Estrangement: Why Some of Us Cut Ties With Our Family of Origin.

Recently online, an internet discussion board was covering the subject of people who cut themselves off from their family. One view was that this should never be mentioned in public because of the discomfort it might cause other people. I thought this was an interesting, but incorrect response, which captured the complexities of estrangement itself.

Coincidentally, the day before, I had also been listening to an interview with the Uruguayan writer Carolina de Robertis and her experience as a queer woman of being disowned by her family, her subsequent decision to cut ties, and how difficult it is to find language to describe and make sense of such a decision. You can find out more in her Love Letter To Anyone Who Has Felt Despair.

In this blog article I am going to explore the theme of estrangement and how therapy can help us to heal from the experience of difficult family backgrounds. 

About 12% of older adults are estranged from their adult children so we are talking about a sizeable number of people – the same number of people who are left-handed – and there are many reasons why we might decide to separate from our family. The most obvious ones are safety and protection – if we grew up in abusive circumstances, it makes sense that we would want to do whatever it takes to protect ourselves.

In the UK, the charity Stand Alone - which supports people estranged from their families - undertook research which suggested that estrangement affects 1 in 5 families: that’s 5 million people who have cut contact with one or more family members. 

Further research into family estrangement (which is defined as “reducing – or stopping – social interactions and interdependence…” with family members) has found that the main reasons this happens are “abuse, bad parenting, betrayal, mental illness, unsupportive behaviour, toxicity, and drug and alcohol abuse.”

For many LGBTQ+ people estrangement may also involve forcible rejection from the family. As many as 24% of young (16 to 25) homeless people are LGBTQ+. which compounds the experience of minority stress already being experienced. (I will be discussing minority stress in a future blog article).

Deciding to cut our ties to family is traumatic and also lacks any kind of ritual or linguistic framework (in the way that divorce does for example). In addition, other people may not understand why estrangement has happened. We live in a society that places high value on family; “family comes first…blood is thicker than water…” and often the response from others will be puzzlement, judgement, or worse, an attempt to reconcile all parties.

We can be grieving the loss of family even though we know it was the right thing to do, and if there is no way of expressing that grief, it will show up in psychological distress – depression, anxiety, suicidality, substance misuse, PTSD and so on. 

Of course, one of the strengths that LGBTQ+ communities have is in the development of “chosen families” based on social bonds rather than biological links. Great examples of this are Drag “Houses” amongst Black and Latinx Queer people or the Mutual Aid networks and connections in the Trans community. Therapy can also help you to think about how you might build your chosen family and what this might look like for you. 

In my clinical practice, estrangement themes mirror Kristina Scharp’s model of family distancing and include quantity and quality of communication, physical distance, lack of emotion or excess of overwhelming emotion, and feelings about the parent’s parenting capacity.

In some cases the behaviours of one or both (or many) caregivers can be toxic, creating environments where it’s unclear what is “true” and what is a manipulation of reality. Role reversal – where the adult parent acts like a child and the child has to parent the adult – can also cause enormous stress which then plays out in future relationships around the theme of trust and intimacy.  Scapegoating of one member by the whole family system can also cause enormous damage to self-esteem.

Estrangement can raise a number of issues for us including adjusting to life “outside” the family and what this might mean for us especially at communal points in the year such as festivals, commemoration days and holidays.

Secondly, we may encounter questions about identity – what does it mean to us be estranged and how do we describe this to others? This can generate strong feelings of guilt, shame and/or grief: how can we process these feelings in a way that feels generative rather than debilitating for us? Many people experience high levels of rumination (dwelling on the past) or worrying (fear about the future) too, and the paradoxical experience of estrangement can feel quite isolating and disorienting, as well as liberating. 

Therapy can help with exploring these issues. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) can help you to really drill down into the beliefs and rules you may have developed to survive in the family and to cope with estrangement, to see if they are still serving a useful purpose.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Compassion Focused Therapy can help us to develop new, more helpful ways of experiencing the emotions associated with estrangement so that we can reclaim our lives again, be kinder to ourselves and see estrangement as a strength and an expression of our will to live a life that is fulfilling and meaningful.

Full disclosure here, I am estranged from my own biological family and this subject is close to my heart. If any of the above themes are connecting with you and you would like to explore it further with a therapist who has lived experience of the issue, you can contact me here at Rhizome Practice.