toxic positivity

Over the past few years, there has been much talk about people having “no contact” or “low contact” with family members. A large study out of Cornell University found that 27% of adults over 18 have no contact with some family members.

Another study found that 11% of mothers between the ages of 65 and 75 are estranged from at least one adult child.

Clinical psychologist Joshua Coleman attributes the rise in estrangement to the "changing notions of what constitutes harmful, abusive, traumatizing or neglectful behavior," adding that the “bar for qualifying as a trauma today is much lower.”

However, Whitney Goodman, LMFT, has a much simpler explanation for why more people are vocal about going “no contact” with relatives. In a world where people have so many ways of contacting one another, one must set much stricter boundaries than before social media.

Goodman is a marriage and family therapist and the author of “Toxic Positivity,” a guide to helping people own their emotions.

“Decades ago, it was pretty easy to become estranged from a family member,” Goodman says in a video with over 75,000 views. “We didn’t even have to put all these labels on it. People didn’t have to say they were no contact, low-contact, estranged because they could just move to the other side of the country, maybe only talk to that family member once a year or see them on a holiday, and that was easy to maintain.”

Goodman adds that these days, people have so many avenues to contact estranged relatives or keep tabs on their everyday lives that it’s nearly impossible to separate from family members who want to stay in touch. Back in the ‘70s, you could move a few miles away, change your phone number, get a new job and easily slip into anonymity.

But in 2024, you can’t be passive about avoiding family members. You have to make an obvious point of going “no contact” by blocking people on social media and refusing to respond to their attempts to make contact.

“And I think this is why we see estrangement today being something that is so clearly verbalized and dictated and we have a lot of older people saying, ‘Well, we didn’t do that back then. Everyone stayed in touch,’ when, really, you probably had some family members that were actively choosing distance and estrangement, but they weren’t really calling it that because they didn’t have to,” Goodman concludes her video.

The big takeaway is that people probably had no contact with family members back in the day without being fully aware of what was happening. It’d be easy to go extremely low contact and see relatives every few years without anyone thinking anything was wrong.

“My uncle lives less than 100 miles from our hometown. Everyone acted like he wasn't estranged, but my mom had to beg him to come to my grandma's deathbed. Over a decade later, I understand him,” Kayla C. wrote in the comments. “I think the biggest difference is in the past when someone moved away, the other party could blame it on them or put a spin on it like, “Oh, she moved for her career, and she’s SO busy!” Kitty added.

TheAlgorithmbroughtmetou added a quote that sums up many people’s families: "That uncle/aunt who kept their distance from the rest of the family will start making more sense to you as you get older."

These days, people are talking more openly about estrangement, though families have always dealt with it. Today’s technology means people have to be more blunt about their feelings, but in some ways, that can be a better way of handling problems than spending years being passive-aggressive.