Oprah podcast on estranged families

[Anonymous]

Interesting to hear that 1/3 of Americans experience estrangement. It’s not widely discussed—or hadn’t been until recently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was screaming when the male therapist author (Joshua Coleman) told that young couple (who went NC with the man's parents because they hated the DIL and were pissed that they got pregnant) that they are showing their DD the example that no contact is an option.

I was like, GOOD!!!! Are you kidding me? What a weird, tone-deaf, not reading the room, absurd thing to say. I never read his book or heard of him before but OP you are probably right that he lacks reflection. My God.

I thought the female therapist sitting next to him seemed irritated by him or maybe that was my hopeful projection.

Overall I enjoyed it. I watched in on youtube. I have seen that hospice nurse before and I really liked hearing from her.

I agree! I am glad Gibson jumped in and reframed it as basically modeling healthy boundaries with people who don't feel emotionally safe. I also totally thought Gibson was annoyed with him. LOVE her. She truly operates with heart and integrity.

That said, I have mixed feelings about that couple now that IG keeps sending me posts from their feed. I truly felt for them and still do, but the stint on Oprah was likely a way to bring people to their balloon business and IG where they partner to advertise products. I admire her entrepreneurial spirit and spunk and he seems lovely, but there's a lot of BS on there. She claims to be so liberal and progressive but her main business harms the environment with forever chemicals and hurts wildlife, and their ads promote consumerism. She posts about protests she doesn't even seem to understand. He complains his parents are performative, yet his social media though charming is highly performative. It's nice to see they don't show their kids' faces and they are a cute couple, but they don't seem as earnest on there as they did on Oprah.

Agree on Gibson. She is my empathy role model.i write up thread about her books helped me to avoid estrangement with my parents. That's in part because working through her books enabled me to see that my parents, as flawed as they are, are products of a lot of abuse and neglect in their own childhoods. They aren't emotionally immature just to hurt me, it's because they have their own wounds and have never found ways to heal and mature beyond them. I have found a way to feel both compassion for myself for my own bad childhood and lack of parenting, and compassion for them for the same. They are a link in a chain of generational abuse, not the source.

I also liked what either Nedra or Lindsay (I can't remember which said this) said to the woman who had the really abusive mother who never really parented. About the idea of letting go of thinking of this woman as a mother, since she never mothered, and considering all options. Including potentially reconciling but not as mother-daughter but as friends. I know people kind of recoiled at that, but that's essentially what I've done with my parents, specifically to enable my child to have a relationship with them. I just think of them as an elderly couple who will show my kid some attention and sometimes love, and also buy her gifts occasionally. My kid knows I have a complicated relationship with them, but we find a way to work through it so DD has some connection to them and experiences something of that feeling if coming *from* somewhere and being connected to past generations. To me it's part of healing that generational abuse I mentioned before. I'm trying to shift us to more functional family patterns, which for me means choosing not to go no contact but instead maintaining healthy boundaries and distance from my parents' dysfunction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interesting to hear that 1/3 of Americans experience estrangement. It’s not widely discussed—or hadn’t been until recently.

I do wonder how this was defined. Do they mean immediate family or extended too? There were estrangements on both sides of my family and my husband's families, but only one in his immediate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was screaming when the male therapist author (Joshua Coleman) told that young couple (who went NC with the man's parents because they hated the DIL and were pissed that they got pregnant) that they are showing their DD the example that no contact is an option.

I was like, GOOD!!!! Are you kidding me? What a weird, tone-deaf, not reading the room, absurd thing to say. I never read his book or heard of him before but OP you are probably right that he lacks reflection. My God.

I thought the female therapist sitting next to him seemed irritated by him or maybe that was my hopeful projection.

Overall I enjoyed it. I watched in on youtube. I have seen that hospice nurse before and I really liked hearing from her.

I agree! I am glad Gibson jumped in and reframed it as basically modeling healthy boundaries with people who don't feel emotionally safe. I also totally thought Gibson was annoyed with him. LOVE her. She truly operates with heart and integrity.

That said, I have mixed feelings about that couple now that IG keeps sending me posts from their feed. I truly felt for them and still do, but the stint on Oprah was likely a way to bring people to their balloon business and IG where they partner to advertise products. I admire her entrepreneurial spirit and spunk and he seems lovely, but there's a lot of BS on there. She claims to be so liberal and progressive but her main business harms the environment with forever chemicals and hurts wildlife, and their ads promote consumerism. She posts about protests she doesn't even seem to understand. He complains his parents are performative, yet his social media though charming is highly performative. It's nice to see they don't show their kids' faces and they are a cute couple, but they don't seem as earnest on there as they did on Oprah.

Agree on Gibson. She is my empathy role model.i write up thread about her books helped me to avoid estrangement with my parents. That's in part because working through her books enabled me to see that my parents, as flawed as they are, are products of a lot of abuse and neglect in their own childhoods. They aren't emotionally immature just to hurt me, it's because they have their own wounds and have never found ways to heal and mature beyond them. I have found a way to feel both compassion for myself for my own bad childhood and lack of parenting, and compassion for them for the same. They are a link in a chain of generational abuse, not the source.

I also liked what either Nedra or Lindsay (I can't remember which said this) said to the woman who had the really abusive mother who never really parented. About the idea of letting go of thinking of this woman as a mother, since she never mothered, and considering all options. Including potentially reconciling but not as mother-daughter but as friends. I know people kind of recoiled at that, but that's essentially what I've done with my parents, specifically to enable my child to have a relationship with them. I just think of them as an elderly couple who will show my kid some attention and sometimes love, and also buy her gifts occasionally. My kid knows I have a complicated relationship with them, but we find a way to work through it so DD has some connection to them and experiences something of that feeling if coming *from* somewhere and being connected to past generations. To me it's part of healing that generational abuse I mentioned before. I'm trying to shift us to more functional family patterns, which for me means choosing not to go no contact but instead maintaining healthy boundaries and distance from my parents' dysfunction.

Yes, I thought it was great advice to see if you can have a relationship is a different way since she was never a mother. That said, if the mother who abandoned her daughter expects help later in life she has a lot of nerve and I hope that daughter will be able to maintain healthy boundaries.

Yes Gibson is my role model for emotional maturity. Her idea of being "relational" rather than expecting a relationship (from her book) helped me a lot with my mother. I could also detach and observe her poor behavior the way Jane Goodall would observe a bunch of monkeys or baboons. The problem is those baboons don't come over and attack you for refusing to engage, but she did help me just be very low contact as opposed to no contact.

Nedra Tawwab has a lot of wisdom, and I appreciated her books as well. She's not always as strong giving feedback on command and I didn't agree with everything she said about grandparents. I think the fact the couple treats their kids well and model respectful behavior can be enough without finding people in the community to act as grandparents. That can be wishful thinking and can set up a potentially inappropriate situation. She missed a chance to say it's far worse for the kids to witness the parents allowing emotional abuse. Tawwab shares about her own family estrangements in her books, and she has tremendous insight. I think if she had time to think about it, she would have addressed the question is a much more therapeutic way that was also realistic.

[Anonymous]

I wrote upthread. I don't care how my childhood was anymore. I'm almost 60. What I DO care about is how I'm treated now. And it's still abusive and cruel. She uses triangulation and other narcissistic moves if she doesn't get her way. I'm done. She'll never change.
Modeling stepping away from this bullcrap is imperative for my kids to see, because she'll do it to them as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wrote upthread. I don't care how my childhood was anymore. I'm almost 60. What I DO care about is how I'm treated now. And it's still abusive and cruel. She uses triangulation and other narcissistic moves if she doesn't get her way. I'm done. She'll never change.
Modeling stepping away from this bullcrap is imperative for my kids to see, because she'll do it to them as well.

I agree with this. I don't think people who can have okay relationships with their parents as adults are becoming estranged because of things that happened in their childhood. I'm estranged from my parents and if you asked my mom the reason I'm sure she'd cite something from when I was little. But the real reason is how she treats me now. She just can't manage not to be unkind. I have tried so many versions of boundaries over many years and none have been enough. I blamed myself for a long time, only to reflect and realize that she makes friends but can't keep them. Neither of my parents have a single relationship in their lives that last longer than about a year (except with each other, but that is a terribly dysfunctional relationship and they hate each other). My mother manages to blow up any relationship in about that time unless there's barely any contact. My three siblings all describe our childhoods as traumatic and they have all chosen not to have kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was screaming when the male therapist author (Joshua Coleman) told that young couple (who went NC with the man's parents because they hated the DIL and were pissed that they got pregnant) that they are showing their DD the example that no contact is an option.

I was like, GOOD!!!! Are you kidding me? What a weird, tone-deaf, not reading the room, absurd thing to say. I never read his book or heard of him before but OP you are probably right that he lacks reflection. My God.

I thought the female therapist sitting next to him seemed irritated by him or maybe that was my hopeful projection.

Overall I enjoyed it. I watched in on youtube. I have seen that hospice nurse before and I really liked hearing from her.

I agree! I am glad Gibson jumped in and reframed it as basically modeling healthy boundaries with people who don't feel emotionally safe. I also totally thought Gibson was annoyed with him. LOVE her. She truly operates with heart and integrity.

That said, I have mixed feelings about that couple now that IG keeps sending me posts from their feed. I truly felt for them and still do, but the stint on Oprah was likely a way to bring people to their balloon business and IG where they partner to advertise products. I admire her entrepreneurial spirit and spunk and he seems lovely, but there's a lot of BS on there. She claims to be so liberal and progressive but her main business harms the environment with forever chemicals and hurts wildlife, and their ads promote consumerism. She posts about protests she doesn't even seem to understand. He complains his parents are performative, yet his social media though charming is highly performative. It's nice to see they don't show their kids' faces and they are a cute couple, but they don't seem as earnest on there as they did on Oprah.

Agree on Gibson. She is my empathy role model.i write up thread about her books helped me to avoid estrangement with my parents. That's in part because working through her books enabled me to see that my parents, as flawed as they are, are products of a lot of abuse and neglect in their own childhoods. They aren't emotionally immature just to hurt me, it's because they have their own wounds and have never found ways to heal and mature beyond them. I have found a way to feel both compassion for myself for my own bad childhood and lack of parenting, and compassion for them for the same. They are a link in a chain of generational abuse, not the source.

I also liked what either Nedra or Lindsay (I can't remember which said this) said to the woman who had the really abusive mother who never really parented. About the idea of letting go of thinking of this woman as a mother, since she never mothered, and considering all options. Including potentially reconciling but not as mother-daughter but as friends. I know people kind of recoiled at that, but that's essentially what I've done with my parents, specifically to enable my child to have a relationship with them. I just think of them as an elderly couple who will show my kid some attention and sometimes love, and also buy her gifts occasionally. My kid knows I have a complicated relationship with them, but we find a way to work through it so DD has some connection to them and experiences something of that feeling if coming *from* somewhere and being connected to past generations. To me it's part of healing that generational abuse I mentioned before. I'm trying to shift us to more functional family patterns, which for me means choosing not to go no contact but instead maintaining healthy boundaries and distance from my parents' dysfunction.

Yes, I thought it was great advice to see if you can have a relationship is a different way since she was never a mother. That said, if the mother who abandoned her daughter expects help later in life she has a lot of nerve and I hope that daughter will be able to maintain healthy boundaries.

Yes Gibson is my role model for emotional maturity. Her idea of being "relational" rather than expecting a relationship (from her book) helped me a lot with my mother. I could also detach and observe her poor behavior the way Jane Goodall would observe a bunch of monkeys or baboons. The problem is those baboons don't come over and attack you for refusing to engage, but she did help me just be very low contact as opposed to no contact.

Nedra Tawwab has a lot of wisdom, and I appreciated her books as well. She's not always as strong giving feedback on command and I didn't agree with everything she said about grandparents. I think the fact the couple treats their kids well and model respectful behavior can be enough without finding people in the community to act as grandparents. That can be wishful thinking and can set up a potentially inappropriate situation. She missed a chance to say it's far worse for the kids to witness the parents allowing emotional abuse. Tawwab shares about her own family estrangements in her books, and she has tremendous insight. I think if she had time to think about it, she would have addressed the question is a much more therapeutic way that was also realistic.

Yes, I learned about detachment from Gibson and it totally changed my life. Not just my relationship with my parents or other family, but helped me navigate relationships with work colleagues, people in my social circle, and my in-laws, all of which I'd been struggling with. I love how she describes detachment, and in her second book she gives really good examples of how it can work in the moment when you're dealing with an emotionally immature person. It is a really helpful book just in general, not just with the parent-child relationship. I think it is also good to read if you are in a relationship with someone who has emotionally immature parents, even if they are doing better, because it can help you understand them better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interesting to hear that 1/3 of Americans experience estrangement. It’s not widely discussed—or hadn’t been until recently.

I believe it if you include adult siblings. My dad is from a larger family (second youngest of 6 kids, one of his brothers died relatively young in an accident unmarried and no kids but the rest are still alive and very healthy in their 60s/70s), and my dad and 2 of his siblings are estranged from a brother, with another brother remaining fairly neutral throughout. This has been going on for around 20 years now.

[Anonymous]

I am estranged from my family.

Should have cut my mother off the day I left home at 17 my mistake.

My brother is a criminal; he preys on the weak and sick.
My youngest sister is insane.
My middle sister is a criminal as well.

Happy to have zero contact.

As for Oprah who cares that crap gave us DR Oz, Dr. Phil, JD lying Vance etc....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Had no idea Oprah was even still alive, much less doing anything in public.

how's life there under your rock?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wrote upthread. I don't care how my childhood was anymore. I'm almost 60. What I DO care about is how I'm treated now. And it's still abusive and cruel. She uses triangulation and other narcissistic moves if she doesn't get her way. I'm done. She'll never change.
Modeling stepping away from this bullcrap is imperative for my kids to see, because she'll do it to them as well.

I agree with this. I don't think people who can have okay relationships with their parents as adults are becoming estranged because of things that happened in their childhood. I'm estranged from my parents and if you asked my mom the reason I'm sure she'd cite something from when I was little. But the real reason is how she treats me now. She just can't manage not to be unkind. I have tried so many versions of boundaries over many years and none have been enough. I blamed myself for a long time, only to reflect and realize that she makes friends but can't keep them. Neither of my parents have a single relationship in their lives that last longer than about a year (except with each other, but that is a terribly dysfunctional relationship and they hate each other). My mother manages to blow up any relationship in about that time unless there's barely any contact. My three siblings all describe our childhoods as traumatic and they have all chosen not to have kids.

I do think sometimes the only way to escape abuse or to heal is to go no contact. Some personalities are harder to set boundaries with than others.

I have found that by living far from my parents, estrangement is not necessary because the physical distance makes it much easier for me to set boundaries. The one time that has not been true was when I was pregnant. Somehow the distance wasn't enough during that time. So I do get it.

For me maintaining some contact is easier because there is less drama. My sister is no contact and while I respect her choice, there is a lot of drama around it. I think in her case it is heightening everyone's feelings and actually leading to my parents behaving worse because they feel injured and defensive. I have found that by just throwing them a bone periodically, my parents mostly stay on their best behavior with me and I can handle phone calls and occasionally visits without it becoming a problem.

I've also found that the key for me is learning how to set a boundary in the moment without making it into a huge deal. My parents will try to broach a subject with me that I don't want to talk about or draw me into a drama with them (for instance they often try to drag me into this thing with my sister). I've learned to gently but firmly explain I don't want to be involved, change the subject, and if they persist, I will hang up or leave the room to end the conversation. Doing this just a few times has taught them to stop doing it. This is also how I got my mom to stop trying to turn me into her therapist and come to me with her sad tales of woe so that I will comfort her and make her feel better. That was a really toxic dynamic that had been happening since I was a kid and putting a stop to that really changed things for the better. It was really just about holding strong and reminding myself that I am not responsible for her mental well being, that she is an adult AND the parent and it is her job to figure that out, not to rely on me to make things better. That's the single best thing I've done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting to hear that 1/3 of Americans experience estrangement. It’s not widely discussed—or hadn’t been until recently.

I believe it if you include adult siblings. My dad is from a larger family (second youngest of 6 kids, one of his brothers died relatively young in an accident unmarried and no kids but the rest are still alive and very healthy in their 60s/70s), and my dad and 2 of his siblings are estranged from a brother, with another brother remaining fairly neutral throughout. This has been going on for around 20 years now.

+1

I think estrangement has been around longer and been more common than people today seem to understand. I have a grandmother who didn't speak to her sister for like 30 years. My dad went over a decade without speaking to one of his brothers. My husband has an uncle he was unaware of until he died, because he was estranged from his entire family for most of his life (uncle was gay, this explains that estrangement and also is very common for gay people prior to like 2000 because so many families had zero tolerance for homosexuality at that time).

So much of the estrangement today is part of generational patterns, not some hot new trend therapists or tik tokers invented. I think expectations of familial closeness even into adulthood have increased in recent decades, making estrangement feel more upsetting than it once was. Also the fact that thanks to technology, it's possible for people anywhere to be in touch with their family no matter how far the distance, creates an expectation that they WILL be in touch with their families. And also that that contact will be affectionate and have a certain quality. But think of all the people who moved or immigrated in the 20th century and literally never saw their families again as a result. Some of them may have maintained affectionate relationship via mail, but many didn't. Perhaps sometimes they stayed in contact but it was perfunctory -- here is what is happening in my life, here is a photo of my family. There were grandparents who never met their grandchildren. Siblings who never saw each other again after the war or after one of them moved away.

Also, perhaps this distance made it easier for people to maintain affectionate feelings for family. If you barely see them and only communicate via letter... this is like a natural form of detachment because you literally never speak directly to each other. Easier to stick to safe subjects, avoid engaging with annoying comments, and not get drawn into personal drama when you are responding to one another via letters that take weeks or months to get there. Even when it was just the telephone -- long distance calls cost money, the connection wasn't always great, and people likely kept it cordial more easily because who could afford the drama?

It's funny how we never talk about the downsides to families of the high level of connectivity in the modern world but they are there. People will talk about the downsides of being tethered to work via your phone all the time, even on weekends and vacations. Well, that is true for family too. There are times when I wish my mother was not capable of reaching me by phone literally anywhere, anytime, for any reason. It would sometimes be better if she had to leave a message on my home answering machine, or send me a letter that forced her to consider and articulate what she wanted to say, and then I could get back to her when I was ready.

[Anonymous]

It’s only with the advent of cell phones that everyone expects daily calls and texts. I think people have always had family estrangements but before commercial air travel, private vehicles etc it was easier to move far away and just break contact. Thinking of all those men who went out to homestead or pan for gold or whatever. My FIL immigrated from his home country and only went back like twice in his life. There are other ways to create distance and there used to be more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting to hear that 1/3 of Americans experience estrangement. It’s not widely discussed—or hadn’t been until recently.

I believe it if you include adult siblings. My dad is from a larger family (second youngest of 6 kids, one of his brothers died relatively young in an accident unmarried and no kids but the rest are still alive and very healthy in their 60s/70s), and my dad and 2 of his siblings are estranged from a brother, with another brother remaining fairly neutral throughout. This has been going on for around 20 years now.

+1

I think estrangement has been around longer and been more common than people today seem to understand. I have a grandmother who didn't speak to her sister for like 30 years. My dad went over a decade without speaking to one of his brothers. My husband has an uncle he was unaware of until he died, because he was estranged from his entire family for most of his life (uncle was gay, this explains that estrangement and also is very common for gay people prior to like 2000 because so many families had zero tolerance for homosexuality at that time).

So much of the estrangement today is part of generational patterns, not some hot new trend therapists or tik tokers invented. I think expectations of familial closeness even into adulthood have increased in recent decades, making estrangement feel more upsetting than it once was. Also the fact that thanks to technology, it's possible for people anywhere to be in touch with their family no matter how far the distance, creates an expectation that they WILL be in touch with their families. And also that that contact will be affectionate and have a certain quality. But think of all the people who moved or immigrated in the 20th century and literally never saw their families again as a result. Some of them may have maintained affectionate relationship via mail, but many didn't. Perhaps sometimes they stayed in contact but it was perfunctory -- here is what is happening in my life, here is a photo of my family. There were grandparents who never met their grandchildren. Siblings who never saw each other again after the war or after one of them moved away.

Also, perhaps this distance made it easier for people to maintain affectionate feelings for family. If you barely see them and only communicate via letter... this is like a natural form of detachment because you literally never speak directly to each other. Easier to stick to safe subjects, avoid engaging with annoying comments, and not get drawn into personal drama when you are responding to one another via letters that take weeks or months to get there. Even when it was just the telephone -- long distance calls cost money, the connection wasn't always great, and people likely kept it cordial more easily because who could afford the drama?

It's funny how we never talk about the downsides to families of the high level of connectivity in the modern world but they are there. People will talk about the downsides of being tethered to work via your phone all the time, even on weekends and vacations. Well, that is true for family too. There are times when I wish my mother was not capable of reaching me by phone literally anywhere, anytime, for any reason. It would sometimes be better if she had to leave a message on my home answering machine, or send me a letter that forced her to consider and articulate what she wanted to say, and then I could get back to her when I was ready.

Agree with all this, especially the points on distance and lack of connectivity, especially in big families. My grandmother had my mom as a teenager, and my mom left home around age 20 and they never lived close to each other ever again, but I bet there would be lots of drama if those two were more connected.

[Anonymous]

Love this thread! I usually stay out of this topic because i am always called "cold" for not caring to repair the relationship with with mom. I simply prioritize my peace over the anxiety and pain she causes.