Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to the Family Calm Flow podcast. I am your host today, Julie Marie. And as always, I am very happy to have you all here today.
Speaker: Today, i am going to answer a question that I have always gotten a lot, but I am getting more so these days. So I am going to take that as a sign from the universe that someone needs this question answered for them.
Speaker: And it's a heavy one. The question is, am i glad that family estrangements are on the rise?
Speaker: So we're going to get into a lot today regarding this question. I am going to answer this question head on, but beforehand I am just going to give my opinion of what I actually think is is going on in the depths and under like the crooks and crannies that no one sees underneath of this very heavy question. Okay.
Speaker: And I want to address that there are kind of two different schools of thought in whether or not family estrangements actually are on the rise and increasing in the world, or at least in the United States, versus previous years and previous generations.
Speaker: There are some researchers saying that family estrangements are on the rise. that there are more actual estrangements in families going on than there were in generations before.
Speaker: And these researchers claim the reasons for that are different cultural viewpoints amongst different generations. the older generations and younger generations maybe having different value systems. And in addition to that, regardless of maybe generational you know challenges, is that every generation has more access to mental health resources than previous generations before. And so now there is this emphasis on self-care, taking care of your mind and your spirit, as well as your physical body.
Speaker: And so that has ah been empowering for some individuals who feel as if they are not being seen and heard in their families or maybe even going a little bit further of abuse or just disrespect and the inability to have a relationship.
Speaker: They choose for themselves that their peace is the most important thing.
Speaker: And then there's this other kind of school, this other kind of group of researchers who are saying that family estrangements are actually steadily staying the same. as to what percentage of adults are estranged to at least one family member. And that it's really like, there is no increase in that going on that has steadily been just kind of the same percentage all throughout time. I think it's like, I don't know, don't quote me on this. I think it's like 26 to 38%, like somewhere in that, that
Speaker: twelve percent range and that It's not that it's increasing, but that people are just talking about it more. And having there be a cultural shift where we have much more exposure to other people via social media or news outlets, we have more access to people, to more information, to more outlets, and individuals are discussing the topic of family estrangement.
Speaker: With that, they claim that that has also occurred because of a shift in our culture where there's more openness to so discuss such a painful topic when in years prior, in generations prior, if there was a family estrangement, it was like when a woman had a miscarriage, like we just don't talk about it. We look the other direction. And that was the same with family estrangement. So that They're not actually on the rise, but the rise of the conversation about family estrangement is actually happening now.
Speaker: And then I actually think that I said there was two schools of thought, but I don't know. I've also um read some things on that. Some researchers researchers are saying there's actually no way of knowing whether or not family estrangements are on the rise because we in previous years in like psychology spaces and family communication spaces didn't really
Speaker: professionally track the numbers of how many family estrangements were going on. So because of that, we can't say for sure if if they're on the rise or not.
Speaker: ah And I have to be honest that on my end, I haven't ran the numbers myself. Those numbers have never been a part of my own particular specific types of research.
Speaker: And i i will say, I do think that all schools of thought have some validity to it. I think, in my opinion, i i really do resonate with that since there are more resources for mental health issues, there are cultural differences between generations, and there's an openness in our culture now, thankfully, more openness to have conversations about more painful things. I think this is all accurate in my own personal findings in working with clients and in studies that I've done and also in just kind of evaluating my own family dynamics and my own family estrangements that I'm a part of or have been a part of.
Speaker: But I think I don't know if I have a school of thought or or my school of thought is a little bit different in the sense that in my personal opinion, i am not surprised if I am not surprised that more family estrangements are happening or that they are on the rise. If that is true, and again, it seems like we can't know for sure, that would not surprise me.
Speaker: Because the truth of the matter is, is that when we as human beings in society don't have access to learning about how to have healthy relationships with one another and how to have healthier or better communication with one another, family estrangements are just going to be a natural result of not having that education be accessible to everyone.
Speaker: And so because of that, there have been years and years and decades and decades of people and families feeling so misunderstood or not feeling seen and heard or not having the tools, the bandwidth, the capabilities of being able to have conversations with one another where family estrangements don't need to happen.
Speaker: And that just leads to communication breakdowns.
Speaker: And after a while, whenever we're not being seen and heard, whenever we keep having the same patterns of relating to each other and communicating with one another over and over and over again, we get really tired of talking to one another.
Speaker: I'll have a lot of clients come to me and say their parents or there's a or their spouse even came to them and said, oh, you know, I just don't want to talk about this anymore. It's not productive.
Speaker: Or maybe even something with a little bit more of like a shaming tone of like, oh, this again. i guess we're going to talk about this again. Or something along the lines of I can't have this conversation anymore.
Speaker: Or we should just stop worrying about this and move on.
Speaker: In my opinion, the truth of the matter is, and what I have seen, is that most people don't actually know how to move on. And what we label in society as quote unquote moving on and what we found acceptable in a lot, I would say, in generally in our family systems is that moving on, quote unquote, means shoving things down and pretending.
Speaker: Because speaking intimately with one another is fucking terrifying.
Speaker: It feels so scary that most of us don't feel safe doing it. We don't usually know how to create safety for one another or if one person creates safety for someone, it can be really hard for another person to receive and accept it.
Speaker: And if you don't have that emotional safety, then you really can't talk about these really tough things or acknowledge these unhealthy dynamics that are going on.
Speaker: And then the estrangement moment happens. And usually, from what I've seen, it is usually because someone can't shove it down any longer.
Speaker: Whether it was a big life transition or a change that occurs, kind of awakening that perhaps someone has where they think there's a lot of hurt here and my hurt is not going to be healed anymore by going to the same people and having the same conversations over and over again.
Speaker: And that is when someone walks away from a relationship in the family. and I know some people, how we label it, again, and society is, oh, this person stopped talking to me. This person is refusing to communicate with me.
Speaker: How I respond to that is estrangement is communication.
Speaker: There is a message in estrangement that is essentially, I don't know how to talk to you anymore.
Speaker: My hurt is never going to be acknowledged here
Speaker: And i have tried all of the ways to communicate this with you and try to work on the relationship with you.
Speaker: But the way you want to work on the relationship and the way I want to work in the relationship relationship on the relationship are very different things. And so i am so hurt. I don't know.
Speaker: what else to say, and so there is silence.
Speaker: And that is the message within the silence.
Speaker: I am not talking about the types of estrangements that come from stonewalling and emotional manipulation. But I do need to add here that usually when there is family estrangements and we don't have a lot of information, that it is very common.
Speaker: that usually the narrative gets creative, created of what's going on is actually not the truth of what's happening.
Speaker: As in if someone has walked away from a relationship, if there is a family estrangement, that they that person is emotionally manipulating another individual. And I will say, what I have seen in my research with my clients, with my everyday life, that is just a story that we tell.
Speaker: I do know that there are types of family estrangements and silence and stonewalling that is emotional manipulation. However, i will say those are fewer and far between.
Speaker: And if you're listening to this... And what I'm saying is triggering to hear, I want you to know it is safe and okay and absolutely acceptable to be triggered by that because it's a really big deal.
Speaker: It's a completely different way of being. It's a completely different way of thinking. And those different ways of being and thinking might cost you some of your beliefs and opinions and feeling safe in the mass of the family.
Speaker: Or the majority of the family. And there's nothing scarier than that. I essentially said that in the last podcast of how important having a sense of belonging in our communities are for the most productive.
Speaker: primal parts of our brains and bodies. And so thinking there might be a different story here other than whatever the typical family narrative can be about a family estrangement,
Speaker: And it's not that you did anything wrong per se. It's just that this is what we do in families, unfortunately, without having the education on how to have healthy relationships.
Speaker: i We all do it. I have been privy to it myself. i In you know this doing this research, it can be really icky and hard to look at yourself where ah you know you're realizing, hey, a type of invisible family dynamic. You're like, oh, no, that's that's not in my family. And then the further you look at it or the more you talk about it with a coach or therapist or your friends and safe people, my spouse, I'm like, oh, I guess I did. kind of You know, I guess that it was kind of there in my family. And o I kind of participated in it, participated in it. There were a lot of narratives in my family system that I believed without question.
Speaker: I will say family estrangements never, ever, ever happen overnight. They are usually a last straw, I guess, that will happen when there are so many years and potentially decades of unspoken hurts that can no longer go unacknowledged.
Speaker: With the person who has decided to walk away and become estranged or take some time away from the family or a specific relationship in the family, usually there was so much hurt and
Speaker: that person tried to have that hurt acknowledged and then it wasn't. And so then when it wasn't, there's usually on top of this mountain of hurt, a extra large suitcase with now even more baggage and of hurt now on top, sitting on top of the mountain. And that is when family estrangement occurs.
Speaker: That being said,
Speaker: I will say, i don't think all. And I would say i don't even think most family estrangements are from bad people.
Speaker: There is usually this strange but huge underlying energy in the air when there has been a family estrangement of it's us versus them. And we need to prove that we were right. And as a family dynamics coach under family understanding, family communication, and family dynamics,
Speaker: And in what I do, that is a sign to me that usually there is not a flow within the family of hearing and seeing each other and listening to one another.
Speaker: And so again, when someone, even if that's kind of the coping mis mechanism of dealing with the family estrangement. So again, when someone walks away from a family They are essentially saying, i have been really hurt.
Speaker: I tried to rectify this situation and that rectification failed. And now I'm even more hurt and I don't know what else to do other than walk away and find someone else who will hear my hurt.
Speaker: Find somewhere else, another environment where I will feel seen and heard and emotionally safe. So it is a clear sign that there was not enough. I'm not saying that there's none, although sometimes there is none. There was not enough emotional safety in that family to make sure that there were healthy connections amongst the family members.
Speaker: And again, i have seen that happen with so many good people. Good-hearted people who choose emotionally unsafe ways of relating to one another because they just didn't know any other way of doing it. They didn't know what else to do or how else to be.
Speaker: It is not the case all of the time, but sometimes and a lot of the times I have found that family estrangements are actually the road that can lead to families attempting to create emotional safety within them for the very first time.
Speaker: A family estrangement can be the first time that just an awakening moment for multiple people in the family realizing things might not be the way I think that they are.
Speaker: It's an opportunity to look at the family and the way that everyone relates to one another through a new lens and a new perspective And it can be this beautiful opportunity of a family really growing together in emotional safety for the first time.
Speaker: And that is one of the reasons why I started Family Calm Flow in the first place. Because family estrangement, dude, it hurts everybody.
Speaker: The family member that is you know being boxed out or the you know the the people that this family member walked away from, they feel totally betrayed. And they also feel so much shame because in our society, there are these unspoken rules that your family has to have it all together.
Speaker: And that estrangement means... your family isn't good. There's probably something wrong with your family.
Speaker: This shit is all over TikTok. People claim my son doesn't talk to me, but he had a totally normal childhood. And i i don't know why this happens to people like me too. And that is so valid. There's so much pain and sadness in that.
Speaker: And I just want to gently
Speaker: Make it safe to question
Speaker: what is a normal childhood that we are normalizing in society?
Speaker: What does a good family mean?
Speaker: What is a good family versus a bad family?
Speaker: What do those things mean to you specifically in your own value system? Not something that someone told you about and not something that someone decided for you. But if you were to answer those questions for yourself, I think that that would be really valuable.
Speaker: And then I also think questioning
Speaker: what would my child or this estranged person value in what a good versus bad family would be and what is a normal quote unquote childhood.
Speaker: I think there are
Speaker: I think that there are blanket statements that we say that require more conversations and again, require more emotional safety in order to have those conversations. Because like I said, it hurts everyone.
Speaker: The people who get who are left behind you know after the person walks away, like I said, total bit of feelings of betrayal, feelings of shame.
Speaker: And yet the person who walks away is also completely wrecked with shame. And they also feel completely betrayed.
Speaker: There's another thing in our society where it's it's your family. you know It's your mom. It's your sister. It's your uncle. These are messages that we give each other in society about family. You can't walk away from...
Speaker: a family member. so So there is no support in our society for family estrangements because the people who get left behind, they are, you know, w racked with shame with with all of these messages. And then the person that does walk away is w racked with pain about these, you know, and shame about these messages as well.
Speaker: And so everyone's just left feeling awful.
Speaker: And so both sides usually, depending on what avenues they choose, they can find, each can find some amount of healing or freedom from walking away or from, you know, healing from someone walking away from them.
Speaker: But what lingers is a sense of lack of belonging for everybody.
Speaker: And this is when, even if where we reconnection is not possible after estrangement, I think it's really valuable and necessary to learn what emotional safety is and what that means for you so that there can be healings and healthier relationships for you on either side that you're on going forward. where healthy other, you know, family relationships can benefit from what happened.
Speaker: I've been thinking a lot about how we watch these different types of stories play out on TV or movies or books that we read where we watch the breakdown of some diabolical family, um you know, or maybe they... um are really rich and have this crazy wealthy family business or maybe you know it's a family who's under-resourced and and these dynamics can occur in in both of them. And we'll watch these things and unconsciously there might be little things that you know trigger us in watching these things
Speaker: And we think to o ourselves, oh, that's not how my family is. Or thank God I don't have a family like that. And yet sometimes unconsciously there may be some little things that your family's your family does do that's playing out on the television.
Speaker: um And I'm laughing because... <unk>ve I've been this person just thinking, oh gosh, you know, it's so entertaining to watch. But yet when it comes to dealing with it on our own, it's usually too complicated or painful to kind of really look at and or to even get out of of of shifting, shifting into a healthier way of being within family relationships. Yeah.
Speaker: And so because of this, there is a lot of shame everywhere that i think all families carry. We don't really have the open, healthy flow of communication about these things and how families are portrayed in media where everybody feels this pressure to not be that crazy family. And yet we all are.
Speaker: for the sheer fact of that we are human beings and we have all grown in a society where education is not available to everyone on how to have healthy relationships.
Speaker: So this comes back to the question, am I glad that family estrangements are on the rise, that there are more family estrangements going on.
Speaker: And the answer is a little bit complicated, but I will so first start with absolutely not because people are heartbroken over them.
Speaker: And I am so in awe of the bravery and the health that comes from an individual deciding that they cannot participate in an unhealthy family dynamic anymore.
Speaker: So in a sense, yes, I'm glad that there are more family estrangements going on because the truth of the matter is, is that if that is a fact or it doesn't have to be on the rise, if family estrangements happen in general,
Speaker: and they happen are happening so frequently, and they're being so much more discussed now, that is, in my point opinion, a point of data that the way our families are functioning don't really work for anyone. The old ways of relating to one another in our families aren't working and are creating horrible pain emotionally for the entire family.
Speaker: So then i view family estrangement as an opportunity for a family to wake up and think, oh shit, I don't know how our family functions exactly. And I don't know if it works for me.
Speaker: Maybe i don't know a lot about the person who walked away. Maybe I participate in some family dynamics that are unhealthy without knowing on it.
Speaker: And maybe there's something that I missed. Maybe that thing that I missed was my own hurt from the family. And maybe i have normalized that a little too much where I carry a lot of shame or blame or hurt feelings that never got addressed.
Speaker: Maybe there's some really dark parts of me
Speaker: That instead of looking at, it is easier to project on another family member.
Speaker: And honestly, now I'm going to start laughing again. And it's not for insensitivity because family estrangements are so incredibly painful, but it's also because the latter question, i mean, I don't know a single person in the world who hasn't done that because again, we are all human.
Speaker: We just don't know how to talk about it with one another.
Speaker: And so, since this is my school of thought, I will say family estrangements don't have to be as dark as they feel.
Speaker: I do think that feeling the feelings of betrayal and hurt feelings over unkindness or misunderstandings or actual intentional hurt I think that that is so necessary. We cannot reconnect or heal from a family estrangement if those feelings are not felt.
Speaker: However, family estrangements can be an opportunity to actually create more emotional safety in your family and have more fulfilling, healthy family closeness.
Speaker: Anyone who's experienced a family estrangement, whether you are the person who walked away or the person who was walked away from, will have a community wound from a family estrangement. And the community wound was probably already there before the estrangement even happened, probably years. And as I talked about in the last podcast, which I can add into the show notes if you missed it, Community wounds really dysregulate our nervous systems. And yet creating emotionally healthy communities can in turn heal them. And a family estrangement is really could be a rock bottom for a family where
Speaker: A new way of being with relating to each other and relating to each other can emerge with the right tools, with the right education systems in place.
Speaker: And this is something that we do at Family Calm Flow.
Speaker: I will say, herrat however, that reconnection is not always possible. There are certain types of abuse ah abuses that can occur in families that you just can't always come back from. Like the devastation of sexual abuse, no one should ever be back into divorce.
Speaker: you know, a relationship with a sexual abuser or when everybody, you know, or if there is are people who are just in the family who are never willing to be open to new ways of communicating and relating to another one to one another.
Speaker: that might be a relationship that is not repairable because it takes two to tango. That is what a dynamic is.
Speaker: Or multiple individuals to tango. But even if trust can sometimes take years to grow back,
Speaker: there is another side of the coin where trust could actually never be rebuilt.
Speaker: And i want to say that that really isn't all of the time.
Speaker: I also think and find it necessary to to say that when we villainize individuals who've walked away from unhealthy dynamics in their families that weren't working for them and our culture or the bystanders of that family within the family or friends of the family point fingers at them and totally villainize them.
Speaker: saying they don't care, they're so selfish, they're hurting everybody, i want you to know they're usually crying in the corner.
Speaker: They don't want to hurt anybody else, but they cannot keep agreeing to continue being hurt themselves.
Speaker: And so villainizing them is going to make them even going to make this entire thing even worse. So I want to encourage you to think, if there is an estrangement in your family, and that is why you listen to this podcast today,
Speaker: If there is an individual that is no longer coming around your family or has refused to speak to his particular family member or had a difficult altercation, you know, a fight or, you know, a miscommunication with a family member, i really think the first step in
Speaker: seeing if reconnection is even possible, is thinking, can I put aside the stories that I've heard about this person?
Speaker: Is there a family narrative that's going around? And is that narrative actually the truth? Or am I just believing it because this is what everyone in my family is saying and believing?
Speaker: Do I have the facts of what is actually going on? Or is this just oo a rumor? we don't normally We don't talk about or normalize that rumors happen in families. We talk about how they happen in high school and middle school. But I would argue they happen more in families than even in school systems.
Speaker: Furthermore, i think it's really important to evaluate the type of love that you have in your heart for someone that you are estranged from or estranged to.
Speaker: i don't know if if you were the person who walked away or if you were the person one of the people left behind.
Speaker: And ask yourself why specifically you love this person without the label of, well, because they're my brother or they're my dad.
Speaker: Think about whether or not there is a harshness to the way a family views a particular individual or a particular group, subgroup within the family.
Speaker: and think about where that harshness potentially originated from.
Speaker: Are you able to find a softness at all? Or are you so hurt yourself from the separation that that blocks you from potentially getting to that softness?
Speaker: Whose responsibility was it to make sure this person felt safe in the family?
Speaker: when they were a child or when they were an adult?
Speaker: Did anyone in the family make them feel emotionally safe or help them potentially feel emotionally safe?
Speaker: And if your answer is, I feel like I did everything, that's okay too.
Speaker: We might not know what everything is.
Speaker: I think these are the deeper questions that we're missing from our culture surrounding family estrangement. And I think that's missing from all the family estrangement TikTok conversations, which we can get into more of how I've been hurt by this person and how did I potentially hurt them?
Speaker: Even if it was not my intention to hurt them, did I accidentally hurt them?
Speaker: Did my actions hurt them? Did my inactions potentially hurt them?
Speaker: And if hearing these questions brings a huge discomfort, please give yourself the biggest hug that you could potentially give yourself without hurting yourself. And your might remind yourself that nobody knows how to do this.
Speaker: We're not taught how to have healthy families in our society. It's just something that we do, that we're all expected to do on our own, that's in the peripheral of this expectation to be the perfect picture, perfect, fun-loving family.
Speaker: And that doesn't exist.
Speaker: If this is something that you're struggling with, We're here for you at Family Calm Flow, and you can visit us at www.familycomflow.org.
Speaker: You are not alone. Take care, everybody.
