When my book, Brothers, Sisters, Strangers: Sibling Estrangement and the Road to Reconciliation, was released in 2021, the editorial board at my publishing house debated whether to use the word “estrangement” in the subtitle. That word was not widely used at that time, and editors feared that potential readers would be confused and put off by the term.
Now, in just four years, the word “estrangement” is everywhere – so much so that some have called the phenomenon a kind of “Me Too” movement.
What has changed?
A new book, Forget Them Kids: Challenging the One-Sided Narrative of the Estrangement Epidemic and the Biased Therapy Trends That Fuel it, claims that two of the most prevalent factors driving the trend are the changing approaches of young therapists and the influence of internet culture.
Young Therapists
Therapy has evolved over recent decades. Trained in a culture that emphasizes individual autonomy and self-care, Vivian King, Ph.D., and author of the controversial book, writes that younger generations of therapists may over-emphasize personal boundaries and encourage clients to cut off loved ones who don’t observe those boundaries. Often, self-discovery and well-being may be pursued at the expense of traditional collectivist, duty-bound values, and family cohesiveness.
King, an estranged mother herself, claims that parents often are misjudged and scapegoated. She is sharply critical of today’s therapy culture, claiming that the current climate encourages and normalizes cut-offs. She believes that young therapists validate one-sided narratives without exploring the parents’ perspective, and they elevate an adult-child’s self-care to justify estrangement.
“When a 27-year-old therapist tells your child that ‘protecting your peace’ means cutting off your mother,” she writes, “what they’re really saying is: your comfort matters more than your character.”
Cutting off holds great value for those who need to protect themselves from abusive families. However, when applied broadly, it can lead to binary thinking and oversimplification of complex human relationships. Parents who made mistakes, for example, may be slapped with the “toxic” label. A loose application of the “toxic” label can quickly result in profound hurt, alienation, and estrangement.
Internet Culture
King claims that the internet can serve as a megaphone for these young therapists, and online communities can become echo chambers. The internet culture amplifies personal grievances and generational differences in values, communication styles, contributing to misunderstandings and divides in families. The rise in pop psychology and self-help content on platforms like YouTube and Instagram, King says, also has fueled estrangements, rather than fostering empathy.
Estrangement can result from what King calls “online indoctrination,” ” mass psychosis,” and “cult-like group behavior.” Here are some of King’s observations:
- Words like “toxic,” “narcissistic,” “gaslighting,” and “emotional labor” have become weaponized, surging in popularity online.
- Online discussions often turn everyday conflicts into a diagnosis to justify cut-offs.
- Harassment and online bullying tend to prioritize and validate adult children’s narratives and silence estranged, vulnerable parents who are profoundly isolated. The same is true, she says, of the therapeutic culture. This bias, King claims, inhibits healing approaches that honor all family members.
- Social media algorithms amplify extreme content and generate higher rates of engagement; Consequently, posts about estranging family members may get more visibiity than content that encourages resolving family conflicts.
- Social media can create silos or filter bubbles that limit exposure to diverse viewpoints. This can reduce empathy toward those with different perspectives, and create a kind of online cult.
- Social media often serves as a poor replacement for face-to-face interactions, which develop deeper emotional bonds.
- Influencers and content creators, who don’t have any formal training, liberally offer advice that often encourages cut-offs.
What Can Be Done
Considering the possibly devastating consequences of estrangement, therapists must recognize the weight of their influence while striving to keep compassion and nuance present in each client’s experiences. They need to be mindful of their own biases and generational perspectives when promoting self-awareness, healing, and understanding.
Family members grappling with strained relationships need to be self-reflective and open to multiple perspectives and narratives. Dr. Donna Hicks, Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, has drawn upon her experiences mediating international disputes to create a model for communication that applies to families as well as to nations.
Family Dynamics Essential Reads
She outlines these four necessary steps to begin the process of resolving disputes:
- Sit down together.
- Listen without interrupting or challenging each other’s stories, and listen to seek understanding. (All experts agree that true listening—where one person genuinely takes in what the other person is saying—is crucial to reconciliation.)
- Acknowledge and recognize what the other has been through. (When each party hears the other’s experiences, neither party can dehumanize or exclude the other from the moral community.)
- Honor and acknowledge each other’s integrity and, in doing so, create a mutual bond.
Society as a whole would benefit from moving beyond binary definitions of “toxic” and “healthy” labels and embracing the complexity of human connections. Social media platforms and mental health influencers need to be responsible in promoting balanced, well-informed discussions about family dynamics.
A counterintuitive, yet fundamental and transformative truth is that conflict may present opportunities for growth. In his classic bestseller The Road Less Traveled, psychiatrist M. Scott Peck explains that most who suffer psychological distress ignore or work around the cues, though resolving the issues actually offers a path to growth. Peck says they blame “the world outside them—uncaring relatives, false friends, greedy corporations, a sick society—for their condition. … Only a few accept their own inadequacy and the pain of the work necessary to heal themselves.”
The current therapy climate and internet culture often discourage many from accepting their own inadequacies and doing the work to heal themselves.
