Going No Contact With Parents? A Michigan Therapist on Grief and Guilt

Family Of Origin TraumaBoundaries & Self-worthFaith Based TherapyEmotionally Immature Parents

Aug 8

Hey Friend,

If you have been anywhere near the news this week, you have seen the headlines. Major outlets are asking whether therapists are to blame for the rise in adult children going no contact with their parents. One widely cited survey found that a third of roughly 7,000 estranged parents believed their child's therapist influenced the decision to cut ties. Op-eds followed within days, and the comment sections did what comment sections do.

If you are estranged from a parent, or quietly wondering whether you need to be, those headlines probably landed somewhere tender. Maybe they reopened a question you thought you had settled. Maybe someone in your life sent you one of those articles with a pointed little note. Maybe you read the whole thing with your chest tight, thinking, is that what happened to me? Did I get talked into this?

Let me offer you what the coverage keeps leaving out.

Adult child with parent in therapy session

No one gets talked into grief

Here is what I know from the research and from the chair across from my clients: estrangement is almost never sudden, and it is never casual. Long before anyone sits on a therapist's couch, there are usually years of trying. Years of editing yourself before every visit. Rehearsing a two-sentence text for an hour before sending it. Leaving family dinners with a headache you could not explain. Apologizing for having feelings that any reasonable person would have.

By the time most people reduce or end contact, the relationship has been functionally gone for a long time. The final step did not create the loss. It made the loss visible.

That matters, because the "therapists caused this" narrative gets the timeline backwards. A therapist cannot manufacture two decades of walking on eggshells. Therapy is often simply the first room where someone says out loud what has been true for years, and hears something other than "but they're your family."

The grief no one sends a card for

There is a clinical name for what estranged adult children carry: disenfranchised grief. It is grief the world does not recognize as legitimate. When a parent dies, there is a funeral, a casserole, a card aisle. When you lose a living parent, there is none of that. People say "at least they're still here," and your grief goes underground.

Unwitnessed grief does not shrink. It calcifies. It shows up as guilt at their birthday, a stomach drop when their name lights up your phone, a wave of doubt every time a news cycle like this one rolls through.

And here is the part I most want you to hear: the guilt is not evidence you made the wrong choice. A child's nervous system is wired to stay attached to caregivers, even caregivers who hurt them. That wiring does not review the evidence before it fires. You can know exactly why you needed distance and still ache. The ache is proof the bond was real, not proof the boundary was wrong.

What therapy actually does here

The critics this week describe therapy as an echo chamber where a clinician nods along until you cut off everyone who ever disappointed you. That is not therapy. That is a bad friend with a license.

Real therapy around family estrangement is slower and more demanding than any headline suggests. In my practice, it looks like reality-testing your memories instead of rubber-stamping them. Looking honestly at your own part in the dynamic. Understanding how emotionally immature family systems shape the adults who grow up in them, including the over-functioning, people-pleasing, high-achieving adults who show up in my Michigan telehealth office having held everything together for everyone else their whole lives. It looks like grieving, in a room where your grief is finally allowed to exist. And for clients who want it, it can include faith, because many of my clients are Christians carrying an extra layer of anguish about honoring parents who hurt them. That tension deserves real care, not a proof-text and a guilt trip.

Sometimes that work leads to repaired relationships with better boundaries. Sometimes it leads to sustained distance that finally brings peace. The outcome is never mine to choose. My job is to make sure the decision is truly yours, examined from every angle, and that you are not carrying the grief of it alone.

If this week stirred something in you

You do not have to have the answer today. You do not have to defend your choice to a comment section, or to the relative who forwarded you the article. But if the question "did I do the right thing?" has been circling for months or years, that is not a sign you are broken. It is a sign you are carrying a real loss without enough support.

I work with high-achieving adults across Michigan who are healing from emotionally immature family dynamics, estrangement, and the grief that comes with both. All sessions are telehealth, so you can meet with me from anywhere in the state.

Book a free 15-minute consult and let's talk about what carrying this differently could look like.

All the Best,
Kymberly Kremnitzer, LMSW
The Rooted Therapist MI, PLLC

Resources