The Part of You That Wants Distance Isn't the Only One in the Room
The same cycle keeps repeating, and I just don't know what to do about it. I know they are my parent and I also know that this is damaging to me.
In my work with adult children there are often conversations and repeated processing sessions about that same exact quote. Having this conversation over and over again does not make you weak, nor does it mean that it isn't just as heavy each time it comes up. It isn't indecision. Knowing something is damaging you and still not knowing what to do about it usually means whoever's saying it isn't of one mind. One part of them has already decided, another part is still hoping against everything it has collected as evidence, and a third part off to the side thinks the whole conversation is a betrayal. This kind of standoff doesn't happen over ending a friendship, but it happens over a parent, because a parent isn't just a relationship. They are the origin point for several different parts of a person, each with its own stake in what happens next. Internal Family Systems (IFS) gives us a useful map for that standoff.
The parts that show up in the room
IFS holds that we're not a single unified voice making decisions, we're a system of parts, each with its own role and memory. A few show up in estrangement work with striking regularity, and you can usually hear them speak for themselves. As you go through these, you may notice one voice is louder for you than the others, or that they take turns depending on the week. That's not disorganization on your part. That's what having a fully staffed internal system actually looks like.
"They are never going to change, and I'm done waiting to find out." That's the protector talking, usually the part that brings the client to therapy in the first place. It's organized, articulate, fluent in the culture's language: boundaries, toxic, trauma. It's often right that harm is happening. Its risk is deciding that distance is the only acceptable outcome, and treating any ambivalence about that plan as proof the client isn't healed yet.
"I can't do this anymore, I'm blocking the number tonight." That's the firefighter, less organized, more reactive, the part behind a cutoff made in a single overwhelmed moment. It's not wrong to want the pain to stop immediately. But decisions made entirely by this part tend to get revisited later, sometimes with regret, sometimes with an unplanned swing back toward contact without any new safety in place.
"Maybe if I just explain it right this time, they'll finally get it." That's the exile, the young part still holding the original longing to be seen. It's usually the most tender part in the system, and everyone else is often organized around protecting it. Estrangement can feel unbearable to this part, not because the relationship was good, but because ending it means giving up the hope it could still become good.
"What kind of person cuts off their own mother?" That's the loyal one, carrying a family or cultural script about what children owe parents. It can sound like guilt, but it's often closer to devotion that's never had anywhere else to go, and it usually holds something the client genuinely values: a wish to be someone who doesn't abandon people, even when abandonment might be the healthiest option on the table.
None of these parts is the villain of the story. The problem isn't that a client has a protector, an exile, or a loyal part, it's that one of them takes the microphone and starts making the decision alone.
Why the outcome depends on who gets heard
When a therapist hears only the protector's account and helps it build a case, sometimes literally diagnosing a parent who's never been in the room, the exile's longing and the loyal part's values never get a hearing. A decision gets made, but not by the client's whole system, just by whichever part got the floor. That's a recognizable version of what psychologist Joshua Coleman and others mean when they describe therapy pushing someone toward cutoff.
The alternative isn't neutrality, and it isn't talking a client out of their protector either. It's closer to what IFS calls Self-leadership: enough calm and curiosity that the protector, the exile, and the loyal part can all get a word in before anything gets decided. Estrangement reached that way tends to look different, with more grief in it, less certainty, and an ambivalence that doesn't fully go away, though it tends to hold up better over time. Pillemer's research notes that a majority of estrangements eventually see some attempt at reconciliation, which fits: decisions made by one part in a hurry are usually the ones that end up needing a second look.
What this looks like in the work
A few things matter in practice. I try not to rush to unblend a client from their protector. It got loud for a reason, and it's worth understanding what it's protecting before asking it to sit down. I make room for the exile without letting the client act from it; the longing for a different parent is real and it needs to be grieved directly, not bypassed with boundary language and not used as a reason to stay. I take the loyal part's values seriously too, instead of writing it off as enmeshment, and I ask what it's afraid the client will lose about themselves, not just about the parent. And I try to slow down anything decided entirely by the firefighter. A cutoff made in acute overwhelm can still turn out to be the right call, but it's worth coming back to once things have settled, just to see if it holds.
I also watch for language doing the parts' work for them. When "toxic" or "narcissist" shows up as a settled verdict instead of a working description, that's usually the protector talking, not the whole client. Sometimes it helps to picture every part actually in the room at once, and a few therapists do this literally, giving each one a turn to speak before any plan gets made. If you're the one sitting in the chair instead of holding it, hearing four different parts of yourself argue about the same decision does not mean you're doing this wrong. It usually means every part of you is showing up and taking the stakes seriously.
None of this guarantees a particular outcome. Some clients still choose full estrangement, and for a lot of them that's the right, hard-won call, while others land on something more limited, like structured contact or a relationship held at arm's length. What changes isn't necessarily the destination, but whether the client gets there as themselves, with all their parts accounted for, rather than because one part outran the rest.
Where I've landed on this
Therapy sometimes pushes people toward cutoff too fast, when it aligns entirely with the protector and never lets the exile or the loyal part into the room. And sometimes therapy gets blamed for a decision the client was always going to arrive at on their own, through a process no one outside that room actually witnessed. Both of those things happen, and from the outside they can look identical.
What I keep coming back to is that a parent isn't a relationship you can just end and move on from, they're wired into several different parts of you at once, and those parts don't agree. My job isn't to help the loudest one win, it's slower than that: to help the client actually hear all of them, then let the decision come from somewhere steadier than whichever part showed up angriest that week. And if you're the one this article is really about, the one who's said some version of that opening line more times than you can count, hearing yourself say it again does not mean you've made no progress. It means the decision is exactly as heavy as it should be, and you're still in the process of getting all of yourself to agree on it.
Sources
Pillemer, K. (2020). Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them. Cornell Family Reconciliation Project.
Deseret News (2026). "Therapy, no contact and the overparented young adult." Survey of ~7,000 estranged parents.
Coleman, J. "Are Therapists Causing a Rise in Parental Estrangements?" Joshua Coleman, PhD Substack (2025).
"Who's Really Behind the Rise in Family Estrangements?" Psychology Today (2025).
"Therapy Isn't to Blame," commentary on estranged mothers' attribution patterns, Therapy for Women Center (2025).
Newport Institute. "Parental Estrangement: Can the Family Heal After Adult Children Divorce Their Parents?" (2026).
Schwartz, R. C. Internal Family Systems Therapy. Guilford Press.
