Does Therapy Fuel Family Estrangement? Parents and Researchers Weigh In

A growing number of American families are splitting apart, and some researchers and parents say therapy may be playing an unexpected role in the rupture.

A 2025 YouGov poll of 4,395 U.S. adults found that nearly four in 10 Americans are currently estranged from at least one close family member. Of those surveyed, 24% reported estrangement from a sibling, 16% from a parent and 10% from a child.

Two recent large-scale surveys of more than 5,200 U.S. parents estranged from their adult children found that 1,014 parents said their child had started therapy within the year before the estrangement began. Another 515 parents said their adult children indicated therapy had influenced their decision about the relationship, and 1,254 said their child had received a mental health diagnosis. The surveys were not peer-reviewed or nationally representative, and relied on parents’ accounts of their adult children’s experiences, which limits what can be concluded about therapy’s actual role.

Richard Blake, PhD, a Texas-based psychology researcher who studies anxiety and family estrangement and was involved in those surveys, calls the broader trend an “overcorrection.”

“There is a lot of debate online about whether it’s happening or not,” Blake said. “I hear it from both sides. I hear from parents who say, ‘My child said my therapist should cut you off,’ and people who’ve told me, ‘My therapist told me I should cut my parents off.’ How much it’s happening and when it’s appropriate and inappropriate is where the nuance comes in.”

Laura Wellington, a Connecticut mother who has been estranged from her adult daughter since 2024 and is known on social media as “Doormat Mom,” is more direct about where she places blame.

“Do therapists, in my opinion, play a role in the estrangement epidemic? 100%,” Wellington said. “But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some really good therapists out there.”

Wellington said some therapists focus too narrowly on one person’s account of a family conflict rather than recognizing it as a “multi-pronged situation.” She said some therapists have even reached out to her afterward to reconsider their approach, asking her, “What did we miss?” She said she supports parents apologizing when they’ve genuinely done wrong, but believes therapists should weigh the full picture before encouraging a cutoff.

Values, not just abuse, driving splits

Blake said differences in values, rather than severe misconduct like violence or abuse, are increasingly behind family fractures. “People are cutting people off because of divergence in values,” he said, citing an online comment he’d seen: “I cut my parents off because they didn’t condemn ICE enough.”

He stressed that some reasons for cutting off a parent are legitimate, including physical or sexual abuse. But he said the picture gets murkier around claims of emotional abuse, a term he believes is sometimes applied broadly to cover disagreements over politics, religion or even word choice.

“Emotional abuse can be [about] differing political values, a little difference in religious beliefs,” Blake said. “It can be about the words people use.”

He argued that therapy has in some cases “raised the bar of what is good enough parenting,” and said there’s “a massive sort of overselling in therapy of how much your parents affected you.” He said he sometimes hears from parents who received no warning before being cut off entirely — just a letter saying never to make contact again.

Still, Blake said parents bear responsibility too, particularly around listening. “A frequent complaint that most adult children make is, ‘My parents just don’t listen. I cannot get through to them. It’s like talking to a brick wall,’ and that is a genuine frustration,” he said. “If you don’t listen to your child, then don’t be surprised if you have conflict with them.” He recommends parents practice active listening — letting the other person finish speaking, repeating back what they heard, and asking if there’s more before responding.

Blake was careful to note his criticism applies only to a “small subset” of therapists, not the profession broadly. But in cases of ordinary family conflict rather than abuse, he warned that cutting off contact can bring short-term relief while creating serious long-term consequences. He also pushed back on the idea that estrangement alone resolves mental health struggles. “This is the sort of myth that pervades in cutoff cultures,” he said, describing the assumption that parents caused someone’s mental health issues and that cutting them out therefore fixes it.

A more nuanced view

Not every expert sees therapy as a driver of estrangement. Lucy Blake, PhD, a developmental psychologist in the U.K. who studies family estrangement, told the American Psychological Association that therapy can be “very helpful” when a therapist understands that estrangement rarely affects just one relationship.

She said therapy also helps when clinicians understand underlying issues like abuse or mental health conditions that can contribute to estrangement. But she’s also heard from people who found therapy “very unhelpful,” especially when a therapist lacked warmth or failed to grasp the grief and loss that often accompanies estrangement. Overall, she said researchers are “still really learning” what helps and what doesn’t in these situations.

Both researchers agreed that bringing in a neutral third party — a therapist or professional mediator — can help families in conflict, provided both sides are willing to participate. “Communication with a mediator, whether it’s a therapist or a professional mediator, can be really productive,” Richard Blake said, though he noted that once one party has cut off contact and asked not to be reached, that option may no longer be available. “I certainly think it’s worth a try,” he said.

Wellington agreed joint therapy could help families reconcile, but said it requires willingness on both sides. She added that disagreement doesn’t have to mean the end of a relationship. “You can have a different opinion,” she said. “You can also have a relationship with your parent who has the other opinion, and that’s OK.”