What is family estrangement?

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0:38Hello and welcome. I'm Kimberly Wilson. I'm a counseling psychologist and this is Complex. The psychology podcast that helps you navigate through the maze and haze of information that's out there about our mental health. In today's episode, I'm exploring family estrangement. Now, we hear about family estrangement when it hits the headlines, Prince Harry and Brooklyn Beckham being the most high-profile cases. But what we don't hear about is how painful, heartbreaking and complex family estrangement can be. And I know this because I see it come up time and time again in the therapy room. So why don't we talk about family estrangement more openly?

1:29Well, my dear listener, that's exactly what we're going to be doing in this episode. And I am very excited that the leading researcher in the UK on family estrangement is joining me, Dr. Lucy Blake. And I'll be sharing a listener's experience, someone who's currently going through family estrangement herself. So, let me be your guide from the rickety rope bridge of misinformation to the glorious suspension bridge of understanding.

2:06Lucy, welcome to the show. I'm so glad that you can join us here in the Complex studio. Thank you for having me. And can you tell us a little bit about your work? Yes, so I'm an academic at the University of the West of England in Bristol and my research and teaching is all about family relationships and for the last 10 years in particular I've been focused on family estrangement So I imagine you have been very busy lately with requests to talk about it? Absolutely, I think there's something about the Beckhams which has been quite surprising the way that that kind of celebrity estrangement has really captured people's attention and that they really want to talk about this issue.

2:48Yes, I think this is going to be really a fascinating discussion and a really important one.

2:58This has been in the news and people are talking about it, but I always like to start with a definition so that everybody is on the same page. Lucy, would you be able to tell us what we actually mean when we say family estrangement? There is some discussion and debate around what it means, but most people are talking about relationships that are characterised by low contact or no contact and also relationships that are low in emotional warmth. And that second part feels quite important because it makes me feel like that there is a difference between estrangement and I just haven't spoken to my uncle in a while.

3:38Yes, yes. There's something about that quality of the relationship. It's so helpful to have that definition. Thank you.

3:50Now, Lucy, we have heard from a listener on this topic. I'm going to call her Nadia to protect her identity. And what I'll do is to read out Nadia's email. And I would love to hear your thoughts. so Nadia says dear Kimberly I came across your podcast yesterday and I listened to the episode about self-acceptance then today because I was so inspired by the self-acceptance chat I listened to the one on female rage I cried with relief as I listened and I found I could relate to so much of what was being said thank you Nadia I'm very glad that you found it helpful and she goes on to say I wonder if you could cover family estrangement please I've been estranged from my parents and as an indirect result also from my sister for nearly three years now It's had a profound impact on my mental health, my self-image and my other relationships and the fundamentals of what I thought unconditional parental love was have been obliterated The questions for me now are what to do about the situation?

4:56Should I do anything? am I holding the grudge or are they by not being willing to discuss any of this with me and then she says will I always live with this pain thank you Nadia for sharing your experience with us and there's a huge amount I think for us to unpick and untangle here we don't have the details of course of Nadia's experience and we don't really know what's understood about the estrangement on both sides. But I think what we can do is to explore how complicated this landscape actually is and to kind of better understand what it means and really what it entails in its entirety. But what does Nadia's email bring up for you, Lucy?

5:45It feels really courageous to kind of reach out and share an experience like that. There There is so much stigma around it. And so it's something I often hear that Nadia touched on in her message was this idea of, you know, will I always be in this much pain? And I think it's really important to acknowledge how painful family estrangement can be and the kind of deep grief people can experience when they're estranged. Yes. And often what I see in kind of comments on social media is I've been no contact for three years and it's the best thing I've ever done. And I think that's a beautiful destination for somebody to come to.

6:27but there's so much that goes up in that preceding part even before the decision is made and that's the part that I think is is really missed when we hear the people who feel that they've done great and come out on the other side in a better position I really do think it's incredibly complex I think that estrangement might result in someone feeling freer more able to be themselves, more able to live in their own identities maybe in a way they weren't able to before. But alongside that, there might have been many years of real struggle, real heartache, pain, rejection, abandonment, betrayal. All of our family relationships, whether we're estranged or not, they all involve a complex range of different feelings and emotions.

7:19And I think what we often see on social media might be snapshots of feelings of contentment or happiness, pride, and actually what we miss is all of those processes that went before that. What did you mean when you said there's stigma around family estrangement? Yes, I think when people are estranged and then they share that with anyone, so it could be a partner or a friend or a helping professional, they're often met with, you know, but it's your family it can really silence people I think and make them not want to share their experience because perhaps they're estranged for all sorts of different reasons that might be kind of addictions in the family mental health challenges experiences of abuse and these are not things that we talk about openly for various different reasons and so there's often so much that people don't know.

8:14Thank you, Lucy. This is a very profoundly moving topic. Let's get into the complexity.

8:26Now, interestingly, one of the things that we know about family estrangement is that it's not new. Mozart was estranged from his father. But why do you think it is that we're hearing so much about it right now. Is it on the rise? I spend a lot of time reading really dry, dense, boring academic papers. Thank you for your service. And I have yet to find any evidence to indicate that family estrangement is on the rise. You know, researchers have been looking at the quality of relationships between parents and adult children for decades and the conclusion has always been there's lots of different kinds of relationships there's no one way or typical way of relating to a parent in adulthood I think why people might think of it as a trend is that we're talking about it so much more often and I think that's in part due to celebrity estrangements and that kind of opens up discussions around like oh that's actually in my family too.

9:31So that can be really powerful. And you said that it's not rare. So what do we know about the prevalence? So we have some really high quality studies coming out of Germany and America that are indicating that about one in four adults will experience a period of estrangement from a father and then estrangement from a mother slightly less common around one in 10. That does feel surprising. Actually, we might even go as far as to say a fairly common aspect of the human experience. Absolutely. I think that's very much how I think of estrangement. What are then some of the common reasons that people give for being estranged or explaining the estrangement in their family?

10:16Some common reasons might be feeling like a relationship is emotionally abusive or not safe. Other factors might be when parents have gotten divorced and there's been kind of conflicts of loyalty that children feel following that divorce. Another kind of factor is when people feel that their sexuality or their gender identity isn't being validated or acknowledged. And I wonder whether there's anything in the research about abuse by proxy. I think the way that parents can poison a child against another parent. Yeah, absolutely. In the research, the kind of term used around that is alienation. And that it just feels that conflict of loyalty feels really hard because it's so important, we think psychologically, to have healthy relationships with both parents and to feel that you have to choose between one or the other.

11:13Yes. And I think something that really kind of resonated with me around Nadia's letter as well was you know in that estrangement from her parents that had also resulted in an estrangement from her sibling and I think that that's really an important thing for people to know about family estrangement is that it kind of ripples out and then affects the other relationships in the family and that can really amplify the pain and the loss around estrangement as well because you're not often losing one relationship you're sometimes losing many and I guess one of the things that we're saying is that estrangement separation no contact however we're describing it is not a neat solution to a problem or set of problems in a family.

12:06So could you talk us through potentially the positives and the negatives? You know, what's on both sides of this decision? I think around some of the benefits people might experience from distance, whether that's kind of physical or emotional or both, that might be having more time and space to really think reflect and process and that can be very valuable to have that kind of time out um and where there's a relationship that is emotionally abusive or challenging or feeling unsafe that really might be very important for people to have that freedom and that benefit might be so huge it might be so life-saving for some people that really might outweigh everything else and I think some of the hardest challenges that we've kind of touched on already will be around navigating that ripple effect on the wider family so will you go to your cousin's wedding next year or will you see your young nephew this holiday and all of those anniversaries whether it's birthdays wedding anniversaries mother's day become really fraught it's not always as if you've made the decision and you lay it to rest absolutely i think you've captured something so important there which is um the kind of theory researchers might use is ambiguous loss so often when people are estranged there is this uncertainty will we be back in touch again and i think maybe that was coming across in nadia's letter as well that kind of open-ended nature of estrangement well what if someone gets very ill is that going to change anything and that can make a loss really hard to live with because it's not kind of wrapped up in a bow there's this open-ended messy uncertainty around it the ambivalence the ambivalence that that can just really be very difficult to live with and it's also not kind of socially sanctioned so we I think in general, any kind of loss, it's more acceptable almost to really talk about that, those initial months and years after the loss.

14:23And then it's almost like people are on a time frame, you know, well, it's been two years. So whereas actually when we experience loss, it takes as long as it takes us to grieve and it might be a lifelong grief that we hold. And I think the other thing that can make the grief ambiguous is about the wishfulness. I see this in particular when people are struggling with estrangement from a mother. And my understanding of that is because a mother's love in particular in our culture is so idealized. and I think even where people do have a mother who hurts them or is harmful to them it is incredibly hard to relinquish the wish to have the mother of the fairy tales of the dream absolutely I think what came out very strongly in one of the first pieces of research I did around estrangement was this longing for a relationship that was warmer and more emotionally supportive and other people just really wish they just said I want to know how they are.

15:38What do they mean by that how they are? I think sometimes with estrangement people might often like move house or change phone number block numbers and sometimes people lose access to to knowing very basic things about family members and that can be a real longing just to know are they okay? Yes. One of the other big issues underneath estrangement is the shame, the stigma that people experience. I think both internally, you know, am I such a bad child that this is what's happened? But also externally in that, you know, this isn't the image of a family or a good person or a healthy relationship that the world expects?

16:24Yes, I think that can be huge shame. I'm thinking of research that's described kind of older women who've had children in other decades where other identities weren't so available to them, like being a career woman, for example. And so being a mother is such a primary identity and that when that is challenged in some way or the relationship breaks down, that loss of an identity and role can be really substantial. And I think one of the hidden complications is actually the financial side. And it feels maybe a little bit crude to say, but lots of people are supported by their families. Maybe they live with their families.

17:06Maybe they work with their families. And so the separation isn't just an emotional one. It isn't simply emotional. It's also survival in practical terms. Absolutely. And I think that point can get lost if we think of estrangement as a trend, because then we're not thinking of these enormous consequences that estrangement can have. So I'm thinking of students in university who are estranged from their parents, and they often experience kind of sofa surfing, a difficulty to meet very basic needs for kind of food, and then no kind of emotional support as they're going through their studies. And the impact of estrangement can be really enormous and bring survival right to the fore.

17:53Other things that come to mind might be when people are raising children, there can be a real disparity between those who are estranged from parents and those who aren't in terms of the kind of support they have around them. It's a cyclical impact, isn't it? Like if I decide that I don't want to have a relationship with my parent at 20, fine. But then I get to 30, 35 and I'm thinking about having children. I'm thinking, OK, well, now I have to build a separate village. Do I tell them that they've got a grandchild? Do I, you know, it has to be renegotiated at least internally time and time again.

18:31Yes, I think that's really important to acknowledge that the impact of estrangement can really change over time.

18:40Usually at this point in the conversation, I would put the topic on a scale. But I think, as we've been discussing, with a topic as nuanced and complicated as estrangement, maybe it's more about how someone assesses how they go about making the decision itself. You know, it's not necessarily a tidy solution. So is there a kind of evaluation, a cost-benefit analysis process that someone might want to start thinking about? I do kind of find myself wishing there was some kind of formula or Excel sheet you could fill in with different possibilities and outcomes. But then I also think there's something about the way we navigate our relationships over time.

19:34there is some inherent uncertainty as well. I think something I feel confident saying is that it's really important to think about how safe we are in our relationships. So that's obviously against kind of physical and sexual harm, but also emotional harm as well. Yes, I think you're absolutely right. Are there different outcomes when someone says, mum and dad, I'm taking a break from you for a while versus something that's a much kind of quieter, letting things fall away. Some studies have suggested that some parents feel quite uncertain as to why their children have distanced from them. And I imagine when you're not certain and you're not sure, that might affect your experience of loss and grief as opposed to when you've got quite a lot of clarity over what's happened in the relationship.

20:27And on the flip side, because I speak to a lot of the children, part of the distress is, do they know why I'm so upset? Do they know why I need this time? And again, as children, I think there's a wishfulness that our parents will just know, you know, that they see us well enough and they understand us well enough. They love us enough to be able to interpret and to inquire and to be interested and to make all of those necessary shifts and changes. But that's not always the case. You know, parents also have differences in their emotional maturity and their understanding and their experience as well.

21:04Absolutely. And I think the really hard thing about estrangement is the fact that people have different perspectives. And I think there's one researcher, Kylie Aglias, her book is about it's a matter of perspective or thinking of the royal family statements around this, you know, recollections may vary. It can be really frustrating, I think. Because where there's hurt, what we want is recognition, acknowledgement, apology, responsibility. And we can insist upon that and we may deserve that, but we also need the other person to be able to be in a position of understanding, humility, low enough defensiveness to be able to tolerate what apology means and I think again often between different generations there can be real struggles between status hierarchy power respect that make perspective taking incredibly difficult absolutely now for everyone listening if this episode is resonating with you and you're impacted by difficult relationships with a member or members of your family, you are definitely not alone.

22:17And please know that you don't have to struggle by yourself. There are mental health organisations that can give you advice and you can also find sources of support in the show notes on BBC Sounds.

22:32Okay, Lucy, so when we're thinking about positive pathways that can be made around and out of this issue. It's not necessarily appropriate to just advocate for reconciliation. I think you've already touched on that. Yes, I think for some people maintaining an estrangement might be something that's really fundamental to their safety and well-being. Whereas for other people, perhaps there's a period where estrangement's very kind of useful and necessary and periods where it's not because something again that comes out in the research is that people often cycle in and out of estrangement rather than it being steady and maintained and then for other people reconciliation might look like sending cards again at birthdays or meeting up and having a kind of light-natured conversation whereas for other people that might require you know addressing harm that's been done in the relationship or really thinking about the changes that are needed to connect together well.

23:34So I really think that kind of happy ever after or how do we get past this, that's going to look really different for people. Yes. I think the thing that you've said that I really want to highlight is the shifting, renegotiating nature of it. Because I think sometimes some of the distress around an estrangement is feeling like it's a full stop. I'm estranged from my family and that's it forever whereas there is something I think kind of emotionally different when you say I'm estranged from my family at the moment that's working for me at the moment yes that sounds like um that could be a really helpful way for people to kind of process what's going on in their relationships at the moment although really hard again to live and sit in that ambiguity I think as well.

24:30And I suppose the other thing that we're thinking about is helpful is if someone discloses to you that they are estranged that what they don't need is to be encouraged and pushed to reconcile but actually they just need some compassionate listening and some understanding that it's taken a lot of thinking and self-discovery and pain and grief to come to this decision. Absolutely. I think meeting people with curiosity and just rather than thinking you know kind of what's best for this other person that maybe you don't and actually there's so much about people's family relationships we don't know.

25:18And if we're thinking about Nadia one of the things that I might suggest in her situation is therapy because complicated relationships, family relationships, ambiguity and ambivalence is our bread and butter. It's kind of the thing that we do a lot of work and training on and is what people bring to us. So this is one of the instances where I might suggest that therapy is a good idea. Yes, building a really safe supportive relationship with a therapist could be really helpful for kind of figuring out next steps and processing. Yes, absolutely.

25:58Lucy, thank you for being here and bringing your UK leading expertise. What I love about this conversation is actually how we're moving away from the soundbites and the tribalism actually, because even in these famous examples it's as if people are encouraged to take a side you know either the parent is right or the child is right and it's kind of a nonsense but it's also kind of insulting to the depth of what is happening emotionally for these individuals absolutely and I think one other thing that's just come to my mind as well is no matter kind of where you are in your position if you're thinking about this or you are estranged or you initiated it or you're a recipient of estrangement you know it can be so isolating and so shameful so there's such value i think in wrapping yourself in kindness and rallying your troops i think can can really make a difference that's beautiful thank you

27:07we are coming to the end of the episode thank you again to my guest developmental psychologist researcher and author dr lucy blake thanks so much for having me and for bringing this topic to light and thank you very much to nadia for sending in your questions and thank you to everyone listening. I hope that what you can hear is that I am on a mission to clear up the mental health space and I want Complex to be your trusted place to get expert information. Tell me what you want me to talk about. Be part of the conversation by emailing us your stories in a paragraph to complex at bbc.co.uk. Please note though that I can't answer you personally.

27:58if you have a concern about a medical or mental health issue, then I'd strongly urge you to seek expert help. And if you want details of further support with some of the issues raised in the podcast, you can find them at bbc.co.uk forward slash action line. The link is also in the show notes on BBC Sounds. That's it. Thank you again to our listener Nadia for sending in her experience and her questions. And thank you to the lovely production team at Loftus Media. At BBC Sounds, Assistant Commissioner Izzy Lee Poulton and Commissioning Editor Rhian Roberts. I'm Kimberley Wilson. Thank you for listening.

28:38Take care and go gently.

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