Family estrangement is receiving increasing attention, and so is the role therapists may play in it. A recent article in The Telegraph raised concerns about therapists potentially contributing to estrangement by reinforcing negative perceptions of family members, encouraging separation, or assigning diagnostic labels to people they’ve never evaluated.
As a clinical social worker specializing in adult family systems, I think these are conversations our profession needs to be willing to have.
Do therapists sometimes contribute to family estrangement? Of course. We’re human. We bring our own histories, experiences, and biases into the therapy room. Sometimes, despite our best intentions, those experiences influence how we understand our clients’ relationships.
But placing responsibility for estrangement entirely on therapists overlooks the cultural, generational, and relational complexities involved.
The more important question is whether we’re helping clients navigate complicated relationships or unintentionally reinforcing the patterns keeping them stuck.
When Validation Becomes Enabling
Validation is essential in therapy, but validation and agreement aren’t interchangeable.
When someone describes a painful interaction with a family member, I want to understand their experience. I also want to understand how their history may influence their interpretation.
What do they know to be factually true? What was actually said or done? What assumptions have they made about the other person’s intentions?
Feelings are real and deserve acknowledgment. But feelings aren’t necessarily facts about another person’s motivations or character.
Validation becomes enabling when we continually reinforce narratives that keep someone stuck in unhealthy relational patterns without examining their own choices, responses, or contributions.
That doesn’t mean blaming someone for how they’ve been treated. Accountability isn’t necessarily an admission of fault.
Sometimes clients aren’t ready for these conversations. Longstanding trauma responses can make even gentle challenges feel threatening. Trauma-focused approaches, including EMDR, ART, and somatic interventions, may help clients develop greater capacity to tolerate difficult emotions and consider different perspectives.
Our responsibility isn’t to force insight before someone is ready. But neither is it to confuse supporting someone with agreeing with everything they believe.
The Danger of Diagnosing People We’ve Never Met
Narcissistic, borderline, toxic, manipulative, and abusive are terms frequently encountered in conversations about estrangement.
Some families absolutely have patterns of serious harm that shouldn’t be minimized.
But there’s a difference between identifying unhealthy relational patterns and diagnosing someone we’ve never evaluated.
When a client describes a parent as narcissistic, I don’t need to determine whether that parent has narcissistic personality disorder to help the client understand how the relationship affects them.
We can explore criticism, emotional invalidation, control, or boundary violations without assigning a diagnosis.
We should also be cautious about allowing popular psychological terminology to become a substitute for understanding complicated family dynamics.
Are We Confusing Discomfort With Danger?
I worry that we’re increasingly confusing emotional discomfort with emotional danger.
Difficult conversations are uncomfortable. Hearing that we’ve hurt someone is uncomfortable. Having our perspectives challenged or being asked to consider another person’s needs can be uncomfortable.
But discomfort isn’t automatically harm.
I frequently hear variations of, “I shouldn’t have to do that. It isn’t fair to me.”
Sometimes that’s absolutely true. But sometimes we’re expecting everyone else in a relationship to accommodate our needs while remaining unwilling to make adjustments ourselves.
Healthy relationships require flexibility, compromise, and a willingness to tolerate differences.
Someone disagreeing with us doesn’t automatically make them wrong.
Of course, abuse, coercion, threats, and ongoing violations of safety aren’t simply discomfort someone needs to tolerate.
Part of our clinical responsibility is helping people distinguish between the two.
Reconciliation Should Be an Option, Not an Obligation
Psychologist Joshua Coleman has argued that therapists should be more oriented toward reconciliation.
I agree reconciliation should be explored when appropriate. I don’t believe estrangement should automatically be the first response to relational difficulties.
There are often middle grounds, opportunities for boundaries, changes in contact, and difficult conversations.
But therapists don’t get to decide whether a relationship should be repaired.
The people within that family system do.
In my adult family therapy work, I conduct individual assessments before bringing family members together. I’m not deciding whether a family deserves reconciliation. I’m assessing whether participants are prepared for productive conversations and whether proceeding is clinically appropriate.
If someone wants family therapy solely to repeat grievances, tell another person how terrible they are, or demand agreement with their version of events, the conditions for productive work may not yet exist.
Productive conversations require people to show up not only to be heard, but also to listen.
Two Things Can Be True at the Same Time
One of the greatest challenges in adult family relationships is believing that acknowledging someone else’s experience means invalidating our own.
A parent may genuinely have done the best they could with the resources and circumstances available to them.
Their child may still have experienced significant unmet needs.
And there may not have been better options available at the time.
All of those things can be true.
Accountability doesn’t require agreeing with every accusation. It requires a willingness to examine how our actions, choices, and responses affect others.
That willingness matters on both sides.
Family therapy shouldn’t function as a courtroom where one person is declared right and the other wrong.
The goal is understanding, not winning.
Estrangement Isn’t a Trophy
One of my concerns about the cultural conversation surrounding estrangement is how easily it can become something to celebrate.
I understand that ending contact can bring relief, safety, and freedom, particularly when someone has experienced longstanding harm.
But family estrangement is also a loss.
It can involve grief, loneliness, abandonment, and consequences extending throughout an entire family system.
We should be careful about turning deeply personal decisions into social media victories or seeking validation from people who know little about the relationship.
Protecting yourself when necessary is important. But we can acknowledge that protection without pretending the loss is insignificant.
Our Responsibility as Therapists
Therapists aren’t responsible for saving every family relationship. Nor should we become advocates for estrangement simply because a client is experiencing pain.
Our responsibility is to support self-determination while remaining willing to challenge unhealthy patterns, examine our biases, and recognize the limits of what we know.
We can be neutral about the outcome without being passive about the process.
Sometimes that process leads to reconciliation. Sometimes it leads to boundaries or reduced contact. Sometimes it leads to estrangement.
Whatever the outcome, I hope we’re helping people arrive there through thoughtful reflection rather than reinforcing narratives that leave little room for growth, accountability, or understanding.
Because good therapy shouldn’t simply affirm the story someone enters the room with. It should help them develop the capacity to understand themselves, their relationships, and the choices available to them.
Sources and references
References
1. The Telegraph. (November 3, 2026). Article examining family estrangement and the role of therapy. Original article.
2. National Association of Social Workers. Code of Ethics, particularly standards 1.02 (Self-Determination), 1.04 (Competence), 1.06 (Conflicts of Interest), and 4.05 (Impairment). NASW
