The Wall Street Journal recently published an article suggesting that therapists often encourage their clients to cut off relationships with family. Having worked in this field for thirty years, I’ve long known this to be true.
Modern therapy leans heavily on developmental theory, which suggests that early childhood parenting shapes us so profoundly that most adult struggles can be traced back to parental breaches.
From there, it isn’t a gigantic leap to conclude that if you’re struggling now, much of the blame rests on your parents. If they missed too many of your games, for instance, or misread your personality so much that you felt fundamentally misunderstood, it’s understandable if you feel your life might improve if you cut them out and rebuild with a new tribe who aren’t relatives. I’ve heard this reasoning repeatedly in supervision groups and classes, but something about it never sat right with me.
Instead, I noticed that when things truly fell apart for anyone, it was family who showed up first, with maybe a couple of close friends following at a distance.
There are always exceptions, of course.
When a good friend of mine was dying of cancer, many of us gathered around her. But in her final days, her family wanted only immediate relatives in the room, and we understood that. It felt natural and is ultimately what happened.
Nearly a decade ago, I learned about evolutionary biology and psychology. This study examined how humans evolved over long stretches of time to the hunter-gatherer era, when most of our evolution actually took place. The more I read, the more it made sense.
We are not the fragile creatures we’re sometimes told we are, endlessly fragile and vulnerable to any misstep by our parents. I will say that we do have unusually long childhoods and remain deeply dependent on our families for several years. Even that is woven into our DNA.
We are also wired to protect and care for vulnerable infants. I remember this vividly from when my own children were born. My husband and I immediately hyper-focused on their care, and that response seemed instinctive. Of course, we listened to family, friends, read books, and noted the advice of pediatricians, but we followed our own judgment above all.
It’s as if humans evolved specifically to carry children safely into adulthood.
I know there are exceptions. Babies who are abandoned, children who are severely abused. We read about these unacceptable cases and established societal programs to provide protection.
I believe in such severe cases the road to recovery can take a lifetime. In these cases, cutting off family members who caused real harm may genuinely be the best – or only – option.
But thankfully this is not the norm. Most of us are raised by imperfect people doing their best they can. Many of us may fall short in parenting too, but don’t deliberately intend to cause distress.
We know we evolved in tribes who protected us from external threats, and I believe this is also wired deeply into us. Studies support the observations that I made a long time ago, that when things go wrong, it is usually families who provide most of the care. Families are most likely to provide accommodation and financial support.
In that sense, your family is a tool for survival. Severing these vital connections is a serious step and one that should only be taken in the direst circumstances. Cutting family ties unnecessarily places people in vulnerable positions. As a rule, I believe therapists should be discouraging, rather than encouraging this. Our goal should be to help repair and reconcile family relationships wherever possible, not dissolve them.
I recognize that not all of us are blessed with extensive family networks, including people who have lost parents or siblings, those who were only children, and people who may not have children of their own. For those individuals, nurturing genuine connections and building close friendship networks offers equally valuable ‘tools for survival.’
I’m grateful to the field of evolutionary psychology and biology for providing the data to support what instinct had already showed me.
If you’re choosing a therapist, I recommend working with one who supports family reconciliation, rather than estrangement, apart from exceptional circumstances. So many of my clients have eventually returned home to where their families live in. San Diego, as you know is a famously transient city. They miss the weather but tell me they instantly feel more grounded being in close proximity to relatives than they ever did at a distance.
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