Therapists are actively encouraging family estrangement, and it is not just a small number of them, either. The Wall Street Journal recently published an article titled, “Are Therapists to Blame for the Rise of Adults Cutting off their Parents?” As someone with 25 years in the mental health field, I can attest that the answer is a hard yes.
I am an outlier in the mental health field, as I believe in traditional family values and personal responsibility. I provide consultations for parents with children affected by gender issues, and one of the main themes I encounter is the repeated pattern of other therapists turning their children against them. The stories are eerily similar to one another, and the grief runs deep.
One mom of a trans-identified male wrote to me, “I haven’t heard my son’s voice in almost a year. I continue to call him, just to remind him that I’m here for him no matter what. He moved across the country last year and every few months I will get an ‘I’m doing good’ text from him, but it hurts bad. I wish they understood our pain.”
Like the author of the Wall Street Journal piece, I am am not speaking about cases of serious abuse where alienation is warranted. There is a rising number of young adults who have chosen to cut off their loving parents simply because of different political, ideological, or religious beliefs, and the left-wing dominated mental health field is all for it. In fact, I personally attended a large therapy training that asserted that anyone who voted for President Donald Trump is in a cult. See the shocking video for yourself here.
It’s hard to believe that well-meaning therapists would ever encourage family alienation, but it’s happening. And there are a number of reasons why. To start, with every uncomfortable feeling now being labeled as “trauma,” the notion that decent parents deserve to be alienated has become more justified. Let’s not forget, therapists say trauma is in the eye of the beholder, so it is natural that the same therapists believe it’s okay to cut off loving parents due to “trauma” without looking back.
Beyond the explosion of inflated trauma claims, one of the biggest drivers of this trend lies within the mental health profession itself. Many therapists have abandoned the Judeo-Christian values that once emphasized the importance of family, forgiveness, and reconciliation, replacing them with social justice ideologies that are reinforced throughout graduate training programs and continuing education courses.
Instead of spending sufficient time teaching foundational counseling skills, many programs increasingly emphasize ideological frameworks. Students are exposed to concepts rooted in critical theory, encouraged to view relationships primarily through the lens of power and oppression, and taught therapeutic approaches influenced by postmodernism and identity politics. Institutions such as the American Psychological Association and the National Association of Social Workers have embraced these perspectives, helping to shape a generation of therapists whose training prioritizes activism over reconciliation and family preservation.
Responses to the Wall Street Journal article suggest that a profit motive is driving the trend. The theory is that if therapists encourage clients to become estranged from their families, those clients will remain isolated and continue returning for therapy. While I understand why people believe this, I don’t think it is the primary motivation for therapists. Having worked in the profession, I see something different. I’ve observed the most prominent driving forces are the rescue fantasies and projected unresolved issues that therapists place onto their patients.
It wasn’t always this way, though. When I was in training 25 years ago, I was taught to separate myself from my patients. In therapy terms, this natural tendency toward closeness is called “transference” and “countertransference.” That is, to see yourself or people close to you in your cases. However, the act of recognizing that a client reminds you of yourself is a skill that has been lost. Instead, therapists believe feelings are truth, allow their sessions to be patient-led, and only develop surface-level conceptualizations of their cases.
Therapy is no longer about finding the clearest insights and making better choices; rather its goal is helping the patient feel “safe” and “affirmed.” Clinicians tend to over-identify with their patients, and if the TikTok-infused patient describes his parents as “toxic” or “narcissistic,” the therapist takes her patient’s word at face value and advises carelessly.
Unfortunately, in our culture, too many parents have outsourced their parenting to helping professionals, and in many cases they have paid a heavy price. Hindsight is 20/20, and my clients learned the hard way that most therapists cannot be trusted. It’s easy for us to blame these parents, but I do not think we should entirely blame desperate parents for trusting a profession that was helpful in the past.
Also, let’s not forget how aggressively therapy culture has been promoted to younger generations in recent years. We are told that everyone can benefit from therapy. Yet many of these same young adults who spent their formative years locked down, isolated, and taught to fear one another during the pandemic eventually seek counseling on their own, only to come away with the perception of themselves as victims and viewing their families as the source of their problems. That story has become all too common.
This estrangement trend is a relatively new and growing on a large scale, all being reinforced by anti-family, Marxist-captured institutions. Sadly, in the near future, many adult children and families will miss out on important life events and live with deep regret. When a credentialed expert with a warm demeanor tells a hot-headed young adult what she wants to hear, rather what may be best for her, families and societies suffer.
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Pamela Garfield-Jaeger, LCSW, is a licensed therapist. She is the author of “A Practical Response to Gender Distress: Tips and Tools for Family” and “Froggy Girl.” You can find her on Instagram at @the.truthfultherapist, X as @pgarfieldjaeger, and Substack as Pamthetruthfultherapist.
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