Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict

by Joshua Coleman

The message of estrangement is that you can have your most treasured person torn from you and there’s nothing—or seemingly nothing—that you can do about it. That experience makes most people feel scared, impotent, and enraged. It has the potential, especially if you’ve had other traumas, to cause you to believe that this is a kind of validation of your fundamental lack of worth.