How to Repair Your Relationship with Your Adult Child After Hurt or Conflict: Helpful Therapy Words, part 3

Episode 232: How to Repair Your Relationship with Your Adult Child After Hurt or Conflict: Helpful Therapy Words, part 3

What happens after a painful conversation with your adult child may matter just as much as what happened during it.

If a disagreement ends badly, your adult child says you hurt them, or distance has started growing between you, it can be tempting to wait for things to blow over. But unresolved hurt rarely disappears on its own. Often, it quietly becomes more distant.

In Part 3 of Therapy Words That Can Actually Help, we’re talking about two of the most important skills for repairing a strained parent-adult child relationship: repair and accountability.

Repair means taking intentional steps to reconnect after conflict, hurt, or disconnection. Accountability means being willing to recognize the impact you had on your adult child without becoming defensive, collapsing into guilt, or deciding that you are a terrible parent.

These skills are especially important when your adult child brings up painful experiences from the past, tells you they felt criticized or misunderstood, or when both of you are waiting for the other person to make the first move.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to repair your relationship with your adult child after an argument, misunderstanding, or hurtful conversation, even when the disagreement itself has not been completely resolved.
• Why waiting for your adult child to reach out first can keep the relationship stuck, and how you can make the first move without taking responsibility for everything that happened.
• What healthy accountability with an adult child actually looks like, including how to acknowledge your impact without immediately defending your intentions.
• Why guilt and shame can interfere with relationship repair, especially when your adult child ends up reassuring you instead of having space to talk about their own hurt.
• How apologies, changed behavior, and consistent repair can rebuild trust with an adult child over time, even when your relationship has experienced repeated conflict or disconnection.

You do not have to agree with every part of your adult child’s perspective in order to take their experience seriously. You can say, “I can see that hurt you,” without agreeing that every interpretation they have of you is accurate.

And you do not have to wait until you know exactly who was right or wrong before you reconnect.

Healthy parent-adult child relationships are not relationships without conflict. They are relationships where conflict does not have to become permanent disconnection.

This final episode brings together everything we’ve covered in this three-part series: differentiation, acceptance, curiosity, attunement, emotional safety, repair, and accountability. Each skill builds on the one before it and helps you become more grounded and intentional in the way you respond to your adult child.

If this series has helped you understand your relationship with your adult child in a new way, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your review helps other parents who are searching for support with adult child conflict, estrangement, communication, and relationship repair find the podcast too.

Click Here to download the free guide: 5 Steps to Take Before Trying to Repair the Relationship with Your Adult Child

 Tina Gosney is the Family Conflict Coach. She works with parents who have families in conflict to help them become the grounded, confident leaders their family needs. 
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If you want support putting what you’re learning into practice, come join The Connection Community in Bridge to Connection. This is the perfect spot where you can learn, connect and get targeted help to start moving your relationship with your adult child in a different direction. Set up a Connection Clarity Call with Tina to see if this is a good fit for you: CLICK HERE TO SET UP A CALL

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 Tina is certified in family relationships and a trauma informed coach. 
Visit tinagosney.com for more information on coaching services.

Transcript

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I recently released a series on therapy words that your child might be using against you. I spent a long stretch of episodes. It was episode 225 through 230 on this podcast, and we worked through words that land really hard, especially when they come from your adult child. These are words like toxic boundaries, gaslighting, narcissist, trauma triggered. You know, those are really hard words to hear. But since then, I've actually moved on to a different kind of series that started with episode 231, and then we also did this in 232, and it will be this one, 233. These are built around words that don't corner you, they actually give you something to do. These are helpful therapy words that when you learn how to understand them and put them into your relationships, it can help your relationships be stronger. So last time we covered curiosity, attunement, and emotional safety, that was episode 232. This is how you actually show up inside of a hard conversation once you're grounded enough to have one. And before that, with episode 231, we started with words of differentiation and acceptance. And these two things, differentiation and acceptance, are the foundation that everything else in this series will rest on. Today we're going to finish with two words that matter a lot after a hard moment has already happened. And those two words are repair and accountability. I want to welcome you to Coaching Your Family Relationships Help for Parents of Adult Children. I'm Tina Gosny, a family conflict coach and a parent educator. And on this podcast, we talk about what to do when your relationship with your adult child feels strained, confusing, and even painful. We're going to do it through a family systems lens, which means we look more than just at one relationship and one event. We're going to look at the whole system. This gives us a lot more information about what's really happening underneath the surface of the relationship. Because there is a hope that I want you to hold on to. And that is when one person becomes more steady and grounded, which is what this podcast is helping you to do, that's when the entire relationship system can begin to shift. Now, in every relationship, even the healthiest ones that you can imagine, they all have ruptures. These are moments of disconnection, hurt feelings, misunderstandings, words that land the wrong way. You know, this is not a sign that something is broken. It's just what happens between two people when they're both human beings. And what actually determines the health of a relationship is not whether a rupture or disconnection happens, it's what happens next. And that's what today's two words are about. So let's get into what that is today. We're going to start with repair. What does it actually mean? Here's a question that is worth sitting with. After something difficult happens, let's just say you have a hard exchange with your adult child. What usually happens next? Does it get talked about again? Or does it get swept under the rug? Or does it just go quietly unmentioned until enough time passes that it feels like, oh, that's so light, long ago in the past, it's just too late to bring it up now. Well, repair means you take active steps to restore safety and connection after a conflict or a difficult moment. That's just plain language version. And I want you to notice what it doesn't say. It doesn't say you pretend that the moment never happened. It doesn't say that resolving every last detail about who was right. But it does mean that you're actively doing something to close the gap that opened up rather than just waiting for time to make that gap close on its own, which it almost never does. Family systems thinking is really useful here because every family as a system moves through ordinary cycles of connection and disconnection. There's closeness, tension, distance, and then in a healthy system, a return to closeness again. And that return is repair. I like to look at this process as connection, disconnection, and then reconnection. This cycle is just a normal cycle of relationships and what families go through. It doesn't require that disconnection never has happened. It only requires that someone is willing to reach back across it. You know, families that struggle the most are not usually the ones with the most conflict. It seems like they would be, but they're not. The families that struggle the most are the ones where no one reaches back across the gap, so that every rupture just becomes more and more permanent and more and more distance. Let's talk about where repair gets misunderstood because I think it's really helpful to look at what are we not understanding about repair? Well, the first misunderstanding is thinking that repair has to be this big formal sit-down conversation or a written apology or some grand gesture, you know, that fully resolves everything at one time. But most repair is much smaller than that. It might be a text the next day or a phone call that starts with, hey, I've been thinking about our conversation. Repair happens in ordinary small moments far more often than the big dramatic ones. The second misunderstanding is believing that we need to work out every detail of this disagreement before we can repair and we can resolve this. That's not actually true. You can repair the connection. You can say, I still care about you, and I don't want this distance between us. At the same time, that that actual disagreement is genuinely unresolved. Because reconnecting and agreeing are two different things. And waiting for full agreement before you ever reconnect means that you probably won't ever do either one. A third misunderstanding is thinking that repair is only the job of the person who you feel is more at fault. In practice, waiting to find out who owes the apology more often means that nobody moves first. And the distance just sits there growing. Repair is not about proving who is more responsible or even at all responsible. It's about who's willing to be the one that reaches out. Well, that person can be you, even in moments where you genuinely genuinely believe that you did nothing wrong. Because reaching out is not a confession, it's an invitation to reconnect. Let's talk about what repair sounds like. And I'm going to give you one small shift that you can try. So let's just imagine that you and your son had a tense phone call last week and that ended pretty abruptly. Neither of you have mentioned it since, and maybe you haven't even talked to him since. So a response that avoids repair just lets it sit. Hoping that maybe the next time you talk, it will just be normal and we don't have to talk about it again. A response that's rooted in repair sounds different than that. It sounds like, hey, I've been thinking about our call last week, and I don't love how that ended. I want you to know I'm glad that we talk even when it's hard. Notice that sentence does not require you to know exactly what went wrong or to have everything sorted out about who's going to apologize and whose fault was this or that. It just reopens a door. So here's a small shift that you can try. Just think of one relationship moment. It can be a recent one or maybe one that happened a while ago, but it's just been sitting there quietly unaddressed. Why don't you reach out first and just have it be a brief, small reaching out? You don't need to resolve everything in this one reach out. You're not trying to fix everything, you're just trying to be the one who reaches out across the gap. That's it. That's the whole shift. Okay, let's go into accountability and what it actually means. I had a mother tell me once, like every time I try to take responsibility for something, I either end up defending myself or totally falling apart. There just doesn't seem to be, I don't know how to get to that middle option. Well, that middle option is exactly where accountability lies. Accountability means recognizing that you have an impact on other people and you take responsibility for that. And you do that without collapsing into shame. Notice that it has two halves and both of them matter. The first half is genuinely owning your impact, not just your intentions, because we just do want to focus on intentions quite often. The second half is doing that without letting it destroy your sense of who you are. Most parents that I work with are strong on one half of this and they're missing the other half. Some can defend their intentions all day long, but they struggle to see the impact of their actions on their child. Other parents that I work with collapse so much into shame that the moment they try to take accountability or that accountability is asked of them, that their child ends up comforting them instead of feeling hurt themselves. This is really what it is at its heart is differentiation showing up again. I keep referring back to this episode 231 because this is such a foundational principle. This is specifically tied, when we talk about it like this, it's specifically tied to responsibility. A well-differentiated person can say, I see that had an impact on you, and I'm sorry. And when they say that, that sentence does not need to threaten their identity. An undifferentiated response either refuses to look at their impact at all because that feels too dangerous, or it looks at it and immediately drowns in it because there's no steady, solid self underneath to hold the weight. Real accountability requires enough groundedness to look directly at something that's really hard about yourself, and then stay standing. Now let's talk about where accountability gets misunderstood. The first misunderstanding is confusing accountability with self-flagellation. A parent who spirals into, you know, I'm a terrible parent, I've ruined everything, the moment that their child names something hard is not actually being accountable. They've made that moment about their own guilt, which usually means that their child ends up managing their feelings instead of being heard. Well, that's the opposite of what accountability is supposed to accomplish. The second misunderstanding is thinking that accountability means accepting every characterization that your child offers you, even ones that feel totally inaccurate to you. You can own your actual impact, honestly, without agreeing to every word that they use to describe it. You can say, I see that hurt you and I take that seriously. Well, that is accountability. But agreeing to a description of yourself that you don't believe is true, just to end the discomfort or end the conversation, that is not accountability. That is appeasement. And it tends to erode trust rather than build it. The third misunderstanding is treating accountability as one single transaction, like one good apology, one time of taking responsibility, case closed. You know, real accountability actually shows up in what happens after that moment, not just in what gets said. So a parent who apologizes well, but then repeats the same pattern the following month or the following day, actually has not been accountable. They just said the right words in the moment. Let's talk about what accountability sounds like, and I'll give you a small shift that you can try out. Let's just imagine that your daughter tells you, you know, the way you talk about my career choices make me feel like I never do anything good enough for you. If you're gonna get defensive when she says that, you're gonna argue her point. You might say something like, I'm just trying to help. I don't see what's wrong with that. If you're collapsing and spiraling, you might say, I'm a horrible mother, I have failed you in every way. So neither of those responses are helpful. An accountable response sounds like, I hear that. I don't think I meant it that way, and but I do see that it landed on you as criticism, and I'm trying to change that. Well, that sentence owns the impact clearly without either defending it away or drowning in it. So here's a small shift that you can try this week. The next time that your child names something that you did that hurt them or that they don't like, I want you to notice which direction you are pulled. Are you trying to defend yourself or do you collapse into guilt? And instead of doing that, try to name the impact plainly without either defensiveness or you're collapsing. So you could say something like, I see that had an effect on you, and I want to understand it better. That is a sentence that can land in a way that builds a relationship instead of tears it down. Let's talk about how these two words, repair and accountability, how these two words work together, because they are close cousins. They're not the same thing, but they are cousins, and it's worth knowing the difference. Accountability is owning your impact. Repair is the broader work of restoring connection. And sometimes that includes accountability. And sometimes you don't need accountability at all if it wasn't, if the rupture was not about fault in the first place. But together, these two words, they cover most of what it takes to keep a relationship resilient over the long run. Notice I didn't say perfect, I said resilient. So you're able to take a hit and then come back from it. And like everything else in this series, both of these words, repair and accountability, they rest on the words that I've already covered. You can't offer real accountability without differentiation. You'll find that in episode 231. And if you don't have differentiation, if you haven't developed a differentiated self, you will defend or collapse instead. You can't repair well without acceptance, also covered in episode 231 because you'll keep waiting for a version of the relationship that just isn't real yet. Curiosity in episode 232 is usually what tells you that repair is even needed. And attunement, also in 232, episode 232, is what lets you sense when your child has, you know, gone quiet in a way that you should pay attention to. Emotional safety, episode 232, is what makes it possible for them to tell you anything at all. So every word in this series has been pointing here to what this episode about repair and accountability is able for is allowing you to do. So doing this consistently in your real life, actual relationship is genuinely very hard. And I'm sure you already know that. Most parents I work with don't struggle because they don't care about their children or they don't care about repair or taking up accountability. They struggle because it's very disorienting to hold yourself steady in a hard moment when no one is helping you in real do that in real time. Parents who I've worked with in the past tell me, you know, that something similar happens for them. They tell me that they stop dreading that moment that their child brings something up. And instead, they start to be the first one to reach out instead of waiting to be forgiven. And over weeks and over months, that relationship starts to feel more steady. It has more weight to it. It can hold more things and difficult situations and difficult conversations. It doesn't feel so fragile anymore. When I work with parents, our focus is really helping you to become a parent who has developed the skills of differentiation. So that when you do have a rupture in your family relationships, you have developed a flexible but solid self and solid version of you that can take responsibility for what's yours and repair in a way that lands as true connection with your adult child. This is not just knowing the right words to say in you, the words that you think that they want to hear. And this is really hard work to do by yourself. We are meant as humans to develop inside of relationships. We were never meant to develop these skills in isolation. We need another person who can be a mirror for us so that they can show us our blind spots because we get so wrapped up in our own perspectives and our own expectations and the way that we feel heard in our disappointment that it's really, really difficult to get past that and do this work on your own. Right now I have two spots open for parents who want to work on this together. And if this is you, I want you to schedule a connection call with me so that we can meet and discuss your specific needs. You're gonna find that link in the show notes. One thing I see that is difficult pretty much across the board for all people is to reach out and ask for help. When you're in a situation where your relationship with your adult child is strained and painful and distant and maybe even right now non existent. That carries some really heavy feelings alongside of it. And I've met so many parents of adult children that come to these connection calls and they're really, really nervous and they're also often really emotional. I get it. I know those heavy feelings and the weight that they carry. I also know how difficult it is to speak your situation out loud. Sometimes when we speak it out loud, it just lands differently and it carries different weight. And I know how difficult it is to speak that out loud to someone that you don't even know. But I do want you to know this. Every person that I meet in these connection calls, I meet them right where they are. No judgment and no expectations. All emotions welcome. So if you have reservations about scheduling a call, I want you to know that's completely normal. And if you're not ready for that yet, keep listening to the podcast. There is great information on this podcast. But if you are ready, please consider scheduling a call. And I really look forward to meeting you. I want to close with some of the mistakes that I most often see with these two words repair and accountability, because I want to help you avoid those mistakes. So mistake number one is waiting for your child to repair first because you think they're more responsible. Well, waiting for the more at fault person to move is a great way for nobody to ever move. You can reach out first without it meaning that you're accepting all the blame. And the research actually tells us that the child is very unlikely to be the one that makes the first move. And so it does usually need to come from the parent. Mistake number two is treating the apology as a finish line instead of a starting line for change behavior. Words really do matter, but they are not the whole of accountability. What you actually do afterwards is, and your child will be watching that. Mistake number three is something that I've addressed a couple of times already in the podcast, but that is letting your own shame hijack that moment that is supposed to be about your child's experience. So if your child ends up reassuring you that you're not a bad parent, the roles are reversed. And accountability has quietly become about your feelings instead of the impact that your actions had on them. Mistake number four is assuming that a relationship that has had a lot of ruptures is too damaged to repair, that it doesn't, this is too far gone. It doesn't even matter anymore. Well, repair does not require a clean relationship history. It only requires a willingness to keep reaching back across that gap the tenth time, the 20th time, or more, even when it feels like it shouldn't even be necessary. But when you get it right, this is what it looks like. Something goes wrong between you and your adult child. And let it instead of letting that distance sit there, you're the one that reaches back first. When they tell you the impact that something had on them, you stay steady enough to fully hear it without defending away or drowning inside of it. And slowly, not just in one conversation, your child learns that ruptures with you are survivable and that you will be willing to close the gap. Here's what I want you to take with you today. Repair means reaching back across the gap first, even without a full resolution. Accountability means owning your impact without defending it away or drowning in shame. And together they're what make a relationship survivable to being human, which is really all that any relationship ever has to do. This episode wraps up our series on words, therapy words that can help you. We went over differentiation, acceptance, curiosity, attunement, emotional safety, repair, and accountability. You'll find those in episodes 231, 232, and then this one 233. If you're just joining us on this last episode, I genuinely encourage you to go back and to listen to the earlier ones because these words build on each other. Each one of these words make the next one a little bit more possible. I also want to name something before we close. I went through seven different words. Three episodes, seven words. That is a lot to hold on to. And it's completely normal if none of this feels automatic yet. Changing the way that we show up in a relationship that we've had for decades is not quick work. It is actually very slow, clunky work. You're going to forget a step in the moment. You're going to default back to your old pattern before you catch yourself. That's not failure. That's what building something new actually looks like from the inside. This is exactly where practice and having support around you while you practice is very invaluable. The fact that you're here stayed with this whole episode or this whole series says a lot about you. It says that you care, that you're willing to look at hard things again and again and again. And that really matters. So take a breath, reach back across the gap and stay steady. Thank you so much for being here with me today. Remember, you don't have to do this perfectly. Just keep working on how you are showing up. Because when one person in a family becomes more grounded, you can have such a big influence on the whole relationship system, and that can begin to heal. This is Coaching Your Family Relationships, and I'm Tina Gosni. This is where parents of adult children get the help that they need to repair and rebuild and strengthen their relationships. And if this series gave you something useful, would you please consider sharing it with another parent who could use a little more help and a little more hope this week? Thanks so much. I'll see you here next time.