Shadowing Practice: Finding Peace Through Family Estrangement - Learn English Speaking with Video
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it's such a thin line between like what's appropriate
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and what's gone too far because as therapists we do see our clients suffering
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and as lindsay mentioned i don't say like you need to leave this relationship
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but i might think like i wonder how you will feel
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if you did is this a new thing
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because i mean for many many many years of doing shows
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and talking to families from all over the country and the world.
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When there's a crisis, people just sort of figured it out or came together at Thanksgiving and had a big fight.
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But is this new?
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Yeah, I mean, there's always been estrangements, right?
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Forever there's been estrangements.
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But it's new the way we think about family.
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There's been a radical change in the way that we think about family.
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The old days of honor thy mother and thy father, respect thy elders, families forever, has given way to this much more of an emphasis personal happiness,
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personal growth, my identity, my political beliefs, my mental health.
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So much so that today protecting my mental health is the single most common thing
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that I see in every single letter from every estranged child.
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And has this been exacerbated or has this increased because of social media?
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Oh, there's no question.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah.
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Because you've got 2 billion hashtags toxic family.
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And everybody's got to, you know, if you line up and you're an estranged parent, you're gonna get onto a Facebook site.
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If you're a strange adult child, you're gonna probably get onto Reddit or something like that.
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And you're gonna get support for your perspective.
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But these aren't people who actually know your parents or know your adult child.
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They're gonna kind of tell you what you wanna hear.
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So there's this very inflammatory reaction that people have as a result of it.
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And partly that happens because we've become so divided as a society.
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People are kind of looking for their tribes because their tribes are, you know, they don't have them anymore.
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We're lonely.
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We have rising rates of mental ill use.
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But your tribe used to be your family.
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Your tribe used to be your family, exactly.
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And it still could if we figure out how to talk to each other.
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Well, it's so interesting because, you know, I've been talking to people for a number of years.
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And I remember back in the day, meaning 80s, 90s, the aughts, the very idea of having a disagreement with your family
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and the very idea of divorcing your parent or removing yourself from a toxic situation was a foreign concept to people.
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But now it's like common understanding.
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It's common understanding.
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It's also positioned as a sort of virtuous act of protecting our mental health.
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And you know what?
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Sometimes it is.
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There are truly abusive, difficult parents and family members.
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But there's a lot of people getting estranged today who aren't abusive, who are loving, decent, hardworking, loving, caring parents, and they're being cut off.
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And part of the problem with us as therapists is I hope we'll talk about because as therapists,
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we become what the sociologists Alison Pugh calls detachment brokers where we help people not feel guilty
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about feeling responsible for our parents.
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That gets sort of pathologized as being codependent or parentified or that kind of thing.
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And therapists are sort of greenlighting a lot of estrangements, particularly when you use language like, oh, your mom's a narcissist or your dad's a borderline
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or they're a sociopath or they're gaslighting you or they're a boundary crosser.
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And once you say that to somebody, once you tell somebody that their parent or their family member or their child is that way, you just greenlit them cutting them off.
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Because now it's a virtuous act of protecting your mental health.
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I think that's a problem.
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Okay.
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Dr. Linz Gibson is here, and she's a clinical psychologist and New York Times bestselling author of Adult Children of Emotionally Inmature Parents.
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And I hear it is sold now over 2 million copies and many people credit your book as the catalyst,
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actually, for this surge in adult children going no contact.
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Now, her upcoming book is How to Raise an Emotionally Mature Child.
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So, Dr. Gibson, what is it that you were seeing in your own practice?
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Yeah, as a psychotherapist, what I was seeing was people coming in,
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not identifying the problem as being with their parents or their family members.
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Usually it was some other kind of stress.
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It could be work stress or friend stress, that kind of thing.
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And then about three or four sessions in, they would start talking about what was going on with the family.
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Sort of like their daily life stress.
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And from there, we would begin to get a picture of this old underlying tension
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that had been going on for a long time with the
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But very few people early in the day would come in and say, I have a problem with my mother or I have a problem with my son.
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They would come in with some other life stress, and then we would get to the family issue.
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What I found- Is the family issue at the root of most things?
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Well, I don't know if it's at the root or whether it just resonates with what's going on now.
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It's very hard to tell.
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But what I found was that the coping mechanisms
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that they had learned to use with their parents
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when their parents were either trying to control them or get them to do what they wanted
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were being transferred to their current relationships or their work relationships.
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Could you give us some factors that you believe make it necessary to protect somebody's emotional health by going no contact?
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I mean, when you say to someone, or do you say to them, perhaps you should go no contact.
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Yeah, I don't say that.
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You don't say that.
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I don't say that.
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Let them decide for themselves.
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Well, my job as a therapist is to help people...
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Come to their own conclusions.
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Well, not only come to their own conclusions, but I want them to be able to turn within and test out their own inner guidance.
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In other words, get back in touch with their own feelings and how things affect them.
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And lots of times when you've had a dominant parent, that ability to know what you actually feel think has been messed with okay
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because it becomes an issue of you love your parent by agreeing with what they see
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so actually no i'm all about helping people to understand the dynamics of the relationship how it's affecting them
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and then they make the decision about what they want to
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do well how do you you talk to them about your emotionally immature parent, and how do you determine whether a parent is emotionally immature?
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Yeah.
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I really stay away from those terms in psychotherapy, because I'm not there.
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But you wrote a whole book about it.
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I did write the book.
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I did write the book.
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When I'm coming in, I'm coming to the lady.
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I'm coming to the lady who wrote the book about emotionally immature parents, OK?
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Absolutely whether you mention it or not in our session.
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Yeah.
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Right.
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But when I'm talking with them in the session, I'm describing behavior.
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They're describing behavior
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and we're talking about the effect of those behaviors on them
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down the road you know once they've read the book yeah then we might use
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that shorthand about emotional immaturity but at the time
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we're just trying to understand their subjective experience of that parent
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okay i want to bring in nedra goldberg to wab nedra is a licensed therapist
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and a relationship expert known as the Boundary Queen on social media.
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And she's the author of the New York Times bestseller, Drama Free, a guide to managing unhealthy family relationships.
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And her upcoming book is The Balancing Act, Creating Healthy Dependency and Connection Without Losing Yourself.
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Welcome.
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I see you nodding here and you're nodding for both of them.
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So what does that mean?
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Yeah.
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I mean, I think it's such a thin line between like what's appropriate and what's gone too far because as therapists,
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we do see our clients suffering.
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And as Lindsay mentioned, I don't say like you need to leave this relationship, but I might think like,
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I wonder how you will feel if you did because there's so much pain for so long.
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But you wrote, you wrote that no contact is not the first option as much as a last resort.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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Yes.
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And when is it a last resort, do you think?
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I think when you've assessed whether the relationship is safe, if you can handle the consequences of actually leaving that relationship,
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it's our work to help our clients determine, is the relationship just toxic or is it annoying?
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Are these some behaviors we can live with with people?
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Is it possible for us to have less contact instead of no contact?
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Have we set expectations?
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Are they even clear about a problem?
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Because sometimes we haven't talked to people about the problems we're talking about in therapy or with our friends.
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And they need to know in order for us to have a better relationship with them.
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Thank you.
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Understanding Family Estrangement: A Real-Life Dialogue
Imagine tuning into a conversation between therapists and hosts discussing a growing trend: family estrangement. They explore how societal shifts—from prioritizing personal happiness over traditional family loyalty to the influence of social media—have changed how we view cutting ties with loved ones. This relatable scenario, filled with natural speech patterns, is perfect for english speaking practice and learning how to discuss complex, emotional topics in English.
Useful Chunks & Collocations to Master
- "Thin line between": Use this to describe a subtle difference (e.g., "There's a thin line between self-care and isolation").
- "Greenlighting estrangements": Means approving or encouraging a decision to separate (e.g., "Therapists sometimes end up greenlighting estrangements without full context").
- "Toxic family": A common phrase for harmful family dynamics (e.g., "Social media is full of posts about toxic family relationships").
- "Rising rates of": Ideal for discussing trends (e.g., "Rising rates of loneliness make finding new tribes more important").
- "Pathologized as": Describes labeling a behavior as abnormal (e.g., "Caring for parents is often pathologized as codependent").
Your Shadowing Challenge: Practice Like a Pro
Ready to boost your speaking skills? Try this shadowing technique with the video: Pick a 30-second clip of the conversation. Play it once to listen, then hit pause and repeat it aloud, mimicking the tone, speed, and intonation. Focus on how the speakers stress words like "mental health" or "toxic" to convey emotion. For extra support, use a shadowing app or shadowing site to record yourself and compare. This is a fun, effective way to learn english with videos and sound more natural in real conversations. You’ve got this—every repeat brings you closer to fluency!
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to be |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | there's always been · there's been · has given |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | been exacerbated · being cut · is sold |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.