00:00they did not run away they did not disappear they made a decision cold deliberate final to never speak to
00:11their own mother again to block their father's number
00:15to skip Christmas skip birthdays skip funerals and here is what nobody wants to say out loud a study from
00:25the University of Cambridge found that 27% of Americans are currently estranged from a family member one in four
00:35people and the research found something even more disturbing the people who cut off their families are not the broken
00:43ones
00:44they are often healthiest people in the room that changes everything you thought you knew about this decision for decades
00:53psychology treated family estrangement as a symptom of damage a sign of mental instability an inability to forgive a character
01:05flaw then researchers started actually asking the people who had done it what they found turned everything upside down
01:14dr carl pielemer professor at cornell university spent years studying family estrangement across thousands of families
01:24his finding was uncomfortable for a culture that worships family the majority of people who cut off family members reported
01:32significant improvements in mental health reduced anxiety reduced depression better sleep stronger relationships with the people they chose to keep
01:43not damage not damage healing but here is the question nobody was asking what happened inside those familiars that made
01:53walking away feel like the only survivable option the answer is darker than most people expect when most people here
02:02they cut off their family they imagine abuse violence addiction
02:08addiction something obvious something extreme but the Cambridge study found something far more disturbing
02:16the majority of estrangements though not involve physical abuse they involve something with no bruises no police reports no visible
02:27evidence they involve what psychologists call chronic emotional invalidation a family system where one person's feelings are consistently dismissed
02:37minimized mocked or simply never acknowledged year after year decade after decade
02:46decade after decade you are too sensitive that never happened why do you always make everything about you after everything
02:55we have done for you these sentencesto not leave marks on skin they leave marks in the architecture of a
03:03person's mind on their ability to trust their own reality
03:07reality on their belief that their feelings are legitimate on their capacity to form healthy relationships with anyone for the
03:17rest of their lives and the person delivering them often genuinely believously are a good parent that is the most
03:25chilling part because what comes next explains why some people have no choice but to leave nobody wakes up one
03:35morning and decides to end their family
03:37the decision does not happen in a single moment it happens across thousands of moments each one small enough to
03:46dismiss until the accumulation becomes impossible to carry psychologists call fist straw that breaks the camel s back effect but
03:57in family estrangement it is rarely one straw it is usually own final moment of clarity a moment where the
04:06person sees with
04:07absolute devastating certainty that nothing will ever change for some people that moment is a family even where the same
04:16dynamic plays out for the hundredth time and they realize if they have been waiting for a change if that
04:23was never going to come for some it is the birth of their own child suddenly holding something fee would
04:32die to protect and realizing fee will not allow fit dynamic anywhere
04:37near this new life for some it is sitting in a therapist s office and finally hearing someone say what
04:45you experienced was not normal you were not the problem and understanding for the first time that leaving is not
04:53betrayal it is survival but here is what the people will have never done it do not understand cutting off
05:02your family is not freedom not immediately
05:05what comes first what comes first is grief a specific kind of grief that has no funeral no sympathy cards
05:13no casseroles from neighbors grief for the family you needed them to bean they never were grief for the childhood
05:22you deserve it and did not receive grief for the relationship you kept trying to build with people will kept
05:29dismantling it
05:30psychologists call this ambiguous loss mourning someone who is still alive and it is by clinical measure one of the
05:41most psychologically complex forms of grief that exists the person who cut off their family does not feel relief not
05:50at first they feel the holidays they feel the empty chair
05:55they feel the weddings they did not attend the funerals they missed the cousins who stopped calling they feel the
06:05way strangers look when they say i am not close with my family and the conversation goes suddenly uncomfortably quiet
06:15the social cost alone staggering and yet they stay gone
06:20because the alternative because the alternative because the alternative the research consistently shows is worse and what the research reveals
06:29about long-term outcomes will completely change how you see this decision dr pelemmer's research followed estranged individuals over years
06:39what he found destroyed the cultural merit of effort cutting off family lives to regret and emptiness the majority not
06:49some
06:49the majority reported that estrangement had been the right decision that their mental health had improved that their other relationships
06:59had deepened that they had become better partners better friends better parents precisely because they had removed the source of
07:09chronic psychological damage from their lives there is a concept in psychological the oxygen mask principle you cannot pour from
07:19an empty cup you cannot love others well if something in your life is systematically destroying your capacity to love
07:28the person who walked away from their family was not selfish they were doing the most difficult most misunderstood most
07:37quietly courageous thing a human being can do choosing their own survival over the comfort of people who were never
07:46comfortable to be around here is the
07:49the truth nobody says family is not defined be blood it is defined be how people make you feel when
07:57you are in the room with them if that room has been slowly taking something from you year after year
08:05holiday after holiday conversation after conversation then leaving it is not abandonment it is the first decision you made entirely
08:16for yourself and that for some
08:19someone who was never aloe to make those is not a tragedy it is a beginning if this video gave
08:27wordsto something you have been carrying subscribe to psychora because understanding yourself is always worth it even when especially when
08:38it is this hard
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