Estranged Adult Children Quotes

Children learn from the world through doing, touching, experiencing; adults on the other hand, tend to take in the world through their heads - reading books, watching television, swiping at touch screens. They're estranged from the world of everyday objects. Yet interacting with the world is fundamental to who we are.

Carl Jung wrote that nothing affects children more than the unlived lives of their parents.

There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief. Aeschylus

maintain that one of the reasons some adult children estrange themselves, or claim to have narcissistic parents, is that they experience their parents’ demand for intimacy as more than they can fulfill, and in some cases, more than they should be asked to bear.

If your child actually dies, everyone will feel sorry for you. If your child stops talking to you, everyone will judge you. At least that’s what it feels like.

I teetered between a dazed existence and hyper-awareness. At times, I walked around in a state of confusion, unable to focus on anything, as if I weren’t fully alive.

This is what my mother and I don't talk about: That it is not my fault she is so profoundly unhappy with her life. That she had a chance to know me—really know me, as an adult and an artist and a human being—and she blew it. That I have not regretted our estrangement for one single second; in fact, I keep waiting for the regret to appear and being surprised when it doesn't. That I feel bad for her that she is so dissatisfied with her own life; I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. That I miss what we had when I was a kid, but I'm not a kid anymore, and I will never be again. And that the thing that keeps me from tackling parenthood with eagerness is not, really, money or ambition or hypochondria or selfishness. Rather, it's the fear that I've learned less from my childhood than I should have, that I am more like her than I want to be.

Avoid what marital researcher John Gottman refers to as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: defensiveness, criticism, stonewalling, and contempt. Studies show that no marriage can survive a steady diet of those emotions.

... whether we feel admiring of our parents, reconciled to them, or still estranged, still teetering near a cliff of anger, we recognize that we can never meet them in agreement about what we have encountered beyond their experience.

As a rule, today’s young adults grew up hovered over and showered with things. Every team member gets a trophy, and an emphasis on feelings and fairness permeates children’s environments. All of this pampering, overthinking, and risk-reducing may not provide children the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them as was common in times past. Historians speculate that this thwarts maturation and the development of empathy for others’ feelings. Instead, maybe all of the attention enhances children’s focus on themselves.

As loving mothers, we surely made mistakes. All parents do. But as kind and supportive parents, we did our best. We must recognize that no matter the choices our adult children make, their behavior doesn’t diminish the good we did or continue to do. Someone’s inability to see our value does not detract from our worth.

I couldn’t quite believe this had happened to us. The crushing disbelief, confusion and helplessness had me waiting expectantly for another phone call. Surely he would contact us and clear things up. I leapt with hope every time the phone rang. Even so, I sighed in relief when it wasn’t him. What would he say if he did call? He had been so cold.

Not everything happens for a reason. You didn’t get estranged because you were supposed to be taught some purposeful lesson in order to become stronger, wiser, whatever. God didn’t deliver this nightmare to teach you how to become better at suffering. You were probably pretty good at it before you became estranged. You became estranged because bad things happen to good people. And even if you made monstrously terrible decisions with your children, nothing makes you deserving of a life without them in it. If your kids are unable to see you as worthy of love, acceptance, and forgiveness, then you have to find redemption in that small crack in the continuum of catastrophe, as Walter Benjamin put it. And guard it with your life.

In other words, if I say that you abused, neglected, bullied, or traumatized me, then you did. As Haslam writes, evaluations about whether emotional abuse, trauma, or neglect occurred are today based on the child’s perception of that behavior, even if that behavior would look benign to an outside observer or exist independently of the parent’s intentions or emotions. It’s what I feel that matters.

Since my child is choosing not to spend time with me, it is healthy for me to think about how I want to spend my time without him or her in my life. Putting my child out of my mind is useful for my happiness and serenity. When I punish myself for the past, I perpetuate the myth that I deserve to suffer. I have suffered enough and as of today I choose to feel good about myself as a parent and as a person.

Over a quarter of American adults say they are currently estranged from a relative. That translates into about 67 million people, more than the number of Americans who suffer from allergies. Half of these estranged adults have had no contact for four years or longer. Most of these rifts came between parents and children or between siblings. Almost everyone in a rift says the estrangement is upsetting to them.

Children make the best theorists, since they have not yet been educated into accepting our routine social practices as “natural,” and so insist on posing to those practices the most embarrassingly general and fundamental questions, regarding them with a wondering estrangement which we adults have long forgotten. Since they do not yet grasp our social practices as inevitable, they do not see why we might not do things differently.

The path out of hell is through misery,” writes University of Washington psychologist and researcher Marsha Linehan, the founder of Dialectical Behavior Therapy. “By refusing to accept the misery that is part of climbing out of hell, you fall back into hell.” The path out of hell is through misery. Excuse me? What is that supposed to mean? It means that you have to start by “radically accepting” where you are right now. Radical acceptance means that you don’t fight what you’re feeling in this moment.

Ten New Rules for Parent–Adult Child Relations RULE #1: Your adult child has more power than you to set the terms of your relationship because they’re more willing to walk away. Basic game theory: she who cares less has more power. RULE # 2: Your relationship with your adult child needs to occur in an environment of creating happiness and personal growth, not an environment of obligation, emotional debt, or duty. RULE # 3: You are not the only authority on how well you performed as a parent. Your adult child gets to have their own narrative and opinions about the past. RULE #4: Use of guilt trips or criticism will never get you what you want from your adult child, especially if you’re estranged. RULE #5: Learning to communicate in a way that is egalitarian, psychological, and self-aware is essential to a good relationship with your adult child. RULE #6: You were the parent when you were raising your child and you’re the parent until they die. You brought your child into this world. That means that if your child is unable to take the high road, you still have to if reconciliation is your goal. RULE #7: A large financial and emotional investment in your child does not entitle you to more contact or affection than that which is wanted by them, however unjust that may seem. RULE #8: Criticizing your child’s spouse, romantic partner, or therapist greatly increases your risk of estrangement. RULE #9: Criticizing your child’s sexuality or gender identity greatly increases your risk of estrangement. RULE #10: Just because you had a bad childhood and did a better job than your parents doesn’t mean that your adult child has to accept all of the ways that they felt hurt by you.

However, it is also true that sometimes people are transformed by their marriages in negative and hostile ways. I think this occurs as an attempt to resolve what Leon Festinger in 1957 referred to as cognitive dissonance. Festinger writes that we’re all powerfully driven to experience ourselves as consistent in our thought processes. As a result, if we become aware of an inconsistency in our beliefs, we’ll change one or more of the beliefs to make them more internally consistent. How might the theory of cognitive dissonance explain why Sam changed from being a kind and considerate family member to being critical and angry? Here’s how the shift in personality might work: Belief: My parents and sisters are good people who deserve my love and respect. Belief: Maria hates my family and thinks they brainwashed me into thinking that they were good to me when they really weren’t. Since Sam loves both his family and Maria, he’s in a quandary. If he remains committed to Maria, he’ll produce endless fights by disagreeing with her or pushing her into being more involved with his family; she has already said that she doesn’t like them and doesn’t feel comfortable being in their presence. He will also feel guilt toward Maria if he remains in contact with them, as she’s made it clear that he needs to choose her over him and being close to them is therefore a betrayal of her. Since Sam has to come home to Maria each night, his path of least cognitive dissonance is to accept her version of his parents as the correct one.

Handling Abusive or Disrespectful Behavior Decide what you want to say before the interaction. What are your goals? Are there particular points that you want to make sure you make? Write out the two or three most important things you want to say. If you’re particularly nervous, practice saying them out loud. Have an exit plan. How will you get off the phone or away from the interaction if it starts to head south? Consider prefacing the conversation with some ground rules if prior interactions have gone poorly. Say something like “I know these conversations haven’t gone very well when we’ve had them in the past, so let’s both make a good effort to keep it calm and reasonable, okay? Maybe you should tell me what you’d like to get out of the conversation and I’ll tell you what I’d like to get. How does that sound?” Express good intentions. “I really do want to understand what you’re saying. I would like to have a closer relationship with you.” Or “I’m sure these interactions haven’t felt very good to you in the past, either.” Start by expressing a belief in the child’s good intentions even if you don’t like how he or she is saying it. “I think that you’re telling me something that you really want me to understand. Something that you think is very important.” Describe your perception of your child’s dilemma that is causing them to talk to you in a disrespectful manner. “You must feel like I’m not going to understand unless you beat me over the head with it.” Describe your dilemma. “While I want to understand what you’re saying, it’s hard to focus on it when you’re yelling at me or calling me names. I’m sure you can understand that.” Ask for different behavior. “Do you think you could try to tell that to me in a calmer way so I can focus on what you’re telling me? It’s actually hard for me to hear what you want me to hear when you talk to me like that.” Give an example of appropriate behavior. “You can tell me you’re furious with me or even tell me that you hate my guts if you like, but you can’t scream at me and you can’t call me names.” Stay calm. Take deep breaths. Count to ten. Set limits. “If you can’t talk to me in a more respectful tone, I’m getting off the phone.

Children make the best theorists, since they have not yet been educated into accepting our routine social practices as "natural," and so insist on posing to those practices the most embarrassingly general and fundamental questions, regarding them with a wondering estrangement which we adults have long forgotten. Since they do not yet grasp our social practices as inevitable, they do not see why we might not do things differently.

Because today’s parents have often invested more in their children, financially and emotionally, than previous generations, they may feel entitled to a kind of availability that is at odds with what their adult child can reasonably or sanely provide. This entitlement can make parents communicate in ways that work against them—and, in turn, cause the adult child to push back. A negative feedback loop sometimes ensues: the child moves further and further away to escape the feelings of guilt and responsibility for the parent. As they feel their child becoming more and more distant or angry, the parent pursues them even more aggressively. In research on marriage, this feedback loop is referred to as the “pursuer-distancer dynamic” and is associated with greatly increased risk of divorce.

MentalHealth.gov

The dynamic, however necessary, may have misshaped her subjective world in the same way that a miracle drug may leave someone with lifelong vulnerabilities.

This lack of social capital puts enormous strain on working-class and poverty-stricken parents because they not only don’t know where to turn for help but also can’t afford it when they do.

As Mark Twain famously quipped, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

The tendency is always strong to believe that whatever receives a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. John Stuart Mill, 1869

In 1850, Dr. Samuel Cartwright reported in The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal the discovery of a new disease, which he called drapetomania. Drapetomania was a condition that caused sulkiness, dissatisfaction, and a desire to avoid service. It was used to describe slaves who sought to run away from their servitude: drapetes, the ancient Greek word for “runaway slave,” and mania for “excessive energy or activity.

While the family was once where individuals located themselves in a chronological or social order, it now comprises the institution from which they must be liberated.

Our prejudices lead us to tear nature where we want it to break. Gary Greenberg, The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry

As Stanford researcher Philip Zimbardo wrote, “A remarkable thing about cult mind control is that it’s so ordinary in the tactics and strategies of social influence employed. They are variants of well-known social psychological principles of compliance, conformity, persuasion, dissonance,…emotional manipulation, and others that are used on all of us daily to entice us: to buy, to try, to donate, to vote, to join, to change, to believe, to love, to hate the enemy…Cult mind control is not different in kind from these everyday varieties, but in its greater intensity, persistence, duration, and scope.

In contrast to prior generations, conflict is no longer seen as an unavoidable, and perhaps even necessary, component of family life, but rather a referendum on each person: Does my parent limit my potential? My happiness?

British sociologist Anthony Giddens observed that part of the strain of modernity results from our becoming “disembedded” from the traditional institutions of church, neighborhood, marriage, community, and gender. In its stead has been left an intensely personal, day-to-day, moment-to-moment appraisal of the self: its moods, desires, thoughts, and aspirations. This self-appraising project requires constant monitoring. How much or how little to engage with others—with friends, with romantic partners? Do they satisfy our ambition of self-actualization? “Personal growth,” writes Giddens in Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, “depends on conquering emotional blocks and tensions that prevent us from understanding ourselves as we really are.” Social psychologist Eli Finkel’s observation of what is required for a successful marriage today also mirrors Giddens’s observation: “Success typically requires not only compatibility but also deep insight into each other’s core essence, the sort of insight that helps us know what type of support is most beneficial under which circumstances.” I say, ditto parenting adult children.

Many draw unforgiving boundaries against their family members and friends who cannot transform their selves—overcome addictions, save money, heal troubled relationships—through sheer determination alone,” writes Silva in her book Coming Up Short: Working-Class Identity in an Age of Uncertainty. “[A]t the center of the therapeutic coming of age narrative are not more traditional sources of identity such as work, religion, or gender, but instead the family—as the source of one’s individuality, the source of the self, and the source of the neuroses from which one must liberate oneself.

Every divorce is a unique tragedy because every divorce brings an end to a unique civilization—one built on thousands of shared experiences, memories, hopes, and dreams. E. Mavis Hetherington and John Kelly, For Better or for Worse: Divorce Reconsidered

As the Chinese sage of early antiquity Sun Tzu said, “The side that knows when to fight and when not will take the victory. There are roadways not to be traveled, armies not to be attacked, walled cities not to be assaulted.

What Chinese parents understand,” Chua wrote, “is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up.

That’s why taking care of yourself is important: your partner doesn’t have endless resources to support you, and you need to be able to give something back to the relationship.

I’ve found that it’s useful to distinguish between pain and suffering, because pain and suffering are two different things. Pain is the inevitable and unavoidable part of being human and of being an estranged parent. Unfortunately, you have relatively little control over that. However, you can gain increasing control and awareness over how long you feel pain. You can reduce the meaning of it, the actions you take that increase it, and the distance the pain travels through other aspects of your life. That’s the suffering part. The difference between pain and suffering is an insight that found its way from Buddhist teachings into contemporary psychotherapy. Psychiatrist Mark Levine, who developed the Mind to Mindful program, gives this example: “Let’s say I stub my toe walking across the kitchen floor and it really hurts. That’s pain. But then I start telling myself a bunch of things about stubbing my toe such as ‘You idiot, why don’t you watch where you’re going?’ Or ‘Next time you’re going to fall flat on your face or break your hip!’ Or ‘This is so typical of you to be so clumsy. Just one more example of what a screw-up you are!’ ” That’s suffering. Suffering lengthens the experience of pain because it creates an endless cognitive feedback loop where pain is always its terminus. Where suffering begets suffering begets suffering.

It’s also helpful to get into the granularity of your emotions. Is it just sadness? Or is it actually despair, grief, misery, agony, rejection, insecurity, sorrow, or defeat? Is it just anger? Or is it actually resentment, rage, irritation, jealousy, annoyance, or bitterness? Why should you get more specific? Psychology professor, and author of How Emotions Are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett found that higher emotional granularity was associated with lowered needs for medication, fewer hospitalization days for illnesses, and greater flexibility regulating emotions. Getting into the specifics of what you’re feeling helps you hear the message one part of your mind is trying to deliver to another part. It can guide you to determine the course of action in response to that emotion. It can help you to feel less ruled or controlled by your feelings because you’ll know more specifically what you’re feeling.

There’s a saying that depression is anger turned inward. I think depression is more complex than that, but there is a pearl of wisdom there for estranged parents.

Not everything happens for a reason. You didn’t get estranged because you were supposed to be taught some purposeful lesson in order to become stronger, wiser, whatever. God didn’t deliver this nightmare to teach you how to become better at suffering. You were probably pretty good at it before you became estranged. You became estranged because bad things happen to good people. And even if you made monstrously terrible decisions with your children, nothing makes you deserving of a life without them in it. If your kids are unable to see you as worthy of love, acceptance, and forgiveness, then you have to find redemption in that small crack in the continuum of catastrophe, as Walter Benjamin put it. And guard it with your life. AFTERWORD The truest form of wealth is social, not material. Jonathan Rauch, The Happiness Curve

While many say that finding compassion for those who hurt them is one of the hardest things they’ve ever done, others discover that it’s freeing in ways they hadn’t imagined. It binds them to a common humanity where we are all in some measure flawed, torn, and hurt. And dying for understanding.

Acting like a kid isn’t just about losing one’s inhibitions or speaking in gibberish. Children learn about the world through doing, touching, experiencing; adults, on the other hand, tend to take in the world through their heads—reading books, watching television, swiping at touch screens. They’re estranged from the world of everyday objects. Yet interacting with that world is fundamental to who we are.

estranged from a relative. That translates into about 67 million people, more than the number of Americans who suffer from allergies. Half of these estranged adults have had no contact for four years or longer. Most of these rifts came between parents and children or between siblings.

Focus on the Family addressed followers of the organization whose grown children had become distant or estranged. 'They won't return your calls,' the message begins. 'They ignore your texts and emails. Either you have little to no idea of what they're actually doing, or their only communication is to rub in your faith the sinful lifestyle they've embraced. It wasn't supposed to turn out this way.' The email goes on to describe the hypothetical perspective of a parent who believes they'd raised their children to follow Christ, who as adults 'would accomplish amazing things and would reach out often with all the updates, and with sincere gratitude for all you sacrificed to help them succeed. Instead, your child has grown into an adult who rejects you and everything you believe in.' ...Mayfield, a millennial who grew up evangelical, continued with an imagined response to these frustrated baby-boomers who'd raised their children by the tenets of Dr. Dobson and Focus on the Family, only to see them walk away from it all. In a thread, Mayfield writes, 'Listen, your kids don't want to talk to you because your love is conditional, and it is very painful to not be loved for who you are by the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally.

It’s normal to look back and wonder if we contributed to or even caused the situation.

good intentions even if you don’t like how he or she is saying it. “I think that you’re telling me something that you really want me to understand. Something that you think is very important.

Right now, you’re reading this because you’re desperate, you’re angry, you’re guilt-ridden, worried, ashamed, scared, and scarred. These are powerful messages from your mind: There’s something here you should be attending to and not judging.

I maintain that one of the reasons some adult children estrange themselves, or claim to have narcissistic parents, is that they experience their parents’ demand for intimacy as more than they can fulfill, and in some cases, more than they should be asked to bear.

And

It’s more like this: you’re saying that you didn’t know when you were raising him that you hurt him. And now you do. Now you wish you’d communicated differently. You don’t have to say that you’re a bad person or a bad father. Just that your behavior had an effect on him that wasn’t your desire.

Of course the parent’s view is sometimes colored by the limitations imposed by their own childhood history

best parenting self are thrust into a torturous spin cycle of If only I hadn’t said that

felt I had violated the agreement I made when I brought her into the world:

Am I really a good father if I’m raising two of my kids and scarcely raising the other? And even though the arrangement was decided in court

Is the best advice we can offer an adult child “Just walk away and protect yourself? Focus on your own needs—your spouse

feeling like that anymore. It sucks. I’m through with him treating me like that person. I feel a lot less stressed since I’ve cut off contact with him.

just don’t know what to do at this point. I haven’t talked to her now for a year and I really don’t want to talk to her. It makes me feel like a terrible person—but I’m just much happier without her in my life. Does that make me a bad person?

As I listened to Karina

adult children should try for some period of time to empathize with the other’s position in order to see if a more mutually satisfying relationship can be built.

I should have known what was going on with my own kid

The talk where she said she hadn’t felt like a priority to me growing up; she didn’t feel cherished or special or important. I don’t remember her exact words—perhaps they’re too excruciating to recall. What I do remember is her anger

But even here

My belief is that parents genuinely did the best they could

I also observed that—having felt so rejected and unloved by her parents—the rejection of her daughter must feel much more unfair.

The ability to accept the parent’s limitations as a parent and as a person.

To recognize that the parent’s inability to provide what he wanted or needed was more about the parent’s deficits and less about the parent’s inherent desire to have the child suffer.

Of not being the mother she had always dreamed of being

In marriage

was a gruff

had several more sessions with Ralph and Rachel. But I wasn’t able to help them reconcile with Frank. It wasn’t because their son was unwilling; rather

I raised him like my old man raised me and I turned out okay

adult children with reasonable complaints who end contact because the relationship felt too hurtful and disruptive.

know only this: that when my mother told me she had not been the mother to me that she wished she’d been

If you keep communicating this way

Estrangement is often a similar attempt to reduce the hold that the parent continues to have over the adult child. However painful the separation