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- [00:01]
A
This is Yang On Purpose with Deborah and Dr. Rob Maldonado of CreativeMind.
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Join us each week for a deep approach to personal growth through our neuromindra coaching method grounded in Jungian psychology, Eastern spirituality and current neuroscience.
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Be empowered to escape the trap of
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fixing yourself and step into your purpose to live a more conscious life. Let's begin. Hello, welcome to another episode of Jung on Purpose. I am Debra Maldonado.
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C
Dr. Rob, welcome to the program.
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B
And we're excited to continue our talk about family, early childhood. And today we are talking about estrangement. Do you have a no contact experience with a family member? And we'll go into the stats, we'll go into why it happens, what it is, and what you can do about it and how you can be empowered in that situation. And before we begin, I do want to ask you to subscribe to our channel. If you're watching us on YouTube, there's just a button in the corner you can click. Or if you are listening to us on the podcast services, please don't forget to subscribe to get every episode of Young on Purpose.
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C
Yeah, we definitely appreciate your attention.
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B
Yeah.
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C
So there's an amazing stat that I came across. 27% of US adults have had some kind of experience with this estrangement from a family member. Now what does that mean? 27% sounds like. Yeah, relatively low number. But if we translate it into what are the actual numbers? 67 million people in the US alone. So you can imagine also worldwide, that's what we're talking about, 67.
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B
Which is why the topic has always been very popular, because there's so many people affected by it.
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C
Yeah. And of course there's a lot of factors that go into it. We're just presenting our perspective, our approach, especially as family Guild practitioners.
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B
And we're talking about any family member. So it could be a parent, it could be a sibling, it could be a grandmother, it could be a stepmother. The 27%. Now can you let me know? Estrangement doesn't necessarily mean no contact. It just means sort of like you're in their life, but you're not really involved. Like you're. It's kind of like. Or is it completely no contact, just to be clear?
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C
Yeah, I mean, the research shows it. These patterns are on and off, kind of, and it's done and it's the end of the story. There's usually a reconciliation. But a strange does mean that there's a kind of rupture, a separation in the relationship. There might little contact or no contact. At all.
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B
Like you marry the wrong person or even younger, as a teenager, you could run away and just go off and become, you know, go, go live in a, go in a band. And you're conservative, very religious. Parents are, you know, you're escaping that. It could be because of religion. It could be because of the parents treatment of the child or the child's inability to accept the parent's love. So it doesn't just, it's not always about just the parent. I know there's. Oprah had a popular show recently, a special, I think a couple months ago, about no Contact. And they interviewed the parents, they interviewed the children, they interviewed the psychologists. And it was very interesting, their take on it of, of what the, the child was going through. But no one really talked about the work of themselves. It was more about how do I process the grief. So I, I think we can offer something a little more than that.
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C
Yeah. I would say Oprah's view is a sociological perspective. They're looking at social problems from that perspective. We, because we look at depth psychology, it's completely different. You'll see.
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B
Well, the therapists are.
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C
How would they look at it on what you were talking about? So approximately 10% are estranged from parent or child. In other words, it's that parent child dynamic. Right. So 10% of that is. But it's still about 25 million. That's a lot of people. 85% is estranged for one year, approximately a year. But 50% of those are estranged for four years or more. Right. So significant numbers.
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B
And some people don't reconcile until the deathbed. When that happens, you know, they, they find I, I have so many clients I've worked with over the years that have been estranged from their parent, a father or mother, and they're on the deathbed and all of a sudden they say everything they were waiting their whole life to say. And the parent, because they're dying, says all the things that they wanted to say. And it's such a tragedy that it has to wait till that last moment.
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C
Yes. There's also a pretty good understanding of the causes. And again, they're varied and complex, but it breaks down into money, for example, inheritance.
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B
Oh, yeah. Being cut out of the will. Yeah.
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C
In law conflict. So, you know, the family that you marry into, of course, then it has to interact with your nuclear family and thus drama ensues. So often also you have the spouse, your spouse or some, you know, the kind of. Versus the family of origin. Mm. Let's say your, your mother doesn't get along with your wife or vice versa. The idea that you have to go at it alone. Right. That you don't need others or. Or you should separate from that nuclear family that. That family that raised you emphasis on personal happiness, the pursuit of happiness. Right. So you don't stay in your hometown because you have to go and pursue your happiness in New York. And therefore you're off and. And you lose contact with family.
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B
You say, what about cults? I mean, here are the stories of like Scientology and some of these strange cults where the. They tell you to cut off from your family because they want to control you. Is. Did that come into play with the. With the research? Because I would think that that would be a bigger, you know, a part of it that the cults encourage you to cut your ties because you're now in this spiritual circle and not, you know, the spiritual like we think, but like whatever. That cult is driving to separate you from the people that are kind of awake and outside of the bubble. So you don't leave the tribe in a way.
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C
Yeah. I would say that's an offshoot of religion because many times it's religion that divides. Let's say I marry into. Or you marry into a Catholic family and you're Jewish. Yeah. Or you're an atheist. Right. That kind of drives a wedge between people. Not necessarily. Of course. Sometimes it brings people together. I know, I know. People that convert. Right. To fit into the family that they're marrying into.
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B
Well, you know, what's interesting is that if you look at the other side of it, if 27% are estranged, 73% are not. So with all the diversity that we are in marriage and culture and religion, like majority of us really make it work. And I wonder if it's just. Well, I think some families are truly happily blended and others just tolerate. So it depends. But. But it's interesting that we. We can as. As human beings get together and cross culture, cross families, and be so diverse within our own family field to get along. What we. We were talking about this is as a. Thinking about, like, let's just talk about the internal family, the. The nuclear family, we used to say. And there's this field, this family field we talk about in our archetypal family field methodology, that this is kind field that kind of constellates the family together and we share, you know, ideas and with each other.
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C
Yeah, that's a whole different perspective then because we understand now from depth psychology, which grew out of Jung's work, and, and in our approach, I. I would Say we're really the first to create a family model that is based on depth psychology. But in a coaching model there are the other schools of thought that include that but they're more therapeutic models that you have to you know, kind of go to, to a therapist or an analyst to get some work done that way. But in a coaching model then people can approach this work in, in a non clinical, non kind of stigmatizing way.
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B
Family members with personality disorders and self self diagnosing yourself or others villainizing of the parent. Yeah, I think what, what's happening is that there are, there's with the Internet, I mean now it's even it's just keep growing in social media. There's a lot of you know, armchair advice on online and people that aren't really experts. There's our people that are experts. But then people are self diagnosing their situation by just hearing a video or reading a book and oh, I must have the, this family member must be this label or that label. And then the narcissistic mother, the narcissistic father.
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C
When I heard about that, I mean I, I did a lot of diagnosing through testing so psychological evaluations we would never making a diagnosis just based especially of narcissism which is kind of a serious condition simply based on external behavior. In other words, the testing was the, the key that you would actually test them with these intricate psychological tests and then you would accumulate a whole slew of them. Then you would use your clinical jud and and do make the diagnosis. Whereas people are kind of flippantly offhand pointing at their fingers at people and saying that's a narcissistic person. That that's not a good idea. Just at the humanistic level we, you know, we don't want to treat each other as human beings that way.
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B
And then there they can only be that. And then you start well here's what happens with a label is that you, you. Well here's what I, I, I, I re see this all the time. I must because I read them for curiosity and they keep feeding them to me the algorithm. But they have like a slideshow of these are the traits that your, your parent. They may be a narcissist if they are this and they're like they don't share love with you or they don't, you know, they don't acknowledge you or, or they put you down or they criticize you and there's some more serious things. But just because your parent criticizes you or maybe doesn't Notice you doesn't mean they could be preoccupied. There could be a million reasons for this. And then you probably your parent is a narcissist. And I feel like when you give someone a label, they cannot be anyone else. They cannot be anyone. They can only be that. And then your mind starts to formulate and only notice the negativity around that parent. The, the, the bad thing, see, and it's going to reinforce that label. And then they, you, you're not going to be able to see any other part of that drive more estranged, which could drive the estrangement.
- [10:59]
C
Yeah, so, so back to the archetypal family field. The understanding is that it's a field of consciousness that we inherit in our family system, that as we're growing up in this unit, the unit of the family operates as an organism, as one organism. And it's just like any organism, it's always looking for homeostasis, meaning balance. And it finds a way to balance itself out through the members, each playing a certain role in the family, kind of bringing in elements that are needed in the family. So one child might be the hero that goes out and carries on the family business or creates new businesses and helps the family out. Another one might be the slacker or the, the trickster, the boat child. All these roles are not archetypes themselves. They're layers of the psyche that we call archetypes. These archetypes are invisible. We cannot see them. So a lot of people make the mistake in pop culture that they, they call the roles that the individuals are playing the archetype. But these are type contains its opposite. And so somebody could be the hero in a, in a creative way or the, the anti hero. And coming from the same archetype, I
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B
love that I, I actually that is the most simplest way to explain it because I've been trying to explain what the difference between the role and the archetype is. And that is brilliant because the archetype can. Contains all the dark and light. And so the role is part of that, like the personal expression of that archetype, but in a very specific way that's related to their personal experience, like a personal level based on their conditioning, their tendencies, their genetic predispositions, all those things.
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C
That's right. And, and here's the, the, the real important element of this archetypal family feel, it's that it's internalized. The whole mental structure is internalized in the individual. So that even if you run away, even if you say, you know, my, my parents were narcissistic, and I'm not going to have any contact with them. You're carrying those elements in your own mind and wherever you go you're going to have to deal with them because these elements will show up in your external.
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B
Well what usually happens, and we see this is that they show up in. Whether you're estranged or not, they show up with your as bosses, they show up as in society. You're triggered by people that have those traits and you're constantly like fighting the world in a way because of that initial fight. And you don't know why, like why does this irritate me or why do I keep meeting these people that are, you know, like if you're feeling like the victim, you're feeling have to be really careful and unconsciously brings you to situations that are going to reflect and reinforce that role that you took. So you could take the role of the victim and then have that archetypally in your life. Like that your personality is going to constellate around that archetype and then you can't be anyone else. But when you identify with the label you can't be anyone else either because it would, it would disrupt the ego, it would disrupt the identity that, that we're so our ego so ties itself to for survival.
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C
Absolutely.
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A
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- [15:16]
C
The psychological principle to understand, and this is easily understood, that an internal conflict becomes an external conflict. And so whatever conflict you carry or you, you acquire, right? The, the things that constellate in your psyche as you're growing up, they become internalized. Meaning those internal conflicts within you or that appeared in the family but you internalize will then be expressed throughout your life. So this is the importance of the inner work is that first of all you realize that it is internal that you're not only dealing with individuals that you left behind or that you're still talking to or relating to at the family level. Because many People tell us, well, my relationship with my mother was strained when I was a child, but now we're okay. And we were best friends and all that. Well, that doesn't matter. The early experience is what that that constellation is, wasn't. It's what's internalized. So that the conflict, it's still within you relationship with that parent.
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B
We see that a lot when we work with our clients. And they say, well, I, you know, had a tough relationship with my father, but now we get along great now. And that usually happens because parents are. When they raise you, they're in their 20s, maybe early 30s. They're very like we talk about the emotional, immature parent. People have kids when they're emotionally immature. We don't actually reach maturity as adults until we're in our 30s. So it's like not a pathology. It's what parents at that age are very young and very not, you know, fully developed yet either. And so of course, naturally they're going to be more Rogist automatically. But I think what. What you're saying is we tell them that, yeah, that's fine. But all this stuff that you assumed about them when you were younger is still in you, even though consciously you're having a great relationship now. It doesn't go anywhere. And those patterns need to find a place to express themselves. So it's going to keep getting expressed. And the reason is not because we have. It's trying to be a cruel. Our unconscious is trying to be cruel to us, but it's trying to make us aware of it so we can deal with it. So I think the biggest difference with our work and some other work is that we don't want to clear these things out. We want to open them up. We want to move toward them. We want to just get rid of our patterns. And in a, like a tapping or whatever magical cure, we want to look at them because they're inside of that is gold. And it's going to help us really have true power in our life. You were talking about last time, the ocean is where carries us to the next phase of our life.
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C
Yeah. And this is a salient point that it impacts the way we do relationships as adults. It impacts the kind of work and the meaning that we find or the lack of meaning that we find in our work and the kind of money that we kind of end up attracting into our lives, kind of our financial situations. Because all those things are learned very early on and they have to do with the narrative that we carry into life about who we are and what's possible for us in the world.
- [18:31]
B
And so one of the things we wanted to talk about is that when we usually estrange from our parents after we're past that nine years old, because we can't leave our parents when we're nine and just go off in the world. Maybe we could, maybe there's some exceptions like Tom Sawyer about what, what, you know, like what happens later in life didn't just happen as adults. Like we think that, oh, we went to that family barbecue and mom did it again and I'm done, you know, I'm done with her and I'm not going to talk to her again. She embarrassed me again in front of everyone. Or she's an alcoholic or a drug addict or whatever happened that some kind of addiction that's interfering with you having a good relationship. And you're like no, I'm done. But you're, but what we were saying before is that the family field that's formed when we're younger, those ruptures start to happen very, very young. Like we, we, we may not be able to see them yet, but the rupture happens early on. And we just sometimes at adulthood it hits an apex where we have to, it, it shows up and, and, and abruptly ends the relationship.
- [19:33]
C
Yeah. Usually just like at the individual level. The, the, the thing is not the thing. Right. The issue that the, the individual thinks is, is the, the cause of the rupture is not actually it. There, there's been decades in the making these patterns, these family patterns that they even transcend the, the individual family and, and go into a cross generational patterns. Yeah. So that it's, it's interesting when you start to open up the unconscious mind that you start to uncover so much. And it's like you say we're not trying to clear this and we're not rejecting our family system. On the contrary, it's a way to really step into its power and its lessons that it holds for so that all that unconscious content is really able to feed us, to nourish us in a new way. It's almost like the transformation requires those elements that are in the unconscious in order to transform itself into.
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B
Now we're talking and we're talking about various issues with the family. It's just sometimes it's parent being cold or, or being busy at work or having 400 kids and not paying attention to one or, or a child dies and it's like the no. 1 and they become the golden child and the family is never the same. And then As a coach in the theft system or archetypal family field system, we look at it more as like the trauma treatment or whatever. That's separate from this. This is really, it's, it's a self. It's really for people with, who have a strong sense of self, the ego strong. They're functioning in the world. And, and I think that's most people. I think it's like 90% of the people is, is really high functioning and, and it's about going to the next level. It's about whether you're, when you're, if you're estranged from the parent. That rupture, like we said, disrupted the family field and we're carrying it within us. Just separating ourselves and no contact with that person is not going to, it may help with, you know, the conscious, your environment. Right. You're, you're changing the environment. But we also need to go inside and look at what assumptions am I making, what are my projections, what, how am I seeing the world? And we can actually use that experience to understand ourselves better and where, what role we played in that field and how do we want to break free of our role. So if you carry the role of victim, would you want, you want to be free of that versus carrying that? I just moved from my parents and then always talk about that parent being terrible and that's my life and that defines me. What if we could be free of that field? Right. What if we can be free of that story and not whether, whether you're not you reconcile or not, you actually become empowered so that whatever happened with that parent doesn't become a defining like narrative in our life and we can be free.
- [22:27]
C
Yeah. So the research indicates that many who cut off contact still long for relationship. In other words, it's a natural part of ourselves to always want to connect to family. It's still there despite the anger or the rupture. Repair usually starts with a parent. So the parent might reach out to a phone call or a letter and say, listen, let's try to reconcile, let's make some contact. But it has to include respect for the adult child or their independence. If there is a lack of respect, then it's difficult to mend the relationship. But through respect, through kind of putting things aside and agreeing to disagree. I know politics has been played a big role in many divisions nowadays, kind of saying, okay, you have your beliefs, I have my beliefs, but let's try to get along for the sake of the family.
- [23:23]
B
But I do want to leave you with that. You know, this idea that whatever, that even if it's a terrible situation where you left your family from, it cannot, it doesn't have to define you for the rest of your life and that you can actually use that information and use that experience for your growth. So nothing is lost. So I think a lot of people think I, I, I'm forever damaged from that experience and I'm going to carry that the rest of my life. But what if it, what if we can transmute that energy, that experience into something that will empower you? And maybe it's, you know, a lot of our coaches and people I know turn that into, I want to help others who had that same problem, you know, and it becomes, you know, your purpose in life. So nothing is wasted.
- [24:07]
C
Yeah, absolutely. And even separation is sometimes healthy, right? It's required. Yeah. And often it's temporary. Again, people need their space and time to do their, you know, work, to individuate not, not individualized, but individual meaning, finding themselves, finding their purpose. Those kind of experiences are valuable.
- [24:28]
B
Yeah. So if you have a great family life and just be your of the 70% and if you're have challenges like I think leaving with that fact that it doesn't have to make a permanent scar on your life, you don't have to be defined by it because that's only happened on the ego level. And we all know that we're much more than the ego and, and that there's a something deeper within us that has never been harmed, has never been damaged and that is pure potential that we have within us. And this is from the Upanishads in Eastern philosophy. So we know that to be true. And we'll see you next week. Take care everyone. Bye bye. Thank you for joining us for Young on Purpose this week. Don't forget to subscribe and if you want more information on our work, go to creativemindlife.com we'll see you next week. Take care.