Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Hello, everybody! I'm here today with Janice Formichella, and we're going to talk about family estrangement.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Let me tell you a bit about Janice. First, st

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: she's a breakup coach and the host of podcasts, sex and the solo girl and breakups, broken hearts and moving on.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: She's passionate about helping people from all backgrounds to beat their breakup, overcome loneliness, and make the end of a relationship the start of a powerful new beginning.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: She's also a survivor of domestic violence.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: and now uses her story to support others and raise awareness about the harmful impact of victim blaming.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: And we've done a beautiful podcast on all of that. So have a look out for that. Welcome, Janice.

Janice she/her: Thank you so much heather, and also thank you for shining a light on another topic that is important and prevalent, and doesn't get talked about enough.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah, tell me why, it's important.

Janice she/her: Because I think a lot more people are learning about toxic family dynamics these days. A lot of people

Janice she/her: would be very well served to distance themselves from their families.

Janice she/her: and a lot of people don't realize how common it is. A lot of people in the Us. Especially have some level of estrangement.

Janice she/her: But yet I think that it is a taboo topic

Janice she/her: that leads a lot of people to not realize that this might be not only a viable option, but the best option for you. And so I think we. That is why I decided to speak out about family estrangement, because for me, I felt like I didn't have a choice. And I want people to know that if this is what you decide to do that, that's okay.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah. And you, you know, I'm a psychotherapist and coach, and quite often I find that

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: there was some sort of priming from the family

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: and ways of being and ways of treatment of my clients by their family. That sort of primed them for unsatisfactory and sometimes even worse, abusive relationships.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: It's like the bullying started young.

Janice she/her: Yeah, I can probably relate to to some of that. And also just when you learn your family is in a safe space. And I do like that. We're talking so much these days

Janice she/her: about narcissism and about toxic family dynamics.

Janice she/her: I think that that's a healthy thing to a certain extent, and I am not sure how many of your listeners will know. But in 2024 family estrangement actually became a very, very hot topic on Tiktok, which I wasn't aware of for a while. I'm not a very, very heavy Tiktok user. I had already decided to speak out about it as part of my 2024 goals before this

Janice she/her: started to take off.

Janice she/her: And what really upset me and hurt me as someone who's gone through. This is a lot of people. Critics were saying that family estrangement was one of the worst trend for millennials, or the worst millennial trend is that we've chosen to do this and talk about it, and

Janice she/her: it kind of broke my heart because this is not a trend, and it's not something that is fun to do. I gained very little other than peace of mind from distancing myself from my family. And so I want people to know. This is, it's it's not a trend. This

Janice she/her: makes people's lives better. A lot of the time.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah. And then, you know, looking back.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: really, emotional intelligence is only something of the last 30 years

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: as a topic that anybody talked about. I think parents from previous generations just didn't have any of these skills or any of this knowledge.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: and some of them are really open to learning, and some of them are really entrenched.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: And it's the same with domestic violence stuff, you know. You know, you have to separate from a partner who is not going to hear you not going to validate you isn't interested in your point of view.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: It's the same. I think. Sometimes you just have to divorce your family.

Janice she/her: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I just because I don't want to say just because but you know, just because someone gave birth to you. I don't think that that makes you obligated to continue to put yourself through

Janice she/her: hell for their benefit.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Indeed. So tell us your story, and then we'll have a bit more breadth of understanding. I think.

Janice she/her: Thank you. So

Janice she/her: one, perhaps the biggest part of how I got to this point is, I was, I am a Mormon, an ex Mormon. I was raised in the Lds. Slash Mormon faith in a very, very strict household with parents who were extremely devout. When I was growing up.

Janice she/her: The culture of the Church was

Janice she/her: different from what it is now. A lot of people have started to recognize how destructive the Mormon faith is. A lot of people are leaving these days. A lot of Mormon parents are becoming more accepting of children who decide to leave. This is not how it was when I was growing up.

Janice she/her: Very few people left.

Janice she/her: Parents were taught to be very firm and strict with children who decided to leave

Janice she/her: the church is still very, very homophobic. I don't care what anyone says. You need to do more research if you think otherwise. But I grew up in a culture where parents were told. If your child comes out as gay, you are well within your right, and perhaps should not allow them into your home ever again. And so this is. This is how I how I was raised.

Janice she/her: I always no, I was different. I felt

Janice she/her: very out of place. I noticed that I had ambitions for my life that the other girls around me did not. I was also raised within a culture where women were girls were not even that encouraged to go to college. It was really. How can you get married?

Janice she/her: Young, for sure, and that would be the most important thing that you could do with your with your youth is to find a good man, and the absolute, most important thing that you can do with your life is, be a be a mother. And so that was how we were

Janice she/her: socialized, groomed whatnot. And if you did go to college, it was, you know, like, if your husband like lost his job someday or he died, it would be good to have something to fall back on, and that I just knew from such a young age that

Janice she/her: I just didn't buy into that. I really wanted to go to college. I wanted to travel.

Janice she/her: It wasn't for me.

Janice she/her: And along these lines, when I was in high school I was very talented academically, and I foresaw myself going off to school, of course, being from Arizona, and I did. I had the whole

Janice she/her: I want to move to New York, you know, when I'm when I'm done with, when I'm done with high school and our big plans for myself.

Janice she/her: only to discover that my parents would not support me going to any of these schools. I had grown up always saying this to everyone around me, that I wanted to go out of state to college. I really wanted to move to New York. I wanted to go to England, and so for the very 1st time my senior year.

Janice she/her: I'm yeah, being told that I can only go to Brigham Young University. People will likely be aware of that. It's the Mormon College.

Janice she/her: I or I could stay home and go to school.

Janice she/her: Long story short, I did end up going to Byu had a complete mental breakdown. Basically I hated it. It was so strict. It was very, very similar to living at my parents house as a high school student, you know we had curfews, dress codes, very heavy surveillance culture.

Janice she/her: I end up dropping out and basically refusing to go back after about a year and a half, and that was kind of

Janice she/her: more or less the beginning of the end. Really, when it came to my relationship with my family.

Janice she/her: I did pull myself up somehow and started to figure life out. I decided I was going to support myself financially, which

Janice she/her: I was not raised to ever even consider. Was a trust fund, kid, and the

Janice she/her: plan or the promise always was. You'll get all of your living expenses paid for during college.

Janice she/her: So I decided I mean, my family refused. So I ended up picking myself up going to Arizona State University, being very, very successful, working, you know, 3 or 4 jobs so that I could have my own place on a roll. You know my school sent me on trips.

Janice she/her: and I and I absolutely loved it. I it was the exact type of college experience that I had seen for myself.

Janice she/her: Well, the fur the second huge nail in the coffin was that my

Janice she/her: parents, who I was still in touch with? I really want to make sure that this is clear.

Janice she/her: A lot of people who decide to become a stranger distance from their family do so partially because of the effort that they have put in over the years to make it work.

Janice she/her: and when you are rejected or abandoned, or continued to be treated poorly, despite all of that, that's what can send you over the edge, and in my case I was out of the church, which I was kind of trying to hide. But

Janice she/her: I don't think I did a very good job. I would still go over there for Sunday dinners. I would take my siblings to do things. My mom and I would get together. I was trying just as hard as ever to be a good daughter and sister, and all the things. I'm the oldest of 7 kids. By the way, so that's added another layer.

Janice she/her: it's a big deal. Yeah, yeah, and that's definitely, partially why I wasn't forgiven.

Janice she/her: My parents come over one night in the midst of all of this happy time in my life, and tell me that I no longer have access to the trust fund.

Janice she/her: because they did not approve of the women's studies classes that I was taking. This is how strict they were and how devout they were that I had started taking women's studies classes. Somehow they saw that as some sort of

Janice she/her: threat, or they just couldn't stand it. And yeah, they said, Best of luck, you're not getting another dime, you have no access to it. We're don't approve of this.

Janice she/her: And like I said, good luck. I remember asking them, you know, what should I do.

Janice she/her: I had only a year and a half left of college, and my dad just said I don't know what to tell you.

Janice she/her: Oddly enough, they still anticipated that I would stay an active member of the family.

Janice she/her: I was

Janice she/her: absolutely devastated, and felt very betrayed, but yet they were still, you know, I remember my mom calling me 2 days later.

Janice she/her: asking if I'm going to come to Sunday dinner?

Janice she/her: And I did not, and that was the 1st period of estrangement was

Janice she/her: I think we didn't talk for about 3 years after that.

Janice she/her: And then, ever since then, we've gone on and off and on and off for yeah, periods of

Janice she/her: maybe between 3 and 5, 5 years.

Janice she/her: mostly coming back together, if not entirely coming back together because of my renewed effort.

Janice she/her: And so, for instance, after my my domestic abuse, which we talked about in a previous episode, everyone go and and check it out. I talked in the episode about how my mom especially had blamed me for

Janice she/her: what had happened to me explicitly blamed me like her exact words were I caused it. I it was my fault, was what she said I, and after that I moved to Australia, and I don't think we spoke for 4 or 5 years. Nobody even bothered to reach out to me, including my siblings. So lots of abandonment. But I've always filled it with a lot of other things.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Very good, very very hurtful.

Janice she/her: It's bad. My! My story is pretty

Janice she/her: out there, so I mean there were times when I was in Australia that I would. I remember, like my last year that I was there. I did start reaching out, and they didn't even know what country I was in at 1 point, just like no care

Janice she/her: at all for my well-being, me being a part of the family, and also keep in mind. In my case.

Janice she/her: we didn't have big fights or falling outs. A lot of people are forced to become estranged from their families because they just can't seem to get along with them. And there's explosive arguments all the time. That wasn't my case, which is why it was even more hurtful. I was just kind of abandoned. People never forgave me for leaving the church

Janice she/her: people never forgave me for the lifestyle that I had. My mom was convinced that the reason why I'd had so many bad relationships was because I didn't follow what we call the word of wisdom.

Janice she/her: The word of wisdom in the Mormon faith is basically like the dietary code.

Janice she/her: So no coffee which people think is hilarious. No drinking, smoking drugs, etc.

Janice she/her: It was perfectly obvious that the life I was leading, and that I did drink

Janice she/her: not excessively, but my mom was very convinced, for instance, that it was my choice to violate this code, that I had bad relationships into my life. So it was just this level of resentment towards me and disapproval that no one was really able to ever get over.

Janice she/her: I ended up living in Australia for 5 years.

Janice she/her: I came back to the States about 4 years ago, with, for whatever reason, a renewed

Janice she/her: Enthusiasm or desire, I suppose, to give it one more go.

Janice she/her: I had had some really upsetting

Janice she/her: things happen when I was in Australia with the people around me. I had some friends there who, I considered the quote unquote chosen family.

Janice she/her: who in the end I

Janice she/her: felt also a bit betrayed by, and you know, some upsetting things happen involving my visa and my social community. And so I was thinking to myself, you know, these were people who I considered family, who, I don't really feel did right by me. I have an actual family like they're not my actual family.

Janice she/her: you know. That's when we say chosen family, or that friends are like family. It's

Janice she/her: really just a way of saying they're very good friends. And so I talked. I talked myself into giving it one more go, and you know you only have one actual family, and so it would behoove me to see if I could rebuild things.

Janice she/her: and it didn't work out. Let's just say that it was

Janice she/her: 2 of the most painful years of my life. Possibly I did good taking care of myself, but I went to visit them in Utah, you know, 7 or 8 times got traded very horribly every time I'm not. I cannot explain why I could not get people on my side. None of my siblings wanted

Janice she/her: anything to do with me. I kept on trying, though there were so many horrible things that happened. I'll give an example

Janice she/her: during the pandemic. They decide that it's still appropriate to have a family reunion.

Janice she/her: Didn't tell me.

Janice she/her: By the way, I had to find out. After that it had happened. They take a professional family photo

Janice she/her: without me again.

Janice she/her: Why can't you wait and then send it to me for Christmas?

Janice she/her: When I was alone in my apartment during the pandemic, I get to open this on Christmas Day. And there were just so many things like that that happened over about yeah, a 2 year period.

Janice she/her: About 2 years ago there was what I call the final incident that I don't really share publicly.

Janice she/her: But it was so.

Janice she/her: Mind blowing on a group

Janice she/her: who does this. You know it was something that both of my parents had done that was so shocking that it completely devastated me emotionally and mentally

Janice she/her: that I started to think

Janice she/her: this isn't worth fighting for anymore. And not only is it not worth fighting for anymore, this is causing you a lot of

Janice she/her: harm. It was absolutely destroying me to put effort in and then have things like this happen.

Janice she/her: So I did take

Janice she/her: a few months to think things over as far as what I was going to do. I

Janice she/her: found myself at the bottom of a bottle. To be perfectly honest, because

Janice she/her: it was. It just completely devastated me. I started drinking very heavily, just completely, for I don't know. A few months kind of spun out of control.

Janice she/her: I was able to have moments of clarity where I thought for the 1st time, it would probably be the best choice, or a choice to like officially cut them off.

Janice she/her: and so, after taking a few months to think it over. That is what I did, and I

Janice she/her: didn't feel like I had really any other options other than to continue to put myself through this. So in my case. I wrote an email.

Janice she/her: And yeah, let them know that I, you know, wasn't gonna have any more contact. And that was hard. Like, I said, these are not easy choices that was also quite

Janice she/her: devastating, and something that took me a lot of time to to process. But I've also always felt that it was the right thing.

Janice she/her: The 1st year was really hard and then in. But I build up my life. I run an ex Mormon group here in Denver that is active, and that is my therapy. And then, in the beginning of 2024, I thought I'd like to speak out about this, and so I started giving yeah podcast interviews on the topic.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: That's brilliant.

Janice she/her: A lot. Yeah.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: But I'm also thinking about

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: all of the victim blaming, but that somehow within me there's this sort of

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: you, this my psychotherapy, you know you encapsulate badness that can then all be put into you so that everybody else can be squeaky, clean.

Janice she/her: Yeah, the. There's a dynamic called the family scapegoat. And I definitely feel that somewhere along the line. Yeah, that I was

Janice she/her: given that role in the family. I mean, everybody else in my family gets along

Janice she/her: well, slash. It's a very enmeshed family, which you will know with your background, is actually very, very dysfunctional

Janice she/her: dynamic. And it's I would say that they're on the far end of, you know the enmeshment, all living near each other and up in each other's business and talking, you know, constantly. And yeah, somewhere along the line, I was given this role that yeah, all all the the frustration or the

Janice she/her: someone has to bear the brunt. Someone has to, you know. Not. Get along. My! My dad didn't get along with his family growing up. He was a middle child, and never felt

Janice she/her: as loved. I mean, this is true. He talked to me about it, and he also had said at 1 point, when I was trying to work all of this out, that there is someone in every family who gets treated the way that I do, and it's just how it is.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: And so so I.

Janice she/her: I think. No, it was, and I'm going to him for like help. And he's just like, you know what this is a dynamic that plays out, you know, in most families it happened to me, and so I think maybe in his mind it made him feel a little bit better to see someone else going through this completely, subconsciously. But

Janice she/her: I mean, maybe he's right, and especially in big families.

Janice she/her: My experience is that something's got to give what, as far as you know.

Janice she/her: people's roles. It's really hard, I think, for everybody in such a large family to get along over the years as well, also the fact that I left the faith pretty early on, I think, like I said people resented and wanted to kind of take it out on me. I know that I've lived a very

Janice she/her: free lifestyle and gone off traveled the world, done a lot of really exciting things, and I suspect at least that

Janice she/her: there could be, you know, an element of

Janice she/her: jealousy, or confusion or resentment towards me for that and certainly that's how it felt.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Some punishment for that.

Janice she/her: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yes, that is actually a good way to put it like I did feel like I was just through the years constantly being punished for this, that, and and the other

Janice she/her: again. But again, we it's not like we didn't get along. It just felt like everyone had just decided to treat me this way.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: What advice would you give to people who are considering estrangement.

Janice she/her: The 1st thing that I will say is

Janice she/her: to try experiment with other ways of creating distance with your family first.st This is a really big step. And for some people who are in this cycle, the way that you might be able to find peace is by creating boundaries with yourself and your family, and seeing, if that works first, st

Janice she/her: as far as maybe different ways, that you will

Janice she/her: demand that you are treated agreements that you will have with yourself as far as what you will engage with.

Janice she/her: This could solve the problem right there, and

Janice she/her: likewise distancing is also something that I like to to talk about, you might be able to create certain levels of distance with your family. Yes, physically.

Janice she/her: that may also again solve solve the problem. So, for instance, moving to a different state which a lot of people in the ex-mormon group that I run have done, that have moved from Utah to Colorado to create some space, and that has been a real game changer for them, because I'm not the only ex-mormon who's in a dysfunctional toxic family situation, so that may help a lot.

Janice she/her: You may do things like only agreeing to go to family gatherings twice a year.

Janice she/her: You know some people are having a lot of contact with their family that is really, really toxic, and a lot of people feel obligated to go to all these family events because it's your family. It's your mom, and

Janice she/her: say that that could lead to a lot of freedom, knowing that you're not obligated for any of this, and you can still be a part of things. But if you cut back

Janice she/her: again that that might really help. So

Janice she/her: playing with some of these things, 1st is, yeah, the biggest or the 1st tip that I would give another tip would be.

Janice she/her: This is not something that you do in the heat of an argument. So I would say, if you're considering distancing or estrangement to let all the feelings die down. If you are someone who fights with their family often.

Janice she/her: and then to give yourself some sort of timeline to see how things work, or how you feel about them before taking any big step. Which is what I did after this incident, I thought to myself, I'm going to give it X number of months. See how I feel. See? Maybe if they reach out which, of course, they were never going to and then think about, think about next steps.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Right got you? Excellent?

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: And and what about people who are

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: already in that place of post estrangement

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: and already distancing? What advice would you give to them?

Janice she/her: Well.

Janice she/her: I would say, feel free to own your decision, because it is a big one, and one way that you can do that is actually within the act of

Janice she/her: cutting off your family to be

Janice she/her: clear about why or not clear that you are doing it. I don't think you need to go into too much detail as to why be clear with them that you are doing it, and be concise about it and to the point. And this will help you also to gain.

Janice she/her: to gain clarity. If you're, you know, going to write a 5 page letter about everything that they've done over the years I feel that'll feel very chaotic

Janice she/her: in your mind, and so be yeah, short and sweet, and then own the decision. And

Janice she/her: there is no way around this. You've got to get some therapy. There's

Janice she/her: I, whatever you have to do to get counseling absolutely set yourself up with that beforehand. I

Janice she/her: did not, for whatever reason I I'm a freelancer, and it's kind of hard to get health insurance in the States, and so I hadn't really explored that for myself, but

Janice she/her: following, cutting them off. I also spiraled a bit, and I had to. Yeah, get some support. I have really good friends, by the way, which I would also hope people would surround themselves with supportive people. But it really got to the point where it was untenable, and I had to had to get some other support in my case. Actually, I I went to my Gp. I was struggling, and they referred me to some

Janice she/her: counseling that was very affordable. So

Janice she/her: if someone listening who also lives in the States

Janice she/her: feels that maybe they don't, they don't have access to that. Do some research, get some referrals. You might be surprised. I was really surprised when I found out how cheap it was going to be, and that helps a lot. In my case

Janice she/her: my counselor would listen to me a lot rather than he was not prescriptive at all. And sometimes, yeah, I would come and just say, you know, I've had this memory about something that they did to me. And I just want to

Janice she/her: talk about it. And yeah, that helped a lot. And it

Janice she/her: turned things around for me mentally, and it also allowed me to speak to someone else about it as with any type of breakup.

Janice she/her: Your friends are great to go to and talk with.

Janice she/her: And they're also really good for other types of support. Going to the pub or having a girls night or having a game night, and maybe not continuing to bring this up

Janice she/her: all the time or not.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Having some fun.

Janice she/her: Yeah, yes. And I was also triggered really easily, too, in the beginning, because it was everything I'd gone through was just so upsetting. And like. I can remember one time that we were out with like 10 friends or something, and

Janice she/her: I think only one of my friends really knew about it. And somehow it came up. And I'm thinking the moment like, yeah, like, let's tell everyone what happened.

Janice she/her: No, I immediately was so triggered that I had to leave the room, and that wasn't fair to anybody, I mean. I don't judge myself for it, but having a therapist who would listen to me and help me to speak about it easier, so that that wasn't happening helped a lot.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Much better, much more contained and safe for you.

Janice she/her: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So

Janice she/her: let rely on your friends. But you're gonna get me professional support. This is massive. This is life changing. It

Janice she/her: has positive results. But this is something horribly negative to to go through. So you need as many reinforcements as you can.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: It's a big transformation. You need support. I get it. I get it.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: How can people get in touch with you?

Janice she/her: Thank you, and thank you so much for wanting to cover, like I said, a taboo and

Janice she/her: dark topic. My life has been changed for the better because of it. But I think sometimes people don't want to touch it. So thank you. And to anyone listening, I definitely have gone through it, and I feel like I have a great life now. I've been able to reclaim a lot of my heritage and my culture because of supporting the ex-mormon community. And

Janice she/her: I would like to share that with you. So come over to Instagram and check me out. I also post a lot about both of my podcasts on Instagram. I post a lot about my life.

Janice she/her: various resources for people either going through breakups, lots of sex positivity over there. So it's also just a fun place. So it's Janice for Michela. Please come over and follow and say, Hi.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Thank you so much, Janice.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: We'll have to think of something else to do. I've really enjoyed being with you.

Janice she/her: I have loved this. Yes, thank you so much. What a great way to spend the morning.

Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Thank you. Bye, for now.

Janice she/her: Bye.