The estrangements of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle from their respective family members, have been two of the most high-profile and public family rifts of recent years.

But while this plays out in the media like the plot of a melodrama – complete with heroes and villains – thousands of UK families are coping with their own challenging family dynamics.

According to charity, Stand Alone, over 5 million people have chosen to cut contact with at least one family member.

The myth of choice

Unlike the media portrayal of no contact as some kind of flippant toddler tantrum – the reality is very different. Stand Alone say what often precedes the estrangement of adult children is abuse and neglect, poor parenting, substance abuse, and conflict arising from contradicting values or beliefs.

The truth is, there are no easy choices to be made about going no contact. Only sad, painful, laboured, and lonely ones.

For many, it's a harmful relationship, or no relationship. Doesn’t feel like much of a choice does it? Estrangement is taboo in our society – as family estrangement specialist Dr Joshua Coleman notes – there is strong societal prejudice towards forgiveness. This pressure seems jarring and inconsistent when compared to contexts such as domestic abuse, where victims are often blamed for staying.

In her book, ‘But It’s Your Family’ Dr Sherrie Campbell writes that we’re conditioned to believe ending family relationships is morally wrong, but sometimes the reality is that if these people weren’t our family members, we’d never choose to have them in our lives.

Ambiguous loss?

Common feelings around no contact include anger, sadness, and loss. But while estrangement is a form of loss, it’s experienced differently to traditional bereavement, involving multiple losses and complicated grief. Loss is associated with not having a loving and supportive family, including the loss of financial, emotional, and practical support provided by parents.

And grief is complicated because the ‘lost’ person is still living.

Psychologist Dr Pauline Boss coined the term ‘ambiguous loss’, to describe situations of loss in which there might be no resolution because the facts about what happened are unclear.

It describes simultaneous absence and presence. In estrangement, there is an absence of physical contact while the family member might remain psychologically present in the mind of the estranged adult.

But I don’t believe ambiguous loss completely explains going no contact, because people who cut contact can be very clear about why they do it. They just wish they didn’t have to.

How can therapy help?

Estranged adults could fear speaking about it openly due to fear of judgment or stigma, so therapy can help to provide a safe space to explore and process complex and ambiguous feelings. Research done in 2020, indicates that therapy helped estranged clients in three ways:

1. Feeling supported

When you’ve spent years trying to repair things and hoping for a better relationship, judgement of your decision, can add to the pain. Even worse when it involves taking the family member’s side.

When training to become a therapist myself, I experienced a supportive therapist who validated my decision to estrange from my dysfunctional family. I remember her once telling me something really powerful – “that I was already in a healthy relationship with my family” – meaning that no relationship was the healthiest place for me to be.

As estrangement can be a healthy response to an unhealthy situation, it’s crucial to support clients’ decisions.

2. Developing Insight

I find it important to facilitate clients’ insight into patterns of behaviour e.g. abuse, underpinning their decision to estrange.  I use my knowledge of trauma to help clients make sense of what happened in their family setting. This can then help clients to better articulate it for themselves.

And as ‘choosing’ to estrange can be accompanied by feelings of self-doubt or questioning about doing the right thing – it helps to know that you aren’t responsible for family members’ abusive actions.

So, while you might have distanced yourself physically (and it takes a while to feel okay about that too) therapy can help in the process of gaining emotional and psychological distance.

3. Moving forward

I’d spent years estranged from my dysfunctional family and did my best to live with it. But therapy provided healthier ways of coping with the estrangement and what led to it. Most helpful for my clients has been learning about having better boundaries so they’re able to keep other abusive people out of their lives.

So, to summarise – no you can’t choose your family – but as an estranged adult you have made a powerful decision to walk towards the hope of a new future filled with mutually loving and supportive relationships that you do choose.

Therapy can help you to feel less alone on what can feel like a lonely and isolating journey. As a qualified therapist and adult who has gone no contact, I do understand so please get in touch.