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 The idea of previous generations that you cared for your family, that you had duty to them, has been replaced by a more self-centred perspective.”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'm not feeling any " glee". I'm just posting from personal experience. I now have a granddaughter. She's 9 - and every now and then she will tell her mother, my daughter, that she "hates her'" and that she is the "worse mother in the world". I can't think of any of my friends, or my daughter's friends, who do not moan or say negative things about their parents at some point or other.

The dominant feeling I get from many post here is unresolved anger.

I am not "miserable". I don't know where you get that idea from?

I'm sorry for your suffering - but we all must deal with such issues in our life, and taking your anger out on others who are posting from differnt perspectives is not going to help you fel O.k in yourself in the long run.

I hope you don't patronise your children by telling them how they feel! I listed things that happened, I didn't say I was still angry about them, although I have been in the past.

I didn't tell anyone to perceive things differently to me. It's those that are implying people shouldn't view their childhood as abuse that are doing that with their sneers about the 'therapy generation' and the 'self-centred generational slice of society'. I'm all for people processing things in their own way. Denying what happened to them is not processing it though. I'm not saying that is you or anyone else in this thread but it doesn't give you the right to deny other people's lived experiences.

I would not expect my children to never moan about me or hold me responsible for anything. How odd for you to suggest this. Just that they are not showing any signs that their childhood would drive them to go no contact and that I have not visited any of the worse behaviours I experienced on my children. My other point was that people on the outside cannot know the full picture of other people's family lives. Your personal experience does not qualify you to do that either.

@Shortshriftandlethal I don't know where you get the whole anger thing, or that I'm taking it out on others.

And there definitely is an undertone of "just you wait" and "you'll be taken down a peg or two" on all threads about this subject or childhood trauma/abuse /neglect. It's annoying (not anger inducing) , especially since it basically tells people that they haven't broken the cycle and that at the end of the day ,they're really no better than their parents.

I don't feel glee. I do think, however, that society has changed very fast and understandably past standards of parenting aren't regarded as appropriate now. I feel some unease at this because I regard my parents as both old-fashioned and loving. Being concerned for one's children's feeling and safety isn't a new thing even though standards are now different in many respects. I also think that society will continue to change very fast and parents' acts today will be judged by future standards, regardless of what they think about them, just as previous generations are being judged now.

As others have said on this thread, the lack of self reflection and self awareness is the key differentiator.

I have no doubt that my children will find fault with my parenting. But I will listen to what they say, validate their experience and (if it's possible) try to make amends and find a way forward.

I won't deny that it happened, that the child's opinion is entirely invalid and that if it did happen it was all the child's fault, which is the response of the toxic parent.

Loving is the part that ameliorates the old fashioned. If you felt their love in whatever way they showed it , that's a long way to go in security and also helps with overlooking/understanding the "foibles" of the time (let's call them).

@Calliopespa - this is exactly what I think. So many adult children secure in the knowledge that they are cutting off their "toxic" parents for all the right reasons. What goes around, comes around.

Children are hugely influenced by the lifestyles of their parents (whether they want to be or not) and if their parents are content to be no contact with family - for reasons other than neglect and abuse - then their children will think nothing of cutting off family in the future just because it's been demonstrated to them as a reasonable thing to do.

That's not wrong in many cases. But in the case of my parents, it was the old-fashioned values that made them good parents, to me at least. They were both born in the early part of WW2, grew up in its aftermath, and didn't join in the swinging Sixties. They were content to fulfil very different family roles to each other and they had a very big, but undemonstrative, sense of obligation. By modern standards they would be slightly strict and slightly distant, particularly in the case of my father, but they were never unkind to me and they kept their emotions in check. I bridle at the thought of them being judged by modern standards and I think they were better parents than I've been.

What constitutes neglect and abuse to you?

The point that is common is parents who are emotionally dysfunctional; either by displaying no attention to a child’s feelings, ignoring their psychological needs or actually actively displacing them by being out of control by means of anger, over sharing, obvious resentment, or lacking the desire to protect. That goes on for years as the child grows up.

You can tick a lot of boxes as a parent in the eyes of society quite easily. But emotional self control, kindness and love, all of which allow children to feel psychologically secure is the core of parenting.

The bitterness people have as adults against parents who are emotionally immature is huge. No contact or very low contact is a good protection from a parent that is demanding psychological support from their children. I think it is fine to do that. The idea that you might, over and over again, have to revisit someone who will deliberately infantilise you for their psychological needs is not something an adult has to bear. These are the long term no contact cases I have seen.

No one cuts their parents lightly. Well, for more than a brief interlude or if they’re a teenager.

The annoying truth is that the more awful the parents, the more loudly they shriek innocence and play the victim. Anyone decent shuts up and hopes for change.

It gets complicated because some adult children do have unreasonably high expectations of perfection and a very different interpretation of what a need is compared to the rest of us.

But I don’t know anyone like that. I do know people who shouldn’t have had kids.

I'm going to take a few quotes from the defensive posts here, and try to reply to them even though others already have. I'm not sure why; I suppose I'm always thinking of other readers (lurkers), some of whom might be at a point where they're questioning these factors in their own lives.

In order of appearance:

They know it all, yet they seem so lost ... so brittle and broken ... so needy and incomplete.
(@Calliopespa)

I wonder how these young adults grew up lost, broken, incomplete? One would hope to send one's grown children out into the world confident, secure, independently capable, optimistic, wouldn't one? What could possibly have gone wrong during their formative years, leaving them broken and needy?

I suppose some capable, secure, optimistic young people may have experienced awful catastrophes shortly after leaving home, so traumatic that they lost all confidence. But that hardly seems like a common enough event to justify Calliopespa's generalisation: no, something or someone must have failed to nurture the desired qualities while they were children.

smacking, sometimes with objects would be considered abuse now. Some people feel harmed and others insist it never did them any harm
(@WhatNoRaisins)

If you, the adult you are now, were repeatedly assaulted by the same person for years, would you say it was okay? Now imagine the person hitting you is three times your size. They're abusing you, aren't they?

But you're dependent on this giant for your living. This, you'll agree, makes the abuse worse because they have total power over you. Like the slaves of old, you can't get away so you must find a way to live with it. It's documented that many slaves resigned themselves to abuse, telling themselves it did no real harm and was simply the price of food and shelter.

Many children do the same. If the child or slave has conditioned themselves to take abuse, does that make it all right?

there are an awful lot of people who are seeking to blame their childhood for everything
(@Ilovetowander)

You know, the vast majority of people go to therapy saying some version of "I'm fucked up!" They don't know why they're fucked up or even, usually, what it is about them that's fucked. They just know things keep going wrong and their responses feel off-kilter.

Invariably, the problems come down to that person's attitudes and beliefs: their personal world-view. Any reasonably alert third party could see this: indeed, someone else's comment is often what prompted them to make the call. When, do you think, is our personal world-view formed? From whom do we get our deep-seated beliefs about the world and our place in it?

If you want to un-fuck yourself, you have to understand the exact problem. Then you will, naturally enough, ask "If everybody else doesn't see things this way, why do I?" The answer's going to lie with the influential caregivers whose words and actions informed our development.

there are also things that are less than desirable but were the outcome of parents just not being perfect
(@Calliopespa)

Less than desirable is being a bad cook or not having much money. People don't sign up to rummage around in scary caverns of their subconscious because of boring dinners or cheap holidays.

your children will end up holding you responsible for something or other
(@Shortshriftandlethal)

Are you saying parents are not responsible for their children?!?

... and finally (for now!)

I don't wish to directly quote the poster who wrote of the man who's been in therapy for a decade, has a BPB diagnosis, and won't let his DC see his parents.

Over 70% of BPD (Emotional Dysregulation Disorder) patients have abuse in their childhood. They're three times more likely than sufferers of other mental disorders to have experienced trauma as children, thirteen times more likely than the general population. A third were sexually abused as children.

I imagine this father has a very good reason to keep his parents out of his children's lives. Given her angrily unsympathetic opinions, I'd suspect it's a very good thing that she has also cut contact.

Well, not "in whatever way". Some adult expressions of love are extremely harmful to children.

You can tick a lot of boxes as a parent in the eyes of society quite easily.

You can, @bombastix, that's why the threads here for adult children of dysfunctional families are called "But We Took You To Stately Homes!"

Mine did a lot of things right, stately homes included. Didn't make them emotionally balanced, sane and reasonable adults.

’What goes around comes around’

It does indeed. Aged 18, my dad cut me off completely from my family of 9 siblings, wrote to the university I’d started at in an attempt to have me kicked out (the man who called me in to discuss that letter, who I wish I remembered his name, because he gave me the funding options to stay, said it was the most horrendously controlling and abusive letter from a parent he’d ever seen). I learned then, after years of very real abuse (still got scars on my inner thighs that my mother put there when I was a baby), how to cope with being abandoned. How to learn to live without the family everyone says you need.

He died last year without me going back. He ‘reached out’ as they’d say, but in such an obnoxious way I chose not to go back for more. I felt only relief when he died. No, that’s not true, I was also elated that he couldn’t hurt me any more.

You really do reap what you sow.

Believe it or not some children can be quite vindictive, and ..........There are probably occassions when parents need boundaries from their children eg violent sons.
Note the article talks about how parents should learn how to respond to children who have had therapy but does not offer any advice about how the children having therapy should interact with their parents.
Brilliant point. I have many cousins and one of them has two DDs - the eldest had been a very rebellious teenager, dropped out of uni, very promiscuous, got into debt etc. Her mum supported her emotionally and helped her back into a good job and stable life until she felt she could move out. In her late 20's, she went to therapy and then went VLC via a letter out of the blue during lockdown. The DD did not want to discuss why, said she didn't want a mum/daughter relationship and the mother was banned from any further discussion about it due to the need to protect her boundaries. Her mum divorced her DD's abusive father many years before but always tried to be fair about him but he is now loving this. I can see that this DD is as manipulative as her father and tortures her mum with breadcrumbs and then ignores her for months. The mum has a very good relationship with her youngest daughter.
This is like an ongoing bereavement for her mum and has affected her deeply.

Somebody might be saying I "torture my mum with breadcrumbs"! She wouldn't say this herself, though, because neither of us feels anyone owes us a relationship. We might talk every other day for a couple of weeks, then nothing for a month or two.

From what you've said there, @LondonLass61, I'd say there's a good chance this rift will heal with time. Your cousin could help by taking it to therapy of her own.

That's a very snarky reply.
As another poster pointed out, an adult child can make this decision, refuse to discuss it and a parent is powerless.

It may heal with time but it happened 4 years ago and has caused terrible damage to my cousin and her other daughter. My cousin did go for some counselling (also with a view to not being a burden on her youngest about it) and has learned that she has to live with it and get on with her life which she is trying to do. But I think that she's too damaged to ever trust her eldest again.
An interesting thread.

@Garlicfest you said

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

Do you really think this only applies to a few? Do you think the majority of people have terrible, abusive parents?

I m really shocked by this. I genuinely think most people are good. Just not perfect. But not abusive and monstrous either.

@Garlicfest I personally take the approach where I'm reluctant to tell anyone that their perspective on their own upbringing is wrong because of xyz but I feel that has to go both ways. I don't see how it's any better to tell a person that they had an abusive childhood when they don't see it that way.

For the record I don't smack my kids. I really hate it when they lash out and hit me so I'd feel a right hypocrite doing it to them.

@WhatNoRaisins, I'm not aware of any therapists telling clients they had an abusive upbringing. None of mine told me anything about myself - they're trained to guide conversations so that you figure things out for yourself.

I'm sure there are bad 'therapists' who do tell people they're abused, marvellous, transgender or whatever. It would be a mistake to think that's how it works, though.

I'm not so much blaming therapists but telling people that their perspective is wrong and they know better in general. I find it very jarring when people try that one on me when I talk about my childhood and also school years. I think we need to accept that different generations had different norms.

You've gone straight from balanced, competent and secure to monstrous and terrible.

There is obviously a whole lot else in between. The comment you quoted is from where I said I'd like to see assertiveness training and the Freedom Programme taught in all schools. Yes, I'm sure the great majority of children would benefit from them.

Oh, you mean people in general telling you how to feel? Yes, that's wrong!

That being said I suspect mismatch in what was considered normal childhood discipline only accounts for small numbers of estrangement cases. Yes you always get the odd needy adult who goes looking for ways that their parents were wrong and that they are the victim and but most cases of estrangement sound like a last resort.

I don't think therapists are the problem but amateur therapy by people with a little bit of knowledge. I'm not always convinced that being really introspective makes everyone happier.