Last week an article came out in the New York Times about family estrangement, specifically around the controversial issue of going no contact with family members. And I'll put the link of that article in the description of this video below so you could check it out. My channel, if you don't know me, is focused on childhood trauma.
In a byproduct of experiencing childhood trauma is often family estrangement and problems in our adult years with family. And I was interviewed in the article as a representative of, say, like a childhood trauma therapist who educates abuse survivors both on childhood trauma and also as well as no contact options and choices, as well as educating on abuse incidents that result in people considering withdrawing from abusers.
Even if that's family. In short, the article covers the following childhood trauma survivors who eventually go no contact for various reasons. The influence of social media on no contact and estrangement in the influence of therapist on no contact and estrangement, as well as different therapy resources for family and for childhood trauma survivors.
The article is a bit sensational and often vague or has a lot of missing context. On a very complicated and personal controversial issue that is changing in society and how we see family. And here is the main root, you know, like the ground zero issue about estrangement, where like the fault line lies about family.
And it comes in a quote from the article from a therapist who works with estranged parents. This is kind of the thing that you need to know here, is the therapist who works with estranged parents stated behind this wave of estrangements is an ever lower threshold for what we view as trauma. For context, the quote is an argument that culturally we are lowering our definition of trauma, which is something that I come back to.
In short, that means that therapists who advocate for family reconciliation or talking it out believe that there was a trend fueled by social media. Watering down the definition of trauma and abuse. And it's interesting that they would advocate for that. I'm gonna come back to it later, but unpacking that here, I think it's gonna be helpful on these issues.
So here are my thoughts about the article, to add some clarification. What was omitted, what was missing from the conversation, and I think it is important, and as always, context is everything. So I'll be talking about what is the role of a therapist in helping clients when they're abused by family and are thinking or wanting to maybe withdraw or leave.
Related to that first question. The second thing I'm gonna talk about is how does the relationship recovery process, which is the group therapy model that I do, how does that apply here? How would an RRP therapist address someone who is wanting or needing some help around going no contact? Lastly, is social media therapy advice in psychoeducation or is it unethical and is it damaging?
So let's just get into it. What is the role of a therapist in helping clients when they are abused by family? Are therapists supposed to be entirely neutral? Do therapists insert their own beliefs on the client's situation and maybe pressure them to make those decisions such as estrangement or what they think is best for the client?
And the answer to both of those questions is no. Therapists are trained to support clients in their process, in their decisions. There are different theories about how to do that. Neutrality is just a theory and it's actually an older theory. Some use a traditional total blank slate approach where there is an avoidance of direct judgment or opinion or advice.
This is embracing neutrality, believing in the client's ability to come up with their own decisions, conclusions and realizations. Sometimes this is totally literal. Sometimes it's a little bit more flexible. Some therapists engage in more validating of what the client is experiencing in their life and will offer options and choices and honor whatever the client decides to do.
A good therapist doesn't shame the client for their decisions and is a safe place for whatever those decisions are. There can be some disagreement, but there ultimately there is some support. What if a client is being abused by anyone in their life, and how would a good therapist be available to them in sessions about that?
In context of the article, there was high criticism of therapists who discussed the option of estrangement from abuse, believing estrangement causes harm to family and sabotages any hopes of future productive conversations and connection with family. That is highly problematic when we don't consider that there are abusers within the family.
It seems like those therapists or that idea doesn't fully believe that those people can exist in family fully. I think it was also stated in the article that going no contact means to lose out on emotional and financial support. There was a lot of cognitive dissonance there that requires its own video really, where we're talking about those coming from childhood trauma in an abusive family system.
Where emotional support and financial support can often be either non-existent or weaponized. There is also the assumption that all families are capable of productive conversations, and there is also an assumption that clients haven't already tried to connect with family about abuse. There's more cognitive dis there in the article, if not some delusion about abusive families, specifically parents having that capacity to have a productive conversation.
Abusive parents. And to clarify that a criticism of discussing going no contact as an option, as many other readers and other therapists thoughtfully commented instead of the issue, say, being only existing in family. What if we plug that in where a therapist is guiding a client through the problem? A. Of domestic violence and not being safe with a partner, would they suggest the same argument that client should avoid exiting a domestic violence situation because leaving the perpetrator is hurtful to them and in sabotages future connection.
I know that sounds silly, but when we think about plugging it to, to the two situations. There's something to discuss there. Here lies the quote that I mentioned in the beginning of the, of the video where we are not on the same page about what abuse is and what abuse isn't. And in short, I believe a good therapist will validate and empower an individual who is discussing abuse in any way, and give them options, starting with the discussion of boundaries, if that's safe, and then providing.
Ongoing support if those boundaries are not respected in a process of choices. And incidentally, the discussion of no contact. Is often the caboose to a very, very long train. It's often the last resort. A good therapist is going to support you in whatever you decide to do, even if it's not their suggestion.
I've never shamed anyone going through domestic violence because they or they didn't take my advice or do the thing. I think good therapists are almost like parents, where we know somebody is gonna have to figure out their own way and still have a safe place to come back to, to keep talking about it. I also believe though, that a good therapist might ask for, in the case of domestic violence, are you sure that's a good idea to move back in with them when they hurt you and threatened your children last time?
We can say that as well. Also, therapists are not being unethical to give a client a green light. On the idea of leaving any abusive relationship that doesn't honor one's boundaries and personhood and safety people leave when they're ready to leave on their own terms. Nor would I be neutral and just keep asking a domestic violence survivor, like, how do you feel about that?
How do you feel about that? How do you feel about that? What do you think when they may need something more from me from that. So that's what I mean about being neutral. The way the article is written makes one assume that some therapists say, me, for example, and other influencers who do what I do, are going to start talking about no contact in the first session and make it a requirement for healing, which it isn't.
It sounds silly, but that seems like the narrative out there. Or give handouts on how to leave your own family without knowing anything about the client or the client situation or story. It's like, hi, here you are. Take this. No contact is highly personal, individualized. In a complex, painful last resort and takes a long process in therapy before I would even offer really any education about it.
But I can offer education about it for those who don't have access to therapy. So lastly here, I would want a therapist to be real with you if you're going through abuse, and I see a lot of therapists re-traumatizing their client by judging them, by suggesting to just make it work with family when the client actually has nothing to really work with in terms of toxicity.
Abuse safety in the family within childhood trauma in the present as well. The second part that I wanted to address is related to the question of how does therapy work in the RRP model on the issue of estrangement going no contact. The relationship recovery process that I do is a group therapy model where members work on processing their childhood trauma.
They work on intimacy with their peers in the group, and they finish business with their family of origin in the form of their family roles, their internalized parents, their abuse, how we think about ourselves, how we think about others. All of that stuff is done in that work. The work is past focused.
And often group members have both passed and present issues with their parents, such as the abuse, neglect, drama, aggression, dysfunction, poor boundaries and abusive messages continue while the client is trying to process their past. Some parents have mellowed and have gotten into recovery themselves, but that is actually pretty rare.
Despite that the client is still in need of processing what happened to them as children. Although having a parent who is working on their own healing leads to much better relationships in general. Estrangement options are brought up when clients continue to discuss those present issues. Not resolving after boundaries have been established, after trying to be with family, say from a different place, or even when clients want to talk about what happened in the past with a parent now because they've gotten some insights and unfortunately.
Those conversations often become more. Traumatic in my experience with this kind of population and, and type of families that people are coming from. So in the work after repeated present focused conflict with an individual's family, you know, the no contact estrangement option keeps coming up in discussions or comes up then, but that doesn't really happen until a lot of effort and a lot of trying that it might be year one or year two of the treatment before people start to maybe look at that after many, many attempts.
No contact is again, is a byproduct of childhood trauma and abuse from family. The issues predate clients getting into therapy. Amanda Curtin, the creator of RRP, and who was also my therapist at the time, back then, she didn't force no contact on me. She just discussed it with me in group when these issues came up after we keep trying, after we keep talking about it.
The issues with my family predated me getting into therapy by nearly two decades. ROP groups are generally a mixture of, they say six to eight adults with the average of one or two, usually going no contact. Well, the article kind of stated less than half of my clients go no contact where I stated it's actually less than a third.
There's a significant difference in that. I've had a group of say, five. Of which four of which were in no contact and one was supported for not going no contact. And I've also had the opposite with another group where there's no universal, no or low contact formula. Everyone's situation is different.
Some already get to the work estranged, some can engage in low contact due. The family not being so acutely abusive in the present. Some clients go no contact due to the parent's increase of abusive messages because the client is now changing in therapy, not playing their family role in setting boundaries.
We really can't heal in environments we were abused in, especially when the abuse is still active. What I mean by that, if we're working on reparenting, the inner child who believes that they're unlovable and a loser for making mistakes that really can't be healed, if we get on a phone with our parent to connect with them and we get the same indirect message that you're unlovable and you're a loser for making mistakes, some clients don't need to have the conversation around going no contact at all because the nature.
Of the abuse was more about neglect or passivity, not like abuse, aggressive, toxic attacks. Again, no contact is not a universal therapeutic tool for all. It depends on the client, their wishes, their situation, and in RRPI provide education on the how to about going no contact if the client wishes to explore that again, after many attempts at getting space or trying to do a good enough connection, and that failed due to continued abuse in the present and missing from the article.
Goal is my full thoughts and context on writing a brief letter and forming the family of going no contact. I suggest that no contact letters are a brief so that the client doesn't create long drawn out. Examples of why they're going no contact or demanding change in the parent, which sometimes happen.
It's, it's a little bit of codependency in there, which isn't good for them 'cause it implies that the parent still can change and there's kind of like a line in the sand kind of a thing. I think if people are gonna go to no contact to work on themselves, just go do that. You know, the shortness is not about punishing.
It's a short statement of a boundary after many boundary violations. The quote in the article of me saying. You're toxic. I'm leaving. Bye-bye Is done. Out of context. It can be simply. I'm going no contact because you don't believe me. You know we're at an impasse. Don't contact me and when I'm ready I can reconnect with you.
It can be more than that. My suggestion is to make a statement which is more for the client actually than it is for the family. Letters are a client's choice. I personally think that parents should know. They are now in a cutoff with their child, but letters and communications with toxic parents can be complex and one size does not fit all.
Like with a parent who has tendencies to say, stalk, confront, bully, or gather alliances against you. Not all do, but many do. And it's up to the client to decide. Or state if no contact is, say, indefinite or, 'cause sometimes the clients may want to reconnect after a period of time, say that they're in therapy.
A benefit to the letter is just another boundary that has been stated to refer back to later if the parent crosses that boundary again. And at one point in the article I was quoted for telling clients. To not visit parents who are ill or passing away like they're on their deathbed. This was also taken out of context completely as it's a personal choice.
You can check out an eCourse that I developed on survivors who are caretakers for abusive and now aging parents, and how to navigate that as well as how to process when an abusive parent passes away. If clients are in the position of caretaking or visiting a parent on their deathbed. There is concrete advice that I give on how to show up in safety for that, if that works for them, and I'll link that course in the, in the description of this video, the author made it seem, like I said, don't ever go to an abusive parent's deathbed, which is false.
The article did discuss examples I gave on how to finish business with that parent. But not in person, but within the therapy room in an RRP group. Those examples listed in that article were experiential therapy where there's some anger work there, there's some empty chair work there. Regret of not seeing the parent in those moments is a thing.
However, highly toxic families often use a crisis. To further scapegoat. So sometimes a parent can hold their child's hand and while they're passing away and not get into the history, the bad history, some even on their deathbed, wanna get into that bad history and still continue to shame and scapegoat the child.
I've had a client who is not estranged from their parent, not be invited to the parent's passing due to. It was a mess. There are all kinds of situations. Lastly, on this issue of RRP, Amanda was quoted in the article about when clients began groups with her that they weren't aware of the nature of the abuse in their family.
Some therapists commented to the article that it reminded them of implanting false memories when it's not. RRP provides psychoeducation on abusive family systems. Contrast over the healthy family systems, education on symptoms, education on issues that come from not growing up in safety and experiencing trauma.
Clients become educated on simply how bad things actually were, which is a process and often most of society does not have a good frame of reference for what is healthy parenting and abuse. What is and what is not. So the education is providing an educational process, not implanting memories that aren't there.
And the third piece is, is it a trend? Family estrangement? And what about TikTok? Therapists talking about estrangement is estrangement from family re. No, I think it's just more visible, like everything else on the internet has brought us. We all have the same information about childhood trauma and estrangement.
People can also go and have gone no contact outside of any connection to social media in the past or with therapy, and it's actually part of the human experience. I was given that choice by a therapist in the late nineties. No internet, no real books, nothing on it. So having social media back then. To break the taboo.
That family is everything would've actually been very helpful to me to be aware of others that are going through the same thing, experiencing the same loneliness and pain. So I've also met multiple people outside of the context of therapy and social media, like say in my work environments, who stopped talking to their parents.
Teenagers have been emancipating themselves for a long time in place way before social media. So calling in a trend or reducing it to a fad is kind of disingenuous. So it is trending, I'll say that, but there is a causation and correlation fallacy going on there just because it's talked about, doesn't make it the cause of family's issues between parent and their child.
Again, predate social media. People like to create a narrative that someone saw a video and decided their family is toxic out of the blue with no prior examples or context. It isn't unethical for therapists to provide psychoeducation about anything, but it happens to be that those discussing estrangement influencers such as myself discussing controversial issues such as no contact, are often sort of the, the, the visible person that.
A strange parent can get upset with, and I understand that they're in pain a lot, but that's, we gotta kind of take that in. For example, there isn't really criticism of influencers who help others become educated on anxiety without seeing the patient, because anxiety isn't that controversial. We're very accepting of symptoms, but we don't like to talk about the causes.
Such as anxiety from childhood trauma. It was also interesting that TikTok was focused on, in the article for its appeal to younger people along with like ongoing discussions or even battles about differences in generations. But YouTube and Instagram are where most of my audience is, but my work was identified on TikTok solely, um, kind of, well, there's other links.
But is, I was wondering if that's some kind of a spin in the article. I will say that lastly on this, this piece is that all of us are simply on social media way too much without really having in-person sort of help with somebody. For many of us, there's so many barriers to therapy, social media, about therapy.
I think it's saving lives. The downside is, is I think we're kind of marinating in multiple issues for different reasons. That's true. Just not even outside of therapy. We're marinating in politics. We're marinating in other stuff as well. So some final thoughts. What I felt was missing in the article was really a definitive definition of childhood trauma, which might have been hard to come up with.
And while the author discussed some of my trauma, my trauma story, and as well as what both parents and estranged children discussed, you kind of don't walk away. With the, the knowledge or the impact of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse that happens in abusive families. That's the vagueness. You know what I mean?
Like coming back to that quote about lowering the bar of childhood trauma, I discussed at the beginning of the video, is the bar too low? Absolutely not. Society is changing around how we view development attachment. Good mental health as related to attachment, safety, and good relationships and progressing and giving children a better experience than many people had.
What is changing about how we value ourselves and how we value relationships? Many childhood trauma survivors are going no contact to also work on themselves, but to also change deep seated, multi-generational, abusive ideas and issues that the family intentionally or not. Is repeating and expecting their children to actually embrace, such as not considering that children have feelings and are bright and see things and and know things.
So it reminds me of how society once bought at the mandatory use of seat belts and cars because they were an inconvenience or a change. My channel is also about getting people to think about healthy child development and breaking generational trauma to which all kind of parents would benefit from.
And I'm curious to know what Es strange parents and some therapists out there consider the bar being way too low. Leave a comment in this video about what does your family not consider abusive, but you do like spanking, yelling, gossiping about each other, um, triangulation, parentification, like all that stuff that we talk about on this channel.
I would love to know more about a discussion. Where's the disconnect? A common example is not being protected by a parent from a perpetrator, like a stepparent and the parent. Defend your childhood by stating that you have material things, education, food, and shelter. So you really shouldn't have any issues.
And as a side issue related to that, I wanna mention briefly that it's related to no contact being a decades old process. The client going no contact may have tried for years to tell that not protective parent directly and indirectly, that they are not comfortable around that abusive stepparent and that was ignored.
The boundaries I mentioned earlier in the video, they don't have to be recent. To be valid. Another side note is when estranged parents reactively believe that their child has been wrongfully influenced by a therapist or whatever, by TikTok, whatever, kind of implies that the child has no efficacy or thoughts of their own.
And that kind of highlights the parent seeing them as an object and not as an individual. It's kind of like a clue. My work, you know, the entire channel is about specifically naming abuse. That often readily gets accepted by society and gets in the way of healthy development in a family and creates lasting mental health issues later in life.
And it requires a lot to overcome. My work on childhood trauma education kind of speaks for itself and no contact is actually such a small part of that work. When the article made the reader walk away thinking it was like. All of my work. Other therapists on social media who discuss this too are often labeled that that's all that they do.
If you're curious about what my definition of childhood trauma is, you can watch the videos on this channel as well as explore two related assessments, and the first is a childhood trauma test. That really anybody can take. The questions are also educational and they get you to think about your childhood and present issues.
The second is a toxic family test to also gauge about the acuity of toxic in the family system, not just the individual symptoms related to their trauma. I'll have both of those assessments and video links in the description of this video. So. That is all my sense, my s my several sense on the article. I hope this was thought provoking.
I would love to hear from you in the comments or that if it just kind of answered questions for you outside of the article. And as always, may you be filled with love and kindness. May you be well, may you be peaceful and at ease and may you be joyous and I will see you all next time. Bye-bye.
