Heart In Mind Blog• Therapy for Estrangement
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Why Adult Children Become Estranged from their Parents
The presumed/expected role of your family as caregivers can make family estrangement ever more painful and confusing.
What is Family Estrangement?
When you’ve experienced these more chronic, harmful family dynamics, you may also find yourself questioning yourself a lot. This questioning isn’t tied to any specific event but rather, to your whole sense of self and trust in what you experienced as real.
This is because one of the ways that might have helped you to survive chronic harmful family dynamics/experiences of abuse, was to downplay or otherwise, repress what was happening to you. *If you could convince yourself it was not as “bad,” you could feel less angry, sad, remorse, confusion, etc.
What is Estrangement and Why Does It Often Feel Confusing?
In many cases, estrangement isn’t just about the relationship itself—it’s about what that relationship meant to you. Navigating estrangement can look like clarifying and addressing how the absence of the relationship or change in the relationship affects the way you see yourself.

