"It's a Them Problem" - Why That Phrase Might Be Keeping You Stuck

There's a phrase I hear often in estrangement support communities, and every time I do, I feel two things at once.

A mother - usually someone who's been in pain for a long time - reaches a point in her journey where she says: "I've realized it's a them problem, not a me problem." And I feel the relief in it. I understand exactly why she got there.

I also feel something else. A small pull in the other direction. A question that won't quite let go.

What if that phrase - as good as it feels - is the place where the growth stops?

Why We Get There

"It's a them problem" doesn't show up at the beginning of an estrangement. Early on, most mothers are in a kind of freefall questioning everything, second-guessing every memory, desperately searching for what went wrong and how to fix it.

Then, somewhere along the way - through therapy, support groups, time, sheer exhaustion - something shifts. The energy moves from collapse to armor. And the phrase is born. That shift is not nothing. For many women, it's what kept them functional. It offered a shore when they'd been treading water for years.

I'm not here to take that away. But I am here to ask: is it still serving you?

Protection vs. Shutdown

There's a difference between protecting yourself and shutting down.

Protection is healthy. It's the boundary you draw between yourself and the grief spiral. It's the decision to keep living - to keep being yourself - even when the relationship you most want is unavailable. Protection says: I will not let this consume me.

Shutdown is something else. Shutdown happens when the complexity of a situation becomes too costly to hold, so you simplify. You choose a side of the story and you stop asking questions.

"It's a them problem" is, almost always, a simplification. And here's what simplification costs: growth.

What I'm Not Saying

I'm not asking you to accept blame that isn't yours. That's not curiosity. That's collapse in a different costume. I'm not dismissing the work you've already done. For many women, reaching "it's a them problem" took enormous courage. What I am asking is whether that sentence is the end of the inquiry or just one stop along the way.

The Phrase as a Landing Place

"It's a them problem" positions you as complete. As someone who has looked at this situation fully, done the internal inventory, and arrived at a conclusion.

And maybe you have.

But in my years of working with estranged mothers, I've noticed something: for a lot of women, that phrase is less a conclusion than a refuge. The place they landed instead of going all the way through the material.

Going all the way through means getting curious about the things that are harder to look at. Not to punish yourself — but to see yourself more clearly. To understand your patterns, your wounds, your fear-driven moments. To ask not just "what did they do?" but "who have I been, and who do I want to become?"

That kind of looking changes a person. Not because it brings the estrangement to an end. But because it brings you to somewhere new.

What the Work Actually Looks Like

One of my clients came to me with a kind of exhausted certainty. By month four, she said, "I think I've been waiting for my daughter to forgive me when I hadn't actually forgiven myself." She wasn't recanting. She wasn't taking on blame she didn't own.

She was seeing something she hadn't been able to see before: unfinished business inside of her that had nothing to do with her daughter's choices. A wound that was asking for her own attention. Her own grace. That is neither a them problem nor a me problem. That is a human one. And it was hers to heal.

Freedom vs. Defense

Here's the question I'll leave you with:

Freedom and defense feel exactly the same from the inside - for a while. Both offer relief. Both offer a sense of solid ground. And they lead to very different lives.

The woman who has truly done the work and arrived at peace looks different - inside and out - from the woman who has simply decided the story is over. One of them is still growing. Still open. Still becoming. I want that for you.

Keep going to therapy. Keep doing the work. Keep learning more about you.

And stay curious. Don't let any phrase - including this one - be the last word you say to yourself about your own story.

Kreed Revere is an Estrangement Consultant, Relational Midwife, and host of The Estranged Heart podcast (250+ episodes). She works with estranged mothers, adult children, and families navigating relational rupture and repair. Learn more at theestrangedheart.com.