Cut-off from adult children or family is emotionally taxing. The uncertainty and stigma contribute to a significant amount of daily stress. Chronic stress includes insomnia, depression, anxiety, agitation, and feeling helpless. Parents desiring reconciliation may wait an average of 4.5 years. What then is a parent to do? Estranged parents benefit by learning key coping skills to combat chronic stress and better communicate with their adult children. This article discusses how to cope with Adult Children When Waiting to Reconcile.
Chronic Stress
Chronic stress includes feelings of helplessness, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and insomnia. Likewise, feeling weak, less socialization, and body aches may also participate from the stress of being cut off. Dr. Karl Pillemer, in his book Fault Lines- Fractured Families and How to Mend Them, explains that chronic stress often results from the estrangement condition. Parents and family members may also experience agitation, anxiety, tension, chest pains, and increased heart rate.
Experiences of Parents of Estranged Adult Child
Research studies discuss the ambiguous nature of estrangement, having no end point differing from the death of a child. For grieving parents who strongly desire reconciliation, the intense emotions vary from great anger to a sense of hopelessness and feeling like one cannot function without a relationship with their adult child.
Many parents express feeling great injustice and unfairness. Many are mystified about how their adult child dismisses their efforts and sacrifices. Also, parents discuss their need to “set the record straight” and let their adult children know what they are thinking. When adult children demand “no contact,” there may be inconsistencies in contact. For example, an adult child may call or text a parent when they need something and then quickly return to a cold, distant demeanor. Mixed messages can be confusing and disheartening when the adult child resumes his cut-off behaviors.
Parental Anxiety About Reconciling
Feeling anxious about when and how you will reconcile is natural and normal. Like the more than a quarter of the population of estranged individuals, you are not alone. A key feature of estrangement is anxiety over repairing the relationship. Unfortunately, your adult child will decide when and if it is the right time. Consider your condition ongoing, and your adult child may soften towards you in time.
Reconciling is a means to move out of the separation of estrangement and find a path forward for a new connected relationship. Estrangement stories and experiences characteristically are varied and complicated. There is no one-size solution and no simple method for the outcome of a relationship. Successful reconcilers practice four key strategies as they journey towards reconciliation.
The emotional and or physical distance can take its toll on the estranged. Cut-off individuals from an adult child or family members can feel the emotional, physical, and social effects regardless of who initiated it. Nearly everyone I speak to wants to reconcile. For some, reconciliation is impossible or unsafe, and estrangement is a necessary self-preserving act. Reconciling when it is safe, and you are ready is a courageous act.
How to Cope With Adult Child When Waiting to Reconcile
- Accept Estrangement is a Marathon, Not a Sprint.
Estrangement is complicated with multiple elements such as divorce, poor communication skills, substance use and mental illness, difficult in-laws, disagreements on values and lifestyles, and abuse. Your adult child’s perspective is as critical as your own. However, parents are more invested in the relationship’s longevity, so adult children control when and if they will reconcile. Prepare for an extended stay in the relationship’s cut-off status by accepting that there is no easy or quick resolution.
Understand that the intensity of grief immediately following the loss of someone may subside; you may grieve your lost loved one indefinitely. We can experience all the stages of grief or just some. Grief can come in waves, and everyone’s experience is different. There is no right way to grieve. Especially if the relationship is estranged and your family member has chosen to separate, it can be highly challenging.
For this reason, committing to a daily self-care routine is essential for your well-being.
- Learn How to Calm
Parents’ heightened emotional response is highly taxing on their mental and physical health. Learning various calming techniques will benefit parents in managing their physical and emotional reactions to stressors. Diaphragmatic breathing, the Four-Seven-Eight breathing technique, prayer, a brisk walk, and meditation are excellent ways to learn to calm down.
Estrangement is a part of your life but does not define you. You may have other children and family who love and value you. Your intentional investment in your well-being will be the necessary step to move forward.
- Sharpen Your Communication Skills, So You Respond and Not React
One of the essential skills in dealing with our adult children is learning to validate what they are saying. Validating is simply listening and repeating your words or what you heard. It allows them to know you have listened to them. Validating your adult child does not mean you need to agree with what they say. You make it possible for them to know they are heard.
In addition to validating, communication is more about body language and facial expressions. Learn to keep a neutral expression when you are with your adult child. There may be family occasions that require both of you to be present. Communicating calmly and composedly will prevent accidental expressions of how upset you have been. If your adult child has been cut off from you, it is highly likely they are not interested in your dismay. Work on modeling attractive composed communication. Ventilate what you are feeling with a therapist.
- Grief and Strong Emotions -Let Yourself Feel
If you’re early in grief- let yourself grieve. More importantly, your investment in processing your strong emotions during an emotional visit. Make time for an emotional visit to allow yourself to feel acceptance. It’s uncomfortable to have estrangement in your life. The onslaught of big feelings requires time to sort out your emotions. There is no right or wrong way. Consider making a favorite cup of tea, grab a journal if you like, and let yourself feel. Be compassionate, and if you need to cry, groan, let it be.
Spend as much time as you need; rest when you feel a release. When you are ready, do something you like to do. Then go back to your emotional visit on another day.
This exercise allows you to think and feel. Processing the gravity and loss of estrangement is a necessary step we cannot afford to skip. This exercise will also help you decrease the power of feelings such as guilt and shame. Strong unprocessed feelings keep us stuck. Getting out of the stuck state requires time to process. Essentially, you are helping yourself to grieve and move forward.
- Don’t be Defensive- Listen and Gather Information.
It is essential not to be defensive or try to convince your adult child they have it all wrong. Setting the record straight may be perceived as defensiveness by your adult child. Their perception is more than likely very different. You may want to let them know your version, but it may be interpreted as you not validating what they have said.
Humans naturally develop their narrative and decide how they make meaning of events. We process stressful events in a way that makes sense to us. The process of perspective-taking is challenging because when we are cut off from someone, we perceive it as a threat. Even if the relationship was strained and less than optimal, it operated within our framework of familiarity. When an event ignites the final straw, we react and become defensive to protect ourselves. It feels uncomfortable and unsafe for the familiar to transform into an ambiguous and uncertain condition.
According to Pillemer, when we approach estrangement non-defensively, we can examine the facts, consider what is wrong with our strategies, and look for ways to improve and make adjustments.
Reconciling When There is Estrangement
To reconcile is to make amends, settle a dispute, and call for a cease-fire. There is often no way to reconcile the two versions, and reconciliation requires accepting that fact. Reconcilers of estrangement were willing to relinquish needing to win their point. To negotiate when there are two opposing viewpoints relates to resigning the need for both sides to agree on one narrative.
A considerable obstacle when considering reconciling is the insistence that the other party listens and agrees with your version of the past. Indeed, both parties’ versions are valid and deserve attention. Estrangement is complex and filled with versions tied to painful histories.
Many threads within a family rift may include divorce, emotional abandonment, alienation, mental illness and substance use, and long-standing poor communication. The differing threads of the dark tapestry being cut off participate in its design.
To reconcile, one must focus not on the threads that created the mess but on what the new relational tapestry will reveal.
The uncertainty of the estrangements condition causes significant stress to parents and their adult children. Many parents are anxious about how and when they will reconcile. Obviously, parents desire to reconcile, but what does a parent do when their adult child does not speak with them? However, you will need to cope while you wait. Estranged parents benefit by learning vital coping skills to combat chronic stress. This article discusses How to Cope with Adult Children When Waiting to Reconcile.
Resources:
Agilias, Kylie. Family Estrangement A Matter Of Perspective. New York, Routledge, 2017.
Morin, Marie. Feeling Heartbroken and Alone? How to Pick Up the Pieces When You are Estranged. eBook. 2022.
Morin, M.L. [Morin Holistic Therapy]. (2022, January 4 ). What is Family Estrangement? You Are Not Alone.
Morin, M.L. [Morin Holistic Therapy]. (2021, September 8). Diaphragmatic Breathing: 5 Minute Deep Breathing Exercise for Beginners.
Morin, Marie. How to Deal with Estranged Family During the Holidays (2021, November 21) Sixty and Me. https://sixtyandme.com/estranged-family-holidays/
Pillemer, Karl. Fault Lines Fractured Families and How to Mend Them. New York Penguin Random House, 2020.
