If You’re Estranged From A Parent, The Connection Continuum Helps Describe Your Reality
Often when someone hears you’re estranged from a parent, they’ll say something like:
“Is going no-contact really necessary? Isn’t there another way? Does your parent really deserve that?”
Living through my own complicated journey as an estranged daughter and working as a trauma healing practitioner with many folks who are estranged from a parent, I know that is the wrong question.
Instead, I encourage people to ask themselves these questions:
How much contact with my parent or caregiver allows me to…
live my best, most connected life right now?
do my own healing?
feel close and connected to my partner or friends?
be the best parent I can be to my kids?
feel at home in my nervous system?
I came up with a concept to help us think about this.
Introducing The Connection Continuum
Every adult parent-child relationship exists on a continuum between extremely close and totally estranged.
On the very close side of the continuum is a relationship where you talk several times a week, you lean on your parent and perhaps they lean on you. Maybe your parent is one of the first people you share news with.
In the middle of the continuum is a cordial relationship where perhaps you talk to your parent infrequently, and perhaps you share only surface level things.
On the estranged side of the continuum there’s no active relationship, and perhaps your parent doesn’t know where to contact you.
I bet you’ve already been working with this concept, but you may not have had a name for it.
Just about everyone I know who is estranged from a parent has tried living at different points on the connection continuum.
In my Estranged workshop and in my individual work with estranged folks, we explore the connection continuum and what’s true for you as you consider these questions.
Many folks notice that having a name for this and exploring within this frame gives them more of a sense of agency, self-compassion, and validation.
Some folks notice that low-contact is a better fit for their particular life right now.
Others notice that no-contact is where they need to be.
Your spot on the connection continuum may continue to change over time. My hope for you is that you know that you deserve to live your most beautiful life, wherever that spot may be.
Annie Schuessler Zam helps trauma survivors with healing and nervous system regulation in San Francisco and online everywhere through Brainspotting and Internal Family Systems informed coaching. She is the creator of Rebel Therapist Podcast where practitioners tell their own personal stories of healing.