Hi {{ first_name | default: "Reader" }},
Last week the Telegraph ran a feature on therapy's role in family estrangement, and I'm in it (Twigg, 2026). Melissa Twigg, the journalist who wrote it, first came across me through one of my Instagram posts. So if you've ever shared one, you helped make this happen.
She quoted a line I'll keep repeating until it sticks: "Family is ultimately one of the most protective things we have against mental illness. We seem to have forgotten that in our rush to blame our parents for everything."
If the paywall stops you, Yahoo carries the same article free here.
It's a big deal for someone like me to get coverage from an established paper like the Telegraph. It puts the argument in front of people who would never stumble across my Instagram.
Then I looked at who has covered my work over the last few months.
Fox News has quoted me in four different articles since August on why more Americans are cutting off their parents, what to do when your adult child cuts you off, whether therapy is to blame and the warning signs that a child is pulling away. The New York Post ran a piece in August on my advice for parents whose children have cut them off. Newsweek covered the book in October. Then came the Telegraph. The Daily Mail has been in touch too.
Fox, the Post, the Telegraph and the Mail all sit on the right. AllSides, which rates news outlets for political bias, rates the Post as right and Newsweek as centre (AllSides, 2026a; 2026b). I haven't heard a word from the Guardian or the BBC. The Guardian leans left. The BBC has a duty to be impartial, though many people question how well it does that these days.
To be fair to the Guardian, it ran a long feature in 2024 asking whether therapy plays a part in estrangement (Hinsliff, 2024). It talked to parents as well as adult children. So nobody has banned the question. But every news outlet that has covered my work sits on the right or in the centre.
That bothers me, because estrangement doesn't belong to either side. Karl Pillemer's national survey found that 27% of American adults had cut off contact with a family member (Pillemer, 2020). You don't reach a number that size within a single political tribe. I hear stories of progressive kids cutting off conservative parents, and I hear stories of MAGA supporters cutting off their parents too. I can't put a number on those stories. They still come from both directions.
So estrangement crosses party lines. The second thing to know is that it harms parents on one side of the rift and adult children on the other. A German study of 5,245 adults found that people estranged from a parent or a sibling reported lower well-being, and the link was strongest for people estranged from both (Hank, 2024). In the US, a study of 2,609 mothers and 5,590 of their adult children found that mothers with estranged ties reported poorer health than mothers with close ones. Adult children in estranged families reported health no better than those stuck in difficult relationships (Reczek, Thomeer and Bijou, 2025).
Neither study can tell us which came first, and some people do feel relief after a cutoff. But if cutoffs carry these costs in Labour homes and Tory homes, in Democrat homes and Republican homes, this should be everybody's story.
So why haven't the left-leaning outlets come calling?
I have a theory, and I could be wrong. Therapy has come to feel like it belongs to the left. In one US study of 467 licensed counselors, most described their politics as liberal (Norton and Tan, 2019). Last week I wrote about the politics at the top of the American Psychological Association. So when someone criticises therapy, a left-leaning editor can hear it as an attack from the right. It's easier to look away.
I don't write that from the outside. I spent two years training as a psychotherapist, and my wife is a therapist. I believe in therapy. I also believe a big part of it has taken a wrong turn, and the profession finds that very hard to say out loud.
Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson wrote a whole book about why that's so hard, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me). They argue that cognitive dissonance pushes us to justify our mistakes, and the more we invest in a belief, the harder we defend it (Tavris and Aronson, 2007). They even gave a chapter to therapists and other clinicians, titled "Good Intentions, Bad Science". Its point is that people who sincerely want to help can stop noticing the evidence that they're wrong.
Every tribe does this, including the right. Some conservatives would love this story to come with a simple villain: the woke therapist. I don't buy that either. Plenty of parents make serious mistakes, and some cutoffs are the right call. Most of the therapists I know are careful and kind.
I sit somewhere in the middle. These days that makes both sides a little suspicious of you. I'd rather follow the evidence, even when it embarrasses my own field.
So I have a question for the Guardian and the BBC. Millions of families on both sides of the political spectrum are living through estrangement. Why does the right-leaning press seem to care more about them than the left? If anyone there reads this, I'm easy to find.
And I want to hear from you too. Has any paper or channel covered estrangement in a way that felt fair to you? Hit reply and tell me which one. I read every reply.
One correction to the Telegraph piece: it calls Cut Off an upcoming book. It's out now on Amazon in the US and the UK, as a paperback and a Kindle ebook. The book makes the full case behind this email: how therapy language gave adult children a new way to judge the people who raised them, and what the research says about how families find their way back. I wrote it for parents, no matter how they vote.
If you'd rather listen than read, I was back on the UK's top biohacking podcast this week, hosted by my good friend Tony Wrighton, for what may be my fifth appearance. I'm trying to see if I can become Tony's number one guest. We talked about whether therapy culture is breaking up families.
And if you'd like to grill me in person, come to the launch. On Thursday 19 November I'll be at Solid Grounds Coffee Roasters in Woodland Park, Colorado. I'll talk about why adult children cut off their parents and what helps families find their way back, then take questions and sign books. It runs from 6pm to 7:30pm. Tickets are $50 and include a signed copy. Seats are still available, but they're selling out fast. If you live within reach of Colorado Springs, I'd love to meet you.
Hold steady,
Richard
P.S. Do you have a friend who reads the Guardian? Forward this to them and tell me what they say.
Disclosure: I wrote Cut Off and earn from every copy and launch ticket sold. This email contains no affiliate links.
References
AllSides (2026a) 'Newsweek media bias rating'. Available at: https://www.allsides.com/news-source/newsweek (Accessed: 3 November 2026).
AllSides (2026b) 'New York Post (News) media bias rating'. Available at: https://www.allsides.com/news-source/new-york-post (Accessed: 9 November 2026).
Hank, K. (2024) 'Emerging ideas. Family estrangement and its association with life satisfaction and depressiveness in adulthood', Family Relations, 73(5), pp. 2937–2944. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/fare.13063
Hinsliff, G. (2024) '"I never want you around your grandchild": the families torn apart when adult children decide to go "no contact"', The Guardian, 9 November. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/nov/09/the-families-torn-apart-when-adult-children-decide-to-go-no-contact (Accessed: 3 November 2026).
Norton, A.L. and Tan, T.X. (2019) 'The relationship between licensed mental health counselors' political ideology and counseling theory preference', American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 89(1), pp. 86–94. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/ort0000339
Pillemer, K. (2020) Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them. New York: Avery.
Reczek, R., Thomeer, M.B. and Bijou, C. (2025) 'How intergenerational estrangement matters for maternal and adult children's health', Journal of Marriage and Family, 87(1), pp. 92–113. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.13013
Tavris, C. and Aronson, E. (2007) Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. Orlando, FL: Harcourt.
Twigg, M. (2026) 'Therapy's role in the toxic trend of family estrangement', The Telegraph, 3 November. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/11/03/family-estrangement-increase-therapy/ (Accessed: 3 November 2026).