More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
September 16 - October 9, 2020
the mother-daughter relationship as primal. I guess that’s why I’m crying, because I miss that. Some people really have lovely, powerful, strong relationships with their mom, and they’re internalizing that secure bond. I think every human being yearns for a secure bond with at least one parent. I just think we’re mammals, that’s how we’re made, and we need that secure bond. And when we don’t get that secure bond, it impacts our internal core stability.
even when a relative was difficult and unrewarding, a desire for contact and connection persisted. Some people expressed bewilderment that they still longed for the relationship despite a history of problems. The fundamental attachment bond, reinforced by even a few positive memories, made acceptance of a permanent break difficult or impossible.
The biologically based process of attachment persists and influences our emotions for as long as we live.
“targeted rejection,” which involves “the exclusive, active, and intentional rejection of an individual by others.” Slavich found that people who experience targeted rejection are three times more likely to become depressed,
the same regions in the brain that respond to physical pain are activated by social rejection.
my mother completely rejected me. Her message to me was, ‘Your actions do not align with what I believe you should have done, so I cannot accept that, I cannot accept you.’”
When rejection happens from your family, it’s ultimate. When rejection happens, you tend to lose everything—you lose your self-esteem, your confidence. You question who you are, you doubt everything, and you are the lowest of the low. I wanted to try to move forward with my life, but I couldn’t because this had such a hold on me.
I feel like it just ripped the rug right out from under me, and everything I believed in, and everything I thought I knew. Everything I worked for my entire life was taken away. I try to accept it or get over it, but it’s a huge part of me every day. I don’t understand a person being in a position in life where you could say, “I don’t want someone who loves me to come close to me.” How can you say, “I have enough love in my life, so I don’t need you
If there is one thing we humans like, it’s certainty.
estrangement brings a prolonged state of ambiguity.
missing in action in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. In other studies, Boss examined families of people missing in disasters or of people who were kidnapped. These families suffered from much more than the loss itself. They found themselves in a situation Boss famously described as having a family member who is physically absent but psychologically present. So it is with estrangement. Boss termed this phenomenon “ambiguous loss.”
coping, and hinders decision-making. In her words, the stress of ambiguous loss occurs because “family members have no choice but to live with the paradox of absence and presence.”
This perspective helped me understand a frequent statement that initially shocked me: Some estranged people would find it easier if their relative had died.
It is like a death, but it’s the death of a relationship with no funeral and no closure. You’re not prepared for this. There are no family stories of how to deal with this.
When you lose someone you love, Your life becomes strange, The ground beneath you becomes fragile, Your thoughts make your eyes unsure; And some dead echo drags your voice down Where words have no confidence. Your heart has grown heavy with loss; And though this loss has wounded others too, No one knows what has been taken from you When the silence of absence deepens.
One source of the pain comes from silence: silence in response to requests for forgiveness and for a second chance, silence in response to expressions of anger and disappointment. Unlike in the aftermath of a death, one’s awareness that the silence could be broken never goes away.
You are not “strange,” “weird,” “weak,” or “losing your mind,” nor are you expected to “just get over it.” Because of how we have evolved, experiences of rejection, shunning, and ostracism make us feel miserable, even if we played a role in making them happen.
carefully weigh the costs and benefits of our actions prior to an estrangement. Cutting someone off in anger because of a perceived slight or breaking off contact because of a relative’s lifestyle choice may seem satisfying in the moment. However, the long-term consequences for those involved should make us cautious about taking irrevocable steps in family relationships.
no one is unscathed by estrangement, including the person who initiated the cutoff and maintains it.
have two children, and I’m starting to become aware that their perspective is different because they didn’t grow up seeing this harmonious family. They’re left with wondering why their grandfather doesn’t get along with any of his siblings or any of his big family. They’re missing out right now on what could be warm and loving, like what I got to experience growing up. Our kids are strangers to a lot of the family, and they don’t really engage much with them. It’s missing from their life. You have to figure out a way to fix those things, or the innocent get hurt for generations.
“social capital.” That term refers to networks of trusted individuals who can be called upon in times of need. These social ties provide a safety net, available for information and advice if and when it is needed. Possessing social capital, in the form of people we see as friendly, supportive, and there for us if required—even if we are not in touch often—makes us feel more at home in the world.
“collateral damage.” Used to describe the effects of war, the term means injury inflicted on something other than an intended target. Substitute “someone” for “something,” and it is difficult to come up with a better description of the far-reaching ripple effects of a family rift.
It was tough being stuck in the middle.
I felt really awkward because I knew she was really angry, even though I didn’t have anything to do with it.
When two people split the family, they are often thinking only of themselves. Caught up in a vortex of anger, blame, and conflict, they focus on their own hurts and bruised egos. They may take extreme stands, believing that they have been wronged, and are consumed by a desire to retaliate. Their own issues become of paramount importance, leading to what we identified in Chapter 2 as “perseverative cognitions.” Hurtful events are played out over and over in the imagination. As the spiral of negative interactions mounts, a complete cutoff becomes more and more attractive. Each side seeks out
...more
There is a dark side to family traditions, however, and estrangement is one of them. As my interviews progressed, I became aware of an insidious pattern: A surprising number of people in a family rift pointed to a history of estrangement, sometimes stretching back generations. They were aware that cutting off relatives was a family theme that had been passed down. Some described it as a learned behavior, in which cutoff was seen as a viable option when conflict becomes too intense.
negative themes persist over generations, such as marital instability, harsh parenting, and aggression. When a family theme of estrangement as a solution for conflict emerges, it can be hard to halt the trajectory.
If you decide to see a therapist with expertise in Bowen theory, on your first visit you will be asked to create (with the therapist’s help) a family diagram. As Victoria Harrison, a faculty member at the Bowen Center, explains, the “family diagram is a graphic depiction of facts of family functioning over several generations.” Using symbols for various family members and relationships, the diagram is much more than a simple family tree. Instead, it portrays the emotional connections within and across the generations, based on the assumption that the history of the family lives on in the
...more
family members in a generation are represented chronologically from left to right (e.g., the oldest child is farthest to the left), with females as circles, males as squares. After five generations were mapped out, from my grandparents down to my two young grandchildren (the diagram gets crowded!), I filled in more details. Conflict is indicated by a wavy line, divorce by two slashes, and cutoff by a broken line between two people. Time flew by as Anne led me through the complicated emotional landscape of my family.
As parents fight with their siblings, or with their own parents, I wish they could hear the voices of these young people who bear the burden of their elders’ actions.
James wishes that the family could reunite and cannot help feeling resentful that those involved are damaging his generation just for material gain. He explained: “I feel like I don’t know when all of them will come to their senses and realize there is more to life than this money. It’s kind of BS, because everyone is pretty well-off. They are definitely losing family over money. All of them are getting older, and it’s definitely not worth it to cross out life connections for money.”
I would tell them that “you guys are brother and sister; you guys are supposed to take care of each other.” It’s not supposed to be everybody looking out for themselves. I would tell them to look at their grandchildren and ask them: “Is it worth it to stop family members from ever meeting each other because of money? Is it worth it to break family connections because of money?” I would tell them to hold your siblings close.
“stress contagion”—when devastating events to a loved one roll over into your own life. In this case, your sister is likely to rely on you for emotional support. You may have to sit with her through long evenings and take tearful calls in the middle of the night. She may need your help with child care, burdening your already busy schedule. You experience anger at her spouse, and you lose sleep ruminating about it. Most important, you have a front-row seat to watch someone you love suffer, which research shows is extraordinarily stressful. Our natural ability to empathize makes us feel as if we
...more
Johnny continually complained to Lois about their mother, which Lois found highly stressful. Lois reported: “I had to listen to him talk badly about our mother. He would say, ‘It’s all because of our mother that my life is such a hell and I’m a loser.’ I started saying to him: ‘You know, we’re adults and we’re talking about our mother all day long, every day. This is not healthy. You can’t blame your mother for ruining your life.’”
If you are on the verge of entering into a rift, step back and consider the effects on others. Based on their experiences and mine, before cutting someone off, I suggest that you make a family diagram that is not of the past history, but of the future. For example, if you and your brother or sister declare that your relationship is over, what will it mean for your children, their children, and their children’s children? What is needed, my respondents told me, is legacy thinking.
There was a time in my husband’s family when two people were heading toward a rift. One of them was saying, “He needs to apologize for what happened. He said this, this, and this. He needs to apologize.” And everyone was asking, “What’s going on with Uncle Oscar and Uncle Alan?” One day at a gathering, I found both of them and made them sit down. I said: “I have to tell you that this tension between you is now getting to the nieces and nephews. They are noticing, they are seeing it, and they are asking me about it. I think you two can do better, for the good of the whole family. I wouldn’t
...more
Here’s a little philosophy titbit for you, if you want it. I think everybody has around one hundred and fifty years of memory. Why? Because you talk to your grandmother, and your grandmother has talked to her grandmother. So your grandmother can tell you stories of her grandmother, and you get about one hundred and fifty years of history just sitting there in your kitchen. I can’t go around treating my parents like they’re jerks and model that behavior to my kids, and then have my one hundred and fifty years of future history turn out to be crap because I blew it.
If my father had been the only one, then it might be different—we might still not have a relationship. But with my mom and brother choosing to stick by his side, it was to either continue to be estranged or to ignore some of the issues and problems and put them aside to maintain relationships with the other family members.
restored a relationship that, although not as close as it was before the rift, involved enjoyable activities and pleasant visits.
father entered into a dispute with his brother over money he felt was owed to him. Amy’s father and uncle each firmly believed the other had cheated him. According to Amy: When my uncle did that to my dad, it hurt him immensely. We lost all contact with my uncle and his sons. My father passed away a year and a half later, and they did come to the funeral. But they did not sit with the family, and we didn’t welcome them in our homes because of what happened. After my dad passed away, my mother and I had no connection with his side of the family at all—none.
take a moment to imagine the alternative future. A benefit of reconciliation is shared (rather than separate) lifetime. Is it worth the risk? The reconcilers think so.
Good reasons to reconcile are to do it for yourself, to avoid regret, and to gain resources. But one possible payoff is simply this: It can be life-enhancing, providing a source of enjoyable experiences that you otherwise would have missed.
There is a celebratory feeling when what seemed like the end of shared lives turned out not to be the end after all. Especially when the earlier phases of the relationship had a positive side, many people were able to recapture the pleasure of the past connection. Indeed, a common feeling was, “Why did I wait so long?”
If I could do anything differently, I would have reached out to him sooner. I ask myself, “Why didn’t I?” I don’t know. Maybe it’s just so easy to not do anything. I feel sad for my dad and my brother and their relationship. They are so close now, and I think it’s sad that they missed out on a lot of life together. If anybody is really thinking about reconciling, I would tell them to reach out, to do it, to take that step if you feel in your gut that it’s what you should do. I should have done it earlier.
“transtheoretical” means here. Instead, there’s one very helpful insight it teaches us. Decades of research using this model have shown that when we move toward a major life decision, most of us begin in the same way. We enter a stage called “contemplation.” In that stage, we recognize the existence of a problem, and we start to think about it and consider the pros and cons of acting.
The reconcilers told me about three “nudges” they experienced when they were in the contemplation stage. Be sure to pay attention to these three signs that you may be ready to reconcile: 1. THE CIRCUMSTANCES HAVE CHANGED
2. YOU START DEVELOPING A PLAN
3. YOU GET A SIGN
it. I called him up and I apologized for being so angry with him and we had a nice chat. And he admitted to some things and that’s been it. It’s history. We now we get together a few times a year and talk on the phone. The argument that caused all this seems trivial now. It’s kind of a Christmas miracle, isn’t it?
Why is a single event so important in generating a family rift?
