Speaking of Psychology: Coping with family estrangement, with Lucy Blake, PhD

Being estranged from a family member—a parent, sibling, or adult child—is far more common than people think. Lucy Blake, PhD,  author of No Family is Perfect: A Guide to Embracing the Messy Reality, talks about why family estrangement happens, why estrangement encompasses more than just “no contact,” the stigma around estrangement, and where and how to find support.

Lucy Blake, PhD, is a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of the West of England. She is a developmental psychologist whose research focuses on family relationships, especially estrangement and the ways in which a negative, distant, or inactive relationship with a family member affects people’s lives. Her book No Family is Perfect: A Guide to Embracing the Messy Reality, was published in 2022.

Kim Mills: Our families can be our biggest source of love and support. But family members can also cause us grief, heartache, stress, and pain, sometimes more than almost anyone else can. When that happens, we might feel we have no choice but to cut ties.

Psychologists who study family estrangement say that estrangement is far more common than many people realize. But stigma around the topic can keep people from reaching out for the help they need to cope with their family members, decide whether they want to reconcile, and figure out how to do it if that’s what they wish.

So how common is family estrangement? What are the most frequent reasons that it happens? If you are estranged from a family member by your choice or theirs, how can you decide whether it makes sense to try to repair the relationship? Can therapy be helpful? And if so, what should you look for in a therapist? Is there a difference between estrangement between parents and children, between siblings, or between other family members? And why does the stigma around estrangement persist?

Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I’m Kim Mills.

My guest today is Dr. Lucy Blake, a developmental psychologist and senior lecturer in psychology at the University of the West of England in the U.K. She studies family estrangement and the ways in which a negative, distant, or inactive relationship with a family member can affect people’s lives. She’s published dozens of academic studies and is author of the book No Family Is Perfect: A Guide to Embracing the Messy Reality. 

Dr. Blake, thank you for joining me today.

Lucy Blake, PhD: Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Mills: How do you define estrangement in your work? Does it mean people who have fully cut off contact with a family member? Or can it be broader, say someone who has very infrequent contact or just feels emotionally distant from someone in their family?

Blake: I tend to take a broader approach when I’m thinking about what estrangement is. So I certainly have spoken with and hear the experiences of people who have no contact whatsoever and maybe haven’t been in contact for decades. But I also hear from people who perhaps exchange cards at the holidays or see each other once or twice a year. And I’ve even spoken with people who identify with the feelings of estrangement and as being estranged from a family member when they’re currently living with them as well. So I’m quite open to some of those complexities. But that can be difficult in a research context as well when we try and be precise about terms.

Mills: How common is estrangement? Is there reliable research that has measured how many people are estranged from at least one member of their family?

Blake: So I think in the past 10 years we’ve seen more really high-quality studies come out on this. So I’m thinking of studies where researchers have spoken to thousands of people and they’ve been interested in the quality of the relationship. So is it distant and lacking in closeness and that frequency of contact? And when they look at both of those things together, we find—I was surprised by how high the rates were.

So we’ve got some indication that it’s one in four siblings who will experience a period of estrangement from the brother or sister, and that it’s around 20% of adults who will experience a period of estrangement from a father, and around slightly lower at 9% who will experience estrangement from a mother. And some of the data I’m drawing on there is kind of large-scale data from Germany and obviously some of these numbers are going to differ according to country and context, but I think they certainly open the door to appreciating estrangement isn’t rare, this is a common experience.

Mills: Do we know if there are actually cultural differences?

Blake: Unfortunately, I think we’re still in the early days of estrangement research. So the data I’m thinking of comes from the U.S. mostly or Germany. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of that kind of comparative data. I still think we are learning about what the word “estrangement” means to people. So it might be in some cultures and contexts, the word doesn’t resonate. It doesn’t have the same meaning as it might do in a White, Western context. So it’s complicated and I think we have a lot to find out still.

Mills: Now I’ve seen some reporting and surveys that have found that family estrangement is on the rise. Do you think that’s true? I mean, you’re looking at the data. Does the data support this?

Blake: I personally can’t think of anything that supports it. I think it might be that we are talking about estrangement a little bit more than we have done in previous decades. We certainly have more estrangement research than we have done ever before. And it might be that people are seeking out therapy or support or help for estrangement more than they have before that. I’m not sure that necessarily means it’s on the rise. I think I personally wouldn’t agree with that statement, but I understand that it’s a way of thinking about estrangement that also frames it as being inherently quite negative, like the language of epidemic or pandemic is often used. And I think that framing can be quite difficult sometimes as well, because although it can be extremely painful and difficult for people, there are ways in which estrangement ensures people’s safety and wellbeing. So I think the framing of estrangement is really important.

Mills: What are some of the most common reasons that estrangement happens?

Blake: Again, we’re still learning about this, but common causes that I found in my own research are that of emotional abuse. So people feeling that there is a quality in the relationship that isn’t safe and that might be referring to acts in the relationship, like calling somebody names or kind of teasing someone, bullying someone, or that might be that the relationship just doesn’t have a quality of closeness or safety in it.

And I think other common causes that we know about are divorce. So really common family experiences rather than rare things that happen in families, they’re the everyday things that happen. So if a parent is going through a divorce, it might be that children feel drawn into taking a side or it might be that relationships weaken over time, especially we find between fathers and their adult children. And there’ll be some variation there, obviously depending on how close those relationships were before the divorce and all different kinds of factors like that.

Other causes might be about not having the same values as a family member. So feeling that your family member doesn’t have the same way of thinking about important issues perhaps like gender or sexuality or religion. And sometimes those values can drive people into a distant relationship or into a estrangement. So that’s certainly not all of the reasons. There are all sorts of different pathways to estrangement, but I think those are some of the most common ones.

Mills: Do these rifts usually build slowly over time or are they more often precipitated by some kind of a dramatic event?

Blake: So again, we’re quite early in the research, but I’m thinking of some excellent studies by Christina Sharp in the U.S. who has spoken to adults who identify as having a negative relationship with a parent and they’ve sought distance because of that. And in her studies, the adults that she’s spoken to describe it as estrangements typically building over time. So there might be an event which is like the straw that breaks the camel’s back, but actually the roots of the estrangement often have this longer lasting history to them.

Mills: Well, let’s talk about one of the most difficult questions that estrangement brings up. How can a person know whether they should try to repair a fractured relationship or whether it’s better for their mental health and wellbeing just to stay out of contact?

Blake: I think it’s going to be really individual how people approach that question of whether to seek contact or try and reunite or whether to maintain estrangement or establish estrangement in the first place. I think that it’s really hard to have an opinion on what you think is best unless you are that person in that relationship. People will have all sorts of different lives and they will have different elements of support they can draw on or that isn’t available to them. So I think it’s a really good question, but it’s a really hard one that I don’t have an answer to and that I really think that is for each individual to decide for themselves.

Mills: Now you’ve done some research on how therapy can be useful in sorting through issues like this. How can therapy help and what should people look for in a therapist if this is the question that they’re trying to deal with?

Blake: I’ve spoken with people who’ve found therapy to be very helpful—and there’s some conditions that are in place when it’s a really helpful avenue of support. And the key is really the nature of that relationship with the therapist. So when therapy can be really helpful, it has those qualities of warmth and validation and often those qualities can be missing in estranged family relationships. So they can be really restorative within a therapeutic context.

I think people can also find therapy very helpful if their therapist has an understanding of estrangement, so some appreciation that it’s rarely one relationship that’s affected when there’s an estrangement. There’s usually this ripple effect where it can impact relationships with siblings or nieces and nephews or aunts and uncles. It can also be helpful when therapists really understand some of those causes that I was talking about, like abuse in a family relationship or mental health issues and challenges that can affect family relationships as well. So those are some of the conditions I think that of growth that can be really helpful for seeking therapy.

And then I’ve also heard from people that have found therapy to be very unhelpful, and that’s typically when that relationship lacks those important qualities of wants and validation or when they feel like a therapist doesn’t have that understanding of just the enormous impact that estrangement can have on people’s lives and their wellbeing and that often estrangement can feel like a significant loss and really appreciating the grief and bereavement that happens often when there is an experience of estrangement. So I think it can be a really helpful avenue of support for some and we are still really learning about what it is that’s helpful or not at this point.

Mills: Is there a big difference between estrangements that involve parents and children and those between siblings? Or are the underlying emotions that people are dealing with essentially the same?

Blake: There’s some ways in which there’s similarities, I think particularly in terms of the significant loss that can happen with estrangement, the feelings of not even just loss of the relationship itself, but loss of what that family relationship could be or should be. There’s some ways in which I think it’s different as well. So I think with siblings we tend to have fewer expectations about what that relationship should ideally look like. Regular contact is something I think that we assume parents and adult children should have in their relationship and it’s a little bit more open for sibling relationships.

I think as well, the causes can sometimes be different. So with the sibling relationship, it might be those events later in adulthood that really spark the estrangement. So it might be issues relating to how to handle a parent being ill, requiring care or a parent passing, or it might be issues related to inheritance that can really kind of drive siblings apart from one another and damage their relationship. So sometimes I think the causes of the estrangement are different, but there are ways in which that feeling, that feeling of loss, that feeling of perhaps uncertainty of not knowing if there’ll be a reunion that can feel the same in some way, I think.

Mills: Now if you’ve been cut off and you want to reconnect, what are some of the ways to approach the person who cut you off?

Blake: I think this is something that we have less data on as researchers. In the last 10 years we’ve seen this growth of studies in figuring out what estrangement is, what causes it, how it impacts people’s lives. But I think we know less at this point in terms of published data about what are the conditions for reunion and what helps family members get back in contact again and become closer again. So here I think listening to people’s personal experiences can be very helpful. I think support groups can be really helpful for people in this situation of just hearing what has worked for other people. But in terms of published research data, I think we know less.

Mills: And you mentioned support groups. I understand that there are support groups on both sides, either for the people who are estranged or the people who did the cutting off.

Blake: That’s right. There are a number of support groups available for parents estranged from adult children, adult children estranged from parents, and also people estranged from siblings. And those can be really helpful places in that you’ll get to meet people who get it, who you don’t have to really explain necessarily your situation from scratch because someone’s going to have some idea, not a full idea, but someone will have some idea of what your experience is like. And we’ve done some work in the U.K. at looking at support groups and find that they can be really helpful for some people in feeling less alone. And just the ability to connect with someone else who gets it can be really valuable.

Mills: Say you did the severing and a family member makes overtures to you, is there any research that tells you how you should respond? And I’m just wondering, should you try to talk out the reasons for the breakup or is it better just to move on and not dwell on the past?

Blake: That’s a great question and I think it’s when we have very little published research data on. So I think that’s really going to depend on the individual and their context, their circumstances, and it’s going to depend on that estranged relationship as well and the kind of causes of the estrangement and how it’s impact their lives. So I think that’s going to be a very individual response to that question.

Mills: I’m just wondering what got you interested in this topic for research and have you experienced estrangement in your family? I mean, a lot of psychologists tell me it’s not research, it’s “me search.”

Blake: Yeah, this is a really popular question that I’m asked a lot and I would say my family tree is quite complex. It’s a real mixed bag. So there are some relationships that are very close and supportive and somewhere that there’s a lot of conflict and somewhere there’s estrangement as well. So there certainly is estrangement in a lot of the branches of my family tree. And I think 10 years ago when I was doing family research, I felt quite frustrated and quite confused, why aren’t I reading about families that look and feel like my own? Why is this so hidden? And 10 years ago, we really didn’t have much in the way of published research on this topic. So it’s really exciting now that 10 years later we’ve got so much more to draw on. And obviously I found that what I’ve learned in my own research has been kind of a huge comfort to me personally because where I used to think that my family was very different from other people’s families and less than other people’s families, I now have this actually the estrangements in my family tree make my family much more like other people’s families.

And I’ve found that to be a big comfort.

Mills: So what do you do if you’re a family member in the middle? Say your parent is estranged from one of your siblings or your children don’t talk to each other. What’s your advice for people in that situation?

Blake: I think that’s a difficult one that we don’t have too much data on as a researcher, but I think that really some self-compassion would be helpful here as well as to anybody at any point who is experiencing estrangement, whether it’s their own or that of their family member. Family is a place where we often expect loyalty. So when there is an estrangement between say parents and a sibling, it’s difficult over time to maintain a position where you’re kind of in the middle or supportive of both parties over time, people are often expecting you to be loyal to one member over another. So I feel like we know that that can be one of the difficulties. And also a feeling of loss as well, loss of a family unit and how it used to function.

And so at this point in terms of thinking how people can cope with that, perhaps there’s some solace in knowing that it’s so common and that there will be millions of other people in your same situation. And perhaps there’s also some comfort to be found as well in finding a kinder voice for navigating through it because we can only be responsible for our own part in family relationships, so we can’t control or shape or dictate the quality of other people’s family relationships. So I think there’s probably an aspect of responsibility that it’s helpful to think about and how we can only really be responsible for our own side of a relationship.

Mills: Why do you think there is so much stigma around the idea of estrangement? I mean, we all sort of break up with friends, romances go awry. There’s all kinds of estrangement if you want to use that term in our lives. But for some reason, family estrangement is a deep dark secret for a lot of people.

Blake: It absolutely is. In most societies, I think—if not all—family is on a pedestal. We really idealize family. So if we think of the images that we see at the holidays or that we see on social media, it’s usually family members together, matching pajamas, kind of big dinner tables piled high with food, holidays together, time together. If we think of political speeches, how politicians speak about the family or about marriage and parenthood, it really is, it’s elevated so high that it can’t really be real in that sense. Anything that we worship and put upon that pedestal is going to come down.

And I think that for parents especially, I think parenthood is such a central identity to people’s lives, and when that identity is challenged, when that relationship becomes estranged, it can be really difficult to navigate that question of “who am I?” And issues of identity are also really relevant as of course for everyone involved in estrangement, like sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. How do we think about ourselves when these relationships are distant or estranged? So I think that’s some of the reason why it’s so difficult to talk about is that we just think it should be so different. And I think estrangement is such a fascinating field of study for that reason because it really challenges well: What is family? What are families rather than what could they be or what should they be?

Mills: I imagine a lot of it has to be driven by the fear that people are going to look at you and say, well, you must’ve been a bad parent or you were a crummy sister and that’s why you’re not in touch with each other anymore. Right?

Blake: Yeah. I think those are things that those kinds of judgments are experienced really commonly by people who are estranged from a family member. And as well, I think we are all entitled to privacy about our family relationships as well. So some of those causes of family estrangement, like abuse in a relationship are not things that you’ll want to tell your coworker about or perhaps friend or partner, even. Some of these experiences are so private to us and we don’t really owe anybody the deepest part of ourselves in that way, and especially if that’s not a safe relationship to make that kind of disclosure in.

So I’m thinking of all those people I’ve spoken to who will say that at the office, they just have a made up story about what they’re doing for the holidays or they have some kind of rehearsed line or two that they will give when people ask them about their families and what they’re doing together. And I think I’ve heard that so often now that I just reflect personally that I actually know very little about other people’s family lives. And so I try not to make assumptions. So I try not to say to my students, have a good summer at home with your families, for example. I try and keep that open mind that I don’t actually know where they’ll be or who they’ll be spending time with.

Mills: What about when an estranged family member gets sick or dies? How does that occurrence interact with grief?

Blake: I think that’s an excellent question that we don’t quite have the answer to in terms of published research yet. But I think certainly estrangement itself can be an experience of grief and loss and bereavement, and so that when a family member dies, that could potentially be heightened as there is no way then to perhaps get answers or attempt repair or find out what happened. But I think a death of an estranged family member can also be a relief to some people as well that the pain and the strain of that damaging relationship is no longer existent. So I think again, that’s likely to really vary depending on the individual’s experiences.

Mills: So it sounds like there are quite a few unanswered questions in this area of psychological science. I’m just wondering, what are you working on now? What are the big questions you’d like to answer?

Blake: There is so much that needs to be done. I’m really interested in people’s experience of seeking support in particular. So the work that I’ve done speaking to people about their therapeutic experiences, that’s what I’m really hoping to focus on and continue and perhaps narrow down as well I think would be really helpful. So far I’ve spoken to people who are estranged from a family member for all sorts of different reasons, but I think perhaps it could be helpful to specify how do people seek support when a relationship has broken down because of abuse? How do people experience and seek support when relationships have broken down because of divorce? And just to get really more narrow and specific in getting answers to some of these things.

But I really think that what next? What do we do now? How can we help people? That feels really important to me at the moment, as well as amplifying those voices that we don’t hear. So I’m very aware that most of the research I’m drawing on is of samples in countries that are high income. We mostly hear from people who are White. We hear mostly from women. We hear less about experiences of estrangement by men. There’s all sorts of ways I think, in which it’s really important that estrangement research reflects the diversity of people’s experiences.

Mills: Well, Dr. Blake, I want to thank you for joining me today, and I wish you luck in your research. This is a very important topic.

Blake: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s always a pleasure to talk about this topic. Thank you.

Mills: You can learn more about Dr. Blake’s and other psychologists’ research on family estrangement in the April issue of APA’s magazine Monitor on Psychology. Go to www.apa.org/monitor. You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at www.speakingofpsychology.org or on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you’ve heard, please subscribe and leave us a review.  If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at speakingofpsychology@apa.org. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condayan.

Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I’m Kim Mills.