Joshua Coleman is the author of the new book Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties & How to Heal the Conflict. His other books include When Parents Hurt. He is a psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Q: What inspired you to write Rules of Estrangement?
A: I had been through a painful estrangement from my own daughter many years ago and at the time there was nothing written to help me. We eventually reconciled and I realized that there was a big need for others to have the tools for reconciliation and managing the pain.
Q: The psychotherapist and author Lori Gottlieb said that the book “candidly addresses parental estrangement from every conceivable angle, steering readers away from shame and blame to a place of newfound understanding and empowerment.” What do you think of that description?
A: I am grateful for it. My goal is to avoid reducing the conversation to abusive parents or overly entitled adult children but to try to empathize with both perspectives
Q: What do you think are some of the most common perceptions and misconceptions about estrangement?
A: Currently the media is replete with first person essays and books about people who decided to cut off their parents and how much better they feel as a result. While abusive parents are certainly one pathway to estrangement it's not necessarily the most common.
Other pathways include the parents' divorce, a troubled or manipulative son-in-law or daughter-in-law, mental illness--in the parents certainly, but also mental illness in the adult child, and a need to feel more separate from the parent. Also, political differences, values, money, and therapists who assume that estrangement is the best path, right or wrong.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: For both parents and adult children to understand how much the culture has moved away from the institutions that guided family life for millennia.
Many parents are still operating from the honor thy mother and thy father, respect thy elders, family is forever ideology and adult children are more oriented towards relationships being a foundation of mental health, happiness, and personal growth.
Helping both sides to understand the other’s is key and ideally, to meet each other with empathy not contempt or anger.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I have a Substack called Family Troubles which allows me to write longer pieces and explore other ideas that I'm thinking about
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: People can learn more about me at www.drjoshuacoleman.com or sign up for my Substack, Family Troubles, here: joshuacolemanphd.substack.com/subscribe.
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