My adult children don’t speak to me – I blame their therapists

[IwantToRetire]

NB - this is not about trans children, but thought some of the experiences seem to be the same, and the article seems to focus on mothers ...

“They have all talked to therapists in the various places and countries they’ve lived. They all seem to speak the same ‘therapy language’, talking about ‘toxicity’, and ‘boundaries’. It seems like a witches’ cauldron of dark forces feeding the whole scenario. The children seem happy to carry on with blaming us for anything and everything that doesn’t tally with their unreasonable expectations of us.”

“[Therapy encourages] people to do things for their mental health, and what’s best for them, and relationships are now governed on the basis of whether or not they promote one’s happiness. The idea of previous generations that you cared for your family, that you had duty to them, has been replaced by a more self-centred perspective.”

Where does therapy come into this? “The goal of therapy is often to not feel so guilty or obligated or responsible for other people’s feelings. Your obligation is really to yourself and your own happiness. I don’t think a lot of therapists have really reckoned with the harm that can be done by supporting or encouraging estrangement.”

“There’s been an enormous expansion in what gets labelled as harmful, abusive, traumatising, and neglectful behaviour in general. I often see adult children who have different ideas of what constitutes mental illness and harm and abuse, trauma and neglect, compared to the parents. I see parents so confused, because they think: ‘But I gave you a great childhood, I’d have killed for you.’ The idea of trauma has become more subjective, so that if you say that someone has traumatised you, then they have traumatised you.

“I see things get labelled ‘traumatising’ or ‘triggering’ which would have, to previous generations, been seen as the normal slings and arrows of family life. Therapy has given adult children a much bigger stick with which to beat their parents, and the parents – particularly those who feel they gave their kids a far better childhood than they experienced themselves – are left confused.”

Just a few paragraphs from a much longer article at https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/adult-children-dont-speak-to-me-blame-therapists-3158291

Can also be read at https://archive.ph/3BENZ

I worked with a woman whose daughter would not speak to her. Got lots of waffle initially but eventually got to the point where she admitted she kidnapped her grandchild because she did not approve of the childcare arrangements her daughter had made. She was adamant she had done nothing wrong because she knew best. She absolutely refused to see that her daughter may have cause to be annoyed with her. God knows what other things had happened over the years - but this was the straw that broke the camels back. She never accepted that the estrangement was something to do with her.

Just to echo what's already been said. I think it's incredibly rare that adult children go no contact with parents who were kind, loving and didn't abuse them in one way or an other.

I have no contact with my parents but if you asked them they would tell you that I am the problem and that I had a great childhood. The truth is both were awful. I experienced physical and mental abuse that took me well into adulthood to fully understand and come to terms with. The only way I can cope with this without letting it ruin my life is to have no contact whatsoever.

If an adult child is no contact there's quite probably a valid reason why.

That’s a very fair point.

Agreed. My parents have no idea how much damage they did. And for two well-meaning people, they did a lot.

Paralysis through analysis. I'm sure therapy has some value bit there's a lot to be said for living in the Now. If you'll forgive the phrase!

The quality of responses on this thread is off the charts

No one goes no contact for no reason. If they do, well it wasn't much of a relationship to begin with , was it?

But the article is the type of self indulgent ,navel gazing , poor me twaddle arsehole parents everywhere pull when their kids finally stand up to them. Similar to the "SS took my kids because I don't do the laundry one week/house was a bit messy/my partners is just misunderstood " . No one buys that bullshit, do they?

Which is why therapy should have stated goals and be time limited, IMO.

I understand what you're saying but I do think there's a very big difference between making mistakes and actively harming your child.

I just cannot understand why a mother would purposely and intentionally harm her own child whether that be psychologically or physically. And take pleasure from it.

Self-evidently, because the mother's fucked up. A sane, emotionally balanced woman doesn't become a fat-shaming mother who calls her own daughter ugly. She does that because it's what she knows: was almost certainly brought up the same way (worse, usually) and, tragically, internalised it as the right way to raise a successful young woman.

It's a self-defence mechanism: if she is to believe that she's okay, she must believe she was raised the right way. If therapy could be said to have a single aim, it would be to ensure that no future parent has internalised such harmful lessons.

[Edit] - The self-defence mechanism also becomes what therapy calls "defended", a passionate adherence to principles that feels like the difference between life and annihilation. Our beauty-obsessed mother may very well have an intuition that she isn't helping her daughter; she will certainly hear from external sources that other people don't feel as strongly about fat girls with frizzy hair.

But if she listens to her intuition or the child psychologists on TV, what does that mean to her? Everything she understands herself to be (slim, pretty, loved) collapses into an unconscionable mess of loathing, fear, doubt, nothingness. It means her lovely mother didn't love or want the best for her. It means everything she's lived by is worthless. It makes her a foolish, cruel, uncaring monster instead of a thoughtfully guiding mother. It's intolerable - so she doubles down, and she does this often.

^^ That's why we say it takes courage to undertake therapy.

There's mistakes and then there's shit parenting. Let's not confuse the two.

I'm as fucked up as they come (mostly due to my parenting) . Do I make mistakes ? Yes. Do I deliberately harm my daughter(emotionally,mentally, physically)? No. Do I apologise when I mess up? Every.Single.Time. Do I pretend it never happened or if it did it wasn't that bad or if it was she deserved it/it was for her own good? No.

There's a difference.

I’m a therapist. I’ve worked with a number of clients who have severed ties with their families and, in all cases, this was for reasons of safety and sanity. Most people who come for therapy are there to wrestle with difficult questions. It’s my job to support people in reaching conclusions for themselves and not to tell them what to do. In my experience it’s not uncommon for someone to grow in confidence through therapy, for this to show up in their personal relationships and for their families and partners to decide the therapist is responsible for the (generally unwelcome) change. I’ve never encountered someone who came to therapy frivolously and I’m not sure how that would work. For one thing, therapy is an expensive investment and, for another, good therapy involves challenge. A client who seems not to have clear reasons for being in therapy either has reasons they can’t yet clarify - and it’s my job to find out what that’s about - or they may be seeking validation the only way they can think of - itself a valid topic to explore. Therapists certainly can use personal power inappropriately, in spite of stringent ethical standards. However, I have worked with clients who have been coerced into staying in abusive marriages or in unhealthy family situations by their priest or pastor.

My daughter went NC for 2 years, she isolated and didn't leave the house. Lived a virtual life and had a therapist "helping her to deal with her trauma". 2 years ago she reapproach us needing financial support. We took her in and immediately after that she had a horrendous psychotic episode, we looked after her, she had another one 6 months on. She is officially considered schizophrenic after the second episode.
She was finally diagnosed with OCD and started on medication. The change was immediate. She is happy, studying and planning for a carreer. She will always have to watch out to avoid a psychotic episode as they can leave sequels and her psychiatrist made that very clear to her.
What was that original therapist doing for 2 years, ignoring the warning signs, the isolation, telling her she was having a "spiritual awakening " ?
When the chips came down, we, her family, were the ones there for her, we nursed her back to sanity, and it was incredible hard on all of us. We are very grateful that she came back and so is she. She is joyful and affectionate, but we were very lucky. She could have died or be an almost vegetable at a mental institution.

I went LC with my mother in my teens (she died without us having seen each other for several years) and with my father and stepmother for a while in my 20s. This wasn't done lightly, and like most people I know I have been far more reluctant to set firm boundaries with my parents or siblings than any other relationship in my life. If a friend or romantic interest had treated me the way my parents did, they wouldn't have ever stayed in my life at all.

The reality is that we can go to therapy to address our own feelings and learn better emotional and relationship skills, but no amount of therapy will change our parents' behavior towards us or in their own lives. The only thing we can do is set boundaries for ourselves and limit contact with people who refuse to change their behavior or take accountability for their own actions. I'm fortunate that I was able to learn to do that and my dad learned to respect my boundaries and now we have a much better relationship. Too many parents dig in their heels and insist that the parent-child relationship is one the parent shouldn't have to actually work at.

Having good intentions and loving their children does not mean parents will always do right by their children - parents are only human after all. It's important to extend grace to people we love (including our parents), but that's not unconditional and it doesn't excuse parents from taking accountability. There's a lot of power in saying "I made the wrong decision when I... if I could go back I would do it differently. I'm sorry." There are parents who are absolutely convinced that parents should never be expected to apologize to their children, and it's not surprising that many of those children aren't willing to accept a relationship so one sided in adulthood.

Pleased to hear your story, @PinkStingray. Wishing you and your family all good things and a following wind.

I'm going to go out on a fairly sturdy limb here, and suggest that a therapist who diagnoses spiritual awakenings in their clients is not only unprofessional, but likely not even professionally qualified.

They do. The late 20s staff at work say everybody should have a therapist and they mean it.

Hi, thanks for that information. It's very interesting.

I do wonder about personal choice though. And just making that choice to harm your child. A lot of people who have had abusive upbringings don't go on to abuse their own children. I chose not to have children but I can 100% say I would not intentionally harm them if I did. I'd make mistakes, but not intentionally abuse my own child (or anybody for that matter).

Yep, puts me in mind of this. Few years old now, but covers the same ground.

i think such a therapist is also not rare. That’s worth saying as your comment makes it sound like oh that’s not supposed to happen, it’s an aberration. I’m not sure it is.

Actually I agree. I'd also like to see the Freedom Programme and assertiveness training in all schools, starting young.

The few young people who are fortunate enough to have emotionally balanced, competent and securely loving families won't be harmed by it.

Yeah, I see them all over YouTube and TikTok!!

My father pulled that shit. He left when I was nine and thirty-odd years later sent Mum a letter saying he wanted to get to know me, and would she facilitate it? Of course Mum showed me the letter, because she's a decent person. I took considerable pleasure in telling him he had his chance and was never interested when I was a child, did he really think Mum, the woman he repeatedly betrayed, would go behind my back to do this, and btw did his current wife know he was writing this? He whined about how wounded he was getting that letter. Good. 😏

Which is why it should be a protected job title, regulated by the HPC and not by the so called professional bodies, which have wildly differing standards and expectations.

Family of 3 siblings. Me and one other have gone LC and then on to NC. The one that is still in contact is very family duty minded and is treated as an inconvenience at best by surviving parent.

Surviving parent would probably agree with the article and be baffled because they "did their best". Sometimes I'm sure they did do their best, other times...

I have complicated feelings towards my parents as an adult, I think in part because it's sort of baked in to want to have a relationship with and love your parents, and I acknowledge that their parents were far from ideal either.

NC sibling has had therapy and I think it's been really helpful for them. I haven't but I've thought a lot about it over the years. We have occasionally talked about it amongst the three of us over the years. Sibling who is still in contact acknowledges what happened but it causes them a lot of pain so they would much prefer to pretend a lot of it didn't happen.

Between the three of us there has been self harm, suicide attempts, eating disorders, addictions, life long struggles with depression, and all of us have had more than one abusive romantic relationship.

Humans are fallible and there is no such thing as the perfect parent, but some parents are abusive.

These things cast long shadows.

Not everyone should be a parent. In fact, most people shouldn't be.