Cutting Off a Parent: What Jewish Wisdom and Family Therapy Both Teach

Some years ago, I was at a lecture given by a very brilliant therapist and author.

His name is Avram Nadigiel.

And I learned from him about family systems therapy.

I'd already been in marriage counseling, which used a similar modality, and it was immensely helpful for my marriage.

In fact, almost thirty-eight years later, I will still make a daily practice of a lot of what I learned there.

Now, any of you who have listened to me speak on momentum trips or listened to this podcast before are familiar with how, for me, proper therapeutic help, along with the guidance of Torah values, saved my marriage.

So let me explain briefly what Bowen family systems theory is and why it is so deeply relevant today.

Family systems therapy is a framework developed by psychiatrist Dr. Murray Bowen that views a family as an emotional unit rather than as a collection of separate individuals.

It suggests that the behavior and the mental health of any one member cannot be understood in isolation from the broader family dynamic.

According to the Bowen Center, addressing a family cutoff starts with improving your own, what they call differentiation of self, which is the ability to remain emotionally connected to your family without being overwhelmed by their anxiety or expectations.

And I've been thinking about this a lot lately because my algorithm is filled with so-called experts talking about the importance of cutoff, child to parent or parent to child.

Personally, I have watched the agony of friends whose children have cut them entirely out of their lives, and I've met children whose parents did the same to them.

And it seems to me that complete cutoff is still a kind of engagement, albeit a quieter one.

No more fighting to be sure, but also no resolution, sort of like the flip side of the same coin.

I did a quick AI search about cutoff, and it yielded these ideas as key aspects of this phenomenon that we're seeing so many of.