Ayesha’s Story
Ayesha is not estranged from her mother.
They speak every day. Ayesha visits often. They eat together.
And yet, something between them has gone quiet.
Not silence. But something heavier.
Ayesha is 38. Married with two children. A life that, from the outside, looks stable—perhaps even fortunate. Her mother helps with childcare. She is present, attentive, involved.
“She’s always there,” Ayesha tells me.
Then she pauses.
“She’s always there.”
Her mother asks questions. Offers advice. Notices everything.
What the children eat.
How Ayesha speaks to her husband.
How she spends her time.
Nothing dramatic happens. No explosive arguments. No moment she can point to and say: this is where it broke.
And yet, something inside her is wearing thin.
“Sometimes I just want to leave,” she says.
“Not forever… just… I don’t know…breathe?”
Then, almost immediately:
“I feel so guilty even saying that.”
Estrangement isn’t always Leaving
When we hear the word estrangement, we imagine rupture.
A cut.
A break.
A door closing.
But in Pakistan, estrangement rarely looks like this[I].Yet, it lives inside many homes.
Estrangement here looks like: Answering questions but not sharing. Listening, but not feeling heard. Staying, but withdrawing emotionally.
It is possible to be deeply embedded—and deeply alone—at the same time.
In many households, leaving is not a realistic option. Financial dependence, cultural expectations and the moral weight of family make distance difficult to enact. Separation is not just personal—it is social.
So people stay. And something else leaves instead.
Closeness.
Ease.
And the feeling of being known.
Love, Duty and Who Holds the Family Together
In Pakistan, family is not just a source of support. It is a moral structure.
And within it, women often carry the invisible work of keeping relationships intact[ii].
To adjust.
To absorb.
To smooth things over.
While men are often expected to provide financially, women are expected to hold the emotional centre of the family. To maintain harmony. To anticipate needs. To prevent rupture.
Over time, this becomes exhausting.
And when relationships begin to strain, research suggests that the explanations that emerge are rarely neutral[iii].
If a son pulls away, blame often falls on his wife—she has “turned him against us.”
If a daughter creates distance, she is seen as too sensitive, too emotional, too difficult.
Across these different narratives, the blame lands squarely on women.
The Love that Holds — and Tightens
When families don’t renegotiate roles as children grow, strain in the relationship accumulates quietly. Expectations formed in childhood remain long after children have become adults. As a result, attempts by adult children to assert independence can be experienced by parents as rejection rather than natural development.
In families like Ayesha’s, love is not absent.
It is intense. Sacrificial. And enduring.
Her mother gave up a great deal—ambitions, autonomy – even safety. Her life was organised around responsibility and survival.
But Ayesha is no longer a child—yet, within the relationship – she is still positioned as one.
Corrected. Guided. Watched.
“Being an adult doesn’t feel like freedom,” she says. “It feels like I’m still being managed.”
This is where many families can become stuck.
Growing up does not end the parent–child relationship. It transforms it.
And transformation asks something unfamiliar: To let go without losing each other.
The Weight of What Came Before
These patterns do not begin with one family. They are carried across generations[iv].
In Pakistan, many families have lived through – and are still living through: political and economic instability, loss, limited choices and long periods of uncertainty. These histories are not always spoken about—but they shape how people relate.
In such conditions, the body learns quickly[v].
That safety is fragile.
That stability cannot be assumed.
And so, stability and control can begin to feel like protection. Obedience can feel like survival.
When children grow up and begin to change, this creates tension. At this stage, parents are required to be flexible – tolerate difference, negotiate boundaries and adapt to changing roles for their adult-children. For many families in Pakistan, where flexibility has been constrained by earlier experiences of stress or trauma – the flexibility required for this developmental transition is limited.
Change begins to feel dangerous.
Ayesha notices this every day. When she sets limits or makes different choices, her mother’s anxiety rises.
Seen this way, the conflict is not only about the present.
It is shaped by everything that came before. And current systemic stressors.
Over time, without safety – these relational patterns harden.
For parents: control begins to stand in for care.
For adult-children: compliance becomes a way of maintaining connection.
And slowly, even when contact remains constant, something else begins to fade: Emotional intimacy.
Papercuts
Parents are often confused by estrangement.
“There was no trauma,” they say.
“We did our best. We gave them everything”
And often, they did.
So why does the relationship feel so strained? Why are so many adult-children becoming estranged from their parents?[vi] Why does one comment—a suggestion, a correction, a tone—feel so heavy?
At the heart of many family estrangements lies a profound mismatch in how trauma is understood. For many parents, trauma is imagined in narrow, catastrophic terms – death, violence, abandonment or severe deprivation. If these events are absent, the assumption often follows that nothing seriously harmful has occurred.
For many adult-children, the pain is less about a single catastrophic event and more about suffering that is repeatedly minimised and denied. Everyday interactions – dismissive remarks, breaches of trust, ongoing criticism – can accumulate over time and undermine an adult-child’s dignity and emotional safety.
Research supports this claim[vii]: trauma is no longer measured solely by intensity. Frequency, duration and cumulative impact are equally important in understanding psychological harm.
What hurts is rarely one moment. It is accumulation.
Not always what happened—but what didn’t.
Not being heard.
Not being understood.
Not being met.
Here, estrangement or emotional withdrawal, is often experienced not as rejection of parents but as a final boundary after years of feeling unsafe. This helps explain why the final point of rupture can appear trivial to many parents – centred on a comment or a disagreement. Yet these moments rarely occur in isolation; they land on ground already saturated with hurt.
Research supports this claim. It demonstrates that even non-physical harms leave deep, lasting marks. This means that adult clients who grew up with chronic criticism, emotional invalidation or neglect, carry forms of trauma that are less visible – but no less significant than physical abuse[viii].
A single moment may seem small. But repeated over time, these moments begin to matter.
Like a paper cut.
A single papercut is nothing. But a thousand of them – can kill you.
‘I can’t say that’
In many Pakistani families, love is shown through action.
Through sacrifice. Through food. Through presence and provision.
But difficult emotions are harder to hold.
Emotional expression—especially when it involves anger, disappointment or difference—is unfamiliar. The lack of safety in our nervous systems does not allow for flexibility. Because of this, emotions are not always something to explore. They are something to manage. To contain. To endure.
It is important to note that across cultures, there is no single and correct way to experience, express, and process emotions. Some cultures have more somatic experiences, while others more psychological and still others experience their emotions in the inter-subjective and social space.
Anger can feel dangerous.
Disagreement can feel like disrespect.
Boundaries can feel like rejection.
So people learn to manage themselves.
To stay quiet.
To keep the peace.
To carry discomfort rather than risk conflict.
Over time, this creates an ‘emotional gap’.
The ‘Emotional Gap’
Ayesha remembers her mother as critical. Her mother remembers herself as caring.
Both are true.
And this is the ‘emotional gap’ many families cannot bridge.
Parents speak in terms of intention:
“I was helping.”
“I was guiding you.”
Adult children speak in terms of impact:
“I felt small.”
“I felt like I could never get it right.”
The conversation never meets.
Because one is grounded in what was meant, and the other in what was experienced.
These memories may not always be factually precise. But they carry emotional truth. And when that truth is not recognised by parents, the distance grows.
Parents
While these narratives may feel harsh or inaccurate to parents, they reflect enduring emotional truths. When parents focus on facts (explaining motives or contextualising behaviour) they often unintentionally repeat the pattern of emotional minimisation, widening the gap.
Repair[ix] works to bridge this space through acknowledgment.
For example: “It sounds like you needed more from me,” or “I didn’t see how alone you felt.”
These statements are not admissions of abuse; they recognise relational impact.
When the emotional gap goes unaddressed, parents are left trying to make sense of the growing distance with adult-children in whatever way they can. Simplistic explanations emerge:
“They’re too sensitive,” or “That’s just how parenting was back then.”
These narratives may soothe parental discomfort, but they rarely reach the place where the adult-child is standing. Without repair, distance hardens.
In a similar vein, generational gaps in priorities, values, and commitments, can make children insensitive to the contexts their parents emerged from, and deaf to the concerns that haunt them.
Withdrawal, silence, or estrangement become a form of self-protection.
Guilt: The Thread that keeps us Tied
If there is one force that holds these relationships in place, it is guilt. Adult-children say:
“I feel guilty for wanting space.”
“I feel guilty for being angry.”
“I feel guilty because they’ve done so much for me.”
Guilt is often mistaken for love.
But it is more accurately defined as the emotional response to perceived wrongdoing or failure to meet obligations[x].
It keeps people compliant. Connected. And available. Even when the relationship is painful[xi].
For adult children, guilt disguises fear:
fear of being selfish,
fear of being judged,
fear of being abandoned.
So they stay.
Not always because they want to—but because leaving feels impossible.
Therapy can help clients move from guilt – to grief. Grief allows families to mourn unmet expectations while recognising both parent and child as they truly are. Where guilt freezes relationships in place, grief restores movement. Without this process, endurance in adult-child relationships can easily masquerade as connection[xii].
When Love becomes Fear
When this continues – over time, something shifts energetically. Love becomes shaped by fear.
When fear enters relationships, ordinary acts of care begin to change their texture: questions can feel like interrogations, advice feels like pressure, concern begins to resemble surveillance. None of this is usually malicious. More often it emerges from anxiety, loss or a growing sense of powerlessness. Yet over time, it can become corrosive.
These dynamics often intensify during periods of transition. As children become adults, parents may feel displaced by partners or grandchildren. Adult-children, in turn, are trying to establish identities that may differ from the roles they occupied within the family.
When flexibility is limited and fear dominates, control can tighten – and inadvertently – the risk of estrangement increases.
Returning to Ayesha
In the end, Ayesha did not leave her family.
She gradually began to see the tensions in her home through a different lens. What had once felt like a personal failure started to make sense as part of a wider relational pattern shaped by expectations, fear and loyalty within the family.
As she experimented with small boundaries and tolerated the discomfort that followed, she discovered that the relationship did not have to be defined entirely by conflict. Ayesha began ending conversations when advice turned into criticism, delaying replies rather than responding immediately and choosing more carefully what to share and what to keep private. Although some tensions remained, she felt increasingly able to navigate them without losing herself.
The Quiet Truth
Not all relationships transition neatly. Many simply change. And these are often the ones that stand the test of time.
They stretch.
They strain.
And they ultimately, settle into new forms.
Repair in relationships is rarely a single moment of apology or explanation. It is not agreement – it is a shift in how people relate. And it is a practice. And the more families practice it – the less likely estrangement becomes.
Repair appears in everyday interactions: the ability to tolerate difference, to listen without immediately correcting and to offer warmth without attaching conditions. Repair doesn’t always need words. Sometimes, it emerges through moments of lightness that allow connection to re-enter a relationship that has become defined by tension.
A message on a birthday.
A shared meal.
A conversation that includes laughter.
These are not failures. They are adaptations.
And often, that is what love looks like when it is trying to survive change.
Estrangement is not always the Absence of Love
Estrangement is what happens when love is asked to change at different points of transition in our lives – and does not know how.
At the heart of adult parent-child relationships lies trust – the embodied belief that difference will not lead to disaster. Adult-children often carry the fear that becoming fully themselves will lead to rejection. Parents may fear that stepping back will result in being forgotten or replaced. When these fears dominate, connection easily becomes confused with control.
In reality, estrangement frequently carries deep shame and guilt on all sides and at times, it may feel like the only available answer. For some, distance becomes a necessary boundary that allows safety and healing. This reality also deserves recognition. Yet even where relationships remain strained or distant, small gestures can still communicate something important: a brief acknowledgement that says: I trust you to live your life, and I am still here.
At the heart of these relationships is a difficult question:
Can we stay connected without needing each other to remain the same?
Because growing up does not end the relationship between parent and child. It asks something more demanding of it.
To loosen.
To shift.
To tolerate difference without fear.
And for many families, that is where the real work begins.
‘’You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.”Khalil Gibran – The Prophet[xiii]
References:
[i] Agllias, K. Family estrangement: a matter of perspective. London: Routledge, 2016
[ii] Strazdins L, Broom DH. Acts of love (and work), gender imbalance in emotional work and women’s psychological distress. Journal of Family Issues 2004; 25(3): 356-378.
[iii] Blake L. Parents and children who are estranged in adulthood: A review and discussion of the literature. Journal of Family Theory & Review 2017; 9(4): 521–536.
[iv] Isobel S, McCloughen A, Goodyear M, Foster K. Intergenerational trauma and its relationship to mental health care: a qualitative inquiry. Community Mental Health Journal 2021; 57(4): 631–643.
[v] Yehuda R, Halligan SL, Grossman R. Childhood trauma and risk for PTSD: relationship to intergenerational effects of trauma, parental PTSD, and cortisol excretion. Development and Psychopathology 2001; 13(3): 733–753.
[vi] Blake L, Bland B, Golombok S. Hidden voices: Family estrangement in adulthood; 2015. Retrieved from https://www.standalone.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/HiddenVoices.FinalReport.pdf
[vii] Felitti VJ, Anda RF, Nordenberg D, Williamson DF, Spitz AM, Edwards V, et al. Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. 1998; 14(4): 245–258.
[viii] Bryce I, Collier S. A systematic literature review of the contribution accumulation makes to psychological and physical trauma sustained through childhood maltreatment. Trauma Care 2022; 2(3): 430–456.
[ix] Olekalns M, Caza BB. Resetting relationship trajectories: a reconceptualisation of the relationship repair process. Journal of Organizational Behavior 2024; 45(2): 313–332
[x] Tilghman‑Osborne C, Cole DA, Felton JW. Definition and measurement of guilt: implications for clinical research and practice. Clinical Psychology Review. 2010; 30(5): 536–546.
[xi] Summers F. Object relations theories and psychopathology: a comprehensive text. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2024.
[xii] Melvin K. Navigating family estrangement: helping adults understand and manage the challenges of family estrangement. New York: Routledge, 2024.
[xiii] Gibran K. The Prophet. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923.
Kavish Sangji
Kavish Zehra Sangji is a Trauma-Informed Psychotherapist with over 13 years of experience running a private practice in Pakistan, where she works primarily with adults. She is currently in the second year of a Doctorate of Professional Skills (DProf) in Psychological Trauma. Her academic and clinical interests include Adverse childhood experiences, Transgenerational trauma and Women’s mental-health, with a particular focus on culturally situated forms of distress. Outside of clinical and research work, she can usually be found buried in a good psychological thriller or getting lost in conversations with friends that begin anywhere and end nowhere in particular. She also firmly believes the best way to know a city is through its restaurants!