Clinical Observations from an Estrangement Clinician: Observation #4

I am an estrangement clinician primarily working with parents who are estranged from their adult sons and/or daughters.  Estrangement is a unique phenomenon requiring a specialized approach.  My lived experience as an estranged parent is a far greater credential than my degree in psychology from Yale and my training as a life coach combined.  Like many clients, I made critical mistakes throughout my children’s lives.  Estrangement is now the price I am paying for those mistakes.  When I stopped berating myself, I grew to “make my mess my message” (in the words of the co-host of Good Morning America, Robin Roberts) or turn my pain into a purpose.

The focus of my clinical practice is to help clients live fully and peacefully through adversity.

My clients have ranged in age from approximately 20 to 90, and they consist of parents, grandparents, sons, and daughters who are all trying to navigate estrangement.  Several clients have peaceful relationships with their adult sons and daughters, but they work with me to improve those bonds.  Although my observations are aimed at supporting estranged parents, they can apply to any difficult relationship.

Clinical Observation #4:  Is there a causal relationship between a parent’s PTSD/C-PTSD diagnosis and parental estrangement?

As of this writing, I am grieving the loss of my beloved 91-year-old mother.  As an estranged parent, funeral services were quite triggering in addition to being grief-ridden.  I was surrounded by those who loved my mother and by several who are estranged from me in addition to my adult son and daughter.  The ripple effect of estrangement was evident at the funeral and brought up a sense of betrayal in addition to triggering symptoms related to my most recent diagnoses of PTSD and C-PTSD. The sense of betrayal came from wondering who in this room I can trust, as it was obvious some people had chosen sides in my estrangement. For weeks after, I felt numb and out of touch with my body, a hallmark symptom of trauma. PTSD generally refers to trauma that is caused by a traumatic event.  Whereas C-PTSD results from too much or not enough of a behavior that impacts a child’s development.  For example, there is a major difference between a parent keeping a child safe and a parent being consistently hypervigilant. Ongoing unhealthy scrutiny by parents can lead to a sense of being smothered or controlled as the child grows into adulthood, possibly leading to estrangement.

Before my own diagnosis, I had already begun to see a pattern in my clinical practice. Most of my estranged parent-clients shared with me some degree of deep woundedness in childhood.  Several from that group presented themselves as being wounded in the form of trauma.  A significant number of my clients are both estranged parents and trauma survivors.  This dynamic prompted me to raise the question: Is there a causal relationship between a parent’s PTSD/C-PTSD diagnosis and parental estrangement?

How can I connect my trauma to how I raised my children?  Based on my clinical experience, there are layers to surviving trauma and surviving parental estrangement.  The first layer is self-awareness, during which you begin to recognize unhealthy behaviors that have become your trauma responses.  For me, yelling at my young children became a consistent reaction because that is how people often communicated in my family, and that was the only way I got heard as a child.  I also recently recognized that when I yelled at them, it felt like an out-of-body experience.  I simply could not stop myself. These behaviors were symptomatic of my trauma. The second layer is recognizing how the pattern of trauma responses played a role in your parenting. 

This realization is the function of the ESTRANGEMENT ALGORITHM®which I created and addressed in an earlier article. For example, yelling at my children became a daily occurrence, multiple times a day.  I believe my adult son and daughter would say they constantly walked on eggshells around me and my moods.  Another trauma response was my hypervigilance about who my children hung out with and where.  I recently made the following connection: My hypervigilant behavior is the result of being assaulted by a nonfamily member as a child, a traumatic event that recently emerged. It is evident that this layer requires one to let down their guard and crawl deep inside their nervous system to find all the ways in which trauma showed up in your parenting. 

The third layer requires seeking a diagnosis from a licensed therapist or clinician.  Receiving the diagnosis of PTSD and C-PTSD as an estranged parent provided me with a tremendous sense of relief on the one hand and a tremendous sense of remorse on the other hand.  Finally, my entire life made sense: my parenting, my relationships, my temperament, my moods, and other hiding places for trauma.  For my adult son and daughter, I feel tremendous sadness.  Though there were many good times, the times they may remember most are my unpredictability that left them feeling insignificant, unloved, and unsafe.

The fourth layer for me, which I cannot call the final layer at this time, is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), which I am currently undergoing.  The purpose of EMDR is to lessen the intensity of intrusive memories.  For a clinical explanation of EMDR, I refer to you other clinicians and psychologists who have written about it.  What I can share is my experience with EMDR, which should not be misconstrued as a recommendation. 

Over the period of several weeks, I shared in detail the various traumas with my clinician, which, at times, felt like reliving the incidents. My clinician selected one trauma to begin the actual eye movement, and she chose to begin with the most painful event, which was the assault. I am now approaching the end of the reprocessing phase for the most traumatic event.  I will continue EMDR focusing on both developmental trauma and other traumatic events one at a time.

I can say already that EMDR has helped me with the painful triggers, images and memories.  Before EMDR, my whole body would cringe with shame whenever the thoughts appeared.  At times, the thoughts were inescapable.  Now, I can think about the assault without holding onto the thought and while bringing self-compassion to it and to me.  I may address, in more detail,  my entire experience with EMDR in a future article. And I repeat, my discussion on EMDR is to share my experience.  It is not a recommendation.

As an estrangement clinician, I am not qualified to make diagnoses.  However, I am trained to see patterns and make connections for my clients, and several clients displayed symptoms that may be related to C-PTSD and/or PTSD.  A client’s trauma and estrangement journey are captured by the ESTRANGEMENT ALGORITHM®

To summarize, after my clients share their childhood wounds or traumas, they are asked to reflect on any related unhealthy dynamics when raising their children. These connections become the ESTRANGEMENT ALGORITHM® The parent then has priceless information which can inform their decision on whether they reach out to their adult son and/or daughter.  Just as significant is seeing and knowing these connections that can bring understanding to the client, and self-understanding helps to promote self-compassion. Both ingredients are essential for healing from the excruciating pain of being cut off by your son or daughter.

The Estrangement Algorithm® is ultimately a tool to bring estranged parents greater peace of mind and to answer the question: Is there a causal relationship between a parent’s PTSD/C-PTSD diagnosis and parental estrangement?

WORD OF CAUTION:

The ESTRANGEMENT ALGORITHM® is solely based on educated assumptions about why an adult son or daughter chooses to estrange. 

Only the estranged son or daughter holds this reliable information.

Life, Positive. “The Link between Trauma and Emotional Numbness: Causes, Symptoms, and               Recovery.” Positive Life Asia, 6 Sept. 2025, www.positivelifeasia.com/post/the-link-       between-trauma-and-emotional-numbness-causes-symptoms-and-recovery.                   Accessed 9 Apr. 2026.

“Undoing Emotional Numbing May Be Key to Trauma Recovery.” Psychology Today, 2024,                   www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/experimentations/202405/undoing-emotional-   numbing-may-be-key-to-trauma-     recovery?msockid=0ab16c569c8a680527087ae09d486983. Accessed 9 Apr. 2026.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer