I have never met anyone who doesn't long for a good parent.

And it sounds to me that if her mother could be a... able to do the work herself, and I'm sure we'll talk about how we do the work and what work we're talking about here and change. She would be willing to try and repair the relationship. But for now, the main word that we would use is paradoxical, right? There is a paradoxical here. Paradoxical thing in this process is the ability to allow sadness and grief. And I'll say one more thing. And because I think this is a conflict that cannot be resolved. And that's the conflict of attachment and pain, the conflict of love and abuse. And because it's so confusing when the person you relied on the most was also the person who hurt you the most. Right? When the person you needed

the most was also the person who betrayed you the most. Or when the person you still love the way describes, right? And it's also the person you decided to not have in your life. You see, this journey will be filled with paradox. I think it's the paradox that is in the heart of the attachment style that is called disorganized attachment style. And those of you who know a little bit attachment theory know about the anxious, avoidant, right? And the disorganized is the last category that would add it. And that attachment style is associated with abuse. And in infant research, you see that the disorganized and often abuse of frightened infant

expresses when the mother comes back. The attachment theory is always about reunions. Can you tell us more about that right now for people who have never heard about attachment theory, what you're talking about? So attachment theory is the idea that, right there, that each of us have an attachment style. And it started in research, John Bobby was the first one who talked about it and he looked at animals and their parents, right, and how the child needs what he called a secure base. He talks about proximity. If there is a noise, the child would look for the parent to hide in

their arms, to protect them. And then from there, the research developed to a research that is called, it has a strange name. It's called the strange situation. Have you heard of that? The strange situation, very known Mary Annforth. And what they did is that they took infants and they separated them from their, back then it was mostly mothers and told the mother to leave the room. And what they measured is how the infant respond when the mother comes back. So I think sometimes when we talk about attachment, we don't always know that actually the research looks at the reunion. What happens in moments of reunion? And what they found is that there were two, at the beginning, only two categories.

The anxious one, which was that when the infant kept crying, the mother was already back, the infant kept crying and crying, as if she did not come back. Right. And that was as a way, if we think about survival, and that's what's underneath all of that, it's a way to engage the mother. because again, every child wants a good mother or a good parent. So everything we do is in order to engage our parents. So the anxious baby says, I need you, I need, do, I need you, I need you.

I need you. And don't ever leave me. The avoidant one was the one that when the parent come back, by the way, I have a dog like that that does that. Oh my gosh. I was just thinking about having. And when the parent comes back, the avoidance, child just makes believe they didn't come back.

They just keep doing what they're doing, as if separation never happened, reunion never happened, right? Again, we can think about that as a defense. It's a way to manage. Some people think that it's because if the baby cries, then the parent will reject them, that it's a response to rejection. But since we know that we will never do that to our animals, we also have to understand that it is not only as a response to their parent,

It's also as a way to manage something that feels too much. And the last category that was added was disorganized attachment. Because the researchers that divided it to two suddenly realized that there are some kids that behave in a very strange way that do not match any category. And they looked at it and what these kids seemed is like when the parent came back, in that case the mother came back, it looked like they looked like they were. really want to be close to the mom, but also were behaving like they were afraid of her. They actually said in the research, there's something like very bizarre behavior that they didn't

understand. And so what we realize is, and I think that's where they added it, that these kids very often were kids who were abused. And they both had the need to be close to the parents. they need for the protection, right, for the secure base, but also the fear of being close to the parents. Yes. So in the research, we really see that.

We really see that the person that protects them, that feeds them, that they depend on the most, was also the person who scares them and who hurts them the most. So, Ghalit, those people, those young ones, are the ones who are already experiencing the paradox. Exactly. That's what the disorganization is, is the paradox. I need you, but you hurt me. I need you, but you hurt me. Yes. Are those the people who would eventually end up as a Catherine who then become, have enough power to protect themselves as an adult, as an adult? And is that what estrangement is. I think that those were the people that will have the hardest time actually with cutting their parents off. Estrangement is not only about abuse, right? The abused children are, those who will hold a lot of conflicted feeling and will have really hard time because, as Catherine said, she loves her mother. She also loves her. It's very paradoxical to love somebody who abuses

you. And we see that in relationships later in life, right, even in marriages. Yes, absolutely. So what is estrangement? How do you define estrangement and how do you see it happening in families? It's true. You said more than ever now. Yeah. What we see now, and I think the research show that one every four families are estranged. And I don't know that there is an exact definition for it because I think that it really, we don't have in the research all the information. I think there is so much shame and guilt.

And it depends, right? Is estrangement about completely not talking to your parents? Is it about managing their relationship somehow? So you see them only in the holidays, right? I think all of that is a little tricky definition. But what we do know is that there are many reasons for estranged men. Many times it's the children that make that decision, but not always. And we start with conflicts related to values, religion, politics, parents of LGBTQ kids who reject their children.

there is a lot of homophobia, there is a lot of transphobia when you look at the situation of estrangements that come from that place. Of course, the increased political and cultural polarization in recent years created rifts between people. One of the most, you know, common things is money, money, and that was always there, right? Money, inheritance, wills. Of course, there is addictions and mental health. And what I hear from people who specialize in estrangement, and one of my friends could swear that that is in his practice,

70% of the people are there after, in something that is related to divorce. And it's so interesting that it's so overrepresented, because I think it goes to this whole phenomenon of their generally being a third party involved in some way, because I think that's a super interesting part to look at, like, is it healthy development when you have a third party that emotionally supports you and you realize what you had before was not emotional support? Or is it a manipulative thing? But this idea that somehow this disorganization, to go back to that word, the disorganization of the family unit via divorce leads to, well, I need.

to be loyal somewhere and therefore break ties somewhere in order to truly be loyal to the aggrieved party. Okay. So you're saying in that version of estrangement that I haven't cut everybody off. I'm saying I choose one parent and I am estranged from the other parent. Right. I think the definition is important to go back to because there's this whole phenomenon right now of quiet quitting in the workplace, which I feel like is mirrored a lot in relationship. where we're kind of not having a dramatic exit or a physical withdrawal, but we have this gradual disengagement and a reduced investment in the relationship. And so that kind of emotional distance that I feel like a lot of folks are having within their

families is a very big phenomenon. But I think in this case, what we're talking about is not that passive estrangement, but the active engagement in which there is a schism that both parties will point to and say, we are estranged. Whereas in the emotional distancing, maybe one party is aware of it and the other party is just blissfully. And that's what the divorce research, that is actual, we are now estranged because of X. Right. And you remember, you know the term gray divorce? Have you heard of that?

Tell us about gray divorce. Gray divorce, sadly, it's about the fact that our hair becomes gray when we are in a certain age. I didn't know that. I haven't experienced it. It's good to know. We'll have to Google that after. We're not aware. Gray divorce is usually divorced between 50 and 70 years old when the kids are adults.

And those are different kind of estrangements that happen when the kids are young or when the children are grown-ups already. And I agree that a lot of what is happening around divorce and if I'll focus on gray divorce is that in those situations, the reason is sometimes it is the, you know, a fair or something that happens that the children are protecting one part. Many times the divorce create a crack in the family that allows a lot of the family. ghosts to come to the surface. Things that were there before, including some family pathology,

power dynamic between the parents, secret loyalties between family members, one of the parents and one of the children becomes suddenly like together in a different way. But all of those things usually, which I think happens also when we talk about money, because as we know, money is never money and wills, somebody dies or something ends and you see that in the ending that's where there is a crack

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the side of cat in this family. If your mental health is threatened by somebody's behavior, fuck them, has been our general response. Okay. Boundaries. Out, out. So what I find fascinating about what you've been discussing recently is that in many cases, like Catherine's, many, many cases, estrangement is the absolute best way to protect your current mental health, to protect that child you were that could not protect themselves, that estrangement is a very, very difficult paradox and also correct. Would you say that? I would say that in 100%.

percent about abuse. We're talking about lines. Abuse is the line. Where there is abuse, you are, that that's the line that says, no, abuse is not allowed. And of course, I think in the last few years, we have been living in a major crisis. And I think that we all feel a little broken inside. And we have been, right, the world became unstable and unsafe. And a lot of things happened in the last few years that made us and us, I mean, especially women. very unsafe and frightened and angry. And we think about young people who were born into a planet that is burning. You think about the implication of that and our basic human rights violations.

And we couldn't trust our leaders. We'll talk about leaders and parents, right? We were talking about disorganized people that's supposed to protect us, that's supposed to know the truth, that's supposed to tell us the truth. and we can't trust them. And of course, I can't leave out the COVID and how we can't really assist yet the full emotional impact of the pandemic on us. Do you equate the rise of estrangement with the incredible lack of control that we have

experienced over the last part? And so we try to control what we can control, which is like I'm unconsciously or consciously feeling so unsafe all the time. Yeah. So damn it, I will control what I can control, which is the people around me and I will not allow anyone near me who hurts me. Because that feels familiar to me. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And I feel so frightened about so many things that I need to protect myself.

I need to protect myself from anything that might damage my mental health, as you said. Because listen, there's nothing new about difficult relationships, right? Or about conflicts or even about the wish to distance ourselves from our families. But we have changed. We have changed because in the last few years, we finally made our mental health a priority. And I do think it's related to COVID. Yes. Yes, that is so true.

Suddenly we talk about trauma. We let ourselves really say, no, no, that's not okay. And I do think it's related to political atmosphere and like think like, no, no, no, that's not okay with me. And make mental health a priority, focus on the needs to feel safe. to protect herself. You know how much the word boundary became? Yes. So major boundaries.

But, and we have to remember that there is always a but also. At the same time, I do think we're more polarized as a society. There is much more either-or thinking, splitting. We struggle much more with trusting people. And it's harder for us to resolve conflicts and to negotiate our needs. which makes so much sense that this would be in an all or nothing time. Right. That estrangement would skyrocket.

I mean, I have been thinking so much about being a person who had no boundaries, then being a person who has so many boundaries to the point where I have made myself a bit lonely. And so what's so interesting is that you have found that in an effort, this is why it's interesting to me, is that in an effort to protect our mental health, we may have, have in some cases chosen estrangement when we didn't have to. And why that matters is not that it's the right or wrong thing to do or that it's kinder to not do that. It's because you've said that in an effort to help our mental health, our mental health ends up worse. Exactly right. That's why it matters. Yes, our relationship are directly related to our well-being, right?

Right. And that's what you were saying before about your own relationships. And And it's not either or. So in some situations, especially situations of abuse or situations where there is no hope for any change and there is too much pain. Yeah. A stranger sometimes is the only solution and it's the healthier solution. I think it's important to notice like with our caller that it's end both. It is the healthiest solution for you and there is still going to be tremendous grief. I mean, when I think about it, I think about the research that's been done on queer folks who have been in abusive church environments and they leave their home church.

And although that is absolutely the healthiest thing for them to do, there is nonetheless a deep well of conflict and pain along these belonging lines and the loss that they experienced, even though it was healthy. for them to leave. So I think we just have to see that group of people and say, you are grieving and this is healthiest for you. And then there's another group of people where you are grieving and there might be another way for you. How do we know if there's another way? Because you call it rupture. Rupture is your, is estrangement. That's when the family structure has been ruptured. We are not going back. It's estrangement. And then you talk about repair. That there is a whole category of families that things are not okay. Right.

And we're not going to go on the way they are. But that perhaps rupture is not what's best for everyone's mental health in the family because what people really want at the end of the day is to be safe around each other. Yeah. Because when you think about it, estrangement is not a great discussion of boundaries because it makes us never even have to deal with boundaries. I know that's what I think. It's like sometimes it is a boundary and sometimes it is in our way to create healthy boundaries, right?

Because it's a solution. But, you know, I think what you're saying is right. First of all, rapture is sometimes the estrangement itself and sometimes rapture is what leads to estrangement. There is a conflict. There is something. And what we know from infant research, for example, is that secure relationships are. based on the ability to repair. Now, of course, not every relationship is secure and not every relationship could be secure. And going back to our previous conversation, there are sometimes

situations that we cannot repair. And what we have to do is to mourn the inability to repair. But if we go back to a rapture and repair for a second, one of the research that I love the most it's by Cohen-Antronic, saying that good enough parents are slightly mismatched with their infants, 70% of the time. Do you know this research? It means that we do the right thing, only 30% of the time, and the rest of the time we're working on repairing a reparation. Wow.

That feels right. Okay. That makes me feel a lot better about parenting. I feel like that's the essence of relationships. I mean, even think about romantic relationships or friendships. how much of the time we do the right thing. And so 70% of the time you don't probably and 30% of the time you do. And the rest of the time you go back and try to repair and match and do something to connect

and let them know that they can trust you. Right? Because through the reparation, the infant and the caregiver learn that negative experiences can be transformed. We can't fix them. past. But we can create new moments of connections. And ideally, ideally, we'll learn that the other person can be trusted. Again, not always. What we learn sometimes is that the other person cannot be trusted. And the most fascinating part of that good enough research to me is not just that the 30%

is good enough, but that in fact, were you to be 100% aligned with your child at all times, that's actually worse for the kid than the 30%. Again, going back to this idea that the reunion is where you build the security, that the mismatching seven out of ten times leads to the going back, which leads to the way that you actually build that connection. And so there's a beautiful way to think about estrangement in that way, which is that, okay, say we're saying, our kids come to us and they're like, I want to talk about that 70%, right?

Okay, now is your time. Now is your time. We're repairing. And for me, I love the idea. I don't know if this is a new research of Joshua Coleman or whether he is relying on other things, but the principles of separate reality, that to me made so much sense. So this is this idea that And you talk about this in your article, how there's this baby boomer generation that is completely baffled because they see themselves as the products of 1960 where they rejected their authoritarian parents. Right. And they thought they did it right. That's really interesting. By the way, the baby boomers are the great divorce that we're talking about, right?

It's exactly that age right now. And so I find that the baby boomers and of course many of the estrangement of kids later on in life are children of baby boomers, they're shocked by this. they're like, what do you mean? We did the right thing. You know how many emails I get from parents who's like, I was not abusive. My child doesn't think I'm abusive. Nobody thinks I was abusive, but something I did that was wrong because my child doesn't want to be next to me. And they feel like they didn't get it in either direction, not from their parents. And then they try to do something different and then not from their children. And, you know, one of the things I think is we used to say that millennials are very dependent on their parents.

But I think what we're missing here is that the parents of millennials are very, very dependent on them. And we are dependent on our children in ways that our parents were not dependent on us. And what it does, I think especially in a young age, is that a gap between power and responsibility. Because inherently, children do not have the same power as their parents, right? So the parents have more power. But then the children have so much emotional responsibility. And every time, and think of it about work environments, right? Every time there is a gap between how much power you have and how much responsibility you have,

there is a problem. Yes. Right? Those need to some degree match. And children with parents that need them so, so much emotionally, they have a lot of emotional responsibility, but they do not have power. And that's a problem. Right.

You know, the idea of the repair being the most important part, it's just making me think right now so much about what is causing not the estrangement. It's not full on estrangement, but a break between my generation and my friends and their parents. What it looks like for me, for my friends, is this getting to this time of life where you look back on your childhood and you're like, wait, hold on a second. I thought I was just, like this because this is the way people are, but actually, wait, and it's partly because you're raising your kids with this new consciousness and this new, well, everything we know now and all of the emotional intelligence that the last 30 years have brought culture. So we are applying all of that to our children. And then we're experiencing a bit of trauma with that good parenting because at the same time we're offering this certain thing to our kid, we're remembering we didn't get that. And so then we want to have conversations. with our parents about that. WTF. Right? Because, you know, we're so enlightened and why wouldn't we? This is about

connection. Right. So then we go back and we say in our sweet way, why? We apply what I call presentism. I'm taking all of the knowledge of consciousness I have right now. And I'm, I'm rewinding 20, 30, 40, 50 years and asking why you didn't have that. All the consciousness I have right now. But our parents don't know this thing about 70, 30 and that the magic is in the repair. They didn't get the memo. They didn't get the memo. So they're like, no, no, no, no. They have this fragility. And there's the block. Yes. Because if the parents would talk to us would have a little bit of like, oh yeah, this is what parenting is. Let's talk about what you're saying. But that's not what happens. It's like this terror of no, but I was a good parent and I did my best. Right. And that's the block. And in that sense, you see, intention becomes the most important thing.

In fact, reparation intention doesn't matter as much. You can hurt someone and say, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. But that intention is not the most important thing in reparation. And so going back to what you asked before, and by the way, Amanda, I really agree with everything you said about the research on being 100% tuned in. I mean, we know from the research that even research that looks at parents' responsiveness to their babies, that being overly responsive, is a problem, right?

We don't want to be 100% responsive or tuned in. And so going back to reparation, I think one of the most important thing in reparation is the ability to recognize the harm. Understanding, right, when the other person comes from, recognize it. And it has a few stages in it. One of them is more intellectual and one of them is more emotional.

Because the intellectual part is that, like, okay, I understand. You're a different person than me. I understand. I recognize you as a different person who has a separate experience from my own and doesn't matter what I meant, that I matter how I impacted you. And this is how you felt and this is why you felt that way, right? But the deeper level of that is the emotional impact it has on me when I really understand that I hurt you. And that impact changes me. To me, that's where the repair comes from. You know, with that phase, when we have to tolerate our own sense of badness, right? I did something to you and you are heartbroken. I've seen it, by the way, with couples. Many couples come to therapy really around

a reparation that is related to affairs, right? And I said, I'm sorry. And how do I repair that? And I think that when it's really hard to repair is when the person that hurts the other person has to maintain their sense of goodness, you know, but I'm a good person, but I did it just because and then they have, you know, many, many, many reasons because this or because of that, because of, and then you lose me. You lose the other person. What we want to do is really help them tolerate the sense of, you did something that was really hurtful, right? It challenges our identity as good people, right? As opposed to clinging to the sense of goodness.

And that is where we can self-correct, right? Because it changes me to see and feel. It changes to the paradox. That love is a paradox. It will always forever be a paradox that I can love you as a parent as much as I do and will screw up 70% of the time. Yeah. Yeah.

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That's join midi.com. Middy, the care women deserve. I have a question. This is true for me, and I'm sure a lot of the pod squad who's listening. There's so many of us that want repair. And like you just said, you're not sure if that person will be able to hold it or acknowledge it or apologize for it. Is there a possibility of repair when you are unsure and almost sure in some cases that there won't be the response that would probably define repair. Yeah, you know, that brings us again

to the difference between reparation, which is a project of two people usually, and forgiveness. I think there is a lot of room for forgiveness and for repairing in a sense that forgiveness is not always about getting closer to another person, right? Sometimes we forgive in order to let go and say, you know, I'm not going to be close to that person. I forgive them, goodbye. Right? reparation is usually about getting closer to another person. And so I do think that what you're saying is that maybe in that specific way of forgiving, there is a way to repair. There is a way to allow that person to be close to you and for you to be close to them

because I think it's always about how dangerous it still is. Are you repairing the past or do you need to change something? I mean, some of these cases of abuse are not just about childhood abuse. Those parents still abuse their children. Parents always have power on their children. They still keep abusing them, right? And so we have to differentiate here between what we do with our limited parents, because our parents are limited.

And with the people that we love and still want in our lives. And how do we forgive them? as opposed to, again, we often want to forgive people just in order to let ourselves free. And we don't want to have a relationship with them, right? That's where I think if you have a parent, like if you're listening to this and you're in a position where you're estranged from your child, or if you're in a situation where you're contemplating estrangement with your parent, and they're willing to at least entertain this conversation. That's where I think the principles of separate reality are so powerful.

Because we're in the situation right now where we have parents believing that their children are rewriting the history of the last 30 years and reporting back to them stuff that they cannot even comprehend. And then at the same time, we have those same children feeling like, their parents are gaslighting them by saying that everything that happened in the last 30 years didn't happen. And so it's further polarizing. But again, with the paradox, we have to live in this world in which both things are true. The first generation cannot see never before have family relationships been based on mutual understanding until now. It's just been mutual obligation. And now we're like, why don't you understand? Why don't you understand? Understanding that you had this experience, you probably did the best you could and here's how you saw it. And I had this experience

and I want you to see it that both things can be true in that way. And that if you can just separate and look at their experience as a child that you love, that had this experience, that becomes the building block. Right. But how do you move forward? What if it doesn't change? I saw this New Yorker cartoon recently that just crushed me because I was like, Like it said it was a dude laying down on a couch and therapist. And the guy goes, I had a really rough childhood, especially lately. I feel like that is like at some point like, you're 46, Glennon. Just stop looking back and trying to reanalyze and reanalyze and reanalyze, right? Just move forward. But then there's a tricky thing about moving forward, which is, does repair come with different behavior moving

forward. Because I think one of the things my friends and I talk and bang our heads against is forgiveness is great, but isn't forgiveness something that you give when behavior is over? It's not like I forgive you and bless this behavior, bless forevermore, this is going to be how we relate to each other. Yeah, I'm going to accommodate this forever as part of my forgiveness. Right. So repair, does repair usually in your definition of repair when you work with people, does it mean that behavior is going to change together? Yeah, repair has to include, again, repair is everything we're talking about is on a continuum. What Abby was saying before, there is a way to repair something.

Maybe it's not the level of repair you want to have, but ideal repair, I'll call it. It also includes forgiveness. You can't really fully repair without forgiving. So you see that forgiveness becomes a very tricky thing because forgiveness could be a way to separate also, right? Again, if we think about divorce, how many times we see. people that do not forgive each other in order to keep being invested in each other. Yes. Right?

So we used to say, right, we used to say people like, if you want to let, you know, you want to let go, forgive. And you see people get really distressed about that because the truth is that this, this process is bidirectional. It's not only that you let somebody go by forgiving, you also have to be ready to stop the dialogue in order to forgive, right? So we're talking here about this forgiveness repair thing. We do need to forgive in order to fully repair.

I think it's really, really hard to repair without forgiving. You can forgive without repairing. So then what does it look like to forgive a beginner process of repair? Let's say we're talking about parents, but the parent, what does that look like? What does it sound like, I guess, is a more important question. How do you start that conversation? If you do feel like you're willing to let go of the past, but only, on the condition the relationship changes. It's really interesting because what you said before,

Amanda, about the mutuality. And there is something about thinking about the difference between mutuality and symmetry. Our relationships are mutual, but they're not symmetrical. And to me, to some degree, for the rest of our lives, our relationship with our parents are not fully symmetrical. I mean, at some point, they become more symmetrical, and at some point when the parents are very old, we take care of them, or we have more power, right? Symmetry is about power. And so, again, what does it mean?

It brings me to some thoughts that you talked about, about what is an unconditional love in one of your episodes. And I thought to myself, that's interesting, because to me, unconditional love is about the acceptance that the relationship is not symmetrical. I do not breastfeed my child and expect them to say thank you for the milk. I have my responsibility. I have a different role and different responsibility in that relationship.

And so it's not conditional. I don't need your thank you. So again, what you're saying is what happened with our own parents who are older and limited in some ways? And we cannot fully repair with them. They might never even understand. what we're talking about. And what do we do there? How do we repair or forgive?

That's what you mean. What do we do? And I think to some degree it goes back to accepting people's limitations, which is our own limitations. Can I accept that I am a limited human as a parent too. I'm a parent, too. I'm a limited parent probably. I'm not, hopefully not toxic.

You know, sometimes when people say, how do you know if you're toxic? And I think like, you know, it's like in mental health when a patient comes in and they say, maybe I am psychotic. And I would say to them, you know, if you were psychotic, you wouldn't say maybe I'm psychotic. You would say, I'm not psychotic. You're psychotic. Right? And it's the same thing. That's good. Right? It's the same thing. I've been worried about being toxic for a while. So that's really comforting. I think. I think the toxic people already left, they're already not listening to us. There is something about being worried that you're bad. We usually defend against badness. We usually say, I'm not bad, you're bad. You know, every time somebody makes me, think about the relationship in blaming and feeling guilty. I feel guilty. Children do that all the time.

And the minute I feel guilty, I say, your fault. Bang! I send you back the ball. I'm like, not mine. Your fault. Hot potato. We call it hot potato. The hot potato of guilt, of guilt and blame.

Right? So when you feel bad and all of those people that feel bad about themselves and have to deny it because it's too much, then it's like, no, no, I'm not bad. I'm good. Right? And from that position, a lot of people do really, really harmful things to others, the position of a victim, the position of it. I'm never bad.

And the inverse of that is true. maybe it's the moment where you are admitting and actually able to acknowledge and embrace that you have been an imperfect parent is maybe the moment that you can become the parent that your kid needed. I'm thinking of the Tara Westover educated book where she said, I know only this, that when my mother told me she had not been the mother to me that she wished she'd been, she became that mother for the first time. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And that's probably our process as parents is to really know we're not perfect. And instead, you know, there's also a defensive place to say, I'm not perfect, you know, but no. But self-correct. What do you want? What do you want for me? I didn't mean,

and throw it again back on the children and blaming them. I think that kids of what we call toxic people, are people that are always blamed. And therefore they have a lot of self-doubt. There's a lot of gaslighting. There is a lot of, there is a parent there that really cares about their own self-esteem. They want to feel good. They want to feel good, right? They care about their needs and about their self.

A lot of it is about fragile self-esteem. It's like, I think that's so true. Yeah. I think a lot of the inability to, like, dig in with your kid or dig in with who really has to do with fragility. It has to do with the fragile self. I'm a bad parent and that's why you're suffering. So what does one do in that case? If we're sitting here thinking, okay, I identify with that. Like, I don't think that my parent is a bad person at all. I think my parent is so terrified of considering that they're a bad person, that they don't have the

strength, flexibility, whatever it takes to enter these conversations with me. Is it possible to repair and move forward without the inclusion of that parent. Yeah, you know, I think some of it is also about empathy. Again, if we talk about what traditionally we call toxic people, I don't think toxic is like a very big definition. But I think parents that are hurtful to their children, it is some of it is about always maintaining their own self-esteem, making sure that their children are fulfilling their own needs.

and there is very little ability for empathy and for remorse. The way that you're talking about even protecting your parents, right? First of all, you're filled with empathy and you already see that you could really hurt. It might be too devastating for them to know all those things that we think about them. So hypothetically speaking, then, just asking for a friend here, how would you, suggest, because I do think that that's super relative to a lot of us, that we're, we don't want to upset our parents because they have this idea of the way that they raised us in one way. Can you give me like bullet points of what to say in a conversation with said parent that's

like, hey, listen, I want to be empathetic. I understand that. But I also need you to know that this was hard for me. Because that's caring too. If we didn't care, if we were apathetic, that's the other thing. I think like this to want to repair, to want to actually talk about something, to want to, to not quiet quit your relationship, right? To not just be like I'm just going to go dead inside around my parents and just make it through.

That takes a lot of love and energy and effort. And I wish to be close to them, right? I think that's what you're talking about. I want to trust them. I want to be close to them. I want to tell them everything. I mean, again, we're going to couples. It's really, really interesting because what we're talking about,

parents and children, we can always apply that to couples as well, right? And including ruptures and repair and this dynamic of chase and dodge and how parents like go after their children in ways that make their children have no other option but really escape. I do that with our youngest. I do that. She actually looks scared when she sees me. I want her to like tell me things. So I can feel my annoying self. For example, parents usually of kids who who, who, who want to cut ties with them. What happened to the parents is they become so dysregulated that they start pursuing the child and they pursue them angrily. Like how dare, you know, and there is like, angry pursuit does not work. That you will never get what you want from that, right? And again,

going back to what we know from attachment theory from infant research, it's one of my dear friends, Dr. Beatrice Bibi from Columbia University when you look at what she does and infant research and video analysis of parents and children, what you see is that, especially the disorganized parent, by the way, it's based on the understanding

that our system needs to be regulated, right? We can't always be in contact with each other all the time. We look at each other's eyes, we move our head away, we come back, there is a dance there. And for those babies, when the babies need to regulate when something is too much for them and they move their head away, the parent get really, really anxious, right? Don't think about relationships, think about estrangement, even doing the child's head,

wait, I need to move my head away. The insecure parent becomes really frightened and they think like, oh, my baby is telling me I'm a bad mom. And so what they do instead of allowing the baby to regulate, and babies always come back, right? Because what else do they have? They have you. Right? And so it's good to remember. You know what? Even as a mother, I had to remind myself that because we all forget that where are they going to go, right? Who else do they have? For your child, as the school year continues, patterns start to emerge. You can see what's clicking and where a little extra reinforcement could help.

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What you're describing, you're talking about babies, but you also could be describing just teenage parenting. Yes, right? They look away in a million ways and we lose our shit. Or I guess I should speak for myself. Yes, yes. I think this is the beginning. We're going to be cut off from each other forever. Then we pursue, pursue, pursue, pursue, which makes them shut down even more.

I have three teenagers at home. I have three teenagers. Do you imagine that? Right? The feeling of... And even if I think, talking about the strangenment and what does it do, I went into a real emotional investigation here.

Thinking about our own fears and how do we think about it? Do I speak from a position of a parent or from a child? I'm also a child. It's like I see that we all move our self-states, right? We're the parents, we're the children. We have this with our parents. We have that with our children. And I'm thinking like, what has happened?

And, you know, in my professional writing, a lot of it is about relationships and sexuality. Yes. And thinking like, okay, how do we deal with this thing about separating the most precious thing? How are we two dependent on our children or not? And so going back to Chase and Dodge and what you're saying about being parents of teenagers, I really think it's true. It's true for romantic relationships, too. What happens is that the parent, instead of saying, where else are they going to go, right?

they have me and they're going to go and go make believe that they have their own life and then they'll come back and I'm secure. What those parents of babies do is that they chase the baby. So the baby moves the head a little bit and the parents will do it will come into their face and say, come back, come back, baby. And now they do it in very, very interesting ways, right? To call the baby back. And of course, as you can predict what happens to the baby is that the baby becomes even more dysregulated. So the baby moves their head even more. And at some point the baby starts getting really distressed and start crying.

And then, of course, the parents says, you see, I am a bad parent. The baby hates me, right? And that's where it goes, right? And anxious. I'm just projecting. I'm just like, I need to get into therapy now. I realize because I feel like all I'm doing is projecting all of my insecurities. It's interesting.

And that's what we all do to some degree. I mean, that's what we have to remember. We all do that. We're all those insecure parents, again, on a continuum. Some of us more and some of our less. And we all think, like, maybe they don't like me. Maybe they're, and some parents are more destructive. Maybe she doesn't like me.

So what will fix that is if I get up in her face 24-7 and make sure all she sees is my face. Exactly. Yeah. We're super, super, super, right? That's going to work. And then, yes, but ironically, we're pursuing, but we're pursuing just the wrong way. Because when you look at what the studies show about effective reconciliation in cases of parental

estrangement, the most effective way of reaching reconciliation is when the parent takes the first step and they take responsibility for past harms, even if it's totally different from the experience of their separate sphere, of their understanding and their experience, they hear with empathy and they take responsibility and they try to see through the adult child's perspective and they express a willingness to change their behavior. So it's like all that energy that's going into pursuing, which is so often doubling down on the same problematic behaviors that have led to the estrangement. Right. Just needs to be re-funnelling into coming from a place of security in knowing I acknowledge that this experience is true for you of your childhood.

and yet I still want to be your parent. And this is how I'm going to pursue you through your experience. Right. And that is really, really right. And I think that some of it, it's different than the pursuit that we're talking about of the chase and dodge, right? It's not angry pursuit. It's empathic.

And I don't think we can even call it pursue. It is a response. It has to start with self-reflection. Parents are there. And again, the parents that are not, what we call toxic our parents that are able to feel remorse, that are able to feel empathy and able to feel that, okay, I want to hear what your experience was.

I want to hear it as if I am not that parent that you're saying. Yes, because you're not. You're totally different person. You're not that parent anymore. Right. And you put yourself aside, right, speaking of fragile self-esteem, as if nobody's telling you that you did something wrong. and you listen to that person, the way you listen to anybody else, that says to you, I'm in pain,

this is what happened to me. And you're like, tell me more. Tell me more, right? And I feel like, Abby, I owe you an answer about your parents. Okay. Because we're switching back. Her friends' parents. Sorry, sorry, sorry, but your friend's parents.

And I want to say something. It's for all of us that, I mean, I'm sure there are many, many people who listen to us and say, I really wanted to be closer to my parents. I really want to talk to them about that. And my feeling is that the way we do it is very gently. We lead with integrity and love and with emotional honesty. You know what the myth about emotional honesty is that emotional honesty is about telling others the truth about them. But like when people say, what? I told you the truth. I'm emotionally honest. I told it like it is. I told it like it is. I mean, We have to say that again.

The myth about emotional honesty. Right? Is that you tell people the truth about themselves. Yes. That's right. And then when they say something, they say, you heard my feelings. They said, what? I'm an emotionally honest person.

Right? And so no. So no. That's not emotional honesty. What is it? What is emotional honesty? The emotional honesty really is the emotional honesty really is the ability to tell the truth about yourself. And that means that you first of all have to look for the

truth about yourself, right? You first of all have to look and see like, wait a second, who am I? Why do I feel that way? Why now? And emotional honesty is really the ability to share with people you love, your struggle, your limitations, your pain. And that is a way to start a conversation like that, you know, it's a way to say, that's my experience. It's not about you. I'm not saying you're bad. I'm not saying, right? Because you see, a lot of that, those conflicts and difficult relationships are about the split between good and bad, right? And you're bad. Right. You're bad. Right. You're a big. Exactly. It's really about like, everybody's like, it's about fragile self-esteem. Again, it's about like, maybe I'm a bad mother. So no, you're a bad child, right? The child is so bad. This baby is so

You have you heard people saying that? Such a bad baby. Oh, it's crying. So a bad baby, just know, is a child that covers for a mom who really feels bad about herself. Oh, wow. Oh, Galit, I love you so much. When we get on, I feel like it's been five minutes and we've only just begun.

Thank you for your brilliance and your humor and the way. way you look at the world. And Pod Squad, this is hard stuff. We can do hard things. If I were you, I might start with the idea of emotional honesty being sharing your own experience and your own limitations. Right now, I'm wondering if things might not be working out for me because I truly thought hard conversations were about clearly stating the other person's limitations.

Oh, this is going to change my. What we love to do. This is going to change everything. And I think we need to end with a shout out to Catherine. Catherine. Thank you. All of the people who are listening to this and knowing that the options that we've discussed in the next steps may not ever apply to them and just honoring the duality of the grief and the self-preservation and that, you know, you have done what you need to. to do, like Galit said, to protect your child's self and your current self. And we grieve that

ongoing loss with you. And you can always talk about it here. It's just so important to remember that sometimes the truest best decisions we make still come with a lot of pain. Like, I think we make the mistake of thinking, this hurts. So maybe I did it wrong. But I think something can hurt and still be exactly right. Yeah, right. Many times, right? Yeah. All right, Pod Squad, we love you, and we will see you back here next time. Bye. I give you Tishmilton and Brandy Carlisle. I came out the other side. I chased desire. I made sure I got what's mine. And I continued to believe that as I'm The lives were adventurers in a final destination they stopped asking directions

to places they had to be believed to be known will find a new heart a brand new star times things fall apart I continue to The best people are free It took some time but I'm fine Because we're adventurers and heart breaks I'm at a final destiny

We've stopped asking directions To places they And too hard Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts, especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn't, don't worry about it. It's fine.