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The hurt is not the trigger, the replay is.

Avoidance is not restraint. It is a missing skill.

A grievance never constructively discussed is a grievance that does not get tested.

From my experience counseling and coaching parents and adult children, the adult children who go "no contract" rarely do it over one fight or argument. They leave due to negative thought loops that replay a skewed perception of family history. They also lack the ability to have calm, constructive conversations with their parents. And to be fair, many parents also lack those skills, or if they have them, their own defenses as parents undermine them.

Parents often come to me feeling devastated. They are convinced there is an offense or a series of offenses that they must pay for. For sure, like most parents, they made some mistakes. But often there is not one, not a single one, to truly explain a cut-off, especially an abrupt cut-off. What I see instead is a different mechanism entirely. An adult child who never developed the skills to sit with a hurt, to name it out loud, and to work through it with the person who caused it. So instead, they........

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