I recently listened to an episode of The Oprah podcast that explored what it described as the “rising trend” of family estrangement, and included personal stories from adult children who had cut contact with their parents, from parents who had repaired their relationships with estranged children and from parents who had not. Oprah also invited a panel of three experts ― all therapists ― to offer their perspectives.
Overall, I thought they did a great job looking at the issue from multiple angles. But one of the experts, therapist and author Dr. Joshua Coleman, presented his point of view in words that left me feeling dizzy, nauseous and cold.
According to Coleman, “The old days of ‘honor thy mother and thy father,’ of ‘respect your elders,’ have given way.” He blames the shift partially on social media content about “toxic families” which he says encourages “inflammatory reactions” to parents’ behavior. He also says that therapists are partially to blame, for pathologizing parents with language like “narcissist,” “gaslighting” or “boundary-crosser.” But throughout the podcast, he uses similar words to describe the children who decide to cut off their parents: “confict-avoidant,” “depressive,” “overreactive.”
