Ep 100: Navigating Family Estrangement
By Charlotte Cummings | Feel Better Podcast
Welcome to the Feel Better Podcast — today’s episode is all about family estrangement. It’s a topic I’m asked about often in counselling, and for good reason: estrangement is incredibly common, deeply complex, and emotionally heavy. Whether you’re holding distance for your own wellbeing, or you’re longing for contact that isn’t possible right now, this is tough terrain.
While I’m open about my life on the podcast, I also protect my family’s privacy. What I can say is: there’s significant lived experience here, and I get it.
This guide offers language, perspective, and practical ideas — whether your estrangement is between siblings, parents and adult children, or across wider family ties.
The Hardest Truth (and the Most Important)
No one — not even family — has an automatic right to a relationship with you.
And you don’t inherently have a right to relationship with them, either.
That’s a brutal truth, particularly for parents estranged from their adult children. Parents often feel an understandable sense of entitlement to an ongoing relationship — after years of sacrifice, love, and effort. And yet, giving birth or raising someone doesn’t guarantee a continued bond. In healthy relationships, people are held dearly, but ultimately loosely.
Making peace with this principle is painful — and foundational.
The Grief Inside Estrangement
Many people describe estrangement as harder than a death: you’ve “lost” the person, but they’re still alive. The grief is layered:
Grief for the person you knew (or hoped for).
Grief for how you wished the relationship would be.
Grief for the lost rituals and roles (sibling closeness, a parent’s support).
Grief for milestones missed.
Your grief is valid. It needs time, space, and support.
Hold the Grey: Boundaries and Flexibility
Estrangement rarely stays fixed. Needs change. People change. Your capacity changes.
Two common traps:
Rigid boundaries you no longer want but feel unable to change.
No boundaries, leading to repeated harm.
Try instead:
Clear, protective boundaries for safety and dignity.
Permission to review your position as life shifts.
A plan if you want to move from no contact to limited contact (how, when, and with what supports).
You’re allowed to change your mind in either direction — and to do so carefully.
Expect Triggers (Plan for Them)
Birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries and family events can be brutal.
Rather than white-knuckling the day itself, make space beforehand:
Journal, look at photos, cry — and honour the love and loss.
Take a long walk or book a therapy session in the lead-up.
Decide how you’ll spend the day and who with.
Keep the plan simple, kind, and doable.
Think of this as releasing pressure from the valve in advance, so the day isn’t swallowed whole by pain.
Get Your Partner On Board
If you’re partnered, help them understand the history and nuance. They didn’t grow up in your family system; they may not “get it” straight away.
Share stories and context.
Be explicit about what helps and what doesn’t.
Ask for practical support on triggering dates.
A partner who “gets it” is protective; a partner who minimises it is exhausting.
Prepare Pushbacks for Well-Meaning People
Extended family and friends often push simplistic solutions: “Life’s too short”, “Just forgive and forget”, “Bury the hatchet”. Be ready with kind, firm lines:
“This is complex and I’m working through it with my partner/therapist. I’m not discussing it today.”
“I’d like to enjoy this event without questions about X — thanks for respecting that.”
“We’re keeping this topic closed with extended family for now.”
A short pre-event message can prevent awkward confrontations.
If You Don’t Want the Estrangement
If you’re the person longing for contact:
Explore your unbearable feeling
We all have a feeling we can hardly tolerate (e.g., rejection, failure, being criticised, abandoned, unheard). In estrangement dynamics, unbearable feelings often drive breakdowns — we avoid the feeling at all costs, even if it means losing the relationship.
Ask: Which feeling hijacks me here? How has it shaped my behaviour? (If you haven’t yet, listen to my episodes on Unbearable Feelings.)
Ask the powerful question: “What would it take?”
If it’s safe and appropriate, ask the other person:
“What would need to change for us to have a relationship?”
Let them set terms. Consider whether you can meet them — and what support you’d need to do so (therapy, accountability, new skills, time).
Sometimes there is a path back — if both parties are willing to learn and change.
Hopes, Boundaries, and the Space In Between
Think of three layers:
Bottom-line boundaries (non-negotiables):
“I won’t stay if I’m being shouted at/insulted.”
“No physical risk.”
“No swearing around the kids.”
Hopes & expectations (what you wish the relationship could be):
Kindness, flexibility, mutual respect, warmth.
Reality: the relationship often sits between these layers.
For some families, maintaining limited, structured contact serves a purpose (e.g., children seeing grandparents) — while acknowledging it may never rise to your hoped-for standard. Therapy can help you tolerate that “in-between” without self-betrayal.
Please Get Support
Estrangement is complex. Colleagues and well-meaning friends aren’t always enough. A counsellor can help you:
Process grief and anger without getting stuck.
Map safe boundaries and contingency plans.
Script contact changes or pushbacks.
Explore your role with honesty and compassion.
Hold the grey — without collapsing your needs.
If your family has been touched by estrangement, I’m sending warmth and solidarity. Human relationships are beautiful and bewildering. You deserve support while you find your way.
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Welcome to today's episode of the Feel Better Podcast all about family estrangement.
This is actually an incredibly common issue that I get asked about a lot, that people frequently come to counselling around and it is incredibly complex. The reality that sometimes our relationships with our family members break down to the point of complete estrangement or sometimes some kind of partial contact. Now this is really difficult with a whole lot of emotion to process and often no clear end in sight.
Even in a scenario where there is complete estrangement, there are still a whole lot of emotions to process and this is really complex. Now you know that I'm really open and sharing personally on this podcast. What I want to acknowledge today is that there is a lot of lived experience around this within my own family.
Now you know that the line that I hold around this is that I don't want to breach other people's privacy in telling stories that relate to others without their permission. So the detail around that is not something that I'm going into other than to say this has been a significant lived experience across my life. So I get it.
Now as I talk today, I'm hoping that I'm going to cover a range of different scenarios. Whether you're the person who is choosing to hold a distance within a relationship, or whether perhaps you're experiencing estrangement where you really would like relationship with the other person. And I know there are a lot of different dynamics here.
This can be between siblings, between siblings and parents. There are a range of different scenarios where we can see family estrangement that really has an impact. So today I'm going to offer some thoughts and some space to explore this topic.
Hopefully a whole lot of solidarity and acknowledgement of the complexity of this challenge. Now I think the hardest thing and equally the most important thing when it comes to family estrangement is that we have to accept that nobody has the right to us, to relationship with us. And the flip side of that is also that we don't automatically have a right to another person that happens to be a family member having an ongoing relationship with us.
That is the toughest, most fundamental thing that I can talk about in this episode today, that we have to make peace with that. Now this can be incredibly difficult to process when it comes to our expectations of what family bonds and ties theoretically should look like, that we would like them to look like. And particularly one thing I notice is how difficult this is for parents who are estranged from their children and they do not want their relationship to be like that.
And why that is so tough for parents is that often parents do have a sense of entitlement to ongoing relationship with their children. Now that is somewhat understandable. Parents sacrifice a lot for their children and regardless of what it is that has or hasn't happened, in most parents minds they have done their very best, the skills, the tools, the energy, the time that they had, to be a good parent to their child.
And it is incredibly hard to end up out of relationship with a child that you've poured a lot of your time into. And yet giving birth to someone, parenting them, doesn't mean you have a right to relationship with them. And the reality of our human relationships is that we can hold people dear but we ultimately hold them loosely.
When it comes to family estrangement, the grief aspect of this is incredibly important to understand. A lot of people will say when it comes to estrangement within their family, it can be even tougher than the loss of a person if they died, because you have lost that person and yet they are still alive. And when it comes to grief, we can be grieving the person and the relationship that we had with them, as well as grieving how we would have liked it to be, our hopes, how relationships usually are, our expectations of what a sibling relationship looks like, or of how a parent should support a child.
So there are so many layers of grief when it comes to family estrangement. One of the top things I say to clients about family estrangement is that we need to accept this is a grey area. This is something that is changeable, where what we want and need might change, where how we feel over time could well change.
And something I see often that's a really common issue is people being trapped behind the boundaries that they have set. I think that if you are the person who is wanting to have reduced contact or no contact with a family member, you need to make sure you also give yourself the flexibility to change that if you want to. I cannot tell you how many people I have worked with who feel trapped behind the boundaries and lines that they have seen.
Where they go, I actually wouldn't mind having a relationship with that family member again, but I have no idea how to navigate that. I have no idea to transition from the no contact we have to something else going forward. And so it is just all too hard.
Our mental health in such a detrimental way that we sometimes see in family relationships. So yes boundaries, but yes also this is a grey area and we need to sometimes allow ourselves flexibility. I think it's incredibly important that if we are changing the nature of our contact and relationship with family members, that we're really discerning about that.
That we're clear on our reasons why, we're clear on what it is that will help keep us safe, how we will review that, how we'll be supported to change things again if we need to. But one of the most helpful things that you can hold if you've got family estrangement going on, is an appreciation that this is a grey area. That this is something that is seldom hard and fast and fixed.
Part of that is because people change across their lifetime. Sometimes for example being no you find difficult. So one of the biggest things that I want to see happen more when it comes to family estrangement, is people recognizing that things need to be able to be held in a way that allows room for change.
Also really important when it comes to family estrangement, is understanding and expecting triggers. Now things like birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries, can be really difficult times. And it is so important that you allow space for the emotions that sit around these times of year.
One of the pieces of advice I often give, is to make space proactively for the emotions that you know will be there. Rather than having Christmas Day completely ruined by the overwhelming feelings that are existing. How about making some time in those couple of days before, to journal, to look at photos, to cry, to release the emotion that exists.
I think of it like a little pressure valve when it comes to leading up to significant events and milestones. How do you make space proactively to sit with those emotions and to acknowledge them, in the hopes that maybe you still get to enjoy that day, or you get to get through that day that is otherwise really difficult, a little bit easier. So make space for those emotions, have a plan around how you regulate through those difficult emotions and hold yourself well through those times.
Get ambitious with how you journey with yourself, in a kind compassionate way, through those really difficult emotions. The other important thing if you're in a relationship, is to get your partner on board. Now this is something that can be incredibly difficult to understand, where someone enters into the world of our family, without the background and the history that we have.
So often I see people expecting their partner to get it and they might have grown up in a really different family context and not be able to quite understand the complexities of this estrangement. So share stories with them, be clear on what's helpful, ask them proactively for what it is that you need. But having a partner who's on board, who gets it and is supporting you, is really important if you're navigating this.
Now around family estrangements there are often other family members, extended family members, even friends, who have their opinions and people can get very pushy if they don't understand how complex this area is, how hard this is to process. They can get pushy about why don't you just get on with that person, bury the hatchet, life's too short. You can get all of these things that people say around the need to restore relationship and my encouragement to you is be ready with your pushbacks.
This is actually really hard for me. This is something I'm processing with my partner, my therapist, whoever it is. I actually have this topic as a closed topic when it comes to conversation with other people.
Get those lines ready that you can use. You know if you're turning up to a family gathering and someone is not there, you might want to send a message in advance about that to say hey look I'm just acknowledging so-and-so isn't going to come, you know this is really complex, I want to enjoy this situation without lots of questions about where they are and what is happening so please can we respect that and enjoy this occasion. A well-timed message beforehand or a pre-prepared pushback can be really helpful in navigating what is a complex social situation.
Now if you find yourself estranged from a family member and you don't want to be estranged from them, one of the most important things that you can do is reflect on how your unbearable feeling has contributed to this relationship. If you're not familiar with this concept of unbearable feelings, there are a couple of great episodes earlier on in the podcast that are some of my most popular podcast episodes that you can dive into to explore this concept. But basically it's the idea that we all have a feeling or two that we really don't want to feel.
Maybe it's feeling unheard or criticized. Maybe it's feeling rejected or left out or that you have failed. Maybe it's feeling abandoned.
Whatever it is, in the middle of family estrangement, time and time again I spot the power of people's unbearable feelings and how it has contributed to the breakdown in the relationship. Because we would rather even sacrifice relationships with those we are closest to than feel our unbearable feeling. That is really hard to understand but my encouragement to you is to reflect on what part has your unbearable feeling had to play when it comes to the estrangement you're now experiencing.
Now the most powerful question of course that you can ask, if you're able to, when it comes to an estrangement with a family member that you want to restore is, what would it take? What would I need to change to have a relationship? The ball is in their court. If they are estranged from you and giving them the power to define and describe to you what it is that would need to look different, can start that negotiation. Can start you thinking about, can I actually do that? Can I do the work to be able to commit to that? What support do I need to be able to do those things that they are asking of me? Often there is a way through and there is a way forward back to relationship.
If everybody is willing to learn, to grow and to change. I think one of the toughest things about family estrangement is learning how to reduce our expectations and when it comes to difficult people in our lives, we think about boundaries and things that we do not want to cross. So I'm not going to be spoken to rudely, I'm not going to allow my children to be sworn around, whatever it is.
These are the bottom line boundaries. I'm not going to stay in a situation that feels physically unsafe to me. These are the boundaries.
My expectations for a relationship are that people will be kind and understanding and flexible and whatever it is that you're ultimately hoping and dreaming for in the relationship and the reality is the relationship will fall somewhere between those hopes and expectations that you have and those bottom line boundaries. Now sometimes some relationships might hang out down here. They might never even reach anywhere near those hopes and expectations but there can be things that you can still enjoy.
For example, if you're trying to maintain a relationship with a difficult family member for the benefit of younger children, perhaps grandchildren or something like that, then maybe you're going to be hanging out down in the space. Holding those boundaries around, look if it's like this, we're not staying or we're back to no contact or whatever it is that are those bottom line boundaries. Acknowledge those and by all means hold those but recognize that it is unlikely the relationship is going to meet that point of your hopes and expectations.
Now that is one of the biggest challenges when it comes to our human relationships. Having some kind of relationship that doesn't meet our expectations, that sometimes can be disappointing but if we're choosing to have that relationship for a purpose, we can learn to tolerate those things. That is where the support of a counsellor can be incredibly helpful in navigating how it feels to be in relationship with this person that might be quite difficult.
Now everyone's situation is really different when it comes to estrangement within family relationships. There are different dynamics, there are different histories and I think one of the most important things to say is that this is complicated. It is really tough to navigate by yourself.
If you're trying to do this just with the perspective of co-workers and helpful friends, that may not be enough. Go and get some help in therapy to move through the emotions around this, to make the decisions that you need to make, to journey through the grief, the loss and the challenges. If your family has been touched by family estrangement, I send lots of love and understanding from my heart to yours.
Gosh it is tough to live in this world with all of these dynamics that go on between people and sometimes relationships just don't work well. My encouragement is to get the support that you need, to be able to explore what kind of relationship you could have, to be able to explore what have I done that has contributed to this situation and to be able to hold the grey of family estrangement. It's super tough in an episode like this to be able to speak to every different possible scenario that exists.
So if you'd like some personal advice, do feel free to reach out to me but I hope that there's been some helpful tips or understanding gleaned today from this episode.
