Navigating Estrangement Situations

Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson

Being Well

Health & Fitness, Education, Self-improvement, Mental Health

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2021

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’ve received a substantial number of questions from our listeners regarding familial estrangement: when one family member distances themselves from the others, or chooses not to interact with them at all. It’s a common and extremely challenging situation, and the pain related to it can be particularly intense during the holidays. Today on Being Well, Dr. Rick and Forrest Hanson discuss family estrangement, particularly focusing on parents and children, and how the questions we engage in this territory apply more broadly to how we balance our own boundaries with the responsibilities we have toward other people.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, and welcome to Being Well, I'm Forest Hanson.
0:10.0	If you're new to the podcast, this is where we explore the practical science of lasting
0:14.2	well-being, and if you've listened to before, welcome back.
0:18.0	We're fortunate to have very engaged listeners, and we get a lot of emails containing questions.
0:24.2	Most of those are probably what you'd expect.
0:27.0	It's about how to improve a meaningful relationship, build a particular inner strength, or overcome
0:32.3	some common psychological challenge, like anxiety or depression.
0:37.5	But one group of questions that's come up more frequently than I expected has to do
0:41.5	with familial astrangement.
0:43.8	This occurs when one member of a family distances themselves from the others, or chooses to
0:48.4	not interact with them at all.
0:51.2	Research conducted in 2020 suggests that roughly a quarter of Americans are estranged from
0:56.5	a relative.
0:57.5	It's an extremely challenging and perhaps surprisingly common situation, and the pain related
1:02.7	to it only intensifies around the holidays when people are swamped with family-centric
1:08.0	messages.
1:09.5	Even if this isn't something that you're dealing with personally, the questions that we engage
1:13.1	in this territory get to broader questions having to do with balancing our own boundaries
1:18.1	with the responsibilities we have toward other people.
1:21.9	That's what we're going to be talking about today, how we can think about and navigate
1:25.8	astrangement situations, including the balance between finding the distance we need and honoring
1:31.1	our commitments to others.
	...

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