"I tried for years to have an amicable and fulfilling relationship with my family of origin, but whatever I did, there were problems, strife, conflict and unhappiness. Over time, I learned that psychology didn't necessarily have all the answers to this very complex problem, and that I needed to reach into my heart and soul for spiritual answers to provide myself with comfort. I learned to be more generous and to focus on all the things for which I felt grateful. I now try to practice gratitude and generosity daily. I give myself permission to go on with my life and to feel good about myself despite having living parents and a sister who will have nothing to do with me or my wife or children.

All of us who come from dysfunctional families where we felt judged, criticized, unwanted and unloved are eager for alternative ways to be with our families of creation; our second chance family of partners, children, close friends, and community. When families of origin unravel due to bigotry, alcohol and drug abuse, coldness, a lack of generosity or other life negating behaviors, we're faced with the challenge of making up for earlier deficits with spiritual and psychological growth. I am grateful to have learned the spiritual, psychological, and cognitive skills that help me grow and achieve inner peace and to have the opportunity to share these tools with all of you.

I hope my writing will help you overcome your pain and add to your psychological and spiritual evolution and serenity."

Mark Sichel's writing on boosting self-esteem, combating anxiety disorders, winning at drug and alcohol recovery and much more can be found online at www.psybersquare.com. Mark's book, Healing from Family Rifts, is available NOW at your local bookstore and at online retailers such as www.amazon.com.

Here, Mark responds to some of the questions he is most frequently asked:

1. What is the single biggest cause of family estrangement?
   
2. Is family estrangement more common than it used to be?
   
3. How can people prevent rifts and estrangement in their own families?
   
4. How do you know the "right thing"?
   
5. How do people learn to feel peace when they are cut off from their families?
   
6. What can I do to get over the shock of a family member saying he or she never wants to speak with the family again?
   
7. How does a person whose family has disowned them get through occasions like weddings, graduations, and other celebrations? How do they get through holidays, anniversaries and birthdays?
   
8. Why do people become unable to resolve conflicts with family members?

1. What is the single biggest cause of family estrangement?
   Probably the most common reason families go off speaking terms with each other is intolerance. This is of course especially evident in instances where family members turn their backs on each other because of lifestyle choices such as homosexuality, marrying outside one's religion, race, nationality or ethnicity. But other kinds of intolerance constitute the root cause of any family fights that lead to rifts, such as an inability to tolerate another point of view, holding grudges, and other forms of pettiness or nastiness that impede forgiveness. It's very similar to the intolerance, bigotry and prejudice that create rifts between nations and among diverse groups worldwide.
   return to top
   
   
2. Is family estrangement more common than it used to be?
   There's a surprising lack of statistics available on this subject, but my impression is that it's much more common that it used to be. Certainly that's the impression I get from other therapists and in my practice. I also teach family counseling to Pastors of all faiths and I hear more and more about family rifts being an increasingly frequent problem brought to the clergy's attention. I think it's more common because of two paradoxical social changes.
   
   One, is people feel freer to stand behind their convictions and don't feel as much of a demand to comply with rules that don't make sense to them. It may be expressed in intermarriage or coming out of the closet, but people are increasingly unwilling to deny their real selves and their genuine feelings and desires. I think that's wonderful and a wonderful sign of progress in our society
   nfortunately, often their family doesn't think that's so great, and creates a rift that they hope will rein in the freedom felt by their family member.
   
   Increased freedom, however, has its down side, and that is a lack of rules for civil behavior. In other words, family members who at one point in history might have been constrained by religion or even what's considered socially appropriate, now feel free at times to act on impulses that are devoid of spiritual or social appropriateness.
   return to top
   
   
3. How can people prevent rifts and estrangement in their own families?
   
   • Do the right thing in your relationships with your family, i.e., do what you feel is the correct social, spiritual, and emotional behaviors.
   • Be the best parent/child/sibling you can be.
   • Treat your relatives like you'd like to be treated.
   • Focus on positives, strengths, and assets among family members.
   • Be proactive in creating mutually satisfying shared experiences among family members.
   • Teach and model tolerance, generosity, and gratitude whenever you have the opportunity to do so.
   • Diffuse divisiveness when you can.
   
   return to top
   
   
4. How do you know the "right thing"?
   Oh, we all know when we're doing the right thing and the wrong thing. Knowing what's right is never a problem. It's doing the right thing that we're challenged with every day of our lives. The single best way to prevent rifts in a family is for members to learn to think before they speak or act, and to live by the notion that you can't control another person's behavior.
   
   If a family holds to the principle of unconditional love, they'll have no issues of estrangement. In other words: I love my son, daughter, brother, sister, mother, or father regardless of whether the choices they make are in line with the choices I'd make for them or for myself. I don't want to imply here that we never offer opinions or thoughts or requests to our loved ones. It's just that we continue to love them no matter what their choice. Beyond that, all families will fight and members will insult and wound and hurt each other, but if they're willing to forgive and let bygones be bygones, they can move past these hurts. In my experience, forgiveness and letting go of past wounds and old resentments is without a doubt the right thing to do, and the only way to insure the survival of any relationship, be it a family relationship, friendship, or love relationship. We're all human and we all have moments of indiscretion, rudeness, poor judgment, speaking without thinking through the ramifications of our words; in other words, to be human is not only to err, it's also to have moments of what we call "bad behavior." Moving on from those moments allows the shared experiences that repair these kinds of temporary breaches; refusing to move on and accumulating, enumerating and collecting instances of bad behavior, on the other hand, creates breaches that then are not so easily repaired.
   return to top
   
   
5. How do people learn to feel peace when they are cut off from their families?
   The central premise I write about in Healing from Family Rifts is that all healing starts from within. The most important reconciliation you make is the one with yourself. That way, your families' willingness or unwillingness to participate in a healing process will not be able to take away your peace of mind. When you feel good about yourself and the ways in which you relate to others and your spiritual side, you'll be okay whether or not your family speaks with you. If you govern your own behavior with love and kind actions, you only have reasons to feel good about yourself and use these feelings to build relationships with people who appreciate your actions and deeds.
   return to top
   
   
6. What can I do to get over the shock of a family member saying he or she never wants to speak with the family again?
   Well, I think that the most important thing to remember is that time always will heal any kind of trauma or shock. I still remember the first New Years that I was estranged from my family. We were with another couple and both of them as well as my wife called family members to wish them a happy new year and it dawned on me that I had no family to call. That was just awful but by the next New Year's, I was able to focus on how fortunate I was to have my second chance family -- my wife, children, loving friends -- that I almost entirely forgot about my biological family. Beyond that, the best tool for overcoming any trauma is to talk about it: to friends, family or a professional. In the first chapter of Healing from Family Rifts I go into much greater detail of how to overcome symptoms of shock, or what is clinically called "acute stress disorder."
   return to top
   
   
7. How does a person whose family has disowned them get through occasions like weddings, graduations, and other celebrations? How do they get through holidays, anniversaries and birthdays?
   I think that's an issue of greater importance to people and that's why I focus on it in the very beginning of Healing from Family Rifts in the second chapter. Readers have told me that's one of the wonderful things about the book; you don't have to wade through massive amounts of reading to find ways to feel better; they're offered almost from the start of your reading. Beyond that, family estrangements are often triggered by these life cycle events for a host of reasons I go into in greater detail in the book.
   
   Big family events certainly offer the most painful challenges to the victim of a family rift. This was my challenge when my parents announced three months before my youngest sons' Bar Mitzvah that they wanted nothing more to do with us. By this time, my sister and her family had taken the same stance, so I knew Kenny's Bar Mitzvah would be colored by the fact that his living grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousins on my side of the family would not be part of the celebrations. In a Jewish family, a grandparent who doesn't go to their grandson's Bar Mitzvah is quite shocking and symbolic of a seriously fractured relationship. I also knew that I was determined to do everything in my power to not allow this to taint Kenny's special day, nor was I going to allow my family's ill will ruin a day that meant so much to Cindy and me and the rest of our family.
   return to top
   
   
8. Why do people become unable to resolve conflicts with family members?
   Essentially, the inability or unwillingness to let go of perceived anger, evidence of injustice, resentment and hurt feelings is what will create an insoluble conflict. Whatever the conflict is about -- be it personality clash, sexual orientation choice, marital choice, occupational or residential choice -- the conflict can only be resolved if all members give up their lists of resentments and accept their family members for who they are and how they are.
   
   People need sufficient incentive to resolve conflict. Sometimes a family gets to a point where the bad times together so outweigh any positives in the relationship that there's just not enough motivation to struggle with all the areas of conflict. Also, all families have contracts or codes of behavior, even if these are often never made explicit until they're violated. When one person deviates and takes a stand against this contract, the other family members have to decide whether or not to go along with this demand for change. For example, the family that prides itself on normalcy, and condones differentiation or what is called "individuation" among members, is challenged by any perceived abnormality, such as inter-marriage, choice of sexual orientation, or even geographically moving away. Unless the rest of the family can learn to value diversity and tolerate difference, there will be, in effect, a family divorce.
   
   And of course there are those fragile personalities in families that demand compliance and submission in order to shore up their fragile sense of self-esteem. When there's a refusal to do that on someone's part, the fragile personality -- who is not generally perceived that way because they act like a tyrant -- will take a stance of cutting off the person they perceive as egregiously rebellious.
   
   With all the complexities and challenges of family relationships, there is however, always hope that rifts will be mended and hearts will be healed. Please join me in taking steps that will give you hope and the tools for healing.
   return to top