Healing Parent-Adult Child Estrangement: Strategies for Reconnection and Understanding - Ep. 54

Are you struggling with the pain and complexity of parent-adult-child estrangement? In this eye-opening conversation with psychotherapist, author, and ReConnection Club founder Tina Gilbertson, we uncover the root causes and contributing factors to this challenging family dynamic, and explore strategies for healing and reconnection.

Throughout our discussion, we examine how values, loyalties, financial problems, sibling issues, and infertility can contribute to estrangement. Tina enlightens us on the role our individualistic culture plays in this issue and shares her insights on reconnecting with adult children through personal healing, growth, and addressing any underlying issues before seeking family therapy.

We also dive into navigating communication with estranged children, and the heartache that comes with feeling disconnected. Learn how to avoid making a difficult situation worse and the importance of understanding and healing family estrangement. Don't miss this valuable opportunity to gain guidance and support from Tina's expertise and compassionate approach as you work towards resolution and reconnection.

Get Tina's book, Reconnecting with Your Adult Estranged Child  - click here!

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Obsessions
Tish:  Glass meal prep containers!  Meal prep is how Tish is teaching her youngest son Liam to cook!
Ellen: custom M&Ms.  She did these for the class of 2023 in school colors but you can do NBA, weddings, birthdays, Father's Day, and showers! 

What we talk about in this episode: estrangement, divorce, shame,  the ReConnection podcast, therapy, family therapy, personal work, growth, boundaries, healing, parental alienation, open heart,  emotional toolbox, and Tina's two books: Constructive Wallowing and Reconnecting With Your Adult Estranged Child.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:21

Today we are joined by special guest, tina Gilbertson, to talk about a very real and painful subject of parent-adult child alienation. Now, there are different kinds of parent-child alienation, but what we will be specifically covering today is the situation where the adult children have cut their parents out of their lives, and Tina is here to shed some light into this very painful family dynamic.

Speaker 2: 0:55

Tina is a psychotherapist, author and founder of the ReConnection Club. She also has her own podcast called the ReConnection Club podcast and is an author of two books that we'll talk about a little later in the episode. It's a supportive and informative podcast that Tina does that helps parents navigate how to handle when they experience this situation.

Speaker 1: 1:21

So you know, it's fate sometimes how certain topics for our podcast come to us. So a couple of weeks ago an old high school friend of mine had reached out and shared with me her personal struggle of being alienated from one of her children, and I could just hear the immense pain in her voice as she told me of her struggle And it just broke my heart. And she had talked about how she tried to keep her situation very private for so long because she felt so much shame and heartache over it. But one day she had summoned the courage to make herself vulnerable and shared her story with a close group of friends and, to her shock, she found out that she was not the only one in that group going through this same thing.

Speaker 2: 2:15

Wow, that's really incredible, Tish, and this is that power of vulnerability that we've talked about on our podcast so much, and when we've been vulnerable, how many openings have come to us. So we allow friends to really share with us and connect with us in a deeper way when we have that vulnerability.

Speaker 1: 2:39

And once she realized that she was not alone in this struggle, she found courage to share the story with me and suggested that we talk about this subject on the podcast. Well, her story moved me so much that I rushed to tell you, ellen, all about the idea And when we started researching parent-adult child alienation and realized what a huge issue this really was and we just knew this is something we needed to talk about.

Speaker 2: 3:09

And that we needed to find an expert to help us talk about this subject. Yes, so, so happy and excited for Tina to join us, but quickly. Before we get to that, you know I love to share our weekly obsessions. So, tish, what do you have for me this week?

Speaker 1: 3:26

So I've been working with my youngest son on trying to learn how to cook. I realized him going away to school last year. He didn't have enough recipes in his arsenal to cook healthy meals, and in part of this, we've been going to the grocery store and learning how to cook. But we're going to be getting all these glass meal prep containers, and so that's my obsession this week is these beautiful containers to help meal prep during the week, because I want to get my son set up for success, and myself as well. So that's my obsession this week.

Speaker 2: 4:02

Love that I have some of those and I find them very handy. Well, my obsession this week has to do with the year of will.

Speaker 3: 4:10

Our listeners know.

Speaker 2: 4:11

I spent this last year of my last son in high school really kind of trying to deepen my relationship with him and really support him. So for all of three of my boys now I've done this. There are customizable M&Ms and you can do them in the school colors and put things like class of 2023 and they're super fun. So if you have a wedding, a graduation, a baby shower, nba teams, m&ms will customize to your hearts content people and they're super fun.

Speaker 2: 4:42

I think you can even put images on them. So check those out, because M&Ms are near and dear, i think, to everybody's heart.

Speaker 1: 4:50

That's a great one. I love that. That's so fun.

Speaker 2: 4:53

All right. So welcome Tina. We are so glad to have you on our podcast today to help shed some light on this perplexing situation. Can you share with our listeners a little bit about your background, your education and how you came to get into this area?

Speaker 3: 5:09

Yeah, thank you so much, alan and Tish. It's great to be with you. I really appreciate your podcast and I was just writing down custom M&Ms because I used to know about that and I forgot all about it.

Speaker 3: 5:21

So that's a wonderful tip. So yeah, i'm a psychotherapist. I have a master's degree in counseling psychology that I got in 2007, and I went into private practice pretty quickly after graduating And what I noticed was that there were a ton of clients who would tell me I'm not going home for Christmas, i don't my parents call. Then I'm very upset. I don't want to talk to my mom, i don't ever talk to my dad, and this was news to me.

Speaker 3: 5:54

I didn't realize that this was a thing that was happening so much. And I would ask them you know, what do your parents think about this? What do they? you know? how do they understand this? Well, they don't understand. They might say I tried to talk to them and they didn't get it, or I couldn't, they wouldn't understand.

Speaker 3: 6:14

And I knew that there had to be parents on the other end just really hurting and wondering what was going on with these adult children. And right around that time I wrote an article about something I thought was a separate issue, which was which was cut off in relationships And I wrote an article called What to Do When Someone Won't Talk to You, And right away I started hearing from parents whose adult children were not talking to them.

Speaker 3: 6:50

That's when I really put two and two together and realized this was a big deal. This was something that was happening in our society that people some people just had no idea about, me included.

Speaker 1: 7:02

You know, tina, when I was first approached about doing the show and this friend had suggested that we do a show about parent-child alienation, i immediately jumped to custodial interference. But she's like no, no, no, it's this different. Can you explain to our listeners what parent-child, a parent-adult child?

Speaker 2: 7:24

alienation really is Adult child.

Speaker 3: 7:29

Yeah, so there is a term, parental alienation, which refers to the very unfortunate practice of talking to your kids about their other parent in a disparaging way And that, especially with younger children, can do a lot of damage to the relationship between that child and their parent. And it's not just hurtful to the targeted parent, it's also hurtful to the child, who is in many cases carrying the genes of that parent and identifying with that parent as well. But a child who is raised with that kind of denigration and alienation of their other parent may find themselves unable to know what to do with that targeted parent and unable to figure out how to forge a relationship then or later. So that's a terrible, avoidable problem. But I do want to say that parental alienation behaviors like talking badly about your child's other parent. Those behaviors are more often attempted than successful.

Speaker 3: 8:36

So lots of people you meet have had the experience of mom talking ill of dad or vice versa. But it didn't change the fact that they wanted to have a relationship with both. So don't be worried that if your child's other parent is speaking ill of you, it means that your child is therefore brainwashed and will never speak to you again. It's not that easy to alienate a child from a parent, especially later on. Adult children who become estranged in adulthood are much more likely to be doing that based on some experience of their own, and it may be complicated because they may also be hearing from the other parent disparaging things.

Speaker 3: 9:24

So it's hard to tease apart. What's really going on. What's the real cause here?

Speaker 1: 9:29

Interesting, so does one lead into the other sometime. Is that what you're kind of referring to, or are they?

Speaker 3: 9:38

really separate things. I think they're really separate things. I think a person can grow up with one parent speaking ill of them, ill of the other parent to them, and then cleave to that targeted parent. as soon as they get to be 19, or as soon as they can, they go rushing over to the other parent to reestablish a relationship and find out who they really are. That's a possibility. Also, it's a possibility that there's no alienation by either parent and the child, for reasons of their own, becomes estranged from one or both of their parents. And there are cases where there's alienation and the child has problems within their own relationship with the parent at the same time And again those are confounding factors It's not really clear what came first or what's having the greater incidence.

Speaker 2: 10:34

I see I know in divorce situations the one type is quite common and Tish and I are both divorced And I think it's something that I took note of. Really not talking disparaging the other parent. I think that's really important and sometimes really really hard Not to you Right, right And I think what we're talking about. when it's the adult, it doesn't necessarily have to come from that type of background, but it's confounding to the parent. I think that's the piece here, And Tish and I love stats Tina.

Speaker 3: 11:12

So we have a couple of stats.

Speaker 2: 11:14

It's something we laugh about, but a Newsweek article stated that in 1997, 7% of adult children had cut ties with their mothers and 27% with their fathers, and in 2020, that overall number was one in four Americans or a stranger from their family in some way. Do you see this increasing, or are we just starting to talk about it more?

Speaker 3: 11:40

That's an interesting question. You would think from the statistics that you stated that it's increasing. However, you have to look at both of those studies and ask how many people were involved, how was the study conducted, and so on. So you can't necessarily you're not necessarily comparing apples to apples, got it When you're comparing across studies. I personally don't see that we have enough evidence yet of whether this problem is increasing or whether people are just talking about it more, because that's certainly true. We're talking about it more and more. Both the adult children are talking about it and parents are starting to talk about it, thank goodness, and finding support and finding out that they're not alone.

Speaker 1: 12:25

So this idea of cutting parents out of out of your life. I didn't really see this or hear about this growing up, so, like anecdotally for me, for me it seems like it's increasing And I can understand that there are some reason. Adult children feel that they need to do this. Do you see any common themes that initiate this behavior?

Speaker 3: 12:52

Well, all I know is from the research that's been done with the strange adult children, and also with my experience talking with them in therapy, about what the issues are. There are a lot of factors that are called contributing factors, things like different values, having to choose between different loyalties, financial problems, sibling issues, even infertility issues. Anything can be a confounding factor, but what it seems to come down to is when a person chooses to become estranged from their family or their parents, there is in some way, on some level, a sense of not feeling supported, not feeling loved, not feeling accepted in some way. When I say that, i'm aware that parents may be heartbroken by that thought, because what they know is that they do love their children and all they ever wanted was to support and love and accept them. But it seems to be true if you talk to people who have made this difficult decision And, by the way, my grandmother made this decision almost 100 years ago.

Speaker 3: 14:16

She left her home. I don't know why. I assume she had some reason for leaving her home and her parents And my mother grew up without knowing her grandparents on that side.

Speaker 3: 14:29

And I'll never know why, and of course, the Bible talks about estrangement from parents, and so did Shakespeare, so we know it's not a new issue. But now that we're talking about it, we can talk about what some of the reasons are that people have, what experiences tend to lead to this And why does it seem like it's increasing.

Speaker 1: 14:57

So a friend of mine had shared this Newsweek article with me from 2022 that talked about parent adult child estrangement, and it elicited a response from a reader that she had forwarded on to me. that said and this was the response to the article, what I think is, while many have undoubtedly been abused, many others just think they've been abused. I think we may be quitting just too soon on people by choosing to simply label them toxic or abusive.

Speaker 3: 15:37

And as I hear that, I mean I totally understand where she's coming from And I'm also aware of how we have to simplify, and sometimes oversimplify things in order to make statements about these complex issues.

Speaker 1: 15:53

And then there was a, there was another article just kind of you know, kind of building this sort of case, And this is back from 2021 from the Atlantic that questions is this a matter of American shift in American family values that is fueling these estrangements, And like you don't see these in other cultures, like you see them here. So how would you respond to this idea that maybe the shift in family values is contributing? Do you see that at all in your practical practice.

Speaker 3: 16:30

Well, certainly there are changes over time in the way generations handle things, but we have to remember also that the US is pretty much unique in what an individualistic culture we are, how we are not collectivistic. There is not the kinds of social pressure on families that does exist in more collectivistic cultures.

Speaker 2: 16:53

That's been true for a long time, yeah, and you know, tina, i was just going to say I was chatting about this episode with another friend who's half Japanese, half Brazilian, and she said it couldn't, it would rarely happen in those cultures because they're multi generation cultures And you know, you're already caring for your parents as soon as you have a job. Or, like a friend in Spain, children don't move out until they're in their 30s, until they get married. So those cultures really are not individualistic as you're saying. It's really inclusive and multi generational And I really do think that that's a really big point here towards this problem in the US. Yeah, it's considered.

Speaker 3: 17:42

In this culture it's considered normal to move out and start your own family And it's not considered normal to live with your parents and raise your kids, you know, in a compound. It is considered. Separation is considered the norm. But it does make it easier to become estranged if you feel like you need distance from family because they're although, by the way, this isn't talked about very much. But there is social pressure in the United States on people call your mother, your father is the only father you've got. You should really forgive him.

Speaker 3: 18:18

There is a lot of pressure on in that direction as well. When parents are in this position of being feeling rejected, they're not aware of the pressure that their kids may be under to reconnect with them. There is, there's, a lot of focus on the support available for people who are, who are choosing to become estranged. There is that. I mean, that's, that's a fact. That's a fact. But what, what? what I'm afraid of is that with the focus on cultural and society societal influences, we lose the essential fact that just because something is acceptable in our culture doesn't make it attractive to every young adult. Most young adults remain connected, emotionally at least, if not physically, with their parents. It is the norm still to have a relationship with your family throughout adulthood. That is still normal in our culture And it's also easier than not doing that.

Speaker 2: 19:27

It's true I I met a lot of events where people complain about their mom or their dad, but more so their mom, right, because you know we're women and the complaints are, you know, just the griping around the moms always tends to be in similar areas, right? But so I think there is that. you know that pressure here. I know that earlier you talked about really what kind of got you into this practice at first, that you were hearing patients talk about. you know their, their parents and understanding that this isn't painful just as painful for the parent as the child in this situation. But maybe you can share with us a little bit more kind of how you got to focus on helping parents and you negotiate this mind field as part of your practice. Yes, yes.

Speaker 3: 20:19

Well, as it became pretty quickly clear to me how deeply painful this was and how much parents were suffering. At the same time, it became more and more clear of how much needed to be understood about how, how they got there and how little help they had in in really understanding this. There was stigma and judgment and self criticism and self blame and regrets and all of that terrible stuff, but there wasn't a lot of hey, let's look at this, let's take a step back, let's have compassion for the parent and the child. They've they've hit a wall together. The child is exercising the only power that they feel they have, for whatever reason. If they don't have the skills to communicate or the will to continue to try, the only power they have is to remove themselves from the relationship.

Speaker 3: 21:15

Why, without blaming anybody or making them evil or bad, why did it come to this place? And there are all kinds of reasons, many of which are rooted in intergenerational processes in the family And why people nowadays are making a more public choice to and some. For some of them, it doesn't feel like a choice. It feels like they have no other option But but to create distance with family. We know a lot more than we did when I was growing up, about the impacts of not getting certain emotional needs met when we're growing up. And my parents were very good people, i think, and very kind people, and they were concerned about raising good children who were good citizens and could make their way in the world and function, but what they weren't concerned about is my emotional literacy, whether I had healthy self-esteem. They didn't use those terms. I don't think they knew those terms And I didn't know them either.

Speaker 3: 22:34

I didn't ask for them.

Speaker 2: 22:36

No, my parents either. I mean, i think you've described Tisha's parents to a T as well, because we knew each other's parents. It just wasn't of the time at all, you know, to talk about emotions and feelings on that level, and I think, for me, one of the biggest things I take away from this is shame. You know, as a mother, the shame of being in this situation, tina. I think would just crumple someone, and I think you know shame is something that's carried within generations as well. Sure, yeah.

Speaker 3: 23:12

And that's that absolutely breaks my heart And that's one of the big reasons why I was drawn to this work. You know, as it became more and more clear to me that the devastation that's caused by estrangement, i just knew, and it was very clear, that shame was a big part of the problem, and of course, it logically doesn't make sense to be ashamed of something that you could not have possibly done differently. Right, we use the tools that we have to do what we need to do, and when we're parenting, we use the tools. We use every tool that we got from our parents, minus the ones we didn't think were working very well, plus any that we picked up along the way. That's our toolkit.

Speaker 3: 24:01

Right, the toolkit starts when we are children and we learn what does it mean in a family to be a child? What are you entitled to? What are you not allowed to do? What do adults do? How do people express emotions? Is everybody allowed to express a feeling, or just some people? Are some feelings allowed to be expressed and not others, or are all feelings acceptable?

Speaker 3: 24:28

These are things we start learning from. You know, preverbally, we're very, very small. We start learning about how families work, and so then, to grow up and have kids and expect to just completely throw all of that out and say, oh well, we now know that it's important that children feel a sense of dignity or that they have some rights over what they do, that they need to have some choices, like you know, do you want to wear the pink one or the yellow one? Just some choice. You know, even a very young child. We know that now. We didn't know it then. So what we know about what helps people thrive and feel good about themselves and grow up and be emotionally mature, what we know about that now may not jibe with what we learned about it when we grow up. So it doesn't make sense to get down on yourself about not knowing something but you didn't know. It's so unfair.

Speaker 1: 25:28

Tina, what I think I love so much about your approach is you're really not coming at it from. You're very neutral in terms of you're not placing blame on one group or another. You're not saying this is this is the fault of this new generation or this is the fault of the parents. You're very neutral that way. So I love that, and I think your ReConnection Club podcast is such an amazing tool for parents. So if you're a parent that is going through any of this, i love how each episode is super short and it deals with one specific topic at a time and it tells parents how they could you know. Maybe you can tell us a little bit more about how parents can use your podcast and new tool.

Speaker 3: 26:09

Yeah, thank you. Well, i love that you identified my approach as neutral, because I have had pretty strong words leveled at me by both parents and estranged adult children, accusing me of being in league with the other side blaming, putting all the blame on.

Speaker 3: 26:28

So I think there might be something there. If I'm making everybody angry, then maybe that's the best way to do it. I wasn't going to do a podcast at all until like the day before I decided to do it, because I was actually nervous about tackling this topic publicly, because it is so highly emotional on both sides And I was just afraid to step into the fray, even though I had to some degree already with my writing. But so with the podcast I just I had so many because of my work with parents. All the time there are little nuggets that come up in conversations or in the forums inside the reconnection club that I think, ah, somebody else is wondering about this, Somebody else is struggling with it, Somebody else has this question or this experience. Let me just pin that down, Right. And so I do try to try to just do one little thing at a time and it comes out to roughly 10 minutes at a time.

Speaker 1: 27:28

So, just so our listeners can understand, like I know, when I was going through some of your podcasts, you had one what if you run into your child unexpectedly out? Yeah, That was just about that And I thought oh wow, these are such great little tools.

Speaker 3: 27:45

Yes, some of them are very practical, like that.

Speaker 3: 27:48

They're very kind of nuts and bolts how to hear some tips what to do, And others are much more geared toward what I think of as the foundational work of reconnecting with your child, which is personal healing and growth. So I talk about the deep pain of the rejected parent. I talk about the emotions of estrangement because I want people to look inside, not with shame or recrimination, but with a desire to connect with their own hearts, with their own emotions. So many of us have had to put aside little pieces of ourselves for various reasons, starting from early on. And when we put those parts of ourselves aside, we lose connection to that part of ourselves And it affects our ability to connect fully with someone else on a heart level. So the more we put walls around our hearts to protect ourselves from our own pain, the harder it is to reach across the wall and really touch someone else on a heart level.

Speaker 1: 28:58

That's so true, that's so true.

Speaker 2: 29:01

I just love this concept too of having your heart open, and it doesn't mean reconnecting actually physically or through the phone, but it's reconnecting with yourself, with who you were back at the beginning, and really opening your heart to options and opportunities coming at you. And healing And healing Right. This whole idea of not only emotional healing but also emotional growth, individual, from your child or from your parent, right? I think that that's a really wonderful thing to talk about And I like to call your podcast, almost like snackable, tina.

Speaker 3: 29:44

I like that, i like that, i like that.

Speaker 2: 29:46

Like a little something. You take it away and you know we're all busy. So walk your dog, whatever you're doing, and have a few things come at you. You know your book Reconnecting with Your Adult A Strange Child, i think is also a resource and something that could fill someone's toolbox. Could you chat with us a little bit about your book?

Speaker 3: 30:08

Yes, the book was born out of a. I had the idea that I would write an article and that I would give it to parents and they there you go. That's what I've got to offer. Good luck, you know. Apply this and everything will be fine. And so I wrote this PDF that I was selling on my website. You know, reconnecting or I forget what it's called Guide to Reconnecting with Your Adult Child or whatever And I found that the more people read that, the more they came back and wanted to know more.

Speaker 3: 30:42

So I thought eventually I thought, okay, i'm going to turn this into a book, i'm going to get it out there and, you know, just flesh it out as best I can. Put my best ideas and my best hope for helping people with reconnection into this book. And there you go, it's in the book. Good luck, you know. I hope it's useful. So that was the intent of the book is to really put my best stuff in one place and also to give people a sense of sitting with someone who cares about them. You know that's not successful with every reader. Not everybody's going to feel that way about the book. It just. It goes down differently depending on who you are. But my intention was for it to feel like you're having a conversation with somebody who really cares about the problem that you're having and wants to help.

Speaker 2: 31:32

Empathy towards you as the reader. We'll put a link to both your podcast and to the book in our show notes for folks. You know, tina, what are some of the steps parents can take towards healing their relationship with their adult children? Is it family therapy together, or is it individual therapy?

Speaker 3: 31:54

That's a good question. I would not rush into family therapy with with adult children in general, because I actually did a podcast episode about this. It's called Preparing for Family Therapy. I think a lot of parents are not prepared and I've heard a lot of stories about parents and adult children who are their relationship is in trouble. They go to family therapy and there's just an explosion and it goes poorly and well. We tried therapy and it didn't work. It made things worse. I think the reason for that is that parents are completely unprepared for what might happen in therapy with their adult child.

Speaker 3: 32:35

It's not like couples counseling, where the two of you are peers and you are. There's a give and take and you listen some and you talk some and you talk to them. In couples therapy even in couples therapy or marital therapy somebody kind of has to go first and be the one to just sit back and listen and try to help the other partner get their needs met. In family therapy between children and parents, no matter how old they are, it kind of for things to work and evolve and change and heal, it has to be the parent who is able to say all right, you go first. I'm going to try to hear your experience And it's excruciating. It can be excruciating to sit there and listen to your child depending. Even if your child is really good and really articulate and really caring and soft about it and trying not to hurt your feelings, it's still awful to hear your child talk about being in pain in their relationship with you.

Speaker 2: 33:35

Yes, i you know, tina. I did some family therapy when I went through my divorce with my children and it was excruciating and incredibly hard to not try and defend myself for things that I even felt were out of my control, but overall it ended up being a good experience. but you are so right, it is really a tough thing to do and to listen to your children with no defensiveness and just understand. it's their experience, so I can imagine that if there's an estrangement, it's even more kind of you know, volatile for you Absolutely, and you weren't even.

Speaker 3: 34:19

You know, i imagine, that going through a divorce you were not at your fullest in terms of resource and capacity to go into that situation, which is inherently unequal with not a full bucket. I think it's asking too much. Fortunately, i don't think it's necessary to heal parent-adult child estrangement, for all of the parent and the child to get together in the same room to work on things. I think that very often the adult child has work of their own to do that parents cannot help them with. You know, if you're 25 and you had a rough childhood, you know it's not fair. I didn't ask for that.

Speaker 3: 35:04

But now that you're an adult, it is your responsibility and your job to work through it and to become the person you're meant to be. That's the work that we all have to do as somebody's adult child. So while the adult child is doing their own work, the parent can do a lot in therapy. I think what often happens that goes a little bit awry in therapy with parents of estranged adult children is and I've heard this actually happening they're encouraged by the therapist to find compassion for the child's point of view, and that's a beautiful thing to do, but it's premature if the parent is not in a place of self-compassion. You're asking to fill somebody else's bucket when your own is not full.

Speaker 2: 35:53

Right And you have to love yourself and have gentleness and compassion towards yourself first, tina, what about?

Speaker 1: 35:59

and I've talked to parents in this situation that they are saying, whether it's real or perceived, they have no idea what has caused this. Where does a parent that says I don't know where this is coming from? The child may not have articulated what the so how does a parent work on something that they don't know?

Speaker 3: 36:23

Excellent question And, by the way you know, there's a continuum. There are parents who have truly not one clue. There are parents who knew that the relationship was in trouble but had no idea it would lead to this, and you know, all through the continuum. There are parents who have some inkling of the issues, versus not at all. But when you don't have any idea. Part of that's part of the reason that I wrote my book.

Speaker 3: 36:57

There are other books too about families and about family experiences and the parent-child relationship.

Speaker 3: 37:04

You can educate yourself about parents and children And there are sociological facts about parents and children, the fact that childhood has changed historically, about what it means in parenting, the meaning of parenting and what it means to be a parent has changed historically over time.

Speaker 3: 37:27

That's interesting, but it doesn't help you with your child. What needs to be understood, i think, in the context of the here and the now and the culture that you live in and the family that you have, is what were the expectations that you had as a parent? What did your child, growing up in this culture at this time and place, expect from you as a child? And where were the mismatches? And you know what do you want to do about it if anything. But I think you know, i will say this if parents are completely and utterly clueless, very often what I find when I get a chance to work with them is there is an emotional component that is completely invisible to the parent because they grew up with this kind of benign emotional neglect that I think I want to say most people of my generation did grow up with, right, we didn't speak the language of emotion, and so if your kid is struggling and not communicating or expressing themselves in a way that you can understand logically or reasonably, you're simply not going to get it.

Speaker 3: 38:44

So, sometimes not having a clue could be a sign of that this is an emotional issue and that you're looking in the wrong place. You're looking for logic. You're looking for incidents rather than themes. You know, some people will say well, i asked my daughter for help. I think this was in the book. I asked my daughter for help with my computer and she flew off the handle and hung up on me. Well, you know, that doesn't make a lot of sense.

Speaker 3: 39:10

All you're doing is you're asking for help with the computer. A reasonable person does not fly off the handle. So where's the emotional subtext? And you can't be faulted for not knowing that, but you can become more fluent in emotion so that you can guess. Oh, you know when that happened? probably what was needed was this tool that I didn't have in my kid at the time, right, and what was used was this other tool that I did have.

Speaker 2: 39:45

And that parents can fill that toolbox with work on their own.

Speaker 3: 39:50

Right.

Speaker 2: 39:51

And I think that that's really important for parents And I love how you say you can kind of go through where or the disconnects to with you know, with the throughout the life, with the child. You know, tina, if you get in this situation where your child tells you I don't want to speak to you right now, i need you to give me space. They don't exactly tell you how much space, but you know my first reaction would be to chase them, which is not not a good thing to do. But how much space do you give them And how do you still keep the lines of communication somewhat open?

Speaker 3: 40:32

Well, wanting to keep the lines of communication open. First of all, we have to recognize as a need that the parent has rather than a just de, facto, automatic good thing for both. We have to be able to tease apart this, some idea of what a family should be, from my emotional needs as your mom, Thank you. Okay, So you know I completely understand and empathize with a desire to keep the lines of communication open with your child or anybody you love. We suffer when we are feel separated and feel like we can't reach out and touch someone. We don't have to be together all the time, but we kind of want to know that we could reach out and touch them if we wanted to. So it's normal. But it's also important to recognize I mean, some parents I speak with are just in so much anguish over not being able to talk with their kid that you know that there's more to this than missing this person who is your kid. There's more to it. There's a loss, There's grief, There's abandonment, There's deep rejection that's older than this situation.

Speaker 3: 41:50

Because of the force of it, it's a pretty fair bet to say it didn't start with this estrangement. So when you're asking, how do I keep the lines of communication open. I think you would start by looking at the question. You know, why do I want to keep the lines of communication open? And it might seem like, well, that's a silly question. I just do. Of course I do, I'm his mother or whatever it is. But there is no harm in looking at the question. Why do I want that? What need will that fill for me? How is that need being met at all in my life if not in this direction?

Speaker 1: 42:29

I mean, i think so many times, especially as mothers, that we feel this desperate need to fix things okay, and we may try to force resolution. What are some of the things parents should maybe avoid to not make the situation worse?

Speaker 3: 42:46

Yeah, good question, good question, tish. I think the number one thing to avoid would be acting from emotion rather than from a strategy that is based on understanding what the situation calls for. A strategy is kind of a cold, cool headed word, but it just is a plan for approaching a project, and the project is reconnection. You don't want to be reaching out or doing anything actually out of an unexamined emotion, like when there's a financial issue. Well, i'm paying for my daughter's cell phone. She's 23 years old. Why am I doing that? And she's not talking to me anyway? And the term is almost up. Why don't I just cut her off, fair?

Speaker 2: 43:38

enough right.

Speaker 3: 43:38

And the brain says well, she's 23. She has a job She could pay herself. Why don't I do this? And then there's a lot of rumination about should I or shouldn't I. So the problem there is that the emotions are ruling. The emotions are ruling the day. You've got this feeling of being taken advantage of, taken for granted, betrayed, hurt, and this knowledge that you continue to pay this person who's hurting you so much. And it's all this emotion that is urging you to take some action. And the action that you can see is well, i could cut her off. Cut off that cell phone thing. That's the only action you can imagine.

Speaker 1: 44:24

So with that specific scenario, how would you specifically counsel parents?

Speaker 3: 44:32

I would, first of all, i would not say do or don't Do, stop paying or don't stop paying. I would sit with the parent and ask where is this coming from? When did you start wondering about cutting her off? Was it the last time you sent a text and didn't hear back and felt devastated and felt just so, so hurt. Is that when you started thinking about this? I mean, what we want to do is to honor the emotions, because they're not wrong.

Speaker 3: 45:05

By the way, if you feel betrayed or abandoned, that's reality, that's how you feel, and I would never, ever argue with anyone or encourage them to argue with themselves about whether they should feel that way, and that was the whole premise of my first book Constructive Following. If you feel that way, you feel that way and you've got reasons. You want to be there for yourself. But I help the parent tease apart how they're feeling right now from what do they want the outcome to be in the long run? What do you want for this situation? And usually the answer is well, i want to repair the relationship, i want to be closer, i want to be here when she comes back, and that's not always going to jive with what you feel like doing right now.

Speaker 2: 45:51

Right, It's like playing the long game of the relationship with your child may not satisfy your emotional need right now, to say the least.

Speaker 1: 46:05

Yeah, yeah, very interesting, very hard, i really wanted to clear this up too, because as we were researching this, this became really important. I think to know that I think the first if you've never been in this situation where your adult child has alienated you somebody else hearing this is going to think what extremely abusive situation has happened to ignite this. And I want to get that kind of cleared up because I think it's an important point that alienation is not born out of just extremely abusive situations or whether serious drug and alcohol, alcohol, right, that triggers this. But if it's not these extremes you know what what does trigger this? Why does it happen in some and not in others, if it's not extremes?

Speaker 3: 47:03

I think. So much for bringing this up. That's such an important point to cover It. It feels so extreme on the parent side because it is so devastating and often shocking, like where did this come from? So it feels as though the punishment should in some sense fit this, fit the crime. And if the punishment is severe, what? what on earth did I do that was this severe? And this, here again, is something that is not logical. It doesn't work that way. It certainly feels severe and shocking, but estrangement is not. There is no one to one relationship between abuse and estrangement, and surely there are people who have endured and survived abusive childhoods who then went on to cut their parents off. There are also people who had childhoods that would, by virtually any standard, be considered within the bounds of normal. They to find themselves or make the decision to estrange.

Speaker 3: 48:12

Don't mistake the the, the sense of severity, for for the severity of your behavior. It may be as simple I mean, it's everybody's different but it may be as simple as your child's temperament is such Maybe they're highly sensitive person, maybe they're an introvert and a family of extroverts, or vice versa that they needed something a little bit different in order to become an express who they are as an individual. Nobody did anything to that particular person except they. They felt different And the family may not have recognized what it feels like to grow up in a family and feel so different. They may not recognize because they're like we love you. Yeah, you're different, but we love you and everything's fine. But we love you and everything's fine for us is not the same as the experience of the person who does feel different. So I mean, that's a garden variety example of somebody having a really tough time in a loving family.

Speaker 2: 49:23

Yes, And this is so nuanced, i think that's the word I would use and and sitting here and learning about this and talking to you, tina, it gives me even greater empathy to not judge if someone's in this situation And I think that's really important or not be like Well, what happened? you know what, what caused this right, and so I think, as both a mother and a child, we can understand, because we're all both right sitting here, today, the three of us can understand both sides of the situation here on some level.

Speaker 2: 50:05

And you know, tina, we'd like to ask our guests if they could give some I don't want to say advice, but some maybe direction or some final thoughts to our listeners that may find themselves in this situation.

Speaker 3: 50:21

Yes. Well, first of all, i do want to say to you if you are in the situation that you, there is nothing wrong with you. You are so not alone. You don't deserve to suffer, no matter what you feel like you've done. I talked to people all the time who say they feel like they've failed. You didn't fail if your child is, you know, functioning at all in the world without a disability. You know, assuming that they don't have a disability that your child is functioning in any way, you have succeeded in raising them. There really is no shame.

Speaker 3: 51:01

But I can't emphasize enough that the healing that you do and the emotions that you connect with in your own heart and the tears that you cry for yourself are a direct path to reconnecting with your child. You don't have to do all this healing work and personal growth and then try to figure out how to make it relevant to your relationship with your child. It is the work That leads to. I mean that if you go through a period of genuine, authentic healing and you really learn to really appreciate who you are in all of your many colors of humanity, that's all you need to do. You have done the work of reconnecting with your estranged adult child. They, on the other side, are doing whatever work that they need to do And you have set the stage for reconnection. You don't have to do more than that.

Speaker 1: 52:09

I love it. That's great. that's great advice. Now, tina, we like to ask this question of all of our guests Can you share with us what you feel your superpower is and why?

Speaker 3: 52:25

Well, i think it is compassion. I think compassion is a superpower. I think if compassion were in all corners of the earth, we would have a lot fewer problems, not just in families, but on a societal level, because it also combats fear, and fear is so damaging at the family level and the societal level. Fear is a destructive thing, and compassion can really go a long way toward ameliorating fear.

Speaker 1: 53:04

Compassion, i think, is an underappreciated superpower for sure, and just in our conversations that we've had today and before you definitely have abundance of it And, like I said, i love your approach of not pointing fingers, you know, because that just puts people, they drive their heels in, they're going to get resistant. I think your approach of let's look internally first and be open in that compassionate way is really the way to go on that path to healing. Wow, great.

Speaker 2: 53:46

I agree, yeah, and I love filling up a toolbox of emotional things you can do And really I love this idea of having an open heart and gentleness towards yourself.

Speaker 3: 54:01

Yes, and, by the way, speaking of the toolbox, i did want to say that all of these things that adult children talk about nowadays, that kind of give parents the willies like boundaries and all these things that are. those are for us as well. Yes, Those are not weapons against us. Those are tools for us to use as well.

Speaker 2: 54:22

Exactly, exactly. You can educate yourself on this. you know, intellectually, you can work on yourself to heal emotionally. You can fill that toolbox for better understanding. But, tina, we'd like to say thank you so much for joining us today. This has been an amazing conversation on this topic And we can't thank you enough for joining us. We'll put a link to your website, to your podcast, to your books. I know Constructive Wallowing is a title. I want to pick that one up. I think that one is just a brilliant title.

Speaker 2: 54:59

We'll put all of those in our show notes and thank you again.

Speaker 3: 55:03

Well, thank you Next week.

Speaker 1: 55:06

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 55:06

Thank you very much First thanks.

Speaker 1: 55:08

so much, tina. Thank you both so much.