Interview on PBS, Fractured Families

The PBS Weekend Newshour segment on estrangement aired on December 22, 2024. They chose parts of my interview for the segment. You may watch it here: PBS Weekend Newshour Fractured Families on YouTube. Fast forward to eleven minutes in.
I’d be interested in any thoughts you may have on it.

I learned from one of the estrangement support groups I am in that the therapist who was interviewed, Whitney Goodman, endorses estrangement. She throws around the idea that a parent may be emotionally immature.

Therapist, Rachel Haack states there are therapists who are using terms such as emotional immaturity which is not a clinical term or therapeutic. See Rachel Haack on Instagram. She is one therapist out there who is encouraging healing between those who are estranged. 

There is also a trend with therapist diagnosing another person without ever meeting that person. I find this to be common in the support groups. Adult children often diagnose their parents as narcissus or have borderline personality disorder. I believe the influencers on social media such as Whitney Goodman, contribute to this unfair diagnosis.

Psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster states, “In a world where we now diagnose ourselves on TikTok, rare is the occasion to actually see what these diagnoses really mean… Diagnosis is the starting point for a long conversation between a therapist and a patient about what makes for a life.”

Armchair diagnosis is a term used when professionals or non professionals diagnose someone they have never treated. When a person resorts to name calling, they’ve lost the argument. When they resort to diagnosing, they’ve lost credibility.

A therapist from the UK responded to an article dealing with estrangement in the Guardian with this:
“It is very timely, then, that calls are being made to better regulate those “clumsy” therapists who can unleash so much trauma and grief. For the sake of our children and society as a whole, we should be seeking better familial relationships, not sowing the seeds of division.”

I couldn’t agree more. All this division hurts.

Meantime, I’m finishing up my memoir on estrangement. My book proposal editor gave me this encouragement:
“Your two sample chapters are EXCELLENT! They’re tight, well-written, flow smoothly and really engage the reader making them want to read on to find out what happens. And for what it’s worth, they’re also heartbreaking. Frances, I continue to feel there is a strong commercial market for this book. It’s an important topic, and a lot of people would benefit not only from your story, but hearing about what you learned. As a result, I encourage you to make the changes I suggest and keep writing.”

It’s been an emotional roller coaster writing this memoir, but it is important and I have learned so much and grown through this process. And this trend of children cutting off their parents is still mind boggling and sad.

My wish for the New Year is grace, grace for ourselves and others.

Thanks for reading,

Frances