Category: Estrangement Therapy

You may never get the apology you hoped for

There are times when waiting for someone else to acknowledge what happened can keep you stuck.

You may never get the explanation you hoped for.

You may never hear, “I understand why that hurt you.”

You may never hear, “I’m sorry.”

And while that can be painful, there may come a point where you decide that your ability to move forward cannot depend on someone else saying the right thing.

That doesn’t mean what happened didn’t matter.

It means you are deciding what you want to do with it.

But what happens if you reconnect?

This is where things can become more complicated.

Perhaps you want some kind of relationship again, but the past has never really been discussed.

You might find yourself having a perfectly ordinary conversation while thinking:

“Are we just going to pretend none of this happened?”

You may be laughing together while remembering something that still hurts.

Or you might find yourself becoming angry when certain comments or behaviours remind you of what happened before.

The relationship may have changed, but the history hasn’t.

And that can leave you wondering how you’re supposed to navigate a new relationship when the old one is still part of your story.

Sometimes you don’t need to talk about it

There can be an assumption that if you’re going to rebuild a relationship, you need to talk everything through.

Sometimes that can be helpful.

But sometimes it isn’t.

You may know that you don’t want to revisit the past.

You may not believe the other person will understand your experience.

You may not want to open up conversations that could lead back into old patterns.

Or you may simply want a relationship that works at a more superficial level.

And sometimes, that can work.

You might talk about everyday life, share a meal, see each other occasionally or have contact around particular events without attempting to resolve everything that happened.

It may not be the close relationship you once had.

It may not involve complete emotional openness.

But it can still be a relationship.

And for some people, that may be enough.

Not talking about it isn’t necessarily pretending it didn’t happen

There is a difference between denying what happened and choosing not to make it part of your conversations.

You can remember.

You can still feel hurt.

You can decide that you don’t forgive certain behaviours.

And you can still choose to have contact without repeatedly revisiting the past.

You don’t have to convince yourself that everything is okay.

You don’t have to tell yourself that what happened wasn’t important.

You can simply decide that you don’t want the past to be the subject of your relationship now.

Sometimes, leaving the elephant in the room may actually be what allows the relationship to function.

But what if the elephant keeps getting bigger?

The question is whether the unspoken past is manageable for you.

Perhaps you can accept that the relationship will never be emotionally close and feel comfortable with that.

Or perhaps you find yourself constantly monitoring what you say.

Maybe certain behaviours still trigger strong reactions.

Maybe you’re worried that the same thing will happen again.

Or perhaps you feel increasingly resentful because you’re behaving as though everything is fine when it doesn’t feel that way inside.

You might then ask yourself:

“Is not talking about this helping me, or is it costing me?”

There isn’t necessarily a right answer.

You may decide that a limited relationship works for you.

You may decide that you need more acknowledgement.

You may decide that you don’t want contact at all.

Or you may not know yet.

You don’t have to forgive to have contact

Forgiveness isn’t necessarily the price of admission to a new relationship.

You may not feel ready to forgive.

You may not want to forgive.

Or you may decide that forgiveness isn’t something you need in order to move forward.

You can understand someone’s perspective without deciding that their behaviour was acceptable.

You can care about someone while still having boundaries around what you will accept now.

And you can choose contact without pretending that the past didn’t happen.

A new relationship doesn’t have to look like the old one

If you do reconnect, you don’t necessarily have to recreate the relationship you had before.

Perhaps what is possible now is something different.

It might be close.

It might be limited.

It might be occasional.

It might be practical.

Or it might be a relationship that works largely on the surface.

That doesn’t automatically make it meaningless.

Sometimes a relationship can exist without everything being resolved.

Sometimes you can have contact while accepting that there are things you will never agree about, things you will never discuss, and things you don’t want to forgive.

The question may simply be:

“Does this version of the relationship work for me?”

You may never get the apology you wanted.

You may never forgive everything that happened.

You may never talk about it.

And you may still decide that some form of relationship is possible.

Sometimes moving forward isn’t about resolving the past.

Sometimes it’s about finding a way to live with what happened while deciding what place, if any, that person has in your life now.

Hello, I’m Sarah Swain, an accredited therapist and coach working online across London, South East, Kent and the whole of the UK. I’ve worked as a therapist across the NHS, charities and Employee Assistance Programmes for over 15 years. I am trained in integrative therapy, coaching and EMDR and I support adults navigating estrangement.

If you’re considering reconnecting with someone after a period of estrangement, forgiveness can sometimes feel like part of the deal.

Perhaps they’ve apologised.

Perhaps they’ve acknowledged some of what happened.

Perhaps they’ve said they want to move forward.

And you may find yourself thinking:

“Do I have to accept their apology?”

“If they’ve said sorry, shouldn’t I forgive them?”

“Can we have a relationship again if I can’t forgive what happened?”

The answer isn’t necessarily yes.

You can choose to have a new relationship with someone without feeling that you have to forgive everything that happened in the past.

Reconciliation and forgiveness aren’t the same thing

Reconciliation is about the relationship between two people.

Forgiveness is something much more personal.

They don’t have to happen together.

You might decide that you would like to explore a relationship with someone again while still feeling hurt or angry about what happened.

You might be able to acknowledge an apology without feeling ready to forgive.

You might decide that some things can be left in the past without needing to resolve exactly how you feel about them.

And you might decide that you don’t want reconciliation at all.

There isn’t one correct emotional starting point.

An apology can matter without fixing everything

An apology can be meaningful.

Being acknowledged and hearing someone take responsibility can sometimes be an important part of rebuilding trust.

But saying sorry doesn’t automatically undo what happened.

It doesn’t necessarily remove the impact it had on you.

And it doesn’t mean that you have to immediately feel differently.

You may appreciate the apology and still need time.

You may accept that someone is genuinely sorry while remaining unsure about whether you want a relationship with them.

Or you may feel that the apology doesn’t fully reflect your experience.

All of those responses are possible.

You don’t have to accept an apology on someone else’s timeline

Sometimes there can be an unspoken expectation that once someone has apologised, the other person should accept the apology and move on.

But an apology is something one person offers.

What you do with it is your decision.

You don’t have to say:

“It’s okay.”

You don’t have to say:

“I forgive you.”

And you don’t have to immediately return to the relationship you had before.

This can be particularly important when past experiences have left you feeling traumatised.

Your mind may understand that someone is apologising while your thoughts, feelings or bodily reactions are telling you that you don’t yet feel safe.

That doesn’t mean you’re being difficult or refusing to move forward.

It may mean that your experience needs to be understood rather than overridden.

A new relationship may need to be different

If reconciliation is something you are considering, perhaps the question isn’t:

“Can I forgive what happened?”

It might be:

“Can we build something different from what we had before?”

That could involve talking honestly about what happened.

It could involve recognising the impact of past behaviour.

It could involve taking responsibility.

It could involve respecting boundaries.

And it may involve rebuilding trust slowly, rather than assuming that because contact has resumed, everything is back to normal.

A new relationship doesn’t have to recreate the old one.

In fact, sometimes the only way forward is for it to be different.

You can remember without remaining stuck in the past

Not forgiving doesn’t necessarily mean holding onto anger forever.

And forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean that you have forgotten what happened.

You can remember something and still move forward.

You can understand someone’s circumstances without excusing their behaviour.

You can have compassion for someone and still maintain boundaries.

You can decide to have a relationship with someone without deciding that everything that happened between you was acceptable.

There can be space for all of those things at once.

What would reconciliation need to look like for you?

If you’re considering reconnecting, it may be helpful to put forgiveness to one side for a moment and ask some different questions:

What would I need to feel comfortable exploring this relationship?

What would need to be different this time?

What boundaries would I need?

What would rebuilding trust look like?

Do I feel able to say no, slow things down or change my mind?

And perhaps:

Am I reconnecting because I genuinely want to, or because I feel that I should?

You don’t have to answer all of these questions immediately.

Reconciliation can be a process rather than a single decision.

And forgiveness doesn’t have to be the price of admission.

You can acknowledge the past without pretending it didn’t happen.

You can receive an apology without feeling obliged to accept it in a particular way.

And if you do choose to build a new relationship, it can be based on what is possible between you now, rather than requiring you to erase what happened before.

Sometimes moving forward isn’t about forgiving the past.

It’s about understanding it, deciding what you need now, and working out whether a different kind of relationship is possible.

Hello, I’m Sarah Swain, an accredited therapist and coach working online across London, South East, Kent and the whole of the UK. I’ve worked as a therapist across the NHS, charities and Employee Assistance Programmes for over 15 years. I am trained in integrative therapy, coaching and EMDR and I support adults navigating estrangement.

Sibling estrangement doesn’t stay between the two siblings.

Partners, children, parents, nieces, nephews and other relatives get caught somewhere in the middle. Two siblings stop speaking, but their children still know each other. Cousins who were once close stop seeing each other. Family occasions get complicated because nobody’s sure who can be invited, who will turn up, or whether everyone can be in the same room.

You might find yourself wondering:

“Do I have to choose a side?” “Can my children still have a relationship with their cousins?” “Am I allowed to see both of them?” “If one person has chosen no contact, does that mean everyone has to?”

There aren’t always straightforward answers.

Estrangement doesn’t happen in isolation

When two family members become estranged, the impact ripples outwards. Other people grieve relationships they haven’t personally lost. Grandparents worry about losing contact with grandchildren. Children notice that cousins or relatives are no longer around. Family celebrations become harder to navigate. People feel caught between loyalty to one person and love for another.

And sometimes, without anyone intending it, children become part of an adult conflict they don’t fully understand.

What about the children?

This gets particularly difficult when both siblings have children of their own. The adults have made a decision about their relationship. Their children haven’t made that decision.

A child may still love their aunt, uncle or cousins. They may ask why they don’t see them anymore, or simply notice that something has changed.

There’s no single answer for what contact between children should look like. It depends on their ages, what they know, what’s happened within the wider family, and whether contact can happen safely without putting them in the middle.

What helps is remembering this: children don’t need to carry the responsibility for resolving an adult relationship.

Does one person’s no contact mean no contact for everyone?

This is where things get complicated.

If someone has chosen no contact with their sibling, that’s their boundary within that relationship. It doesn’t mean every other family member has to hold the same boundary.

At the same time, boundaries can have knock-on effects. If someone has asked for no contact, repeatedly using another family member to pass on messages, gather information or arrange meetings doesn’t respect that boundary.

Respecting someone’s decision about their own relationship is different from letting them decide everyone else’s relationships too.

You don’t have to choose a side

When a family divides, there’s often enormous pressure to decide who’s right and who’s wrong. You’ll hear different versions of what happened, and you may never have enough information to make that judgement.

You don’t need to.

You can care about more than one person. You can have a relationship with someone without agreeing with everything they’ve done. You can respect one person’s boundary without adopting their view of the entire family.

Working out what that looks like in your own situation is the hard part, and it’s specific to your family, not something a formula solves.

What can you do when you’re caught in the middle?

It can help to ask yourself:

• What relationships are actually mine to decide?
• What boundaries has each person asked for?
• Am I being asked to carry messages or take sides?
• What is my relationship with each person, independent of the other?
• What is in the best interests of the children involved?
• Can I maintain relationships without putting anyone in the middle?

These questions won’t give you a formula. They can help separate the different relationships in your family from the original conflict between two people.

There may not be a perfect solution

Sometimes there’s no arrangement that keeps everyone happy. Some family relationships change, and you may need new ways of managing birthdays, Christmas or family gatherings. You may need to explain changes to children without handing them information they aren’t ready to carry. You may need to grieve the family relationships you’d hoped they would have.

None of this makes the estrangement yours to fix. Your role is to work out how you want to conduct yourself within the situation you’re in, not to resolve the conflict that created it.

Hello, I’m Sarah Swain, an accredited therapist and coach working online across London, South East, Kent and the whole of the UK. I’ve worked as a therapist across the NHS, charities and Employee Assistance Programmes for over 15 years. I am trained in integrative therapy, coaching and EMDR and I support adults navigating estrangement.

If you’re estranged from someone in your family, you may eventually find yourself asking:

“Should I try to reconcile?”

You might miss them.

You might wonder whether things could be different.

You might be worried that too much time has passed.

Or perhaps other people are encouraging you to reach out.

But reconciliation isn’t a decision you have to make simply because someone else thinks you should.

Reconciliation isn’t the only possible outcome

Sometimes there can be an assumption that the ultimate goal of estrangement should be getting the family back together.

But relationships don’t always return to what they were.

And sometimes maintaining distance may be what feels right for you.

There are many possibilities.

You might want to rebuild the relationship.

You might want some form of limited contact.

You might want to keep things as they are.

Or you might not know yet.

Not knowing is allowed.

Reconciliation requires more than one person

If you’re considering reconnecting, it can be helpful to think beyond the question:

“Do I miss them?”

You might also ask:

“What would need to be different?”

Because wanting a relationship and being able to have a workable relationship are not necessarily the same thing.

Reconciliation may require willingness from both people to understand what happened, take responsibility for their part, respect boundaries and make meaningful changes.

Without that, reconnecting can simply return you to the same patterns that led to the estrangement in the first place.

What about forgiveness?

Forgiveness is another area where people can feel pressured.

You may hear that you need to forgive before you can move forward.

But forgiveness isn’t a simple requirement for reconciliation.

You can decide what level of contact works for you without first reaching some particular state of forgiveness.

You can care about someone without excusing what happened.

And you can decide that you don’t want to rebuild the relationship without needing to make that person the villain.

You don’t have to decide today

Sometimes the pressure to make a decision can become part of the problem.

You may be trying to work out the rest of your life when what you actually need to understand is what feels right now.

If you are considering contact, you might start with smaller questions:

What would I want from reconnecting?

What am I afraid might happen?

What boundaries would I need?

What would tell me that this relationship is safe enough to explore?

And if you don’t know the answers yet, that’s okay.

Sometimes the question isn’t:

“Should I reconcile?”

but:

“What would need to be different for reconciliation to be right for me?”

You don’t have to make a decision because other people think you should.

And you don’t have to know the answer before you begin exploring what you actually want.

Hello, I’m Sarah Swain, an accredited therapist and coach working online across London, South East, Kent and the whole of the UK. I’ve worked as a therapist across the NHS, charities and Employee Assistance Programmes for over 15 years. I am trained in integrative therapy, coaching and EMDR and I support adults navigating estrangement.

One of the hardest parts of estrangement can be not knowing exactly what happened.

You may have questions that you have gone over again and again.

“Why did they do that?”

“What did I do wrong?”

“When did everything change?”

“Why couldn’t we talk about it?”

You may have spent years trying to find an explanation that finally makes the whole story make sense.

The mind wants an explanation

When something doesn’t make sense, our minds naturally try to make sense of it.

You might replay conversations.

Look back at old messages.

Remember particular moments.

Try to work out what someone else was thinking.

Sometimes this can be useful reflection.

But sometimes it becomes a cycle of analysing the same situation without getting any closer to an answer.

You may find yourself thinking about it late at night or returning to the same questions whenever something triggers the memories.

What if you never get the answer?

This can be one of the most difficult possibilities to accept.

You may never know exactly why someone behaved as they did.

You may never hear their version of events.

You may disagree about what happened.

You may even have completely different understandings of the same relationship.

And that can be incredibly frustrating.

Because sometimes what you want isn’t necessarily reconciliation.

You simply want to understand.

Acceptance isn’t the same as agreeing

Acceptance can sometimes sound like giving up.

But accepting that you may never have all the answers doesn’t mean saying that what happened was okay.

It doesn’t mean agreeing with someone else’s version.

And it doesn’t mean that you have to stop wanting answers.

It can simply mean recognising the limits of what you can know.

That can create space to ask a different question:

“What do I know about my own experience?”

You know how the relationship affected you.

You know what you experienced.

You know what you tried.

You know what you need now.

You may not know everything that was happening for the other person, and you may never be able to.

You don’t have to solve the whole story

Sometimes we can become so focused on understanding the past that we lose sight of the present.

You don’t necessarily need to work out exactly why everything happened before you can decide what you want now.

You can begin to understand your own patterns.

You can look at the boundaries you need.

You can explore the guilt, grief, anger or uncertainty you’re carrying.

And you can begin to think about what kind of relationships you want in your life going forward.

There may always be parts of the story that you don’t have an answer for.

That doesn’t mean you can’t make sense of your own experience.

You don’t have to have all the answers before you can begin to move forward.

Hello, I’m Sarah Swain, an accredited therapist and coach working online across London, South East, Kent and the whole of the UK. I’ve worked as a therapist across the NHS, charities and Employee Assistance Programmes for over 15 years. I am trained in integrative therapy, coaching and EMDR and I support adults navigating estrangement.

You might have been dealing with estrangement for months or even years.

You may have built a life around it. You go to work, see friends, make plans and get on with things.

And yet, every so often, it comes back.

A birthday.

A family gathering.

A photograph.

A song.

Something someone says.

Suddenly, you’re thinking about it again.

You might find yourself wondering:

“Why am I still affected by this?”

“Shouldn’t I be over it by now?”

“Why does this still hurt?”

The truth is, moving forward from estrangement doesn’t necessarily mean reaching a point where you never think about it again.

Estrangement doesn’t always have a clear ending

When a relationship ends through estrangement, there isn’t always a clear moment when it is over.

There may be no conversation where everything is explained.

No shared understanding of what happened.

No agreement about what went wrong.

And sometimes, no certainty about whether the relationship will ever change.

That can leave you carrying unanswered questions alongside the loss itself.

You may find yourself replaying conversations, wondering what you could have said differently or trying to understand how things reached this point.

Your mind may keep returning to the situation because part of you is still trying to make sense of something that doesn’t have a simple answer.

You can be moving forward and still feel sad

Sometimes people think that if they are still grieving, they must not be moving forward.

But the two things can exist together.

You can be building a life that feels good and still have difficult days.

You can feel settled in your decision and still miss someone.

You can feel relief about the distance and still grieve the relationship you wished you could have had.

You can accept that things are different without feeling completely at peace with everything that happened.

These feelings don’t necessarily mean you’re going backwards.

They may simply mean that the relationship mattered to you.

Sometimes the past keeps pulling you back

There may also be things that haven’t been fully processed.

Perhaps there is guilt.

Perhaps there is anger.

Perhaps you are still trying to understand whether you made the right decision.

Perhaps there are boundaries you are still working out.

Or perhaps you are carrying grief for something that never became what you hoped it would be.

Sometimes what looks like “not moving on” is actually a sign that there is something you haven’t yet had the space to understand.

So what does moving forward actually mean?

Moving forward doesn’t have to mean forgetting.

It doesn’t have to mean forgiving.

It doesn’t have to mean reconnecting.

And it doesn’t have to mean deciding that what happened no longer matters.

It might simply mean that the situation takes up less space in your life.

That you understand yourself a little better.

That you can experience difficult feelings without being completely overwhelmed by them.

That you can make choices about your relationships based on what you need now, rather than being continually pulled back into what happened then.

You don’t have to stop caring in order to move forward.

And you don’t have to have everything resolved.

Sometimes moving forward simply means being able to carry what happened differently.

If you’re finding that estrangement continues to affect you, even when life appears to have moved on, you don’t have to work it all out on your own.

Hello, I’m Sarah Swain, an accredited therapist and coach working online across London, South East, Kent and the whole of the UK. I’ve worked as a therapist across the NHS, charities and Employee Assistance Programmes for over 15 years. I am trained in integrative therapy, coaching and EMDR and I support adults navigating estrangement.

You might know that stepping away from a family relationship was something you needed to do.

You may have thought about it for a long time.

You may have tried talking, explaining, compromising or setting boundaries before reaching the point of no contact or low contact.

And yet you still feel guilty.

You might find yourself thinking:

“What if I’ve got it wrong?”

“What if I was too harsh?”

“What if I should have tried harder?”

Knowing that something wasn’t working for you doesn’t necessarily make the emotional consequences disappear.

Knowing something isn’t right doesn’t switch off your emotions

You can know that a relationship was affecting you negatively and still care deeply about the person.

You can know that a boundary was necessary and still feel guilty for setting it.

You can feel relief when contact stops and then feel ashamed for feeling relieved.

This is one of the difficult things about estrangement.

Our emotions don’t always follow the conclusions we’ve reached logically.

And guilt can make you question decisions you may have spent a long time trying to make.

What if I made mistakes?

You may also have things you regret.

Perhaps there are things you said that you wish you had handled differently.

Maybe you weren’t always the person you wanted to be within the relationship.

That doesn’t automatically mean you are responsible for everything that happened.

Relationships are rarely made up of one person’s actions alone.

It can be useful to ask:

“What was my part in this?”

rather than:

“Was everything my fault?”

Taking responsibility for your part is different from taking responsibility for the entire relationship.

When guilt becomes something bigger

There is also a difference between guilt and shame.

Guilt can sound like:

“I did something I wish I had handled differently.”

Shame can sound more like:

“There is something wrong with me.”

When guilt turns into shame, you may stop looking at what happened and start judging who you are.

You might tell yourself that you’re selfish, cruel, difficult or a bad daughter, son, parent or sibling.

But having boundaries doesn’t automatically make you a bad person.

And choosing distance doesn’t mean you don’t care.

You don’t have to choose between caring and protecting yourself.

One of the most important things to remember is that caring about someone and having contact with them are not necessarily the same thing.

You can love someone and still need distance.

You can understand that someone has their own pain and still recognise the impact their behaviour has had on you.

You can have compassion for another person without abandoning your own boundaries.

What is the guilt telling you?

Instead of immediately asking:

“How do I get rid of this guilt?”

it may be worth asking:

“What is this guilt trying to tell me?”

Is there something you genuinely want to take responsibility for?

Are you worried about what other people think?

Are you struggling with the idea that choosing yourself might hurt someone else?

Or have you learned somewhere along the way that putting your own needs first means you’re being selfish?

Guilt doesn’t always mean you’ve done something wrong.

Sometimes it tells you that something matters to you.

The work is learning to understand what it is telling you, rather than automatically letting it make the decision for you.

Hello, I’m Sarah Swain, an accredited therapist and coach working online across London, South East, Kent and the whole of the UK. I’ve worked as a therapist across the NHS, charities and Employee Assistance Programmes for over 15 years. I am trained in integrative therapy, coaching and EMDR and I support adults navigating estrangement.

Why does my childhood estrangement still affect me?

Perhaps you were estranged from a parent or other family member when you were young.

At the time, you may not have fully understood what was happening.

You may have adapted.

You grew up, built your own life, formed relationships and became an adult.

Perhaps you rarely think about what happened anymore.

And yet, something can bring it back.

Becoming a parent yourself.

A family occasion.

A relationship ending.

Seeing other families together.

Or simply reaching a point in your life where you start looking back differently.

You might find yourself wondering:

“Why is this affecting me now?”

“I thought I’d dealt with this years ago.”

“Why do I still want something from them?”

“Was what happened really my fault?”

You were a child then, but you’re an adult now

One of the difficult things about childhood estrangement is that you experienced it at a particular point in your development.

You may have had very little control over what was happening.

You may have had to adapt to changes in your family without really understanding them.

Perhaps you were expected to accept things that felt confusing.

Or perhaps you simply learned to get on with things because that was what you had to do.

As an adult, you can look back with a different understanding.

You may now have a clearer sense of relationships, parenting, responsibility and the choices adults have.

Sometimes that can change the way you see your childhood.

Becoming a parent can bring things back

For some people, becoming a parent can be particularly significant.

You may find yourself looking at your own childhood through the experience of raising a child.

Questions can surface that you hadn’t previously considered.

“Why did that happen?”

“How could my parent make that decision?”

“Would I treat my own child that way?”

Or perhaps the opposite:

“I can understand my parent in a way I couldn’t when I was younger.”

You might experience compassion, anger, sadness or confusion.

Sometimes all of them.

There isn’t a particular way you’re supposed to feel.

Old family roles can follow us into adulthood

Childhood estrangement can also shape the role you took on within your family.

Perhaps you became the responsible one.

The peacemaker.

The difficult one.

The one who stayed quiet.

The one who tried to keep everyone happy.

Those roles can sometimes continue long after the circumstances that created them have changed.

You may find yourself still seeking approval, avoiding conflict or taking responsibility for other people’s feelings without really understanding why.

That doesn’t mean your childhood has determined who you are.

It may simply be useful information about where some of your patterns began.

What if you still want something from your parent?

This can be one of the hardest things to acknowledge.

You can be an independent adult and still want your parents’ approval.

You can know that someone wasn’t able to give you what you needed and still wish they had.

You can understand why a relationship didn’t work and still grieve the relationship you wanted.

Being an adult doesn’t necessarily remove those needs.

And recognising them doesn’t make you childish or weak.

Sometimes part of moving forward is allowing yourself to acknowledge what you didn’t receive, rather than judging yourself for still wishing you had.

You don’t have to rewrite your childhood

You may never arrive at one neat explanation for what happened.

Perhaps your understanding will change over time.

Perhaps there are things you will never know.

You don’t have to decide that your childhood was entirely good or entirely bad.

You don’t have to excuse what happened.

And you don’t have to blame yourself for things that were outside your control.

You can begin to look at the experience with the understanding you have now, rather than only through the eyes of the child who lived through it.

What does it mean for you now?

The important question may not be:

“Why am I still affected by this?”

It might be:

“What is this experience asking me to understand about myself now?”

Perhaps there are feelings that haven’t had much space.

Perhaps there are old beliefs about yourself or relationships that no longer fit.

Perhaps there are questions about your family that you still want to explore.

Or perhaps you simply want to understand why certain situations affect you in the way they do.

You don’t have to go back and relive everything in order to make sense of it.

Sometimes it is about understanding what happened, how it shaped you and what you want to carry forward into the life you’re living now.

You were a child when it happened.

You’re an adult now.

And you get to decide what that experience means to you today.

Hello, I’m Sarah Swain, an accredited therapist and coach working online across London, South East, Kent and the whole of the UK. I’ve worked as a therapist across the NHS, charities and Employee Assistance Programmes for over 15 years. I am trained in integrative therapy, coaching and EMDR and I support adults navigating estrangement.

Being cut off by someone you love can leave you with a lot of questions.

Perhaps contact stopped suddenly.

Perhaps it became more distant over time.

Or perhaps you’ve been told that they need space, but you don’t understand why.

You may find yourself thinking:

“What have I done?”

“Why won’t they tell me?”

“How can they just walk away?”

“Why can’t we talk about it?”

And perhaps one of the hardest questions:

“How am I supposed to make sense of this when I don’t understand what happened?”

Not knowing can be incredibly painful

When someone chooses no contact or low contact with you, there can be a strong desire to find an explanation.

You might replay conversations.

Go over things you said or did.

Think about key moments in the relationship.

Ask other family members what they know or think.

You may even find yourself trying to piece together a story that makes sense of what has happened.

Sometimes there is a clear explanation.

Sometimes there isn’t.

And sometimes the two people involved have very different perspectives of the relationship.

Your experience is real too

Being the person who has been left behind brings its own grief.

You may be grieving the relationship you had, the relationship you thought you had, or the relationship you hoped you would have in the future.

You might feel sad, rejected, angry, confused, guilty, scared or completely overwhelmed.

You may also feel misunderstood.

Perhaps you’ve been told that you have done something wrong, when that isn’t how you experienced the relationship at all.

It can be incredibly difficult to hold that uncertainty.

Understanding doesn’t always mean agreeing

One of the hardest things about estrangement is that there may not be one version of the story that everyone agrees on.

You may genuinely not understand why the other person has chosen distance.

That doesn’t mean your feelings aren’t valid.

And it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to agree with their understanding of what happened.

At the same time, trying to understand their perspective can sometimes tell you something important about the relationship, even when you see things very differently.

That isn’t about deciding who is right or wrong.

It’s about becoming curious about what happened between you.

What can you do when you don’t have answers?

You may not be able to make the other person explain their decision.

You may not be able to change their mind.

And repeatedly trying to get answers may sometimes create even more distress, particularly if they have asked for space.

But you can begin to look at what is within your control.

You might ask yourself:

What do I know about what has happened?

What have I been told, and what am I assuming?

Is there anything I want to take responsibility for?

What would I want to do differently if I had the opportunity?

What do I need in order to cope with the uncertainty?

These questions aren’t about blaming yourself.

They’re about finding a space for you when you don’t have all the answers.

What if you want the relationship back?

You may desperately want contact to resume. That is understandable.

But wanting reconciliation and being able to reconcile are not necessarily the same thing.

A relationship can only be rebuilt if there is some willingness from both people to engage with what has happened.

Sometimes the most useful place to start isn’t with “How do I get them to speak to me?” but with: “What can I understand about myself, this relationship and what has happened?”

That may eventually help you decide what you want to do next.

It might mean reaching out differently.

It might mean respecting the distance for now.

Or it might mean finding a way to live with not having the resolution you hoped for.

There isn’t one right answer.

You don’t have to work this out alone

Estrangement can leave you feeling as though you’re expected to simply get on with things while privately carrying grief, confusion and unanswered questions.

Therapy can provide a space to talk about what has happened without having to defend yourself or prove that you are right.

My role isn’t to take sides or tell you whether you should pursue reconciliation.

It’s to help you make sense of your experience, understand what you’re carrying and explore what you want for yourself now.

You may not be able to change someone else’s decision.

But you can begin to understand what this experience means for you.

Hello, I’m Sarah Swain, an accredited therapist and coach working online across London, South East, Kent and the whole of the UK. I’ve worked as a therapist across the NHS, charities and Employee Assistance Programmes for over 15 years. I am trained in integrative therapy, coaching and EMDR and I support adults navigating estrangement.

If you’ve chosen to step away or distance yourself from a family relationship, you may have asked yourself this question more than once:

“Am I wrong for doing this?”

You might feel certain about your decision one day, only to question it the next.

You might feel relief and sadness.

Anger and guilt.

Certainty and doubt.

You may even miss the person you’ve chosen not to have contact with.

None of that necessarily means you’ve made the wrong decision.

Estrangement is rarely as straightforward as it can look from the outside.

When everyone seems to have an opinion

Family estrangement can come with a lot of outside opinions.

You may hear things like:

“But they’re your family.”

“You’ll regret it one day.”

“Why can’t you just forgive them?”

Or perhaps people around you simply don’t understand why you have chosen no contact or low contact.

When you’re already questioning yourself, these comments can make things even harder.

You may find yourself trying to explain or justify your decision, even when the reality is much more complicated than a simple explanation can capture.

You don’t have to convince everyone else that your decision was right before you can begin to understand what it means for you.

You can miss someone and still need distance

One of the most difficult things about estrangement is that two things can be true at the same time.

You can love someone and not want contact with them.

You can miss someone and still believe that distance is necessary.

You can feel relieved that you have stepped away and still grieve what you’ve lost.

You can care about someone without wanting the relationship to continue in the same way.

These contradictions can be uncomfortable, but they don’t necessarily mean you are confused.

Sometimes they are simply part of the reality of estrangement.

What if I change my mind?

You may also worry that choosing no contact or low contact means you’ve made a decision you can never change.

But you don’t have to know what you will want forever.

What feels necessary now may change over time.

You may decide to maintain no contact.

You may decide that low contact feels more manageable.

You may eventually want to explore whether the relationship could change.

Or you may decide that you don’t want to revisit it at all.

There isn’t one right outcome.

What matters is having the space to understand what is right for you, rather than making a decision because you feel pressured, guilty or afraid of what other people might think.

What matters to you now?

It can be helpful to look beneath the surface story and ask yourself some different questions.

What happens to me when I have contact with this person?

What happens when I don’t?

What do I need from a relationship for it to feel safe and manageable?

Are my boundaries being respected?

What am I hoping will change?

And perhaps most importantly:

What do I want for myself now?

You don’t have to work out the entire history of the relationship before you can begin answering those questions.

You don’t have to be completely certain

Choosing no contact or low contact doesn’t mean you will never have doubts.

It doesn’t mean you won’t grieve.

And it doesn’t mean you have to stop caring.

Sometimes moving forward starts with allowing yourself to hold all those feelings without immediately turning them into a judgement about whether you’ve made the right decision.

You don’t have to decide today whether this is forever.

You don’t have to prove that you are right.

And you don’t have to decide who is to blame.

You can simply begin by trying to understand what this relationship, and the distance from it, means for you.

Sometimes that is where clarity begins.

Hello, I’m Sarah Swain, an accredited therapist and coach working online across London, South East, Kent and the whole of the UK. I’ve worked as a therapist across the NHS, charities and Employee Assistance Programmes for over 15 years. I am trained in integrative therapy, coaching and EMDR and I support adults navigating estrangement.