Oprah Explores the Rising Trend of Going No Contact with Your Family

Speaker 2 Today officially marks one year no contact with my parents.

Speaker 4 I've been basically fully no contact with my parents for the last three plus years.

Speaker 6 We're talking about the rapidly growing epidemic of estranged children who walk away from their parents. What are they protecting themselves from?

Speaker 4 You know what?

Speaker 7 I'm over it.

Speaker 4 I'm over the idea that parents are supposed to sit around in emotional timeout until our kids decide we're worthy again.

Speaker 4 And when somebody new in my life finds out that I've been no contact with them, without failure, the number one thing that they tell me is, but they're still your mom.

Speaker 1 Hi, everybody. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Oprah podcast.
We are here in New York City with a live audience of our listeners. Hello, New York.
Hello, New York. Hello, New York.

Speaker 1 So maybe you all can relate in some way to this growing phenomenon known as going no contact. That's when a person cuts off ties to someone in their family.

Speaker 1 A Cornell University study now shows that almost one-third of Americans are, one-third, are actively estranged from a family member. That is incredible to me.

Speaker 1 I want to ask a few people in our audience to help us understand what that means. So Bristol, go ahead.

Speaker 8 I have been no contact with my entire family for a a year and a half now.

Speaker 1 No contact.

Speaker 8 No contact.

Speaker 1 Not a phone call, not a text, not a nothing. Nothing.
For a year and a half now. Okay.

Speaker 2 Chris, how about you?

Speaker 10 It's been four years since I've had contact with my parents and my siblings.

Speaker 2 Four years.

Speaker 10 Not a word. Not a word.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 And Kendall.

Speaker 11 I've been no contact with my 30-year-old son for two years. By your choice.
By choice.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 So some experts believe that there's been a shift in how younger generations protect their mental health and their boundaries or have an expanded view of what is considered abuse.

Speaker 1 And that has led to a silent epidemic. So social media has millions of videos with the hashtag no contact from adult children who say that their parent or their sibling is toxic.

Speaker 1 and they've had enough. So what is going on?

Speaker 1 So we gathered leading experts, leading experts, and people with different experiences and points of view on this issue, including parents whose adult children have cut them off.

Speaker 1 And we'll hear from other adult children who chose to go, no contact with their parents. I know this is a tender hot button topic.
My hope is that we can open up the heart space and really listen.

Speaker 1 I'm not on anybody's side. I just want to hear what everyone has to say.
So let's start by introducing Dr.

Speaker 1 Joshua Coleman, who's a psychologist and best-selling author of Rules of Estrangement, Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict.

Speaker 1 Now, he's a frequent contributor to the Washington Post column, Ask a Therapist. Welcome, Dr.
Coleman. Thank you for having me.
So is this a new thing?

Speaker 1 Because, I mean, for many, many, many years of doing shows and talking to families from all over the country.

Speaker 1 and the world, when there's a crisis, people just sort of figured it out or came together at Thanksgiving and had a big fight. But is this new?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, there's always been estrangements, right? For forever, there's been estrangements. But it's new the way we think about family.

Speaker 2 There's been a radical change in the way that we think about family.

Speaker 2 The old days of honor thy mother and thy father, respect thy elders, families forever, has given way to this much more of an emphasis on personal happiness.

Speaker 2 personal growth, my identity, my political beliefs, my mental health.

Speaker 2 So much so that today protecting my mental health is the single most common thing that I see in every single letter from every estranged adult child.

Speaker 1 Has this been exacerbated or has this increased because of social media?

Speaker 2 Oh, there's no question. Absolutely.
Yeah. Because you've got 2 billion hashtags toxic family.

Speaker 2 And everybody's got a, you know, if you line up and you're an estranged parent, you're going to get onto a Facebook site.

Speaker 2 If you're an estranged adult child, you're going to probably get onto Reddit or something like that. And you're going to get support for your perspective.

Speaker 2 But these aren't people who actually know your parents or know your adult child. They're going to kind of tell you what you want to hear.

Speaker 2 So there's this very inflammatory reaction that people have as a result of it. And partly that happens because we've become so divided as a society.

Speaker 2 People are kind of looking for their tribes because their tribes are, you know, they don't have them anymore. We're lonely.
We have rising rates of...

Speaker 1 Your tribe used to be your family.

Speaker 2 Your tribe used to be your family, exactly. And it still could, if we figure out how to talk to each other.

Speaker 1 Well, it's so interesting because, you know, I've been talking to people for a number of years and I remember back in the day, meaning 80s, 90s, the aughts,

Speaker 1 the very idea of having a disagreement with your family and the very idea of divorcing your parent or removing yourself from a toxic situation was a foreign concept to people.

Speaker 1 But now it's like common understanding.

Speaker 2 It's common understanding that's also positioned as a sort of virtuous act of protecting our mental health. And you know what? Sometimes it is.

Speaker 2 There are truly abusive, difficult parents and family members.

Speaker 2 But there's a lot of people getting estranged today who aren't abusive, who are loving, decent, hardworking, loving, caring parents, and they're being cut off.

Speaker 2 And part of the problem is us as therapists, as I hope we'll talk about, because as therapists, we become what the sociologist Allison Pugh calls detachment brokers, where we help people not feel guilty about feeling responsible for our parents.

Speaker 2 That gets sort of pathologized as being codependent or parentified or that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 And therapists are sort of greenlighting a lot of estrangements, particularly when we use language like, oh, your mom's a narcissist or your dad's a borderline or they're a sociopath, they're gaslighting you, or they're a boundary crosser.

Speaker 2 And once you say that to somebody, once you tell somebody that their parent or their family member or their child is that way, you just green lit them cutting them off.

Speaker 2 Because now it's a virtuous act of protecting your mental health. I think that's a problem.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 Dr. Lindsay Gibson is here, and she's a clinical psychologist and New York Times best-selling author of Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents.
And I hear it is sold now over 2 million copies.

Speaker 1 And many people credit your book as the catalyst, actually, for this surge in adult children going no contact. Now, her upcoming book is How to Raise an Emotionally Mature Child.
So Dr.

Speaker 1 Gibson, what is it that you were seeing in your own practice?

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 3 as a psychotherapist, what I was seeing was people coming in not identifying the problem as being with their parents or their family members. Usually it was some other kind of stress.

Speaker 3 Could be work stress or friend stress, that kind of thing. And then about three or four sessions in, they would start talking about what was going on with the family,

Speaker 3 sort of like their daily life stress.

Speaker 3 And from there, we would begin to get a picture of this old underlying tension that had been going on for a long time with the family.

Speaker 3 But very few people early in the day would come in and say, I have a problem with my mother, or I have a problem with my son.

Speaker 3 They would come in with some other life stress, and then we would get to the family issue.

Speaker 1 Is the family issue at the root of most things?

Speaker 3 Well, I don't know if it's at the root or whether it just resonates with what's going on now. It's very hard to tell.
But what I found was that

Speaker 3 the coping mechanisms that they had learned to use with their parents when their parents were either trying to control them or

Speaker 3 get them to do what they wanted were being transferred to their current relationships or their work relationships.

Speaker 1 Could you give us some

Speaker 1 factors that you believe make it necessary to protect somebody's emotional health by going no contact. I mean when you say to someone or do you say to them perhaps you should go no contact.

Speaker 3 Yeah I don't say that.

Speaker 1 You don't say that. I don't say that.
You let them decide.

Speaker 3 Well my job as a therapist is to help people come to their own conclusions. Well not only come to their own conclusions but I want them to be able to turn within and test out their own inner guidance.

Speaker 3 In other words, get back in touch with their own feelings and how things affect them.

Speaker 3 And lots of times when you've had a dominant parent, that ability to know what you actually feel and think has been messed with, okay?

Speaker 3 Because it becomes an issue of you love your parent by agreeing with what they see.

Speaker 3 So actually,

Speaker 3 no, I'm all about helping people to understand the dynamics of the relationship, how it's affecting them. and then they make the decision about what they want to do.
Well, how do you

Speaker 1 talk to them about your emotionally immature parent and how do you determine whether a parent is emotionally immature?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I really stay away from those terms in psychotherapy because I'm not.

Speaker 2 You wrote a whole book about it.

Speaker 2 I did write the book. I did write the book.
When I'm coming in, I'm coming to the lady.

Speaker 2 I'm coming to the lady who wrote the book about emotionally immature parents, okay? Absolutely.

Speaker 1 Whether you mention it or not in our session.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Right.

Speaker 3 But when I'm talking with them in the session, I'm describing behavior.

Speaker 3 They're describing behavior, and we're talking about the effect of those behaviors on them. Down the road,

Speaker 3 once they've read the book, then we might use that shorthand about emotional immaturity. But at the time...

Speaker 3 We are just trying to understand their subjective experience of that parent.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 I want to bring in Nedra Glover to Wab. Nedra is a licensed therapist and a relationship expert known as the boundary queen on social media.

Speaker 1 And she's the author of the New York Times bestseller, Drama Free, A Guide to Managing Unhealthy Family Relationships.

Speaker 1 And her upcoming book is The Balancing Act, Creating Healthy Dependency and Connection Without Losing Yourself. Welcome.
I see you nodding here, and you're nodding for both of them.

Speaker 1 So what does that mean?

Speaker 7 Yeah, I mean, I think it's such a thin line between like what's appropriate and what's gone too far. Because as therapists, we do see our clients suffering.

Speaker 7 And as Lindsay mentioned, I don't say like you need to leave this relationship, but I might think like,

Speaker 7 I wonder how you will feel if you did.

Speaker 7 Because there's so much pain for so long.

Speaker 1 But you wrote that no contact is not the first option as much as a last resort.

Speaker 3 Yes. Yeah.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And when is it a last resort, do you think?

Speaker 7 I think when you've assessed whether the relationship is safe, if you can handle the consequences of actually leaving that relationship, it's our work to help our clients determine, is the relationship just toxic or is it annoying?

Speaker 7 Are these some behaviors we can live with with people? Is it possible for us to have less contact instead of no contact?

Speaker 7 Have we set expectations?

Speaker 2 Are they even clear about a problem?

Speaker 7 Because sometimes we haven't talked to people about the problems we're talking about in therapy or with our friends. And they need to know in order for us to have a better relationship with them.

Speaker 1 So I think what's so interesting, Dr. Coleman, you lived through this with your own daughter.

Speaker 2 I did, yeah.

Speaker 1 Who cut off contact with you. She cut off contact with you for several years.

Speaker 2 For several years.

Speaker 1 Okay. Tell us what this was like for you to go through this.

Speaker 2 Oh, it was hell. I was completely heartbroken.
I was married and divorced in my 20s, and my daughter's in her 40s now. We're blessedly very close and she has a child that I'm also very close to.

Speaker 2 But, you know, she's in her early 20s and she wanted to talk to me about what it was like growing up being in a blended family and how she felt after I became remarried and had kids from my second marriage, which is my

Speaker 2 current marriage. And how she felt in some ways neglected or like I didn't really have her back and in some ways unloved by me.
which is very, very painful to hear that your own child say that.

Speaker 2 And at the time, of course, I responded defensively, angrily, explained myself, blamed other people. Yeah, and for some weird reason, it didn't really bring her back to me.
I don't understand why.

Speaker 2 But so it really wasn't until I realized I just needed to

Speaker 2 empathize with her and take responsibility and find the kernel of truth, if not the bushel of truth, and what her complaints were, that things really began to shift.

Speaker 2 Because up to that point, I was making it about me. And it was really about her and her suffering.
But going through that was, it was, it was hell. I felt ashamed.
I felt embarrassed.

Speaker 1 Did that inform your ability to write rules of estrangement? Did it? Yeah. And was it harder for you? Because you're supposed to know.

Speaker 1 I mean, you're the person that's advising other families and other people about their lives. And in your own family, it happened to you.

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, I wrote my first book on the topic when parents hurt in 2007.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 once we'd reconciled, I wouldn't have written this book if he hadn't reconciled. But once we'd reconciled, I wrote it.

Speaker 2 And as a result, got a really wide following of other parents who were going through it. And they all said the same thing, which is, I thought I was the only one.

Speaker 2 As a result of that, I did a study of 1,600 estranged parents and published that in that book. So, yeah, it's just, it's been really my works for the past almost 20 years.

Speaker 14 Time for a quick break. Up next, adult children who have cut off contact with their parents and what led them to make this difficult decision.
Stay with us.

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Speaker 14 Welcome back. We're about to hear from adult children who don't speak with a family member.
It's now known as going no contact.

Speaker 14 If you think this is a conversation someone you love needs to hear, share the link to this episode with them. Let's get back to it.

Speaker 1 Well, we have a number of audience members who are going through this right now.

Speaker 1 So Chris and Brie, what's going on?

Speaker 10 Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up in a very performance-oriented household.
It was attend an Ivy League school.

Speaker 10 get the money, the power, the status, be someone that we can feel proud of. And Brie very much did not come from that background.

Speaker 1 Did you have other siblings in the household too?

Speaker 10 Yeah, I had two younger brothers.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 10 So I was the oldest, who was trailblazing in that way.

Speaker 1 So tell us again, you've not had contacts with your parents now for four years. Four years, that's right.
You said parents and siblings?

Speaker 2 That's right. Okay.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Nobody in the family.

Speaker 10 There's some extended family, but not in the core family. Okay.

Speaker 2 That's right. All right.

Speaker 10 And so when Brie and I first got together, we very much felt like she was, remember my parents were apathetic towards her. They were not super interested in getting to know her.

Speaker 2 They didn't like her. Yeah.

Speaker 10 Yeah, that's the feeling that we got.

Speaker 2 That's the short answer.

Speaker 1 They didn't like her. They didn't like her.

Speaker 10 And the way that that really surfaced was

Speaker 10 what we perceived as a disinterest in getting to genuinely know her.

Speaker 10 And for what we started dating,

Speaker 10 so be it. But as it became clear that this was

Speaker 10 a real relationship, that this was an intense relationship that we were in love, and I said, this is the woman I'm going to marry.

Speaker 10 And as we moved into that more serious realm, it went from what we perceived as apathy to more of, we don't like this.

Speaker 10 And the way that that took form for us was my parents, we found through friends, were scheduling lunches to have conversation with my friends where the topic was, we're worried about Chris.

Speaker 10 That was the first thing. And then it became, can we delay this engagement or can we?

Speaker 1 Asking your friends.

Speaker 10 Yes, or can we take this marriage off the table?

Speaker 10 In spite of that, we really worked hard to figure out what is our new family going to look like going forward.

Speaker 2 Like, we're going to get married.

Speaker 1 So when you hear that they're conspiring with your friends, what did you do?

Speaker 2 You have a conversation about it?

Speaker 10 Yeah, we have a conversation about it.

Speaker 10 I very much grew up in a house where, again, because of that performative aspect, it was also a compliance aspect.

Speaker 10 And so frankly, something I've had to really work on and grow in is being comfortable. in that conflict.

Speaker 10 And at the time, I wasn't really, I could bring that up, I'm unhappy with this, but am I going to really pursue that? And the answer is no.

Speaker 10 And so

Speaker 10 we got married, they were invited to our wedding, they were part of that. And for a time, we were able to have this kind of tacit peace.

Speaker 1 Wasn't there something with the bridal shower? Or there's something that she tried to mess up the bridal shower.

Speaker 1 Your mother-in-law did, tried to mess up the bridal shower.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 10 we were trying to kind of construct it.

Speaker 1 Well, that's a sign.

Speaker 10 Yeah, that's a sign for sure.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 10 where the tables really turned was when we found out that Brie was pregnant with with our first daughter. And

Speaker 10 so we were nervous. We called up my parents.
We said, this is what's going on.

Speaker 10 And we were profoundly hurt by what we were met with, which was disappointment.

Speaker 1 They were disappointed that she was pregnant. That's right.
Okay.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 10 The way that we perceived it is that they were expressing that this wasn't the pace that they expected us to move at. And we had already gotten married before they had wanted.

Speaker 10 And now we were having children before, you know, was their timeline. Yeah.
And

Speaker 2 I left that call.

Speaker 10 I said, let's let's regroup. Let's have another conversation.

Speaker 10 And when we did have that conversation and I expressed how I had felt and how hurtful that was, rather than being met with the empathy and some repair that we would have really hoped for, I was met with what they described as they were embarrassed by us.

Speaker 10 And that was actually the last conversation. that I had with my parents before going to a contact four years ago.

Speaker 10 And I just remember walking out of that conversation thinking for the years that Brie and I have been together, I've had to watch her endure that treatment of not feeling accepted.

Speaker 10 And the last thing that I would want to do is bring a daughter into the world where she will walk into the world on day one and experience that treatment from her grandparents.

Speaker 1 Okay, and so you just decided no contact. So I'm curious, Chris.
So can I ask how old you are? I'm 30. Okay, you're 30.
So you...

Speaker 1 grew up in a world where you said there was compliance and there was the household was performative.

Speaker 1 So you didn't grow up in a world where you thought about you know removing yourself or distancing yourself from your parents.

Speaker 1 Where did the idea even come from that, all right, I'm not gonna I'm gonna cut you off and I'm not gonna talk to you anymore?

Speaker 10 Yeah, I don't think there was one moment. I think it was very incremental.
And I think that actually it all began when we first got together.

Speaker 10 It really highlighted the emotional distance between myself and my parents.

Speaker 10 And I think with each step over years and years where I saw my parents being less and less a part of my life, the idea that they could not be a part of my life at all became something that seemed possible.

Speaker 1 So did you reach a point where you felt if I don't comply, then they don't love me unless I'm complying.

Speaker 10 That's right. Yeah, I would say I'm not accepted unless I'm complying.

Speaker 1 Not not accepted. Okay, do you have a question for one of our experts here?

Speaker 10 Yeah, as you think about parents raising children,

Speaker 10 and as us as parents, we're not connected with our families. What would be your advice for talking about that with our children, right? How as parents can we best support our children as they grow up?

Speaker 2 You know, you mean with their grandparents, without grandparents.

Speaker 1 Without grandparents, yeah. Because are you speaking to your parents? You're not speaking to your parents either?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 1 Why aren't you speaking to your parents?

Speaker 13 I grew up in a very religious household.

Speaker 9 And when I became an adult and was not necessarily having some of the same morals and values and political beliefs and religion,

Speaker 13 they basically disowned me.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 They disowned you. Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 1 All right. So your children are grandparentless right now.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 And so you're asking the question of how do you manage the grandparentlessness, right?

Speaker 1 Nedra, is it a tragedy if as a grandchild, their children are two and four, you never even knew your grandparents?

Speaker 7 Yes, but they will still have some idea of what a grandparent is. And I think for you two, it'll be very important in an age-appropriate way to explain the situation.

Speaker 7 We have chosen to not have this contact as a protection for our family, right? And as they get older, you express that more. I don't think they need to know like all of the painful stories.

Speaker 7 That's not appropriate.

Speaker 7 But being clear that this is a choice that you made and trying to find other people in the world who can be grandparent-like, right? So that could be a neighbor.

Speaker 7 If you're a part of a social community, that could be someone in that social community. But being open and honest is really important.
Not trying to erase your childhood.

Speaker 7 So, you know, not doing the thing of never talking about your childhood, never talking about your parent. Share some of those good memories with them as well.

Speaker 7 So, you know, don't make it seem like these are people we don't talk about because they will have some curiosity.

Speaker 7 And if you want to have that emotionally connected relationship with them, the one that you didn't have, you'll have to be vulnerable and honest with them.

Speaker 1 So you shouldn't act like these are people we don't talk about even though you're not talking about them?

Speaker 7 Well, they should be clear that these are people that you have chosen to not have a relationship with.

Speaker 7 We don't want to make it seem like they just disappeared, no one ever existed because you were raised by someone.

Speaker 2 Okay. What do you say, Dr.

Speaker 1 Gibson?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I was just thinking about

Speaker 3 when your children begin to be curious about it or when they bring it up, I think that's when you're in that position of what do we say now? What do we do now?

Speaker 3 But I don't think that, you you know, for little children, two and four,

Speaker 3 I mean, they're not in the position yet where,

Speaker 3 you know, Johnny's grandparents had him over for supper.

Speaker 2 Where are our grandparents?

Speaker 3 I mean, that day may come. And when it does, I think you can let them know that we're just not that close to them.
We don't have contact with them.

Speaker 3 It's sort of like when children ask, you know, the facts of life. It's like, be careful about how much you lay out for them at once because they can only digest it.
And Age appropriate.

Speaker 3 Age appropriate, right? But I think it's very important to wonder and ask the child, honey, why are you asking that right now?

Speaker 3 What brought up the thought about grandparents?

Speaker 1 I'm just curious, it's been four years. You think it's going to go on forever? Do you see it going on forever? You see never, ever, ever communicating with them again?

Speaker 2 Right now, yeah? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Both two.

Speaker 2 On a cautionary note, you are presenting your children with a role model of how to handle conflict. And that's a concern.
You are showing them that people can be cut out of your life.

Speaker 2 And so that is a role model. Because I'll sometimes work with a parent who will say, well, you did it, Mom.

Speaker 2 You cut out your grandma, so why can't I cut out you? So it's an adult child. So we just have to be very mindful of every layer of this.

Speaker 3 Yes. I thought about that.

Speaker 3 I think

Speaker 3 you will try, knowing what you all do about the importance of your inner subjective experience as being an individual, you're going to pass that on to your child.

Speaker 3 That what people make you feel inside matters, okay?

Speaker 3 And that has to be taken into account. It's not a solution just to cut somebody out for no reason, of course.

Speaker 3 But if there are reasons, there are people that we, the role model that you're becoming is If there are people that are harmful to you emotionally, you do have the right to keep as much distance, maybe not total cutoff or whatever.

Speaker 3 You have the right to decide the optimal distance that you're going to have in your relationship with them. That is preparing them for adult life.

Speaker 3 So I don't see it as you giving them carte blanche about cut anybody out that you don't like. You're saying, you know, you have to come to that decision about what's best for you.

Speaker 3 And we would be here to talk with you about that if you ever needed that.

Speaker 1 Thanks, Chris and Gree. Thank you.
Thank you. Bristol?

Speaker 2 Hi.

Speaker 8 I first want to start off by saying thank you for creating space to have this conversation. When I first made the decision to go no contact, I felt so alone.

Speaker 8 So this conversation means the world to me.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 1 when did you first make the decision to go no contact?

Speaker 8 As sad as it is to say, ever since I was young, I knew I would be no contact. I knew I didn't want my family to be aware of.
You're still young, Bristol.

Speaker 1 Let me tell you that. Yeah, no, but

Speaker 2 what do you mean?

Speaker 1 What do you mean by young? Okay. No, like just being

Speaker 2 years old.

Speaker 8 Yeah. And I had family that saw how I was treated as well and tried to step in.
So

Speaker 8 it's something I sadly always knew.

Speaker 1 Is it like what Chris said? There isn't one thing, but there was a series of things.

Speaker 8 Yeah, it is multiple events. So it's not just one traumatic event.

Speaker 1 What was the final straw for you that you said, that's it, no more. I've had enough.

Speaker 8 It was a phone call actually where I, you know, I spent my whole life trying to change every aspect of myself to be the perfect daughter and to make the relationship work.

Speaker 8 And it was a phone call where I tried to set a boundary of just don't talk so rudely about your children. Like we were not punching bags.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 my mom is actually the one that blocked me initially. So she's the one that laid down that foundation.
and I followed suit and just cut off contact everywhere else.

Speaker 1 I hear you have a question for Dr. Gibson.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I do.

Speaker 8 So I have no regrets about my decision to go no contact, but every time I see a girl with her mom or dad, it physically aches in my heart.

Speaker 8 And so does the longing for that connection, despite never experiencing it myself, ever go away? Or do you just learn to live with it?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, it's like any terrible loss.

Speaker 3 Do any of our terrible losses ever go away? We all know that it never goes away, okay?

Speaker 3 But I think our job in this kind of situation is to enlarge ourselves

Speaker 3 so that we know ourselves better, so that we are expanding our own life, so that this terribly hurtful loss becomes a part, an integrated part of the tapestry of your your life, of your overall life.

Speaker 3 It'll never go away, but it's not all there is to you.

Speaker 3 And so you carry this, I see it,

Speaker 3 as part of your increased complexity as a human being,

Speaker 3 your increased depth, and your ability to know what it is that's good for you and not good for you.

Speaker 3 And when you bring all that together, yes, that feeling is still there, but the context is now so much bigger because you're a much more complex person.

Speaker 1 Nedra, you wanted to say what about this?

Speaker 7 Yeah, I think that void gets smaller as time passes, but there will always be something there because you do have a mother, you do have that part of your family, and both things can exist.

Speaker 7 You can miss people and decide to not have that relationship, and you don't get to erase the feelings in either direction. So it's something that you'll come to live with.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 1 But how's your life otherwise? Do you miss, miss, miss, miss the contact with them or have you been able to create a life that's full and vibrant without them?

Speaker 2 I love my life.

Speaker 8 I have five animals.

Speaker 8 So I've created my own family.

Speaker 8 When I went off to college, I am used to spending holidays alone. So it's not like much has changed.
I'm just not being walked all over actually. So I know peace for the first time.
It's amazing.

Speaker 8 I felt my nervous system leave fight or flight.

Speaker 17 And I

Speaker 1 think this is so fascinating to me because I've been doing this so long.

Speaker 1 And I remember in the early days doing this, people just suffered. They just went through hell with their parents.
And we were always talking about relationships with your parents.

Speaker 1 Have you, as therapists, seen it evolve over the years also?

Speaker 2 Oh, absolutely. You know, and I think one of the things,

Speaker 2 Oprah, is that there was a study done in 2016, which showed that

Speaker 2 our ideas about what constitutes harm, abuse, trauma, and neglect have radically expanded the past three decades, radically expanded.

Speaker 2 So what often happens is an adult child, like any of you may come up to your parent and go, you emotionally abused me, you neglected me, you traumatized me.

Speaker 2 And your parents are going to be like, what the hell? I would have killed for a childhood like yours. So generations are talking past each other.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's kind of incumbent on us as parents to really learn how to speak the language of our adult children if we want to have a relationship with them.

Speaker 2 But that is one of the most significant changes is our expanded views of what constitutes abuse and harm.

Speaker 1 And that has changed. That is changing.
And it has evolved exponentially in the past several years. Exactly.

Speaker 2 Well, the past few decades, but social media is an enormous amplifier of that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Thank you, Bristol. Thank you so much.

Speaker 14 We need to take a break. Next, we're going to hear the parent side of going no contact mothers and fathers speak out.
Thank you.

Speaker 15 You're fine, Vecna.

Speaker 14 We end this once and for all together.

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Speaker 18 Stranger Things, Season 5, Volume 2, begins December 25th, only on Netflix.

Speaker 14 Thanks for joining me on the the Oprah podcast. We're talking about the dramatic rise in estranged families, people who've chosen to have no contact.

Speaker 14 My hope is that this conversation can help you or someone you know who might be going through the same thing.

Speaker 1 We have another Bri in our audience. This Bri is with two Yeez, in case you're going to get them confused.
Okay, so you've decided no contact with your mom. What happened?

Speaker 17 Yeah, so my mom abruptly stepped away from our family when I was six years old to be with someone else.

Speaker 17 And not only did she leave my dad, she didn't want to be be a mother to me at that point either and so throughout so your mom basically abandoned you yes when you were six yep she didn't she was just like she left to go with an old boyfriend yep she decided to go be with her college boyfriend and she wanted to kind of just live this new child-free life

Speaker 17 and um it was very jarring and traumatic for me because i was used to having a two-parent household and doing things with them and just it was just a night and day and At that point, she just kind of stepped away, didn't really have as much contact, would see her sometimes.

Speaker 17 It was very off and on. And I would try.
And whenever I would try, I felt like I would be let down. I had a wonderful dad who like filled the gap, but it's just like, just no mom.

Speaker 17 And I would see all these girls being raised with their moms and I wanted that. And so when I was in college, I extended it out of the branch and I invited her to my college graduation.

Speaker 17 And she ended up humiliating me. I was on the floor with the graduates and I saw this.
crowd of people walking towards me, security,

Speaker 17 the counselors, and looked in the the middle. It's my mom.
They brought her towards me. They said, Brie, it's been an emergency.
So I'm like, you know, what's going on?

Speaker 17 And she's just like, I'm ready to leave. Like, we're about to go, her and her boyfriend.
And that was what the emergency was in front of all the graduates before I even walked. And so

Speaker 17 I was bawling, crying. The whole stadium's looking at me.
And from that point on, I was like, this is done. Like, she does not have a care for me.
And with me being a mom now.

Speaker 1 She couldn't leave quietly.

Speaker 17 And she couldn't just get up and go.

Speaker 1 I know. And so.

Speaker 17 she had to cause a scene yeah a whole scene and so like i'm a mom now and i'm a single mom and so there's points in motherhood where i'm like like i i get that it can be a lot like you know but i could never just walk away from my child like i just couldn't understand doing that and so i get a lot of judgment for it like when something happens and people are like you know your mom isn't feeling well or something like that like it's like you know i don't have that empathy because it's just like you know she didn't really have it for me and it's it's hard for me because it's like, you know, I understand, you know, like that she is my mother and this whole, you only have one mother thing.

Speaker 17 However, we did not have that relationship. And so what weighs on my heart and mind a lot is the forgiveness.
And sometimes I'm like, will I ever be able to just forgive her and let this go?

Speaker 17 Because it's like, you know, some people's mothers have passed away. My mother lived 20 minutes from me my whole life, you know, and just didn't want to see me.

Speaker 1 And didn't see you.

Speaker 17 Yeah, and just didn't want to see me by choice.

Speaker 1 Well, I think that's so interesting because people use that phrase, particularly in our culture. You only have one mother.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And they use that to guilt you, no matter what's been done to you, no matter what you've been through, you only have one mother.

Speaker 1 And it sounds like that you allow that sometimes to bother you, right?

Speaker 1 You feel embarrassed or the shame of that in some way.

Speaker 17 Absolutely. I'm very empathetic.
And it's the fact that it's like, I do understand she is my mother. However, it's like we just, we don't have that relationship, you know?

Speaker 17 And so it's just like, you know, she was never there for me. Like, you know, and whenever I would try, it would be, I would be met with hurt.

Speaker 17 And so it's like, you know, I want to be able to like forgive her for my own peace and mind, not to bridge the relationship, but just to like have some kind of a start to healing.

Speaker 1 So your question is.

Speaker 17 So my question for Nedra is,

Speaker 17 how do I carry the void of the disappointment and the hurt and the distance, but also like,

Speaker 17 is there a chance that I could truly forgive her and be able to kind of move on even though we obviously are both still, you know, here in the world?

Speaker 7 I think you have to accept that

Speaker 7 people can birth a child without parenting them.

Speaker 7 And what I'm hearing in your situation is

Speaker 7 you have a mother, but you don't have the nurturing of one.

Speaker 7 And it's very hard to reconcile that while you're mothering, right?

Speaker 7 And other people are being mothered and they're telling you about their mother and you should do this for your mother, but you don't have that

Speaker 7 role or that connection with your mother. And so it's very important for you to accept that you can give birth without parenting.

Speaker 7 I think you also need to allow yourself to be angry. Because sometimes we're not making room for that and we're just rushing toward forgiveness.
I have to hurry up and...

Speaker 1 Especially if you live in a culture that says, but it's your mother.

Speaker 2 It's the only mother you have.

Speaker 6 But you are her daughter. But you are her daughter.

Speaker 7 And so on both sides, if we're going to say, but this is your mother, this is your father, you are also a daughter. And you get to be upset about not being parented.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 7 After you work through that stuff, what does forgiveness mean for you? Because you can forgive and reconcile. You can forgive and continue to not have her be a part of your life.

Speaker 7 You can forgive and readjust what the relationship is. Maybe she's not a mother, but she's a great friend.

Speaker 6 So you get to decide what that forgiveness is.

Speaker 1 Can you see her just do this?

Speaker 2 Army is an associate.

Speaker 7 Maybe she's an associate.

Speaker 9 I'm not sure.

Speaker 7 But perhaps there is something there.

Speaker 7 If you can remove that expectation of parenting from her, because she hasn't done it and she's not doing it, maybe there's a little bit left there that you can have. I don't know what that is.

Speaker 7 And maybe it's nothing. But you decide what that forgiveness looks like.
And it sounds like you have learned how to be a nurturer, even though you didn't have it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And may I say this, that in all the years of all the shows and all the experts, my best example or best definition for me of forgiveness that has carried me through many a situation is that forgiveness is giving up the hope

Speaker 1 that the past could be any different.

Speaker 1 I don't even remember who said that so many years ago, but when they said it, the hairs on my arm raised because I was like, wow, it's not even about that other person.

Speaker 1 It's about you giving up the hope and you accepting finally that this, as Bristol has already done,

Speaker 1 that the relationship is what it is. And there's not going to be one thing you can change.
You cannot change yourself. You cannot change that situation.

Speaker 1 Give up the hope that it's going to to be anything other than what it is and accept the reality of it. That's what I hear Nedra saying.

Speaker 1 Once you accept the reality of it, you can meet her where she is or not meet her at all. Yeah, you understand what I mean?

Speaker 2 Yeah, the only thing I would add to that is we can't really forgive people who've hurt us unless we really believe we didn't deserve to have what happened when you were abandoned by your mother.

Speaker 2 She treated you really poorly. And you probably don't yet fully know that you really didn't deserve that.
You might consciously feel like you don't deserve that.

Speaker 2 But we can't really forgive somebody until we really, really know in our guts that we didn't deserve to be mistreated. So usually compassion can come follow from that.

Speaker 1 Well, we have some parents here who have a different perspective. First, watch this short clip of what a mother named Christy posted on her social.

Speaker 6 So I'm going to ruffle some feathers with this one, but I don't care. So I'm going to address a comment that repeatedly gets commented on my posts and other people talking about estrangement.

Speaker 6 And it's the comment that says, your children are not estranging from you to hurt you. They're doing it to protect themselves.

Speaker 2 I call BS.

Speaker 6 What are they protecting themselves from with us?

Speaker 6 Loving parents who've always supported them, loving parents who's always, you know, done everything in their power to be there for them, who financially has supported them, who has went out of their way.

Speaker 6 and put their life on the back burner for their kids. What are they protecting themselves from?

Speaker 1 Okay, Chrissy, so I you've had no contact with your daughter now for what three years?

Speaker 6 My daughter, yes. She's estranged from my side of the family three times in seven years.
The last estrangement came as a shock because we had reconnected for two and a half years. I let my guard down.

Speaker 6 We got matching family tattoos, beach vacations with me and her brothers. And so I thought, we made it.

Speaker 2 We're golden.

Speaker 6 I'm not going to lose her again. And bam, a little conflict happened and out the door.
And I tried to talk to her and I was like, we need to sit down. Can we just please sit down and talk?

Speaker 6 And like, why are you so upset? It was something so minor. And she refused to communicate with her brothers and I.

Speaker 6 She's cut my mother off, the only grandmother she's ever had who's completely heartbroken. Her brothers don't have a sister.
You know, they're...

Speaker 2 She cut out of contact with them.

Speaker 6 Yes. And in the beginning, the first estrangement, I will give, you know, it wasn't her fault.
She was 17, 18 years old.

Speaker 5 I went through a divorce.

Speaker 6 She felt she had to choose and she didn't choose me. We worked worked through that, you know, and she explained some things to me, and I understood it.

Speaker 6 But now she's 25, almost 26. She knows I'm a good person.
She even, you know, we made TikToks together.

Speaker 6 She made me beautiful TikTok that I have pinned on my profile, you know, and, you know, literally Mother's Day. And then two weeks later, there was a conflict.
So my daughter, she is smart.

Speaker 6 She's funny.

Speaker 6 She was a joy to raise. She's a college graduate, but I feel she lacks conflict resolution skills.
And I just feel like my question to the therapist is how

Speaker 6 do we move forward to help parents and children that weren't an abusive parents? Like a lot of us are really good parents.

Speaker 2 We aren't deserving of this.

Speaker 6 How do we teach parents and children that we can work through the messy hard stuff so that we can talk and not go no contact?

Speaker 6 Because I'm not going to lie, like it's been three and a half years, no word at all. And the glimmer of hope of us ever reconnecting is

Speaker 6 going away. You know, I talk about a platform and give parents a place to be seen and heard.
And, you know, when it first started happening to me, I was like, you. I was like, I thought I was alone.

Speaker 6 So now I have a platform where parents can be seen and heard because we are villainized. And that video was about how villainized we become on that app.

Speaker 1 What was the response to that video?

Speaker 6 Parents were thankful. And, you know, so many, I felt like I was alone.
And to be honest, so many of us parents, I'm not a therapist, but I've heard hundreds of stories.

Speaker 6 So many of us never even got the opportunity to sit down and talk to our children. Listen, I'm all about, we don't decide what hurt, we don't get to decide what hurt someone.

Speaker 6 They don't get to decide what hurt us. So if my daughter came to me and said, mom, can we talk? Heck, yes, absolutely.

Speaker 6 I would take ownership of anything she said I did to hurt her because I don't get to decide what hurt her.

Speaker 1 Okay. Because she refuses to.
Well, you know, that brings me to the point. When you said the thing, the reason we are not talking now was such a little thing.

Speaker 1 We all are wondering what little thing was that. What was that? And you know what? I was going to say, but I didn't want to interrupt you.

Speaker 1 Maybe it was a little, obviously it was a little thing to you, but it wasn't a little thing to her.

Speaker 6 It was something she didn't get her way. Okay.
She didn't get her way. And, you know, my boys are in my life.
I'm a mom of three.

Speaker 6 They reassure me all the time, mom you're not a bad mom do you have a specific question for for my question is how do we how do we work on teaching conflict resolution skills so that the no contact doesn't start because we all know once it starts it's a hard thing to go back from yeah

Speaker 2 so i mean what i always tell parents is you have to start with telling your adult child that i know you wouldn't do this unless you felt like it was the healthiest thing for you to do.

Speaker 2 Now, it may not feel that way to you.

Speaker 1 Is that the first rule of estrangement?

Speaker 2 That's the first rule of reconciliation. Okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 The first thing is you have to reach out to your adult child and say, you wouldn't do this unless you felt like it was the healthiest thing for you to do. Now, you may not feel like it.

Speaker 2 You probably don't feel like it's the healthiest thing to do. I, as a therapist, may not feel like it's the healthiest thing to do, but it doesn't matter.
Your kid does.

Speaker 2 And there's no way they're going to come to the table unless you do. Second of all, you have to find the kernel, if not the bushel of truth in the complaints.
And maybe you did all that.

Speaker 2 I mean, I get it. You're right.
Some of these adult children who cut off contact, they're conflict avoidant. They don't know how to have a conversation.

Speaker 2 And they tell their parents that they're gaslighting them or they're, you know, emotionally mature, sorry, or they're, you know, narcissists or whatever.

Speaker 2 And it's actually that they have mental health issues. Yes.
You know, or they're being negatively influenced after a divorce.

Speaker 2 Or they're married to somebody who says, choose them or me, you can't have both. Or they're involved with a therapist who assumes everything's a result of parental trauma.

Speaker 2 Or they don't know any other way to feel separate from the parent other than to cut them off. But this idea that it's only bad parents who are getting cut off.
I'm sorry. I call Bo on that.
Thank you.

Speaker 6 Thank you. You You agree with my TikTok.

Speaker 1 So we have another motherhood, Kendall.

Speaker 2 Kendall?

Speaker 2 Hi.

Speaker 11 Yes, I am estranged from my 30-year-old son by choice. And what I do notice, even in the room when the children were speaking, people were kind of nodding and agreeing with them.

Speaker 11 But the moment Christy started telling her side of the story, people were kind of like, hmm, you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 11 My platform speaks similar to hers on behalf of the parent because parents are suffering in silence.

Speaker 11 And when children become estranged, they are celebrated, they're supported, people rally behind them. But when the mother decides to go no contact with her child, she's demonized.

Speaker 11 And that's been my experience.

Speaker 1 You made the decision to go no contact why with your son?

Speaker 11 My son has been, he's caused me verbal, emotional.

Speaker 11 physical trauma and financial trauma for over 15 years now.

Speaker 1 And you just decided enough.

Speaker 11 Two years ago, he threatened my husband and myself and I made a conscious decision that that was the last straw.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Because he didn't get his way.

Speaker 1 He didn't get his way. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And has he respected the no contact? No. He has not.
No, he has not.

Speaker 11 He sends threats that if we don't unblock him, he just threatened my husband yesterday as I got off a flight. Yeah.

Speaker 11 Saying if we don't unblock him, if we don't, you know, if I don't speak to him, he's going to do some harm to us. Wow.
So that's been my experience.

Speaker 11 And parents don't go no contact for very small reasons. It takes a lot for a mother to make that conscious choice.

Speaker 11 And I've been experiencing this for over 15 years since his dad and I got a divorce and I got remarried 18 years ago.

Speaker 1 And you have a question?

Speaker 11 My question is, why are parents always demonized when they speak their truths or when they make a conscious decision to go no contact? But Australian children are celebrated and rallied behind.

Speaker 1 Good question.

Speaker 1 Who wants to answer that?

Speaker 3 If someone was coming in to see me as their therapist, I'm listening for what that person's experience is.

Speaker 3 And I have had parents come in whose children are asking for money or they're making the parent feel morally obligated to give them exactly what they want.

Speaker 3 It's the emotional immaturity switched, okay? I mean, you don't have to be the parent or the adult child to be emotionally immature.

Speaker 3 And so whatever it is that is crossing the boundary of the relationship or the other person's right to their own life or to their right to say no, I mean, that has to be dealt with every time in order to keep your own stability and mental health.

Speaker 3 So I see it very much as going both ways.

Speaker 3 Whoever it is that's going across the boundary and saying, you have to give me what I need because I'm the most important person in the relationship here, in effect,

Speaker 3 whether that's parent or child, that has to be addressed and it's for your own mental health.

Speaker 2 I would add to that that

Speaker 2 for a parent when they're estranged, there's no upside to being an estranged parent. It's all downside.
It's all heartbreak. It's all shame.
It's all getting cut off from your grandchildren.

Speaker 2 It's all guilt. It's all sorrow.
It's regret. Whereas when you're an adult child, it's, I mean, you're not doing it unless you were in pain in the first place.
I get that.

Speaker 2 But, but it's also weighted to our very powerful themes of identity and personal growth and personal happiness and protecting my mental health. And those are much more resonant themes in our culture.

Speaker 2 So they're much more likely to catch fire than, you know, some parent is getting cut off.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much.

Speaker 14 After the break, can you rewrite family patterns without cutting off contact with your loved ones? That is next.

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Speaker 14 Hey there, welcome back. If you or someone you know is going through a strained relationship with a relative, our experts have advice and guidance on navigating family estrangement.

Speaker 14 I encourage you to send a link to this episode to someone, anyone who may need to hear this conversation. Let's jump back into it.

Speaker 1 I wanted to now bring in Aaron. Aaron is a husband and father of four whose oldest daughter chose to go no contacts

Speaker 1 for three years

Speaker 1 before reconciling. Correct.
Take a look at what he shared with other parents about that experience.

Speaker 2 Parents,

Speaker 2 no one prepares you for the silence after no contact with your adult children.

Speaker 2 One day you're texting, I love you.

Speaker 2 The next you're staring at a phone that doesn't ring.

Speaker 2 That silence

Speaker 2 It doesn't just hurt

Speaker 2 it haunts you

Speaker 2 well

Speaker 2 Painful. Painful.
It's painful. It's very, very painful.

Speaker 1 So what's your story, Eric?

Speaker 2 So my story was my daughter,

Speaker 2 I think it was around 20, 21, she decided to go no contact. That turned into three years of no contact.
Three years. And I'm going to be honest with you guys.
I thought I was a great father.

Speaker 2 I really did. I thought I was a great father.
I did the best that I could,

Speaker 2 provided her with everything, took care of her, just did everything I thought that I was supposed to.

Speaker 2 But what she told me, and when we had the conversation, she said, dad, you're a helicopter parent. I said, a helicopter parent? I didn't even know what that was.
Again, I didn't know what that was.

Speaker 2 She told me I was a helicopter parent. And a parent, a helicopter parent is a parent that wants to fix everything.

Speaker 2 And then I started thinking about it. She was right.
I was a helicopter parent. I was trying to fix everything.
I was always doing too much. I was overstepping my boundaries.

Speaker 2 And I had to realize that and understand that.

Speaker 1 But weren't you doing that as a man providing for his family, trying to protect his family, wanting the best for your children? You were not doing that because you were trying to inhibit her.

Speaker 1 You were doing that because you wanted the best for your children. Correct.

Speaker 2 Yes. But then she also told me I didn't listen.
She wasn't wrong about that either. I don't listen.
Okay. I'm hard-headed.
You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, so she wasn't wrong about that.

Speaker 2 But she told me, she said, you're a helicopter person. So

Speaker 1 is she having this conversation after the three years? Correct. Okay.
After the three years. So for three years, she said nothing.
Nothing. You thought everything was great.

Speaker 2 I thought everything was great. And then my wife reached out to her and she didn't respond to my wife.
And my wife kept trying to reach out to her.

Speaker 1 Is your wife her mother?

Speaker 2 Her mother, correct. Okay, okay.
Yeah, she kept trying to reach out to her. And then we went through a situation where we started talking to her roommate, just trying to figure out what's going on.

Speaker 2 No contact, no communication, no nothing. Yeah.
So then she needed some help, of course. So she calls me.
Dad, can you help me? I'm enrolling in college again. Okay, cool.

Speaker 2 I was just happy to hear her voice. Yeah.
So I haven't heard from her in so long. So she came over and we talked.
And she, that's when she told me. She said, Dad, you're a helicopter parent.

Speaker 2 And I'm looking.

Speaker 1 So you were willing to help her even though she hadn't spoken to you all these years. Oh, yeah, that's my baby.

Speaker 2 Yeah, okay. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 I got you. Okay.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 I'm going to help you as long as I'm living. So then after the conversation, she said, I said, well, how can we work on our relationship? What can we do? She said, I'll tell you what we can do.

Speaker 2 We can go to therapy. As a man, I did not want to go to therapy.
I'm going to be real with y'all today. I did not want to do, I didn't want to go and be vulnerable to somebody that I don't know.

Speaker 2 So I went to therapy because I wanted to get my baby back. So I went to therapy.

Speaker 2 And the therapist, the therapist told me, she said, listen, Aaron, what you got to do and you got to understand, you have to parent your children at different stages differently.

Speaker 2 You're still trying to control her like she's a teenager. You're still trying to do too much like she's she's a teenager.
She's a full-fledged adult.

Speaker 2 Understand that. You know what I mean? So that changed my whole outlook.

Speaker 2 And then the therapist also told her, she has to learn how to communicate and stop running. A lot of adult children run and hide when they don't get their way.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Or when their parents don't get their way.

Speaker 1 I think this is so interesting. I have a friend who just went through the, is going through this with her daughter, and she said, we had gone out for Thai food and bowling.

Speaker 10 Correct.

Speaker 1 I thought everything was fantastic. And then I get a letter.
A letter arrives in the mail telling me from this day forward, no contact. And she thought something had happened to her daughter.

Speaker 1 She thought like it was like that her daughter had been kidnapped or somebody had done some harm to her. She calls the police.
They go to the apartment. All of that.

Speaker 1 So I think it's harder when you don't even, you don't know where it's coming from. Correct.
Yeah. I think this situation where they tried to work it out, you tried to get them to accept

Speaker 1 your new wife, you tried to get them to accept that you're having a child. Very different than if you just suddenly disappear and nobody knows what it is.
Correct.

Speaker 2 Yes. No, I totally agree.
Yes. So the positive, our relationship now is phenomenal.
We worked it out. We learned how to communicate.
I backed up. Like I backed up.

Speaker 2 So what I started doing now, and I'm going to tell you parents out there, this is how you can help your situation. First thing first, stop.
overstepping boundaries. Stop overstepping boundaries.

Speaker 2 Just have a normal conversation with your adult child. You know, if they ask for any more information or if they need a question answer, answer that question.
But stop overstepping boundaries.

Speaker 2 That's what I did. That changed my relationship.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 We're so happy to hear that your story worked out, but I also can hear that every situation is different. Correct.
I mean, in Kendall's situation where there is verbal and physical abuse. Correct.

Speaker 2 Uh-uh. Exactly.

Speaker 1 Not tolerating that.

Speaker 2 And I agree with what you said earlier, too. In our generation, the way we grew up,

Speaker 2 you loved your parents no matter what. Yeah.
They're not doing that no more. They're not doing that anymore.
And now that you think about it, you know, I can see some of these situations I understand.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I know. I mean, listen, I've been doing it so long that people were like severely abused physically, emotionally, and still felt like they had to

Speaker 2 tolerate whatever from their parents.

Speaker 1 So I think some of it's good. Some of this being able to...

Speaker 1 I think reaching a state where you're able to honor and protect your own emotional and mental health, that's a good thing. That means we are evolving as human beings.
Have we gone too far?

Speaker 1 That's the question.

Speaker 7 Well, what I'm hearing a little bit of is if someone isn't coming to me with an issue,

Speaker 7 it's very important to ask ourselves why.

Speaker 7 Do they not feel safe with me? Is there something maybe I've done in the past that has prohibited them from wanting to clear the air, talk about an issue with me?

Speaker 7 Sometimes we don't recognize that with ourselves. We think, oh, I'm just being a dad.
I'm just being a mom.

Speaker 7 But what's actually happening is you're overstepping their adult boundaries.

Speaker 1 But isn't it also true, though, that, because Erin and I were talking about being raised in a different time, that A lot of the parents who are parenting kids, they're raising kids the way they were raised.

Speaker 1 And so you're raised not to come to your parents with your problems. You're raised not to have conflict with your parents.
You're raised not to disagree with your parents.

Speaker 1 So nobody knows how to even begin to have that conversation because your whole life you weren't allowed to disagree because you always had to be compliant.

Speaker 7 Correct.

Speaker 7 Yeah, but just as the kids have more information, and we know gaslighting, and we know nurses, we know all these terms, it's also available for parents to find and understand these things as well.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 You want to say that? Yes, Dr. Gibson.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 No, I was just going to say that

Speaker 3 you show the one thing that turns this thing around, and that's the willingness to self-reflect.

Speaker 3 You, I mean, that is the

Speaker 3 change agent. Because if you can't reflect on your own behavior and say, gee, I wonder if there was something I did that may have contributed to this.

Speaker 3 A lot of times when people are scared and they're in fear of loss, Their first reaction, of course, is to be defensive and to find all the reasons why they're not the bad guy because that feels horrible.

Speaker 1 Which is what Dr. Coleman did the first, when his daughter had the conversation.

Speaker 3 Anybody would do that.

Speaker 1 It's what we do. It's your natural reaction.

Speaker 3 It's like you've just been injured, okay? Your first reaction is going to be to clinch and to defend, okay?

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 nothing can change until you ask that question, which is, gee, I wonder if there was something that I did too.

Speaker 3 Once you do that, you begin to become more objective and you certainly become more receptive to your adult child. And that is the platform from which you can have a different relationship.

Speaker 3 So I just wanted to point that that is a hallmark of emotional maturity that you can self-reflect and understand that you are not. the most important person in the relationship.

Speaker 1 You are the hallmark of emotional maturity.

Speaker 1 Franchise.

Speaker 1 Thank you for saying that. Thank you, Erin.

Speaker 3 I think that absolutely you would want to hear what your daughter had to say, that you would want to work it out and do that conflict resolution. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 The problem is that some of us have such a strong personality and such a strong way of engaging other people that it becomes a little intimidating.

Speaker 3 And we don't know we're doing it because this is our energy.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 3 This is who we are.

Speaker 3 So one of the things we have to remember is that when you're trying to get someone to engage with you in conflict resolution, that you have to be aware that you may have more power than you actually think you do.

Speaker 3 And they may be backing up from that in a way that feels unnecessary to you, but to them, it may feel like, I can't stand my ground with this person.

Speaker 3 And if you feel like there's no hope of standing my ground, there's no hope of the conflict resolution. So I think we have to just be aware of how we come across with our energy.

Speaker 2 There's nothing wrong with it.

Speaker 3 There's nothing wrong with being a strong personality.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 5 My sons communicate well with me.

Speaker 6 The problem is, is it's not all on my daughter. I'm not saying that, but she has cut her father off.
She's cut other people off.

Speaker 6 When there's a conflict, I feel like she lacks those skills with anyone, not just me.

Speaker 3 Well, is it that she lacks the skills or that she lacks the feeling of personal power that

Speaker 2 she could stay in your life.

Speaker 1 You just said something, and this is definitely not a criticism, but I'm just going to say,

Speaker 1 because I said it's not a criticism, you're going to think it is a criticism.

Speaker 2 I'm used to it. I take it all the time on TikTok.

Speaker 1 This is what I noticed that you said. And I just wanted to bring up this point from Dr.
Colbland's book, that there are separate realities in every family.

Speaker 1 And for years I've had multiple discussions with lots of families. And lots of parents say what you just said, Chris.
They say, but my sons did this and my other child did this and my other son.

Speaker 1 Everybody in the family, in the same family, you're doing the same thing with all the kids. They're all having a different experience.
Correct?

Speaker 2 Yeah, not only is it correct, but, you know, our children also have, they kind of come into the world with a certain temperament.

Speaker 2 If you've got, you know, three kids, they might all have really different. temperaments.
Some might be really assertive. Others might be really resilient.

Speaker 2 Others might be really conflict avoidant, anxious, depressive. And

Speaker 2 how they see us as parents is going to be reflected through that filter.

Speaker 2 So if you have a kid who's sort of prone to depression or anxiety, they're going to see, they're going to be much more reactive to you. They're going to be much more sensitive.

Speaker 2 And they're going to later say, well, you were emotionally abusive. You're going to be like, the hell, I was, because you're not really reading the world from their perspective.

Speaker 2 And that's why I agree with what Lindsay's saying, that we need to sort of see it through their eyes, not through just our own eyes.

Speaker 1 All your kids see their experience in their life.

Speaker 6 And I understand that. And like I said, I've never had the opportunity to talk.
Like

Speaker 6 we didn't come from a family where we just fought and yelled. That wasn't our family.
You know, and in fact, you know, a lot of things were shoved under a rug.

Speaker 6 And I have thought to myself, did I teach her how to communicate? You know, because a lot of things in my marriage was shoved under a rug, not on my end, but it takes two people to talk.

Speaker 6 And if there's not communication, so I've thought, did we teach her that? Did we teach her to just

Speaker 6 talk about that?

Speaker 2 Where did she learn not to have conflict?

Speaker 6 But I can't make her talk to me. Like she has to be wanting to come to me and say, let's sit down, let's go to therapy, let's talk about this.

Speaker 6 Because I've said so many times on my platform, I will own it. Bring it to me.
I will own it. I've not had that chance.
And so many other estranged parents haven't had the chance either.

Speaker 1 Does she know you want that chance?

Speaker 6 Yes, I'm sure she's seen my TikToks.

Speaker 1 So we thought this was interesting. Thank you all so much.
We thought this was interesting. Hadley, stand up.

Speaker 1 So Hadley, y'all, is a hospice nurse and a New York Times best-selling author about her experience.

Speaker 1 And she says that sometimes her dying patients will ask her to call their estranged adult children who have gone no contact.

Speaker 1 And when my team saw one of her videos, we, you know, wanted her to join us in this conversation. Here's a quick look.

Speaker 12 If you're the type of person who continues to be no contact with your dying family member, even even after I, as a hospice nurse, call you and say that that is their final dying wish to talk to you, then I think that's totally fine.

Speaker 12 I don't judge you, and I don't think you owe people who abused you peace. I don't mind being the bad guy and telling them no.

Speaker 12 I'll even update you when they pass if you ask me to and be your shoulder to cry on. And if all you feel is relief, that's totally normal too, and you're not a bad person.

Speaker 1 I, you know, when I first heard your story and I hadn't seen you on TikTok, TikTok, I was like, wow, what an interesting thing. You're putting these strange children

Speaker 1 with their dying parents. But it's not that at all.

Speaker 1 In most cases, they don't, right?

Speaker 1 They say, no, I don't want to see them.

Speaker 12 They do in most cases, but it's difficult. I've had conversations before where they say, what should I do? And they asked me, and that's, that's very difficult.

Speaker 12 When I became a hospice nurse 10 years ago, I I was not estranged from my own biological father. And about seven years ago, I did become estranged from him.

Speaker 12 So I really began to understand more how those children are and what they're feeling whenever they're getting that phone call.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 what do you find when the people who are dying ask to see their children? Are they asking to see their children?

Speaker 1 They're estranged adult children because they want to apologize, because they have regrets, because they want to have final words.

Speaker 12 I don't believe personally that they usually want to apologize

Speaker 12 because

Speaker 12 they're telling me,

Speaker 12 did they know that I'm dying?

Speaker 12 It almost feels like a guilt trip to me. Like, please tell them that I'm dying and maybe they'll talk to me.

Speaker 1 Has anybody expressed, you know, regret or grief that they were estranged from their

Speaker 12 I did have one person in particular I i think of that really told me that they had a lot of regrets and they wanted to make amends and uh i did with our social worker make that phone call to the child and asked if they wanted to hear them out and give them that chance they ultimately decided not to they went really back and forth they ultimately decided not to so what myself and the social worker did is we offered for that patient to write a letter to the child and we said after you pass we'll make sure that they get it we can't promise that they'll read it um and the patient decided to not write that letter really

Speaker 1 you told my team that you think that this is oftentimes uh a form of control on the part of the parents

Speaker 1 i do yes yeah well first of all what it takes to be a hospice nurse can we just give that a round

Speaker 2 thank you

Speaker 1 that is

Speaker 1 That is the Lord's work you are doing for sure.

Speaker 1 And do you find that that when you're asked to reach out to these estranged children, adult children, that the adult children appreciate being reached out to or not?

Speaker 12 Not always. I think that sometimes they have no idea that anything about their parent at all.

Speaker 12 And I'm usually making these at like 11 a.m. on a Tuesday, and they're in the middle of a workday, and I think it's very jarring, understandably.

Speaker 2 Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 how long have people been estranged from their children?

Speaker 12 I think the most I've seen has been like 20, 30 years.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, I can understand it's been 20 years.

Speaker 12 Yeah. To get that phone call on a Tuesday while you're working.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Hard.

Speaker 1 And then you call them after the person has passed, if they want you to?

Speaker 12 I ask them, or a social worker will. I ask, and most times they do want to know, which I find interesting.

Speaker 12 They want to know that they've passed. And I understand that.
I mean, being estranged myself I think it would also be extremely daring to find that out from like Facebook.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So you said you now are estranged from your biological father. Yes.
Why? Can we ask?

Speaker 12 I say it's a million cuts that bled me dry and I could give you one reason but I think that it wouldn't reflect the entirety of the situation and I think that someone would judge that one situation and say that wasn't enough of a reason.

Speaker 12 And in reality, it wasn't just that.

Speaker 1 It was a million things before that that led up to that yeah it sounds like it's never one thing yeah nobody does it over one thing so I want thank you so much Hadley for sharing that with us I want to close with a word from our experts Nedra let's start with you

Speaker 7 well I think there is hope because we have more information on the topic and if we want to preserve relationships we have to be open to hard conversations and sometimes we have to be the person to start it whether that's the parent or the child.

Speaker 7 We have to get out of these patterns that we've been in with our parent. If they've been domineering, if they've done something to us, we have to learn to use our words and speak up.

Speaker 7 I think that the boundaries that we're starting to see with so many adults is not necessarily a new thing, but people are more vocal about wanting emotional connection with their parents or not wanting to be told who to marry or what they should feel in certain situations.

Speaker 7 And that's not necessarily a bad thing because we want to feel closer to our families, but we also have to learn to deal with the conflict within our families.

Speaker 7 And I don't think everybody is just like, I'm out of here. I've never had a conversation.
Sometimes people make it hard for us to talk. Some people are intimidating.
Some people become defensive.

Speaker 7 And so it's hard to tell a person who's doing that that they're actually doing that.

Speaker 7 But if you are disconnected in a relationship, you have to look inward and you have to own your part of it and not just assume that this other person is wrong. It's two people.

Speaker 7 Perhaps we both did something. So being open to that conflict is really important for repair.

Speaker 1 That's what you said, Dr. Gibson.
Self-reflection is the key.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, it's the key for any relationship to have things get better.

Speaker 3 But I just wanted to mention that, you know, societally and culturally, what we're all up against is that everybody has tremendous stress in dealing with a very complex world now.

Speaker 3 I mean this is not the world of 30 years ago even.

Speaker 3 The things that adult children are having to

Speaker 3 think about, weigh, succeed in are very different and it's very, very stressful.

Speaker 3 We don't have the energy to put into relationships where someone is going to be continually pushing back and making us feel that what is going on inside us is not valid or is not true in some way.

Speaker 3 This old way of the respect for the role itself,

Speaker 3 I think, for the role of the parent or the authority figure.

Speaker 1 Honor thy father and thy mother.

Speaker 3 Yes, exactly. Yes, it says honor them.
It doesn't say obey them, agree with them, do do whatever they say, make them the most important person in the relationship.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 those days of the role trumping everything else are gone. People do not have the energy now

Speaker 3 to sustain a relationship that is draining or difficult or constantly

Speaker 3 conflictual. They do not have the energy to keep on maintaining that and live this very complex life.

Speaker 1 I think it's a very interesting thing you just said,

Speaker 1 the days of the role

Speaker 1 being the almighty in the relationship, because it's not about the role. It really is about the relationship.

Speaker 3 And that's what's happening to these poor parents, because they're thinking that there is some security there for them in the role.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 3 But what has happened is that...

Speaker 1 And that's what people mean when they say, oh,

Speaker 3 she's your only mother, that's your only one they're talking about the role you actually haven't had a relationship with a mother who mothered you yeah it shifted from the role to relationship skills and to empathy and to understanding the other person's subjective experience there has been a ground shift in that.

Speaker 3 That's not going to go backwards. People are not going to become less aware and less conscious of their own inner experience.

Speaker 3 You know, the ship has sailed. And so we have to find ways of understanding that our kids are stressed.
They're exhausted in this very complex society.

Speaker 3 They don't have a lot of extra energy to work stuff out with you. And so you have to, if you want to get along or regain the relationship, you have to treat them like a treasured friend.

Speaker 3 Like, how would you keep a friend that you wanted to keep, a cherished person? That's how you have to treat them because they're exhausted.

Speaker 7 You'll have to improve the relationship skills. Yes.

Speaker 3 Thank you. That's what I'm trying to say.
If the relationship skills have to take the place.

Speaker 1 Well, you have to do that and not use the, I'm your mother, I'm your father, and so automatically you should give me whatever.

Speaker 2 Yes, exactly.

Speaker 3 But see, nobody comes along and tells the parent, you have to undergo this shift.

Speaker 3 And you have to understand now that it's going to be the quality of the relationship and the empathy that's going to count. Nobody told them that.
Everybody's being caught unaware by by that.

Speaker 2 Well, I agree with all that.

Speaker 2 But I know there's a bug coming.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But I would add that, you know, the Surgeon General recently came out and added parenting as one of the risks of adulthood currently.

Speaker 2 And parents are under enormous pressure, including parents of adult children, in part because the criteria of what constitutes good parenting has gone through the roof.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's what I call the soulmate parent.

Speaker 2 You're not only supposed to be, you know, get your kids out of the house and independent, you're also supposed to be sensitive and empathic and psychological and a coach and a learning disability specialist and a psychiatrist, you know, and a psychiatrist.

Speaker 2 And that's a lot of pressure on parents. And then later, your adult child might estrange you because you didn't do one of those things.

Speaker 2 I mean, I'll see letters from adult children saying, well, you didn't see that I was depressed when I was young and get me help. So I don't owe you a relationship.

Speaker 2 I'm like, well, your parent isn't a damn psychiatrist. You know, I mean, they didn't know that you were depressed.
And to cut off a parent for that reason, to me, that just seems wrong.

Speaker 2 Okay, now final comment? Two things.

Speaker 2 One is I have close family who are in recovery and I've learned a lot from the fourth step, which is that you make a fearless and searching moral inventory of yourself.

Speaker 2 This is similar to what Lindsay and Nedra are saying. You make a serious and searching moral inventory of your own character flaws because we all have them.
Y'all have them. We have them as parents.

Speaker 2 Everybody has character flaws. And what I often tell parents is, you know what, it's about humility.
It's not about humiliation.

Speaker 2 Because parents don't really necessarily want to write that estrange letter. It's probably hard for you to hear what your daughter had to say.

Speaker 2 It was hard for me to hear what my daughter had to say and to really open myself up and be vulnerable.

Speaker 2 But I think what we're all saying is nothing's going to happen unless that, unless we can do that, unless we can sort of see our own character flaws.

Speaker 2 But I think adult children also, you have to see the ways that you push your parent away, or you don't give them credit for the things that they did, or you don't recognize that they might have grown up in a culture that

Speaker 2 wasn't so psychological, wasn't so emotional and sensitive, and love them anyway, see that their efforts were still loving. And so those are my final words.
Okay.

Speaker 1 I thank you, all of you, for being a part of this conversation. And for all of you who were thinking, oh, you were alone, well, there's rules of estrangement.

Speaker 1 There's adult children of emotionally immature parents and drama-free. People are writing about it, and now we're all talking about it.

Speaker 1 And hopefully, this has been eye-opening for many of you, particularly those of you who are going through it. Thank you so much for joining us.
Go well, and we'll meet up again next week.

Speaker 1 You can subscribe to the Oprah podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week.
Thanks, everybody.