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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 read Kajama's advice columns every week, and I'm often struck by the types of questions people pose. A lot of people have relationship problems. While this may sound odd, I would simply LOVE to have a relationship problem, because it would mean I had relationships! Sometimes I have to look in the mirror or pinch myself to remind myself that I exist, because I feel so alone and ignored. I've even been to therapy and been the only one without a "real" problem. Most other people had relationship problems, whereas I just wanted a relationship of any kind just to be able to interact with another human being! Even one close friend would do. Am I inherently bad? It sure feels like I am not good enough to be in this world.

- the lady no one wants

Dreamchaser:

Quantum physics offers scientific proof that we create our realities via what we think. The only name attached to your question was "the lady no one wants." The letters were not even capitalized!

Do you see how statements like that help to create the reality you live in? You have convinced yourself that no one wants you and that you are going to be alone, thus this is the reality that you are creating every day.

In What the Bleep do We Know (a film that everyone should rush out and buy or rent if you haven't seen it already), Dr. Joe Dispenza said, "I wake up in the morning and I consciously create my day the way I want it to happen. Now sometimes because my mind is examining all the things that I need to get done, it takes me a little bit to settle down and get to the point of where I'm actually intentionally creating my day. But here's the thing: When I create my day and out of nowhere little things happen that are so unexplainable, I know that they are the process or the result of my creation. And the more I do that, the more I build a neural net in my brain that I accept that that's possible. (This) gives me the power and the incentive to do it the next day.

"So if we're consciously designing our destiny, and if we're consciously from a spiritual standpoint throwing in with the idea that our thoughts can affect our reality or affect our life - because reality equals life - then I have this little pact that I have when I create my day.

"I say, 'I'm taking this time to create my day and I'm infecting the quantum field. Now if (it) is a fact the observer's watching me the whole time that I'm doing this and there is a spiritual aspect to myself, then show me a sign today that you paid attention to any one of these things that I created, and bring them in a way that I won't expect, so I'm as surprised at my ability to be able to experience these things. And make it so that I have no doubt that it's come from you,' and so I live my life, in a sense, all day long thinking about being a genius or thinking about being the glory and the power of God or thinking about being unconditional love."

Take a really close look at how you react and interact with people who cross your path. Do you go out and actively seek this love you are asking for? Are you taking the risks that are necessary to find love? The truth is that whatever we have going on outside ourselves is a direct reflection of what we think we deserve on the inside.

I wish you new creations.

2517

Astrea:

I'm always stumped when people ask why they don't have love in their lives. You're not bad, you're not ugly, and I'm sure you don't smell awful. I feel that you are, however, very quiet and shy, and that you were badly hurt or disappointed as a child. Thus you are so terrified of being hurt that you won't allow other people access to your emotional world.

You're not the only person who feels this way in the crazy world we live in. There are LOTS of people who are every bit as lonely as you feel right now! Other people have their own problems, so they're not going to just fall into your lap. The Universe can HELP us to a goal, but it won't fulfill our goals for us.

No one is going to try to draw you out. Most people are too self-involved to struggle to get past your self-protective barriers. Don't depend on anyone but yourself to manifest the happiness you desire.

If you want relationships, you have to improve your relationship with YOURSELF first. You're very hard on that lady in the mirror! You don't really think she deserves to have anyone in her life. If you don't feel you are worthy of love, how are you ever going to feel that what you have to offer others is valuable? Since you seem to have had this attitude for many years, nothing is going to happen overnight, but as you improve your relationship with yourself, you'll begin to develop relationships with others.

You have to be able to give love to receive love, and you're hiding from everyone. It sounds like the therapy you tried was group therapy, and you probably would benefit more from personal counseling. Once you determine the deeper reasons you don't have relationships, you can get past it and find all kinds of people who will love to spend time with you. It probably won't take you long, since you already know you don't like what's happening now. When people want change, change happens, and you sound like you're ready for that.

I honestly believe in my heart that when a person gives love unselfishly, real love comes back to that person. Practice gratitude in place of self-pity and see what happens. Every time you feel like you're unloved or unwanted, extend a hand to someone. Volunteer to read to the blind or serve in a soup kitchen. More than any therapy, THAT will open your heart to the truth that you really do have a lot to give and to be thankful for. The feelings you'll get from the good deeds you do will radiate from your aura and draw wonderful relationships of all kinds into your experience.

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.