After reading the latest installment in the Estrangement Ideology series, I found myself sitting quietly for a long while, absorbing the weight of its observations. There’s a lot in it that rings true and a lot that deserves pushing back on. And maybe that’s the heart of the matter: our current climate doesn’t easily allow for both/and thinking. It demands allegiance. Resolution. Finality.
As someone who has chosen estrangement (and I use that word loosely), I approach this topic from within the experience. My decision didn’t come through Reddit threads or a wave of TikTok therapy reels. I turned inward. I sought therapeutic support-real, personal, difficult work-and leaned heavily on the people closest to me: my husband and trusted friends. I didn’t talk about it publicly until recently, because at the time, it didn’t feel like a badge to display. It felt like a wound.
Reading this article, I’m struck by how much of our modern emotional architecture is built on reframing pain as identity. There’s a deep societal hunger to make meaning of our suffering but increasingly, that meaning seems to be found in isolation, not connection. Forums, platforms, therapeutic language-they offer us a script. And once we start following it, we’re rarely invited to stray from it. As the article suggests, estrangement isn’t just a private act anymore it’s an identity, a position in the moral economy of pain.
I’ve seen this happen from a distance. Individuals who say they’ve escaped cycles of emotional control only to find themselves following a new doctrine-one that uses the language of healing to reinforce permanence, to reject complexity, and to suppress doubt. It’s not that they’re wrong to walk away. Sometimes that’s the only sane, safe choice. But when the dominant message becomes, “If it hurts, cut it off,” we’re not teaching people to be healthy…we’re teaching them to be numb.
At the same time, I want to say this clearly: I do think there’s something positive in the broader effort to normalize conversations around trauma. It used to be that everything was hidden-shameful, buried, unspeakable. That silence often caused more pain, more rupture, more secrecy handed down like an inheritance. In some ways, the willingness we now have to name our wounds has made us more connected, not less. We recognize shared experiences, and that can be healing.
But as with anything…when does it become too much? When does naming become overidentifying? When does normalizing turn into absorbing our entire sense of self into trauma? At what point does the pendulum swing from liberating honesty to ideological rigidity?
There’s a particular thread in this conversation I wrestle with often: the expectation that children should care for their parents, no matter what. Most Eastern cultures fall into this belief. Having spent the last 12 years of my life in the Middle East, I’ve seen it up close. Nursing homes are almost nonexistent. It’s assumed that children, usually with the help of hired support, will care for their elderly parents in the home.
But what happens when that parent lived a sedentary, unhealthy lifestyle-one that could have been different, one that was chosen? Is it still the child’s burden to carry? Must they put their own life on hold until death grants them permission to begin again? I’m an only child, and I’ve spent over a decade living outside the U.S. I don’t feel safe or comfortable returning, for many reasons-including what happened recently when I tried to renew my passport.
In February, I had a chilling interview at an American embassy where I was essentially accused of being “anti-American” for voicing opposition to genocide. My passport renewal was turned into a tool of intimidation. I was made to feel like a threat for having a conscience. That experience shattered something for me-not just politically, but existentially. It drove home the reality that I have no clear “home” to return to. And it made the complexities of estrangement even more complicated.
Even though I’m estranged from my mother… if something were to happen to her now, what would I do? Where would that responsibility fall, and on whom? I’ve built a life far away from hers and not just geographically. But does that severance absolve me from the moral weight we’re all expected to carry for our aging parents? Or is that an illusion, too?
These aren’t questions with easy answers. And that’s the point. What worries me most about the growing normalization of estrangement isn’t the act itself, but the framework around it. When we collapse all intergenerational misattunement into “trauma,” when we reduce flawed, tired, human people to diagnoses like “toxic” or “narcissistic,” we strip away the possibility of change-not just in them, but in ourselves.
There’s something chilling about how well this framework aligns with our broader cultural mood: immediate clarity, curated identity, emotional purity. Everything unwanted must be removed. Everything painful is pathologized. Everything complex is collapsed into a binary-abuse or accountability, safety or danger, love or exile. And if you hesitate? You’re told that’s just internalized manipulation. You’re trauma-bonded. You’re not healed enough yet.
But real healing isn’t clean. It doesn’t follow a five-step guide on Instagram. It’s messy, contradictory, full of false starts and uncomfortable questions. And above all, it’s human.
I’m not here to argue against estrangement. God knows some parents have left their children with no other choice. Which I feel I fall into. But I am wary of how quickly estrangement has become moralized, monetized, and mediated. I’m wary of how often it’s framed as proof of growth, rather than what it actually is-a painful, complicated, and sometimes necessary decision that deserves gravity and nuance.
The article makes a critical point I want to echo: what gets lost in all this ideological clarity is the slow, silent work of repair. The real, “unsexy“work of sitting with your pain, your doubt, your part in the story. The uncomfortable conversations that don’t end in applause, but maybe in a crack of mutual recognition.
We need more space for that. More room for people who are not sure. More permission to leave the door cracked open without being accused of weakness or regression. And more language that invites repair…not just severance.
Estrangement, at its core, should be about protecting your peace-not proving your purity.
"The article makes a critical point I want to echo: what gets lost in all this ideological clarity is the slow, silent work of repair. The real, “unsexy“work of sitting with your pain, your doubt, your part in the story. The uncomfortable conversations that don’t end in applause, but maybe in a crack of mutual recognition. We need more space for that. More room for people who are not sure. More permission to leave the door cracked open without being accused of weakness or regression. And more language that invites repair…not just severance."
After we received the one paragraph, 5 sentence farewell to our family I asked my child if we could do family therapy. He organized a session two months later. When I had the opportunity to dialog with his therapist, my first question was " in your thinking, is estrangement more a personal rift or influenced by cultural shifts", she believed it was mostly personal. She admitted she had no experience with estrangement.
yep, and I agreed anyhow, putting faith in my son. she also violated professional ethics by not disclosing that she was his therapist. I only realized this during the sloppy session and sent her an email afterwards. she apologized and tried to blame my son saying she thought he told me. The session was on zoom, yuck!, it was during the Fauci shut down, my DIL was watching from outside camera view, we could tell by how our son/brother was behaving. Therapist did not find the family as our son described. In hindsight, it is kinda funny, sick funny.
I think it is more about the nature of the therapeutic model being used. I wanted to hire Josh or a Bowen Family System trained therapist, he wanted to use his already biased therapist.
And yet, in the other corner of the ring, we find determination over free will as described by Sapolsky :
Determinism over Free Will:
Sapolsky's central argument is that our actions, including those shaped by cultural norms and family dynamics, are not freely chosen but are the result of a chain of biological and environmental factors.
Having studied social psychology for some years, I am inclined to view the individual as an autonomous expression of biology and culture. Freewill is an illusion when so much of what we believe and "know" (consciously or unconsciously) about ourselves and the world around us is determined by what is provided (or not provided) to us by our parents, family, community, media, religion and history of the wider culture we swim in.
I read both Behave and Determined, and as a care partner to my bro with young onset Parkinson Disease (neuro determined behavior ) I truly understand Sapolsky's argument and had an opportunity to speak with him about my experience seeing it up close. However, imo Daniel Dennett won the debate with Sapolsky on determinism and free will. His argument adds learning and moral reasoning to the equation. Dennett, if still alive, would likely point out that our estranged kids decided to use determined avoidance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cbxi7ZZIoU&ab_channel=CloserToTruth
Determined avoidance is the judgment form of avoidance. But avoidance still innately stems from anxiety and fear- residing in the autonomic nervous system.
I am writing a book about the education I have had about human behavior as I journey through parental and grand parental estrangement. I must say that the mammalian instinct to survive is the foundation of the decision to estrange. I get it. However the judgment is influenced by lifestyle exposures (commentating, preaching, observation) and this too is what manipulates the instinct. Today’s global circumstances, lifestyle cultures and the propagation of ideologies associated with current day sociological dynamics have stoked fear and flight behaviors such as estrangement and ghosting behaviors. People are seeking refuge and the most severe kind is targeted annihilation and suicide - all stem from the fear that drives fight or flight behavior.
Interesting Allison- I look forward to your book. I can’t say I necessarily agree with that perspective as being at the root foundation as a rule. But every circumstance is different- good luck with your book. I too am in the throes of writing (new author)
Judgement comes from learning. However emotion is a consequence of brain function that is sensory and hence primitive in origin - not learned. Fear is the emotion that drives avoidance. Determined avoidance is steeped in judgment and stoked by confirmation bias and its ideologies. But the need to avoid is still rooted in the emotions of anxiety and fear.
The need to feel psychologically safe is an innate human (mammalian) need. Read books by Dr Stephen Porges - the neuroscientist who is responsible for Polyvagal Theory. Today there’s so much stoking fear especially in our youth.
Indeed neuro plasticity is a determinant in learning new habits. The conundrum is that often the EAC views the parental short comings as a fixed entity
sure, but that is a belief, a false one. I was specifically address Sapolsky's claim that humans are ONLY neuro determinate, without free will. After much thought and learning from philosophical debate, I have decided he is wrong and his ideas are harmful. As I suggested those with neurodegenerative disease provide a window into how behavior is linked to brain activity. Yet while maybe only a small percentage of humans, we can and do utilize free will, apparent when you see an addict change behavior, their brain changes too.
Laura- indeed I would agree with your note, and comments re Sapolsky. My response to the original post was the counterpoint on beliefs and subsequent behavior and the etiology of both. This was through the lens of Estrangement which was the topic of the post. While interesting from a new found ideological and philosophical perspective, the beliefs held by the EAC mitigate any philosophical perspective in reality
Interesting the transformation of estrangement from a private, regrettable event to an empowered, self actualization achievement. It reminds me of another cultural shift, indeed so similar, where women “shout their abortions”.
I greatly respect your writing on an extremely emotionally charged topic. I would, however, encourage you not to label estrangement an ideology. It has none of the substance to merit it.
Instead, estrangement is a trend promoted by social media influencers and some therapists. It’s become the new drug because it requires no accountability or empathy.
Estrangement is a sick, twisted game that has no winners, except for the therapists and influencers.
After reading the latest installment in the Estrangement Ideology series, I found myself sitting quietly for a long while, absorbing the weight of its observations. There’s a lot in it that rings true and a lot that deserves pushing back on. And maybe that’s the heart of the matter: our current climate doesn’t easily allow for both/and thinking. It demands allegiance. Resolution. Finality.
As someone who has chosen estrangement (and I use that word loosely), I approach this topic from within the experience. My decision didn’t come through Reddit threads or a wave of TikTok therapy reels. I turned inward. I sought therapeutic support-real, personal, difficult work-and leaned heavily on the people closest to me: my husband and trusted friends. I didn’t talk about it publicly until recently, because at the time, it didn’t feel like a badge to display. It felt like a wound.
Reading this article, I’m struck by how much of our modern emotional architecture is built on reframing pain as identity. There’s a deep societal hunger to make meaning of our suffering but increasingly, that meaning seems to be found in isolation, not connection. Forums, platforms, therapeutic language-they offer us a script. And once we start following it, we’re rarely invited to stray from it. As the article suggests, estrangement isn’t just a private act anymore it’s an identity, a position in the moral economy of pain.
I’ve seen this happen from a distance. Individuals who say they’ve escaped cycles of emotional control only to find themselves following a new doctrine-one that uses the language of healing to reinforce permanence, to reject complexity, and to suppress doubt. It’s not that they’re wrong to walk away. Sometimes that’s the only sane, safe choice. But when the dominant message becomes, “If it hurts, cut it off,” we’re not teaching people to be healthy…we’re teaching them to be numb.
At the same time, I want to say this clearly: I do think there’s something positive in the broader effort to normalize conversations around trauma. It used to be that everything was hidden-shameful, buried, unspeakable. That silence often caused more pain, more rupture, more secrecy handed down like an inheritance. In some ways, the willingness we now have to name our wounds has made us more connected, not less. We recognize shared experiences, and that can be healing.
But as with anything…when does it become too much? When does naming become overidentifying? When does normalizing turn into absorbing our entire sense of self into trauma? At what point does the pendulum swing from liberating honesty to ideological rigidity?
There’s a particular thread in this conversation I wrestle with often: the expectation that children should care for their parents, no matter what. Most Eastern cultures fall into this belief. Having spent the last 12 years of my life in the Middle East, I’ve seen it up close. Nursing homes are almost nonexistent. It’s assumed that children, usually with the help of hired support, will care for their elderly parents in the home.
But what happens when that parent lived a sedentary, unhealthy lifestyle-one that could have been different, one that was chosen? Is it still the child’s burden to carry? Must they put their own life on hold until death grants them permission to begin again? I’m an only child, and I’ve spent over a decade living outside the U.S. I don’t feel safe or comfortable returning, for many reasons-including what happened recently when I tried to renew my passport.
In February, I had a chilling interview at an American embassy where I was essentially accused of being “anti-American” for voicing opposition to genocide. My passport renewal was turned into a tool of intimidation. I was made to feel like a threat for having a conscience. That experience shattered something for me-not just politically, but existentially. It drove home the reality that I have no clear “home” to return to. And it made the complexities of estrangement even more complicated.
Even though I’m estranged from my mother… if something were to happen to her now, what would I do? Where would that responsibility fall, and on whom? I’ve built a life far away from hers and not just geographically. But does that severance absolve me from the moral weight we’re all expected to carry for our aging parents? Or is that an illusion, too?
These aren’t questions with easy answers. And that’s the point. What worries me most about the growing normalization of estrangement isn’t the act itself, but the framework around it. When we collapse all intergenerational misattunement into “trauma,” when we reduce flawed, tired, human people to diagnoses like “toxic” or “narcissistic,” we strip away the possibility of change-not just in them, but in ourselves.
There’s something chilling about how well this framework aligns with our broader cultural mood: immediate clarity, curated identity, emotional purity. Everything unwanted must be removed. Everything painful is pathologized. Everything complex is collapsed into a binary-abuse or accountability, safety or danger, love or exile. And if you hesitate? You’re told that’s just internalized manipulation. You’re trauma-bonded. You’re not healed enough yet.
But real healing isn’t clean. It doesn’t follow a five-step guide on Instagram. It’s messy, contradictory, full of false starts and uncomfortable questions. And above all, it’s human.
I’m not here to argue against estrangement. God knows some parents have left their children with no other choice. Which I feel I fall into. But I am wary of how quickly estrangement has become moralized, monetized, and mediated. I’m wary of how often it’s framed as proof of growth, rather than what it actually is-a painful, complicated, and sometimes necessary decision that deserves gravity and nuance.
The article makes a critical point I want to echo: what gets lost in all this ideological clarity is the slow, silent work of repair. The real, “unsexy“work of sitting with your pain, your doubt, your part in the story. The uncomfortable conversations that don’t end in applause, but maybe in a crack of mutual recognition.
We need more space for that. More room for people who are not sure. More permission to leave the door cracked open without being accused of weakness or regression. And more language that invites repair…not just severance.
Estrangement, at its core, should be about protecting your peace-not proving your purity.
"The article makes a critical point I want to echo: what gets lost in all this ideological clarity is the slow, silent work of repair. The real, “unsexy“work of sitting with your pain, your doubt, your part in the story. The uncomfortable conversations that don’t end in applause, but maybe in a crack of mutual recognition. We need more space for that. More room for people who are not sure. More permission to leave the door cracked open without being accused of weakness or regression. And more language that invites repair…not just severance."
Wonderfully put. Many thanks Carri.
This is a beautifully honest, thoughtful, insightful response. Thank you.
Thank you 🙏🏼
After we received the one paragraph, 5 sentence farewell to our family I asked my child if we could do family therapy. He organized a session two months later. When I had the opportunity to dialog with his therapist, my first question was " in your thinking, is estrangement more a personal rift or influenced by cultural shifts", she believed it was mostly personal. She admitted she had no experience with estrangement.
"She admitted she had no experience with estrangement."
Not a good start.
yep, and I agreed anyhow, putting faith in my son. she also violated professional ethics by not disclosing that she was his therapist. I only realized this during the sloppy session and sent her an email afterwards. she apologized and tried to blame my son saying she thought he told me. The session was on zoom, yuck!, it was during the Fauci shut down, my DIL was watching from outside camera view, we could tell by how our son/brother was behaving. Therapist did not find the family as our son described. In hindsight, it is kinda funny, sick funny.
Sad story, but I get the funny side.
Therapy is so behind the times !!! The taboo of familial estrangement is responsible for this failure in therapy.
I see a number of therapists on Substack who are pushing back, their voices are very useful and merit our support.
I think it is more about the nature of the therapeutic model being used. I wanted to hire Josh or a Bowen Family System trained therapist, he wanted to use his already biased therapist.
Most therapists don’t. Why?
Affirm model pays better.
And yet, in the other corner of the ring, we find determination over free will as described by Sapolsky :
Determinism over Free Will:
Sapolsky's central argument is that our actions, including those shaped by cultural norms and family dynamics, are not freely chosen but are the result of a chain of biological and environmental factors.
Food for thought
Having studied social psychology for some years, I am inclined to view the individual as an autonomous expression of biology and culture. Freewill is an illusion when so much of what we believe and "know" (consciously or unconsciously) about ourselves and the world around us is determined by what is provided (or not provided) to us by our parents, family, community, media, religion and history of the wider culture we swim in.
I read both Behave and Determined, and as a care partner to my bro with young onset Parkinson Disease (neuro determined behavior ) I truly understand Sapolsky's argument and had an opportunity to speak with him about my experience seeing it up close. However, imo Daniel Dennett won the debate with Sapolsky on determinism and free will. His argument adds learning and moral reasoning to the equation. Dennett, if still alive, would likely point out that our estranged kids decided to use determined avoidance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cbxi7ZZIoU&ab_channel=CloserToTruth
Thanks for the reference, Laura, I'll watch the video later.
Determined avoidance is the judgment form of avoidance. But avoidance still innately stems from anxiety and fear- residing in the autonomic nervous system.
Likely a blended response imho of the range of causative factor for free will
I am writing a book about the education I have had about human behavior as I journey through parental and grand parental estrangement. I must say that the mammalian instinct to survive is the foundation of the decision to estrange. I get it. However the judgment is influenced by lifestyle exposures (commentating, preaching, observation) and this too is what manipulates the instinct. Today’s global circumstances, lifestyle cultures and the propagation of ideologies associated with current day sociological dynamics have stoked fear and flight behaviors such as estrangement and ghosting behaviors. People are seeking refuge and the most severe kind is targeted annihilation and suicide - all stem from the fear that drives fight or flight behavior.
Great observations. Many thanks, Allison.
Interesting Allison- I look forward to your book. I can’t say I necessarily agree with that perspective as being at the root foundation as a rule. But every circumstance is different- good luck with your book. I too am in the throes of writing (new author)
Brain plasticity tells us we are not limited by biological determinism as Sapolsky says. Habits adopted through learning affect brain plasticity.
Judgement comes from learning. However emotion is a consequence of brain function that is sensory and hence primitive in origin - not learned. Fear is the emotion that drives avoidance. Determined avoidance is steeped in judgment and stoked by confirmation bias and its ideologies. But the need to avoid is still rooted in the emotions of anxiety and fear.
The need to feel psychologically safe is an innate human (mammalian) need. Read books by Dr Stephen Porges - the neuroscientist who is responsible for Polyvagal Theory. Today there’s so much stoking fear especially in our youth.
Indeed neuro plasticity is a determinant in learning new habits. The conundrum is that often the EAC views the parental short comings as a fixed entity
sure, but that is a belief, a false one. I was specifically address Sapolsky's claim that humans are ONLY neuro determinate, without free will. After much thought and learning from philosophical debate, I have decided he is wrong and his ideas are harmful. As I suggested those with neurodegenerative disease provide a window into how behavior is linked to brain activity. Yet while maybe only a small percentage of humans, we can and do utilize free will, apparent when you see an addict change behavior, their brain changes too.
Laura- indeed I would agree with your note, and comments re Sapolsky. My response to the original post was the counterpoint on beliefs and subsequent behavior and the etiology of both. This was through the lens of Estrangement which was the topic of the post. While interesting from a new found ideological and philosophical perspective, the beliefs held by the EAC mitigate any philosophical perspective in reality
Interesting the transformation of estrangement from a private, regrettable event to an empowered, self actualization achievement. It reminds me of another cultural shift, indeed so similar, where women “shout their abortions”.
Some stuff is really hard to understand.
I greatly respect your writing on an extremely emotionally charged topic. I would, however, encourage you not to label estrangement an ideology. It has none of the substance to merit it.
Instead, estrangement is a trend promoted by social media influencers and some therapists. It’s become the new drug because it requires no accountability or empathy.
Estrangement is a sick, twisted game that has no winners, except for the therapists and influencers.
Thank you for this important in-depth. thought provoking, and timely piece.