Is Cutting Off Your Family Good Therapy?

As she struggled through her sophomore year in college, Zhenzhen spent hours in therapy, but it hadn’t addressed the central strain in her life: her parents.

They called her at her Midwestern campus again and again, badgering her to fulfill their expectations — to study business, and to return to China, marry a wealthy man and raise children near them, she said. When she pushed back, her father screamed, she said, and her mother wept.

The pressure made it hard to function, and Zhenzhen fended off thoughts of suicide. But when she brought this dynamic up with her therapists, she said, “they would always stand by reconciliation, and ‘family is everything.’ They would always look at the problem from the parent’s lens.”

That’s when she discovered Patrick Teahan, a licensed social worker from Massachusetts with tousled hair and a massive YouTube following. Mr. Teahan’s videos introduced her to a new idea — that to heal from childhood trauma, it may be necessary to “go no contact” from abusive parents. Around half of Mr. Teahan’s clients restrict or sever ties with their families, which he describes as “brutally hard” but, when it is appropriate, deeply rewarding.

On Mr. Teahan’s website, you can fill out a “Toxic Family Test,” which measures your family on a 100-point toxicity scale. You can access a webinar explaining how to write a “no-contact letter.” (He suggests: “I’m doing a family cutoff to get space to recover from this toxic and dysfunctional family.”) You can join his “Monthly Healing Community,” where clients support each other in the lonely endeavor of disconnecting from family.

Zhenzhen, who asked to be identified by her first name in order to speak about a family conflict, took action as soon as she graduated and began to earn a paycheck. The relief was almost immediate, she said. It was lonely at first, but not for long. Through Mr. Teahan’s site, she found others — her “chosen family,” she calls them — who supported her decision.