#estrangement

What is it called when someone does something bad, reprehensible, unforgivable, and time passes, and before you know it, they are back in your space acting like nothing ever happened? Rug sweeping? Emotional invalidation? Conflict erasure? Whatever it’s called, my brother is guilty of it all the time. (more…)

It’s my son’s birthday weekend. We’ve been out all day, treated ourselves to pizza and beer, the kind of easy day that doesn’t ask anything of you. By the time I’m on my coffee, and he’s finishing his beer, we’ve landed — the way you do when you’re full and not in a hurry — in the middle of a real conversation. (more…)

When Your Adult Child Would Rather Watch the Snow Outside the Window than Listen to Your Advice

They "kept trickling in like water through the planks of a leaky boat." That is an excellent metaphor for how family influence often works. One criticism is not decisive.

Thousands of similar interactions over many years create an internal voice. Even after the person leaves the room, the conversation continues inside the nervous system. Modern psychology sometimes calls these internal working models. They become predictions about oneself and about relationships. The sister leaves, but the predictive model remains active. So many of us has the feeling that our families do not want us to become more. And your feeling is most probably right. Most parents, however, believe that they genuinely encourage independence. They believe what does not mean it is the truth.

Usually families struggle with it th independence of their members. The crypto cruel difference often has less to do with malice than with psychological equilibrium. Every family develops a kind of balance where everyone has a role. There is the responsible one, the successful one, the caretaker, the rebel, the dependent one. When one person begins to change, the balance is disturbed. Other family members may unconsciously try to restore it. It is when they say, "You're getting above yourself." "You've changed." "You think you're better than us." This is how the family members express their envy and fear.

These accusations frequently confuse two very different things. One is inflation. "I deserve admiration because I am superior." The other is individuation. "I am becoming more fully myself." Those are not the same. Someone leaving home, setting boundaries, becoming financially independent, developing intellectually, or refusing manipulation is accused of arrogance simply because they are no longer playing the old family role. What does not mean they becoming "bigger." It simply is becoming differentiated.

This is why the final paragraph is so psychologically brilliant. "The trick was to treat them as strangers..." At first, that sounds cold but it is nothatred. It is recalibration. As children, we give family members extraordinary epistemic authority. If your mother says you are lazy, stupid, selfish, or unlovable, it feels like objective reality because, as a child, your survival depends on taking caregivers seriously.

As an adult, that privileged status no longer has to remain. The character is not saying, "I will stop loving them." He is saying, "I will stop granting their judgments absolute authority." It is matuation. Leaving the family is a kind of enstragement that parents often cannot get over. That is a profound psychological transition. If a stranger criticized your photographs, you would evaluate the criticism. You would not automatically absorb it into your identity. The character is trying to extend that same standard to his family. Not because family opinions are worthless. Because they are no longer uniquely authoritative. That strikes as healthy. Not emotional withdrawal but epistemic independence.

A child asks, What do they think of me?" An adult increasingly asks, "What is actually true?" That is a move away from authority and toward reality. That is the deepest freedom in this passage. The prison is not primarily the family house but other people's evaluations still function as if they were reality itself. The moment they become hypotheses rather than verdicts, the walls begin to disappear.

Today is Father’s Day in Guatemala. I watched a father interact with his seven-year-old daughter today, and I was uncomfortable with how much care he put into making her happy. (more…)