Is It Too Late? How to Repair a Broken Relationship With Your Friend or Family Member

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Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. Today, you and I are going to have a very enlightening conversation about a topic that most people don't want to talk about.
The topic is estrangement, and don't you dare turn this podcast off. Estrangement is something that we got to talk about because researchers say it's a silent epidemic.
50% of us will experience estrangement in our families and our lifetime. And just over the past couple of weeks, two fans of the Mel Robbins podcast have stopped me out and about in real life.
And when I asked them, well, what would you want me to do a podcast episode about? Both of them said, could you please do something about estrangement? And there was such a look of pain in their eyes. One woman hadn't talked to her sister in five years.
And the other listener was a man who was heartbroken over the fact that he and his wife hadn't spoken to their daughter in seven years due to their daughter's mental illness. This is so much more common than you think.
When I stopped to think about it, I realized, holy cow, this is present in my own life. In my extended family, it's present.
And I even had an experience where my two closest friends, one of them stopped talking to the other one for three years, and I didn't have a clue what to do about it. And so I'm listening, and I want to dig into this topic with you and learn from the world's leading expert on estrangement so we can avoid it and so we can reconcile if it is happening in your life.
He is here. His name is Dr.
Joshua Coleman. He's a practicing psychologist in San Francisco.
He's written four books. His research on adult estrangement has also been published in academic journals.
He's here to help you understand this topic, why it happens, why it's on the rise, and more importantly, we're going to talk reconciliation. Consider this conversation today an invaluable toolkit for you to use, for you to share, to help you understand estrangement, and to help you, God forbid it happens to you, empower you to reconcile.
All right, Dr. Joshua Coleman, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast.
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Let's just start at the most basic level. And can you define for all of us, what is estrangement? The way that I think of it is it's a cutoff in a relationship that may be temporary, may be permanent.
I think of it as a, you know, complete cutoff or near to complete cutoff. How common is estrangement? It's very common and getting more common all the time.
A recent study out of Ohio State said that 26% of fathers are estranged from their kids. Studies have found that 10 to 11% of mothers are estranged from their kids.
But if you expand it out to family members in general, then something like 27 percent of families in the U.S. are estranged from a family member.
So it's it's incredibly common, growing more common all the time. Why do you think it's growing more common? I think it's a variety of reasons.
Our culture is becoming more identity focused, more tribalistic. We have kind of in-group, out-group ideas, and that no longer includes family.
I think the notion of family has radically changed. Prior to the 1960s or so, there was the idea of honor thy mother and thy father, respect thy elders, families forever.
And that's really been turned on its head, where increasingly the idea is that of chosen family, the fame is who you make it, that people don't owe their parents anything, that the most important thing is the preservation of my happiness, my well-being, my mental health. So there's always been estrangements, but never before have they been based on the idea that it's actually good for one's mental health or it's even an act of existential courage to cut off a parent or a family member.
And it's tied to what the sociologist Anthony Giddens talks about is the evolution from role to self, whereas it used to be there are very clear ideas prior to the 20th century. The ideas about what it takes to be a member of a family was fairly clearly defined, being a good parent being a good child, etc.
being a good adult child. And

then ideas about what it takes to be a member of a family was fairly clearly defined being a good parent being a good child etc being a good adult child um and then it changed much more towards an orientation towards self we've had the evolution of what he calls the pure relationship relationships are now purely constituted on the basis of whether or not that relationship is aligned with that person's ideals their goals or or aspirations for happiness, etc. And if they're not, then the relationship is viewed as being problematic and corruptive and not worth pursuing.
Just that last point I want to highlight. Because it's true.
If someone thinks a relationship, whether it's a friendship, a sibling relationship, parent-child, if you view it as a problem, people do ghost each other. Cancel culture isn't just limited in the media.
It's happening in friendships, in family. It seems like there's zero tolerance or maturity to have a deeper discussion with people about what you disagree about or why you're mad at somebody.
And I'm sure that you see this between friends, siblings, not just parent-child relationships. Exactly right.
So Dr. Coleman, I'm fascinated with how you got into the work of counseling and supporting parents who are estranged from adult children.
Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to do this? Sure. I was married and divorced in my 20s and have a fully grown daughter who I'm very close to.
But there was a period of time in her early 20s when she cut off contact for several years and Laura's response to my becoming remarried and having children in my second and which is my current marriage of some 30 plus years. And there are many ways that she felt displaced by that, hurt by not so much the divorce because she was so young, but just by all the kind of things that can happen with divorce and remarriage and bleeding about blended family and the like.
And at the time, there was nothing really written to advise me or help me. I was in therapy at the time trying to get help, and the advice I got was terrible, as it often is.
What was the advice? You know, you need to remind her of all the things that you've done for her and correct her memories and just show up at her place and kind of, you know, demand that she see you. None of them really caused her to feel understood or cared about or, you know, like I had any degree of compassion for what her experience was.
So it really wasn't until I just learned how to stop explaining, stop defending, stop blaming, and respect where she was coming from that things began to turn. But during that time of estrangement, it was easily the most painful, awful, disorienting thing I've ever been through or ever hoped to go through again.
You know, the idea that your child would cut you off and you would never, may never see them again is horrifying, painful, and terrifying as well. So once we did have a reconciliation, I felt so many people struggling with this.
I wrote my first book on the topic in 2007, When Parents Hurt. I got a wide following of parents here and in other countries who are dealing with this.
And as a result of that, I did a research study of 1600 estranged parents that's been published in numerous academic journals. They've developed a training program for therapists.
So what typically drives someone to say, that's it, I'm going to cut my parents or somebody else out of my life? Yeah. There's a number of pathways.
Adult children, what they typically will say is emotional abuse, physical abuse, neglect, differences in values. Those are the most common things reported by the adult child.
But other pathways, statistically, in my own research study and in my own clinical practice, 70% of the parents have been through a divorce. So there's a number of ways that divorce can increase the risk.
One is that they cause the child of any age to blame one parent over the other for the divorce. They can bring in new members, step-siblings, half-siblings, new step-mothers, step-fathers have to compete for emotional and material resources.
It may cause the child to support one parent over the other, even if the parents don't need that kind of support. Finally, in a highly individualistic culture like ours, it could cause the child to see the parents more as kind of individuals with their own strengths and weaknesses and not as a family unit that they're a part of.
So divorce is a clear risk. Mental illness in the parent, but equally mental illness in the child, the adult child.
The role of therapy, bad therapists or therapists that just aren't very well educated in this who assume that every problem that surfaces an adult has childhood trauma at the heart of it,

which isn't necessarily true, but so many therapists believe that and put the adult child on the pathway to estrangement. I just want to make sure everybody hears that.
So you're saying that there are lots of therapists out there that take whatever their client is telling them and facilitate the linking of childhood issues with estrangement being something that they should consider?

Yeah, consider or do.

I mean, I've had numerous parents show me letters from adult children where they said,

well, my therapist said that you're a narcissist and you can't change, so I'm not willing to

do family therapy with you. And, you know, these are often therapists who've never met the parent.
They're diagnosing the parent from afar. And more problematic, they're assuming childhood traumas that may or may not exist.
I think childhood traumas are a real thing. But in this day and age, there's the assumption that if somebody has a problem in adulthood, well, you just have to figure out where the childhood trauma was, and then the doors to identity and happiness and meaning will be open.
But that's really problematic. We're really preoccupied with traumas at this point in our culture and society in a way that's really causing a lot of harm.
My wheels are spinning as you're talking about this, Dr. Coleman.
And I know that you're not being cavalier. You're not saying that trauma isn't real.
If I'm listening to you correctly, from your point of view, based on the experience that you have working with people who are trying to reconcile a strange relationship, you're highlighting the fact that childhood traumas, when they get revealed with a child or somebody in therapy it can easily become a tripwire that leads to estrangement and i can kind of see how that could happen because when you dig up all that stuff and it gets revealed it's a lot of work to move forward and heal it. And it's difficult to talk to your parents about the things that didn't go right in your childhood or the things that you wish had gone differently.
So I can see how people would either get stuck in the process of blaming or just not wanting to talk about it at all and distancing themselves. Sure.
You know, one of the challenges is that generations

are often talking past each other. So important article by Nick Haslam, who's an Australian

psychologist, and he called it concept creep. And what he found was that over the past three

decades, well, his article came out in 2015. So it's more than that at this point.
But

there's been an expansion of what we consider to be hurtful, traumatic, abusive, neglectful behavior. So often the adult child is saying, is you neglected me, you were emotionally abusive, traumatized me.
And the parents are like, what? You know, because they're looking at it from the way those terms were defined when they were growing up. You know, was the adult child is looking at it in a very different way.
So often, you know, if the adult child's saying, you emotionally abused me, the parents, particularly a lot of these parents who've given their children a really good quality of life, just can't relate to it. And so what I tell parents to say is, it's clear that I have blind spots, that I wasn't aware that that felt emotionally abusive to you.
I'm glad you let me know. I would like to learn more about what that felt like to you, how this impacted you.
Is there something you'd like me to read? Would you like to get into therapy around it? Are there things you'd like me to work on in my own therapy? So again, it's kind of to the point that you were making, the parent has to really go toward the adult child's complaints rather than away from them. They do have to show a certain amount of courage and willingness to kind of get into the really painful territory of how the child feels like they neglected them or hurt them or let them down.
And no parent really particularly wants to go there. Definitely not.
It's not a fun place to be. So I'm sure that as people are listening, there's a bazillion bells going off.
And so I, of course, want to go, okay, well, let's talk about childhood trauma and all this stuff. But I want to stay in this topic, because I personally believe that everybody listening has either had an experience with estrangement, or they know somebody who's really struggling because of it.
I mentioned this earlier, but in my own extended family, there's a person that I love who died recently and he had never met two of his grandkids. And I felt so helpless just wishing somehow that this could have been repaired right before he died.
And knowing the heartache and the frustration and the anger and the sadness and all the grief that he carried with him before he died. And

that's just the reality of what happens when somebody makes a decision to unilaterally cut

you out of their life and you don't even really know why. I have a question that may sound kind

of obvious, but how do you know if this is a situation of estrangement that you're dealing with

versus just the distance that can happen because you don't really like a

relative. You know, like, yeah, maybe you don't get along with your brother or your sister.
They're

not your favorites. You don't really call them that often.
But you're not really estranged.

You just aren't making much of an effort. They still get the Christmas card.
You still call

them on their birthday, but they're not like your go-to for going out. And so there's a lot of

distance there. How do you know if somebody has deliberately cut you out of their life? No, it's a good question.
It's not the answer isn't at all obvious. And I think that a lot of parents today end up getting more estranged because they're wanting more closeness from their adult child and their adult child feels capable or desiring of getting.

Dr. Coleman, it sounds like we're about to go down the path of all the things that we do wrong

that can lead to estrangement or that keep us estranged. And so let's pause right here,

hear a quick word from our sponsors who allow us to bring this all to you for zero cost. And when

we return, we're going to dig into the mistakes that people make that can lead to estrangement. We'll be right back.
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Go to rosettastone.com slash pod five zero and start learning today. Welcome back.
I'm Mel Robbins. I'm here with one of the world's leading experts on estrangement and reconciliation between family members, friends, siblings, none other than Dr.
Joshua Coleman. And we were just about to start talking about the mistakes that people make that can lead to estrangement.
Dr. Coleman? Yeah, there was a survey done out of the University of Virginia that said that a majority of parents raising children want and expect to be best friends with their children once they're grown.
But a lot of adult children don't necessarily want that level of closeness or intimacy. And one of the problems with social media is that it allows a certain kind of intrusion of the parent on the adult child that they might not want.
Parents can reach their adult child anywhere in the world within a matter of seconds. And so I think a certain percentage of adult children feel very crowded today.
You know, what's the most common complaint I hear in every single estranged adult child's letter is you need to respect my boundaries, right? So boundaries have become the most important thing. And it's in part because parents raising children over the past four decades are more worried.
They're more worried about getting their children through the narrow bottleneck that can land them in a successful life. So parents have become more anxious, more guilt-ridden, more intrusive, more surveilling.
And that doesn't always work in the parent-adult-child relationship in the long term. So to circle back to your question, it may not start out as an estrangement, it may start out more as kind of normal distance.
But as soon as the parent starts to act to victimize or hurt or criticizing the adult child, then they're putting themselves on the path to potential estrangement. You know, I can personally say there was a period in my relationship with my mom who I love deeply and I know she loves me.
And there was a period of time where I was newly married and I was so enthusiastic about my husband and about his family. And we were living closer to my husband's family.
My parents are in the

Midwest, they're on the East Coast. And I know it was an extraordinarily painful period for my mom

because she from a distance felt like she was losing me to another family. Yeah, it's very

common. And I started to sense that resentment or that fear.

And that started to upset me.

And so we got into a period of time where we didn't know how to come together.

Yeah.

She would say something, I would get offended.

I would say something, she would get offended.

And it felt like our relationship had all of these landmines that neither one of us wanted there.

Yeah.

I just wanted to get back to that, like, I just love you and you just love me. And without me doing a tremendous amount of therapy and without us even having almost like a period where we tolerated each other, that it could have led to a disastrous and hurtful situation for both of us.
Because we're both very opinionated. We have big emotions.
We're very similar. And we didn't know how to navigate this without hurting or upsetting the other person.
And I'm so grateful it didn't end up differently because I feel closer to her now than I ever have. But I can see how just going, I'm not going to call them.
I'm not going to pick up the phone. I'm not going to go visit.
I'm not going to do this. How not talking to somebody for a month or two months or a couple months and being that cold, uninterested, distant would actually throw gasoline on the fire because the emotions build.
And then every interaction is so high stakes. It's a recipe for disaster.
Right. Yeah, no, I think you're putting your finger on a couple of important things.
When I was talking about the pathways to estrangement,

I didn't list one of the most common pathways, and that's when the adult child marries. And if

there's conflict between the son-in-law or daughter-in-law and the parents, sometimes the

son-in-law or daughter-in-law basically says to their spouse, choose me or them, you can't have both. And men in particular are vulnerable to that.
But you're also putting your finger on the fact that the parents can commonly feel like, well, how can the other parents get to spend more time with you or the grandkids? And in some ways, the parents of sons are more at risk of that because of what sociologists refer to as the matrilineal advantage, which means statistically daughters are more likely to prioritize their own family. But that is a really common source of estrangement or beginning conflict.
And to your point that once conflict starts, it can quickly spiral out of control and lead to an estrangement. And for parents, I think most parents feel kind of panicky when the adult child starts to pull back and be more distant, become less available.
And that causes what John Gottman refers to as the pursuer-distancer dynamic. What is it called? The pursuer-distancer dynamic.
And it's associated with a high risk of divorce, where one partner, more typically the wife, is pursuing the other for more contact, more intimacy, more communication. The other person, more typically the husband, pulls back more, becomes more shut down.
And over time, that dynamic is more rigidified and harder to change until the couple splits up. A similar thing I observe with parents and adult children around estrangement.
The parent starts to pursue more and more and more, aren't you calling me, blah, blah, blah, you know, and then they're off to the races. One of the reasons why I was so excited to talk to you is because you're my favorite kind of expert.
You not only have all the credentials, but you have the lived experience. What are the big mistakes that you see people who want to reconcile with somebody who's cut them off? What are the big mistakes that people make or that you made? Yeah, there, you know, I have a whole webinar on this called the five most common mistakes of estranged parents, and I'm sure I made all of them.
The first one is thinking that it should be fair. As soon as you think it should be fair, then you're going to, first of all, you're going to feel more victimized by your child, which is not a good place to be both as a person, but also in terms of how you communicate.
It's going to make you feel more angry and resentful. And that's going to come out.
The idea that it should be fair is the idea of like, well, I was a much better parent than my own was. Think of all the sacrifices I made.
You know, I was there for this kid in so many ways. But it, you know, from the parent's perspective, it isn't fair.
It's much more about practically what works and what doesn't work. And that relates to the second common mistake, and that is thinking that you're going to motivate your child through guilt.
Parents can no longer do that. Guilt is now considered a toxic, coercive, corruptive force.
It's antithetical to the idea that the adult child doesn't owe the parent anything and shouldn't feel guilt. So using guilt is not going to work, including statements like how miserable the

adult child is making the parent feel through the estrangement. Third common mistake, and I see

therapists enabling this mistake, is returning fire with fire. The adult child says something

angry or assertive or critical, the parent fires right back at them and tells them they're ungrateful

and challenges them and says, you can't talk to me that way. You need to respect me.
And it may be true that they want respect, but returning fire with fire never works. The fourth is assuming that it's all about the parent, which goes to what you and I were talking about before, about there may be not as much contact because the adult child's

more preoccupied with their own life, their own children, their own career, their own

social lives.

You know, what I tell parents is, look, when we have adult children and grandchildren,

they're front and center of our minds, our heart, our consciousness.

But for our adult children, that's not the same.

We're not as a front of their hearts and minds and consciousness.

And I know that was true with my own parents as well when they were alive. And like you, I was very close to them, to my parents.
I also grew up in the Midwest. So I just knew that when I called my parents or visited them that, I mean, I liked both, but I knew it meant much more to them than it did to me.
So probably if my adult children call me or visit me, I know it means more to me than it does to them. So the mistake is assuming that every bit of distance or non-responsiveness or not returning that text right away or that email or whatever is personal.
Because once you make it personal, then you are on the pathway to a stranger. The final mistake is failing to recognize how long a stranger takes to reconcile.
It's a marathon, it's not a sprint. And then even if you're taking the best next steps, that it still may be a matter of months or even years before you can get your child to respond.
So those are the most common mistakes. Let me add one more.
And that is one of the key parts of my strategy with parents is helping them write an amends letter, where they take responsibility, where they're not defensive, they don't explain, they find the kernel, if not the bushler of truth in their children's complaints. And a common mistake I see with letters is that they say, well, if I did anything wrong, or, you know, you know, I'm sorry, you feel that way that way or those kind of things which aren't really taking responsibility and not really facing the hard cold truth about the mistakes that they made because as parents, we all make them.
So, but it's a hard thing to do. I mean, I didn't love doing it myself when I, when I did it, but it is the most effective way to potentially bridge a distance between a parent and an adult child.
What I would love to do is go mistake by mistake and unpack it a little bit more so that we can understand how that mistake that we make when we're trying to make amends or trying to make contact with somebody who has cut us off, how it backfires and what it feels like for the person that has cut you off. Because I think that would be helpful.
The first one was to think that things should be fair. Right.
So why is that a mistake, and what do parents do that backfires? You know, one of the things that I teach parents, particularly who've been in the longer-term estrangement, is the principle of radical acceptance. And part of radical acceptance is saying that it is what it is.
You know, I can take all the best steps, but I may not be able to do any better. And when we think that things should be fair, we're really injecting a certain amount of resentment and bitterness and unhappiness into the equation.
So it isn't very helpful to one's mental health to sort of say, well, this isn't fair. I shouldn't be treated like this.
I was such a good parent. I was a better parent than my own parents were.
They're not acknowledging all the good things that I did. They're rewriting history.
I mean, all those things may be true, but tormenting yourself with that kind of feeling is just going to make you miserable, but it's also going to make you more resentful to your adult child. From your child's perspective, it's completely fair.
They wouldn't be doing it unless they thought it was fair. So one of the things I tell parents to do when they write an amends letter is to start by saying, I know you wouldn't do this unless we felt like it was the healthiest thing for you to do.
Because that's how it feels to the adult child. And the parent has to get on the same page as the adult child.
If this parent comes across as being defensive or blaming or not willing to take responsibility, game over. The adult child's going to go, I'll screw you with that.
I'm not going to have a relationship with you. This is why I did it in the first place.
Exactly. That's right.
That's right. And I think resentment is the powerful word there because in this feeling that things should be fair.

Right.

What you're not saying is I resent the fact that I gave you fucking everything. And this is what you're doing to me.
Right. Exactly.
And I see this even in myself.

We were just yesterday after school quickly trying to find a black suit for my son for prom this weekend. And we went to three different places.
Thankfully, we found something. And I turned to him and I said, hey, can you give me a lift home before practice? And he said, oh, mom, I'm going to it's going to make me late for practice.
And I caught the words before they came out of my mouth. But what I almost said to him, Dr.
Coleman was, are you fucking kidding me? I just spent an hour and a half with you and spent hundreds of dollars on a suit to support you. You can't drive me 10 measly minutes home.
And then I thought for a second, how is shaming or being resentful or kind of like, like that is a example of how I think I'm trying not to be transactional. I will love you when, if I buy you shit, you need to do something for me, but it's hard.
And so I can see how that opinion that I'm doing this for you. So it has to be fair on my terms, on my terms, because I could step into his shoes, which is what you basically ask your clients to do, to get from the one side of the table to putting your arm around your child and trying to see it from their point of view.
I basically took him shopping because that was the window that was convenient for me. And so from his side, he was also accommodating me and he didn't want to be late, which I can understand.
So I love that because I think the resentment piece is what somebody who cuts you off picks up on. Talk about guilt for a minute.
It just doesn't work anymore. You know, there's plenty of cultures where it still works.
You know, there's plenty of cultures where, you know, the notion of filial obligation, duty to one's parents, et cetera, is still very active. And it's more tolerated and accepted because the adult child has embraced those values.
But in the rest of North American culture, there's the idea that adult children don't owe their parents anything and that guilt is an excessive, coercive, corruptive demand. And so if the parent makes the child feel bad, then somehow they're now putting themselves in the role of being a toxic, narcissistic person who the adult child should cut off in order to preserve their own mental health.
Dr. Coleman, I can tell you're really passionate about the fact that this is on the rise and that you see this connection between the rise of individualism and estrangement from family members.

What I want to do when we come back is I want to role play.

I would love to play the role of being the person who's been estranged

and you be the therapist and walk us through what do we do here.

We'll be right back. Doing this podcast is a chance for me and my good bud Woody to reconnect after Cheers wrapped 30 years ago.

Plus, we're introducing each other to the friends we've met since, like Jane Fonda, Conan O'Brien, Eric Andre, Mary Steenburgen, my wife, and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

And trust me, it's always a great hang when Woody's there.

So why wait? Listen to Where Everybody Knows Your Name, wherever think in your chosen language. They even have a built-in speech recognition technology that provides real-time feedback to help you sound like a natural.
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Unlock your language learning potential now. And as a listener of today's show, you can grab Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50% off.
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Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins, and we're talking about estrangement, which is on the rise.
We're here with Dr. Joshua Coleman, who is one of the world's leading experts working with families and friends around the world who are estranged seeking reconciliation.
And I want to do role play. I want to put us all in a therapy session with Dr.
Coleman. So Dr.
Coleman, let's say that you're with a parent or a parent who's been estranged from a child or another family member. Where do you start with them? Most typically it's the parent who wants the therapy and the adult child is being kind of coaxed into it.
Either I'm reaching out to them to see if they'll do it, I'm helping the parent reach out to them in a way that will make it more likely that the adult child would consider doing the family therapy. But what I explain to both parent and adult child, particularly parents, is that reconciliation therapy is not marital therapy.
In marital therapy, you both equally come in with equal claims to what the marriage can look like, you negotiate, you compromise, you meet somewhere in the middle. Reconciliation therapy with an adult child is much more on the adult child's terms because they've already shown that they're willing to walk.
And that from their perspective, they're not in the same kind of pain that the parent is. Now, they may have been in pain that caused them to cut off the parent, particularly if it was an abusive parent, et cetera.
There were childhood traumas and childhood traumas do exist. I'm not not at all saying that they're a myth.
I am saying that we overstate them. But there's certainly plenty of kids who have had real childhood traumas.
And so they feel a certain sense of endangerment in getting into the room with the parent because they feel like estrangement is a way to protect themselves and their mental health. So I make it clear to them as well that I have your back, that this is really about helping your parent learn how to become more empathic, to become more respectful of your boundaries, to take more responsibility for the ways that they were hurtful to you, and have a deeper understanding of why you felt like an estrangement was in your best interest.
And I tell a parent that as well, because I don't want them to get into therapy session and then feel kind of broadsided by me. I will say to them, if I side with anybody in the session, it's going to be with your adult child.
Because, first of all, it's the only way to keep them in the room. But second of all, it's just how I think about these dynamics.
I think that even parents who did the best they could, could still be really hurtful. And even if it's something that might not have felt hurtful to some other family member, if it felt hurtful to that adult child, it's still incumbent on us as parents to take the lead, to take the high road, to show leadership, and to make the moves in the right direction towards healing.
So if we can get past that initial phase of therapy where the parent can do a good job in empathizing and taking responsibility and accepting the child's terms, then we can kind of proceed to a new phase where the parent can talk more about what a good relationship would feel like to them. And the adult child at that point is more willing to consider that than necessarily guaranteed to consider it.
But they're in a much better place if they know that their other boundaries and limits could be accepted and adopted. Can you and have you achieved reconciliation with people when the person that cut them out of their lives won't come to reconciliation therapy? Sure.
I mean, a really good amends letter can work miracles. That said, they don't always work.

There's really nothing I can tell every parent that, gee, if you only just do Coleman's five steps towards reconciliation. Because some adult children, they're just not ready.
They're too mad or hurt. They're too influenced by the other parent after a divorce.
They're too influenced by their therapist, by who they're married to. They may have a need to feel separate from the parent.
So these strategies don't always work, but they often work. And when they do work, it's because the parent's doing the right thing.
There is a tremendous amount of content coaching people to cut people out, to have boundaries, which are important. Sure.
But when you get to that point where you feel like, I don't have the ability to have this person in my life, it's easier to just stop having a relationship with them. What are the five steps for somebody who's on the receiving end of that? Because we don't talk about that a lot.
Your parents did the best they could. If you look at the way your parents were treated growing up, it explains a lot about what they did.
Doesn't justify it, Dr. Coleman.
I agree. But it certainly explains it.
So what do you do? I mean, what are the steps to reconciliation? And are they the same steps if it's an adult child coming to work with you who wants to reconcile with a parent?

Yeah.

Increasingly, I'm having more adult children contact me who the parents cut them off. Really? They're the ones who want help.
Yeah. Or even if the parents haven't cut them off, they just want an improved relationship.
Does this process of reconciliation and the amends letter also work for siblings or friends? Siblings are more complicated because for parents, it's very easy for me to get a parent to take the high road, to take responsibility because they're in so much pain. With siblings, it's more tricky because parents are willing to walk over hot coals, which is sometimes required.
But siblings typically aren't. So somebody has to take the high road.
Somebody has to be willing to not get pulled into the weeds, to make amends, to probably take more responsibility than they think is fair. I mean, if both siblings are equally motivated to heal the relationship, and I have worked with those kind of siblings, that's easier.
Then it's more like marriage therapy. Then you can examine the dynamics that shape them both and get them to learn how to communicate more and kind of make the unconscious processes much more conscious.
But more typically, one sibling is completely estranged and the other sibling is in pain about the estrangement. So typically, the person who's in the most pain has to show more leadership.
So that's the tricky part. Can you explain a little bit more about what you mean when you said that's the tricky part? If a child cuts off a parent, there's a feeling like, well, it is my obligation to heal this.
Even if they feel like they're innocent, they can feel an enormous sense of shame that their child feels like they've failed them. There are parents who won't do what I tell them to do.
I can't help them if they will. I tell parents this isn't about, you know, right or wrong per se.
It's about the practicality. Isn't there a right or wrong when somebody cuts you out of their life? I mean, particularly if they don't even tell you why they stopped talking to you? I mean, I do think that there is a moral basis to what I preach.
The parents should take the high road. Their children didn't choose to have them.
And therefore it is incumbent on parents to take the high road and take responsibility and not get pulled into the weeds, not return fire with fire. I love what you said.
And I just want to take a highlighter and make sure that everybody heard something that you said. You said that your personal belief is that the parents have a moral obligation to take the higher road because they chose to bring their children into the world.
Correct. And I think that's an interesting thing to think about because you're right.
We forget as parents that we're the ones that brought them into the world. Right.
They didn't choose us. We chose and created them.
Exactly. And that doesn't mean they owe us anything.
If anything, it means we owe them something. Yeah.
I would say two things to that. One is that I extend that even to wills.
Like a lot of parents in my practice have been treated miserably by their adult children. And it wouldn't surprise me.
I'm sympathetic to some of these parents who want to cut the kids out of their will.

But I say I don't support parents doing that.

Why? Because it seems like my natural reflection is, of course,

if you're going to cut me out of your life, why the fuck would I give you any money?

Because I've been paying for your ass your whole adult life. Like, why would I continue to do that

if you don't even do you see how quickly I could go into that? I'm an angry, resentful parent. Yeah.
No, why would you say that? Why, why should somebody who's had a kid cut them out actually give them money? The reason is that we're parents forever and we're parenting long after we're gone. I mean, my parents, you know, are both dead and they still continue,

their influence still persists with me, you know, some good ways and some bad ways. I don't think our responsibility as parents ends when we die.
And as much as I hate the way some of these adult children treat their parents, how contemptuous, how self-righteous, how rejecting they are, how much they've immiserated the life of the parent, I still think that the role of parent continues after the parent dies.

And it's also an issue, a question of what do you want your legacy to be? Do you want your legacy to be that you punished your child from the grave? And that doesn't mean parents have to give their child every single penny, but that they might give them what they would give them if they were still alive. A, and B, if there's other siblings, it greatly complicates a sibling relationship if one of the children is cut out of the will.
So yes, I do think there's a moral obligation to parents. I think there also is a moral obligation from adult children that we've lost sight of in this culture.
I actually do think that adult children owe the parents something. I agree with you, Dr.
Coleman, but this is what pisses me off, is when people cut other people out of their life without any explanation, and they use silence as a power move. If you've been friends for a long time, or you're related and grew up with somebody, or they're your parent or your child, I personally think it's wrong.
I think it's wrong on a basic human level that you owe your former best friend or your family member an explanation, period. You don't have to reconcile, but to just drop the guillotine on communication and not explain why, that's not a sign of somebody who's mature.
And for those of you that are now going to get pissed off and write to me about that, I'm never listening to this podcast again. Ask yourself this, why are you triggered? Why are you triggered? Are you triggered because you know that the explanation is owed and that it is somewhat cowardly to just stop talking to somebody and then avoiding them and not responding to their outreach? Or are you triggered because you're dealing with somebody who is abusive and you feel like the explanation has already been given based on what happened? And if that's the case, then you've already communicated and there's no reason to be triggered by what I'm saying.
You were the mature person because you pointed it out and then you left. I'm talking about the person who just stonewalls somebody.
And it's very clear from the amends letter or the outreach or the phone calls that this person has no clue why, even if they're just obtuse as hell, consider doing them the favor of writing it out. Because if they have it in writing, at least then they can go to a therapist or a professional and perhaps work on themselves.
I totally agree with you. I just don't think that parents can demand that or extract it or guilt trip the child into doing it.
Some of the reasons that adult children cut off contact aren't because the parent was abusive or neglectful. It's because, you know, their therapist has convinced them that the parent was more responsible for how their lives turned out than they were.
Or the kid got married to somebody who hates the parent and the kid isn't strong enough to stand up to their spouse and say, no, they're my parents. I want them to see them and I want them to see their grandchildren regardless.
So in the same way, the parents have a moral obligation. I think adult children do too.
That's a really important point, Dr. Coleman.
There's another person in our extended family that I can think about right now who married someone who turned this person in our family against the entire family. But, you know, here's the thing.
Of course, as soon as there was a funeral, boy, oh boy, did they show up sweet as pie dressed to the nines because there's inheritance coming. There's stuff to pick through.
So I know this is happening probably in everybody's extended family. And look, I realize there are important situations where cutting off contact is the healthiest, safest option for you.
That's not what we're talking about here. Now, that doesn't mean that they're obligated to stay in contact no matter how abusive or hurtful or critical or shaming, you know, rejecting the parent is.
But they are morally obligated to give the parent a time of due diligence to repair, to do therapy, to hear them out, to think of the parent in a more three-dimensional way, to view it from the perspective that you were saying earlier that they did the best they could, not in a way that they just get to be forgiven no matter how crappy their parenting was, but that perspective of compassion rather than contempt. So I think both sides, there's moral obligations.
That's beautiful. And I mentioned about, you know, this second person in my family that had never met his two grandkids.
I mean, it was heartbreaking. And they did show up at the memorial service.
I didn't know what to say. Yeah.
And I think you probably see that a lot, that people show up in death. Yeah.
Because there is something deeper that connects us all. And I think that that's what that speaks to.
And we have this inability as emotional beings to navigate what feels like endless landmines that can develop between us. Let's focus on the five steps.
Like what do we do if you know, okay, I'm going to go see Dr. Coleman.
What are the five steps that people can take in any situation, in any relationship where there has been an estrangement? What are the steps, doctor? Yeah. Well, what I often tell parents is there's a lot more things you can do wrong than you can do right.
So, you know, the things you can do wrong are contained in the five most common mistakes that we've already discussed. The things that you can do right are to show compassion, to take responsibility, to find the kernel, if not the bushel of truth in a child's complaints, to communicate that you know that they wouldn't cut off contact unless they felt like it was the healthiest thing for them to do.
If you have no idea what the reasons are, and some parents don't, to say that it's clear I have significant blind spots as a parent, as a person that I don't have a deeper understanding, but I want to? Would you feel comfortable writing me and telling me more about what your thoughts or feelings are that make you feel like this is the healthiest thing for you to do? I promise to listen or read purely from the perspective of learning and not any way to defend myself. You know, on the one hand, to not give up, but at some point you might have to stop as a show of respect.
Can you give us an example of when you should stop reaching out? Well, if you're getting your letters returned unopened, returned to sender, you know, threats of the police calling you, communicating through an attorney, or your kid just gets so unraveled, then you should just stop completely for a year. Sometimes stopping completely works because the adult child can feel like the parent is respecting their boundaries finally.
It can make them respect the parent more that they're not just continuing to try no matter what. That old saying, how can I miss you if you don't go away is sometimes true in family life.
It can create, you know, that sort of space for the adult child to come into. So there's a lot of reasons why sometimes just stopping is the right thing.
There's something that you write about in your work, Dr. Coleman, that you call the lighthouse model.
Can you explain that to us? This is particularly to the parents who've been victims of parental alienation, where they've been brainwashed against the parent by the other parent after a divorce, is to embody what I call kind of the lighthouse model, that you're just there on the beach, you're steady, you're broadcasting light from its definite point on the beach while your child is being pushed up and down out at sea by the waves. And sometimes they'll come out and see you standing on the beach there broadcasting light and they'll get oriented towards you, but then they'll be carried back out to sea and pushed underwater.
Oh, my God. As I sit here listening to you, Dr.
Coleman,

I can think of a bunch of people that I know that have gone through a divorce and that's exactly what happened. The kids drifted toward one parent and the other parent felt completely alienated.

And come to think of it, I've experienced this kind of dynamic or feeling too as a parent,

when our kids have been in a relationship with somebody that we don't really like. and they kind of drift away from us toward the person they're in the relationship with.
So this analogy that you just explained that people can get caught up in the waves of life and carry it out to sea, it's so useful because it bottom lines what you need to do when you feel like your kids or your parents or your friends are drifting away from you. Just keep broadcasting the light and the love from where you are so that they know you're there.
And at some point, as you so beautifully said, they'll be carried back toward you. Your task as a parent is to be steady and loving and compassionate and available and responsibility taking and hope that over time your child can find their way back to you through those efforts.
Can you describe what an amends letter is and how you write one? Sure. First of all, they're much shorter than parents often think they should be.
Typically, two paragraphs.

You don't want it to be so long that, you know, sort of so much rope that you're going to hang yourself with it. They should be courageous, fearless, moral inventory of your character flaws.
If your child has made complaints about you, to be able to really fearlessly say what those

were and how you can see how that could have impacted your child, how that might have been

hurtful or traumatizing to them or damaging to them or affected their feelings of trust or safety or security in you or the relationship with you. That's critically important to not blame anybody else, to not make excuses, to not say, well, I was a single mother, or your dad didn't pay any child support, or your mother blamed me for divorce when it wasn't my fault, or you had ADD or learning disabilities, or you had your own issues.
No, no, no. It's 100% about empathy, responsibility taking.
But there has to be blood on the tracks, meaning that the parent has to actually show courage in facing their own character flaws, not in a self-hating way, but just in a way, and that's critically important as well. It shouldn't be an exercise in masochism, even though it is a painful thing to do, I understand from my own personal experience.
They're not fun letters to write. They're actually super hard.
What was it like for you to write one to your daughter when she cut you off? Well, I mean, there's two things that go into it. One is, is this going to work? And the other is just having to face the reality of some of her complaints.
I mean, I can empathize with the ways that she felt sort of sidelined when I remarried and had other children and how my children from my second, my current marriage had a much better quality of life and were raised in the context of a stable marriage. And she didn't have that.
And she was, you know, kind of went back and forth between two homes. There was conflict with me and her mother.
And, you know, it was a lot there to be hurt and upset and feel displaced about. So it's very painful.
You know, there have been numerous times where we've cried together about it because it was, yeah, it's just really painful.

What was her response to your letter? Good. I mean, she, you know, to her credit, I was just lucky that my daughter had whatever it is that causes an adult child to forgive and to accept.
Not all parents are just as dedicated or empathic as me or communicate just as well or better than I did, who's the adult child wasn't or isn't willing or able to do that. But I was lucky that she was able to.
It didn't happen right away. And it often doesn't.
That's why I say it's often a marathon, not a sprint. So it took a while.
And actually, it wasn't just like one simple thing like, oh, great, clouds have parted, all is forgiven. No, it still comes up periodically.
Those kind of things are fault lines in a parent-adult-child relationship that will always be there in one form or another. What if you're the one that's in the middle? I've been in a situation where my two closest friends, one cut the other one off and didn't talk to her for three years.

Yep.

And I was in a relationship with both of them.

And one kept trying to reconcile an absolute stonewall from the other.

Yeah.

What do you do if you're the sibling or the other child or you're the friend in the middle?

Yeah, well, it's often that one child is estranged and the other sibling is not estranged from the parents.

And what I tell parents is you can't really have your non-estrange child advocate for you.

First of all, if one of your children is estranged from you, they are showing that they're capable of using estrangement, so they may well estrange that sibling. Second of all, the sibling may say that if you're acting like our parents' advocate, I will cut you off.
So often the estranged sibling makes the non-estrange sibling swear that they won't reveal what their reasons are, what their thinking or feeling, sometimes even where they live. So I tell parents that they have to accept that boundary and limit as difficult as it is.
The other thing I tell parents is that if you have one kid who's estranged, you don't want the non-estrange kids to feel like they have to sort of hold up some mirror of you as the great parent. They know how much pain you're in.
You're better off saying to them something like, your sister, your brother's estranged, but I don't want you to feel like you have to sort of, you know, repair my self-esteem by making me feel like I'm a great parent or whatever. You may have the same complaints about me or you may have different complaints, but I want you to feel like you have room to do that without worrying about being overly burdensome to me.
Now, if you're the friend, it's sort of a similar dynamic where you don't really have that kind of power to really change very much about it. It really won't serve your friendship to be overly allied one against the other, even if you think that, you know, one person's more fault or more troubled or more difficult.
So we can be sympathetic. But if you put yourself in a position of advocacy, that can cause the person who's being advocated against to feel more misunderstood or ganged up on and that kind of thing.
I think if there's one thing I'm taking away from this incredible conversation is that when this happens, there's typically on the part of the person that

is estranged, this story or feeling that you just don't get it. Yeah.
And I'm tired of trying to explain it. And I'm tired of you defending yourself.
And it's just easier and better for me to remove this from my life right now.

It must be a profoundly painful and challenging and humbling thing to do to say, this is so important to me that I'm going to be the leader in this process. And the only way that we're going to make progress is if the person that's cut me out actually feels like they've been validated and understood without me defending myself.
Yeah. No, I think it's really well said.
It's a really good summary of what this looks like and feels like. So when you get to the point where it's like, okay, I have gotten the message, You don't want to talk, I'm going to just go silent for a year.
Do you send somebody flowers on their birthday? How do you engage with somebody who doesn't want to engage with you? Yeah, well, the difference between, you know, a kid who's a minor, which I would say that parents shouldn't give up, versus a kid who's, you know, a more full-fledged adult.

If somebody's going to let the line go cold, per my recommendations, I recommend they don't do anything. Because I think that for some adult children, they really need to feel that parent's absence.
For some estrangements, they're really trying to get in touch with a certain part of themselves that they don't feel like they can access with the parent involved in their life. The parent in some ways is too important in their mind.
The parent feels really unimportant because the adult child is sort of closed off contact in every avenue of access. But the adult child is doing it because they feel like the parent's too important in their mind.
So if the parent can be no contact and allows the adult child to feel themselves in a different way in relationship to the parent. So it's what I call lose your parent, find yourself.
I want to make sure that we leave people feeling empowered. We are going to link to absolutely everything from your books to anything that you have about how you write an amends letter so that people have a template.
I would love to know if this is happening to you, what is the first couple steps that you want people to take immediately after listening to this? The most powerful thing is to write a really good amends letter. And those also aren't really easy to do.
They're counterintuitive. And getting to write them in a way that doesn't sound offensive or overly explanatory or et cetera, that's the single most important thing you can do.
Stop defending, stop explaining. Assume your child has very good reasons, even if you don't understand them, even if you feel like they're rewriting history, to really approach them with a perspective of love and learning and respect for their boundaries or that they get to set the terms of the relationship.
Those are really the most important principles. And I think if people catch these dynamics early enough on, they're in a much better position than if it's gone for a number of years.
If you are in a situation where you are sensing that the boyfriend or girlfriend or new husband or spouse is starting to pull your child away from you, what should you do now to stop that sort of distancing that can happen? Well, you have to see that that person is the gatekeeper to your child and to your potential or current grandchildren. So you can't say anything that's going to threaten them.
And some people are married to really troubled people. So the more troubled your son or daughter-in-law is, the more you have to kind of walk on eggshells.
You can't demand anything from them. You don't want to say anything critical about them to your child because in all likelihood it'll be passed on to that son-in-law or daughter-in-law.
And once that happens, you're kind of screwed. If you have done that, as many people have, and you want to work your tail off to repair that and make amends to that son-in-law or daughter-in-law, but they're the gatekeeper.
They're the new alpha. You know, once your kid marries, you are in some ways being replaced, but it's developmentally appropriate.
But the more parents complain about it and don't accept that transition, the worse it is. In all the years that you've been counseling people, what is the hopeful message here? I mean, the hopeful message is that statistically, most people do have a reconciliation.
It may not happen right away, but the majority of estrangements do eventually reconcile. Why do you think that is? I mean, I think as people mature and grow, they're probably able to see their parents with more clarity.
They may become parents themselves and either be able to face what that would be like, or they want their children to have, you know, a relationship with their grandparents. Even though the notion of family being forever is a much more diluted concept than it once was, I think it's still part of our culture.
So I think people do feel some kind of a tendency in that direction, which may motivate them more towards pursuing that.

We started this by talking about this really interesting shift in culture that has led to this silent epidemic of estrangement. There is less emphasis on family and more on kind of your chosen family and, you know, your friends being the family that you choose.
What do you wish you would see in our culture on how people are thinking about this? Yeah, I think that we're sorely lacking in empathy and compassion in this culture, and it's ruining us as a society. Having compassion and forgiveness, it doesn't mean you're giving somebody a pass who's been hurtful to you.
It in some ways can feel more grounding. People who are estranging have kind of a more victimized identity.
Well, you hurt me, so I don't owe you anything. And I've been victimized by you, so I'm cutting you off.
And that makes me a stronger person. Well, I don't really know that it does.
I think parents have to do a better job in taking responsibility and showing compassion and empathy. And I think adult children have to do a better job in showing compassion and empathy for their parents.
Dr. Coleman, thank you so much for your work.
It's been a real honor spending time and learning from you. Likewise.
It's good to talk to you. Thank you.
And I want to make sure that you hear me tell you that I love you.

I believe in you.

And I'm not going anywhere.

I'm here Mondays and Thursdays.

There is no estrangement between you and me.

I'm going to hold your hand.

I am going to put my arm around you.

I'm going to do whatever I can to understand and to support you.

Because that's what I want to do.

Alrighty. I'll talk to you in a few days.
Okay. So let me think about this.
Um, hold on a second. I don't think I want to start there.
Let's see. Let me think.
Why don't I just close this down and just kind of talk to the talk to my start over?

Oh, God.

Sorry.

OK, here we go.

These kids are yelling out there.

Can't you see that our recording light is on?

I'm going to estrange these friends of my sons from myself. That's not a thing that could happen.
Okay. Here we go.
Okay. Is that the cat or my? Okay.
He does not want to listen to the topic of estrangement, but you do. Okay.
Excellent. Oh, and one more thing.
And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language.
You know, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes.
I'm just your friend.

I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good.
I'll see you in the next episode. Stitcher.
What's up, podcast listeners? It's Tanks, host of the It's Me Tanks podcast. Join me weekly on It's Me Tanks as I dive into topics like relationships, why it's okay to feel lonely, fighting summer comparison, and pop culture's hottest takes.
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