Connect Courageously - Heal Family Relationships Through Differentiation

Tina Gosney is the Family Conflict Coach. She helps her clients move past contention in their homes and move into connection. Developing healthy family relationships can change lives.
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Tina is certified in family relationships and a trauma informed coach.
Visit tinagosney.com for more information on coaching services.

Transcript

Tina Gosney: 0:00

Tina, welcome back to your family relationships podcast. I'm your host and your family conflict coach. Tina Gosney, today we're talking about one of the most painful experiences that a parent with adult children can go through, and that is disconnection from one of their children. So if you have been replaying conversations in your mind, second guessing every decision, walking on eggshells, wondering why this child that once felt so close now feels so far away, then this episode is for you. We're going to explore why this happens, not just on a surface level, but from a family systems perspective. And here's the truth is that families operate on systems, not just as these collection of individual people that live together or thrown together in the same family. So when one person in that system is struggling or changing or having a hard time, the entire system feels it and often, when an adult child distances themselves, it's because they can no longer tolerate that level of anxiety in the family. Their withdrawal might not be about rejecting you. It might be about finding relief from a system that feels overwhelming. And this is not about assigning blame or saying who's at fault. It's about just recognizing patterns and making intentional choices to show up differently. So if you are tired of walking on eggshells, if you're exhausted from trying to fix things that don't seem like they will change. I want you to stick with me, because there is a way forward. And if this is a topic that is deeply interesting to you, that is maybe your life experience, at this time, I have a free class for you to attend where we will dive deeper into this topic. This is how to start healing the relationship with your adult child. It's happening Thursday, March 13, 6pm Mountain Time. It's totally free. There's a link in the show notes. So if this topic is close to your heart, if it's something that you're experiencing or you think might be headed your way, I strongly encourage you to sign up for this class. Take advantage of that. While you can disconnection from an adult child is unlike any other grief, because, you know, it's ambiguous, they're still alive, but they feel lost. You've lost something that is really important to you, and it's so often that it will keep us awake at night, you know, in tears or maybe the following day, there's a dull ache that just follows us throughout the day, like there's always this pit in our stomach and this dull sense of loss and confusion and not knowing how to fix and repair, and We often will feel really guilty, you know, like, what did I do wrong? We start replaying every moment, searching for the mistakes that we made, even though we're not even sure if they were mistakes. We're not sure what they're latching onto, and they're seeing a mistake. But we start replaying every action and everything that we ever have done for their life, and sometimes it feels really anger producing, like after all that I've done, after all that I've given you, and I've been there all these times when you asked me to and I've poured into you and poured into you, how can you just walk away? And that feels a lot of resentment, a lot of anger and also confusion. There's also always confusion, no matter what else is there? Confusion is there. Sometimes it just seems like it came out of nowhere. You kind of understand how, how did this happen? I don't even know what happened. All of a sudden, they're just coming at me. They're so angry, they're, you know, they're putting boundaries into place and accusing me of things, and I don't even know this feels like just coming out of nowhere. It's really easy, then when we are experiencing this estrangement or this really like a disconnection, even if it's not to the point of estrangement, but disconnection or distance, to feel really judged by other people, and to be really comparing ourselves with other families who seem like they have it all together. They are the families like, apparently, those parents did it all right and I did it all wrong, or this parent who's telling me that, oh, I could never, I would never accept that from my child, or, you know, just throwing judgment on you a parent, this other parent who does not understand and has no idea what it's like to be in your shoes. It's really easy to feel judged, especially when we live in a world that tells us that the good parents have close relationships with their kids, and that just leads you to feeling hopeless. And you keep trying things and nothing works, and every time you do try something, it just seems to push them further away. If any of this resonates, you just please take a deep breath and hear me when I say that you are not alone and you are not hopeless. You are not powerless. I know your pain is real, but staying stuck is not the only option. It might seem like it is at times, but it is not the only option. Bowen family systems theory tells us that families function like a single emotional unit. That means that the way one person thinks and feels and reacts is deeply interconnected with the rest of the family, and so when anxiety, fear, hopelessness, confusion, anger, when those rise in one person, it rises in the system and it spreads. The easiest way to handle those types of emotions are to diffuse them among the system. Most families operate with a really high degree of emotional fusion. That means members are overly dependent on each other for their own emotional stability. And if you are in one of these families, there's a good possibility that you don't know that that's your family, because you only see it as the way things are when fusion is high, these individual differences in us, they feel like threats. And the when, when we feel threatened, our anxiety skyrockets, and someone starts to pull away or change. And then it gets really tricky, because, you know, anxiety doesn't show up always as yelling or conflict or nervousness. Sometimes it looks like withdrawal. Sometimes it looks like that adult child is distancing themselves, because that's the only way they know how to manage themselves with the emotional intensity of the family, they might not be able to tolerate the weight of your expectations, of your fears, of your anxieties, your pressure, whether it's spoken or unspoken, they don't know how to stay emotionally tethered in the way that they were as children, and when they're adults, they can distance more easily, and it gives them some relief From the anxiety that being in that system creates and this is why, when we're trying to pull them back in, when we're trying to fix things, because we're really afraid, it often backfires, because they're already emotionally overwhelmed. They feel that pull from the family, and the pressure only reinforces I can't enter that system again. I need to distance. So what is the answer? The solution is not to demand that they come back and demand the closeness to demand like, let's make things the way that it used to be. The solution is differentiation of self, the ability to remain connected while maintaining your own emotional stability and your own sense of identity. This is what a well differentiated person can do. They can hold on to their own emotions without expecting somebody else to manage them. They can respect their child's independence without going into a spiral of feeling rejected or abandoned. They can communicate clearly and calmly even when conversations get tough, and they can allow their adult child to have different values, different beliefs, different priorities without feeling like it's a personal attack. Differentiation is not about emotional cut off. It's not about detaching and pretending that you don't care. It's about learning to stay in the relationship in a way that doesn't feed and fuel that anxiety and their reactivity. So when you become more differentiated, you stop reacting from a place of fear. You stop trying to manage your child's life, to manage their choices, to get them to come back to where you want them to be. You stop basing your emotional stability on whether they react and they treat you and you have the relationship that you want with them, like if they return your phone calls or their texts, or if they invite you over, or if they let you into their lives. And paradoxically, when we do this, when we are more differentiated in our own individualism, we open the door for reconnection. It's not the demanding that they come back and the pressuring that gets them to come back. It's the being differentiated within ourselves. So when your child senses that that pressure has lifted, that you're not grasping at them for emotional security, they're going to feel safer to step back towards you. But right now that's not what you're there right right now you might be feeling like you're stuck, trapped in these painful patterns, and there is no way out. But I want you just to imagine for a moment what life would look like if you were more differentiated, if you showed up that way in your relationship with your adult child? So I'm going to go through three common situations and how they might transform when you develop a stronger sense of self. So let's just imagine that your adult child blames you for their problems. Maybe right now, everything feels like an accusation. They're constantly reminding you of how you failed them, of you know, you messed up, and I can't move forward because of this thing that you did in the past. So you try to explain, you defend yourself. You try to say, I'm sorry. I don't even know what I'm apologizing for, but I'm sorry or like, nothing is ever good enough for you. And you leave these interactions feeling really guilty, exhausted and responsible, because they're unhappy, and you take on their unhappiness, you're responsible for their happiness. So if you become more differentiated, you're no longer taking responsibility for their emotions or their choices. You would be able to hear their pain, acknowledge their feelings, without absorbing the blame that they want to hand over to you, you might say, I see you are hurting so much, and I really regret that I've had any contribution to this pain that I've caused you. And at the same time, I really trust that you are strong enough to work through this. I believe in you. I believe in your ability to create the life that you want. I know you are capable of this. So instead of getting defensive and trying to fix things, you hold your ground and you have calm confidence, and you know what, they're probably not going to stop blaming you and say you're totally right, because that's not what happens but, but what does happen is you're no longer feeding the emotional intensity, and when you no longer do that, the dynamic begins to shift. You begin freeing yourself from carrying the weight of their emotions, and you are still showing up with love and compassion. Scenario number two, what if your adult child doesn't respect your boundaries, maybe they're constantly pushing your limits. Maybe they expect financial help without even saying thank you, without reciprocating any effort when you need some help, maybe they show up unannounced, maybe they speak to you in ways that feel really hurtful or just respectful or they disregard their requests that you've made about how you want to be treated, and when you try to set a boundary, they just tell you that you're selfish. They lash out. They guilt trip you, or maybe they just threaten to cut you off. They're giving you ultimatums. How would this scenario change if you became more differentiated, you would not be afraid of setting boundaries. You wouldn't be setting those from a place of fear, you know, from a fear of their reaction. You wouldn't fear losing them. You wouldn't fear of being the bad guy. Instead, you're going to set boundaries from a place of self respect. You would say, I love you and I want a healthy relationship with you. That means I need to be clear about what I can and what I can't do, and right now, I'm not able to give you financial help, and I need you to speak with me to respect if we continue this conversation. If you can't do that, then let's come back to this conversation another time, and then this is the most important part, is that you follow through. You know how easy it is to cave when you're getting a push back from your kid? Yeah, you follow through with calm confidence. There's no over explaining, no wavering, no guilt. You recognize that this is their reaction to manage. It's not yours. And even though they're going to resist this at first and they might be actually escalating and be more upset over time, you. They begin to understand that you are no longer for available for a relationship that feels one sided, that just drains you, and you're not look and you will no longer be a doormat. You're going to feel respected, empowered and at peace, regardless of whether or not your child agrees with you, your boundaries, and whether they decide to show respect to you. Scenario number three, you want to reach out. You've been feeling this disconnection for a while now. You are so afraid to reach out because you don't know what's going to happen, and so you just don't do anything. Or maybe you've been walking on eggshells. You're waiting for them to reach out first, and the silence is deafening. But the longer that silence goes on, the worse your fear gets, and it just keeps you more and more frozen because you don't know if they're going to reject you, ignore you, or lash out at you. So maybe you're drafting texts that and emails that never get sent, and you keep telling yourself you know what time is going to heal. Time heals all. But inside, you're so upset, you're so feeling stuck, lonely, all those feelings that I was was going through before. You're feeling disconnected, you're just you just don't know how to move forward, and so you do nothing. How would this change? If you became more differentiated, you would take action, not from a place of desperation or fear, but from a place of clarity, self, leadership and peace. Instead of reaching out with this graspy, anxious energy trying to say the right thing to get the right response, you're going to reach out with a calm, steady confidence. You're going to send a message like, Hey, I just wanted to say, I love you, and I know that things have been hard between us, and I don't expect to fix everything overnight, but whenever you are ready to talk, I'm ready to listen, and I'm here, and then what do you do? You just let go. You don't try to follow up and chase the outcome. You don't over analyze it. You trust that you've done your part and that you can continue living your life with peace and with purpose. And that shift is so liberating is so freedom producing. It allows you to show up in your child's life. Is this steady, emotional, strong presence, rather than someone that they feel pressured or obligated to respond to and while you don't have control over their reaction, your sense of self worth doesn't depend on their response. It doesn't depend on their reaction, because you already hold that firmly by yourself. So in each of these scenarios, the common thread is when you become more differentiated. You stop trying to control things that are not yours to control. You take responsibility for yourself, your emotions, your actions, your boundaries, your feelings, and you will let your child take responsibility for theirs, and that is what creates space for real healing. Do you know what else it does? It allows your child to mature because you're maturing. This is a more mature response to our relationships. Because you are maturing, you are modeling that for them. And when you stop reacting at a fear and guilt and anxiety, you show up as your strongest, most grounded self. You become someone that they can trust because they don't feel like you're trying to pressure them into certain choices, and they don't feel that pressure from your expectations anymore. They don't need to take care of your worries, they don't have to take care of your emotions and the way you're emotionally depending on them. But does it mean that they're just going to come with open arms and do exactly what you want them to do? Probably not, but it does mean that you will finally be free, free from this cycle of reactivity, free from carrying their burdens as your own, you're going to be free to love them deeply, so deeply, while standing strong in your own self respect. And that changes everything. If this differentiation of self is something that you want to learn. If you're like I want that. I don't know how to get that, but I want that, and I want you to come to this class that I'm teaching Thursday, March 13, 6pm Mountain Time. If you can't make it live, don't worry about it. I will send out a replay. Eight, but you do need to be registered if you do want the replay. This differentiation of self is something I feel so passionate about because I've had a front row seat the last several years, oh, more than a decade, to the unhealthy enmeshment that we have within our family relationships and the problems that that is causing that we don't even see are connected. If you want healthier, more mature relationships within your family, it starts with coming to this class how to start healing the relationship with your adult child. And if you don't have adult children, and you still want to learn this. This is a good thing to learn when your children are still young, because you can start modeling these type of relationship patterns while they're still at home. Imagine the power in that. So if you're not even having if you don't even have adult children, you are still welcome to come to this class, and you are still welcome to gain all of that magnificent learning that you're going to gather from attending this class. So I look forward to seeing you there, and I look forward to seeing you next week here on the podcast.