Estranged from your adult child? Hypnotherapy could help you to find your peace.
Estrangement is an increasingly common experience. How can parents learn to cope?
Surveys suggest that one in ten people is permanently estranged from a parent or from a child. Up to a quarter of people are estranged on a temporary basis. Estrangement is a serious phenomenon and all the signs suggest that it’s becoming increasingly common. If you’re suffering because of being estranged from a loved one then it seems as if you’re very far from being alone.
So, if you’re here because you’ve been cut off by a child then I’m truly sorry. It’s something I have worked with a good number of times in recent years and so I do understand how heartbreaking it can be. If this is something which is affecting your life then help is at hand.
Whilst nothing can take away the pain of estrangement, hypnotherapeutic approaches (combined with the skills and qualities of a trained psychotherapist) can help you to approach that pain differently. I work with depression, anxiety and grief on a daily basis. I understand the pain of estrangement and the devastation it leaves behind. You can learn to rise beyond estrangement and live your life once more. Perhaps I could be the one to help you. So, if you’re living in, or around, Oxford or Reading or are prepared to work with me over zoom, get in touch and we’ll talk things through.
The cruelest thing…
Sometimes the cruelest thing about being estranged from your child is that you’ve not been given any real reason as to why it happened. I often hear parents complaining that they were never given a reason, their child simply vanished one day and never accepted contact thereafter. It’s hurtful. It’s degrading. It’s cruel and it goes against every human desire to have certainty.
Human beings are certainty seeking machines and to combine the lack of a reason with the withdrawal of an adult child’s presence is a double torture. It’s grief without a loss. It’s a grief which nobody can understand (besides others in the same position) and it’s a grief which nobody wants to talk about.
Nobody understands
If a loved one dies then there is usually a ceremony of some kind. A funeral provides a sense of closure and the opportunity for friends and family to close ranks and to share their pain together. Everybody goes through such a loss, sooner or later, and our cultures generally know how to cope with the emotional demands placed upon those left behind.
Estrangement provides none of this. Instead, the estranged parent is left alone in their grief, frequently afraid to voice their situation in case others should judge them to be to blame. It seems to be a natural assumption that parents are responsible for their children, well into adulthood, and that ruptures in the relationship are the fault of the parent.
“You should try harder”
“What did you do?”
“Just call and apologise!”
Judgement and useless ‘advice’ are the lot of the abandoned parent. Instead of reaching out for support, such experiences frequently lead them to withdraw from the world, from company, from life itself. The pain is all they can feel and life seems mundane, flat and even pointless.
The wider family might not always be as supportive as you’d like, falling victim to divided loyalties or even, sometimes, choosing to side with the estranged adult child. The effects of estrangement spread outwards and the pain of loss multiplies. What if there are grandchildren you can no longer see? It’s all so indescribably painful.
It can be even worse if you are the only parent who is estranged. If your partner still has contact with the estranged adult child, then the relationship can suffer and you can be left feeling completely alone, even in your own home.
There are plenty of reasons why adult children might choose to estrange themselves from a parent. Some of them are absolutely valid. Some, however, are not. If you’re the innocent victim of an estranged child’s behaviours then perhaps I could help you to master your grief and turn your life around.
Why, why, WHY?
Now, it may be that you know why your child chose to become estranged. There are certainly some parents who suffered from addictions or mental health issues during the years in which they were parents to children. Some parents can, of course, be abusive, others controlling. There are many valid reasons for parents to lose contact with their children.
However, there are many other reasons too. I’ve worked with people who have left cult-like organisations, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, leaving their children behind and thus being shunned by them. Sometimes children will adopt Islam or join a radical christian church and so come to abandon their parents in this manner
I’ve worked with parents whose children identified as being trans. When the parent found this transition difficult they were labelled ‘transphobic’ and abandoned. Online fora can sometimes encourage this behaviour, urging the vulnerable to abandon their parents in favour of the new “glitter family”. Many think that modern culture has abandoned the ideal of the family and considers family members to be disposable if they do not buy into every aspect of the adult child’s lifestyle.
Other people can find, later in life, that their child was sexually abused by a relative and that they are now being blamed for not knowing and for consequently failing to protect the victim.
Children, themselves, can fall victim to addictions or mental health problems and thus be led into a life which cuts them off from their parents.
Daughters or sons in law can be controlling and manipulative, causing the adult child to abandon their parents for fear of losing their partner.
Hostile ex-partners can alienate the adult child from the other parent and thus cause estrangement.
There are very many reasons as to why a person might become estranged from their children. Whatever the cause, it hurts just the same. I’m sorry that you’re here, having to read this. I hope to be able to help you to make sense of it all and to move on.
Move on?
Sometimes there will be no answers forthcoming. Years might drift by in such a manner. One day such an answer might come. A reconciliation might occur. In the meantime, however, you need to find a way of living with the uncertainty. with the grief, sometimes with the judgement. In the meantime you have to decide how to behave. Do you continue to attempt contact? Do you continue to send gifts and cards? Will you live the rest of your life, if this situation should prove to be permanent, in a grey and dream-like half-life?
Working with a suitably qualified and informed professional could help you to find answers to these questions. You could learn to rise above the situation in which you find yourself. You will always love the estranged adult child. You will keep a place for them, should they one day choose to initiate contact. In the meantime, you can learn to cope with the grief, rediscover your zest for life and move on.
If you’d like to talk about the issues raised by this page then please do get in touch. I can be called on 07786123736 or emailed via paul@resolvedhypnotherapy.co.uk. I’d love to be able to help you, as best I can, to pick yourself up and move forwards. Could hypnotherapy help? It’s certainly worth the price of a ‘phone call to find out.