The complexity of grief is difficult to describe or understand, especially when it’s a family member one has been estranged from.
We have every right to feel sad, angry, resentful, or even guilty, whether the estrangement was our choice or not.
When we lose those we were distanced from, the pain is still there. Yet, many do not understand, so it can feel isolating.
Grieving the loss of a parent from whom you were estranged is a very difficult experience. You have the grief that comes from loss and the permanence of death. Death is a very traumatic experience, and that grief can never be replicated or compared. However, the grief that follows when someone has been estranged from a family member or loved one can sometimes feel worse. It is filled with guilt, shame, and a sense of loss—or of grieving what wasn’t there.
With estrangement, there is so much unknown: Some people might struggle with guilt or anger, having wanted a reconciliation, yet they are unable because it is too late. This brings the loss of what could have—and should have— been, coupled with the knowledge of what is unattainable. Many others might struggle with resentment. One client put it perfectly: “I don’t even have the luxury of grieving the loss of my dad because, instead, I’m grieving the loss of who my dad was—and our lack of a healthy relationship.” My client echoed the feelings and sentiments that many others, myself included, have felt.
The questions and judgments from others make it all the more difficult for survivors of estrangement. There are the insensitive and unaware questions or comments such as “But they’re your family; you should have talked to them” or guilt trips such as “Why are you sad? You didn’t talk to them anyway.” To someone who has never been estranged, it’s impossible to understand. To them, it might just seem like a petty argument or disagreement, and they might automatically blame the survivor for their feelings of grief.
Many estrangements are due to traumas, conflict within the family, mental illness, abuse, or other elements that make the relationship difficult—or impossible—to navigate. Too many well-meaning friends will tell you to “just move on,” not knowing that it’s not that simple. Comments like this place the blame for the estrangement on an already vulnerable and often traumatized individual.
Here are five steps to help you navigate the grief experience of losing a parent from whom you were estranged:
Validate and honor your feelings. You have every right to feel sad, angry, resentful, or even guilty. You do not owe anyone an explanation for these feelings, nor do you need permission to feel them. Survivors of family estrangement are often blamed for the estrangement, whether it was your choice or not, and are often made to feel that their feelings aren’t valid with comments such as “Well, you didn’t talk anyway, so it can’t be that hard.”
Negative feelings do not mean you need to act differently. Many survivors feel that negative feelings, specifically guilt, mean we were wrong and that the estrangement was our “fault,” or that there was something we should have done differently. This is not only unfair, but it is also unrealistic. Allow yourself to acknowledge these feelings, but try not to let them gaslight you into thinking your experiences didn’t happen.
Seek support from those who understand. During your grieving process, choose to spend time with those who validate you and your feelings. Whether they are friends, family, support groups, or others who understand, you need people in your corner who are not going to challenge your feelings or make you feel like you have to “prove” your grief, which can make you feel misunderstood and uncomfortable.
Remember that grief is like riding a wave. You will have good days, or even good weeks, when you think you’re all done grieving, only to hear a familiar song or smell a nostalgic smell that brings you right back. Know that this is normal and that it is part of the process.
Seek professional support if needed. Do not be afraid to seek professional support from a therapist. Navigating grief is extremely difficult, especially if there was any sort of dysfunction in the family relationship. Most of my clients have histories of traumatic or dysfunctional families, and the death of a parent or family member does not take that dysfunction away. They still have the unhealthy messages and unhealed traumas to unpack and work through—even more with the addition of grief.
Why families need to pay more attention….. by Peg Streep
Perhaps, given the biblical story of Cain and Abel, it shouldn’t have come as a big surprise but in interviews for my forthcoming book on verbal abuse, I was struck by how many respondents reported being verbally abused by a sibling in their families of origin. In some cases, the abuse was an echo of parental verbal abuse, and the abuser was joining in both to keep him or herself safe from becoming the target and to establish loyalty to the abusive parent. This is especially true in a family where a mother or father is high in narcissistic traits, hypercritical, controlling, or highly combative. In these families, siblings are frequently pitted against each other. That was true for “Joe,” now 42:
“My father was a tyrant; there was a right way of doing things, which was his way, and a wrong way, and woe to the son who didn’t do it his way. My mother was his accomplice, using shaming to get us to stay in line, and praising the merits of ‘sibling rivalry.’ My brother is five years older and he bullied me to show my dad how strong he was. Believe it or not, I thought this was how all brothers were until I started to notice that my friends had brothers who were actually friends. I have as little to do with my parents and brother as possible and I have worked hard at making sure my own boys are never compared to each other or encouraged to belittle each other.”
This story focuses on a son’s experience but it happens between sisters as well, especially when a mother or father plays favourites or uses the achievements of one daughter to belittle or browbeat another, and the favoured daughter becomes verbally abusive to her sibling as well.
How the term “sibling rivalry” blinds us to sibling abuse
KEY POINTS
The term “sibling rivalry” can mislead parents, leading them to ignore sibling abuse.
Healthy competition requires balance of power between siblings. Parents can contribute by not playing favorites or using competion to criticize.
Physical aggression is strikingly common between and among siblings. Surprisingly, it can teach valuable skills when it is mutual or dyadic.
Sibling abuse is about power. It is always one-sided.
Source: Obie Fernandez/Unsplash
Perhaps, given the biblical story of Cain and Abel, it shouldn’t have come as a big surprise but in interviews for my forthcoming book on verbal abuse, I was struck by how many respondents reported being verbally abused by a sibling in their families of origin. In some cases, the abuse was an echo of parental verbal abuse, and the abuser was joining in both to keep him or herself safe from becoming the target and to establish loyalty to the abusive parent. This is especially true in a family where a mother or father is high in narcissistic traits, hypercritical, controlling, or highly combative. In these families, siblings are frequently pitted against each other. That was true for “Joe,” now 42:
“My father was a tyrant; there was a right way of doing things, which was his way, and a wrong way, and woe to the son who didn’t do it his way. My mother was his accomplice, using shaming to get us to stay in line, and praising the merits of ‘sibling rivalry.’ My brother is five years older and he bullied me to show my dad how strong he was. Believe it or not, I thought this was how all brothers were until I started to notice that my friends had brothers who were actually friends. I have as little to do with my parents and brother as possible and I have worked hard at making sure my own boys are never compared to each other or encouraged to belittle each other.”
This story focuses on a son’s experience but it happens between sisters as well, especially when a mother or father plays favorites or uses the achievements of one daughter to belittle or browbeat another, and the favored daughter becomes verbally abusive to her sibling as well.
How the term “sibling rivalry” blinds us to sibling abuse
But, sometimes, a sibling’s verbal abuse isn’t an echo but an act of individual aggression, and it’s sad that parents don’t always recognize it as such and write it off as a function of “sibling rivalry” — a supposedly a “normal” occurrence in families with more than one child.
In his 2012 book Sibling Aggression, Jonathan Caspi noted that this normalization isn’t just limited to laypeople but to professionals as well. He writes that despite a growing body of research which shows otherwise, “the mistaken belief that sibling violence is not harmful normalizes it. Statements such as ‘My brother beat on me and I am fine’ and ‘Boys will be boys’ minimize honest appraisals of possible effects and validate its continued use.” He notes that practitioners too grew up with the same social context—thinking that sibling aggression is normal—and so their judgments about family dynamics are often clouded by their own internalized views. He surmises that this point of view limits research as well. He uses sibling aggression as an umbrella term which encompasses four categories which he arranges in order of effect, going from most mild to severe; in order, they are competition,conflict,violence, and abuse.
Understanding competition between siblings
Healthy competition can motivate and challenge siblings to develop their skills and talents. Famous siblings in sports — the Williams sisters or the Manning brothers — immediately come to mind. But when the aim of the competition is to highlight one sibling’s flaws or inadequacies, competition moves from being inspirational to being hurtful and damaging. (Think about the Jackson Five, their siblings, and their abusive father, for example.) Caspi notes that most of the time, one sibling’s advanced skills don’t damage another’s self-esteem.
Surveying conflict in sibling relationships
Every family experiences some amount of conflict and, as Caspi notes, constructive sibling conflict promotes social and emotional competence, teaches problem-solving, and helps a child hone his or her emotional regulation. My own thought is that, for this to happen, parents have to have modeled and implemented cooperative ways of dealing with disagreements and conflict. In households where verbal abuse is the default, this isn’t going to happen.
But even in a household where constructive behaviour has been modelled, it’s clear that constant negative conflict between siblings can alter the dynamics of a family as well as the sibling relationship.
Is roughhousing violence between siblings?
Caspi notes that the terms sibling violence and sibling abuse are often used interchangeably because they both entail physical and verbal acts that intend to do harm. However, he distinguishes violence from abuse. He writes: “Violence reflects mutual or bidirectional aggression in which both siblings aim to harm each other in a concert of perceived egalitarian relationship.” Sibling physical violence — hitting, biting, pinching, kicking — is astonishingly prevalent; some researchers’ estimates are as high as 96 percent of all families while others put it at 80 percent. But, as Caspi points out, physical violence is very difficult to distinguish from animated roughhousing or even rough-and-tumble play so these numbers may be greatly inflated because of parental confusion about what’s “normal” between siblings and what’s not. Most importantly, research supports Caspi’s contention that this kind of mutual sibling violence doesn’t damage self-esteem.
Some readers will share my initial confusion, reading that this “even-steven” and mutual mano a mano type of violence isn’t necessarily harmful or damaging, but that is what research shows. Let’s consider rough-and-tumble play, for example. Joseph L. Flanders, Vanessa Leo, and their colleagues cite research showing that physically aggressive behaviors are observable as early as 18 months but begin to taper off in most children by age two or three; their study looked at father-child rough-and-tumble play (RTP) to determine whether a father’s behavior influenced a higher incidence of continuing physical aggression in children. It’s widely recognized that fathers play with children differently than mothers do, regardless of gender, and that kids prefer Dad’s style of play over Mom’s.
KEY POINTS
The term “sibling rivalry” can mislead parents, leading them to ignore sibling abuse.
Healthy competition requires balance of power between siblings. Parents can contribute by not playing favorites or using competion to criticize.
Physical aggression is strikingly common between and among siblings. Surprisingly, it can teach valuable skills when it is mutual or dyadic.
Sibling abuse is about power. It is always one-sided.
Source: Obie Fernandez/Unsplash
Perhaps, given the biblical story of Cain and Abel, it shouldn’t have come as a big surprise but in interviews for my forthcoming book on verbal abuse, I was struck by how many respondents reported being verbally abused by a sibling in their families of origin. In some cases, the abuse was an echo of parental verbal abuse, and the abuser was joining in both to keep him or herself safe from becoming the target and to establish loyalty to the abusive parent. This is especially true in a family where a mother or father is high in narcissistic traits, hypercritical, controlling, or highly combative. In these families, siblings are frequently pitted against each other. That was true for “Joe,” now 42:
“My father was a tyrant; there was a right way of doing things, which was his way, and a wrong way, and woe to the son who didn’t do it his way. My mother was his accomplice, using shaming to get us to stay in line, and praising the merits of ‘sibling rivalry.’ My brother is five years older and he bullied me to show my dad how strong he was. Believe it or not, I thought this was how all brothers were until I started to notice that my friends had brothers who were actually friends. I have as little to do with my parents and brother as possible and I have worked hard at making sure my own boys are never compared to each other or encouraged to belittle each other.”
This story focuses on a son’s experience but it happens between sisters as well, especially when a mother or father plays favorites or uses the achievements of one daughter to belittle or browbeat another, and the favored daughter becomes verbally abusive to her sibling as well.
How the term “sibling rivalry” blinds us to sibling abuse
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But, sometimes, a sibling’s verbal abuse isn’t an echo but an act of individual aggression, and it’s sad that parents don’t always recognize it as such and write it off as a function of “sibling rivalry” — a supposedly a “normal” occurrence in families with more than one child.
In his 2012 book Sibling Aggression, Jonathan Caspi noted that this normalization isn’t just limited to laypeople but to professionals as well. He writes that despite a growing body of research which shows otherwise, “the mistaken belief that sibling violence is not harmful normalizes it. Statements such as ‘My brother beat on me and I am fine’ and ‘Boys will be boys’ minimize honest appraisals of possible effects and validate its continued use.” He notes that practitioners too grew up with the same social context—thinking that sibling aggression is normal—and so their judgments about family dynamics are often clouded by their own internalized views. He surmises that this point of view limits research as well. He uses sibling aggression as an umbrella term which encompasses four categories which he arranges in order of effect, going from most mild to severe; in order, they are competition,conflict,violence, and abuse.
Understanding competition between siblings
Healthy competition can motivate and challenge siblings to develop their skills and talents. Famous siblings in sports — the Williams sisters or the Manning brothers — immediately come to mind. But when the aim of the competition is to highlight one sibling’s flaws or inadequacies, competition moves from being inspirational to being hurtful and damaging. (Think about the Jackson Five, their siblings, and their abusive father, for example.) Caspi notes that most of the time, one sibling’s advanced skills don’t damage another’s self-esteem.
Surveying conflict in sibling relationships
Every family experiences some amount of conflict and, as Caspi notes, constructive sibling conflict promotes social and emotional competence, teaches problem-solving, and helps a child hone his or her emotional regulation. My own thought is that, for this to happen, parents have to have modeled and implemented cooperative ways of dealing with disagreements and conflict. In households where verbal abuse is the default, this isn’t going to happen.
But even in a household where constructive behavior has been modeled, it’s clear that constant negative conflict between siblings can alter the dynamics of a family as well as the sibling relationship.
Is roughhousing violence between siblings?
Caspi notes that the terms sibling violence and sibling abuse are often used interchangeably because they both entail physical and verbal acts that intend to do harm. However, he distinguishes violence from abuse. He writes: “Violence reflects mutual or bidirectional aggression in which both siblings aim to harm each other in a concert of perceived egalitarian relationship.” Sibling physical violence — hitting, biting, pinching, kicking — is astonishingly prevalent; some researchers’ estimates are as high as 96 percent of all families while others put it at 80 percent. But, as Caspi points out, physical violence is very difficult to distinguish from animated roughhousing or even rough-and-tumble play so these numbers may be greatly inflated because of parental confusion about what’s “normal” between siblings and what’s not. Most importantly, research supports Caspi’s contention that this kind of mutual sibling violence doesn’t damage self-esteem.
Some readers will share my initial confusion, reading that this “even-steven” and mutual mano a mano type of violence isn’t necessarily harmful or damaging, but that is what research shows. Let’s consider rough-and-tumble play, for example. Joseph L. Flanders, Vanessa Leo, and their colleagues cite research showing that physically aggressive behaviors are observable as early as 18 months but begin to taper off in most children by age two or three; their study looked at father-child rough-and-tumble play (RTP) to determine whether a father’s behavior influenced a higher incidence of continuing physical aggression in children. It’s widely recognized that fathers play with children differently than mothers do, regardless of gender, and that kids prefer Dad’s style of play over Mom’s.
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RTP is characterized by aggressive behaviours such as “wrestling, grappling, jumping, and chasing in a play context.” Fathers often socialize both sons and daughters through this kind of physical play which is associated positively with emotional regulation, self-control, reading emotional cues, and even sensitivity to others. These are important skills for self-development and permit children to negotiate social rules in peer settings with more ease. What Flanders and his team found was that when fathers controlled and set limits during RTP, their children demonstrated lower levels of physical aggression in daily life; in contrast, the children of fathers who didn’t set limits and shucked off dominance were more likely to be more physically aggressive in later life.
So mutual or bi-directional physical aggression actually has its benefits, as counterintuitive as that may seem.
When it’s not mutual, it’s abuse
The distinction that Caspi makes between violence and abuse largely rests on power; if he considers the first to be “bidirectional” or “mutual,” then sibling abuse is “unidirectional hostility where one sibling seeks to overpower the other via a reign of terror and intimidation, and reflects an asymmetrical power arrangement.” The abusive sibling not only wants to humiliate and render the other powerless but he or she is intent on aggrandizing him or herself through the act. Caspi notes four kinds of sibling abuse—physical, sexual, psychological or verbal, and relational—but verbal abuse is by far the most prevalent. Among siblings, verbal abuse includes insults, name-calling, and threats to property. Again, because siblings do chivy for attention in the household, it may be difficult for the parents to distinguish between chivying, an expression of frustration, and verbal abuse which is about dominance.
Beyond sibling rivalry
It’s clear that we need to retire the term. If you’re an adult who experienced sibling abuse but have rationalized or downplayed it, now’s the time to stop and reflect on its effects. Speak out. You may get pushback because families guard their narratives fiercely but it’s time you stepped out of the role assigned you, whether that’s the “sensitive one” or “the wuss.”
If you’re a parent of siblings, pay close attention to not just your behaviours but theirs. Step in if necessary.
(This person says it how it is, it may be ‘tough talking’ here, but they are right!)
(Image- Psychmechanics)
I thought I’d share this. Many of us deal with these types of not-quite-right adult children.
Narcissistic adult children demand you do what they want, try to control you, push every boundary, throw temper tantrums, blackmail you by withholding their love or your grandchildren, try to bribe you with sweetness and affection when they want something, and blame their behaviour on you.
Every time you give them what they want, they demand something else. They say your job is to make them happy. They try to stimulate your guilt and shame for every sin they say you committed when they were kids.
What a nasty and unending list. If you were an average parent or better (you didn’t need to be perfect according to them), don’t accept blame and guilt. You don’t deserve to be used and abused. You don’t owe them anything anymore. Probably, your only big mistake was giving in to them too much, hoping they’d wake up one day straightened out and loving like they were when they were infants. Don’t hold your breath waiting for that miracle.
Selfish, narcissistic, manipulative bullies misinterpret your kindness and compassion as weakness and an invitation to demand more. They think they’re entitled to whatever they want. They always have reasons, excuses and justifications for being obnoxious. They claim their problems and rotten lives are all your fault. Their justifications will last forever.
I’ve never seen parents be able to purchase respect and civility from these narcissistic adult children. There’s no hope down that path. Stop meddling and enabling them. These adult children will remain predators as long as you feed them.
The only path with hope is to stop giving them anything, to demand civil behavior or to cut off contact. Don’t debate or argue about who’s right. Tell them you know they’re strong enough to make wonderful lives for themselves. Be full of joy when you protect yourself and your future because, really, you are taking your life back. Now you can enjoy the rest of your life. You can surround yourself with people who respect and admire you, with people who are fun to be with.
Of course it’s hard and there are usually many complications. But if you continue to feed to them while they rip your heart out, you’ll be bled dry. Your life will shrivel up like a prune.
If your children are still kids, you have a chance to stop the patterns now. With a big smile, teach them that they won’t always get what they want, that they can’t always beat you into submission or bribe you into giving in. And that there are consequences for throwing temper tantrums. And they’re not destroyed when they don’t always get everything they want. And nothing is for free.
Develop the strength, courage, will and determination to be and to act your best resolutely, diligently and effectively.
Develop a plan and master the skills necessary to create the life your spirit has always hungered for.
Suicidal feelings can affect anyone, of any age, gender or background, at any time.
If you are feeling suicidal it is likely that you have felt increasingly hopeless and worthless for some time. You may not know what has caused you to feel this way but it is often a combination of factors.
Common causes of suicidal feelings
Struggling to cope with certain difficulties in your life can cause you to feel suicidal. These difficulties may include:
If you are unsure of why you feel suicidal, you may find it even harder to believe that there could be a solution. But whatever the reason, there is support available to help you cope and overcome these feelings.
Can medication cause suicidal feelings?
Some medications, such as antidepressants, can cause some people to experience suicidal feelings. This side effect is often associated with a type of antidepressant called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). But all antidepressants have this as a possible risk.
Some research shows that young people under the age of 25 are more likely to experience suicidal feelings when taking these medications.
If you experience suicidal feelings while taking psychiatric medication, you should talk to your GP as soon as possible about this.
Feeling suicidal
Suicide is the act of intentionally taking your own life.
Suicidal feelings can mean having abstract thoughts about ending your life or feeling that people would be better off without you. Or it can mean thinking about methods of suicide or making clear plans to take your own life.
If you are feeling suicidal, you might be scared or confused by these feelings. You may find the feelings overwhelming.
But you are not alone. Many people think about suicide at some point in their lifetime.
What does it feel like to be suicidal?
Different people have different experiences of suicidal feelings. You might feel unable to cope with the difficult feelings you are experiencing. You may feel less like you want to die and more like you cannot go on living the life you have.
These feelings may build over time or might change from moment to moment. And it’s common to not understand why you feel this way.
How you might think or feel
hopeless, like there is no point in living
tearful and overwhelmed by negative thoughts
unbearable pain that you can’t imagine ending
useless, not wanted or not needed by others
desperate, as if you have no other choice
like everyone would be better off without you
cut off from your body or physically numb
fascinated by death.
What you may experience
poor sleep, including waking up earlier than you want to
a change in appetite, weight gain or loss
no desire to take care of yourself, for example neglecting your physical appearance
How long suicidal feelings last is different for everyone. It is common to feel as if you’ll never be happy or hopeful again.
But with treatment and support, including self-care, the majority of people who have felt suicidal go on to live fulfilling lives.
The earlier you let someone know how you’re feeling, the quicker you’ll be able to get support to overcome these feelings. But it can feel difficult to open up to people.
You may want others to understand what you’re going through, but you might feel:
unable to tell someone
unsure of who to tell
concerned that they won’t understand
fearful of being judged
worried you’ll upset them.
If you feel like this, you might find it helpful to show our pages on supporting someone else with suicidal feelings to someone you trust. This can be a good way of starting the conversation and can give them suggestions of how they can help you.
It’s important to remember that you deserve support, you are not alone and there is support out there.
Why Festive Gatherings can be so Toxic by David Robson
Christmas is a time of love, warmth – and often, huge family arguments. Here’s how to decode the primal forces that can cause painful rows, and enjoy a more peaceful season.
“A happy family,” so the saying goes, “is but an earlier heaven” – which must surely make an unhappy family a living hell.
As we enter the holiday season, many of us will be steeling ourselves for potential tension and argument. Whether it’s quiet disapproval over the quality of the cooking, a simmering resentment over alleged favouritism, or a fierce argument about our political and social values, family gatherings often bring out the worst in us. That’s if we choose to see our families at all – for many, there is no choice but to spend the holidays apart.
While family strife may be a source of entertainment in dramas like Succession, the real-life consequences are no joke.
“A really common consequence of estrangement is feeling isolated,” in addition to feelings of shame and being judged, says Lucy Blake, a developmental psychologist at the University of the West of England and author of the forthcoming book No Family Is Perfect: A Guide to Embracing the Messy Reality.
There is no easy cure to heal fractured relationships. But a better understanding of our family dynamics can help prepare us for the inevitable flashpoints and reveal ways to cope with the stress.
People are often reluctant to talk about unhappy gatherings and family estrangement – which can make those of us who experience it feel like we are somehow unusual. We may even assume that there is something wrong with us to have such poor relations. Social media networks can contribute to our sense of isolation, says Blake. “We often see a ‘performance’ of family, which can then make you feel more and more alone.” Few people are going to post a picture of a bust-up – you’re much more likely to see the gurning faces before a meal than the tears after a row.
Data from anonymous surveys suggests that fractious family relationships are astonishingly common, however. Blake points to one study, from the US, that questioned 633 middle-aged adults about their relationships with their own parents and their own children. In almost a third of the relationships studied, there was little ongoing contact, though most of these people felt some emotional ties – reporting both good and bad feelings about their kin. Of those who were more regularly in touch, many considered their relationships “conflicted” or “ambivalent”. Only 28% of the parent-child ties were engaged and harmonious.
Another paper, published earlier this year, examined data from a huge longitudinal study in Germany to try to identify the prevalence of estrangement. The researchers considered a parent and child to be estranged if they either had no contact, or if they had less-than-monthly contact combined with low emotional closeness. According to these criteria, around 20% of people experienced estrangement from their fathers, and 9% experienced estrangement from their mothers.
Not all clashes lead to such deep rifts, but even mild family rows can be very wounding – and tend to share some common causes.
A shared history
While any relationship has the potential for tension, family arguments often arise from clashing interpretations of the past, which even the slightest off-hand comment can then bring to the fore. And unlike friendships outside the clan, the emotional stakes are extraordinarily high.
“In families, there’s an almost primal sense that my most important loyalties are being challenged – that my love is being challenged,” says Terri Apter, a psychologist based in the UK and the author of numerous books about strained familial relationships, including Difficult Mothers and The Sister Knot. “There’s always the threat of a loss of status in the family, and a loss of connection.”
Even mild family rows can cause damage to relationships – and sometimes the effects can be longlasting (Credit: Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images)
The triggers of those frustrations, and the ways they are expressed, will of course depend on your relative positions within the family tree. A parent may still believe that they have the authority to give guidance to an adult child – whether it’s about their appearance, career decisions, or romantic relationships. Their well-meaning comments may, however, remind their child of constant unfair criticisms from their adolescence. Among siblings, meanwhile, there may have been rivalries for who gets the most attention from the parents, or who feels most dominant. A grating comment from a big brother may give you the impression that he still thinks he knows everything, or your little sister’s bad mood may be a sign that she is “acting up” to be in the spotlight.
If you were only experiencing these events in isolation, you might see them quite differently. Your brother’s advice – in itself – may be a little irritating, but you could see that it was well-intentioned. Perhaps you might believe that your sister’s tantrum is a one-off and a sign of a bad day. With your family history, however, the slightest reminder of a previous resentment may lead you to feel like you are stuck in an unrelenting Groundhog Day, where past crimes are repeating in an endless loop.
“It doesn’t take a lot, in the present, to reawaken patterns that felt uncomfortable in the past,” says Apter. “And the fact that you don’t particularly like your own responses to the behaviour can compound the discomfort and tension.”
Clashing family cultures
Interacting with in-laws presents its own set of challenges, Apter says – since one family’s rules of behaviour can seem alien to another. Certain actions – such as who volunteers to do the dishes, or how you address the different relatives – can be taken for granted, and what passes as a friendly joke in one household may seem like an insult in another.
In some ways, stepping into another family is like learning to live in a new country; it’s going to take time to translate their behaviours and ways of expressing themselves into a language you can understand. As a result, simple gestures can be lost in translation, leading to conflicts that may escalate over time.
If the inevitable friction leads you or the in-laws to take offence, and your partner doesn’t take your side, it only adds to the hurt. It may be that, having lived the family script for so long, your partner simply cannot see your point of view, or that – because of the accepted roles within the family – they feel unable to intervene, but that doesn’t make it any easier to bear. You may feel completely abandoned in this unfamiliar territory. “Betrayal is often not too harsh a word, in these circumstances,” says Apter.
Apter emphasises that many disagreements are often unspoken. “Sometimes you feel silenced. And that leads to a sense of great discomfort and discontent – that you can’t be yourself or be spontaneous.”
Great expectations?
It may take a miracle to resolve all your family tensions this Christmas, but Apter suggests some steps to ease relations.
One positive move could be to avoid alcohol. “People sometimes drink a lot in the hope that that will make them better able to tolerate the tensions,” says Apter. “But it often makes them less able to moderate their irritation and to put it in context.”
You might also try to shift your expectations of the event. In many cases, our fear of tension, and our desire for the “perfect” day, can itself heighten our stress levels, which then makes arguments more likely.
“You have what psychologists would call high arousal, in which you’re hyper vigilant for certain dangers,” Apter explains. “And so the pressure for it to be a ‘good’ event can contribute to it being a very bad event.”
For this reason, it may be healthier to accept that some disagreement is inevitable, but that it needn’t “ruin” the event. “If you can get to that point where you can mend an argument easily, then that’s very helpful,” says Apter.
As part of this more accepting attitude, you could try to be more compassionate to yourself when you do feel irritated or upset, and make sure that you give yourself the necessary space for self-care. “You might recognise that you’ve got to have private time, maybe in another area in the house or outside the home, where you can breathe, and get back your sense of self,” says Apter.
Learning to adopt that mindset may be especially important this year, as many families around the world are reuniting after more than a year of pandemic-induced lockdowns and forced separation. “Expectations may be even higher because we missed Christmas last year, and there may be a little loss of memory for how uncomfortable it can be,” Apter says.
Ultimately, there is no perfect family, and there will be no perfect Christmas – or Diwali, Chanukah, Chinese New Year, or any other festive get-together. But a recognition of our own and each other’s flaws, and the potential for discord, may – ironically – help us all to have a more relaxed celebration.
Dealing with the pain of estrangement can be difficult at the best of times, let alone when it’s Christmas and the absence of family may be more noticeable. After a difficult year of restrictions, hearing about the ‘Christmas bubbles’ some families are forming may also add to the feeling of loss that estrangement can bring, so we asked gransnetters for their tips and advice on how to cope with estrangement at Christmas time.
Seven ways to cope with family estrangement at Christmas
Focus on yourself and what you want to do
“On Christmas Day I got up early, had several cups of tea, fed the dogs and then wrapped up warm and took them for a long, slow walk. We got back home, I made a hot drink, put the fire on and cuddled up with the dogs until we’d all thawed out.
My Christmas dinner was egg and chips with brown bread and butter and then I curled up with the dogs and watched three Star Wars films, one after the other. It was wonderful! I went to bed happy, relaxed and ready for whatever was coming next. Please don’t think of Christmas Day alone, but of Christmas Day on your own – a vastly different kettle of fish.”
Whether you’re alone for Christmas, or spending it with other family and friends, try to create a day including things you enjoy and that will make you happy. It could be that you ignore traditions and do something you’ve always wanted to do, for example, an alternative feast and film marathon like this gransnetter, or make the day as festive as possible (with all the trimmings). The important thing is that you try to make plans (whether alone or with others) that will bring you joy. Stuck for ideas? Check out our page on things to do if you’re alone for Christmas.
One gransnetter recommends doing something altruistic to raise your spirits: “Volunteer! There are so many people in need this time of year, and lots of amazing organisations. Focusing on giving to others in need will help you embrace what the season is all about, peace and goodwill. You’ll feel so good about your good deeds, you’ll forget to feel bad.”
If you’re deliberating whether to decorate or not, one gransnetter has this advice: “If you’ve always celebrated Christmas, decorated your home and your tree, don’t stop. It’s very tempting to not bother because it’s just too painful but you can’t ignore it, not really. You see homes with their lovely decorations and, for me, to not do my best to embrace this time of the year would simply reinforce what we have lost, and make it harder see what we still have.”
Talk to a trusted friend
“I would talk to your friends and get it out in the open. You may find that talking about it helps get it in perspective and makes it more manageable. I would have a plan for the day, make the most of the things that you have and do something that will keep you busy and engaged.”
Christmas is a hard time of year to be estranged from family, so it’s important that you have a support network in place in case you need to talk through your feelings and acknowledge the sadness you might feel. Communicating how you feel to a trusted friend (who isn’t involved in the estrangement) is important for your mental health, and they can always offer support in the form of taking your mind off things by having a good catch-up too.
Or chat to the Gransnet community
“Most importantly, talk about how you feel and if you think that those closest to you are ‘all talked out’, talk to us here on GN. You are not alone. Like me, and I’m sure it’s the same for so many estranged people, you’ll be surprised at just how many are going through what we are.”
If you are unsure who to open up to, the Gransnet forums are open 24/7 and there’s a dedicated estrangement topic, where users share advice and offer support to those in similar situations. There’ll also be quite a few of the Gransnet community around at Christmas, especially with restrictions meaning many are spending the day alone, so whether it’s for support or virtual merriment to cheer you up, you can chat anonymously on the forums.
Remember it’s just a day
“I think Christmas can be a minefield most years, but this year is particularly problematic with bubbles and worries about infection. I think there is so much hype surrounding Christmas and the sometimes unrealistic picture of saccharine family harmony.”
The pressure Christmas can cause shouldn’t be underestimated – a survey by the Mental Health Foundation found that more than half of adults in the UK are worried about the mental health of a loved one over the festive period. With sadness caused by estrangement on top of the usual Christmas stresses, it can seem overwhelming – particularly if it’s your first year estranged. Try to remember that it is a short period, and to take each step and day at a time, as Christmas will soon be over and you’re not alone in feeling this way. We have a page on how to deal with loneliness at Christmas that might be useful in finding some coping mechanisms.
Avoid activities that will make you feel worse
“If there are things that you feel are just too hard to do, don’t do them. It’s eight years for us now and I still can’t go to our church’s children’s nativity service or watch them on tv, so I don’t.”
Identify triggers and avoid them where possible. If it’s one of your first Christmases estranged, this might be difficult as you may not necessarily know the things that will bring on feelings of loss until you encounter them, but if the thought of going to or watching something makes you feel uneasy about the memories it may provoke, it’s best to give it a miss if you can.
It might also be worth avoiding social media such as Facebook and Instagram around the time if you feel you may become upset at photos of families spending Christmas together. In this instance, it’s important not to compare yourself and your situation to others, as this is likely to be detrimental to you, and bear in mind that not everything on social media is as it seems.
Think carefully before you communicate
“We’ve never sent anything to our estranged son which to be honest is purely for self preservation, as neither of us could cope with anything we’d sent being returned, or being castigated for sending him something in the first place. Do what feels right for you, do what will help you get through your first or yet another Christmas with estrangement.”
The sentimentality of Christmas may incite nostalgia, and make you want to pick up the phone or put pen to paper to try to reconcile, but before you make any hasty decisions think through whether this is the right thing for you to do. If you receive no reply, will it make you feel worse than before? Would you want to make contact like this if it was any other time of year? Connecting with an estranged relative is obviously a very sensitive topic, but it’s essential that you think things through clearly and objectively before making any big decisions. Our page on estrangement has more information on this.
If you’re struggling with not seeing your grandchildren over Christmas, and are unable to make contact, one gransnetter recommends creating a memory box and putting a card in there for them each year. This way you are acknowledging your grandchild’s Christmas without creating further hostility with their parents: “This will be the first year we haven’t sent them a card in the post, we’ve decided we don’t need to do that anymore, so we will be getting a card for each of them to go in the memory box.”
Be kind to yourself and get help if you need it
It’s been an unimaginably difficult year for many, so go easy on yourself, and remember that even when coping with loss through estrangement, you’re still allowed to feel joy and happiness at Christmas. If you are really struggling and feeling low, it’s important that you seek advice and guidance to help you through this hard time. Here are some organisations which may help if you’re worried about your mental health:
Relate – offer relationship counseling, including family issues
Unhappy families: Nine out ten adults estranged from family find Christmas difficult.
A new report looking at the experiences of people who are estranged from family members and the challenges they face has highlighted the particular difficulties associated with Christmas.
“Social media plays a part because it’s a highlight reel of people’s family lives, with Facebook feeds filled with pictures of families celebrating together.” Lucy Blake
Hidden Voices – Family Estrangement in Adulthood, a collaboration between the charity Stand Alone and the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge, is the first in depth piece of UK research on family estrangement. It examines the experiences of over 800 people who self-identify as being estranged from their whole family or a key family member, such as their mother, father, siblings or children.
Becca Bland, Chief Executive of Stand Alone, says: “Family is a huge part of our individual and collective lives and an unconditionally loving, supportive group of relations is idealised in society. Yet this is not always attainable for those who are estranged from their family or a family member. I’m sure this research will be challenging to read, but I’m hopeful that as a society we have the strength to keep listening to people in this position, with the view to eventually understanding why our adult family relationships are not always as unconditionally close and supportive as we might wish and imagine them to be.”
The report provides an understanding of family estrangement and its characteristics as well as detailing the challenges participants faced when living without contact with family or a key family member. Common factors that contribute to relationship breakdown with parents, siblings and children include emotional abuse, clashes of personality and values, and mismatched expectations about family roles and relationships.
However, estrangement does not necessarily mean there is no contact between family members. A minority of respondents have minimal contact with the person they are estranged from. Similarly, estrangements are not always stable, and cycling in and out of estrangement is not uncommon. Those who wished their estranged relationships could be different wanted a relationship that was more positive, unconditionally loving, warm and emotionally close.
Most often, respondents who were estranged from an adult child reported that their daughter or son had cut contact with them. Of those who had initiated estrangement from a parent, respondents had done so at various ages, with most doing so in their late 20s and early 30s.
The report shows that the festive period is often the most challenging time for those touched by family estrangement and can be a key time of isolation and vulnerability, with 90% of respondents saying they found the Christmas period a key time of challenge. Other challenging times were reported as birthdays (85%), being around other families (81%) and the death of family members (79%).
“Almost every estranged person finds Christmas the hardest period,” explains Dr Lucy Blake from the Centre for Family Research. “There’s a strong societal expectation of what a family looks like. Social media plays a part too because it’s a highlight reel of people’s family lives, with Facebook feeds filled with pictures of families celebrating together. The reality doesn’t always look like this, but people often find it difficult to talk about that.”
Stigma around the topic of family estrangement is also an issue: two-thirds (68%) of respondents felt that there was stigma around the topic of family estrangement and described feeling judged and feeling as if they were contradicting societal expectations. One in four respondents had turned to their GP for support but reported finding them not at all helpful.
However, not all experiences of estrangement were negative. Around four out of five respondents felt there had been some positive outcomes of their experiences of estrangement, such as greater feelings of freedom and independence.
Reference Lucy Blake, Becca Bland and Susan Golombok. Hidden Voices – Family Estrangement in Adulthood. 10 December 2015
By expressing strong emotion, adolescents can manipulate their parents.
Children do it all the time. Powerless when refused what they want by a parent, they may signify displeasure by communicating disappointment, hurt, or outrage. What happens next is formatively important, and in most parent/child relationships this response occurs some of the time.
Faced with the child’s sulking, crying, or tantrum, the parent feels regret or remorse for saying “no,” or simply seeks relief from the emotional intensity and so relents. “All right, just this once, you can have it (or do it), since it matters so much to you. Just stop making such a fuss!”
Now the child brightens up, and learns how there is persuasive power in the strong expression of emotion, particularly unhappiness. It can be used to get his way.
In fact, one psychologist, John Narciso (see his book “Declare Yourself,” 1975) called this category of behaviors “get my way techniques.” Another psychologist, Susan Forward, wrote a book about this emotional manipulation (“Emotional Blackmail,” 1997.) In one of my early books, “Keys to Single Parenting” (1996) I called it “emotional extortion.” In counselling, I still call it by that name.
During adolescence, when getting freedom from parents becomes increasingly important, manipulation of parental authority through lying, pretence, and pressuring becomes more common. Emotional extortion can combine all three.
Thus when pleading and argument fail to win a parent over or back a parent down, the tactics of emotional extortion can come into play. The particular emotions exploited vary according to the emotional susceptibility of the parents, but the objective is always the same—to get parents to give in or change their mind.
Remember, from closely observing these adults who have so much power over their lives, children know their parents far better than parents know their children. Children, and particularly adolescents, are expert in the “pushing the buttons” of emotional susceptibility in parents, often using this knowledge in conflict to win their ways. Many children growing up with a parent who is not safe to be around learn this manipulative behavior to survive and must then unlearn it later on, or else they will afflict a significant adult relationship with emotional extortion to their cost. Consider a few of the forms emotional extortion can take.
If a parent is sensitive to approval, then the teenager will express love through appreciation, affection, or pleasing to soften the mother or father up. This emotional extortion works when the parent feels, “How can I refuse when my teenager, who is usually so hard to get along with, is now acting so nice?”
If a parent is sensitive to rejection, the teenager, loudly or quietly, will express anger through acting offended, injured, or wronged to soften the mother or father up. This emotional extortion works when the parent feels, “I can’t stand it when my teenager acts like she doesn’t like me.”
If a parent is sensitive to inadequacy, the teenager will express criticism through attacking the parent’s character, caring, or competence to soften the mother or father up. This emotional extortion works when the parent feels, “I can’t stand being judged a failure in my teenager’s eyes.”
If a parent is sensitive to guilt, the teenager will express suffering through acting unhappy, hurt, or sad to soften the mother or father up. This emotional extortion works when the parent feels, “I can’t stand feeling responsible for my teenager’s unhappiness.”
If a parent is sensitive to pity, the teenager will express helplessness through acting hapless or resigned to soften the mother or father up. This emotional extortion works when the parent feels, “I can’t stand feeling sorry for my teenager when she just gives up and acts victimized by whatever decision I’ve made.”
If a parent is sensitive to abandonment, the teenager will express apathy through acting like the relationship doesn’t matter anymore and doesn’t care in order to soften the mother or father up. This emotional extortion works when the parent feels, “I can’t stand the loneliness when my child acts like there’s no caring for our relationship.”
If a parent is sensitive to intimidation, the teenager may express explosiveness, loudly talking or acting like he’s going to lose physical control and threaten harm to soften the mother or father up. This emotional extortion works when the parent feels, “I can’t stand being frightened of getting hurt.”
To discourage these manipulations, parents must refuse to play along with the extortion. After all, your adolescent cannot emotionally manipulate you without your permission. You must resist your own susceptibilities to rejection, guilt, intimidation and the like and refuse to let these emotional vulnerabilities influence your decisions.
Give in to these tactics, and you will feel badly about yourself, your teenager, and your relationship, and more important may reluctantly allow what you know is unwise that could cause your adolescent to come to harm. “I know I shouldn’t have let her go. I didn’t want to. But she was so unhappy with me for refusing, I just couldn’t say ‘no.’ And now look at what has happened!”
Parents must not only hold firm in the face of this emotional manipulation, they must hold the teenager to declarative account. Thus when the teenager uses intense anger or suffering to overcome a parental refusal, the parent needs to be able to say and mean: “Acting emotionally upset is not going to change my mind. However, if you want to tell me specifically about why you are feeling so upset, I certainly want to listen to what you have to say.”
Declaration creates understanding, but emotional manipulation creates distrust. At worst, when feelings are expressed for extortionate effect, then the authentic value of those feelings can become corrupted.
Declare what you want or do not want to have happen in specific terms, then discuss and negotiate the disagreement. Do not use the strong expression of emotion to get your way, or you will encourage that extortion from your teenager by your own bad example.
This article does not only apply to children and teenagers, adult children can also behave this way.
The indoctrination of children in cults differs from that of adults in that children are extremely vulnerable to adult influence – the people they look up to, especially their parents. Children’s brains are still developing, and they are like sponges, absorbing the world around them, the world of adults who create the environment they exist in. A child will absorb the world view of those around them and accept this as their reality because this is all they have known.
The Cult Leader’s Demands Always Comes First
In cults, the cult leader or doctrine always takes priority over anything else. The child who grows up in a cult will never be the centre of attention in their parent’s world because they will most likely be totally self-absorbed with the cult leader and the cult demands. These demands are usually great and unattainable because the leader is likely to be highly perfectionistic, insatiable, and persecutory of those who do not meet their ideals. Moreover, a cult leader will employ fear tactics with their disciples and keep them in a state of perpetual adoration towards them and shame towards themselves. In this state of fear, shame and total preoccupation with another, there is no room for the age-appropriate demands of a child who actually needs their parent’s care and attention.
“Have No Needs”
A child who grows up in a cult learns to have no needs because they quickly learn that they do not matter. To survive in the cult and gain some crumbs of attention from their parents, they will have no choice but conform to the leader’s demands, try to fit in as much as possible and override their natural developmental needs. This means the child will miss out on normal stages of development, if not also on education and normal peer interactions because of the insular and isolated nature of most cults.
Isolation and Abuse
Sending a child to school means interacting with the outside world, which most cults find threatening. Depending on how isolated a cult becomes, they will supply their own schooling, have children interact only with other cult children and make sure there is no outside influence that could lead the child to question their upbringing.
Keeping a child isolated from society also makes them vulnerable to abuse – sexual, physical, spiritual, emotional, and psychological. Isolated groups create their own rules and decide what is right or wrong. In the cult I grew up in for instance, children and teenagers were conveniently seen and treated as adults. This meant that we were required to work long hours, worship and meditate with the adults. This also meant that schooling was minimal and there was no age-appropriate censorship to adult-only stuff. The cult leader – a self-proclaimed enlightened master – was seen as an expert in raising children, despite him not having any children himself or knowing anything about child development. If the cult leader condones inappropriate, harmful, or even criminal behaviour, then his disciples collude because all that matters is what the leader thinks. His truth matters above all truths, and they are always above societal rules and norms, including the law. Under these circumstances, children are extremely vulnerable to predators.
The Objectification of Children
In cults, children are either seen as an inconvenience or used as means for growing the cult. In both situations, children are seen as objects and not encouraged to develop their own identity. In cults, nothing is in the best interest of a child. Everything is in the best interest of the leader and the organisation. Despite this well-known fact, cult leaders will make it seem that everything they do is for your good and the good of your children, even if there is plenty of evidence to the opposite (see ‘Gaslighting’ below). They will make you quash your doubts, question your sanity, and give up everything you have, including your children, in the service of “the greater good”. This “greater good” has very few winners, which are usually the leader and his inner circle.
Gaslighting
A central feature of cults is gaslighting – a term coined from the movie ‘Gaslight’ where it a young woman is manipulated by her husband into believing that she is descending into insanity. Cults do this on a large scale, which is designed to keep its disciples or followers in a state of perpetual doubt about their opinions and follow the opinions and ideas of the cult leader. It is an exercise in maintaining power over others and abdicating any responsibility for one’s actions. For instance, in the cult I grew up in the self-proclaimed enlightened master would attribute all personal suffering to his disciples and never take any responsibility. This extended to the sexual, financial, and psychological exploitation of ‘his people’ including children. When questioned, he would say that you had not surrendered to him enough and that this was your reason for suffering.
Leaving
When the child grows up and is lucky enough to leave the cult, they will have to contend with a long process of rebuilding or recovering their own identity. Everything that they are has been attributed to the cult or exists because of the cult. Sometimes, when a former child choses to leave, their family will want nothing to do with them. Or they may need to cut contact with their family to survive psychologically.
The Recovery Process
Cult recovery is a long and challenging process which requires the right support. Finding a group of like-minded individuals who share similar backgrounds is advisable, as well as finding a therapist who is experienced and knowledgeable about this type of work. Explaining to people what you have gone through is never easy. Former cult members and those who grew up in cults can feel a lot of shame about their past and have difficulty articulating what they have been through. Most people lack an appreciation of what it is like to live in a high control group and its effects.
Regaining One’s Mind and Setting Boundaries
Those who were born or grew up in cults will often need to learn or re-learn how to live in society. Although cults range in terms of how isolated and restricted their members are, the indoctrination of children is so deep that it will take a very long time to regain their own mind, learn to think for themself and have their own opinions. This extends to knowing one’s own preferences, wishes and needs. Because having own thoughts and opinions was frowned upon or even dangerous, it takes time to regain a sense of safety in doing normal things, having personal preferences, and even feeling entitled to personal space. Growing up in an environment where nothing belongs to you, all the thinking is done for you and personal space is not a thing, has big implications in later life when it comes to setting personal boundaries.
Sam Jahara is a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist and Clinical Superviser. She is experienced in working with the psychological impact of high-control groups and cults on individuals, families and organisations. She has also spoken about her personal experience of growing up in a cult in recent public interviews.
Have you read about that man in Munich, Germany, who floats to work every day? He got tired of the stops and starts of traffic, the long waits that got him nowhere fast, and the road rage. This man, Benjamin David, did something different. He looked to what was in his environment to help him, decided on a plan, prepared himself, and plunged into the river. Now, he floats along with the current each day—and it delivers him effortlessly to his workplace. He goes with the flow. (Read about him here.)
Maybe it’s a stretch to compare this man to parents rejected by adult children—or maybe not. Especially as estrangement drags on, it can feel like we’re stuck in a sort of traffic limbo. We may be the recipient of anger we don’t deserve, or get angry ourselves. The tiniest breakthrough can get our hopes up and then drop us into a pit. Like when the cars go from a standstill to a crawl and we breathe a sigh of relief… only to get snagged in another snarl of traffic up ahead.
CHANGE DIRECTIONS
Like this man who made a change for the better, parents rejected by adult children can assess their situations, realize they’re getting nowhere, and try something different. A realistic analysis is the first step to a solution, and new direction that drives progress.
Parents around the globe continue to send holiday cards or gifts yet remain estranged. As the holiday music jingles and the messages of family and restoration abound, they feel a mix of obligation, hope, and confusion. They start to ponder whether to reach out again this year.
They may worry that not reaching out may be used as proof they don’t care. Or that a heartfelt message of love will be viewed as a manipulation tactic to “guilt” the son or daughter into responding. Grandparents who want to make sure their grandchildren know they’re loved face a dilemma: How can they choose gifts for the special family members they no longer know? Or worse, will their gifts given to innocent grandchildren be subverted to the trash bin?
WHEN YOUR ADULT CHILD WANTS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU: START A NEW ERA
As this year comes to an end and a new one begins, I implore you to consider what one of my adult children who is not estranged recently said about estrangement from the sibling who is:
“We’re about to start a new era.”
We really are beginning a new era, moving into the third decade of the millennium, and far beyond the time when our estrangement from one adult son began. It’s a new era for our family as a whole, with fresh starts, changes in direction, and a time of renewed joy. Being stressed over something we couldn’t change has no place in our family’s future.
How about you? As 2019 comes to a close, can you ring the holiday bell to end an era of heartache, and think of the season as a time of rebirth and joy?
GET OUT OF THE TRAFFIC JAM
Make decisions that move you forward rather than keep you stuck. If you’re pondering whether or not to reach out this holiday, reflect on a few critical questions. Consider using a pen and paper to fully explore your thoughts. Ask yourself:
Whether or not my estranged offspring has ever replied, has my reaching ever made a difference?
If I’m worried about how my behavior will be construed or misconstrued, what are my fears specifically? Do they make sense? Or are they keeping me stuck?
Don’t Stress
There’s an old story about a woman whose daughter asks her why she cuts two inches off each end of the roast and throws them away. “That’s the way my mother did it,” she says. Curious, the daughter asks her grandmother the same question—and gets the same answer. Dying to know why it’s so important to cut two inches off either side, the girl calls her great grandmother to inquire. She’s surprised when her great grandmother laughs, saying, “Because the roast wouldn’t fit the pan!”
At one point, reaching out may have kept the hope that you would reunite alive. Even when your adult child wants nothing to do with you, it has been a way to demonstrate (at least from your point of view) that you still love your child and were ready to forgive. But what’s the purpose now? Is it helping, or keeping you stuck in a cycle of hope and disillusionment? Is the expended energy doing you good, or are you only throwing it away?
Times change. Feelings do, too. At what point do you listen to the message your child’s silence (anger, gossip, abuse. . .) sends? Is it time to decide to put your energy toward your own life, your emotional wellness, and the people who love you?
Like the man in Munich did, is it time to take the plunge … and go with the flow?
Taking The Helm 