Are Therapists Causing a Rise in Parental Estrangement?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Dr. Laura Podcast

Episode Title: Are Therapists Causing a Rise in Parental Estrangement?
Host: Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Date: May 26, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this thought-provoking episode, Dr. Laura Schlessinger takes on the controversial topic of increasing parental estrangement and questions the role therapists may play in fueling this trend. Drawing on personal experience, calls from listeners, social commentary, and psychological theory, Dr. Laura debates whether therapy is sometimes encouraging unnecessary family cut-offs and examines the broader cultural implications of this shift toward severing parental ties—especially over issues she considers minor or subjective.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

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1. Therapists as Catalysts for Estrangement

[01:20]

• Dr. Laura asserts that many therapists are directly contributing to the rise in parental estrangement:

  “So the question I’m asking—are therapists causing a rise in parental estrangements? And the answer is, damn straight they are.”

• She clarifies that while minimizing contact is necessary in genuinely destructive or dangerous family situations, a substantial proportion of estrangements do not meet that threshold.

Moral Obligations and Family Bonds

• Dr. Laura stresses the importance of maintaining at least minimal contact out of moral obligation when possible:

  “If somebody’s parents are dangerous or destructive, yeah, you got to protect yourself. Hit the eject button... But if somebody is just annoying, well, so are you.” [02:10]

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2. Good and Bad Therapy

[03:15]

• Dr. Laura distinguishes between good and bad therapy, admitting that even good therapists can have off days:

  “Even good therapists can do some bad therapy in a day... Poop happens.”

• She emphasizes therapy’s human element and the professional responsibility to acknowledge mistakes.

The Problem with Modern Therapy Culture

• The content and direction of therapy, Dr. Laura warns, is often steered by prevailing social values and not rooted in objective science:

  “A lot of what therapy is over the years has been determined by the social environment, not by science. First of all, psychology is not a science.” [04:20]

• Here, she draws a contrast between “hard science” and psychology, criticizing therapy when it devolves into validating a client without challenging them.

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3. Societal Shifts and Therapist Complicity

[08:32]

• Dr. Laura places blame for some of today’s family estrangement on the “culture of individuality” and on therapists who validate the pursuit of personal happiness at any cost:

  “Therapists are increasingly handmaidens to a culture that just has individuality…emphasizes the pursuit of happiness at any cost.” [09:00]

The Overuse of Psychiatric Labels

• She criticizes the casual application of mental health diagnoses to imperfect but loving parents:

  “Calling every loving parent who is not perfect a narcissist, a borderline personality disorder, a sociopath…Everybody is a narcissist except you and me, right? Just the caller and me. And I’m questionable, okay?” [10:51]

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4. The Danger of Recovered Memory and Overstating Trauma

[08:25]

• Dr. Laura recounts media and therapeutic trends like “recovered memory syndrome” and highlights the potential harm in reclassifying ordinary childhood disappointments as trauma.
• She references past scandals in psychotherapy and emphasizes the distinction between genuine trauma and everyday slights.

Memorable Analogy: “Juvenile Furniture”

• A humorous but pointed anecdote illustrates the way childhood perceptions might later be interpreted as trauma under the influence of therapy:

  “So I said, Dad, what does juvenile mean? And innocently like he’s talking to an adult, he said, ‘it’s what you are.’ I was traumatized...Imagine all of you, your parents say something innocently and you’re traumatized.” [13:21]

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5. Family, Gratitude, and Endurance of Annoyance

[15:40]

• Dr. Laura encourages listeners to balance their individual grievances against the irreplaceable value of family relationships, especially for the sake of grandchildren and multi-generational ties.
• She is critical of the modern approach, which, she argues, prioritizes autonomy and personal happiness at the expense of basic gratitude, affection, and responsibility.

Critical Quote on Family Obligations

“What about prioritizing all the other aspects of family? Gratitude, affection, time with grandchildren—suddenly made passe because you’re rushing to have your identity, your autonomy and your personal happiness, no matter the destruction you leave in your wake.” [16:40]

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6. Parental Annoyance is Universal—not Trauma

[17:48]

• Dr. Laura shares personal family stories, emphasizing that all parents are annoying at times, and that’s a standard part of growing up, not a basis for estrangement or for pathologizing one’s upbringing.

Notable Moment:

• Reflecting on her Italian war-bride mother and the drama of cultural conflict in her childhood, Dr. Laura notes:

  “So we had drama. There was drama. And you know, it got a little annoying because parents are always annoying to kids when we don’t get what we want…But that’s what you do in family.” [19:45]

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Therapists and Responsibility:

  “Therapists are doing this all the time and making money hand over foot because it makes you have no responsibility for your emotional regulation.” [11:12]

• On Cultural Definitions of Dysfunction:

  “Everybody says I had a dysfunctional family. What does that mean? It didn’t look like the families on television?” [14:38]

• On the Real Damage of Overt Parental Abuse:

  “Some parents are blatantly hurtful, evil, unrepentant, so disrespectful of their child that they leave no other option. Some were so destructive when the child was young that no foundation was ever built...But that's a minority.” [17:11]

• Sociologist Quote Cited by Dr. Laura:

  “Today lives are imploded backwards. What is a dysfunctional family? A family where one’s needs were not met. What the hell does that mean? What needs did you have in an 8 year old? ... If it’s not happifying, you are destroyed.” (Eva Ilouz, Saving Modern Therapy) [12:32]

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Key Segment Timestamps

• Intro & Main Question – [01:00]
• Why Therapists Sometimes Encourage Cut-off – [02:15]
• Limits and Human Error in Therapy – [03:15]
• Culture, Ideology, and Therapy’s “Soft Science” – [04:20]
• Media & Memory Fads (Recovered Memories) – [08:25]
• Family Labels & Over-diagnosing Parents – [10:45]
• Personal Anecdote: “Juvenile Furniture” – [13:21]
• Defining Dysfunctional Families – [14:38]
• Emphasizing Family Over Hurt Feelings – [15:40]
• Dr. Laura’s Own Family Story – [19:45]

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Final Thoughts

Dr. Laura’s tone throughout is direct, occasionally humorous, and unmistakably tough-love: she urges listeners to reexamine their roles in family tension, resist reductive labels, and to distinguish between genuine abuse and ordinary human imperfection. Her challenge to therapists is to take responsibility for the cultural impact of their advice and to practice discernment; her message to adult children is to value connection over solipsism, and to check therapy’s narrative against the long-view of real family loyalty and obligation.

If you’re wrestling with family estrangement or thinking about therapy, this episode offers a counter-narrative—one that values reconciliation, self-reflection, and responsibility.

Transcript

[Dr. Laura Schlessinger]

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So whether it's perimenopause, menopause or any other health journey, it's easier at Sprouts Farmer's Market. Thank you for listening to my morning monologue brought to you by Golden Crest Metals, helping everyday investors protect what they've worked so hard to build by adding gold and silver to retirement portfolios. Learn [e-mail] Protect Remember, you can hear my radio program daily on Sirius XM Triumph and connect with me 24 [e-mail] I'm going to talk about something that's pretty close to home because I deal with this on the show every day. So the question I'm asking are therapists causing a rise in parental estrangements? And the answer is, damn straight they are. Now, I'll start out by saying I have supported people having less. I go from minimize contact if it's that awful. But it's not all awful. So just minimize contact. Minimally call and make sure everybody's okay. Some moral obligations if they fit into that scenario. But if somebody's parents are dangerous or destructive, yeah, you got to protect yourself. Hit the eject button. I would say, though, that probably a huge percentage of the estrangements are not dangerous or destructive. And as I say on the air all the time, if your parents are just annoying, well, so are you. You think you're not. You think you're not annoying. Trust me, you are. Everybody is, to some extent. Except for Mike. He's shaking his head no, Mike, trust me, you have moments. And so do I. Anyway, moving Right along. But if somebody is just annoying, well, there are other parts to the relationship that are valuable. And to cut parents off from their grandkids for no good reason other than the therapist told you, you have to do this because you need this to survive. I want to talk about this a little more because I know that some of you are in therapy now. There's good therapy and bad therapy, and even good therapists can do some bad therapy in a day. When I say that, I'm remembering one particular circumstance. It had to be 20 years ago. I remember the moment where I did it, did said something, and I went, I just blew this badly. Now, a lot of times you can dig yourself out by saying, you know what? That didn't make sense, now that I think about it. Let me look at that again. You know, you tell the truth and you work with the person. There was no coming back from this one. So even good therapists, which I think I believe was, am not a practicing therapist anymore. You have your bad therapy moments because you're human. Poop happens. And if you get so scared, it's like being a surgeon. If you get so scared about, you know, nicking something, then you're going to not be able to do the surgery anymore. You've got to plunge ahead and be as humanly positive and powerfully smart and responsible as you can be. But we're talking today about some bad therapy. And I'm going to say this, and some of you are going to freak out, but the therapists out there, they know that a lot of what therapy is over the years has been determined by the social environment, not by science. First of all, psychology is not a science. Science is when you take a rat, knock his head off, take some cells out, do some work, and it can be repeated infinitely. And anybody else can repeat it, too. That's a hard science. And I have a PhD in hard science before I came into counseling thingy, okay? So I know the difference between hard science and wussy science. This is not even science. It's not science. You can't repeat stuff. And some people are good therapists, not because they learned how to be good therapists, but they learned certain concepts and. And foundations of behavior and neurochemistry in the brain. And they've learned dynamics in people and families, et cetera. So they have plenty of experience, but they're able to make connections, take stars out of the universe and pull it together and make something out of it that's unique. More so, a lot of people charge for their 45 minutes of listening to you repeat how you feel. I could do that while dozing. Okay, As people age, it's normal to ask what more they could be doing to take care of their health. It's important to be proactive, especially when it comes to your brain health. Don't wait for something to feel off before taking action. Make your next checkup count. Ask your doctor about your risk factors for dementia and a cognitive assessment. Visit brainhealthmatters.com for more information and resources

[Morgan Stewart]

provided by Lily hey everyone, it's me, Morgan Stewart, and I have a new podcast called the Morgan Stewart Show. Join me each week as I talk about pop culture, fashion, my personal life, and just a warning, I'm gonna be giving my opinion on everything. I'll also have some really fun guests to join in on the fun I'm the Morgan Stewart show is out now. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts or watch full video on YouTube.

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[Dr. Laura Schlessinger]

So I remember when I was on KFI AM 640 more stimulating talk radio in Los Angeles. 50,000 watts. I was the Heavy hitter at that point. And they had. I'm not going to give names. They had another person not saying the gender. And there are only two. So the person was one of those two. That's another thing therapists are playing games with. Oh, we have to be sympathetic because people have delusions about what they are. No, that's called a problem to be resolved, not something to be accepted and made into fact. But that's a lot of what goes on in the therapy thing. So at 20 years ago, one of the hosts asked this person and myself to come on to discuss this thing about memories that you couldn't remember and then suddenly you would remember. And they were always about having been molested. Recovered memory syndrome. Some therapists actually went to jail on this recovered memory syndrome on three continents. They proved this was a non entity. And I always like to say there being no, no post traumatic stress disorder in military. If you could just submerge it. Boom, gone. Oh, happy days. It doesn't work that way. Okay, so our opinions of how memory works, what really constitutes trauma. You've heard me say, oh, you know, I. Post traumatic. Well, what happened? Are you in the military? Well, no. This thing happened. I was very disappointed. My feelings were hurt. It was quite traumatic. Some therapist told you that was a trauma. Really? Wow. There are therapists that do that? Yes, Babies. How your identity is for them. Ah. And all this goes in to what you hold dear as to truth. But therapists are increasingly handmaidens to a culture that just has individuality. Not even marriage, not even parenting, not even family. But just individuality is everything emphasizes the pursuit of happiness at any cost. I'll just automatically be happy if I tell my parents to go mm themselves. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the way some therapists recommend no contact just because the family is annoying. Annoying is to be tolerated. If annoying is not to be tolerated, then no person on the face of the earth can be tolerated. Okay, so a lot of you go to therapists just to corroborate questionable claims of emotional abuse at your parents Hands. They liked my brother better. I had that yesterday. They liked my brother better. Maybe there's a good reason. Maybe your brother was easier to get along with. That happens, you know, if you're a parent and you have a bunch of kids and one of them is a pain in the ass and the other one cooperative, warm, loving, attentive. Where are you drawn? That happens in families. That happens in clubs and groups. Happens everywhere. Okay, now, disappointments, it's not life altering trauma. Calling Every loving parent who is not perfect. A narcissist, a borderline personality disorder, a sociopath. You hear that all the time in my show. Everybody is a narcissist except you and me, right? Just the caller and me. And I'm questionable, okay? But everybody else is a freaking narcissist and you are a victim of them. Therapists are doing this all the time and making money hand over foot because it makes you have no responsibility for your emotional regulation. There's a quote. Let me find this. There's a quote. Let me get to that quote. Yeah. Sociologist Eva Ilawazz wrote in Saving Modern Therapy, Emotions and the Culture of Self Help. Quote. Today lives are imploded backwards. What is a dysfunctional family? A family where one's needs were not met. What the hell does that mean? What needs did you have in an 8 year old? I'm trying to figure this out. And how does one know that one's needs were not met in childhood? Simple. Look at your present situation. If it's not happifying, you are destroyed. Now, I love looking back over childhood perceptions because I'll ask people all the time if you've been listening for any period of time. So when you were 9 years old, 6 years old, 12 years old, I always ask a particular time because there are different states of development. So I ask a particular time and I'm getting their perception. Now, unless things were overt felonies, we have perceptions. How do I know that? Let me give you an example. I'm in the back of the car. I'm about 7, 8 years old, 9 maybe somewhere in there. And we're driving. My dad is driving, my mother's in the front, I'm in the back before my sister was born. So we're driving and there's this huge building, like an airplane, plain hanger size. That's how they used to make the big stores. And it said juvenile furniture. Now you and I know what that means. It means furniture for kids, right? No, not when you're 8, 9 years old and you're me. No, not at all. What you do is you go juvenile. That means a bad kid, juvenile delinquent. I knew that. Juvenile delinquent. They have a store for bad kids. Furniture store for bad. So I was confused, so I said, dad, what does juvenile mean? And innocently like he's talking to an adult, he said, it's what you are. I was traumatized, which explains how I am today. Just in case you were wondering how I got so wacky. Seriously, I was so Upset? My dad thinks I'm a bad kid. So imagine all of you, your parents say something innocently and you're traumatized. And you tell your therapist when you're 30, 40, 50, he said, that's what you are. And the therapist goes, oh my God, you should never talk to that person again. It explains why you can't have a relationship while you're self centered, while you're not giving, while you're. Why you sit and mope about your being a victim instead of taking on the world like just about everybody, whether or not they're in a wheelchair or an iron lung. And what are you complaining about? Juvenile furniture. Okay, The present moment, hidden traumas and family dysfunction. Everybody says I had a dysfunctional family. What does that mean? What does that mean? It didn't look like the family's on television. What did it mean? 99% of you have no definition for that other than you're not pleased. Wasn't perfect. Your parents didn't kiss your ass, give you everything you asked for, tell you every decision you made was brilliant, support every dumb idea you had. Oh my God. Dysfunctional family, that's presumed to be the root cause of unhappiness. Well, dump the parent and you'll spontaneously have good mental health. What about prioritizing all the other aspects of family? Gratitude, affection, time with grandchildren suddenly made passe because you're rushing to have your identity, your autonomy and your personal happiness, no matter the destruction you leave in your wake. Current sociologist has said that a lot of therapists today are detachment brokers. They carry the social authority to soothe any feelings of guilt or obligation, responsibility because you were traumatized. Now, some parents are blatantly hurtful, evil, unrepentant, so disrespectful of their child that they leave no other option. Some were so destructive when the child was young that no foundation was ever built. I was stoned and drunk and violent. And now they're 30 and I want my kid to talk to me. Yeah, good luck with that. So I think I covered it. I think my parents were annoying. They were definitely annoying. They had their issues. Mother was a war bride from Italy. My dad evacuated her from northern Italy by marrying her at the end of the war. I'm a war baby. His family, nice Jewish family in Brooklyn was very non accepting of my gorgeous Italian mother. Italian Catholic mother. And that was definitely traumatizing. My mother gives up her family, her country, everything. Her mother was already dead, but her brother and his family and her home, her dad, her country, to be treated like shit. So we had drama. There was drama. And you know, it got a little annoying because parents are always annoying to kids when we don't get what we want. When I had to babysit for my sister instead of go to a party, that was annoying. Seriously annoying. They should have paid somebody else to babysit. They should have paid me. I don't think I'd be bitching 100 years later, but that's what you do in family. Okay, I covered a lot of territory there. I hope you're all going to start thinking about this in a more healthy way. My number 1-800-375-2872. If you like this podcast, be sure to rate it on Apple Podcasts or your favorite place to listen to my podcast. Of course, I'd love if you gave me five stars. And be sure to share this podcast with a friend on Facebook or your preferred social media platform. SiriusXM Triumph is Life presenting you with challenges?

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[Dr. Laura Schlessinger]

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[Morgan Stewart]

Hey everyone, it's me, Morgan Stewart, and I have a new podcast called the Morgan Stewart Show. Join me each week as I talk about pop culture, fashion, my personal life and just a warning, I'm going to be giving my opinion on everything. I'll also have some really fun guests to join in on the fun The Morgan Stewart show is out now. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts or watch full video on YouTube.

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[Dr. Laura Schlessinger]

I thought it was safe.

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