Right now, it feels like your family is broken. Everyone is fighting and hurtful.
You may be a parent and your children have now grown up into their adult years. Facing family estrangement as a parent can be heartbreaking. Unfortunately, family estrangement can be very painful to deal with when it comes to adult children. Your adult child may be cutting your off or alienating you. Due to some deep anger, it feels like your child no longer loves you or wants you in their life. You feel sad and hurt because your adult child is pushing you out of their life. And, you do deeply want to figure out what is going on through counseling. There may be times when your adult child starts conflict with you. At Wisdom Within Counseling, we are a group of family estrangement specialists and therapists that would love to help you.
Are you feeling alienated by your adult child or family member?
Your adult child may be pushing away their siblings as well as you. there may be more than one family member being cutoff by your adult child. For one, you may be unaware of how angry your adult child is with you until they stop communicating. The team of therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling support families in reconnecting and reunification after estrangement.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, our family estrangement specialists and therapists help families overcome anger due to past trauma.
Your adult child is mad and fighting and there is a lot of tension.
What can family estrangement look like?
At one time, not long ago, your adult child loved having you around. You may even have been helping with a newborn or a grandchild. All of a sudden, it seems that your adult child is a different person. They no longer appreciate you as a grandparent. Instead of wanting your support with a new baby, they are holding anger towards you.
When you want to talk to your adult child who is estranged from you, they do not answer your phone calls or texts.
It feels so sad not being able to communicate with a loved one that you raised. When you look through childhood memory books, you sob and cry. Confusion, sadness, and your own frustration can be a part of counseling. You want a safe place to talk about positive memories of your adult child’s childhood. Though, you do also remember difficult, stressful times you all lived through together.
Why do family estrangements occur?
Trauma in childhood can lead to family estrangements and a need for professional counseling. Commonly, experiences of sexual, physical, verbal and emotional abuse lead to family estrangements. One or more family members may disagree on the facts of childhood trauma leading to an estrangement. For some reasons, perhaps rooted in unresolved trauma, your adult child is not wanting to communicate with you. There can be anxiety, fear, worry, and grief that comes along with facing family estrangement. One day, you may feel confident and the next day, you may feel depressed and sad. You can have a safe place to talk with a therapist about all these intense emotions. At Wisdom Within Counseling, we are a group of family estrangement specialists and therapists.
Is your adult child angry and hurting?
In a family estrangement, you may feel confusion, hurt, loss and sadness. It is normal to want to talk to your adult child and want a healthier bond. When you have tried talking in the past, it always seems to end in conflict or yelling. Maybe, they leave your home and walk out due to high emotions and anger. As part of you is curious about why your adult child is pushing you out and curious about their pain. Another part of you wants to fix this and wants resolution. As well, another part of you wonders if you did something wrong to cause this.
Confusion, shock, loss, sadness, and grief are all valid emotions
When you think back to raising your children into the adults they have become, you wish they saw and appreciated all you did. You helped them get out of a traumatic situation. Thinking back, your ex-partner was verbally and physically abusive to them. Could this be why they are mad and hurting? Counseling can be a safe place to digest and process your fears, worries, and thoughts.
Did your adult child grow up experiencing childhood trauma?
When you reflect on your adult child’s upbringing, you know you did everything you could to help. Still, they have memories of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. Perhaps, there was a messy divorce due to their other parent being abusive in some way. Could their childhood memories of trauma really be causing so much pain to this day? Right now, it feels confusing as to why your adult child is so angry and distant. Wisdom Within Counseling can help determine if childhood trauma is the root of family estrangement or not. The team of counselors at Wisdom Within are a group of family estrangement specialists and therapists. You and your family can have a safe place to talk about all the emotions you are feeling about the past. Notably, unresolved past trauma can lead to anger, frustration, mood changes, and estrangements .
You wonder if childhood trauma could be why your adult child is so angry.
Maybe, there are feelings of pain from childhood abuse your adult child is experiencing. At times, you had to survive around an abusive family member. Getting divorced was for their best interest. When they were young, you did everything you could to protect your children from harm. Memories of fleeing, leaving your abusive, narcissistic ex-partner flood your mind. Being pulled through a messy, emotional divorce to separate from a narcissist person is traumatic in itself. Divorces, multiple moves and having a parent who was abusive can lead to family estrangements.
To begin, click the button below to book your phone consult.
Does your adult child blame you for their anger and pain?
It seems like your adult child may only see you as the one to blame. Counseling can help you and your adult child talk about what is under anger, and removing and releasing blame. Often, underneath blame are feelings of sadness, hurt, and loss. Therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling can support healthy communication skills in families. Often, families do not lead how to communicate in healthy, effective ways until conflict has begun. Working with a therapist who specializes in family cutoffs and estrangements can help slow things down for everyone. By having a place outside of your home to talk, your therapist can teach healthy ways for sharing intense feelings.
Our family estrangement specialists and therapists can help your family release anger, anxiety, and grief in healthy ways.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, we support families through holistic therapies. Holistic, somatic, mind-body therapies help with processing PTSD memories and complex trauma. When family estrangements occur, there is usually past trauma resurfacing, and that needs counseling. Some painful memories of abuse may be resurfacing for your adult child. As well, every time your adult child yells at you, you feel your own trauma memories coming back. They remind you of your ex-partner who was narcissistic and abusive.
A holistic, creative, mind-body approach to family estrangement counseling
For mothers who face estrangement, mind-body therapies can provide an outlet for the loss and pain. Now, it is not to say that your adult child will always want you out of your life. But, while they are keeping their distance, mind-body therapies help you have positive coping strategies. Sometimes, estrangements last a few weeks, a few months, or a few years. It can also be uncertain to know who will be cutoff next out of anger. Holistic therapies at Wisdom Within can help you with the uncertainty and not knowing when they will want to talk to you again. Art, painting, and using clay can be a language beyond words. Playing a music instrument can be healing and freeing for trauma.
Holistic, mind-body therapies help you cope with anger, uncertainty, loss, and trauma in positive ways.
To note, a variety of emotions may come along with feeling estranged. For instance, anxiety, worry, sadness, loss, grief, anger, and confusion may all be present. From building healthy coping tools, you can be calm for the time when your loved one does what to reconnect. As well, holistic, mind-body therapies help you cope in a healthy way with the passing of time until talking again. Instead of turning towards a negative coping tool, you can build healthy outlets for all your feelings. Learning that your adult child no longer wants a relationship with you can be triggering for panic, anxiety, and your own anger. Your therapist can teach your positive self-talk to deal with trauma symptoms like anxiety and frustration. As well, your therapist at Wisdom Within Counseling can teach you mindfulness meditations, yoga poses, and breathing skills to feel calm.
To begin, click below to book your free phone consult for family estrangement counseling.
Feeling alienated from your child and your grandchildren can be heartbreaking.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, you can use art therapies, yoga therapies, music therapies, drama therapies, and walking therapies. Coping with heartbreak and the loss of relationships can be a grief process. Studies show that for trauma memories to heal, mind-body therapies are necessary. No matter what your family member is doing or not doing, you can choose to love yourself. As holistic therapists, we believe trauma is held in the body. Positive coping tools can help when going through a family estrangement and not known when your adult child will reach out. In counseling, you can go for a walk outdoors in the fresh air by the beach. Essentially, you get a language beyond words to heal and gain inner peace. Yoga therapy can be a way to move trauma memories out of the body. Movement therapies promote mind-body connection and present moment thinking.
Mind-body, holistic, creative therapies give anger and outlet and a place to go.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, our team of family estrangement specialists and therapists offer holistic, creative therapies for building trust.
It feels so difficult to talk to your adult child because they get triggered so fast. In the past, arguments have become heated and emotionally intense. Anger seems like the easiest emotion for your adult child to show. And, you seem to be the one blamed for all their problems and pain. Holistic, mind-body therapies can help all ages of people heal from trauma, loss, and grief due to family estrangement.
The team at Wisdom Within Counseling specialize in holistic family estrangement therapy.
How to end family estrangement?
Accepting your part in the estrangement can be difficult. There may have been a wound emotionally that your adult child is thinking about again. Having a child of their own and cause trauma memories and symptoms to resurface. Often, anger is a symptoms of complex PTSD. However, when you, as a parent, have to face an angry child, that can be really challenging. If your child is frustrated or angry, you can learn ways to cope in counseling.
You are not alone if you are facing the painful reality of family estrangement.
It can feel like your adult child holds all the power in your parent-child relationship. Meeting with a family estrangement specialist at Wisdom Within Counseling can help you take back your power. Counseling for family estrangements and cutoffs can help you identify what aspects of life you do have control over.
To begin, click the button below to book your phone consult to work with our group of family estrangement specialists and therapists.
Counseling can help families take ownership for any hurt from the past.
Often, family estrangement occurs because of childhood trauma. Perhaps, your adult child feels you’ve been homophobic when they were coming out. Maybe, your adult child is hurting emotionally about something that happened in their adolescent years. Your adult child may believe a trauma occurred, like sexual abuse.
Some people become estranged from their family due emotional, physical, verbal, or sexual abusive during childhood.
To note, talking about sexual abuse from childhood can lead to emotional flooding and anger. Being sexually abused as a child by a family member can lead to family estrangement in adult years. Especially, family estrangement occurs when an adult was not listened to as a child. And, your adult child may feel invalidated as no one believed them when they shared about sexual trauma. A family estrangement can be a process of trauma, grief and loss for all.
Family counseling with an estrangement specialist can help family members get on the same page again.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, family estrangement specialists can help family members understand one another with compassion. Gaining an understand for one another’s emotions can bring families together. Rather than feeling protective and angry, family members can openly share intense feelings in healthy ways.
Anger is a sign there are bottled up emotions that need help being let go of in counseling. Acceptance is a key part in recovering from family estrangement in counseling.
How can counseling help loved ones survive family estrangement?
Working with family estrangement specialists and therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling can determine the trigger issue. Finding out what began the estrangement is essential to healing from this family trauma.
Family estrangement can be common for families who may force their child to have rigid religious beliefs in childhood.
Not being accepted by parents for being gay, transgender, queer, or bisexual may lead to estrangements. Growing up gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer in a strict, religious family can be traumatizing. Commonly, family estrangements occur because a younger person feels conflicted about their cultural or religious heritage. There may be lingering anger about family rejection from their coming out process.
As well, family estrangements may occur when an adult child views their parent as making bad decisions. An adult child may create distance from a parent who has alcoholism, a drug problem, or was abusive when on drugs.
Holidays and family gathers can also be triggers for family estrangements
Notably, holiday and big events can triggers family estrangements. Getting together for Hanukah, Christmas, or any holiday can bring about intense emotions. Adult children may chose to become estranged after occasions.
For instance, having a conflict break out over a new baby being born, wedding or due to a death in the family can lead to family estrangements. An adult child may worry that spending time around their family will lead to a bad Christmas.
At times, when people choose estrangement, they do not know how to resolve conflict.
A person who is choosing estrangement may feel a negative, traumatic event happened on a special occasion. Furthermore, spending more time with family members may cause more triggering, angry, painful memories.
Online and in person in Niantic, we help couples in neighboring towns. We help couples in Bozrah, New London, Mystic, Stonington, Norwich, Waterford, Old Lyme, Ivoryton, Centerbrook, Essex, East Lyme, Franklin, Griswold, Groton, Ledyard, Lisbon, Montville, Glastonbury, Colchester, East Haddam, Hadlyme, Hamburg, Old Saybrook, and Madison. In farther away towns, we offer video counseling in Connecticut to Portland, Berlin, East Hampton, Haddam, Litchfield, Simsbury, Fairfield, Cobalt, Cromwell, Rocky Hill, West Hartford, Clinton, Wethersfield, Middlebury, Waterbury, Guilford, Chester, Deep River, Moodus, Durham, and Middletown.
The team of estrangement specialists and therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling help families work thorough conflicts.
Losing a loved one and then realizing your adult child will not speak with you are complex traumas. The team at Wisdom Within Counseling specialize in supporting complex trauma recovery and healing.
