Estrangement therapy for the family you can't just "get over."

Who this is for

Adults dealing with family estrangement from any direction:

• You've gone no-contact or low-contact with a parent, sibling or other family member, and you're second-guessing yourself.
• A family member cut you off and you're stuck between hurt, confusion and wanting to fix it.
• You're thinking about stepping back and want help deciding, not someone deciding for you.
• You're estranged and it keeps showing up somewhere else: in your marriage, your parenting, your sleep, or the way you brace every December.

A lot of the people I see are the "responsible one" in their family. The one who kept the peace, managed everyone's feelings, and finally ran out of room to keep doing it.

Reconciliation is not the goal (unless you want it to be)

Some therapists quietly treat estrangement as a problem to solve, and the solution is always "repair the relationship." That's not how I work. Sometimes repair is possible and worth it. Sometimes distance is the healthiest thing you've ever done. Most of the time it's more complicated than either.

Our job isn't to get you to a particular outcome. It's to help you feel steady enough in your own decision that other people's opinions stop knocking you over.

The grief nobody sends a card for

Estrangement is a real loss, but it rarely gets treated like one. Nobody brings a casserole. People say things like "but they're your mother" or "life is short." You can be relieved and heartbroken in the same afternoon, and both are real.

Therapists call this ambiguous loss: grieving someone who's still alive. It's also disenfranchised grief, meaning grief the people around you don't recognize or make space for. Naming it doesn't fix it, but it helps a lot to stop feeling crazy for how much it hurts.

How we work together

• Room for all of it. Anger, guilt, relief, longing, doubt. None of it has to be resolved before we can work with it.
• Untangling the old story. Family roles are sticky. We look at the part of you that still feels responsible, still waits for an apology, or still flinches at their name.
• Brainspotting and IFS-informed work. For the stuff that lives deeper than talking. A lot of estrangement pain sits in the body and in younger parts of you that talk therapy alone keeps circling around.
• Practical support. Boundaries that hold, what to say (or not say) to relatives who take sides, and how to get through holidays, weddings, illness and funerals.

Related concerns I often see alongside estrangement

Estrangement rarely shows up by itself. It often comes with childhood trauma, grief, anxiety, or the kind of burnout that comes from decades of being the family's shock absorber. We work with the whole picture.

What it costs and whether insurance covers it

Sessions are 53-55 minutes. I'm in-network with several plans and provide superbills for out-of-network reimbursement. Current rates and how to check your benefits are on my insurance and cost page.

Where I see clients

Telehealth only, for adults physically located in Washington, Wisconsin, or Florida.

Keep reading

• Signs of childhood trauma in adults: how early family stuff shows up decades later.
• Your nervous system isn't broken: why you still react to their name, even years later.
• What is Brainspotting therapy?: the body-based approach I use for the stuck stuff.

Common questions about estrangement therapy