Congratulations to my three clients this year who have disowned their toxic parents and family or are “in process.” Yes, this sounds ugly. But look at the alternative: those who remain stuck in their childhood bedroom in spirit. It matters not that they have careers and partners and children and friends. They have converted a sordid past into the rotten present, despite what bells and whistles and nice rationalizations they have attached to it. None of them has the feeling of being their own person. Part of them is always sitting, unmanned and soft, on their father's lap. Giving parents money, listening to sister’s terrified beg to pretend to be a happy family, “needing” their children to have grandparents, malignant as they are, having an “adult” relationship now with an always cold, intellectual parent, taking their money, caretaking them, telling yourself your childhood was great, remaining afraid of a Nazi-like father who should spend his life in prison, contemning while catering to them.
The one, single, only, unique factor that differentiates psychic adults from psychic adult-children is this: Have they put their parents in their place or do they drink from the empty teat of neediness. All else may look the same about them in the outer world, but in therapy (and in their own constructed family), their depression, anxiety, failure to thrive permeate the air in the room and all come from one source: their family that didn’t live and won't die.
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Comments are welcome, but I'd suggest you first read "Feeling-centered therapy" and "Ocean and boat" for a basic introduction to my kind of theory and therapy.