Oprah and Experts: Setting Boundaries with Toxic Family Members

So now Oprah is shocked by the aftermath of estrangement after being one of the biggest voices pushing it for decades. Oprah, the biggest plot twist in the entire family estrangement crisis. While everyone is applauding her for finally discussing estrangement, very few look at the irony and the contradiction. Oprah was one of the strongest voices pushing

the normalization of family cutoffs, and not by accident,

publicly, repeatedly, and openly. I don't feel that I contributed to the culture of estrangement in the way that you're saying. Hi, everybody. I'm happy to be here with you on the Oprah podcast in gorgeous New York City.

So right before Thanksgiving, we did an episode about the growing number of Americans choosing to go now contact with their parent or their adult child. And it reached over 5 million of you, thank you so much, and millions more reacted on social media. I did not fully appreciate this issue, it hit such a raw nerve, and then in the middle

of Thanksgiving with my own family, my phone is blowing up with comments and articles and debates online. And I wanted to show you just a few of the most reposted moments from that no contact episode. So you didn't grow up in a world where you thought about, you know, removing yourself

or distancing yourself from your parents. Where did the idea even come from?

I don't think there was one moment.

I think it was very incremental.

Do you miss the contact with them? I love my life. I'm just not being walked all over, actually. So it's, I know peace for the first time.

There's always been estrangements, right? Forever there's been estrangements. But it's new the way we think about family.

I do understand she is my mother. However, it's like we just, we don't have that relationship, you know? And so it's just like, she was never there for me.

It's such a thin line between like what's appropriate and what's gone too far. Because as therapists, we do see our clients suffering.

I am estranged from my 30-year-old son by choice. When a mother decides to go no contact with her child, she's demonized.

And that's been my experience.

In our generation, the way we grew up, you loved your parents no matter what. They're not doing that no more.

I just wanted to mention that this is not

the world of 30 years ago.

I think it's a very interesting thing you just said, the days of the role being the almighty in the relationship, because it's not about the role, it really is about the relationship. Some of you said you felt seen and understood for the first time. Others felt that the language and the framing of our conversation missed the mark. So I'm here today to try to unpack this and dive a bit deeper if we can.

On this episode, our three experts will be back as well as more people who have chosen to cut ties with their parents and even ties between siblings, which hits a very different nerve. But first, one social post really caught my attention, so much so that I responded to it.

Watch this.

So now Oprah is shocked by the aftermath of estrangement after being one of the biggest voices pushing it for decades. Oprah, the biggest plot twist in the entire family estrangement crisis. While everyone is applauding her

for finally discussing estrangement, very few look at the irony and the contradiction. Oprah was one of the strongest voices pushing the normalization of family cutoffs and not by accident, publicly, repeatedly, and openly. And this started as far back as the 90s. And it continued for decades right into 2025. And look at the trail. She wasn't neutral. She wasn't asking questions. She amplified the very messaging that contributed

to millions of parents and children walking away from one another. Estrangement isn't entertainment or a trending conversation piece, it's real families, real grief, parents dying without hearing their child's voice. Generations are now breaking. Let's talk about what Repair talks,

and what that means, and what Repair actually takes, because that's part that no one teaches you, and that's exactly why I'm here.

Mm, Tanya, thanks for being here to talk with me.

Hi there. Hi, Oprah.

Hi, you believe that I and so many others have helped to promote this concept

of going no contact over the years.

You're right, yeah. Now, whether it was intentional or not, Oprah, speaking directly, because this conversation didn't just recently start, I was one of those people that cut off my mom in the name of healing because I put you on a pedestal

for so long and I was watching your episodes and I've watched you talk with Nedra, which is awesome to have her here today, where the language is about protecting your peace and having the boundaries and empowerment, which was freeing in the moment,

but there was no path to repair after that. And so when I saw this topic come up now, I was kind of like, Han, this isn't new.

Well, I thank you for bringing that to my attention because what I thought was new certainly is new culturally in the African-American community, which we'll be talking about, I think later on with Nedra and other people,

is that the idea of cutting off your parents has just been an unthinkable thing. And I can see why you might think that I was strongly endorsing people having no contact. What I felt I was doing was allowing people the opportunity to remove themselves from abusive relationships.

So what I remember is all of these various shows that we did where people are being abused by their parent. And I believe when you have to reenter a situation where you have suffered abuse or you have been, you know, severely mistreated in that way, that divorcing that situation, for many people,

is the best recourse. So that's what I have in my memory. But I don't feel that I contributed to the culture of estrangement in the way that you're saying. But I can hear why you feel that way.

I want to say I appreciate you bringing presence to the abuse part, because my content is never about the abuse. That's when distance is necessary. I think what happened is because that language was learned and pushed so much,

it started to become-

Which language in particular, Tanya?

Like the parting, the distance, when you should go no contact, your parents are toxic. Even the terms of your parents are abusive might not be coming directly from you. That language became so normalized, Oprah, that it's now being used for everyday hardships, not necessarily abuse.

I would agree with that, and that's one of the things that I learned in this most recent show that we did, that what I, in all the years of doing the Oprah show, saw as abuse, people feel now when somebody hurts their feelings or somebody doesn't agree with them, that that is now abuse.

I see abuse as it has been defined for years in the culture, someone is sexually abusing you, emotionally abusing you, saying things on a constant basis that make you feel small and make you feel less than valued in the relationships. That's what I see as abuse.

So someone having a disagreement with you and you not, you know, feeling like they are necessarily in your corner, to me that isn't abuse. And I think from my point of view, what I have done is tried to get people

to look at the truth of their lives. If this person is toxic to you, which I know is a word that's used, overused now, then you need to create some distance. You know, in my own family relationships, as you referred to, I had some toxicity.

And it didn't mean I completely estranged from my family because of it, but I had to set up some boundaries because of it. So I think there's a difference between setting up boundaries

and having absolutely no contact. Yeah, I wanted to set up some boundaries because of it. So I think there's a difference between setting up boundaries

and having absolutely no contact.

Yeah, I wanted to add on that because boundaries are such an important tool. And that's where I appreciated Nedra because I think boundaries are so important when someone has never had boundaries before and knew how to say no.

But what happened is boundaries is staying in relationships that aren't safe are essential. And it stops the bleeding by setting these boundaries and it creates that space to breathe where the conversation often stops.

Okay, say that again.

Staying in relationships that are unsafe.

I think the distance is necessary in those instances. Like you don't stay in the relationship when your safety is an issue. But what happens is the conversation is stopping with boundaries when boundaries are treated as the end goal of healing

rather than the beginning steps. And that's essentially why I talk about that because managing pain through distance is not the same thing as resolving the emotional wounds underneath it. And so healing is what creates freedom.

Boundaries is what creates that first line of protection. Two very different things.

Tell me, Tanya, what do you think, because I'm always interested in evolving, growing, making things better, what do you think was missing from our episode?

I think it was lacking the depth, because obviously this conversation runs deep. And so when I say depth, I mean, it's one thing to understand your pain, but for me, when I really uncovered emotional healing, there's three stages to it.

And I feel like this kind of covered stage one, which is stage one is really unpacking the wounds, bringing it to the surface, attaching your pain and your insecurities and all of that to what happened to you in your childhood and your upbringing.

But that's just stage one. Stage two is really about now how do I reframe that? And for me, that's saying, okay, the villain in my story from stage one, I need to now rewrite their story so that I'm no longer just holding onto the resentment

and the pain that I have, but I need to be able to understand their perspective, not to justify the pain that happened to you, not to excuse it in any way, shape, or form, but to allow you a level of compassion to say, this wasn't about me. This was about them and their character

and what they've gone through and how they've grown up that deflected that onto me, and it's not me. So that's stage two. There was no conversation around that, let alone stage three.

About how to repair.

About how to repair, how to understand that they didn't mean to necessarily hurt me. By the way, there's of course some terrible people in the world that don't have that intention, but there was no repair.

Actually, I think that that's a whole, completely different conversation and show. I think for myself and I think for the producers who brought the idea to me in the first place, actually, the idea came because I have a friend who was going through it, who called me up one day

and said, do you know about this no contact thing? Then I mentioned it to a producer and then we started this whole thing and they said, oh yeah, a lot of people are going through this. So I think our initial intention, because we always talk about what is our intention before we do anything, was to make people aware that this was happening in the world.

Now I know you live in a world where you're very social and you know this, but there are a lot of people that didn't know this was even happening. Including my best friend, Gail, who's like, I didn't even know people could do this, you know? So the initial show was just to let people know this is happening in the world,

and I think you're right that we didn't delve into how to repair because we were just trying to let people know this was actually happening. So what's the third thing you think is missing?

The third thing is now rewriting your own story. Yeah. So once you've found the compassion, the understanding, now you write your own story and say, okay, I'm not gonna be stuck in stage one. I need to be able to work through that level of compassion

and say, since I'm aware now that the triggers and the people who activated them and everything was not a direct correlation with my worth and who I am and everything, it's time for me to rewrite my own.

And I love that you say this because this comes from your own experience, right?

Because I read that you went no contact once yourself.

I did. That's the thing is, I, you know, oftentimes you say it's to protect my peace, but for me, I learned that it was actually protecting my pain because as long as I wasn't around the thing that was triggering me, then I felt peaceful.

But really, for me, real peace came when I was no longer triggered, which I don't like to use that term so loosely because I feel like it's another common word now. Once I learned how to be around my mother or the person that was triggering me and still stay calm and grounded, that was a different level of peace.

That is the real definition of peace.

Okay. So, Tanya, I really thank you for sharing your point of view with us and giving me and all of us on this team a different perspective. We're going to move on to my other guests, but I want to make sure you had a chance to say what you wanted to.

Is there some final thing you wanted to share with us? No, I think it's important to have that open dialogue and I appreciate you actually commenting and being open to it because sometimes we do have an effect that could create a ripple effect when our intention was not to create that.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much and you've given me ideas for at least three or four other conversations. All right. Thank you. All right. Hope to talk to you in the future. Okay. So now I want to bring in our three experts into the conversation. Dr. Joshua Coleman, you will remember, is a psychologist, best-selling author, known for his frequent contributions to Ask a Therapist column in the Washington Post, and Nedra Again, and Dr. Lindsey Gibson, psychologist and also a New York Times bestselling author. Welcome back to you all. Dr. Coleman, you've seen Tanya's posts

and you share some of her sentiments, how so?

Well, I share many of the sentiments that people are way too quick to cut off loving, decent, involved parents. And they're using the language of therapy and abuse. And part of that is just the way that the thresholds for what we consider to be abusive, harmful, neglectful,

traumatizing behavior have lowered. So the generations are really talking past each other. And one of the problems that we have right now in our culture is that, you know, just about every day, there's some article about somebody who's cut themselves off from a truly abusive parent,

where any of us could agree that it's a reasonable, understandable thing for that adult child to have done. But you know what's missing from our culture are the parents' stories. And parents aren't out there talking about their stories. You know why?

Because they're terrified that if they do that, that's gonna decrease the chance of-

Further estranged, further estranged their kids.

It's gonna further estranged them. So you have this great disparity between who's kind of running the narrative here. And so people often say things like, well, you know, nobody cuts off a parent unless they have really good reasons.

And yeah, I agreed that they might not cut them off unless they have good reasons, but that reason may not be parental abuse or neglect or harm. It could be because they don't get along with the spouse that their child is married to.

It could be the parent's mental illness, but could also be the adult child's mental illness or addictive issues. So there's all these different pathways to estrangement that can happen with good, decent, loving parents. And that is not enough in

in the the media in our conversation right now.

Nedra, what do you want to say about the reaction that you've been seeing online about this episode?

I've received so many messages about the title. And one of the things that you know, I mentioned is one, I do not label and market Oprah Winfrey's episodes. I had nothing to do with the title. And also, if we are being technical,

a trend is something that is popular. So if you look on Twitter or threads or TikTok, they have a list of 20 or 10 trending topics. So if this happens to be a popular topic of this time, then that is what the episode was labeled. I don't think it was labeled in a manner to say that we are doing something to make it more popular, or we're doing something to say that this has never been a thing,

but it really is something that more and more people

are talking about. I think the word trend made a lot of people feel marginalized. Trend was in the labeling of this episode. I never called it a trend, but I take responsibility for what it's labeled, because I approve everything.

And so I didn't know that that word would cause a stir or cause people to be upset. Let me just say, I apologize for many of you. That word felt insulting, and it did not actually reflect the immense pain and the grief behind the decisions that you all have made. So I apologize on behalf of myself and my team.

I want to say I thank you all for the correction. I stand corrected. And I think people think long and hard for many days and nights and often years before they make a decision like this, long and hard, and are tormented by it for a long time. So any implication that it's anything else was certainly not

intended by me. And what I wanted to talk to you about is that in the African American community, this was unheard of. I've seen so many people in relationships in the African American community where you at least needed to set some boundaries, but the idea of divorcing or dismissing or no longer having contact with somebody who has done severely harmful things to you was just unheard of. And now that is happening. That is happening.

Yeah, and I would say in many instances, it would have been healthy to happen many years ago. We would have saved some generations from trauma. You know, to Tanya's point, the real abuse a part of it, some people are suffering real abuse for years and years, particularly in the black community,

because we have this, I don't want to put it out there that this person is doing that. I don't want to bring shame to my culture. I don't want to say anything and

disrupt the family programming. So people are dealing with real abuse. I would have to say, if I, Oprah Win Winfrey personally know three people who have been in abusive relationships and Have now grown up and their mothers are still with those men And they feel like they have to continue a relationship in that family I if I personally know three I know that there are at least three or four million out there who are doing the same thing.

And that's-

And the pedophiles in the family.

And the pedophiles in the family, yeah. The pedophiles in the family, or the verbally abusive aunts and grandparents and all sorts of things, that it's just been something we've tolerated. And now that people have the education and understanding

that that is actually abuse, they are taking a stand.

So Dr. Gibson, what's the response been like for you?

Yeah, for the most part, all the responses that I've gotten have been very positive. This is coming mostly from colleagues and friends, but also people that have posted stuff as well. So it was very positive in the sense of it being experienced as a well-balanced show,

something that showed the point of view of several different situations, whether it was parent-child, child-parent.

Yeah, okay. There were so many posts I responded to, Tanya's, because that just popped into my feed, and then I realized everybody else was saying all kinds of things. I just couldn't keep up.

But Jemele Hill posted this. I watched Oprah's episode about going no contact with family, and I have a personal connection that I don't feel comfortable sharing. And then someone posted something pretty rude, and Jamel clapped back, thank you, and wrote, maybe you should watch the episode

before having such a strong opinion. It was a very good episode, and the point of it wasn't to say, look at this new thing happening, but to also highlight and have hard conversations about how the no contact is happening

for a variety of reasons that sometimes don't include obvious abuse. Well, thank you, Jamel. Thank you so much. Emmy award-winning journalist, author, and The Atlantic contributor.

I love The Atlantic so much and all that you say there. Great to see you. Thank you for watching and supporting us. What struck you the most watching it

and caused you to have that response? Well, if you will allow me to name drop your best friend, Gayle, the episode struck me so much because I have a few personal connections to it. I have two very dear friends of mine who have gone no contact with their mother, so I thought about their situation. And I was so struck and drawn to this episode that I texted Gayle because I know her socially and through some other channels.

And I said, listen, I know you're not Oprah's messenger or her administrative assistant, but if you could pass along to her that this episode was really one of the best that I'd ever seen in terms of addressing something that was so deep and painful for a lot of people.

But I was struck by people's courage, by their vulnerability, and another part of it that I hadn't considered, because you had a woman on who had decided to go no contact with her son, because that was a part of this movement. I don't want to use the word trend either, or part of this growing awareness that isn't really covered. Like, I don't, I think on some level, it may not totally surprise people

if children decide to do that with their parents because of all sorts of different reasons, abuse, not liking a spouse or significant other, host of things. But to hear parents saying that they decided to go no contact with their kids was especially stark.

Yeah, powerful because I thought her testimony was really profound, saying, I've been abused for years by my own son, and have taken it, and have done everything. And what happens in those relationships is the other children in the family end up suffering, because all the attention

goes to trying to solve this problem with the child who is abusive and not getting along with the rest of the family and everybody ends up suffering. So I think the fact that people, particularly parents, come to that conclusion is an even more daring and thought-out process than it is for kids in many cases. Well in 2022, I recall, it was right after the pandemic was subsiding, you released your acclaimed memoir, Uphill.

And if you're watching or listening and you haven't read Uphill, let me just tell you, it's a fearless and inspiring story written in Jamel's voice. And in the book, you shared some unforgettable truths about your own family dynamics. I know it was probably hard for you to

share a lot of that, also cathartic. What do you want people to know now?

Well, you know, as I alluded to in that social media post that you referenced, I said I had a personal situation that I was dealing with. And I have never disclosed this publicly because it's sort of relatively recent, but I've been no contact with my own father for almost going on three years and it is interesting to mention my book because my book played a role in the reason why I

Decided to go no contact and I didn't even know that was the language for calling it that But my father was upset about my book and if anyone has read my book I certainly did not tear down my father. We had a very sort of difficult path in the sense that we were estranged for some time. We sort of came together, you know, renewed a relationship. We were estranged because my father early on in my childhood was addicted to heroin. Both my parents were addicts and they have thankfully recovered.

And so because of that early absence, it was a lot of stops and starts in terms of how to grow our relationship. And I did the best that I could, certainly on my end. And I know my father was trying to do his best, but when this memoir came out,

he took to Facebook and was upset about some of the things that I said about him and my memoir. Actually, he wasn't upset about what I said. What he told me, Oprah, was that he was upset that he wasn't in it enough. And my immediate thought was, you would have had to be into my life more

to be in the memoir more, okay? And so, and he disparaged my mother, and he has always sort of blamed her for the fact that our relationship has been, again, stops and starts and kind of awkward. We certainly had good moments and good times. And I think it was Nedra who said this, is that when you're trying to reframe the relationship

with your parent when there has been hurt there, is that maybe they're not supposed to be the parent. Maybe they're just supposed to be a really good friend. So I was trying to put him in sort of the dynamic of like, my dad can't be the dad in the way that dads are typically dads, just because of the estrangement and the time lost and those kinds of things, but he can be my friend. And I thought we were on the pathway to that

until he decided to publicly say these things when he has my number and he could have called me if he had anything that he took issue with, with the book. And so between that and some other instances, and Oprah, I know you can probably relate to this, of asking me for money. And I mean, it was just like a whole thing. And so finally, I just got to a point where considering the pattern of our

relationship, and I had certainly put to bed the things that did not happen in childhood. Like, all that stuff was dead to me. Like, I wasn't carrying that at all. I was all about, let's reframe and be on to this new relationship. But it was such a lack of accountability and awareness.

And I felt like I was pouring more into it than him. And I got to that point.

Can I say this, too, since you brought this up? This is for all the people who are the first in their family or one of the only in their family to succeed, particularly when you've come from challenging circumstances, difficult backgrounds, we all become the first national bank to our families. And that's a very difficult thing to accept. And I know people think,

well, you got money, you should be able to share it and give it to everybody in the family. It's a difficult thing to accept when you're not seen for being a person. You now just become a resource for them. You become the bank. You're no longer even like human to people.

So I so get that. And I hear for a long time you were hesitant to even share this part of your story. Why is now the right time?

Well, I was hesitant. And it was something that you have alluded to earlier with some of your previous guests because we know that, especially as black women, we're carrying a different responsibility when it comes to how we speak about our community, how we represent our community. And there are so many bad...

There is a black tax, yes.

There is a black tax, correct. There is such a negative stereotype about Black men, and especially about Black men and their presence in the home, that we hear all the tropes and all the negatives and all those kind of thing, and that they have tried to make Black men the face of absenteeism and of not being the parent that is there.

And so I was very hesitant to share the story because I didn't want people to then-

So you're piling on.

Yeah, start piling on and run with that narrative. And frankly, the other part I didn't want either, I didn't want a whole bunch of people who ain't got any degree with a PhD or anything behind their name trying to diagnose me as somebody who is, oh, you're just another bit of black woman, or oh, you got daddy issues. I'm like, trust me, I do not have daddy issues. There's been a long line of black men who may not have been my biological father.

My mother was married twice. I had two good stepfathers. I had other really positive black male role models in my life. Like, trust me, that is not my issue. And so I also didn't want to have to deal

with that part of the conversation. But your episode really was the one that gave me the courage to say like, oh, there's a lot of people that are actually going through this. I'm not the only one. And it helped to frankly validate some of what I was feeling

about why I arrived at what is, as you said, and it's very true, a very difficult decision for anybody to do, especially when it comes to a parent.

Well, thank you so much. And I hope everybody reads that memoir. It's hard to write a memoir as good as yours because one of the things that's really powerful about your story is that your story makes me think about my story. And that's what you do for everybody in that book.

So thank you so much. Thank you so much for that. Thanks, Jamelle. I appreciate your support, and. So thank you so much. Thank you so much for that. Thanks, Jamel. I appreciate your support and I also thank you for sharing more of your story here with us today. And I know you speak for so many others. And after all this, I am wishing you peace. I'm wishing you peace. Thank you.

Okay. So I read that over two out of five members of Gen Z are in some form of regular therapy. Isn't that... That is an incredible number to me, y'all. You know why? Because when I first started the Oprah show, 1986 nationally, I remember audience members standing up and said, I will never go to therapy.

I mean, I think therapy is for like people who are crazy or out of their minds. So the idea that now two out of five are going to therapy, it's a case for older generations who grew up in a time when mental health treatment was absolutely taboo. At my school in South Africa that I opened in 2007,

and we had three therapists on board at the time, we could get none of the girls who had been severely traumatized to even go to therapy because it had been so stigmatized. So, Dr. Gibson, how do grandparents,

parents, and their children bridge this gap?

Yeah, I mean, because of the explosion in self-help books and self-awareness and self-development, there has been a similar increase in the interest in therapy. So that's a cultural fact now. But you know, when older generations talk about

not understanding all this therapy stuff or why it's okay now to go to therapy, or what's the importance of boundaries, or why are people making such a big deal out of this? I think that there is a real blind spot toward children and toward the younger generations that really is something that needs to change. What I mean is that I don't care what generation you are,

boomer, millennial, whatever, you know what boundaries are. You don't say certain things to your boss. You don't cop certain attitudes toward authority figures. I mean, we know, we humans are a hierarchical group of beings, and we understand that there are boundaries,

and there is a need for tact, and there are things that we can and can't say to other people and get away with it. But somehow, when it's our children, there is a sense of them being a part of us.

And so we feel that it's sort of a right or an entitlement to tell them what we think.

Not only that, but Nedra could speak to this too. In the African-American community, I remember growing up, you know, and hearing quite often, you know, I brought you in this world, I can take you out. I mean, there's this feeling of, my black photographer right now, cameraman is like laughing. Have you not heard that before? I don't know if y'all heard that in your white families.

I brought you in this world and I can take you out. But that's how we grew up. Like you are mine to do with whatever I want.

You know what I'm speaking about, right, Nedra? Yeah, I'm hearing that. And I'm like, I should say that to my kids

and see if they even know what that means.

Yeah, I brought you in this world, I can take you out. Because that has not been a part of their black upbringing.

They would be like, what?

What did you just say, mom? What does that even mean?

Talking about. But yeah, I heard that. And I also heard this bottomless plea to tolerate abuse, this bottomless plea to accept more from people. You know so-and-so is that way. You just have to avoid this with that person. If so-and-so comes over, you need to stay away from them. You know, so there were also things going on

that people were aware of and it was put on the child or the victim to protect themselves and I think that's also one of these things that we're now seeing people say, well I don't want to be a part of the the family reunion if so-and-so is gonna be there. I don't want to show up for family dinner if nobody else is taking a stand with me against this thing.

Yes. And this may not surprise you. The United States ranks as the most individualistic nation, y'all, in the world, where personal goals outweigh collective ones. Dr. Coleman, could our American way, this individualism, thinking about your own self, empowerment for yourself, which is good in many ways. Could this be contributing, do you think, Dr. Coleman, to the estrangement?

I think high rates of individualism absolutely is a pathway to estrangement because there are whole continents where estrangement is considered to be a completely bizarre or foreign idea. The idea that you'd cut off your family or a parent is considered completely wrong. And you know I think this moment there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that adult children now have the power

to cut off truly abusive parents. The bad news is that a lot of parents who are getting cut off today weren't necessarily bad or abusive or difficult but they're being treated in some ways like they were.

Yeah, they haven't been abusive, but they have offended their child.

They've engaged with them in a way that the adult, that the now adult child finds difficult.

Here's the problem.

Okay, so here's what I'd like to clear up, and I want all of you all to speak to, because I want to know, for all of the people who are listening, people hearing about this for the first time, when do you as therapists feel that it is appropriate to have no contact or cutoff relationships?

When is it appropriate? Dr. Coleman, then I'll go to you, Nedra, and you, Dr. Gibson.

Well, Oprah, I'm happy to answer that question. But I think before I answer that question, I want to stress that even when it's justified, even when I go, Oprah, I'm happy to answer that question. But I think before I answer that question, I want to stress that even when it's justified, even when I go, yeah, go ahead, you need to do that. I get it. Estrangement is a cataclysmic event in every family system. Today, if a parent is cut off, they also cut off access to the grandchildren. That's a tragedy and a trauma, not only to that grandparent, to that grandchild. Also, siblings get cut off.

It's typical, this is true in some of the guests today and last time, that one sibling's going to line up with the parents, others are going to line up with the estranging sibling.

But my ask also is that people don't do it forever. Maybe you need to go no contact as a way to set a limit. Maybe you do it for six months. Maybe you do it for a year. But what about after that period of time, coming back and telling the parent,

look, I need things to be really different with you if we're gonna have a relationship. Either you need to get into therapy or we need to get into family therapy or I can't be in relationship with you.

Okay, Nedra, what do you say? With adults, the only time that I have talked about someone estranging from a parent and or sibling is when there is an active physical or sexual abuse issue or if there is a physical or sexual safety concern. And those things for therapists are reportable by law. Outside of that, our clients are typically coming to us

with this ideal on their own, or they have spoken about it so much that they make this decision and I may support them in it. I don't direct that path for them though. I don't say, have you ever thought about cutting your mom off?

Would you stop talking to her? How long are you gonna tolerate this? I don't say things like that, because I truly believe they have to live with the consequences, which is guilt, which is other family cutoffs,

which is feeling shame and all sorts of things. So I don't wanna direct that path for you, but I will listen. I will support if that's what you choose,

but it's never a thing that I need to present to a person for their life.

Dr. Gibson.

Yeah, I totally agree with Nedra. I mean, that is my position as well. However, I just want to add here that more often than not, people are coming to that conclusion themselves as we're going through the process of therapy and self-awareness and self-growth. They end up feeling like they need some space, some separation, in order to get their feedback under them to see where they stand with things

before maybe re-entering the relationship with the parent or even knowing what it is that they want to ask for from the parent to get clear about that. But yeah, I don't bring up estrangement as a solution to anybody's problem.

But as Nedra said, they often come to that or they come into the therapy session with that on their mind. Having written the book on adult children of emotionally immature parents, do you recommend them trying to come to some understanding of what it means to come from an emotionally immature parent?

Yeah, I mean, if you look in my book, I have at least one chapter on trying to understand what happened to these parents

and what has made them so defensive.

Yeah, that's what I, yeah.

Yeah, you do the what happened to, yes.

Yeah, and then I also have an extensive chapter in there about how to deal with them in a way that you protect yourself and you have boundaries and you maintain that connection with yourself

instead of giving everything over to the parents' opinion.

Got it. I wanted to bring Tanya back. Tanya, thanks for joining us again because you expressed earlier that you had separated, no contact, because you were looking for peace, but it only ended up causing you more pain.

I want to know, how did you get to a place of reconciliation,

and how long did it take?

I mean, I was estranged for two years. Myself, I was estranged for two years. So when it really came to my estrangement, what helped me is learning first, I wanna say that my, I had a therapist too, by the way, and they're right when they're saying we come to that decision ourselves.

When I was talking to a therapist, it was very uncovering everything that happened, you know, okay, so tell me what happened, how did that make you feel? So I was building this villain image around my mother in particular, and it compounded. So when I cut her off, I was my unhealthiest though.

I had chronic anxiety, insomnia. I was trying to deal with all of it, and I was obviously blaming it on her. Until I really understood, like they talked about, stage two and three of my healing journey, it really came when I rewrote my mother's story, Oprah.

That's what happened. I said, okay, she was the youngest daughter, the 15th out of 16 kids. Her dad died when she was three. Her mother definitely neglected her in unintentional ways. And so when I rewrote that and I started to have more compassion,

I said, okay, to her, even though she failed my emotional needs and needs in a lot of ways, she did literally the best that she could. Now, that's not to say that, you know, everyone is doing the best and you can use that as an excuse. But for me, when I really understood that, I said, I cannot expect her to be this incredibly emotionally mature person when she never had the tools that I'm now presented with at her age.

OPRAH WINFREY Got it. So you rewrote her story. SHONDA RUTHERFORD I did. it ended up rewriting your story or your narrative with her. Exactly. Exactly. Thank you. Thank you for that. All right, we're moving on to other guests. Trisha's joining us. She hasn't talked to her sister in nearly a year.

Trisha, thanks for being here. What's going on?

Thank you. This isn't something I ever saw myself talking about so publicly, but I feel it's really important, so thank you for this. We grew up in a household where it was very controlled and religious. Our father was a preacher, and family roles were very clearly defined. And as preacher's kids, there's kind of like a spotlight on you, and people look at you, and our parents wanted us to model outward perfection. Be perfect.

Yeah, be perfect, yeah.

And my sister, she's the firstborn, she's the oldest, so that came easy to her, that was right in her field. She was the responsible one. She was the one we modeled ourselves after. I'm the middle child, I'm a little more emotional. I'm the peacekeeper in the family,

I handle everyone's emotions. And then my brother is the youngest, and he's the family. I handle everyone's emotions. And then my brother is the youngest and he's the baby. He kind of got attention only for being the only boy. And as we got older, those roles just followed us into adulthood. And we had a lot of layered family trauma happen to us. So there was a lot of change in our family system. The roles, the dynamics, there was confusion. I'm estranged from my sister,

and her and I haven't talked in a year, but I still have a relationship with my brother.

Okay. Do you have a question for one of our experts?

I do for, um, Ms. Gibson. Um, when choosing emotional safety, because that's what I did, when choosing emotional safety, I had to grieve a version of myself that was

always accommodating to people and always available to people.

How would you tell people to honor that grief without shame or without self-doubt?

Hmm, good question.

Yeah, that part of you, the part of you that wants to be accommodating and collaborative and wants to do nice things for people, that is a precious part of your personality. That's kind of the open, joyous child part of you. Now, that may have been commandeered to become sort of a pleaser of your parents or of your family members.

And in that way, it may feel like it's something that you need to get rid of, but it's really your superpower. Because who do people like to work with? Who do people like to be around? Who do people feel energized by? They're people that have those characteristics

of being receptive to other people and being accommodating and so forth. So that's not something that we want to get rid of. We want to celebrate that in you and also raise it like a precious child of yours that, you know, honey, I know you want to please them

or give in to them or agree with them, but maybe that's not gonna be the best thing for us this time. So just hang back and let me handle this. You can do that kind of different part of yourself work where you don't have to get rid of or lose that lovely part of yourself,

but you also don't have to let it drive the car, so to speak.

You, as the adult, get to do that.

I love that.

I love that. And also rewriting, as Tanya was saying earlier, rewriting that part of your story, rewriting that narrative for yourself. You get to write another story about yourself. Yeah, you do.

Thank you, Tricia. Erica and her husband David are

joining us and I hear you watched this episode together. How did it impact each of you?

Well, for me, yeah, it was very validating. We felt very seen, similar to what other people had shared since even though it's becoming more aware and obvious to other people It still feels very lonely within our own communities and with our friendships So it was nice to have some context outside of ourselves

And this is because you have been estranged from or no contact with whom?

My own father and now my mother and my sister, and then David's family as well.

Really? And you both are no contact?

Yes.

Yes, but the episode really impacted me directly because it talked about how there can be some room for the future and reconciliation and moving forward. The father, I think his name was Aaron, he talked about a lot of the self-reflection meant a lot. And after watching the episode,

I actually forwarded it to my own father, who we are still in contact with him, but then he shared it with our other family members that we're not necessarily in contact with, and they didn't even want to take the time to listen. And that's what really kind of hurts us a lot,

is that we're not being heard. We're not getting listened to.

I know, which is one of the most important, I think, experiences that everybody needs to have, is to know that you were heard and that you were seen and that what you had to say mattered. And so if you're going to be just dismissed, I hear you would both like to begin, as you just said,

to repair the estrangement. So let's ask our experts, what's the advice on what to do? Beginning with you, Dr. Coleman.

Well, first of all, I applaud your effort to try to give your family a way to work towards reconciliation. And I sort of wish a lot more adult children who were estranged would do that, whether it's by giving them my book

or somebody else's book, or some other pathway to reconciliation. So the task, I think, it's very, very hard. And I can say this as a parent whose daughter had cut him off and he eventually did reconcile. It's incredibly hard for a parent to hear the ways

that they'd failed their child. We're gonna get defensive, you know, we're gonna feel hurt and we may respond with anger. We may try to shut you down and we're shutting you down because of the ways that we feel hurt or ashamed or embarrassed or humiliated.

We feel like we're failing at our most very important task. And so I think the more, if your goal is reconciliation with your parent, to really let them know that your goal in raising these topics isn't to shame them, to hurt them, to criticize them, to make them feel bad about themselves.

It's really an expression of love. And it's really an expression of a desire to feel closer.

Do they know why you're estranged?

Yes. I've had many conversations and even my dad has relayed the same information of how he wants to support. And I think his most recent comment was even just sit down and listen to him and get up and don't even say anything. And unfortunately my mother doesn't want to even do that. She can't listen. It always has to be a tit for tat or what about you type of situation

that makes it really hard to reconcile because there's just no self-awareness. There's no self-reflection of what did I do to this situation or what am I contributing to this problem?

Yeah, in reality, some parents just don't have that capacity and some adult children don't have the capacity to communicate.

I think capacity is a really powerful word. Because if the person doesn't have the capacity, it's like, you know, rolling a boulder up a hill. You never get it there. You just never get it there. And at some point, you have to accept or resolve within yourself that I've done everything that I can do,

and there's nothing more to be done. I don't know when you reach that point. Nedra, do you have some thoughts on

that and Dr. Gibson? Yeah, what I'm thinking about here is it sounds like someone has to concede. Yes. Because if your mother is unwilling to hear any other way. I think there has to be some acceptance on your end that some of your needs may not be met. And you will have to tolerate this to the extent that you can. I don't think this sounds like a situation

where you go back into it and all parties leave happy with what they're bringing to the table. So there will be some concessions in this situation and you'll have to sit with yourself and say, if I am in this relationship, how can I manage it differently?

And you don't wanna leave it. It sounds like you really wanna be in it, but it does sound like something that needs to be managed

in a different way this time.

May I just say to you all, Erica and David, that Dr. Coleman's use of the word capacity struck me and I'm always struck by that word because years ago I read a memoir in which somebody was talking about their family relationship and they realized that their family member didn't have the capacity to fulfill the needs that they they as a child, nor as adult.

And when I read that, it was just so eye-opening to me, because I realized, oh, all this time I've been pushing uphill and struggling and resisting and resisting what is in my face with my own family relationships. Oh, the person doesn't have the capacity. And when I recognized that particular word,

you know, struck me and opened me in such a way that I realized, oh, I'm never going to win this. I'm never going to be able to convince somebody who doesn't have the capacity to receive it. That's when I was able to find peace within myself and have the boundaries or set up what I needed, you know, to best survive in that relationship. When you realize that the person doesn't have the capacity, that's a huge, huge place to get to in terms of acceptance. I just wanted to share that,

how profound an impact that word has had on my own life and my own relationships.

When you're dealing with somebody who doesn't have the capacity, it's hard.

Yeah, and that's been our experience as well. And I appreciate you sharing that because it took us a while to get to that point to be able to accept where their limitations were. And that did give us more, I guess, freedom might be the word. But also we could stand firm in why we had set the boundaries the way that we did, that we're gonna meet for our family and our own needs, not demanding anything of them that wasn't realistic.

We just offered resources or attempts at solutions, like through mediation, and they have just shown no interest in that.

So we just feel a bit-

But I will just say, you're coming to terms, as Nedra was saying, you're coming to terms, as Nedra was saying, you're coming to terms and accepting, accepting that they don't have the capacity brings you peace so that you're not in resistance to still pushing and hoping and wishing and trying and giving and not receiving. It's the acceptance that they don't have the capacity.

Dr. Gibson, what do you want to say? not receiving, it's the acceptance that they don't have the capacity. Dr. Gibson, what do you want to say?

Yeah, along those lines, I'm reminded of a client I had who just couldn't seem to grasp that her mother was as superficial as she was, and it drove her crazy that her mother seemed to oversimplify everything,

see it in black and white. You couldn't reason with her because of that very limited perspective. And we talked a lot about her mother's limited complexity, that her mother just didn't have the tolerance for ambiguity. She didn't have a complex enough personality structure

to really take things in and think about them deeply. And what if she thought of her mom as someone who saw the world in 2D, where she sees it in 3D? Could she still relate to her mom at some level across some common ground in the 2D world

where her mother lived? And that was very helpful to her. And the other thing that I would mention is, you know, along with the acceptance comes a different form of goal for the relationship. That is, instead of trying to have an intimate relationship

between two people who are capable of a complex relationship, how about just trying to relate to them as people who are very different, I mean, humanly different from you in terms of what they can tolerate and what they can think about, what they can reflect on. And if your goal is to have, you know, a pleasant enough interaction or to relate to them in that way,

that may be much more achievable than trying to have this relationship where they feel understood by the parent,

because that may not be able to happen like this.

And I think many times, too, we're holding onto this idea

of what we think the relationship should be.

Well, I mean, they seem like they should be able to do that.

Yeah, it seems like you should, but you're not

going to have that. They're wise about some things. It seems like they should be able to do it. But it gets back to that point about the acceptance. That is not the reality.

Not the reality. Erica and David, thank you. And listen, it makes us all who work here on the Oprah podcast feel really good that you watched it and shared it with other family members and that it actually impacted you in a way that made you think about doing things differently. Thank you so much and we wish you the best.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you for bringing light to the matter. It's something that's hard to talk about, but much needed.

Yeah, let's keep talking about it. Thank you all so much. And thank you to all my guests. Thank you, Jamel Hill, and your beautiful memoir, Uphill. Thank you, Tanya and Tricia. Thank you. Thank you, Tanya, for that post. Thanks to these experts, all of you,

all three of our experts, for returning to this conversation. Dr. Coleman's book is Rules of Estrangement. Dr. Gibson has an upcoming book on how to raise an emotionally mature child that comes out in April and Nedra Glover Tawwab's book is The Balancing Act. Creating healthy dependency and connection without losing yourself. It's in stores right now, and I hope this

conversation has opened up even more space for a little compassion, some understanding for yourself or maybe someone you love who's going through this. We'll keep talking. Go well, everybody. See you next time. You can subscribe to the Oprah podcast on YouTube

and follow us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen.

I'll see you next week. I'll see you next week.

Thanks everybody.