A look at “Relatively not speaking” by Alix Fox (2026)
Scroll through the headlines and you’d think family estrangement was the latest fad, fuelled by celebrity feuds and TikTok “estrange-fluencers” urging everyone to go “no contact”. This Therapy Today feature asks whether that’s really true, and points out that LGBTQIA+ people have been navigating family rejection long before social media existed.
What it covers
Is estrangement really rising? Probably not provably. One 2025 poll found 38% of American adults currently estranged from a relative, compared with a 2020 study estimating one in four. But the experts interviewed point out that these used different methods and definitions, and some polls are closer to market research than science. What does seem to be changing is how openly estrangement is discussed, and how much permission people feel to set boundaries.
For queer people, it’s often about safety. Interviewees describe parents who see their queerness as shameful or sinful, and family members who are hostile to their gender identity. Some describe physical violence. The article cites a UK Government survey of LGBTQ+ people: around 6% of non-religious respondents, 10% of Christians and 20% of Muslims had undergone or been offered conversion practices. Of those who had, 16% said family members had carried them out. One therapist notes that thinking about cutting off family is coming up more often, particularly with trans clients, against a hostile political backdrop.
But don’t assume. One non-binary lesbian describes a counsellor presuming her estrangement from her father was about homophobia. Actually, it was about his alcoholism. The article also highlights a less-discussed group: women who come out later in life, sometimes facing rejection from their own children.
What good therapy looks like. The therapists interviewed agree that the goal isn’t to steer clients towards reconciliation or separation. It’s to help them make authentic, informed choices. That might mean keeping contact with firmer boundaries, or closing the door entirely. It also means believing clients when they describe painful experiences, and therapists checking their own blind spots.
A grain of glitter ✨
This is a rich, compassionate and well-balanced feature. It includes useful scepticism about shaky statistics, which is a nice irony in a piece about headlines. But it’s journalism, not research. Much of it rests on interviews with therapists, influencers and individuals, which are powerful but can’t tell us how typical these experiences are.
Some voices, such as influencers discussing their own content, have an obvious stake in the story. And while it rightly centres LGBTQIA+ experiences, the perspective of estranged parents gets relatively little space, apart from the later-in-life lesbian mothers.
Why this matters
If you’re LGBTQIA+ and estranged from family, or thinking about it, your decision is likely rooted in something far deeper than a trend. You deserve a therapist who won’t push you towards reconciliation or judge you for walking away, and who won’t assume they know the reason. Chosen family is real family, and grief for the family you hoped for is real too.
Sometimes a unicorn has to leave the herd it was born into to find the one it belongs with. That’s not running away; that’s finding your way home.