Family Estrangement & Setting Boundaries With Parents
by Dr. Marc J. Shulman | Long Island Psychology | Family Relationships, Nassau County | Page last updated: September 2026For many Nassau County adults, figuring out how much room to give a difficult parent in daily life is one of the heaviest calls they’ll ever make, and it rarely comes with a clean, guilt-free answer.
You may know the feeling already. A low dread that builds for a day or two before you’re due to see your mother or father, then real, physical relief the moment you’re back in your own car. Or maybe it’s quieter than dread, just a tiredness that arrives when their name appears on your phone, before you’ve even read what they wrote. Either way, if you’re reading this page, you’ve probably already tried the obvious fixes on your own: more patience, clearer explanations, a private hope that the next visit will somehow go differently. The relationship still costs you something every time you show up for it.
Underneath the feeling is usually a belief you’ve never had much room to question: that you owe this parent something simply because they’re your parent, because they made you and, in most cases, raised and provided for you. That’s a natural thing to feel. For most families it never needs a second look.
What gets discussed far less is that the healthy version of this relationship runs in both directions. A parent shows up for a child, day after day, in a hundred small ways that rarely get labeled as anything in particular; most parents do this without ever needing a name for it. When enough of that steady showing-up was missing across a long stretch of someone’s childhood, it can leave an adult child holding two things at once: real affection for a parent, and a relationship that somehow still costs more than it gives back. There’s no easy way to explain how both can be true. That’s the situation this page is about. Not a verdict on any particular parent, but a way of making sense of a relationship that refuses to fit neatly into “good” or “bad.”
Reach out to Long Island Psychology to talk through your specific situation. No pressure, just a conversation about what’s actually sustainable.
The Relationship Is Supposed to Change. Sometimes It Can’t.
Adulthood is supposed to rebalance this relationship in a few specific ways. Reliance goes down. The picture of a parent gets more three-dimensional: real strengths sitting alongside real limitations, rather than the all-or-nothing lens a kid uses by default. The caretaking direction shifts too, sometimes slowly and sometimes overnight, as the person who once did the caring starts needing it returned, physically or emotionally. New partners, grandchildren, and everything else that comes with a fuller adult life layer on top of all of it. Handled well, what emerges is a relationship built on real affection between two adults instead of a leftover parent-child hierarchy.
When a parent carries chronic difficulty, whether that’s self-absorption, volatility, or an untreated struggle of their own, the evolution often doesn’t happen. Years pass without real safety or connection ever getting built, and something foreseeable follows: the grown child doesn’t return the warmth the parent assumes is theirs by right. A parent is owed the love and regard due a parent, yes; that regard has to be built through the relationship, though, not claimed by title, and there’s little to draw on when it never got built. Most parents in this position are still surprised by the outcome. They’re hurt by it, and often angry, even though the arithmetic was never really in question.
Meanwhile the adult child is left holding two things that don’t easily fit together: whatever real love, respect, or obligation they still feel, and their own need not to be steamrolled by a relationship that keeps costing them more than it returns. That’s the quandary this page is about.
What Setting a Boundary Actually Looks Like
A boundary isn’t a punishment, and it isn’t estrangement in miniature. It’s a clear, specific line about what you will and won’t accept, held consistently enough that your own needs stop getting violated. In practice it might mean limiting how often you see a parent, changing the subject when a conversation turns toward familiar criticism, declining to discuss certain topics at all, or simply not being available for every request just because it’s made. Winning an argument isn’t the point. Making the relationship sustainable enough that you can actually be in it is.
Boundaries work best when they’re specific and held quietly rather than announced as an ultimatum. “I can’t talk for more than twenty minutes on weeknights” is a boundary you can keep. “You need to stop being critical of me” is a demand aimed at someone else’s behavior, which you can’t control; it tends to produce a fight instead of a change.
When Boundaries Aren’t Enough
Sometimes a relationship has crossed into genuinely toxic territory, and a boundary either isn’t being honored or was never going to be feasible in the first place. A different option opens up then: real distance, whether that means a defined cooling-off period or something open-ended, held in place until (and only if) the terms of the relationship can be meaningfully renegotiated. Some families settle into what’s often called low contact, a scaled-back but not fully severed relationship, rather than the complete no-contact cutoff many people search for by name. Nobody treats this as a first move. It’s rarely chosen without a great deal of deliberation. But it happens with a regularity that the near-total public silence around it would never suggest.
Estrangement between parents and adult children is far more widespread than most families assume, cutting across income levels and backgrounds, and it rarely follows one incident; it’s almost always the endpoint of a much longer pattern. Worth repeating here: estrangement is neither easy nor straightforward for the person choosing it. It’s frequently the outcome of trying everything else first, not a decision made in anger.
Most of the people we see in this territory aren’t choosing between the two extremes that dominate how this gets discussed online. Full closeness sits at one end; a full cutoff sits at the other. What we see far more often is a workable middle distance, and a person struggling with the guilt, the extended-family fallout, and the ambiguity of a relationship that is neither resolved nor over. That’s a more accurate picture, and a far more common one, than the all-or-nothing framing most content about “toxic parents” defaults to.
The Guilt Is Real, and It’s Also Not Proof You’re Wrong
Many people who set a real boundary with a parent, or who step back from the relationship, go through some period of guilt about it. For some it’s a passing pang; for others it’s genuinely intense. Either way, that guilt gets mistaken for evidence the decision was wrong. It usually isn’t.
Guilt in this context is frequently just the old family rule still running, the one that puts a parent’s comfort ahead of your own, reacting to being disobeyed for the first time. For most people it fades with practice, and faster than they expect going in.
What This Looks Like in a Session
A composite of a pattern that comes up often: someone finally sets a limit with a parent. They decline a Sunday invitation by text, three sentences, entirely polite, and then reread the sent message four separate times that evening. The next several days are spent feeling like a terrible person, even though, described out loud in session, the boundary was completely reasonable.
What’s actually happening is an old alarm system going off. A lifetime of learning that a parent’s disappointment is dangerous, firing exactly as designed. The work isn’t convincing someone the alarm is wrong; it’s helping them recognize the alarm for what it is, so it stops getting the deciding vote.
What Changes
Before
- You say yes to avoid the guilt of saying no
- A boundary feels like betraying your parent
- You’re stuck choosing between total access and total cutoff
- Every visit costs you days of recovery
After
- You can say no and let the guilt pass without it changing your answer
- A boundary feels like basic maintenance for a relationship you want to keep having
- You have a specific, sustainable middle distance that actually works
- Contact with your parent, however much or little, doesn’t cost your whole week
If you’re worn out from constantly weighing how much contact with a parent actually makes sense, talking it through with a therapist can help you find that middle distance.
How We Treat This at Long Island Psychology
Psychodynamic Therapy
Understanding where your specific sense of obligation came from, and whether it was ever actually earned in the relationship, is usually where this work has to start.
Dynamic Experiential Learning (DEL)
Developed here at Long Island Psychology by Dr. Shulman, DEL works directly with the felt guilt and dread that come up around boundary-setting, rather than only reasoning about whether the boundary is fair.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT helps identify the specific automatic thought driving the guilt (“a good son or daughter would say yes”) and tests it against your actual values rather than an inherited rule.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
ACT builds the capacity to hold a boundary while the guilt is still present, instead of needing the guilt to disappear before you can act.
Positive Psychology
This work focuses on building whatever version of the relationship is realistic and, just as importantly, on noticing the relationships already in your life that never demanded this much watchfulness.
This work connects closely with our page on growing up with a narcissistic or emotionally immature parent, and with couples therapy when a partner is caught in the fallout of these family dynamics.
We work with adults across Nassau County navigating exactly this, from Garden City and Rockville Centre to Great Neck, Manhasset, Syosset, Mineola, and Levittown, where “twenty minutes away” often means a difficult parent is genuinely twenty minutes away, not an easy distance to fall back on. A number of the adults we see describe the stretch of Sunrise Highway or a stop at Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream as the last calm minutes before a visit they’ve been bracing for since the invitation arrived. See our full service area here.
What to Expect in Your First Session
We spend the first session mapping exactly what a boundary or a step back would need to look like in your specific situation, and where your sense of obligation to this parent actually came from. From there, we build a plan out of the mix of psychodynamic, DEL, CBT, ACT, and positive psychology work that fits your particular family history.
Contact us to get started.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is wanting distance from a parent selfish?
Wanting a relationship you don’t have to shrink yourself to maintain is a reasonable baseline for any relationship, this one included. Whatever discomfort that idea triggers is usually the old family rule talking, not an accurate verdict on your character.
Will setting a boundary make things worse with my parent?
Sometimes, at least initially. A parent used to unlimited access often pushes back when a limit first appears. That reaction is information about the relationship; it isn’t proof the boundary was wrong.
How do I know if I should set a boundary or step back entirely?
As a general guide: if the relationship causes real harm even with reasonable limits in place, or if boundaries are consistently ignored, stepping back becomes a legitimate option. If limits get respected, even imperfectly, boundaries alone are often enough.
Is estrangement always permanent?
No. Many families find their way to a renewed, differently structured relationship after a period of distance. Others don’t, and that outcome is also legitimate. The goal of this work isn’t a specific ending; it’s a relationship, or its absence, that you chose deliberately rather than one you’re stuck in by default.
Can I do this work without my parent's participation?
Yes. Most of the meaningful change in this territory happens on your side of the relationship, which is usually the only side you have any control over anyway.
Does the right approach change if my parent has a diagnosed mental health condition or a personality disorder?
It can affect what’s realistic to expect, though the basic tools stay similar. A parent with a diagnosed condition may have less capacity to change in response to a boundary, which sometimes means the boundary needs to be held with fewer expectations attached to how the parent will respond.
What if extended family pressures me to reconcile before I feel ready?
That’s an extremely common part of this experience, and it’s worth preparing for specifically. Extended family often has a much thinner picture of what the relationship actually involved, and pressure to “just get past it” says more about their own discomfort than about what’s right for you.
Should I tell my parent directly that I need distance, or is it acceptable to just quietly step back?
Both approaches are legitimate, and the right one depends on the relationship. A direct conversation can create clarity, but with a parent who reliably escalates or weaponizes information, a quieter, gradual step back is sometimes the safer and more sustainable choice.
Do most people who step back from a parent eventually reconnect?
Many do, on renegotiated terms, once real change or real distance has had time to shift the dynamic. Others find that distance is what actually needs to hold long-term. Both outcomes are common, and neither one is the “correct” result this work is aiming for.
How do I handle major life events, weddings, births, funerals, with a parent I've set boundaries with?
These moments usually need their own specific plan rather than a default extension of your everyday boundary. Many people find it helpful to decide in advance, ideally in a calmer moment, exactly what role feels sustainable for that particular occasion.
Further reading: What Adult Children Actually Owe Difficult Parents and Boundaries, Not Ultimatums on our blog go deeper into the obligation question and the boundaries-versus-stepping-back decision.
Contact us to talk with a therapist about your specific family situation, in Garden City, Rockville Centre, or by telehealth statewide.
