So this video is gonna be a hard video, and it's a video that I've gotten many requests about from. Parents seeking insight about why their children have gone no or low contact and what they can do about it, and what are some things that they're missing? Family estrangement is incredibly painful for everyone involved.
There are many unanswered questions and stuck places, usually on the estranged parent side, and I wanted to make a video as a resource around the issue of estrangement. In FYI, this video is going to feel uncomfortable. It's gonna feel accusatory. It might even feel kind of exposing, so it's gonna be hard.
I just really wanna let you know that upfront, and it's gonna sound significantly harsh, but I wanted to offer some potential answers for what I see as blind spots. That is strange. Parents often have stuff that I've seen, you know, in five years of being on social media. And in about 15 years of private practice, and I'm making this video to help with an extremely painful issue around going no contact with, its not understanding and not having concrete reasons why you might be estranged from family, specifically your children.
So even though. They are blind spots. The, there might be something in this list that resonates with you or that you've actually thought of before in a couple of quick things. So this video isn't gonna be helpful to you if you just see the issue around no contact and estranged parents as being caused by mental health content creators or professionals.
These issues existed long before social media and childhood trauma issues in your family predate things like Instagram. And if you're looking to blame professionals for your relationship with your children, this probably isn't gonna be a really good resource for you. And also this video isn't gonna be helpful to you if you gain insight from it.
But don't take any action upon that insight. What I, what I mean to say there is that people of all types can often think that insight is all you need when it comes to mental health. When that's not true, there's a lot of action that happens after insight. The insight is just kind of a beginning. The work now is about dealing with things like your anger otherwise, and that issue is kind of like hearing, if you've ever heard from an alcoholic, what they say, well, I know I'm an alcoholic, but it stops there and they don't do any of the work around.
Moderate drinking or abstinence or anything like that. Also, my channel is about recovering from childhood trauma. That is my work. I'm not a family therapist. This is my opinion about this video. This is what I see in family systems. And again, this is what I've seen in 15 years of private practice working with childhood trauma survivors.
And if this feels offensive or too painful, I totally get that and maybe not watch the video. At this time, I really do sincerely want this to be helpful, and it's gonna feel like. A bit of attacking when I'm stating what I see in the disconnection between the parent and the child around childhood trauma issues, as well as blind spots.
And of course, it's possible that adult children have their own mental health problems, just like their parents might have mental health problems. And I ask that you focus on your parenting here, what happened in the past, and try not to go to that. Well, what about them and what about this, and what about their behaviors kind of a thing.
And that can very much well be true. But the focus here is on you. In this video here are seven common blind spots that I see with the strange parents. At the end of the video, I'll discuss a few more issues such as my thoughts on reconciliation. And the purpose of going low or no contact and childhood trauma work and what to do with these insights if they're helpful to you.
This video is gonna be hard, but really try to not go to an intense shame place about some things you hear in this video or defend them so much in your mind. If you're in that place that it re when it really doesn't feel good or you, you feel really bad about yourself, try not to go there. 'cause that's a place where we can't really learn when we're in a deep shame hole about things.
Number one is. You might not know how you affect your child and those around you. You might not know that people consistently experience you as things like maybe being negative or potentially miserable or portraying yourself as a victim, or that you come across as maybe foolish or immature or shallow.
Or that you come across as dramatic or maybe you're unaffected and kind of shut down, kind of aloof or oblivious and disinterested in the world around you and maybe your children. You might not know that you've kind of reversed roles that you might seek parenting from your children, but struggle to give it.
And these, again, these are blind spots. These are things that you, you might kind of know in a tiny way. You might also be reactive and not know that you might say or remote. Or do certain things without thinking about how those things will land. Reactivity can also come in the form as being vindictive about things.
You might make things about you versus being available to others. And the blind spot here is you might have narratives. This is super important, that are bigger than knowing what you're like in the moment around others in your children. And what I mean by that, if you live in a place that your family life that no one is like helping you.
That you might not get, how much you might be passive. Aggression about that no one is helping me narrative. And there are two major childhood trauma issues here that might be related to your own childhood. The first one is really being self-consumed due to triggers, which is a top tier sign of childhood trauma is when in our triggers we really lose space and time and things.
Let's say that you're triggered by your child's spouse in some way. And you might feel persecuted by them, and this could solely be in your head or there might be some issues there. And you might become dramatic or reactive anytime that, that your, your spouse, your daughter-in-law, your son-in-law comes up, but you haven't done any work around why your, your son or daughter-in-law triggers you.
So you might send off things like some intense text to your child about that spouse or you might act squirrely around them and you might people please around them, or you might feel they're after you kind of a thing.
But the narrative in your head about the, your child's spouse is so big and you believe it to be true without knowing how all your energy affects your child and the spouse and their children if they have children. An old school version of this old school psychology is something called the narcissistic injury.
The narrative is that your pain is too big and that gets in the way of your relationships. Related to that is you may have grown up in a family when you were a kid and you might have lived somewhat in a bubble where people in that family, they did not know how they affected each other, or the family was very unreal about emotions and intimacy.
You may have been raised by someone who was very reactive or shut down or dramatic themselves, and these things affected you too. How to work on this insight. This one about not knowing how we affect people is to seek out therapy and explore this and ask people honestly around you that are close to you that what you might be like around them.
Don't ask from the place of like, I'm not like this, right? Because people are inclined to take care of us if we're in that kind of place, instead of being real with us. If you come to it like that. And be prepared that it's gonna be painful to hear feedback about what you might be like. That's hard for anyone.
But it can also be a clue about your childhood trauma to get some feedback on how you might affect people. And if you identify with having any kind of childhood trauma, or even if you don't like those words, that it might have been tough as a kid growing up in the family that you grew up in. The disconnect between the estranged parents and the children here is that adult children often feel invisible around a parent.
Who doesn't know or care to know how their reactivity or their emotions or their general vibe affects their children and others around them. Number two is you might think in terms of transactions and exchanges with your children. Here's what I mean, instead of solely being in the role as being in a parent role, this looks.
Expressing things in a transactional way. Like I gave you everything I fed, I clothed you, I gave you education, or I provided gifts to maybe make up for some of my bad behaviors. You might have confused basics in parenting for loyalty since I paid to come visit you. You need to tolerate my reactivity. I supported you in college.
And you cut me off. This is not how it works kind of a thing. And yes, there are definite things that we can be grateful for from what our parents provide for us. And there might be a major schism in your mind about like sort of younger generations and you or whatever. But the blind spot here is weaponizing what anyone would want to provide for their children as a commodity.
For either their loyalty or their tolerance of, of your stuff in. Additionally, the blind spot here is gonna be confusing because the transaction is. In place of real intimacy and a, a sign of childhood trauma, again, is not knowing how to authentically connect with someone else. So one might think that providing something like a dinner or education or something like that, or a gift cancels out that lack of ability to be.
Real with your children or be really intimate with your children in a, in a real loving way. In other words, you might be providing things to make up for that, but that's not usually what children want. And I get it. There are some good intentions there, but you know, that's what I mean. Even think of it as a common marriage problem where.
The provider might think that all they need to do in the marriage is provide, yet there is real no connection with whom they're providing for their children or their spouse, if that makes sense. In providing education to our children is a really good, but also really basic thing. But the blind spot, basic thing in terms of like what parents would be doing anyway, those things do not make up for fully not knowing your children.
So a common disconnection between estranged parents and their adult children is usually that the parent might confuse these basics of what we wanna give our children anyway. We might confuse that as evidence that the adult child should really never have a problem with you or bring up anything because of those things that you provided with them.
Your message might be, you can't be upset about anything I've done since I've provided you in all these kind of ways. How to work on this insight about. This one is to spend time in everything about what are basics that healthy parents provide for their children, and perhaps work on the myth that providing for children means to buy their loyalty.
When providing for children, it's really about their success in life. Children don't ask to be created like you made the choice to sort of have children. You invited them into the metaphysical home. That is the world of you being a parent. Number three is you might assume you had no involvement in the trauma that your child experienced.
This example is simply when an estranged parent has a blind spot of thinking they had no involvement in their child's trauma. Even when it was someone else's doing. But let me, let me explain. It's issues like it wasn't my fault, it was your father's fault, or your mother's fault, or your brother's fault.
What was I supposed to do? Kind of sentiment like you are removed from what your child might be expressing to you, and I understand that that can be very hard to hear because there could have very well been. A perpetrating spouse that you were married to or that you had another person in the child's life.
But I'm listing this as a highly specific attitude that some parents estranged parents have, which is really a big blind spot, which is that the abuse happened outside of your orbit with your child, and you are totally separate from it. If not even victimized by it yourself. A common scenario is getting involved with someone who becomes your child's stepparent or you dated someone that was unsafe in some way to your children.
I've had many clients who cannot get their parents to engage or see that they had an involvement. About that person in their life because they brought that person into their lives by choice. In a strange, parents who struggle with this blind spot might, they might argue that the abusive parent just happened to them in their life, instead of acknowledging that they brought them into their life and therefore their child's life.
All of these will involve personal responsibility as a parent in, in a childhood trauma issue. Could be that miserable things happen just because. And you don't see how you could have prevented it or have been real about it, which is kind of an interesting thing. You may not have been able to prevent it when it's happening, but the trauma is around now.
You're not being real about it, and that might be your blind spot, and that might be what your child is asking. When an adult child challenges a parent about these non-involvement issues, in a strange parent might say, well, what do you want me to do about it? How was I supposed to know? Why don't you take it up with the person who did the thing to you?
The blind spot here is about being separate. And disconnected from responsibility or involvement or empathy, like your role as a parent might be too compartmentalized around these issues. The disconnection is that the child is seeking care and accountability and connection, where the no involvement parent feels victimized, that the child is seeking that from them, which is something you have to kind of think about.
Another childhood trauma piece might be that a strange parent is highly defended. Again, feeling shame that their decisions may have affected each other. That's the shame piece that I mentioned earlier, and perhaps the most damaging piece to a, an adult child between the estranged parent is when the parent starts blaming the child.
For talking about the abusive parent that the parent brought in, like I can't believe you're talking about them. You're making me feel things kind of a thing. It's like coming back to that narcissistic injury thing that I talked about earlier. So how to work on this insight, this blind spot, this one is hard because you might have to explore what feels personally shameful or why you might be so defensive around your choices that affected your children.
Here's a hypothetical. Let's say you had to move cities because of your work. When you were having children, and that's greatly gonna affect your child's lives, like their school, their friends, some newness, some fear, some social pressure, and it's a parent's responsibility to help their children with that.
This example about when a parent feels victimized about the work issue already, like it's already hard for them and demands that the children shouldn't have. Feelings about it since the parent is already facing something really hard and it kind of becomes a power struggle, a battle about who the victim is.
And the abuse is about expecting adult attitudes and kind of understanding from your children about a move that affects them. And in this hypothetical, you're not a bad person because you have to move. But it becomes abusive when you're creating a power struggle. When it's like, what about me and all this, you know?
It's like you lose your empathy. You might be triggered to something about your childhood there. Number four is you might think it's all normal. What I mean by this is perhaps how an estranged parent was raised. Or for other reasons already discussed, perhaps in numbers one through three. This is a big blind spot and, and it might be about abuse behaviors and issues that might feel normalized for you.
Here are some examples about what might feel normal to you, but they're really very damaging. Some examples such as screaming at your children, yelling in the household. Overpowering them being a high conflict person as a communication style, ignoring big things in the home, such as violence or drinking or drugs, boundary crossings, such as gossiping or disclosing personal private info that your kids.
Wanted you to not disclose to people, to other members in the family. Another is minimizing a child's abuse inside or outside of the family. Another is deflecting your outburst or reactivity or anger issues as normal. Another is assuming conflict. Without resolution is just normal and kind of naming it, just frustration that happens in all kinds of relationships.
There's also physical punishment or physical abuse, crossing physical or emotional boundaries with children. Thinking children don't hear or feel certain things when they do, and that might be normalized for you, but that's not really healthy. A big one here is you might think it's normal to disclose your personal life to your children like they might be your friend.
Or your therapist or like maybe if you're character assassinating your spouse to your children and they're like five or 10 or, or even 18. So another is not being invested personally in your child or not knowing how to be invested. Another is not addressing big problems such as bullying inside the family or outside the family, or an abuser in the family or your own care.
Or your own mental health, like not going to therapy or seeking out couples, not seeking out healthy resources might feel normal to you. That really falls under both neglect, children and of yourself. So those things might feel normal to you. The blind spot. Here. These things potentially tie into not knowing how you affect your children with your emotions like we've covered already.
A big one here is continuing a generational trauma theme in the name of maybe tradition or not. Knowing that you're doing that and not knowing that it's not normal like bing at, or making fun of healthy parenting and believing more in a toughness that makes children better, that might be a generational thing.
Toughening up your kids with kind of being. Mean or abusive or kind of like unempathic makes them better equipped in the world when it doesn't. It just creates depression, anxiety, and trauma symptoms. Not seeing your children as individuals or people themselves. It's gonna sound harsh, but you might see your kids as objects and that might feel normal to you, not that they're individuals.
Some harsh truths with this one is that it's easier to willfully claim that these things are normal than to actually do something about them or try to change their behavior. There's plenty of families out there that are just like, geez, how much empathy do you want? You know, they can, they can be really cold, they can be really critical.
They can really kind of interpret empathy as weakness. That's gonna take the ship down and stuff like that. It really creates a lot of damage. How to work on this again, is seeking out therapy. And not dismissing healthy parenting ideas. It might be a clue for you if you kind of like Bach at, or you just like think that's like a lot of like, you know, psychological mumbo jumbo to like really not shame kids or punish kids or, or put them in timeouts kind of a thing.
Like that might be a clue for you. If you notice, you immediately blk at such ideas. It might be a clue about your blind spots. It might be a, a clue to the disconnect between you and your child and it's helpful to reflect on. This is a big thing here, is that if what you considered normal. Was something you experienced growing up?
And a bigger clue is if you think it's normal because you do the thing to a lesser extent. What I mean by that is for someone who was beaten daily in their childhood, which you might have experienced, you might think that verbally raging at your kids is a healthier and better and less extreme option.
And the blind spot there is that it's still abusive no matter what. That's often the most common and kind of saddest, heartbreaking legacy in generational trauma is abuse is somewhat. Still valued, but maybe at a lesser extent in someone's mind. Your adult children may have approached you about these things over the course of their lifetime, and you might have to ask yourself if you minimized or if you called them overly sensitive over things you really considered normal.
The disconnect between the adult child and the estranged parent is usually a power struggle that goes kind of nowhere. It's very difficult to get someone to admit that their behaviors are abusive if they feel like their behaviors are kind of normal. And number five is you might have picked the wrong sides.
The root issue with this one is that you might have picked the wrong person to advocate for. When it comes to your children in their childhood or even in their adulthood, this takes place when a parent usually struggling with maybe some codependency or they have a protection of their own childhood trauma issue.
Like having contempt for their child. They don't advocate for their child when they're in conflict with somebody else. Some examples, your child has an issue with their friends when they're kids, and you automatically assume and voice to this default of your child because you've put them in some kind of role, like you're projecting something from your own childhood on them that they're kind of foolish or weak or too sensitive.
Another example of your child is being abused by your spouse or your other children or grandparents, and you blame them for being abused. And you support the abuser in some way, you might find yourself more interested in your child's friends or their partners than your own child. If your adult child is going through a divorce, you might overly all align yourself with the person they are leaving at your child's expense.
This is really hard stuff to admit to, but this is common stuff that I see in this stuff. When your child voice difficulty with a boss or a friend or a roommate or a stranger, you try to maybe teach them a lesson about their faults. And you support the other side and you feel more empathy maybe for the other side.
And uh, it's really kind of a mind f for people who have a parent who does that. You might choose the person who would be more upset with you and not get that you might be betraying your child because you think your child will understand more. That's coming back to the codependency thing in a tough and controversial one here is you might have voted against your child and their ideals politically and not understand what that means, or even if it's kind of true in your mind, so might be something to reflect on.
The blind spots here are. You might not choose your child's side because you think they need to learn some kind of lesson. Something you see in your child that your child is not getting, or you think you're doing the right thing due to a moral issue, like say your religion. This is a clue that you might be projecting.
Some issues onto your child, such as, let's say you were raised by a highly victimized, martyred mom, mother, or father, and you get triggered when your child is in pain or isn't hurt and needs to talk about it or needs protection, and you might feel that they need to learn something to get over themselves.
The most common scenario is not choosing your child's side because you feel like the child's perpetrator. We'll be more upset with you while your child might be more understanding, when that's not gonna be true, it's gonna be betrayal. The blind spot might be that you don't connect or understand your child because of something about you and you lost your sense of love and protection for this child.
Or maybe that was never in place because of a multiple of reasons, or you don't really think of protecting them from a place of, of empathy. You might think that casual betrayal is how relationships work when it doesn't, and how to work on this is again, is gonna be in the therapy room. And getting real about some choices that you may have made notice in your body how you feel like, I might feel like I'm being unfair to you here, or if you feel the need to defend yourself, or which side you've taken and why that might be a clue.
Might be something to think about in therapy or talk about in therapy what feels off. Or threatening to you if you had taken your child's side might be something to ask yourself and why Might have you been compelled to not take your child's side and say their divorce or something that where it wasn't your place to maybe take the opposite side.
These are some hard questions. The disconnection between the adult child and a strange parent here is betrayal. In some unfinished business. You know, you can also start to see in these cases why some adult children don't specifically name why they've gone no contact. As to do so might be having to spell out something to an estranged parent.
That should seem obvious when they don't feel like they have to because the boundary crossing around betrayal was so big and so egregious to the adult child. It's highly improbable that that to, to name this and talk about this will be met with. Care and empathy and humility given the pattern in the estranged parent already.
Moving on to number six is you might have crossed lines. This one is tricky because it's focused on boundary crossing in two ways. The first one is overstepping across your child's boundaries, and the second one is overstepping over your own boundaries. As a parent, which is kind of harder to explain, here are some examples of overstepping.
Your child's boundaries, reading their diary, going through their things without discussion, treating them as something you own that goes beyond age appropriate protection, like making sure that they're safe online, like really being intrusive into their life, not allowing for age appropriate for autonomy, um, like kind of being overly strict, overly on them.
Um, not allowing for their own bit of privacy in life. Betraying their confidence in, in you is a big one. Like making jokes about something they said in confidence to you or telling everyone at the holiday their struggles. Like telling everyone, all the members of the family that your child now has a boyfriend or across, or they had their first period or they've been bullied at school.
Like really making fun of and crossing a boundary in that way. In other words, complaining about your children. In front of them to others, even strangers in public, like you're giving off a burdened attitude about your kid in front of them that is crossing their boundaries, badgering your adult children with excessive texting or phone calls or being enraged or dramatic, that they're not immediately picking up from you, especially in conflict.
Like you might go into bully mode and you're crossing a boundary there overstepping your adult child's wishes and their own parenting. Like this is where you're dismissing their guidance when you are with. Your grandchildren, like their children. Another is sending messengers. To your estranged children, like your friends or your, your siblings or other people in the family, in an effort to maybe shame them or get information or convince them or their hurtful decisions.
IE you cross a boundary when you involve other people and many supporters report getting calls from their parents or siblings or the parents press friends to get information or talk sense into them. And the blind spot is inserting outside parties again into an already tense and complicated relationship.
In other is taking out credit cards in your child's name or trying to accomplish something that you want with gifts or holding financial help or attaching strings to finances or stuff like that. The biggest one here is not honoring your child's ability to make their own decisions or have their own thoughts.
You might believe that a therapist or a spouse convince your child. To see you as the parent as unsafe, which implies your child doesn't have the ability to think for themselves. Which might be an old issue for you. You might have been seeing your child the whole life that the way that they can't make good decisions for themselves.
Here are some examples of overstepping your own boundaries as a parent. This is that other issue. Um, favoring one child over the other. Yes, that's a boundary. Crossing oversharing or seeking emotional support from your children is another boundary crossing character, assassinating your child's other parent or family members.
Like your father's mother has never liked me and she's a terrible person. And you're talking to your 5-year-old about that, their grandmother. Um, like with picking sides, an example is seeking help from your, your adult child's friends or partners or children if they've gone No contact with you seeking alliance from your child inner circle to gain sympathy or information, not having clear financial boundaries.
I know this is messy or. Overly using finances to influence your child. And yes, that is super nuanced and complex, but in short, just make sure you're not using financial resources for motives outside of those basic parenting things that I mentioned earlier. The blind spot here about boundaries, like with all the others, can be helped with therapy and the boundaries are things that don't feel clean to your adult child and probably don't even feel clean to you.
On some level. When an estranged parent has crossed such boundaries, they might justify them from those narratives. That I would encourage you to bring into therapy the narratives that I mentioned earlier that might be coming from your own childhood trauma. How might these boundary crossings have made things worse with your relationship with your child?
Have you crossed these boundaries while you were raising them? And as an adult because you justified them in your mind from a place of maybe some drama or your own trauma. The disconnection between the adult child and estranged parent on these boundaries are usually, like the adult child does not feel like they're a person worthy of respect, autonomy, and consideration.
And the parent often feels like their child should be there, maybe for them more. Um, and not so much vice versa, or that the child isn't, again, capable of making their own decisions or is that their child is some kind of loose cannon, or the parent feels like they need sympathy from others. About their child's character, which is possibly maybe some major mental health stuff going on, maybe for you or projection of your own childhood trauma or both.
So at number seven in the final one is what I call, you might rewrite history to serve you. And lastly and briefly, I. This one might be very confusing to you because when an adult child and parent cannot agree on the history or the issues or the meaning behind the history, it's hard to see your part in things.
In this last example, we can see how in all of the seven examples so far can actually influence each other. Or be true at the same time. Not all of them at the same time, but you know, usually these issues are gonna overlap. Here are some examples about rewriting history to serve oneself, like in number three, where your adult child maybe wants to process with you about a perpetrator that you mean brought into their life.
Rewriting history would be about not admitting to any involvement. Or your choices. That's also an example of that. A big example is flat out denying things happened. One has to ask themselves, why don't you remember certain things? That might portray you in a bad or negative light. Do you notice other relationships where people say something happened involving you and it's shocking to you?
Like, might that be a pattern? Another example is stating your child was happy and fine their whole life according to you, but dismissing their reality of what it was like for them. You might not have been fully safe or aware enough to know that your child was experiencing. What they were experiencing in context of your parenting.
Remember in the first example where I talked about narratives or something called narcissistic injury where your narrative might be so big, your child, a trauma narrative or whatever, that you totally dismiss your adult child wanting to bring something up or processed with you. You might have acted out or had an ongoing abusive issue like rage, but you might feel that it's just normal parenting frustration.
Coming back to something I said earlier, inappropriate. So. You might deem your child as overly sensitive and silly about what they're bringing up with you. That's an example of writing history. You might not be able to tolerate your adult child's wishes or statements, or you might look to build a case for how they are misguided and wrong.
While minimizing what your adult child struggle with. That's another example of rewriting history. Another is building a case looking for allies, like creating a story that isn't accurate to your child experience of you. Like you might have an attitude like, well, you had no contact 'cause you didn't like that I moved.
You might be making it to be about other things or. You might think no contact was about your child's wedding fiasco when it was maybe two decades of things leading up to that wedding disaster. That's an example of rewriting history. The blind spot here is might be about being more invested in self-preservation and avoiding shame again, or accountability instead of being curious or self-reflect.
About how others experience a relationship with you. The disconnection here between an adult child and the estranged parent is perhaps the hardest because the two parties are living in separate realities. And when that happens, I find that it's nearly impossible for there to be one agreed upon reality.
So it's sort of like someone needs to kind of cave. In my experience, in my clinical practice, estranged parents dismiss or deny a childhood trauma survivor story, and often according to estranged parents, it's things like. Well, it wasn't that bad that didn't happen. I wasn't involved, so go ask them. My struggle was greater than yours, so your struggle is now canceled.
Well, you were a difficult child or you were always the problem, unlike your brother even saying I wasn't upset. That's a way to rewrite history too, and with that stuff, there's often the criticism of, well, why would I as the therapist solely believe my clients and not take the parent's side? You really need to think that one.
And in addition, usually estranged parents are not seeking out treatment for their relationship with their child before no contact takes place. And family therapy is often dismissed by estranged parents before or denied. No contact is really a long, long process. And I'm not saying those conversations exist in every case of of going no contact about going to family therapy.
So some final thoughts if you've made it through this video. I very much can acknowledge its difficulty and you might feel like you've been condescended to, I don't expect estranged parents to, to totally embrace this or enjoy this content. But I did make this video as it's often requested from estranged parents about insights, and they're asking that in good faith.
So I'm kind of giving in good faith, but I've been in the family of origin childhood trauma world since the late nineties, and I spent about. 15 years in private practice, two years before that, working in inpatient psychiatry in a clinical practice as as a therapist throughout all those years. I do come with some knowledge about this.
So what to do with this information. Now, I strongly urge you if you're interested in getting into therapy, but for exploring your own childhood trauma. And to seek out more about some insights, really go there seeking some answers about maybe you and your mental health in your life. Well, I don't mean to say that this is a universal, but most of the issues I've talked about here for estranged parents are about how people are raised.
Struggling with unconscious and untreated childhood trauma themselves. I mean, for estranged parents. Take that with what you will. I'm not saying that's universal, but that's really what I see. Um, and again, not everybody, but. There's that. So I do not recommend finding a therapist who doesn't get childhood trauma or trauma, or I don't recommend getting a therapist that doesn't understand the no contact issue.
You're not gonna grow with a therapist who just thinks no contact is entitled and immature on the behalf of the adult children who use low or no contact. You could just go to somebody and hear what you wanna say. Otherwise, I would really recommend working on yourself. I do not recommend taking these insights to your child after this video as a new understanding.
If they have specifically stated some boundaries around low or no contact, and I get it. It's human to want to get a quick resolution to a huge, painful problem, such as this. If this video like resonated with you, but I wouldn't immediately. Take this as like a solution. My first really recommendation is to work on yourself, and by that I mean can you find some growth outside of your relationship with your estranged child?
If you struggle with boundaries or emotional dysregulation or the narratives that I've mentioned, why not get some help with those and improve your life in general? And this is super important if you're a child to trauma survivor and an adult child who went low or no contact. I really don't recommend sharing this video.
With your parents that you're struggling with. I really believe in my heart that people should find their own resources if they want to find them on their own, and it probably won't be received well, and it most likely will feel weaponized if you send that to them. So some thoughts about reconciliation, like I'm, like I mentioned, I have much mixed feelings about reconciliation due to it, needing sincerity from both parties to work and get over some issues, not unlike couples therapy in my experience.
Reconciliation doesn't get to the root of issues as estranged parents tend to want to be seen as well and explain their choices and their situations without real accountability or sincerity or ownership without seeing what the impact was on their child in the ch in their own childhood trauma. The adult child childhood trauma reconciliation is not the place I think for parents to defend.
Or say stuff like, what about me and all this? If their child has experienced childhood trauma, if that's really what needs to be talked about first with estranged parents, it's often becomes a power struggle involving the seven issues that I've kind of talked about here about reconciliation. What makes reconciliation successful is when both parties against sincerely want to know how they affected each other.
Family therapy with unfortunately with immature parents can really be counterproductive. Or unsatisfying in terms of real connection and real intimacy. It can be useful in terms of sort of maybe setting boundaries. I guess what I'm sort of saying is if both parties aren't really working on themselves, there may not be the outcome that both parties want.
And reconciliation is also used in somewhat weaponized against therapists, you know, or content creators like myself who talk about these things like no contact or childhood trauma. And those accusations that I've received were stuff like, why don't you ask the parents about what happened? Why don't you offer solutions like family therapy instead of ripping families apart with your nonsense?
Or why don't you teach parents how to be better parents if you're so against them kind of stuff. And I can very much understand the pain and anguish about going no contact. But for those who feel that way, if you're watching this and you feel way, those statements are not made in good faith. And they might really speak to you about your blind spots.
And I'm not attacking you here with these questions, but for those who feel that way, there's this really great old therapy question, why now? It's an old therapy question. Why are you seeking that reconciliation based help now in the 15 years of private practice as a general practitioner and later a child to trauma therapist specialist?
This is hard to point out, but I never got a call in all of those years from a parent saying, I'm struggling with my parenting and I worry about how I'm affecting my children. I never received a call like that. My, my practice was from with clients who needed help sorting out their family of origin, childhood trauma.
They were the ones making the calls about seeking sessions about their anxiety or their relationship problems, or their struggles, or their dissociation, or they were also seeking help and processing what parents had done with their own children or with their spouse, or how they acted out on vacation.
Those were the calls I got. And I'm not saying all this to say, I'm not gonna offer anybody help now because you missed your chance. You didn't call me kind of a thing. Why now is about what got you here? Why now might be about how can I work on my childhood trauma? How can I fix my relationship with my child?
How do I figure out how to stop reacting the way I do and improve my life? Those are very different from why don't you do family therapy instead of breaking families up with your nonsense as if I get out of bed every morning with that goal in mind. Also, the work that I do, the issue around going no contact is a such a small resource.
In my work compared to a greater thing. It's not for everybody. Not everybody needs it, but some people do need space from their family or it's just not working out, or the family is unsafe and that is a reality. The most heartbreaking thing about parental estrangement is that parents spend so much time defending themselves that they often miss the issues that could simply be healed by being more open and actually do, and maybe you don't really want to hear this more honest, I often say.
No one is gonna die from men Faults. Or poor choices and it is actually very healing to do so if it's done from sincerity. I hope that this was thought provoking for you or insightful on some level. And don't take this as demeaning. I do not miss you any ill will or harm. If you can look at this now and grow from it, you might find yourself in a better place where there's less confusion.
And I mean that with with sincerity. This was a complicated video to make given the issues, but I also wanted to give it voice for those. Struggling with it. And answer that request about making this video. If it was not provoking or helpful to you, consider leaving a comment or a question. I'd love to hear from you.
May you be filled with loving kindness. May you be well, may you be peaceful and at ease, and may you be joyous. And I will
