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Estrangement from family is among the most painful human experiences. We are born into a close family tie, and our continued inclusion is literally a matter of life and death. Without an adult’s attention, care and love, we cannot survive infancy. This basic need does not go away, even we are able to look after ourselves. Instead, that early dependence grows into an emotional attachment that makes us feel, even as grown ups, that our lives depend on connection to the people we love.
Being around another family can highlight one’s own exclusion. Birthdays can chill with the reminder that people who would normally delight in the simple fact that we exist, have cut us out of their life; but the most common trigger of estrangement pain is the holiday season which 9 out of 10 people who suffer family estrangement find “challenging”.
Christmas, the quintessential time of family gathering, gift-giving, communal hopefulness, gratitude and celebration, becomes a hollow-eyed reminder of continuing emotional loss.
Family ties are fundamental to our emotional and psychological make-up. Why would anyone shun one of their own? One imagines the extreme cruelties of physical or sexual abuse – and indeed, these are reasons people in the study sometimes gave for instigating estrangement. But there are other reasons, too, less extreme and very common, such as mismatched expectations about family roles and obligations, about the meaning and expression of the family relationship.
While family estrangement is sometimes temporary, an adult child who instigates estrangement is likely to believe that a functional relationship with a parent – a relationship that does not involve pain and humiliation, or bring with it a sense of betrayal – will never be possible. The fractured family members long for things to be better, even just a little better, enough to stem what feels like an ever-increasing tide of loss, never a scar always an open wound.
So what can we do to help someone in this position? A recent report suggests that “having someone listen” to them, “being seen as normal”, being told that they were “an okay person”, and hearing that others had similar experiences can ease the pain.
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Category(s):Family Problems
Source material from Well Doing
