Why Estrangement Reconciliation Is Often Within Reach

In a recent post here, my colleague Peg Streep wrote that parent-adult child reconciliation is often impossible. There is much that Peg and I agree upon — for example, that reconciliation is often a marathon, not a sprint, and that parents who aren’t open to self-examination, writing letters of amends, or empathizing with the child’s perspective or request for boundaries doom themselves to continued estrangement.

In addition, denying an adult child’s narrative about the parent or their childhoods will not invite a desire to reconcile. Only a willingness to empathize and find the kernel, if not a bushel, of truth will do.

However, there are many paths to estrangement beyond parental abuse or dysfunction — for example, when an adult child marries someone troubled who says, “Choose me or them; you can’t have both," an act some refer to as “intimate terrorism.”

While the mental illness or addiction of the parent may cause an estrangement, so too may the mental illness or addiction of the now-adult child. And no, not all mental illness stems from traumas at the hands of parents, even though many do.

Also, therapists appear to increasingly support the idea of estrangement even from parents who are willing to make amends, empathize, and change. I commonly see adult children citing the authority of their therapists that the parent is a narcissist, borderline, or sociopath, when they are in reality nothing of the kind. Here, too, endorsing the idea that the parent is beyond redemption, toxic, and not worth engaging prolongs estrangements from parents who may be far more workable than their therapist leads them to believe. I know this, because I have many such families in my own practice.

Finally, some adult children need to estrange themselves because they don’t know any other way to feel separate from overly involved, overly caring parents. I have heard more than one adult daughter in my practice say, “I need to have some time away to just get my mother’s voice out of my head!” However sympathetic we may be to that desire, though, we do a disservice to both parent and child to act like estrangement is the only way to achieve that aspiration.

In sum, there are many pathways to estrangement and its continuation beyond hurtful, unrepentant therapists.