On occasion, I will get a client whose relationship with one or both of their parents has been so wounding that they are considering cutting off all contact with them. They want my advice. What I tell them is that it depends on a few things.

The idea of cutting off ties with one’s family emerged in the 1980s, mainly through 12-step addiction and recovery movements such as Adult Children of Alcoholics. Therapists began adopting recovery-addiction terminology such as “toxic parents,” “dysfunctional families,” “setting boundaries,” and “breaking the cycle.” We began seeing the value of such distancing when dealing with clients who had long-unresolved issues of trauma and abuse in their families.

Talking about such unhealthy family dynamics became normalized and helped clients to identify emotional abuse, thus validating the potential need for boundaries and making cutoffs even thinkable. For the most part, cutoffs in those days were client-driven, not therapist-prescribed. The idea of cutting from one’s family has gone through something of an evolution, falling out of favor when some therapists began relying on the idea of exploring

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