Reply to Oprah podcast on estranged families

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]   I could not believe how many things Gibson nailed perfectly. She was trying to gently explain to that one mother there is a power differential and that together with a strong personality makes it hard to do "conflict resolution" with some parents. I know with my mother anytime I gently brought up anything it was "I am your mother! You must...."

She also was perfect with the whole idea of how people are under much more stress now. I danced around my mother's difficult behavior and people pleased for decades to keep the peace. Between covid lockdown, my husband's prolonged illness, my father in law's emergency and then our daughter's emergency surgery over the course of several years, I had nothing left to give and through it all mom was all "me, me, me" and trying every tactic possible to manipulate. She did not have an ounce of empathy, just fury that my attention was not on her. I finally understood I could try to appease her and she would not be satisfied, or I could distance and do nothing and she would not be satisfied, but I would time to recover for all this mess.

There is nothing I miss. I have some contact, but when she decides to punish me and have none, it's even better. I only mourn what I never had, but mostly I have accepted that.
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Exactly regarding how she tried to address the mother who clearly showed disdain for her daughter. Maybe this is my bias but to me that mother seemed very satisfied that she was right and would win any argument (what she was calling a discussion). Both Coleman and that mom had an aggressive manner that they were trying to keep in check. [/quote]

That tattoo mother comes across as a bully pretending to be into conflict resolution. She wasted too much time trying to convince the public her daughter stinks. If her daughter is so terrible, then why is this mother so interested in resolving things. She definitely seemed emotionally stunted. Her daughter may be too for all I know but why try to humiliate her on TV? Coleman is still salty and lacks much insight. He basically learned the things to say to play along, but in his heart, he seems like he still resents his daughter for not falling into line. [/quote]

Exactly. That mom and Coleman both seem to have resentment to the kid that made it clear they aren't/weren't great parents. [/quote]

I get the resentment. I think they are human and this is a natural feeling a parent would have.

I wish more people would have focused on what the mom said about poor conflict resolution skills.
This is so true! and we have realized this with our own kid - college age but not estranged. We can see that we didn't help them much in this area and we observe the same with their friends.

On self reflection, this is another issue that should have been highlighted since there are many estranged adult kids who would benefit from that.

I do think social media and therapists have made this worse. There are so many posts on social media spouting the same stuff claiming it to be based in psychology but really it's just based on someone else tiktok

And post covid there are a lot of newly graduated, very young therapists who took advantage of online education to get their degree and begin a career as a counselor / therapist. I question the veracity of the training and experience of many of these recently minted ones.

Especially for those who cut off their parents because they were MAGA, one of the funny things, I would bet many of them are using a therapist who got their degree from Liberty online.

I also went down a rabbit hole on reddit forums for estranged adult kids:

- Forums skew those in their twenties and early thirties and moms who have young kids. Personally I think you gain a new perspective on your own parents when your own kids are college age.

- Two type of posters - parents were truly abusive, addicts,  or who went in and out of their lives or left completely and parents were there but were critical, and harsh.

-  Lots of posts about boundaries and it's clear the concept is misunderstood to be a boundary is something you impose on someone else instead of something you do for you.

- Posters clearly show lack of their own conflict resolution skills, lack of their own communication skills , lack of understanding the therapy terms they use, and lack of their own ability to deal with uncomfortable feelings.

- Lots of encouragement for cutting off but no encouragement for self reflection or critical thinking.

- Whole thread of complaining they cut off contact with a parent , then being upset their parent didn't attempt to continue contacting them. It was surprising and baffling.

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