Life is too short to listen to mel robbins

There’s been a lot of buzz about an op-ed published in the New York Times right before Thanksgiving entitled, Life is Too Short to Fight with Your Family. It was co-written by Dr. Carl Pillamer and Mel Robbins.

Pillamer is a professor of human development at Cornell, as well as a sociologist and a gerontologist. And Robbins is an attorney who came to notoriety because she was a legal analyst on CNN. She later became a podcaster, and in 2023, she published a book called The Let Them Theory.

My theory? Life is too short to listen to Mel Robbins. 

Let’s put aside for a moment that this theory was co-opted from two places. Mel Robbins didn’t make up the idea of “Let Them.” It’s a poem published by Cassie Phillips in 2022. Robbins took that idea and wrote a book about it, without crediting Phillips, by the way.

And the idea of “Let Them” is completely stolen from the 12-step program expression Live and Let Live. Live and Let Live means that I can accept that I can’t control you. I am going to let you live your life the way you want to live it.

But it doesn’t mean that I have to be around you when you do that, or that I have to ignore when it’s having an effect on me in a negative way. Philip’s poem Let Them is about acceptance and self-preservation in relationships. It suggests that when people make choices that push you away, you should let them, which I can totally get behind.

It’s about having boundaries and choosing yourself. This opinion piece, however, proposes that because one in four Americans is estranged from a close relative, and because you might have regret about it later in life, you should just let people be themselves and not get so upset about it. You should lighten up.

The #1 Predictor of Happiness

Here’s a quote from that op-ed. “You may think it’s better for your mental health to slowly distance yourself for someone you have difficulties with, but in the long run, it will likely have a devastating impact on your happiness and well-being.”

My response to the authors about that? Actually, the data from an 85-year Harvard study are very clear. The number one predictor of happiness is healthy relationships.

Healthy relationships, not relationships where one person gets to do whatever they want, and the other person has to let them. There’s a reason why so many people have stepped away from certain family members and created chosen families. They heal through things like therapy and 12-step meetings and support groups, and they find people with whom they can co-create healthy, fulfilling relationships where no one has to tolerate inappropriate behavior or treatment.

And as someone who has worked with trauma survivors for over 30 years, I can say definitively that preaching to people like this op-ed did, that they should stay connected because they might regret it, is so incredibly dismissive of people who have genuinely suffered in relationships with family members. In my experience, the actual regret they often have is staying connected with their family as long as they did because they felt like they were “supposed to,” when in fact, they were suffering from mistreatment and or abuse.

So if your family makes racist comments about your interracial relationship, you should just let them? If you are trans and your family insists upon using your dead name and calling you by the wrong pronouns, you should just let them? If your creepy uncle continues to make inappropriate and misogynistic comments about women and women’s bodies, you should just let them?

No. If my family does any of those things, then I’m not going to spend time with them. And to tell me what I’m supposed to do is to just let bygones be bygones is gaslighting.

It’s what abusive families have done for years. “Oh, don’t be so sensitive. You know your uncle Phil was just kidding. Lighten up.” 

So don’t worry about all the mistreatment you’ve suffered or the abusive conversations or behavior that may happen at family gatherings. Just let them and carry on.

The only way people carry on in situations like that is if they shut down and override their nervous system, because that’s the only way they can get through it if they’re going to be in environments like that. So this whole belief that you have to – and I am quoting this op-ed again – …”learn how to accept people as they are, sometimes in spite of who they are, and still stay connected?” That’s some of most unhealthy advice I’ve ever read.

Yes, I can accept that people are who they are. When I step into acceptance, what I’m doing is surrendering. I’m letting go of the possibility that somebody is going to change. But that also frequently involves a lot of grief, because I have to come to terms with the fact that they’re not willing or able to change. 

Acceptance vs. Approval

But there’s a big difference between acceptance and approval. While I can accept them, I can’t approve of their behavior or condone it.

If they are mistreating me, or if I witness that mistreatment of someone else; if they’re prejudiced against me; if they’re doing things and saying things that are offensive to me, or that are physically, emotionally or spiritually harming me, then I’m not only not going to approve of that behavior, but I’m not going to let them. And Dr. Pillamer and Ms. Robbins, that is a healthy response! 

There’s an expression, “We teach people how to treat us,” which I heard for the first time about 15 years ago from a recovery friend. If I put myself in situations where people are abusive or are so clueless; who are crossing boundaries; who are saying things and doing things that are inappropriate towards me, then that is allowing myself to be mistreated. I have taught them how to mistreat me.

And for a lot of us who were allowing that – myself included – there was likely a period of time when we didn’t have the power to set boundaries or step away because we were young, or because we were conditioned to believe that that kind of behavior was okay. Or if we knew it wasn’t, we were shamed when we spoke up. We may not have had the power then, but we do now.

Sometimes Estrangement is Necessary

And sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is to not let them, and to step away. I am somebody who stepped away. I was estranged from my parents for about a year when I started on my path of healing from the experience of being a child of alcoholism.

Believe me, it was not a decision I made lightly, but it was an important part of my journey. And I will say that when I stepped away, I communicated with my parents why I needed time away. I’m not sure they ever understood my reasoning, but it felt important to let them know, rather than just ghosting them. 

They were really lovely people, but they were also alcoholics, and both eventually died from that disease. When I stepped away from them for that year, I needed time to sort through things, and to get some clarity. I needed to mourn being a parentified child – having to grow up long before I was supposed to. I needed to learn how to separate out the disease of alcoholism from the people that my parents were.

I needed to know what my boundaries were; what I was okay with, and what I wasn’t. I needed to experience the feeling of being appropriately entitled to create and hold those boundaries. I didn’t have that capacity at first, and it took me time to build those skills.

And the only way I could reconnect with them was by doing my work: my recovery work, my trauma repair work, my psychodrama work, my group therapy work, my individual therapy work, my spiritual work. And as a result of that temporary estrangement and all the work I did, when my mother was in her final weeks of life, I was able to show up and be with her. Because I didn’t feel obliged to be there, and resentful, I actually wanted to be there.

I was able to tell her that I loved her and have a good goodbye with her. But that ending would not have been possible if I hadn’t stepped away for a while. 

My circumstances are different from a lot of other people’s who are estranged. While I certainly encourage people to explore their reasons for making that choice – and to communicate why they’re making it – I also encourage them to explore if there is a way to reconcile. 

And if someone tells me that it’s not workable, I don’t try to talk them out of it. I don’t gaslight them and tell them to just get over it. I believe them. I accept their truth. And I let them live their life the way they need to, to feel happy and free.

So life is too short to listen to Mel Robbins. Neither she nor Dr. Pillamer is a family therapist. Neither of them is a trauma therapist.

So my theory is that when it comes to therapists, Ms. Robbins and Dr. Pillamer, let them be therapists and stay in your lane. 

I want to offer an invitation to sit with, and sort through, who you can let be in your family and who you can’t, and honor yourself no matter what anyone or any op-ed tries to tell you what you’re supposed to do.

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About Jean:

Jean Campbell, LCSW, SEP, TTP, TEP has been bringing together groups of people to heal for over 30 years. She blends her extensive experience in psychodrama, sociometry, group psychotherapy, somatic healing and trauma resolution to offer training for helping professionals, personalized intensives, and clinical consultation.