Among the latest cultural trends is a movement called ‘no contact,’ where family members cut off communication with one another. A recent survey from Talkspace found 38% of respondents went no contact with family or friends in the past year. This follows research from Karl Pillemer, a professor of human development at Cornell University, who found 27% of Americans had cut off contact with a family member. Recently, Drew welcomed Noelle Mering onto The Drew Mariani Show, who published a recent book No Contact.

Mering began noticing the growing phenomenon during the COVID era, when she found it was becoming more difficult to disagree; Mering herself said she “experienced new strains in lifelong friendships” stemming from that era. 

However, while past strains in relationships resulted from trauma, addiction, or divorce, this new iteration of no contact is more rooted in political ideology – one aimed at dividing the family, Mering argues. “We’ve seen man against woman, woman against man, parent against child, and now adult child against parents.” 

Mering holds COVID responsible for making other human beings into threats. Of young people, she said, “I don’t think we can underestimate how much that formed their moral imagination as to how to react to the other in their life and what relationships were.” 

Therapy Speak

Some Americans are encouraged to go no contact by a mental health professional. “I did hear from a number of young people who said that they were surprised to hear a therapist suggest it,” Mering told Drew. 

Mering also thinks the rise of ‘therapy speak’ tends to use labels to describe people, like toxic or narcissistic to name a few. “This language catastrophizes things and makes it seem much more dire,” she told Drew.

Pillemer, author of the book Fault Lines, produced the “first large-scale national survey on the subject” of going no contact. He told the New York Post that going no contact often goes too far. “I think this no-contact craze has a lot of adult children deciding to cut off contact from parents who were reasonably good parents and with whom some kind of contact would be beneficial for them and for their parents,” he said. 

Reasons for Hope 

Even if one is suffering through a no contact situation, Mering encourages hope. “Relationships can turn around. We cannot give up on our hope, nor can we give up on the people that we love.”