"Why Won’t My Adult Child Talk to Me?" The False Comfort of AI Answers

Episode 203: "Why Won't My Adult Child Talk to Me?" The False Comfort of AI Answers

If you’ve ever typed “why won’t my adult child talk to me” into Google at 2 a.m., hoping for clarity or comfort, you’re not alone. Many parents experiencing estrangement from adult children are turning to AI tools for support—hoping to find relief from the pain, confusion, and rejection they feel. But while AI might offer quick comfort, it can’t truly help you reconnect with an estranged adult child or heal the emotional wounds underneath the silence.

In this episode of the Coaching Your Family Relationships Podcast, I’m sharing why AI can’t replace human connection—especially when it comes to healing parent-child relationships. You'll learn why emotional healing for parents requires more than advice or reassurance. It requires courage, self-awareness, and the kind of human support that helps you regulate your nervous system, see your own contribution to the dynamic, and find compassion for yourself and your adult child.

We’ll walk through the story of Julia, a mother navigating the heartbreak of emotional distance from her daughter. Through her story, you’ll discover how to stop walking on eggshells and start understanding the bigger picture in your family. If you've ever said, “I feel rejected by my adult child,” this episode will speak directly to your heart—and give you tools to begin the healing process.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why turning to AI can create a false sense of connection
• How estrangement from adult children is rarely about one event
• The importance of seeing your own role in family dynamics and communication breakdowns
• Why your nervous system needs co-regulation from a real person
• How to rebuild trust with an adult child without control or shame

Whether you're dealing with emotional distance, complete cutoff, or just want to improve communication with your adult children, this conversation is for you. Healing after estrangement starts with you—and this episode will help you take the first step.

Subscribe to the show and get weekly insights on how to reconnect with your adult child with grace, strength, and emotional matu

 If you’re tired of reacting to what’s happening in your family and want more internal calm and confidence, I’d love to support you. Reset to Connection runs live February 2–6 at 9 a.m. Mountain Time, with short daily sessions and replays available.  We'll focus on getting off the emotional roller coaster and creating confidence. The registration link is below. 

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Tina Gosney is the Family Conflict Coach. She works with parents who have families in conflict to help them become the grounded, confident leaders their family needs.
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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: 0:51

What if the tool you're turning to for emotional support is actually keeping you stuck right where you are? I'm Tina Gosney, family conflict coach and family life educator, and I work with parents who are feeling rejected, confused or heartbroken because their relationship with their adult child is strained or even cut off, and I get it. You know, when the pain is really big, you just want something or someone to help you make sense of it. So today, I want to talk about something I'm seeing more and more of, which is people turning to AI as a tool, kind of like as a stand in therapist, which, you know feels easier, feels more private, less expensive, for sure, and less vulnerable. That's probably the biggest one, less vulnerable than talking to a real human being. I am not here to demonize AI. I think technology can be a beautiful support when it is used well, but when it comes to trying to substitute AI for a human connection, especially in emotional healing and relationships, it can actually keep us from moving forward. I want to walk you through a story of a woman who is fictional. I'm going to call her Julia, and she, you know, her story is drawn on many real experiences of people that I have talked to. So Julia is 62 years old, who has an adult daughter named Marissa. Marissa has not responded to her texts in over three months. The last time they spoke was over the holidays when they had what felt like to Julia, a very small blow up over a comment that she made. But since then, there's just been silence, and Julia's heart feels broken. She feels so confused and she feels alone. She doesn't know where to turn, and she doesn't want to turn to her friends or to other family, because she feels like she'll be a burden to them or they might judge her. So instead, she turns to chat GPT, an AI chat bot. It's late, you know, late at night she can't sleep because she has this constant ache in her chest that will not go away. So she types in what she's feeling, and she gets a calm, compassionate response. Feels so good in that moment, but pretty soon, that feeling fades and she keeps coming back to that chat bot, hoping that it's going to be able to give her something that sticks and helps her to fix this situation. So let's walk through Julia's journey. Let's look at why AI feels really helpful, but ultimately it falls short when it comes to real healing. So the first thing that AI offers you is the illusion of connection, because it's easier to talk to AI. Have you noticed how much easier it is to open up to a screen than to another human being? This is the connection paradox. As humans, we are wired for connection. We crave connection, but we are also very afraid of it, especially when we've been hurt. Now, when connection feels risky, we retreat. We go to places that feel safe and predictable and low stakes, which is why AI is so tempting, because it feels like connection, but without all the messiness, no eye contact, no risk of rejection, no fear that they're going to misunderstand you or tell you that you're wrong. And so at 2am AI for Julia, feels like a lifeline. She can type her thoughts without feeling ashamed. She doesn't have to worry about being too emotional or saying the wrong thing or burdening another person, because this chat bot is going to respond instantly kindly, and it's never going to get overwhelmed with her. But here's the thing, it does not offer any real human presence. There's no nervous system in that machine. There's no shared energy, also no risk, therefore no depth. Real connection is hard. It requires us to show up honestly, to stay grounded in ourselves while we open up to another person, this is what I call holding on to yourself in a relationship. It takes emotional strength to be vulnerable with someone else without dissolving into this shame or defensiveness. AI is going to feel safer, but it can. Not help you to practice that kind of emotional courage, and we all need to practice with that kind of emotional courage. This exact is exactly what we need to rebuild broken relationships. We need to be able to have difficult conversations. And how do we get better at having difficult conversations? By having difficult conversations. I don't know anyone who is naturally good at having difficult conversations that has not had a lot of them already. The second thing AI does is it offers you false comfort. There's no accountability. It does not see the bigger picture. Julia just kept going back to chat GPT and she typed in things like, why won't my daughter talk to me? What did I do wrong? The answers that she got were very, very comforting. It was answers like, oh, it's not your fault, or Marissa might be going through something that has nothing to do with you, and you did your best. Now, those words feel really good, and they might even partially be true, but they're for sure, not the whole story, because I want you to hear this very clearly and understand this. One thing is that no one lives in a bubble, in families, we influence each other constantly and consistently. This is over years, over decades and over generations. These patterns form, resentments build, and pain accumulates, and when there's a rupture in the relationship. It's almost never about just one thing. It's not ever about just the last conversation, the last disagreement. Julia was looking at her daughter's silence as a reaction to one argument, but that argument was just the tip of the iceberg. It was the last thing that happened underneath it were years of miscommunication, emotional distance and unmet needs on both sides. Ai cannot help you see that. It does not help you get the full picture. It does not challenge you to reflect on your own patterns or your own role in the family dynamic, it can't say to you, hey, hey, Julia, let's slow this down. When have you seen this pattern before with Marissa? What are the things that you might not have said that shaped this relationship so when we're only seeking comfort, we miss this opportunity to grow and see ourselves more clearly, and when we miss our part in the story, we just give our way, we give away our power and our ability to change it, and our part is very, very important. The third thing that AI cannot help you with it's missing the human mirror, the sense of common humanity, which heals us. There's something very profound about opening up to another human being, and then they say, Me too. This is the power of common humanity. It reminds us that we are not broken, that our pain is just part of being human. It's part of the human experience, and that other people have stood where we are standing now. Now let's just say that Julia starts coaching. She joins one of my coaching groups. She decides to be really brave. One day, she shares her story. Her voice is trembling, and she tells about how she has not spoken to her daughter in months, and she's blaming herself. She is so ashamed, and she feels like a failure. And then another parent says, you know, I haven't seen my son in over a year, and I thought I was the only one. All of a sudden, that shame that Julia was feeling, that felt so personal, starts to lift, and she realizes that she's not alone. And when she sees somebody else show themselves without the shame. It gives her permission to do the same thing. Ai cannot offer that to you. It can simulate empathy, but it can't say I have lived that too. It cannot laugh with you in your sorrow or cry with you in your grief. It cannot create that shared space of I see you because I'm there too, or I've been there too. Now, when we feel our pain mirrored in another human, it helps us to soften, and from that softening, real compassion begins. For other people and for ourselves, that real compassion is so necessary for us to relate to other human beings. The fourth thing AI has trouble with is holding emotional space, and it cannot give you co regulation. Your nervous system is not meant to carry pain alone. When you are overwhelmed, when you're in grief, fear or heartbreak, your nervous system goes into survival mode. You feel panicky, you feel shut down, you feel numb, or you get stuck in a loop. We regulate through relationships. This is called co regulation. It means our bodies and our brains calm down in the presence of another safe, grounded human being. Many of our wounds are caused from relationships, and so we need to go back into relationship to be able to heal them. But we need to do that with a safe, grounded human being. When Julia broke down one night after another unanswered text from Marissa, she turned to AI again and she typed, I think I'm losing her forever. I don't know if I can do this. And you know what chat GPT gave her a very decent answer. It was something like that. Sounds incredibly hard. Have you tried mindfulness or journaling? You know what? That's a great answer, but not in this situation, because Julia's body was flooded with fear, and her chest felt like it was caving in on her and her breathing. She was barely breathing. It was so shallow. She didn't need advice. She needed someone to say, Okay, I'm here with you. Let's take this breath together. I'm staying right here. In a coaching session, I would have slowed everything down help her reconnect to her breath reminded her, like in this moment, you are safe and you are not alone. That's what co regulation is. It's something that AI will never be able to do. So when we can sit with someone who can hold our emotions without trying to fix them, our body begins to settle down. Our fears start to melt, and we can access that calm place where we get we begin to see clearly again. Another thing that AI does, the fifth thing is it bypasses our inner wisdom and our intuition, because Julia kept going to AI for answers, and she asked it things like, what should I say to Marissa? Should I send her another text? Should I wait? She was looking outside of herself for someone to tell her what to do. She wanted direction. She wanted guidance. But what she didn't realize is that guidance was already inside of her, there is a quiet voice within each of us. It's this deep, wise part of ourselves that already know many, many answers, but it only speaks when we get still enough to listen. AI, for all of its usefulness, does not invite stillness. It moves fast. It gives really quick answers, and many times, it feeds our anxieties, rather than calming them. Healing, on the other hand, is slow. It's contemplative. It asks you to sit with uncomfortable truths, to make friends with the silence, and to hear and trust the whisper of your own inner knowing. When Julia finally paused long enough to reflect, she began to remember something a time years ago when Marissa had shared her feelings and Julia had brushed them off. And Julia felt this pang of regret when she remembered that, but she also had some clarity. This was a moment that needed repair, not the holiday fight, not the unanswered text, but this memory that had lived in, that had lived unspoken between the two of them from years ago, and she realized that in that moment when she brushed off how Marissa had told her she felt that had actually become a pattern that she had done many times. Because honestly, you know, Julia was not very comfortable with marissa's feelings. Those feelings that Marissa had shared with her were very uncomfortable, and it was easier for Julia to brush them off and pretend like they weren't happening. And that became a pattern. This kind of insight does not come from outside of us. It comes from within, from the deep work of turning inward with gentleness and honesty and asking yourself, okay, what is my responsibility here? What is mine to own and what is mine to do and take care of using AI for emotional healing is like trying to find your way home with somebody else's map. It might give you a direction, but it doesn't know your roads. It doesn't know where your heart is hiding. It can't guide you through the terrain of your soul. Julia thought she needed the right script, and she needed the right words, but what she really needed was just some presence, some witnessing, some courage and the strength to sit with another human being and say, This is so hard. Can you be with me right here in this hard moment? If you've been turning to AI in moments of emotional pain and you still feel stuck or unseen, maybe it's time to try something different, something real, like a real human being.