Clinical Strategies for Family Estrangement – Free Workshop for Clinicians
Family estrangement can leave even experienced clinicians weighing competing concerns: respect boundaries without reinforcing division, remain neutral without becoming passive, and explore repair without pushing reconciliation before a client is ready.
The Family Estrangement Workshop brings those clinical tensions into a practical framework. Psychologist Joshua Coleman, PhD leads the training with focused conversations featuring relationship and estrangement experts Nedra Glover Tawwab, MSW, LCSW; Kristina Scharp, PhD; and Lori Gottlieb, LCSW.
The workshop moves from the changing landscape of family estrangement into assessment, case formulation, Estrangement Reconciliation Therapy, emotional regulation, accountability, apology, trust, safety considerations, ethics, and situations where reconnection may not be possible or appropriate.
Clinicians will also work through decision points, case examples, therapeutic tools, and strategies for parents, adult children, couples, siblings, and grandparents navigating fractured family relationships.
Why Attend the Family Estrangement Workshop
Estrangement cases rarely reduce to a simple question of whether family members should reconnect. Clinicians may need to assess competing narratives, loyalty conflicts, boundaries, trauma histories, accountability, safety, and each client’s goals without allowing the therapeutic relationship to become another site of triangulation.
This training provides a structured way to think through those decisions. Joshua Coleman, PhD brings together assessment tools, case formulation, clinical decision trees, motivational interviewing, attachment-informed work, emotion-regulation strategies, and interventions for shame, defensiveness, grief, anger, and ambivalence.
The workshop also addresses the limits of reconciliation as an outcome. You will examine how to support meaningful accountability and repair when appropriate while also helping clients move toward clarity, acceptance, dignity, and emotional growth when renewed contact is not possible or advisable.
Who Should Attend the Family Estrangement Workshop
This workshop is designed for mental health professionals who work with family estrangement, cutoff, no contact, and broken connection. It is especially relevant when the clinical work requires more nuance than simply encouraging firmer boundaries or urging family members to reconcile.
The material spans individual and conjoint treatment as well as multiple family relationships, giving clinicians a framework for thinking about both relational repair and situations where continued distance may remain necessary.
- Clinicians working with estranged parents and adult children
- Professionals supporting clients through sibling estrangement
- Therapists working with grandparents affected by family cutoff
- Clinicians navigating estrangement within couples and remarried families
- Professionals concerned about triangulation, neutrality, or therapist bias
- Clinicians helping clients work with shame, guilt, grief, anger, or defensiveness
- Professionals assessing readiness for reconnection or reconciliation sessions
- Clinicians managing cases involving trauma histories, abuse allegations, safety concerns, or serious boundary violations
What You’ll Learn During the Family Estrangement Workshop
The training begins by placing estrangement in its cultural, generational, relational, and clinical context. You will examine current research, common myths, high-conflict dynamics, loyalty conflicts, and reasons traditional treatment approaches may fall short in these cases.
From there, the workshop moves into Estrangement Reconciliation Therapy, including pathways into estrangement, clinical decision trees, treatment goals, readiness for reconnection, therapist neutrality, motivational interviewing, narrative reconstruction, attachment-informed interventions, and emotion-regulation skills.
The final portion expands into difficult clinical decisions, including premature reconciliation, safety risks, trauma histories, abuse allegations, serious boundary violations, autonomy, informed consent, confidentiality, dual relationships, and ways to define progress when reconnection does not occur.
- How to identify different pathways into family estrangement
- How clinical decision trees can guide assessment and intervention planning
- Ways to build a therapeutic alliance without reinforcing triangulation
- How to explore ambivalence and readiness for reconnection
- Tools for working with guilt, shame, defensiveness, triggers, and heightened distress
- How perspective-taking and narrative reconstruction can broaden rigid family stories
- Strategies for meaningful accountability, effective apology, and rebuilding trust when repair is sought
- How to conduct reconciliation sessions while managing setbacks and the risk of re-estrangement
- Ways to support acceptance when reconnection is not possible
- Clinical considerations for violence, threats, coercive control, untreated addiction, psychiatric instability, and repeated serious boundary violations
Estrangement Reconciliation Therapy: Assessment, Growth and Repair Without Forcing Reconnection
Estrangement Reconciliation Therapy, or ERT, is Joshua Coleman’s evidence-informed framework for approaching the complexity of family cutoff. The model begins with assessment and case formulation rather than assuming that estrangement has one cause or that every family should pursue the same outcome.
ERT incorporates clinical decision trees, motivational interviewing, attachment-informed interventions, cognitive reappraisal, narrative reconstruction, distress-tolerance skills, mindfulness, self-compassion, and strategies for accountability. These tools help clinicians address the emotional and relational dynamics surrounding cutoff while maintaining clearer therapeutic boundaries.
Reconciliation is one possible direction, not the sole measure of progress. The framework also addresses acceptance, personal growth, realistic expectations, and ways clients can move forward when contact cannot safely or constructively be restored.
- Assess pathways into estrangement before selecting an intervention
- Clarify treatment goals and relational values
- Explore readiness for reconnection without pressuring the outcome
- Support accountability, perspective-taking, and more complex family narratives
- Use emotion-regulation tools when distress threatens productive communication
- Prepare for reconciliation, setbacks, continued distance, or acceptance based on the clinical situation
Featured Speakers and What They Cover
Joshua Coleman leads the clinical training and is joined by three special guests for in-depth conversations about estrangement and psychotherapy. Their work spans clinical practice, relationship therapy, family communication research, and public education.
Joshua Coleman, PhD
Psychologist Joshua Coleman is the workshop’s featured presenter and developer of Estrangement Reconciliation Therapy. His teaching addresses assessment, case formulation, therapist neutrality, intervention planning, reconciliation, acceptance, safety, and the broader clinical complexities of family estrangement.
Nedra Glover Tawwab, MSW, LCSW
Nedra Glover Tawwab is a licensed therapist, relationship expert, and New York Times bestselling author of Set Boundaries, Find Peace, Drama Free, and The Balancing Act. She brings extensive relationship-therapy experience to the workshop’s conversations about family relationships, boundaries, connection, and estrangement.
Kristina Scharp, PhD
Kristina Scharp is a Professor of Communication at Rutgers University, Director of the Family Communication and Relationships Lab, and a Fellow of the International Association of Relationship Research. Her research has examined parent-child estrangement, family disconnection, changing identities, stigma, uncertainty, disclosure, and communication strategies for more than a decade.
Lori Gottlieb, LCSW
Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. Her clinical and public-education work brings another psychotherapy perspective to the workshop’s expert conversations about estrangement and difficult family relationships.
Family Estrangement Workshop Schedule and Four-Part Agenda
The live virtual workshop takes place Thursday, January 7, 2027, from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Central Time, which is 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM Pacific Time. The training is organized into four major parts covering the clinical landscape, ERT, expert conversations and case examples, and advanced applications.
Part 1: The New Landscape of Family Estrangement
- Cultural and generational influences on estrangement
- Current prevalence and research
- Mental health and family estrangement
- Alienation, loyalty conflicts, and high-conflict families
- Clinical myths, misconceptions, and limitations of traditional treatment models
Part 2: Estrangement Reconciliation Therapy
- Therapist neutrality, bias, pathways into estrangement, and clinical decision trees
- Treatment goals, readiness for reconnection, motivational interviewing, and relational values
- Guilt, shame, defensiveness, triggers, perspective-taking, and narrative reconstruction
- Attachment-informed interventions, grounding, paced breathing, distress tolerance, mindfulness, and self-compassion
- Accountability, apology, rebuilding trust, reconciliation sessions, setbacks, and acceptance
Part 3: Conversations with Experts and Case Examples
- Common mistakes in estrangement cases
- Factors that may make reconnection more or less likely
- Progress when reconnection does not happen
- Estrangement following remarriage
- Childhood emotional neglect with conflicting abuse narratives
- Cases in which an adult child’s therapist has recommended estrangement
Part 4: Advanced Applications and Clinical Considerations
- Individual versus conjoint treatment
- Sibling and grandparent estrangement
- Problems with premature reconciliation
- Distinguishing discomfort from danger
- Trauma histories, abuse allegations, violence, threats, coercive control, addiction, psychiatric instability, and serious boundary violations
- Clinical contraindications, autonomy, informed consent, confidentiality, dual relationships, research limitations, and future directions
Lunch is scheduled from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM Central Time, or 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM Pacific Time. A 15-minute break is also planned for both the morning and afternoon at the speaker’s discretion.
Dates, Access, Replays and Where to Watch
The Family Estrangement Workshop is a virtual training on Thursday, January 7, 2027, from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Central Time, or 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM Pacific Time.
If you cannot attend live, register anyway. Registered participants receive 3-day free access to the training.
Check your email after registration for viewing links and access details.
How to Register for the Family Estrangement Workshop
Click any Register Here For Free button on this page, enter your contact information, and check your email for access details.
About Joshua Coleman, PhD
Joshua Coleman, PhD is a psychologist in private practice and a Senior Fellow with the Council on Contemporary Families. His clinical and professional work has focused extensively on family estrangement, particularly parent-adult child relationships and the challenges clinicians face when families become divided or disconnected.
He is the author of five books, including The Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict. His book Estrangement Reconciliation Therapy: A New Model for Treating Family Conflict is scheduled for publication in November 2026 and provides a clinical framework for mental health professionals working with family estrangement.
Dr. Coleman has published peer-reviewed articles and chapters on estrangement and has provided professional trainings for organizations and institutions including the American Psychological Association, Stanford University, Weill Cornell Department of Psychiatry, and the University of California, Irvine Department of Psychiatry.
His broader public work has included contributions to publications such as The Atlantic and The Washington Post, along with appearances across national television, radio, and podcasts. In this workshop, that experience is organized into a practical clinical roadmap spanning assessment, intervention, reconciliation, acceptance, safety, and ethical decision-making.
Reviews and Testimonials
“Dr. Coleman is focused on a dilemma that has plagued therapists for decades. His unique perspective on parent-adult child estrangement was very helpful.”
“Wonderful presentation from an expert in the field and practice!”
“This was one of the most interesting and well-presented continuing education courses I’ve ever participated in. Very informative and made fascinating connections to cultural/generational shifts. Practical, no-nonsense recommendations for helping families manage painful estrangement…would highly recommend to other clinicians!”
CE Hours and the Estrangement Reconciliation Therapy Book
Free registration provides access to the virtual workshop. Continuing education hours and the book are available for an additional cost.
Estrangement Reconciliation Therapy: A New Model for Treating Family Conflict
The book, valued at $36.99, is included with the CE upgrade purchase. Joshua Coleman presents ERT as a structured and compassionate framework for understanding the emotional roots of family cutoff while recognizing that rebuilding contact and maintaining distance are different legitimate treatment goals.
- Set realistic expectations and support more constructive communication
- Help clients examine their role in difficult relational dynamics
- Work with unresolved anger, grief, sadness, and confusion
- Support clients navigating one-sided estrangements with dignity and respect
- Encourage emotional growth, self-care, and legacy building whether or not reconciliation occurs
Frequently Asked Questions
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Register for the Family Estrangement Workshop with Joshua Coleman, PhD to explore assessment, Estrangement Reconciliation Therapy, clinical interventions, expert conversations, case examples, and advanced considerations for family cutoffs and broken connection.
- Jan 07 2027
- 7:00 am - 3:00 pm
Local Time
- Timezone: America/New_York
- Date: Jan 07 2027
- Time: 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
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