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An excerpt from Reconnecting with Your Estranged Adult Child 
by Tina Gilbertson

Ten million Gen X and Baby Boomer parents have estranged adult children. Parents wonder: How did this happen? Where did I go wrong? While time, in and of itself, does not necessarily heal, actions do, and while every estrangement includes situation-specific variables, there are practical, effective, and universal techniques for understanding and healing these not-uncommon breaches. Psychotherapist and author of Reconnecting with Your Estranged Adult Child: Practical Tips and Tools to Heal Your Relationship, Tina Gilbertson has developed techniques and tools over years of face-to-face and online work with parents who have foundher strategies transformative and even life-changing. Gilbertson cuts through the blame, shame, and guilt on both sides of the broken relationship, so parents will feel heard and understood but also challenged —and guided — to reclaim their role as “tone setter” and grow psychologically.

We hope you enjoy this excerpt from the book.

The price of positive change is fear. Several different species of fear may crop up in the attempt to change how you communicate. Let’s look at the fears that might show up when you consider adopting a clear, direct communication style.

Fear of being vulnerable. Open and honest communication requires us to expose our true thoughts and feelings. Once those are out of our mouths, they can be criticized, ridiculed, or rejected. When we’re not used to being vulnerable, it seems safer to stay a little closed off, and even to be vague at times in what we say. Without built-in deniability, we feel like sitting ducks.

Fear of conflict. What if we say something that someone else disagrees with? Or worse, what if it hurts or offends someone to hear what we have to say? Expressing ourselves clearly and directly invites the last thing most of us want in our lives: conflict. Fear of conflict is as common as conflict itself. That’s probably because we humans can be pretty bad at managing it. But conflict is a necessary part of relationships. It’s born out of different people having different points of view, which is inevitable. We can learn to tolerate conflict by coming through it repeatedly without lasting damage.

Fear of the unknown. What would happen if everyone owned and openly expressed their thoughts and feelings? Who knows? Familiarity is a balm, even when our familiar patterns of communication are not the best way, or even the easiest. But for parents with estranged adult children, those familiar ways of communicating are often part of the problem. There comes a point when the fear of the unknown starts to be eclipsed by the fear of things staying as they are. Estrangement can create such a turning point.

Fear of intimacy. Those of us who don’t like to let others get too close may feel threatened by the idea of using clear and direct communication ourselves, even if we appreciate it in others. Sharing our true thoughts, feelings, and needs is akin to letting a listener get to know our real selves. And many of us have an unconscious habit of keeping ourselves hidden unless we know we’re safe from judgment or personal attacks.

Changing the Pattern
Why does all this concern with communication matter for the estrangement with your child? Isn’t it too late for the family to improve communication? Yes and no. Your child might never move back in with you (although in this day and age, you never know), but you can still be the vanguard of a new wave of clear, direct communication in your family. In every estrangement, there are emotions at play. Even if your child expresses nothing but apathy toward you, he didn’t start out apathetic. Voluntary estrangement is motivated by emotion. And if you’re going to get to the bottom of it and help your child heal whatever needs healing, you’ll want the best communication tools you can muster, with emotional literacy as the centerpiece.

To make sure communication goes well with your estranged child when you have contact, you’ll need to understand how to respond if your child gets triggered even by calm, clear, direct, ownership-taking statements from you. The more adept you are at identifying and tolerating your own feelings, the easier it will be for you to respond appropriately to theirs. You’ll also want to be able to differentiate between their feelings and yours, so you can hear that they’re angry or hurt without becoming angry or hurt yourself. This takes lots and lots of practice. So why not start today?

Tina Gilbertson is a psychotherapist and author of Reconnecting with Your Estranged Adult Child. Her work has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, Glamour, Real Simple and Redbook. In 2019, Tina cofounded www.ReconnectionClub.com, offering education, community, and support to help estranged parents repair their relationships with their adult children. Originally from Vancouver, B.C., Canada, she now lives in Denver, CO. Find out more about her work at www.TinaGilbertson.com.

Excerpted from the book Reconnecting with Your Estranged Adult Child. Copyright ©2020 by Tina Gilbertson. Printed with permission from New World Library.

I have been working on myself in regards to relationships for the past year or so. In February, I did a Chinese New Year spell for a husband, and within days, a man I know spent the weekend at my house, as he and his wife were fighting. I asked for a husband - and ended up with someone else's! I have done several more spells since then on giving and receiving love, and have even specified the type of person I want, but have not named anyone or done this to attract any one person in particular. I am very drawn to the man I mentioned. It's not just physical attraction, for we can talk for hours about anything, which is something I've not experienced with another man before. I haven't told him about my feelings, as he is still with his wife, and I am not even sure of his feelings towards me. Am I making something more of this than there is, or is this the universe's way of answering my prayers? What should I make of it, and what do you advise?
Thanks!

Lisa

Dreamchaser:

Love spells are supposed to be for the good of all. How can you being in love with a married man be a good thing for any of you? This sort of situation usually causes pain for all concerned.

Free will is a big issue here. Before doing spells, we have to make sure that we are not interfering with another person's free will. Any spell you cast will come back on you at least three times over. Would you like someone to work a spell on you where you felt compelled to love them when it was against your will? Spells should be carefully thought out before they are put out.

You also will get what you accept in love. If this married man is all you are going to accept, then he is all you will get. You have to believe in the spell that you work, or else you'll tie the hands of the Universe.

If you accept this man who cannot be all you desire at this time, do you really believe in your own spell work? If you believed in what you were asking for, you would continue to move past him because you would KNOW that the husband you asked for would come to you.

It could be that the Universe does not think that you should have a husband right now. Have you asked the Universe what your highest path may be? If you did this, you could assure yourself that you were acting for the greater good for ALL.

Many of the higher spiritual beings on this planet are finding themselves "alone." It appears that some of us can do the most good in the world by focusing solely on our spiritual journeys. When people are in relationships, they tend to get single-minded, and fail to look outside of the relationship or beyond the other person. In doing so, they end up ignoring their own spiritual paths.

If you really believe this is the man for you, you need to tell him how you feel and ask him what his feelings and intentions are. Both of you need to have a clear understanding of the other person's needs and wants. He has to understand that you cast a love spell, he came, and now you are questioning whether he is the husband you asked for. He has to have full disclosure from you, and you have to have the same from him. As things now stand, you do not even know why you are in his life.

I would also strongly advise you to not enter into a physical relationship with him. As most of the readers and clients of Psychic Chat who are the "other woman" or "other man" know, relationships with someone who is married usually leave everyone involved feeling hurt, lonely, confused and a mess.

If you really want to know the truth, go inside. Ask.

I wish you the wisdom to face the truth.

*****

Astrea:

I took my "spell" down from Psychic Chat when I learned what was going on with a lot of internet spellwork. It seems people are buying spells from strangers that involve trying to force other people to do their will. Unless someone knows exactly what to do with spellwork, things can go very WRONG, very FAST!

While spell casting isn't on par with brain surgery, it takes years of practice before you should ever cast a love spell, and you should NEVER do it for yourself. Like prayers, spells are powerful. When spells are in inexperienced hands, they are in the WRONG hands.

This is a perfect example of why people shouldn't work "magic" unless they know what they are doing. Obviously, you did the spell incorrectly, and you wound up with someone else's husband. Now you'll have to pay someone who knows what she is doing to clear this mess up.

Girl, you are now STUCK with this guy with the Glue of the Universe. With this careless spell, you've also blocked yourself from meeting ANYONE truly available and right for you. This is just TERRIBLE!

You see, subconsciously you named HIM when you did these spells because he symbolically represented what you want. The Universe didn't really send him to you, but what happened IS ironic. You got what you deserved for doing that spell, and now you won't be able to get a real husband for yourself until this situation is completely cleared up.

Here's the crux of your problem: the spell didn't work on him, it worked on YOU! Of course, he wouldn't be "talking for hours about anything" with you if he didn't WANT to be there. The idea that a spell can force someone to do something against his will is foolish and DANGEROUS to the spell caster.

The spell you did bound YOU, not him. Now you want him. He's just there because he's flattered - you're stroking his ego. You don't have to worry about him knowing how you feel, for he knows EXACTLY how you feel about him, and is taking advantage of it as much as he possibly can. He can't believe his luck. He's tickled that a sweet young thing like you will let him dump all his phony marital problems at her feet! Oh, he's having a BIG TIME!

I advise you to find someone experienced and competent, and pay that person to take your spell away. This will most likely involve a big expense, since they have to undo all the mess you've made. It is CERTAIN to involve drinking something nasty and bathing in one of those STINKO "yberia" formulas. I hope the entire experience is awful enough for you to learn your lesson. (That goes for anyone else to whom this applies - you know who you are!)

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.