FAMily relationships & Estrangement

It’s very difficult not to have heard, at least in passing that Brooklyn Beckham no longer wants to have contact with his parents, David and Victoria Beckham.  It’s unlikely too that you didn’t hear just a tiny bit about the family members not invited to Holly Ramsey’s wedding. Before and since then, speculation and opinion about Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and vaious other members of the Royal Family, dominate our phones and social media.
Whilst the profusion of articles and posts undoubtedly reflects the celebrity and high profile of the families concerned, and speaks to the importance enjoyed by high status, the real pull of these stories is their relatable nature as everyday tales of family life.  From Snow White, and Hansel and Grettel to Hamlet and Harry Potter, tales of family strife are meaningful and relevant. When we read them, we think about our own stories of sibling rivalry, childhood resentments and ongoing power battles. When we follow the stories and posts we notice amongst the trappings of fabulous wealth and designer styling, more familiar scripts of complaints about controlling parental style, rivalries, recrimination, un-met expectations and misaligned values and visions. It is these elements that compel and grab our attention.
FAMILIAR STORIES
Knowing that the most successful and well-known people experience family arguments can be reassuring. It puts our own less than perfect relationships into perspective and can bring insight as to what might be going on. Often, getting to grips with what is happening, might best be done with the help of a therapist, perhaps one that specialises in this area of work. I have been interested in family estrnagement for some time and have worked with StandAlone, to support individuals and groups who are eperiencing estrangement.  I've worked with many of the problems that typically lead to family rifts, communication breakdown and full blown estrangement. Counselling and therapy might help to unravel some of the more deep-rooted causes of current turbulence and be a way to explore the painful emotional and psychological impacts surrounding relationship breakdown and estrangement. It could provide  a safe, supportive space in which to make decisions about future contact.
WHAT IS ESTRANGEMENT
The roots of family estrangement often go back years and are embedded in the culture and dynamics of an individual family. Data and research on estrangement reveals it affects 27% of American families and 20% of British ones. Of course, this covers a whole range of scenarios from difficult and strained family relationships to cases where there is no verbal or physical contact between family members. Estrangement is often a fluid, dynamic situation where the family members concerned move in and out of states of not speaking or limited contact to declarations of ‘no contact’. These might be punctuated with sporadic contact, limited communication and attempts at reconciliation. This can be emotionally trying and confusing. Estrangement might concern or be driven by one or more family member but will inevitably impact the whole family.
Causes of estrangement are diverse and while usually unique to the people and situation, often include reports of emotional and other abuse, mismatched expectations about family roles and relationships, clashes of personality or values, mental health problems and traumatic family events (2).
 
SUPPORT WITH ESTRANGEMENT
Getting help and support with difficult or strained family relationships will always be a unique and bespoke experience. The decision to reach out and speak to a professional might come after years of trying to manage and improve difficult interactions and/or before an important decision is made about future contact.  It might happen early on in the rift in response to a change that is painful and difficult to make sense of. Counselling might support more focused and careful thinking about the relationship, permitting reflection on it’s history and nature as-well as exploration of the painful and problematic aspects.  It might be a way to identify how to move forward from a place of stuckness and to consider some of the unhelpful relational patterns that might be playing out.
Often the roles we get given in our families of origin are not how we want to be in the new families we build or with our friends or colleagues. Separating from the family in which we were reared, in order to become the established and independent adult we desire to be is an important  life task. It is a psychological and emotional shift as much as a physical one. Major life events and changes may well be instigate the need to separate or be a reason to re-evaluate existing separation.
As we think about what this means for ourselves, we are inevitably drawn to the stories of others and keen to learn and understand their experience. Leo Tolstoy’s famous quote that “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in it’s own way” (3), highlights the timeless nature of family split and misalignment. Relationship counselling for family estrangement can be a  way to make greater sense of the particualr dynamics of our family relationships, to come to terms with their painful impacts and to get support in making the best choices for you.    
 
REFERENCES
Anna Russell, New Yorker, 2024 ‘Hidden Voices’, StandAlone, 2015. Anna Karena, 1878.