A mother came to me convinced she had lost her daughter forever. I remember listening to her talk about the situation and thinking about how exhausted she sounded. Not just tired. Exhausted in the way people get when they’ve been carrying the same worry around for so long that they can no longer remember what it feels like to set it down.
She told me she wasn’t sleeping very well. Some nights she would wake up at two or three in the morning, and her mind would go straight to her daughter. There didn’t seem to be an off switch. During the day, she would be doing something completely unrelated, driving to the grocery store or trying to focus on work, and suddenly realize she was replaying a conversation they had months earlier.
She kept hoping she might remember something differently. Maybe there was a clue she had missed. Maybe there was a sentence she wished she could take back. Maybe there was something hidden in that conversation that would finally help her make sense of what was happening.
She checked her phone more than she wanted to admit.
Not because she expected a message every time she looked.
But because hope can be hard to let go of.
I think many people understand that feeling.
You tell yourself you’re just checking quickly. Then you look again an hour later. Then, before bed. Then, the first thing in the morning.
Most of us have probably done some version of that when someone we love feels far away.
What struck me wasn’t that she loved her daughter. Of course, she loved her daughter.
What struck me was how frightened she was.
At one point, she described feeling as though every day mattered. Every conversation mattered. Every decision mattered. If she reached out, maybe she would make things worse. If she stayed quiet, maybe her daughter would think she didn’t care.
She felt trapped between doing too much and not doing enough.
That’s a painful place to live.
Over the years, I’ve noticed that many people who are estranged from a loved one end up in that same place. They become detectives in their own lives. They go back through old conversations. They revisit holidays. They think about things they wish they had said differently. They wonder whether there was a moment when everything started going wrong, and they missed it.
I don’t say that critically.
I say it because it makes sense.
When something hurts badly enough, most of us start searching for answers.
The problem is that searching doesn’t always bring relief.
Sometimes it just brings more questions.
Read more here: Understanding Family Estrangement: Why It Happens and What It Means
One of the things this mother struggled with most was uncertainty. She wanted to know what her daughter was thinking. She wanted to know whether the relationship could be repaired. She wanted to know whether she should reach out again or stay quiet.
What made it harder was that every choice felt risky.
If she said too much, she worried she would push her daughter away.
If she said too little, she worried her daughter would think she didn’t care.
Read more about that here: What to Say When You’re Afraid of Making Things Worse
After a while, I noticed our conversations were changing.
At first, she mostly wanted to know what to say to her daughter. Should she write another letter? Should she reach out again? Was there something she hadn’t explained clearly enough?
Those questions didn’t disappear overnight, but they stopped taking up quite so much space.
We found ourselves talking more about what happened to her on the days she felt especially overwhelmed. What was she thinking when she reached for her phone? What story was she telling herself when she hadn’t heard anything for a while? What was making an ordinary Tuesday suddenly feel unbearable?
Those conversations turned out to be far more helpful than either of us expected.
Many people think they need a communication strategy when what they really need first is a way to calm their nervous system.
One question that came out of our work together is a question I still think about today:
Am I communicating for connection, or am I communicating to reduce panic?
The first time I asked it, she sat quietly for a moment.
Because she knew the answer.
Most of the time, she wasn’t reaching out because she felt calm and connected. She was reaching out because she was scared.
And honestly, I think many of us have done the same thing.
Re more… Why People Shut Down During Difficult Conversations
As the months went on, I noticed something shift.
She wasn’t reaching for her phone as quickly. The urge was still there sometimes, but she no longer felt as though every uncomfortable feeling needed an immediate response. There were moments when she would stop, sit with the anxiety for a while, and let it pass instead of acting on it.
That may not sound dramatic, but for her it was a big change.
She started giving herself room to think before reacting. Instead of getting pulled into the fear every time it showed up, she became more curious about it. She began asking herself what was actually happening in that moment and whether the relationship truly needed her attention right then, or whether she was simply hurting.
If this story feels familiar, you may also enjoy watching:
Or listening to:
Caught Between a Family and a Hard Place
Caught Between a Family and a Hard Place
And if you find yourself freezing, overthinking, avoiding conversations, or saying things you later regret, you can learn more about When Words Feel Risky here:
