Key Takeaways
- Estrangement often happens to protect one’s mental or emotional well-being, especially in toxic or abusive family situations.
- Cultural and social pressures can make it harder to distance oneself from family.
- Coping strategies like therapy, mindfulness, and support groups can ease the grief and stress of estrangement.
Family dynamics can be complicated. So complicated that we might want to cut our losses and go no contact. You’re certainly not alone if you feel this way. In fact, a growing number of us are becoming estranged from our biological family.
Why we choose to distance ourselves from our families is complex and personal. As a society, we tend to moralize this choice—as if you’re inherently a bad person for separating yourself from a harmful situation. But choosing to become estranged is a decision many don’t take lightly.
What Leads Someone To Cut Ties With a Family Member?
In any relationship, we exist on a spectrum from high contact to low contact to no contact. Decreasing your level of contact is a choice dependent on many factors, such as:
- Toxic and unhealthy relationships
- A denial or withholding of funds or resources
- Mental, physical, financial, or emotional abuse
- Substance addiction
- Mental illness
- Political polarization
- Different religious and/or cultural beliefs
- Shifting family dynamics, such as divorce or controlling marital partners
Alice Zic, MPH, LCSW, a trauma therapist, says it’s important to understand that estrangement isn’t a simple decision and that it often includes a deep level of thought, especially since many don’t want to reduce or eliminate contact with their family member(s).
“I think with a lot of folks, when they finally get to that point of estrangement, it doesn’t always feel like it’s a choice,” she says. “I think it kind of feels like this is something I have to do to preserve myself.”
The Reasons May Not Be Obvious to Both Parties
The process of estrangement is rarely cut-and-dry. How much contact you have with a loved one shifts and changes.
Joshua Coleman, PhD, a psychologist in private practice and a senior fellow with the Council on Contemporary Families, adds that estrangement is a scenario sometimes rife with miscommunication.
“A lot of parents say, ‘Yeah, I made some pretty serious mistakes,’ but probably the majority don’t understand why that would produce an estrangement,” he explains. “Some just have no idea. Sometimes, it’s because the child is telling them, and they’re not accepting it. Other times, some adult children, probably because they’re conflict-avoidant, haven’t really told their parents, so they are operating in the dark.”
What Are the Psychological Effects?
Estrangement can lead to a variety of positive and negative mental health effects. For some, it brings feelings of sadness, grief, and a loss of control.
Studies show that the person choosing to separate themselves from their family member(s) experiences a host of emotions, ranging from anger, sadness, and stress at the beginning of the estrangement. Over time, these feelings will dwindle, though anger and sadness may remain at lower rates.
A 2017 study echoed this, noting that adult children estranged from their families found their separation necessary but a painful loss they will grieve throughout their lifespan. Another study reported the opposite, citing that those initiating the separation feel a sense of liberation, stress relief, and a realization of one’s purpose.
The reality is that estrangement is complicated, and how one feels about it depends on the person and their circumstances—especially considering most estrangements are marked by on-and-off-again cycles.
Patricia Dixon, PsyD, a clinical psychologist and owner of a Florida-based group practice, adds that social media glamorizes estrangement, noting that it “makes people more comfortable with becoming estranged because they can still stalk the person through social media,” she says. “So it’s almost as if, if I cut you off, [I can] still know what’s happening in your life.”
Instead of rushing towards estrangement, Dixon recommends setting boundaries and expectations in your relationships. This, she says, will help curb the mental and psychological stress that may come with being estranged and grieving your lost relationships.
How Society Views Estrangement
Societal narratives surrounding estrangement regularly place reunification or reconciliation on a pedestal and ignore the reality that estrangement can be painful, beautiful, illuminating, and a whole host of other experiences, often all at once.
Dixon believes this pressure to maintain familial relationships can actively harm those considering estrangement or who have actively gone no contact.
“This is someone you were once close to and they had a strong foundation in your life,” she says.
Patricia Dixon, PsyD
To distance from them can bring up a number of feelings, including grief, which is this sorrow of what was. In some ways, it’s not even grief of what was—it’s the grief of what you thought the relationship would be.
— Patricia Dixon, PsyD
Culture Can Play a Part
Dixon says there is a cultural expectation to stay in contact with your family, which can be particularly damaging for people of color.
“There tends to be this kinship for survival, for making it through the different discrimination that you may face as a person of color,” she says. “And so there becomes an added pressure of having to remain family and bonded because we’re supposed to protect each other. For somebody to step away from a family member, there’s this pressure and shame.”
Zic adds that these pressures can make estrangement more difficult, particularly if your cultural background stems from a collectivist culture.
How To Cope With Estrangement
What does coping with estrangement look like?
- Engage in physical or mental practices. Zic recommends therapy, meditation, or movement-based activities to help nourish and ground you.
- Find comfort in your chosen family. Your chosen family includes the people in your circle with whom you share a family bond, regardless of whether you are actually related to them. “Having chosen family [means having] people who remind you, ‘Hey, I trust you. We can navigate relationships differently,” Zic says.
- Speak to a mental health professional. Seek out a mental health clinician who understands the intricacies of estrangement.
- Visit an online support group. Websites like Together Estranged and Stand Alone have online support groups to help you cope with being estranged from your family.
- Group therapy. Research shows that group therapy reduces the psychological stress of estrangement.
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Reconciling With Estranged Family
If reunification or reconciliation is a goal, Coleman recommends communicating expectations and a timeline. He often tells his clients interested in reconciling with their parents to “let their parents know the changes that they need or want them to make and that they’ll check back in with them in six months or some period of time.”
“Often adult children are saying to their parent, ‘You need to do your own therapy, you need to do your work.’ But they often don’t give the parent a timeline,” he says.
Keep in Mind
Ultimately, whether you decide to remain estranged from your family or seek reconciliation, know that either decision is completely valid. Family relationships are complicated. Sometimes, years of resentment, trauma, and buried feelings can’t be solved. And sometimes with therapy, changed behavior, and forgiveness, they can.
But it’s not up to society to decide this for you. Chat with a therapist, set boundaries with your family, communicate your expectations, and go from there.
