0:02 welcome to where parents talk my name is
0:04 Leanne castellino Our Guest today is a
0:06 clinical psychologist speaker and
0:09 thought leader in the area of parent and
0:12 grandparent estrangement Dr Joshua
0:15 Coleman is also an author his latest
0:19 book is called rules of estrangement why
0:22 adult children cut ties and how to heal
0:25 the conflict Dr Coleman is also a father
0:27 of three and he joins us today from the
0:30 San Francisco Bay Area thank you so much
0:32 for taking the time yeah thanks for
0:34 having me it's a pleasure to be here Dr
0:36 Coleman how would you go about
0:39 describing the current landscape where
0:41 are we when it comes to children and
0:44 adult children being estranged from their
0:45 their
0:48 parents well from my perspective um I
0:50 think it's a kind of Silent epidemic you
0:53 know in there was a study recently done
0:55 that showed that one out of four fathers
0:58 is aranged from an adult child they're
1:01 22% even more like to be aranged from a
1:04 daughter that same study found 6% of
1:07 mothers are aranged from a child but
1:08 other Studies have put it closer to 10
1:12 to 15% which is where I would put it so
1:14 a lot of parents are being estranged
1:16 today and they're also being estranged
1:19 for reasons that weren't uh weren't
1:21 really in existence in the past so
1:23 certainly weren't common political
1:25 differences particularly uh in the
1:29 United States um where whereas um the GR
1:31 the glue that kept families together
1:32 through Millennia honor thy mother and
1:35 thy father respect thy Elders uh families
1:36 families
1:39 forever that's been largely replaced by
1:40 much more
1:42 identitarian perspective if a
1:43 relationship doesn't feel good to me
1:45 then not only can I cut that person off
1:48 I should cut that that person off uh
1:50 protection of mental health has become a
1:53 big priority so there's a lot of adult
1:54 children who are cutting off parents
1:57 certainly for reasons of abuse and and
2:00 neglect um but also for reason that are
2:02 much more psychological much more subtle
2:05 much more political and that really is
2:08 causing a lot of uh disruption in the
2:11 families when you look at that landscape
2:13 because you've just outlined so many
2:15 different contributing factors and you
2:18 know societal pressures Etc contributing
2:21 to this issue like what concerns you
2:23 most when you look at that
2:25 broadly well what concerns me most is
2:27 that you know I'm often interviewed and
2:30 people say well you know it point should
2:31 you cut off a family member and I'm
2:34 always okay answering that question but
2:35 what people don't realize is that
2:38 arangement is a cataclysmic event in a
2:40 family it's not dietic it's not triotic
2:42 it affects the whole family system it's
2:45 typical that if an adult child cuts off
2:47 a parent they also deny access to the
2:49 grandchildren even if the grandparents
2:51 were reasonably good grandparents it can
2:53 divide siblings against sibling one
2:55 sibling might Ally with the parent the
2:57 other sibling might Ally with the with
3:00 the estranged child it may if not
3:02 breakup marriages it often strains
3:03 marriages particularly because of the
3:05 different ways that in heterosexual
3:07 marriages men and women handle conflict
3:10 and stress um and you know who's willing
3:12 to make amends which is a big part of my
3:15 my recommendation to parents and who's
3:18 not um so it's a cataclysmic event in a
3:20 family and you know in the United States
3:22 and I think in Western Societies in
3:24 general we're becoming Much More
3:26 atomized Much More individualistic in
3:28 the US we have a huge problems with
3:30 social isolation with loneliness with
3:32 Rising rates of mental illness and I
3:35 think a big part of that is kind of the
3:39 destruction of uh family as a source of
3:42 identity and comfort and
3:45 care so when you look at that whole
3:47 picture like what are we supposed to
3:51 take away from it because on one level
3:53 so much has changed you know what are
3:55 your personal value systems what was
3:57 your communication and your family
4:00 relationship like in the first place
4:01 and then you add all these other
4:05 elements like where is somebody supposed
4:08 to start if they actually feel that they
4:11 want to repair uh and want to address the
4:12 the
4:15 estrangement yeah I mean you know most
4:16 of the estrangements that happen these
4:18 days are from the adult child to the
4:20 parent probably in earlier Generations
4:22 it might have been the parent estranging
4:24 the the adult child because they didn't
4:25 like who the person was marrying or
4:28 their gender identity or their sexuality
4:31 or their career Choice um but these days
4:33 it's much more the adult child and from
4:35 that perspective it's typically
4:37 incumbent on the parent to do most of
4:39 the initiating of the reconciliation
4:41 because the adult child from their
4:43 perspective it's working you know they
4:45 feel they might feel happier they might
4:47 feel less stressed out life might feel
4:48 simpler they don't have to have the
4:51 conflict with the parents that they had
4:53 so but for the parent there's no upside
4:55 it's all it's all pain it's all sadness
4:58 regret guilt remorse anger fear of what
5:00 kind of future they going to have
5:02 without their children or grandchildren
5:04 so from that perspective it's typically
5:06 incumbent on parents to make the first
5:08 move and what I always tell parents to
5:11 do is to try to start by writing a
5:14 letter of amends now some parents are
5:15 completely cut off from their adult
5:17 children they are they've been they're
5:19 not cut off from social media they're
5:21 blocked on cell phone they have no
5:23 access to them in any way they' moved
5:25 and not giving them an address and in
5:27 those situations parents are really at a
5:30 loss but many parents still have a way
5:32 to contact their children and even if
5:34 they've been directed to go no contact
5:35 which is the common way that it's it's
5:38 explained today or characterized today I
5:40 still encourage parents to begin by
5:42 writing a letter that starts with
5:44 something like I know you wouldn't do
5:45 this unless you felt like it was the
5:48 healthiest thing for you to do now
5:49 that's what it feels like to the adult
5:51 child to the parent it might not feel
5:52 that way at all it may feel the in fact
5:54 the opposite but the parent has to get
5:57 psychologically on the same page as the
5:58 adult child and they also have to
6:02 recognize this fun Al uh shift in values
6:05 that today relationships between parents
6:06 and adult children have to be more
6:08 egalitarian they have to be more
6:10 psychological they have to involve
6:11 communication and often that
6:13 communication happens with the parent
6:14 being open to hearing the ways that they
6:17 fail their child they hurt their child
6:18 they neglected them they traumatized
6:21 them and for parents that's a big ask
6:22 but for those parents who can actually
6:25 do that work not all certainly but for
6:28 many who can do that work they can find
6:30 a much more receptive audio in their
6:33 adult child on the adult child's end you
6:35 know my my wish is that for the adult
6:37 child that they could see the parent in
6:40 a more sort of three-dimensional way
6:41 that that even when parents behave
6:43 terribly they're typically doing the
6:45 best that they can do given their own
6:47 childhood traumas or when they grew up
6:49 or who they had to partner or their
6:51 socioeconomic level or all the other
6:53 things that affect parenting and at
6:56 least be open to repair from the parent
6:59 and to accept that that the kind of
7:01 mistakes that the parent made however
7:03 hurtful weren't necessarily intentional
7:04 and particularly if the parents willing
7:06 to work on themselves and be in therapy
7:09 or the like to give that parent a chance
7:11 to to repair and to
7:14 heal you know it's interesting as I hear
7:15 you lay out that description one thing
7:18 that strikes me is that you know none of
7:20 that is possible that is to say finding
7:23 a solution to the estrangement if there
7:26 isn't a degree of awareness on the part
7:29 of both parties right and when you throw in
7:30 in
7:31 generational differences and all the
7:33 different things you outlined that could
7:36 be factors that you outlined initially
7:40 it becomes really complicated and in
7:43 many cases one side or the other may not
7:47 have the capacity for that awareness so
7:49 in terms of stumbling blocks how does
7:52 one address it if that is the issue no I
7:54 think that's really well said and when I
7:56 do family therapy with parents and adult
7:59 children um yeah best case scenario both
8:01 are willing to be self-reflective to
8:05 show empathy to communicate well uh to
8:08 to be psychological to um look at the
8:09 other in a kind of more
8:11 three-dimensional way but you're right
8:13 not everybody's able to do it sometimes
8:15 the parent isn't able to do it and they
8:17 just can't take my direction as much as
8:19 I kind of sit on them and compel them to
8:21 do it and I warn parents before I get on
8:23 the call with them look if if I see you
8:25 starting to sound critical or making
8:27 your child child feel guilty or being
8:30 defensive I'm going to going to correct
8:32 you um and let you know that you're
8:33 going down the wrong path and this is
8:34 why your child doesn't want a
8:36 relationship with you and then for the
8:38 adult child I encourage them to
8:41 communicate their feelings in a calm
8:43 constructive non-blaming non-critical
8:46 non-name calling way but you're right um
8:48 not everybody's able to to do that and
8:50 that does pose challenges typically the
8:52 person who wants the relationship more
8:54 which is more typically the parent has
8:56 to do more of the work and that's why so
8:58 much my methodology is oriented towards
9:00 helping the parent uh because they're
9:02 typically the ones who in much more pain
9:05 about the loss of the the relationship
9:06 um but we all have to sort of take
9:08 people where they are whether they're
9:11 our family or our friends or co-workers
9:14 and sort of work based on our own
9:16 Awareness on on what's going to make
9:17 that create the conditions where they're
9:19 going to feel the most compelled to
9:21 communicate in a way that's in line with
9:22 our our hopes and typically that's
9:24 communicating in a way that's empathic
9:27 it's not not critical not negative
9:29 doesn't invoke defensiveness than the
9:31 other person those are typically kind of
9:34 the key principles that promotes good
9:37 communication Dr Coleman what inspired
9:40 you or LED you or motivated you to
9:43 writing rules of estrangement sure well
9:45 I my first book um I wrote on this topic
9:47 was when parents hurt and I wrote that
9:50 in 2007 and I wrote that because I had
9:52 experienced an estrangement from my own
9:54 daughter in her 20s I was married and
9:56 divorced in my 20s and have an adult
9:59 daughter I'm very close to and felt
10:01 close doing much of her younger years
10:02 but but there were ways when I got
10:04 remarried had twins from my current
10:07 marriage uh that she felt displaced that
10:09 she felt left out she felt hurt she
10:10 didn't feel
10:12 prioritized um and I didn't initially
10:14 respond very sensitively to that when
10:16 she wanted to talk to me about it so she
10:18 eventually withdrew and stopped
10:21 communicating with me and at the time it
10:24 was easily the most painful awful thing
10:25 I've ever been through and hoped to go
10:27 through ever again and there was very
10:29 little written to to help me the advice
10:31 that I got from friends and the
10:33 therapist I was saying were really
10:36 counterproductive well meaning but but
10:38 counterproductive um which only made her
10:40 feel less understood so it really wasn't
10:44 until I kind of changed my method to you
10:45 know just working on just hearing it
10:47 purely from her perspective not
10:50 defending myself taking responsibility
10:52 finding the colonel if not the bushel of
10:54 Truth in her complaints uh that really
10:55 things began to turn around and we
10:58 eventually reconciled and I thought well
10:59 gosh there's no guidance about that I
11:01 should write a book on that so I wrote
11:03 my first book when parents hurt and as a
11:05 result of that got a wide following of a
11:07 strange parents both in the US and in
11:09 other countries as a result of that
11:11 developed a webinar series that I've
11:13 been doing for the past 12 years for
11:15 strange parents and because I got so
11:18 many emails I started doing a free Q&A
11:20 uh every other Monday which I still
11:22 still do for strange parents because I
11:24 just cannot respond to all the emails
11:26 that I get and then based on that I
11:27 wrote my more recent book rules of
11:30 estrangement and that was based on a
11:32 study I did out of the Wisconsin
11:34 University of Wisconsin Survey Center of
11:37 1600 estranged parents and so I looked
11:39 at things that I didn't talk about as
11:42 much in the first book such as the role
11:43 the way that a son-in-law or a
11:45 daughter-in-law can produce estrangement
11:46 mental illness certainly in the parent
11:49 but also in the child the role of
11:51 divorce the effect on grandparents the
11:54 role of therapists as being agents of
11:56 estrangement um so that's kind of the
11:58 personal the way the personal began to
12:01 transform the professional in this case
12:04 really interesting um lived experience
12:05 there what would you say that you
12:08 learned uh through that Journey that you
12:10 yourself as a clinical psychologist
12:13 experienced as a father um that you wish
12:14 you'd known when you were going through
12:17 it earlier into that process perhaps
12:18 yeah I mean it's what what all the
12:20 strange parents say to me when they read
12:23 my book I wish I'd read your book sooner
12:26 and that is to to seek to understand and
12:29 be curious and be empathic and don't be
12:31 defensive even you're you're going to
12:33 feel misunderstood you're going to feel
12:35 hurt you're probably going to feel
12:36 unappreciated you're going to want to
12:38 talk your child out of their feelings
12:40 and all of that is counterproductive
12:42 it's just going to make your child feel
12:45 unseen unheard hurt like you don't
12:47 really care about them you're just
12:49 trying to prove yourself right I think
12:51 in general dads have a harder time with
12:53 this uh than mothers do which is pro
12:55 partly the reasons that that so many
12:57 dads are aranged versus uh mothers of
13:00 course divorce is also a big cause of
13:02 that um but I think that those are
13:05 really um those are really the key
13:07 elements and and really you know the
13:08 statement that I tell parents to make at
13:10 the beginning of their amends letters I
13:12 know you wouldn't do this unless you
13:13 felt like it was the healthiest thing
13:15 for you to do you know I've had a lot of
13:18 parents right back that their adult
13:20 children responded really well to that
13:21 because from the adult child's
13:23 perspective you know they don't really
13:24 want the parent to feel shamed or
13:27 criticized or humiliated or Bel belittle
13:29 in the way that the parent does but the
13:30 healthier one somebody who's really
13:33 troubled might but even underneath that
13:35 they really want the parent to
13:36 understand and do a better job in
13:37 reaching out to them and caring about
13:41 them so really helping the parent to uh
13:44 I mean I learned that being defensive
13:46 doesn't help trying to persuade my
13:48 daughter didn't help reminding her of
13:50 all the ways I was a good parent uh
13:52 didn't help trying to prove her wrong
13:54 all those things just make the other
13:56 person feel alienated and those are sort
13:58 of general principles that are true also
14:00 you know in marriage other family
14:01 relationships the more that we can just
14:03 empathize shut the hell up try to be
14:06 empathic try to take responsibility try
14:08 to find the Colonel if not the bushel of
14:11 truth and the person's uh complaints
14:14 about us uh the better we do but I think
14:16 that one of the reasons and this wasn't
14:18 true for my daughter but but one of the
14:20 reasons so many parents struggle today
14:23 is that what gets defined as abuse
14:25 trauma harm and neglect is really
14:28 generationally different so uh and there
14:31 was a stud by Nick Hassam out of the
14:33 he's an Australian psychologist who
14:34 developed the notion of concept creep
14:36 and Hassam found that in the past three
14:38 or four decades there's been an enormous
14:40 expansion over what gets labeled as
14:42 harmful abusive neglectful traumatizing
14:44 Behavior so so many adult children are
14:45 writing their parents saying you
14:48 emotionally abused me you traumatized me
14:50 you harmed me the parents are going what
14:51 I gave you a childhood I would have
14:53 killed for you know which again is not
14:57 the right thing to say but but from the
14:58 adult child's perspective they've been
15:00 raging in an environment where this is
15:02 what's getting labeled and diagnosed as
15:04 abusive Behavior whereas for a parent
15:05 none of that was considered or most of
15:08 it wasn't considered abusive so that
15:10 also can be really challenging for
15:12 parents and there I can tell parents to
15:13 say well it's clear that I had blind
15:16 spots that I didn't know that that felt
15:17 abusive to you but I'm glad you're
15:19 letting me know I'm open to working on
15:22 this either with you or in therapy uh
15:25 talking more about it Etc anything that
15:27 sounds defensive or is defensive is
15:29 going to be counterproductive is the
15:30 biggest message I've
15:33 got you know it's interesting because of
15:35 of all the things that you've mentioned
15:37 there in terms of contributing factors
15:40 to being estranged from your parent you
15:44 know it strikes me that fear of uh an
15:47 individual or individuals in the family
15:50 or even guilt as a part of the
15:52 conversation that you know maybe that's
15:55 how the the parent approaches it are
15:58 things that can also affect whether that
16:01 relationship ship can be repaired or not
16:04 so my question then is are there
16:08 circumstances uh excluding abuse where
16:13 maybe there is no solution for the
16:16 estrangement well and by solution well I
16:18 mean I can think of certainly many cases
16:21 of that one is if the there's mental ill
16:22 severe mental illness in the parent and
16:25 they just can't help but continue to to
16:27 traumatize the child the mental illness
16:29 or addictions in the adult child I mean
16:32 that may remediate over time but um but
16:34 that can certainly be an enormous
16:37 obstacle um I commonly see that a
16:39 troubled son-in-law or daughter-in-law
16:41 uh can tell the adult child choose them
16:43 or me you can't have both and the cost
16:46 to that son or daughter uh of defying
16:47 their son the son-in-law or
16:49 daughter-in-law is so high that they
16:51 just say you know that they're not going
16:53 to choose the parent because they just
16:54 can't live with the stress of their
16:57 partner being so mad and angry at them
16:59 all the time uh I think therapists are
17:01 doing a lot of damage not all therapists
17:03 clearly uh but I think there's a lot of
17:04 untrained therapists who were assuming
17:08 that every problem with adulthood has an
17:10 arra has a traumatizing parent in the
17:13 past and so they are telling the the
17:15 adult child that it's better for them to
17:16 not be with a parent that they're
17:18 continuing going to continue to expose
17:20 themselves I sometimes see letters where
17:22 they you know they say well your parents
17:24 are narcissist and narcissist can't
17:26 change and the parent actually isn't a
17:29 narcissist so um I think situations are
17:34 very very difficult to change um divorce
17:35 isn't necessarily an impossible one to
17:38 change but in my own research 70% of the
17:40 parents who contacted me had a divorce
17:43 from the biological parent so there's a
17:46 lot of ways that divorce can make things
17:48 much harder to heal particularly with
17:49 fathers and daughters they're the
17:51 they're the most at risk of all the
17:54 diets Dr Coleman speaking of research I
17:56 wonder if you could take us through the
17:59 process that you undertook to write
18:00 rules of
18:02 estrangement I'm sure what was a
18:04 question what is the process that you
18:06 undertook to write your
18:09 book um well I did the study of 1600
18:12 parents and looked at various things
18:14 like um whether the parent was married
18:15 quality of them the marriage whether it
18:17 child had mental illness paren had
18:18 mental illness a whole bunch of
18:21 different factors so um the book was
18:24 largely though written by my clinical
18:25 experience and exposure to really
18:27 literally thousands of parents whether
18:30 it's through my webinar or my q&as or my
18:32 private practice and just kind of
18:35 assimilating the different content areas
18:38 that um would cause somebody to be a
18:40 strange kind of what do I see the most
18:42 what does the research show that kind of
18:45 thing do you expect to continue to see
18:48 an uptick in this space in terms of uh
18:50 you know ongoing growth in terms of
18:52 where we are as a society where
18:55 relationships are where Communications
18:57 within families is these days despite
19:00 having more Comm Communications methods
19:02 than ever in the history of the world is
19:03 this something that we're going to
19:06 continue to see potentially increase or
19:08 is the pendulum gonna swing the other
19:11 way again well it is a paradox as you
19:13 say that that on the one hand we've got
19:15 better Communications than ever and in
19:17 some ways you know on the one hand I
19:18 want to say worse family relationships
19:20 than ever but actually that's not that's
19:22 not that's a mischaracterization I mean
19:25 you know estrangement is on the rise and
19:28 it's also a significant factor but but
19:31 other research shows that it's not in
19:33 contradiction it's just a different
19:35 observation that the majority of parents
19:36 raising adult children today are
19:38 actually in a lot of contact with them
19:40 and the survey showed that the majority
19:42 of parents feel like they're closer to
19:44 their adult children than they felt to
19:46 their own parents at a similar age so
19:48 one ways to think about it is that the
19:49 kind of much more close
19:52 psychological uh parenting intensive
19:53 environment that we've been doing over
19:55 the past four or five decades has
19:58 largely produced positive relationships
20:00 uh between parents and adult children
20:01 well they're actually in much more
20:03 contact than they were in Prior
20:05 Generations but the downside to that is
20:07 that for some adult children they get
20:09 too much of the parents so you know a
20:11 certain percentage of a strange what's
20:13 actually happen because the adult child
20:14 doesn't know any other way to feel
20:16 separate from the parent you know and
20:19 cell phones exacerbate that also that
20:20 you know you can't sort of have that
20:22 organic evolution away from your parents
20:24 the way we could say in my generation
20:26 pre cell phones where you know I could
20:28 go for two weeks without talking to my
20:29 parents unless I wanted to make a
20:32 collect call back from San Francisco to
20:34 Dayton you know and it was just it was
20:35 easier to be out of touch without it
20:37 meaning something whereas now a parent
20:39 can send their child a text or an email
20:41 and in two days like you haven't
20:43 responded to my email or my text are you
20:45 mad at me you I just think that it makes
20:47 the environment much more crowded and so
20:49 on the positive yes if things are going
20:51 well it's great you can exchange
20:53 pictures of your grandchildren and talk
20:57 about things and send funny texts Etc uh
20:59 but if it's not going well then all that
21:01 becomes more fra and texts and emails or
21:03 can be grossly
21:06 misunderstood um and just the way that
21:09 this therapeutic narratives have really
21:10 become the dominant Narrative of our
21:13 culture also just puts more parents at
21:16 risk because adult children have kind of
21:17 they're just much better armed from
21:18 their therapy and the therapeutic
21:20 culture to challenge their parents with
21:22 their parenting and parents haven't yet
21:24 caught up with the right way to
21:26 communicate about all of that so I think
21:29 all of that really U matters in these
21:31 discussions when we talk about the word
21:34 estrangement and we think about it in
21:37 terms of timelines can you give us some
21:39 perspective in terms of what are we
21:42 looking at at at what point is a
21:45 relationship considered a strange is it
21:47 days months weeks
21:51 years yeah I mean I think that it's um
21:53 um I don't think if there's any
21:57 particular agreement about that um but I
21:59 think that you know typically
22:01 you know if somebody writes their parent
22:03 a no contact letter or say I want you
22:04 out of my life or it's not good for my
22:06 mental health to have you in my life
22:08 that parent should consider themselves
22:10 reasonably to be aranged now sometimes
22:12 parents are on the estrangement track
22:15 before they even know it and the adult
22:16 child is sending all kinds of warning
22:18 flares up saying look if you don't
22:20 change this Behavior you don't stop
22:22 criticizing my parenting or if you don't
22:23 take more responsibility for the ways
22:25 that I felt hurt by you as a child I'm
22:27 not going to want to have a relationship
22:28 with you I mean that's a pre
22:30 estrangement environment I always told
22:32 parents to take that very very seriously
22:33 because your kids's giving you an
22:36 opportunity to correct them uh but some
22:38 parents just don't see the gravity of it
22:40 or there have been messages that the
22:41 parents not seeing or the adult child's
22:44 really not communicating communicating
22:47 it until suddenly they're out of contact
22:50 the parents are very confused about it
22:52 the research I this is a study done out
22:53 of oh highest state by Ren Resnik who
22:56 found that 26% of dads are estranged
22:58 from from their parents she found that
23:00 the majority of arangements occur in the
23:04 20s um and she found that with mothers
23:08 roughly 80% resolve and closer to 70%
23:11 resolved uh by fathers average length of
23:14 time is between two to three years and
23:15 that's I mean that squares with what I
23:18 see in my clinical practice as
23:20 well Dr Coleman what would you like
23:22 readers of rules of estrangement to take
23:23 away from your
23:26 book um I think that there there are
23:29 methods to because most of the time it's
23:30 it's parents who are reading the book of
23:32 I've had a lot of adult children read it
23:33 and I've had a lot of them send it to
23:36 their parents as well so I think the
23:39 main message is a have compassion for
23:41 yourself for the mistakes that you made
23:44 as a parent but B have compassion for
23:45 your adult child that even if you felt
23:47 like you did a reasonably good job or
23:49 objectively did a good job that your
23:51 adult child may have a very different
23:53 perspective about what they needed or
23:54 wanted from you and the more that you
23:57 can Embrace that and take responsibility
24:00 and show empathy in compassion and not
24:02 be defensive the better the chances
24:05 there are for
24:07 reconciliation Dr Joshua Coleman
24:09 clinical psychologist author of rules of
24:11 estrangement really appreciate your time
24:13 and your perspective today thank you so
24:15 much yeah thanks for having me it was a pleasure
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