When parents are labelled toxic

Happiness, says the Internet, comes from purging all toxic things from your life. Even dad and mom. And now there are estrangement coaches to guide you

Her name is Bozi Alula but in her TikTok commercial, she introduces herself as Violeta, a certified therapist as well as something called an estrangement coach. She is experienced in this area; it’s been four years since she cut her family out of her life.

These days, for a small fee, Violeta will give you step-by-step guidance on how to ghost your own family and sever ties with them. She’s TikTok’s queen of estrangement and will help you decide what kind of estrangement would be perfect for you. Low contact or no contact? Where should you position yourself on what she calls the “continuum of estrangement”? Stop attending family functions? Make contact only a couple of times a year? Stop paying certain bills for your parents? Decide you’re not after all going to be that caregiver they expected you to be in their old age? 

If you still depend on them for certain needs, Violeta will recommend Estrangement Lite, with softer boundaries like not sharing intimate parts of your life, or not picking up the phone that much. 

Among her services, Violeta will help you feel more confident in cutting off the parents and siblings you’ve deemed to be toxic or dysfunctional; challenging social, cultural and family values that don’t align with yours; and transforming your relationship with grief. 

The last one there matters. On days, she warns you, you will miss them terribly and want them back in your life, but with her professional help, you will stand steadfast in your aloofness.

Violeta is in a burgeoning market. Karl Pillemer, a Cornell University professor, estimated in 2020 that about 67 million Americans were estranged from a family member. No number is available for India but estrangement coaches like Violeta teach those wounded children how to exact vengeance upon the ‘toxic’ parents who brought them into a brutal world and then ‘harmed’ them.

Happiness, says the Internet, comes from purging every last toxic, negative thing from your life. Even dad and mom.

Let’s talk about toxic. It’s the word du jour, and it comes with its entourage of supporting psycho-jargon such as gaslighting, self-care, boundaries, narcissistic behaviour, red flags, and negativism. 

Advice on how to surgically excise toxic people from your environment is plastered all over Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, and Reddit. Listicles will tell you how to recognise 10 telltale red flags that your partner is toxic, or 8 ways to eliminate that toxic friend.

I’ve seen instant wisdom like There’s no better self-care than cutting off people who are toxic for you. if someone hurts your feelings, you are allowed to get rid of them. 

There are more — Cut them off silently, they know exactly what they did.

You have no mental or emotional obligation to people who do not communicate with you, no matter how much you love them. This tweet was shared 50,000 times.

Sahar Dahi, 22, a TikTok creator with a following of millions, cheerily tells her fans that if someone in their life can’t tell the truth, can’t keep their secrets and crosses their non-negotiable boundaries, they definitely need to be cut off.

A WebMD page helps us understand who might be a toxic person: “anyone whose behaviour adds negativity and upset to your life”.

I know that the chilling advice being dispensed online will one day go out of style. I also do not believe that the millennials and GenZ-ers of our world are cold-blooded and values-free. To the contrary, they have shown greater commitment to “doing the right thing”, “being the best versions of themselves” and fighting racism and inequities than my generation did. But the advice they give each other in their personal relationships makes my blood run cold.

Today’s online culture has expanded the ways abuse is defined and perceived. The writer Sarah Schulman, in her book Conflict Is Not Abuse, wrote that overstatement of harm can itself cause more harm. I have been belted once or twice by my father without thinking of it as abuse, but today’s child as an adult may ghost me for the same action. In today’s world, if you express disagreement, you’re likely to be labelled toxic.

It fills me with questions — Are we in a world where remorse and forgiveness are obsolete? How much can I forgive and be forgiven for? I know that I have hurt every person I love at least once, mostly without intending to, and being human, will do that again. Am I toxic or just a flawed human?

The human species abuses its children in a thousand ways, through wars, sexual abuse, neglect, slavery, child labour and many other brutalities. Those children will struggle with their wounds and anger all their lives. But are they the ones fuelling this epidemic of estrangement? Or is it the children we sent to schools that  taught them to look out for themselves above all else?

One last big question: does walking away from negativity and ghosting toxic people lead to a happy, contented life?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. If you have a moment, would you click this link and answer four short questions about estrangement? https://forms.gle/omL72X56tyUuqc5Y6

You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com

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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper

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