(This article expands on information provided in How to Respond to Parental Alienation and is meant for parents and professionals.)
Parental alienation can be difficult to recognize for anyone not experiencing it first-hand. It’s like a riptide: hidden and forceful. Rejected parents can find themselves struggling against a powerful force as it pulls them further and further from the relationship they once had with their children. They feel the resistance and fight against it. But the more they fight, the more exhausted they become. It seems as if there’s no one to appreciate how difficult it is to stay buoyant in these deceptively calm waters. They search for someone—anyone—to throw them a lifeline.
The experience of being targeted by your co-parent is upsetting. But to be rejected and hated by your own child, feeling and watching them slip away, and fearing that you’ll never see them again, is like witnessing that child die a slow death. While they remain physically alive, they become increasingly emotionally dead to you. The radiant love in their eyes turns dark and vacuous and the joyous sound of their voice turns blue and hateful.
In my work with rejected parents, I’ve often witnessed them be tragically seduced into making mistakes while they are in the throes of the painful, intractable, and insidious drama of parental alienation. This isn’t because they’re hopelessly flawed human beings, but because they’re in unknown and turbulent waters. Rejected parents flounder and their mistakes can become fatal and sink their chances of reconciliation with their children.
By highlighting the five most frequent or common mistakes made by rejected/targeted parents, it’s my intent that they, the members of their “village,” and the professionals they encounter, will better understand and, subsequently, overcome the destructive force of parental alienation.
1: The Rejected/Targeted Parents Misunderstand their Children and Personalize the Rejection
Alienated children are often caught in a torrent of multiple post-separation family dynamics. Although most children can endure a high-conflict divorce with resilience, very few are able to avoid the powerful force of parental alienation where one parent actively—or sometimes unwittingly—seeks to separate the other parent from their children. The powerful alienation process, in effect, severs the relationship with the targeted parent and serves to align the children’s loyalty to the alienating parent.
Let that sink in: When the children show any love, interest, or affection to the targeted parent, they fundamentally feel as though they’re being disloyal and unloving to the alienating parent. Likewise, when the children display an attitude of hate and disrespect while resisting and refusing contact with the targeted parent, they feel loyal and loving to the alienating parent. Most children simply can’t withstand nor extricate themselves from this deep and powerful attachment dynamic without intervention.
A way to understand what’s happening to such children is to think of parental alienation as a type of psychological tumor that impacts the cognitive function in their brains and the emotional wiring to their hearts. It’s invasive and at risk of growing and metastasizing if ignored and left untreated. While multiple post-separation dynamics can contribute to its inception, the toxic attachment process that requires the children to maintain a loyalty contract to the alienating parent feeds it. And, as it grows, this tumor begins to negatively impact functions in the children’s heads and hearts.
The Loyalty Contract
Alienated children become desperate to maintain their loyalty contract with the alienating parent. They develop a narrative to fit the contract that requires a polarized view of the alienating parent as all good and the targeted parent as all bad. Because most relationships don’t fit these polarized black and white characteristics, the children are required to distort and bend reality in order to fit each parent into rigid cognitive constructs. Although children can have an affinity toward one parent over the other, it’s markedly atypical—outside of parental alienation—for children to idealize one parent as perfect while denigrating the other as disposable.
This polarization only grows over time. The growing psychological tumor potentiates the growth of an encapsulated delusional thought system: a belief in the targeted parent’s extreme dangerousness, woeful ineptitude, and irredeemable incapacity to love, despite any evidence of a good base-rate relationship prior to parental alienation setting in or of substantiated abuse and neglect claims. The developing narrative is not based in objective reality, but is an inter-subjective narrative between the alienating parent and the children that solidifies the loyalty contract between them.
Most untrained professionals—therapists, attorneys, mediators, and judges—don’t understand this dynamic and will either ignore its presence or prescribe contraindicating treatments and parenting time arrangements. For example, they observe the children experiencing symptoms of dysfunction—disobedience, verbal abuse, emotional withdrawal, anxiety, irritability—when in the presence of the rejected parent, while observing these same children functioning in an optimal and sometimes exceptional way elsewhere. They can’t fathom that the acting-out behavior is encapsulated and dormant when the children are in the presence of the alienating parent but becomes enlivened and active when they’re exposed to the rejected parent.
When Children’s Lying is Misinterpreted
Rejected parents mistakenly believe, and report, that their children are lying about events and situations. This causes them to look bad as a parent and be perceived as unfit and dangerous. From my experience working with alienated children, I know very well that they’re at risk of sharing stories full of distortions, exaggerations, and manufactured incidents. On the face of it, these stories distort facts and reality and, in other situations, could be perceived and treated as outright lies. But I don’t believe alienated children are intentionally lying. I believe the process of parental alienation causes them to slowly lose their orientation to reality.
Rather than naming the distortions and exaggerations as lies, it’s more accurate to call them “confabulations”—a memory error often found in patients suffering from cognitive decline due to brain diseases such as Dementia or Alzheimer’s. In such patients, it’s believed that the individual confabulates to fill gaps in memory or to keep their self-identity intact. Similar cognitive impairments present in parental alienation, but with psychological underpinnings rather than emanating from a neurological disease process. Whereas lies are selfish manipulations to empower the liar, confabulations serve to reduce the suffering and, in the case of parental alienation, enable children to cope.
Alienated children will make up stories, distort, and exaggerate facts to manage the “lost” memory of a loving connection with the rejected parent. It’s lost, because to hang onto it, or find it again, will be, in effect, an active violation of the loyalty contract with the alienating parent. The confabulations are feeble, yet desperate, attempts to knit together a cohesive narrative to justify the hate and rejection for the rejected parent while nourishing and strengthening the loyalty contract with the alienating parent.
This process doesn’t empower or enhance a child’s mental wellness; it’s a means of survival. While they may effectively confabulate stories to honor the loyalty contract with the alienating parent and to maintain their polarized black and white world, it comes at an enormous cost to their mental, emotional, and relational well-being. The psychological tumor quickens the deterioration of any loving and caring memory tracts of the past and impedes the cultivation of any current loving and caring experiences. Their need to confabulate stories follows them into other relationships that have to neatly fit into their polarized tribal world including with extended family, friends, and professionals associated with either Dad or Mom.
The Desire to Connect Implodes
It’s painful to watch your children’s memory fade—erasing any cherished memories or revising them into tragic disappointments—while simultaneously cementing memories of all your mistakes. The rejected parent is forbidden to take any sentimental journey with their children at the risk of being accused of not “getting it,” not listening to them, and only wanting to minimize all the bad stuff. The parent is basically deemed manipulative and “clueless.” Their anguish is compounded when they’re blocked from creating any new loving experiences since all those efforts are labeled as either fake, ill-timed, not enough, too much, selfish, or just not quite right.
The children live with debilitating anxiety and must be hyper-vigilant to their loyalty contract with the alienating parent. Even the civility of normative salutations afforded to strangers or remote acquaintances is ignored and traded in for blatant rudeness. Normal, successful, or loving experiences aren’t allowed because to have any can effectively shrink the psychological tumor and that’s forbidden.
Unfortunately, the path of least resistance, the one that will cause the minimal amount of suffering for the children, is the path to sever the relationship with the rejected parent. The children will eventually end up providing only one way for the rejected parent to express their love: stop fighting for them and let them go.
More than fearing the rejected parent, what the children actually fear is rejection and disapproval from the alienating parent. They’re in pain. The hope is that the rejected parent will understand, not personalize it, and love them, nonetheless. Although they see the rejected parent fighting for them, the children intuitively know that the odds are not in that parent’s favor. They know the power of the alienating parent because they see that parent’s tribe growing, with more professionals willing to support the false narrative and unwittingly contribute to the psychological tumor’s growth.
I’ve witnessed children desperately plea for the targeted parent to just let them go and stop fighting for parenting time. These children can’t describe or name what’s happening because the words are unspeakable and a violation of the loyalty contract with the alienating parent. Instead, they appeal to the unconditional love of the rejected parent, stating, “Our life is just easier without you, less stressful. Please understand, this is so stressful for us. Please just stop fighting and leave us alone.” I’ve seen tormented, targeted parents, faced with these words stop fighting, release their children, and say “goodbye” in an expression of love.
How could this behavior feel anything but personal? It’s terrorizing to hear such pleadings from your own children and to be told through words and/or behavior, “Get out of our lives!” It hurts and scares the rejected parent more than anything ever has. But, as much as it hurts, they have to recognize that it’s not about them. The more they think it is, and the more they think their children are rejecting them from self-agency, the more hurt and anger it will cause. And that can lead to the second mistake.
2: The Rejected/Targeted Parents Believe that Increased Punishment and Discipline will Put an End to Misunderstood Attitude and Behavior
While alienated children notoriously function quite corrigible and respectfully to almost all other adults in their lives—teachers, coaches, the alienating parent’s extended family—they’re remarkably disrespectful and defiant to the targeted parent and often any adult connected to them. I’ve seen children ignore their parent, not even offering a civil acknowledgment of their presence—not a look, a touch, nod, or a word. I’ve heard children both deny all positive memories and offer no vision of hope in restoring the relationship with the rejected parent. I’ve worked with alienated children who have destroyed parental property, abused step-siblings, and ignored and defied step-parents. They hole up in their room for whole weekends, refuse to eat or socialize, even endanger themselves by running away from court-ordered parenting time. And, I have seen targeted parents’ desperate attempt to use discipline to curb this disturbing progression of attitude and behavior.
The temptation to think this will work is understandable since disciplining disobedient and defiant children is considered normative and reasonable. However, to address the source of the problem merely as willful defiance and resistance reinforces to the child that the parent doesn’t “get them” and will likely intensify their anger. Although they may look, sound, and act like naughty and rebellious children in need of lectures and discipline, they’re not. To the contrary, alienated children are very troubled and in need of proper understanding, compassion, intervention, and treatment. If the rejected parent approaches them only with increasing levels of discipline, that parent eventually plays into the children’s false narrative that they’re bad, mean, and unreasonable.
I’ve counseled and evaluated many targeted/rejected parents who’ve been seduced into this line of thinking and have unwittingly fallen into an authoritarian style of parenting:
- The parent who eventually forced his 13-year-old daughter to take a shower after she refused for the sixth day in a row during a hot summer week of daily soccer practices;
- The parent who took the door off the 15-year-old adolescent’s room after several weekends of his isolating and refusing to come out for any family time including meals;
- The exasperated parent recorded in a tirade that foster care is where his children belong until they can learn to follow the court orders;
- The parent who dropped his chronically-combative 14-year-old off at the fire station to wait for the alienated parent to pick her up because, once again, she would not stop screaming in front of the younger siblings in the car;
- The parent who prohibited his star adolescent athlete from going to football practice during parenting-time which caused his son to be ineligible for an important game.
With proper context, one could argue the appropriateness of these parental actions. But, all of these get decontextualized and inserted into the inter-subjective narrative between the alienating parent and the children—often a child therapist is eventually co-opted as well—and downloaded as “data” to prove the targeted parent is bad, poor, and unfit. In some cases, child protective services (CPS) is contacted and targeted parents have been investigated and sometimes even substantiated for neglect or abuse. The agency has marching orders to substantiate abuse and neglect, not contextualize it.
Discipline and Negative Campaigning
While structure and discipline can’t be cast aside, they can’t unilaterally be the solution for the incorrigibility. This plays into the false narrative and the negative interchange in the attachment process between parent and child. Not only is there a loyalty contract being constructed in the inter-subjective narrative between the alienating parent and the children, there’s an aggressive campaign to prove the targeted parent defective. If politicians can effectively use negative propaganda and messaging to win elections, so can parents to win custody.
The alienating parent operates stealthily behind the curtain, hoping for the targeted parent to act out on center stage, so they can shine a spotlight on them as the glaring problem in the family psychodrama. This campaign is strengthened when the targeted parent provides any data that can be used stripped of context, intent, and history. Yes, the targeted parent may feel under attack, unfairly scrutinized, and held to unreasonable standards, but such is the nature of negative campaigns and their seductive impact on others. Although the targeted parent can’t control the campaign, if they understand what’s happening, they can work to not provide any fodder.
The other reason to avoid thinking that strict or rigid discipline will fix incorrigibility is the importance of reducing the negative interchange between the targeted parent and their children. It can play into the parent’s anger toward the children and cause increased feelings of guilt and shame in them. The parenting brain says the anger is righteous and that it’s normal to dislike the children’s attitude and behavior. The parenting brain thinks the children should feel guilty for bad behavior, —feeling bad for ruining the birthday party—and a little healthy shame—”shame on you for calling your stepmom a bitch.” However, this negative interchange only foments the parent’s anger and increases the children’s sense of being bad.
The loving and caring bond wanes, the parent’s exasperation and the children’s defensiveness waxes. This becomes a vicious and escalating cycle, often leading to the third mistake: enlisting the help of extended family members.
3: The Rejected/Targeted Parent Enlists or Allows Extended Family and Friends to Lecture and Advise the Children
The parental alienation dynamic may function in children as a malignant psychological tumor. But, in the “village” that is involved in raising your children—grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, step-siblings, step-parents, coaches, teachers, and friends of the family—it spreads like a contagious virus.
This often happens at the same time alienating parents are securing negative allies in their village—family, friends, and professionals—to support the children’s wishes and to testify to an alienating parent’s love and fitness as a parent. Targeted parents sense this trend and either enlist help from their village or merely support the effort individuals make to advise and correct the escalating behaviors and attitudes of alienated children.
Alienated children are hypersensitive and hyper-vigilant to the tribal communities developing in a climate where the alienation virus spreads. They view the supportive people in the targeted parent’s village as a threat seeking to “social distance,” while seeing supportive others in the alienating parent’s village as safe with whom to “quarantine.” The targeted parent’s village grows wary and frustrated with the experience of social-distancing and may begin to angrily confront the children.
The children—similarly to how they feel and respond to the rejected parent’s confrontations—end up feeling attacked and shamed by these social encounters. They begin to suspect that the rejected parent put them up to it, or they just feel intruded upon, invaded, or contaminated. The children begin to see the rejected parent’s village as increasingly more dangerous and wish to increase their social-distancing, quarantine, and seek refuge in the alienating parent’s social bubble. This, of course, increases the tension between them and the rejected parent—for example, “how dare you treat your grandparents like that.”
Children’s Resist and Refuse Response
Although rude children who reject a whole village of loving and caring people need to be challenged, it can backfire when the alienation virus is not eradicated through effective intervention and treatment.
Children don’t experience confrontation as loving and caring; only as shaming and critical. The alienating parent uses these conflictual encounters to reinforce the narrative of how “those” people are bad, mean, and infected by the targeted parent’s influence. It reinforces that social distancing is needed for the children to be “safe” and not stressed out. The alienating parent’s allies use those negative encounters to point out how upsetting and disruptive they are to the children’s emotional state. In so doing, they commit a fundamental attribution error: Because the children are upset and feel shamed by the social encounters in the targeted parent’s village, that village is unsafe and unhealthy for them. They erroneously conclude that increased social distancing is warranted to secure the children’s safety and best interests.
On occasion, because of court orders and the fear of appearing in contempt of court, the alienating parent will disallow the children’s request to avoid parenting time—essentially to quarantine with the alienating parent’s social circle. They send the children to parenting time sometimes forcibly. This show of force is often used as proof that it is not the alienating parent’s fault for the resist and refuse dynamics. It is the children’s “independent” choice. The false narrative is that the children make the decision to isolate or leave after contemplating what is best, healthy, and safest for them. The children function as if to avoid contamination from the rejected parent and that parent’s village. This is accomplished by remaining physically distant, and emotionally and verbally disengaged.
These children will isolate in bedrooms, bury themselves in homework, read books, or play video games; anything to avoid interacting with the rejected parent’s village. They will resist and refuse picnics with family or birthday parties with friends and family, and if forced to go, will socially distance. If their efforts to avoid and disengage are confronted, there’s a risk of escalating conflict. Unfortunately, what children bring back to the alienating parent or the negative allies are stories of reactive invasion, criticism, and disrespect by the rejected parent’s village while they leave out their own social distancing actions or overall discourtesy. The children’s behavior can escalate even to the point of physical assaults, property destruction, or running away from the rejected parent’s village.
Damage Done by the Untrained and Uninformed
The vicious cycle of toggling in and out of what are now tribal communities creates a convincing narrative to the uninformed. They intuit: the targeted parent’s village must be abusive, neglectful, and dangerous otherwise the children wouldn’t be behaving like this. They don’t behave like this in the alienating parent’s village, at school, or on the sport’s team. Again, untrained ears and eyes make fundamental attribution errors.
Consequently, allied therapists will write unethical letters and erroneously testify in court for reduced parenting time with the targeted parent, citing the hostile environment and the children’s destabilization. Judges will be deceived into signing an ex parte order after an attempt to run away by the alienated child following a climactic, combative social encounter. The alienated children eventually get what they think will make them safe and healthy again: quarantining with the alienating parent.
What they actually get from naïve and colluding professionals is greater exposure to the virus—the alienating parent and his/her village. Consequently, the psychological tumor inside the child metastasizes and the rejected parent’s anger grows. The temptation to seek revenge against the alienating parent can lead to another mistake.
4: The Rejected/Targeted Parent Retaliates Toward the Alienating Parent
I’m sure it’s become increasingly clear that a good offense (intervention, judicial oversight, engaging trained professionals, etc.) is one of the best defenses to combat alienation dynamics. This offense is weakened by the mistake of succumbing to the temptation to seek revenge on the alienating parent. Why? Because the acts of retaliation can be used by sly alienators to buttress their narrative of the targeted parent being abusive and unfit. Also, alienated children will use any retaliatory actions to justify their alliance to alienating parents while pointing out how mean and dangerous the rejected parent is.
Rejected parents grow frustrated. They can’t understand how the alienating parent’s behaviors go unnoticed and that they’re often not held accountable. This growing frustration and impatience hatches into the idea of taking matters into their own hands rather than waiting for the hands of justice or mental health professionals to do something to help. It seems that the professionals and court have had plenty of time and they’ve just had enough of it all.
Acting-out is a Barrier to Reunification
Feeling frustrated and ignored, rejected parents begin to compose snarky email responses, make sarcastic comments during parenting time exchanges, or blow up in a reunification counseling session about how the alienating parent is poisoning the children against them. They’ll make idle threats to the alienating parent or vent on social media attempting to expose the alienating parent’s true motivation. They may seek out their own counselor to advocate for them outside ethical roles and standards: Someone who will write critical assessments of the alienating parent’s behavior, despite not having met nor professionally assessed the situation. The targeted parent may even withhold the alienating parent’s court-ordered parenting time to “make up” for lost parenting time, or extend a vacation they feel entitled to.
These actions can all be understood considering the targeted parent’s frustrations, but most often, they will be used against them as further evidence of their unfitness as a co-parent. While retaliatory actions may feel good, they do not do good. The feelings of anger and frustration need to be expressed and managed. If not, they can easily be acted out in a fashion that ultimately dis-empowers the targeted parent and impedes their mission to gain greater access to their children and to stop the alienation. If not managed well, this can lead to the next mistake.
5: Rejected/Targeted Parents Present as Angry, Argumentative, and Obstinate to Professionals
Growing frustration and fears can lead the targeted parent to present to mental health and legal professionals in angry, argumentative, and obstinate ways. This can prevent them from getting proper help, since most professionals find parental alienation dynamics counter-intuitive. In other words, they intuitively get that children will reject and fear bad parents, but they don’t understand how children will reject and fear good parents.
Accordingly, these professionals are often scrutinizing the rejected parent’s attitude and behavior to confirm their bias of believing that resist and refuse dynamics are caused by a parent’s abuse, neglect, or unfitness. And guess what? The rejected parent’s angry, argumentative, and obstinate attitude and behavior plays right into the professionals’ biases and the parent is misunderstood and seen as the problem.
Uninformed professionals fail to see the attitude and behavior as a direct result of unaddressed, unabated alienation. They erroneously conclude that the targeted parent’s attitude and behavior are the cause of the resist and refuse dynamics rather than the unfortunate result. And once the estrangement/abuse/neglect construct gets supported; it becomes very difficult for targeted parents to extricate themselves from the box they’re put in. Understandably, this can further exacerbate their anger, fear, and oppositionality.
The professionals, in turn, become advocates for the estrangement theory and will cite specific behaviors the targeted parent has exhibited to support their conclusions. They’ll transcribe the vicious voice mails, the email bombs, and tirades in counseling sessions, or report any obstinance or outright opposition the targeted parent shows towards participating in various sessions. (Note: Although it’s important for targeted parents to not engage in faulty treatment plans that fail to address the alienation dynamics—or worsen them—this refusal needs to be done smartly and strategically.) No matter what defense mechanisms targeted parents choose, they need to realize it will take more brains than brawn to remove themselves from the estrangement box.
The way out for targeted parents is to manage their feelings and behavior, so that the best version of themselves—rather than the wounded, desperate, and angry one—shows up. They need to be grounded in the literature on parental alienation, including what type of counseling intervention helps or hinders. They need an attorney who understands alienation and knows how to work with mental health professionals; an attorney whose goal is to educate professionals and advocate to retain professionals who understand alienation dynamics, all the while presenting to professionals or the court legitimate signs their client is fit, rational, and reasonable. That they’re madly in love with their children, not mad. That they wish to win their children’s hearts and minds, not win a case or one-up the co-parent.
When professionals are faced with targeted parents who are grounded and have these admirable intentions, there’s a better chance that the professionals will advocate for justice, accountability, and healing, rather than become another manipulated agent in the alienation dynamic.
A Word to Rejected/Targeted Parents
The aggregate of these five common mistakes can be visible and palpable while the stealthy and insidious moves of the alienating parent often remain latent and hidden. The greatest chance you have of pulling back the curtain on alienation dynamics is to not take center stage with the drama caused by these mistakes but to instead work to pull back the curtain and put the spotlight on the alienation that’s taking place.
You must be methodical and strategic. Don’t be afraid to ask for help and seek counsel. Time is your enemy and experts can help you assess the severity of the alienation and appropriate interventions, up to and including court involvement. It won’t hurt to have a coach/counselor, consultant, and a good attorney on your team.
Parental Alienation isn’t only a psychological tumor that grows in your child, it’s contagious. Its toxins can spread to you and your extended village. It’s important to realize that, just as in treating a tumor that’s at risk of growing and metastasizing, home remedies won’t work to resolve alienation.
Targeted/rejected parents need help. And sometimes the first, right, next step, is learning to help yourself. The arduous battle to save the hearts and minds of your children often requires expert strategy, but it can only be won when you are in it with an attuned mind and loving heart.
Amazing article. I have struggled with many of these – including wanting to “even the score”. However, even while being denied phone calls I was able to ensure that my alienating ex was getting fifteen minute calls on my weekends with my daughter. After being denied phone calls for a week or two at a time, I still upheld MY responsibility. The hardest thing in the world to do – be the bigger person and hope it pays off, both in court and with your child. Unfortunately, being a targeted parent is generally a no-win situation. All the more reason professionals must have mandatory training in this cancer!
Ryan: Thanks for the compliment on the article and I’m heartened it has been helpful to you. You sound like you’ve done what is so difficult to do as a targeted parent–take the high road, or as Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” The sad tragedy is that, in severe cases of parental alienation, targeted parents can avoid the 5 common mistakes and still struggle to develop and maintain a loving and involved relationship with their children. While avoiding the mistakes can help immensely, the “no-win” situations in parental alienation are prolific, imposing, and challenging as you allude to. The presence of trained professionals can assist in exposing these manufactured dilemmas and place the accountability for them where they belong. I wish you the best in exposing the truth and creating a healthy environment for your children as you aspire to go high in the name of love and integrity when others are going low.
This is soooo true I am in hell right now and have no money for a lawyer
Unfortunately, to get out of parental alienation “hell”–severe alienation–money becomes part of the currency to fight for justice, and that isn’t always a guarantee. I wish you the best.
Dear Randy,
All the information you have presented here is wonderful. I arrived here from a link on the site that outlined what to do when you are the targeted parent. Everything said here resonates very closely to what is happening in my life at the moment. It is terrifying, heartbreaking and devastating. My 11y/o son is acting in ways that almost seem like this was written with him, us, the alienating parent as the case study.
I have been diligent, strategic and calm. We separated in April about 7 months ago, and i now recognize that these behaviours began long ago even before the separation, and in turn – with no voice, being written off as a father i had no choice but to leave. And now – i find myself alone, broken. The process has not gone to court, i have my allotted time but the quality of that time is what is described – self soothing with video games, audio books etc. My counsel is in the process securing an agreement that embeds reunification therapy and i am on my knees praying that this will help. Do you have any thoughts, advice, even experience with reunification therapy?
Thank you for the article. And for all the parents out there going through this – i feel your pain and struggle, and I hope we all are able to connect, hold and hug our beloved children again as we once did.
Dennis: I’m sorry for your situation. I wrote this article for many reasons, but one was to speak to parents like you and to help you feel you’re not alone. I also note your empathy for other parents struggling with parental alienation.
Regarding reunification counseling, yes, I’ve heard of it, in that I provide that service along with evaluations, expert consultation, coaching, and parenting coordination. Outpatient reunification counseling is controversial in that it may not be effective in severe cases or when it is being provided by an untrained professional—sometimes it can cause more harm than good when untrained professionals are involved. Also, if parental alienation hasn’t been identified by an evaluator or the court, the reunification therapist can make a fundamental attribution error and conclude a child is resisting and refusing parenting time or disengaging with a parent due to the targeted parent’s poor parenting fitness, abuse, or neglect rather than because of the alienating parent’s parental alienating behaviors (PABs). Sometimes, a reunification therapist focuses too much on trying to “repair” the relationship between the child and targeted parent by working with that dyad, rather than focusing on the origin of the child’s resist and refuse dynamics (RRDs); the relationship the child has with the alienating parent. This loyalty bind the child feels needs to be addressed as does the alienating parent’s PABs.
It is my hope that your attorney has vetted your assigned reunification therapist, your case is milder, and progress can be made in reunification therapy. Take care of yourself and avoid the top 5 mistakes.
Dear Dennis,
I am in the exact situation like you right now, except I am a mother to my kids and also the targeted parent. My husband is very powerful, so I do not know how to fight this. I am also not divorced but separated 1 year ago with no formal agreement either.
Excellent article. I have done all the mistakes. The longer alienation continues, the more devastating the outcome. After 7 years of “behind the scenes” manipulation and engaging family and step mom to view me as the villain, my daughter (now 21) is now in a worse place.
Alienating parents may feign remorse ( that maybe they weren’t the greatest parent in the past) but they will discard the child when it no longer serves them. Parental Alienation is abuse. It’s not about parents “ not getting along”. Abusive ex-husbands often use the child as a tool to bring the mother pain. Then tell everyone “mom is just bitter and says bad things about me”. Parental Alienation is abuse and has life long consequences.
Christine: Yes, parental alienation is a form of psychological abuse that can have a lifelong impact on adult children who don’t ever recover from it. It is also a deep and painful loss/wound for targeted parents who didn’t ask for or deserve this rejection but have to work on their own recovery.
You mention a valid progression seen in some families where domestic abuse is occurring during the marriage, and parental alienation becomes the primary post-divorce abuse/control tactic. I hope your personal lifelong consequences are ameliorated by your own recovery work and perhaps your children experience an awakening from some life experience and they seek to reconcile with you.
How do I reconcile?
Tee: Unfortunately, there isn’t a prescription or a three step process I can give you in this medium as there are too many dynamics relative to history of issues, age of children, court history, family evaluations and/or counseling professionals involved, your parenting fitness status, economics, etc. This is an important but very personal question, hence, why I provide individualized coaching and consultation services. I wish you the best.
This is the best article and understanding I’ve ever read. It’s word for word of the evil attacking my beautiful family. I being the target parent making everyone of these mistakes. A court system and counselors who have continually made it worse by a wrong diagnosis and court plans.
I’m at wits end and the depression, anxiety, frustration, are literally suffering me to death. Unable to be heard by a Judge and I am on 6 attorneys not one of them understanding what or how to fight this.
Michael: Sadly, your story is much too common since many professionals find parental alienation counter-intuitive and thus don’t understand how to fight it, address it, or intervene to mitigate it.
We have much work to do in our universities that train future counseling and legal professionals, as well as in continued education and training of our current professionals. This is a specialized discipline that requires unique and specialized training. A person needs to seek such training because it isn’t yet compulsory throughout the country. While family law is a division of law, there are family attorneys now who specialize in litigating parental alienation since it requires unique strategies. Similarly, there are now mental health professionals who specialize in resist and refuse dynamics, parental alienation, and high conflict divorce. If you aren’t seeing one of these trained professionals, you are at risk of them making mistakes, not malevolently, but unwittingly.
It is my hope you find specialized help, effective healing, and expeditious reconciliation.
I am now in my 15th year of alienation and recognize a couple of things I did wrong. The problem isn’t the targeted parents, it’s the alienating parent. It is a worldwide, trans-generational phenomenon and occurs regardless of nationality, religion, socio-economics, race, or gender. It is induced psychological splitting in a child … an alignment or enmeshment for the alienating parent.
Alienated children display unjustified contempt and an attitude of entitlement towards the targeted parent and have a perception of an “all-wonderful” alienating parent and an “all-bad” targeted parent. This is a dysfunctional coping mechanism which, if not addressed, leads to an unstable personality disorder and disrupts social-emotional development throughout a child’s life as a consequence of Parental Alienation. These alienated children will grow up and marry someone like their alienating parent and have their own children. Studies show a high percentage of these now-grown alienated children will end up becoming the targeted parent.
Dr. Jennifer Harman’s studies have confirmed that at the very least 22 million parents in the US alone and millions more around the world are experiencing Parental Alienation. Statistically, 4-5% of school children under the age of 18 are experiencing some level of mild, moderate, or severe alienating tactics and Parental Alienation is 3x more prevalent than children on the Autism Spectrum.
Those who engage in severe alienating tactics often, but not always, have a personality disorder. If you think a child could never be brainwashed … think of charismatic cult leaders like Jim Jones, Rev Sun Moon … thousands of adults were manipulated. How could a child resist their own parent?
Thank you for your article … Caron
Thank you for your attention to this issue that I am learning affects far more people than I ever imagined. I think I have probably made all of the mistakes – and then some. And yes, it is a lonely place to be. In my case, I believe the alienating behaviors were not intentional, but yet very powerful. (9 kids, 8 with complete estrangement, 1 partial). It has also been a game of whack-a-mole with false memories and accusation that kept coming up. Do you have any suggested reading for issues of unintentional alienation and or false memories? Thank you.
Tom: I wrote this article, because I’ve witnessed many good and loving rejected parents make these mistakes and I wanted to shed light on them. I do believe that some favored parents unwittingly reinforce an alienation dynamic without malevolent intention. The dynamics of high conflict divorce, individual coping mechanisms of certain children, misguidance from untrained mental health professionals, extended family tribal warfare, the mistakes of rejected parents, etc., can all unwittingly support an alienation dynamic in children.
You raise awareness to the dynamic of false memories or tainted memories. Once a false narrative about the history of individuals and relationships strengthens and is legitimized, it can contribute to false memories and contemporaneous false or exaggerated allegations in children. It is a snowball effect and yes, at times, a “game of whack-a-mole”.
While there is much information published about the psychology of false memories, there is not so much on unintentional parental alienation. I think the book Divorce Casualties by Dr. Douglas Darnell provides a decent description of severity levels of parental alienation. He notes that the mild alienator does at times present with unintentional alienation and is more amenable to education, counseling, and change. The professional literature also refers to Counter Productive Protective Parenting (CPPP) as a mild form of unintentional parental alienation in cases where substantiated parental unfitness has been documented on the rejected parent.
I do wish you healing and reconciliation as you continue to research and learn about parental alienation.
As an alienated parent whose daughters are now beyond reach at 22 and 19, I wish I had read this article some 15 years ago. I made pretty much every single mistake listed in this article while fighting aggressively to get back my daughters and ended up failing abjectly. I was hoping that my daughters would see through what was going once they turned into adults but in fact, it only became worse since once they went out of the jurisdiction of the courts, there could be no compulsory counseling (not that it did much good other than allowing me to get some face time with them) nor any kind of minimum visitation time.
The only silver lining in my case is that my situation motivated me to go to law school somewhat late in life and become a lawyer. However, I do not intend to focus exclusively on family law as I find the whole system pretty mindless and corrupt, especially in the Dallas area where I live.
One question of you – have you ever seen any case where adults who were alienated as children ever saw the light and came back to the alienated parent and if so under what circumstances?
Venky: I’m sorry the alienation dynamic didn’t spontaneously resolve once your children aged out of the family court. I’m heartened it motivated you to complete law school and use your experience to advocate for justice for others. I sometimes hear mental health and legal professionals mollify a grieving targeted parent by projecting that the children may “come around” once they aren’t forced by the court to comply with any parenting time order. I think they underestimate the power of how the emotional tumor grows and lodges inside the children’s psyche and soul despite their leaving the alienating parent physically as a young adult.
The answer is “yes” to your question about adult children returning to the targeted parent. I have experienced this in my clinical practice. It required intensive therapy for these individuals to heal and grow. It requires a courageous journey of questioning much of what they believed in and oriented themselves to including reconstituting relationships, grieving their past, and the hard work of reconnecting with a parent they rejected for dubious reasons. Nonetheless, they discover a more healthy, autonomous, and gratifying life by working on this journey, rather than remain imprisoned in a delusion, and at risk of repeating unhealthy attachment patterns with others.
I wish you the best in your personal and professional life.
I was a targeted parent and my two girls, now 40 and 36, have absolutely nothing to do with me as well as their children. I also live in the Dallas area. Today I blame the judges, lawyers, and psychologists whose help we sought, but we got blown off, ignored, or blamed. I no longer condemn my self for the outcome. Targeted parents are as much as a victim as the children. Courts, lawyers, and psychologists allowed the alienator the power to alienate.
Susan: I’m sorry to hear about your ongoing alienation from your adult children–this is not uncommon, particularly in alienation cases from decades ago. While courts, attorneys, and psychologists are intervening in parental alienation more effectively in certain cases today, we still have a long way to go. Your tragic story is why I try to educate the court on intervening even with late adolescents while they remain minors, because once they turn 18 years old, they may remain alienated from good moms and dads for life. This is tragic and unnecessary. The court must see late adolescents as minors and move swiftly to address the alienation and work toward accountability and reconciliation. I hope miracles may happen for you and your children in the future.
How do you identify and address cases of false accusations of alienation where a parent who has alienating tendencies himself projects that onto the other parent?
Anonymous: This is often best proven via an evaluation by a trained psychologist who understands parental alienation and can provide a psychological evaluation for projection tendencies. Incidentally, it is also possible for a parent to accuse the other parent of parental alienation, and it may in fact be estrangement/abuse/neglect that is causing a child to reject a parent rather than an alienation dynamic. You point out that a parent can be alienating the children, but be in denial about his/her behavior, and defensively project those intentions and motivations onto the targeted parent. Unfortunately, sometimes if the 5 mistakes noted in this article manifest, the alienating parent can use those mistakes in their arsenal to further alienate the children. The alienating parent will point out how a good and loving parent doesn’t behave like that while decontextualizing it and not noting how the mistakes are causative of the intense stress of being rejected, vilified, hated, and defied. Parental alienation can be difficult to detect in a family where both parents are alleging the other of it, but not by a professional psychologist with training and expertise in this specialized field.
I wish my husband would have had this article seven years ago. At the advice of his attorney, he stopped pushing for [his ex-wife] to follow court ordered visitation, which she wasn’t anyways, which lead to him not being able to speak to the children at all. The first year he texted and called the children without ever getting a response. A year later he found himself back in court where he lost his children and [his ex-wife’s] new husband adopted them that very day.
Now here we are seven years later and out of the blue his daughter, who is an 18-year-old high school student with a three-month-old baby and a boyfriend who her mother has tried to have disappear too, now wants contact. My husband, of course, is so excited to be a part of her life again, and now his grandson’s, but I do not trust it. His son, who is 16, was the first to make contact. He has only made contact a handful of times during the last year but will still ghost my husband then use the excuse “I work a lot” when contact is made again. My husband has only seen his son once for about 30 minutes when he showed up at our door at 3:00 am. The mother was out of town at the time but then it was four months before he received a text from him again. He has gone and seen his daughter, who’s living with her boyfriend’s grandmother at this time, I believe, 4-6 times.
After all the lies, schemes, and pain, I watched my husband stuck in for the first two years my guard, along with husband’s parents’, is way up. My husband doesn’t realize/accept he was one of [his ex-wife’s] flying monkeys before I came along (Yes, it was all my fault that the kids wanted nothing to do with him). These two children I took care of full time for our first 2 years together. Happy years for the kids and finally my husband had a loving partner who loved the kids and wanted to help raise them in a positive environment, something none had experienced before. These children asked their dad to find them a mom who loved them because after the divorce their mother moved across the United States and had very little to do with either of them. Minute or less phone conversations with kids but long conversations with my husband, which I put an end to. Her focus was controlling the kids, my husband, and the goings on in his house from where she moved to, which she was doing, until I came along. She used to get on my husband for instilling fear of making mom mad or stressing her out into the kids. That was a constant!!! And a huge mistake I’m sure he will always regret.
I want to know how to help my husband NOW! I don’t trust the ex not to be behind the contact made by his daughter. I just don’t trust her. She had too many of her mother’s characteristics seven years ago!! Already caught her in a lie that she’s not in contact with her mother because she still is. And this is the one who, just prior to going no contact, came over every weekend for a month being sweet as pie while packing up old pictures and sentimental items in her bag, without our knowledge, and taking them back to her mother. Things her mother was fine leaving behind when she left them (her children) and my husband to be with her dead best friend’s husband (who was also one of her flying monkeys) and work on the pipe line. His daughter has told him horrific stories of their life with them. More abuse and neglect than either of us thought could/would happen without at least one of them reaching out for help!!! Knowing her the way my husband did it’s not surprising, but we honestly (stupidly) thought her husband would protect them from her the way my husband did prior to their divorce.
Being a psych RN for almost 10 years I’ve seen a lot and am not ignorant to NPD and BPD and how they work and the joy they can get out of others’ pain. I want an article on after these damaged children finally reach out to the loving parent. What should we expect? From the children? From the narcissistic Ex? How do we protect ourselves from all her evil ways this time?
Fearful she is still using these children and now a grandchild to hurt him, which she knows hurts me, again just out of boredom and/or because of the anger she still has for losing such a dedicated flying monkey (my husband) or maybe just for the fun of it all!
Remember, legally these are not his children any longer, even though she’s been receiving a SSI check monthly for both kids for the last seven years because my husband is disabled, so our hands are tied. Both children just found out about the money she’s been getting this whole time.
They could all be gone again tomorrow without any explanation or even a word!!! Leaving my husband who had always put his children’s interest above everything, even the ex spoke about how great of a dad he was until it didn’t fit in with her agenda any longer, back in the bed with debilitating anxiety and depression (PTSD) for who knows how long this time.
We were united in the fight for those children seven years ago. This time we are not. I don’t want them in our home and I have no interest in speaking/seeing them until they no longer have any contact with their mother or she’s dead. Now, with a defenseless grandchild in the picture, I feel keeping my heart closed to all of them is the only way to protect myself but I don’t like how it’s slowly building a wall between me and my husband, which could very easily be the ex’s new strategy to try and get me out of the picture, since nothing worked before the grandchild.
I admit to having a couple of narcissistic traits myself, but work hard to keep them in check because I hate those parts of me (thanks Mom!). I have my own two grown children and three grand kids under five that love my husband, he’s the best grandparent and stepdad!!! Didn’t consider marriage until my children were grown because I never thought it possible for man to love the way he does. He’s always willing to run the roads/babysit/whatever is needed to help my daughter regardless of how much pain he’s in (that he deals with daily) even if I’m at work or sleeping all day after working a night shift and not available to help, which happens a lot since COVID hit and the schools and daycare are shutting down every time we turn around. My children’s dad also has BPD and NPD and my kids, along with the grand babies, don’t know him as anyone of importance in their life; his own choice not mine or my children’s. My daughter married and just recently had to divorce another BPD/NPD!!! and I don’t want them or myself to suffer the loss of one of the only positive male role models, who loves all of us unconditionally, we have. My husband and I are very similar (empaths) but fearful that this new situation is bringing thoughts and feelings up in me that only a narc would have.
I need to know how to help my husband!!! Am I right or wrong in not having contact? (Afraid ex just waiting on “ME” to do so before she starts next step in her attempt to destroy us). Husband told his daughter where I work, that’s concerning. I have a nursing license to protect also! Yes, I’m sure you will suggest therapy, but no insurance at this time or $ to pay for it. I realize I’m being selfish to a point but we both need guidance on how to handle things while protecting ourselves and the ones we love from the wrath of an angry narcissist and the two children that have had her in their heads for the last seven years and still do today.
Christina: You outline and explain your situation well and anticipate my response: yes, getting consultation, coaching, or therapy would be helpful for you and your husband as you traverse, respond, and make decisions in this complicated extended family dynamics. You also point out a phenomenon not addressed much in the professional literature that is, whether to approach or how to respond to alienated adult children. As you describe, one cannot assume their reaching out is genuine and without hidden devious motivations. But, I am also aware—as I have worked with adult children and targeted parents of parental alienation— that healing and true reconciliation does occur. Sometimes, the adult children extricate themselves from the control of the alienating parent, or they have a transformative and enlightening experience in relationships outside the power and control of the alienating parent.
It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to offer you prescriptive advice in this format as any good and helpful advice would emanate from a direct professional relationship with you or your husband, where I can listen, ask questions, gather history, learn dynamics, prior to providing specific direction and recommendations.
We continue to learn and grow as professionals in this developing field of parental alienation, and hopefully our specialized professional services and the educational offerings via articles and books will help in more effectively preventing and intervening in parental alienation. I wish you the best and thank you for sharing your story as it can help other readers know they aren’t alone in dealing with the insidious and destructive legacy of parental alienation.
Great article. I have been living this nightmare with my kids for over ten years. I have learned over the years the many things of what not to do and they all were in the article. I need an article on what to do as a targeted parent. You gave me a glimpse on exposing the alienating parent. I need more. It hurts me everyday knowing my kids are living in an unhealthy environment and yes I have used the courts and received custody but don’t have it unless I use police. Please provide suggestions on what to do, not what not to do.
Tom: I hear your frustration. Please note this article for more information on parental alienation and links to individualized professional coaching services.
Grateful for this article, while awfully sad to experience this and be affirmed that there doesn’t seem to be a solution. I guess I’ll give them continued unconditional love, while be present and concurrently afford them space.
Same—kudos on a really well done article. Thank you.
I am in the midst of the most painful decision I’ve ever had to make—exiting my children’s lives and going “no contact” with all three of them. It’s been going on for 27 years, when my second child was born. My oldest child’s father was deceased, so I’ve dealt with a lot of scapegoating, too, from my family of origin. The sister without a husband to stand up for her is prime for a family scapegoat—Caron’s remarks from above had me nodding my head. Oh yes, this is inter-generational. In our case, both sides of the “family” have personality-disordered parents and siblings.
My youngest is in the hell of high school COVID right now, in her junior year. I got beaten badly in custody court 10 years ago because I had no money for a lawyer, and despite the irrefutable evidence of physical abuse (my ex has a conviction for assault to a female—me) and irrefutable evidence of his alcohol abuse. He had a lawyer AND he had the prime pawn—my oldest child who sat there and lied about me on a witness stand. (She also did this through two cases of restraining orders before all of this). It is astonishing, he’s not even her father. (That likely has a lot to do with it, I know.)
My oldest was committed to a mental hospital for five weeks after physically assaulting me (badly, too) at the age of 15 and leaving a journal on her nightstand that included a very detailed fantasy about having me gang raped, murdered, dismembered, and my body parts buried in various parts of the city we lived in. When I say this is severe, I mean, this IS severe. The mental hospital kept her for two months. They do that with garden variety rebellious teens. This destroyed my TA-ship, which was my ticket to financial freedom—at last. No, I could not go on with grad school—especially after I found out that the ex and my oldest had been having a highly dysfunctional and incestuous relationship, which explained the severity of her mental issues. He smoked pot with her, drank with her, bought her cigarettes, all going on under my nose. And there were sexual times, how far they went, I’m not sure, but I think by now they even ”consummated” their relationship.
When someone really wants to December you, I found out, they can. I’m careful about who I share this story with, because people will blame the mother. They were very good at deceit. I had no way of knowing, though I knew she has experiencing a really rough adolescence. I kept trying, reading books, trying to reconnect with the little girl I’d known, but she just became more and more hostile—and finally, violent.
These two continue today—she has just recently been tossed out by yet another man whom she physically abused. She’s been charged with felony breaking and entering when she terrorized an elderly couple at 2 AM because she was drunk and needed to use a phone. She pled guilty to the misdemeanor charge—and get this—she blamed me for this. And for all the many boyfriends who have dismissed her after her abuse starts. This is the woman currently living with my ex, like a perverted step mother to my high school junior. This is my daughter.
My middle child—the 27-year-old—has had a hot and cold relationship with me. Abandoned by his dad when his dad found that he’d fallen in love with an old college girlfriend in another state, he clung to me. Then he turned on me for five years. Then back for four years. I finally blocked him from calling or texting me a year ago, after severe gas lighting, just the most outlandish lies. And a whole lot of pain.
My high school junior is a cutter and her father forbade her to even be evaluated by an MD. I am not the custodial parent so I was not able to force the issue. This girl has banished me from her life as well, for years at a time. I gave in and got her her own puppy when she begged, telling me her father would never do it and that she needed one. She was right, she did need a dog. She was living alone with her father and the man has a thing for flying into rages that can go on for 45+ minutes of screaming and throwing things, etc. He probably also has intermittent explosive disorder. Nonetheless, she needed a dog. I promised, and I delivered.
And after I gave her my own dog to keep her company for six months while I trained a puppy for her, she got that puppy home (we are in different states) and she just refused to have anything else to do with me for almost three years.
But my oldest was moving in and out, playing mommy to my youngest and middle children. It’s disgusting. It’s angering. To say it is excruciating, unbearable pain, is an understatement. And these are just the Cliffs notes.
At the request of my youngest, I went to stay for a few months over the fall and winter because of her loneliness and the COVID situation. She’s got a “budding narcissist” for a boyfriend (those were my therapist’s words). I cooked every night, when before, my daughter told me she got takeout most nights and ate alone in her room. I love my family. I wanted to take care of her. Things went pretty well until just before X-mas—what a hard time of year, and for me, horribly triggering because of all the Christmases I have spent alone.
The triggers got hot, and I finally reacted. I’m sick (literally sick, as in mental health wise) of being told that I never took her cutting seriously. What??? Still?? That story? I was the only one who DID take that seriously and was blocked by my ex and banished by her. I’m sick of hearing this terrible lie. I felt like I had lost my mind—again. We managed to hold it together for X-mas, and I did like I had always done on X-mas and wore myself out, trying to make it a special one for her. There was absolutely no gratitude, and by New Year’s Eve, she had picked away at me so incessantly that I finally just gave up, trying to comfort her over her missing boyfriend and all the other woes.
The New Year’s presents I’d bought, not a thank-you for any of them. The savings account I started for her to buy her car, not even a thank- you. Just incessant picking at me: “When will you get mad, mommy?” That’s what it felt like.
I left for home shortly after New Year’s. Things calmed down and I thought we had resumed our kind of decent relationship until the perverted step-mother moved back in and I got a vicious text from my youngest telling me what a horrible, abusive person I am.
That was it. Twenty-seven years of this insanity. I’m worried about all of them, just sick over my youngest, but I cannot sustain this level of pain. I’ve been in psychotherapy for ten years, but I’m the only one who does that. Nothing will change. My ex now has all the kids cheering him on, “oh, what a great dad, what a horrible person mom is” (when they start again, they refer to me by my first name—with contempt and hatred). So, once again, I’m the abusive, cruel parent—who was trying to help her with school, trying to help with SAT prep, trying to help with daily household functioning (like regular food), and even cooking for my ex, who was loving this (and getting drunk every night—much to the chagrin of my youngest).
It will never, ever change. I have to accept that. It is the most sobering, painful, but also weirdly relieving realization, that, no, I cannot keep trying or I will spend what years I have left in a constant whirlwind of insanity. And I think my therapist was right—I’ve stayed frozen in time because nothing has ever really been resolved. I can’t beat depression with all this crazy-making going on.
So, this weekend, I am going through my closets, the bedroom I kept here for my daughter, all the 1000s of photos, cards, even baby clothes I had saved through all of this. I’m packing these things up and shipping them I hope next week. I’ve changed my phone number—no more hateful text messages OR cries for help. I have created a whole new email account. I’m done.
I will include a letter for my two younger children to let them know I loved them always, that I always will, and if they have real emergencies they can leave a voicemail for my therapist. But it’s over. I am no longer available for the abuse.
I am shattered, but as I said, there’s also a sort of relief—it will stop now. I know it will hurt and continue to hurt for all a long, long time but I won’t be frozen in this painful cycle with three other people who enjoy using me as a whipping post and creating situations that no one could successfully navigate.
I’m shattered. But I don’t want to die, and the suicidal ideation was severe. I’ve got my dog, and I have a distant cousin, and that’s it. That’s all the family I have. I will not hold out hope, because I really do not think any of them will ever recover and understand what has happened. I won’t be participating any more.
It’s hard, really hard. I hope for everyone else, whose cases have not yet reached the severe stage, that they can heal their relationships with their children. I know now that I can’t have that, and I’m doing my best to accept it.
Thank you for the article. It has helped me.
Suzanne: I must admit, your story was painful to read. I can’t imagine how painful it is to live it, so sorry. I’m encouraged you are in therapy, and working through these tough decisions with your therapist, and getting the ongoing support needed to endure an incredibly difficult transition. The severity of your situation increases my desire and conviction to provide needed evaluation, expert consultation, and coaching services to individuals and families in an effort to identify parental alienation (PA) dynamics early and prevent them from worsening to such severe levels. Unfortunately, in certain cases where the PA dynamic goes unabated for years, even decades, it can become so calcified and embedded, it becomes a monumental—sometimes unsolvable—extended family problem.
I believe in miracles, but I also believe in personal sanity, self-care, and interpersonal boundaries needed to effectuate health and wellness. It is my hope that your decision and attendant boundaries will provide you healing, a time to “unfreeze”, and become enlivened to life again. If your adult children ever seek you out through your therapist, I encourage you to engage with them only in a controlled and reliable stepwise reconciliation process with a professional, rather than just opening the door again to perhaps, another round of pain, abuse, and insanity. I wish you the best, Suzanne.
Wise and enlightened article Randy.
My son ( and his tribe) has been alienated from his 3 younger children for nearly 4 years( the oldest child, at 16 years old, refused to be alienated and was subsequently totally rejected by his mother) . The other 3 are classical victims of parental alienation (as are we all now). The oldest of the 3 is now 15years old and as her grandfather, I was considering sending her this poem, but was discouraged from doing so by the family therapist;
WHO STOLE MY DAD?
All my friends have super dads
They love and idolise.
To them, their dads are heroes
And praise them to the skies
But my own dad seems lesser.
His star not shining bright.
He doesn’t seem as good as them.
Has failed to reach the height.
But now as I get older,
And see the world more clear,
I see my dad’s been locked away
From me who held him dear.
Some have run him down to me,
Many times repeating,
Filled my head with many lies
And left my heart retreating.
So, did they steal my dad from me
Or did I keep away?
Until for me the coast is clear
To love him every day?
From now I will defend him,
As I should have done before.
It’s never right to hurt him.
Love dad for evermore.
What do you think?
Tom
Tom: Thanks for sharing your poem. I think it is powerfully illuminating in its prose and truth. If you are okay, perhaps we can share it as a Facebook post, or include it in an article sometime. We could make it anonymous, or from “Tom”. I understand why your family therapist did not want you to send it directly. I think it was an important and healing poem to write, and sometimes that is what is most integral as we journey in the healing process of having relationships stolen from us from parental alienation.
I decided to leave my wife after 18 years of marriage. We have 3 beautiful children. It has been 18 mos since I left. The divorce is now final. The children are 14,16, and soon 18. The youngest, my son, initially kept in touch. My ex has done everything in her power to keep me from my children. I was a very involved parent. Their mom is a driver. Pushed the kids all the time. She has taken zero responsibility for the divorce and has campaigned that I left “the family.” After spending $50,000 in court costs and trying to force the kids to see me, I decided to let them go. Months of texts sent with no response.
I fell into another relationship shortly after leaving. Their mom has accused me of having an affair. My children do not believe anything I say.
My question is, will giving them space (which is what they have asked for) help them heal and return? Everyone around sees what their mother is doing. Will time heal and soften their hearts?
Charles: I am sorry to hear about your situation. It must be painful, and I can see how you don’t want to do anything to further the alienation, but you’re not sure what to do. Unfortunately, each case is so different depending on the history, children’s ages and personality, professionals or extended family involved, and the severity of how much the alienating parent remains intent on alienating.
As children grow older, a rejected parent can have hope that their emancipation and individuation from the alienating parent can provide them emotional and physical space to reapproach a rejected parent. Unfortunately, some alienating parents will remain aggressively and intrusively involved with their adult children making it difficult for adult children to differentiate and establish their own beliefs and values with respect to relationships.
As I described in the article, alienated children suffer from an “emotional tumor” that can remain embedded inside them, despite an alienating parent not being integral anymore to their decision making. I’m sorry to answer, “It depends,” as it truly does. I usually encourage rejected parents to somehow communicate their ongoing love and interests in a relationship in a way that makes sense, and hopefully isn’t received as offensive, intrusive, and uncaring since alienated children are at risk of feeling assaulted and disrespected by any gesture from the rejected parent.
If you hadn’t attempted to use the court and/or professionals, I would have suggested that, but it appears you have, but sadly unsuccessfully. I have seen healing and reconciliation happen with adult children, and I have seen the relationships remain fractured. I hope you experience healing and reconciliation.
Thank you for sharing. I have been alienated from my 2 teen sons for over a year and a half. They made it clear that they no longer wanted a relationship with me. I pray for them daily. I will not force myself on them. I am here when they are ready. My love for them will never change. I’m healing and getting healthy. It’s sad how the Perpetrator becomes the victim and the victim becomes the perpetrator. Freedom is amazing and I look forward to the day that they are free from the abuser, too.
HT: I think it is good and important you are healing and getting healthy. While time can be a healer in some situations, it can be your enemy in parental alienation. I hope something creates a shift soon, and you will experience reconciliation with your sons.
Seriously, the most concise and helpful thing I’ve found so far. It’s such an important topic. Thank you for writing this.
You’re welcome. I am heartened you found this helpful; that is why I wrote it.
I am the targeted parent. My ex wife, oddly enough, is a family therapist, but in retrospect I see she has a history of alienation: her former husband was STRONGLY alienated by his children, and now I am the new pariah (the list includes my mother and father as well).
My daughter is 18 and doesn’t see me or talk to me, hardly at all. Child custody payments end this year: do I keep supporting her at the same level (I don’t think my ex pays a penny for support), or do I “retaliate” and lower the monthly support payment to something more equitable? I am quite wealthy, and my daughter was my sole heir, but if she has no interest in me, I can’t see supporting her further. But I realize that such a threat would be dehumanizing. I am so confused. I am here for her, it’s just that she has no interest in my existence. And as might be expected, neither does my former wife.
Dave: I’m sorry to learn of the situation with your daughter. I refrain from offering specific advice in this commentary medium out of respect for the complexity of dynamics inherently unique to parental alienation cases. While I identify 5 common mistakes in this article, there are many actions that can be assessed as mistakes or adages depending on several dynamic variables varying case by case. Also, how one parent implements a particular action or behavior can determine the success or failure. You certainly need to assess your situation and discern how to respond. I can appreciate your confusion and distress in making this decision since there are inherently competing truths. I am here for coaching and consulting if you need, and I encourage you to talk with others you trust as you discern your next right step in this painful and confusing journey.
THANK YOU for writing such an easy-to-read article highlighting the most important facts and treatment expectations. Man, I wish this had existed several years ago when we began our journey (I self-taught using Karen Woodall primarily)! It feels so good to name your problem, especially when it feels like your children are dying in front of helpless you.
We were blessed enough to have the finances to fight a 3-year custody battle to obtain court-ordered therapeutic interventional treatment. The first TI was wonderful but we had hardly any sessions before COVID hit and appointments were placed on hold until the order expired. When trying to renew, the alienating parent (with undiagnosed type I BPD) requested, and was granted, a change through our PC (who is somewhat aligned with the AP). Our new therapist is court-ordered and supposedly forensically informed, however, her treatment approach is confusing, and after all the torture we’ve been through, very hard to trust.
I’m a stepmom who’s cared for my husband’s kids since they were little. The youngest and I had become especially close prior to the AP activating the PAS button. We are undergoing therapy with our new TI however, despite me being the primary targeted parent, she refuses to meet with me because I’m not a biological parent and my daughter claims I’m too controlling and unreasonably demanding. The TI met with AP first (this has always led to a biased impression previously) and is encouraging my husband to improve his awkward teenaged girl interactions. The TI has not even begun to address the AP behaviors etc. My husband has advocated several times but she won’t even acknowledge my presence in the waiting room when bringing my stepdaughter to her appointment. The TI has not all-out said she’d never meet with me but her treatment plan has not included me at all when discussed with my husband.
This is a 180-degree approach from the last TI. Is this just a different method of counseling or should I be worried? Requesting another TI will take a minimum of 6 months and we’ve already lost too much precious time.
Jessica: YOU’RE WELCOME. While I don’t like to offer specific advice without thoroughly knowing the historical and contemporaneous family system dynamics, I will offer this: Reunification therapy is still in its infancy without a lot of standardization, so many models exist as they emanate from the individual therapist’s understanding of what the Reject and Refuse Dynamics (RRDs) are caused by, how severe are they, and in your case, how the therapist views a step-parent’s role in the family system. If I read you correctly, you have been a significant caregiver for years, so it makes sense to me that you would eventually get incorporated into the intervention.
If this case has been deemed more of an alienation case, rather than estrangement, then I would be concerned about the treatment emphasis being placed too much on helping bio-dad work on his parenting skills with an adolescent, but for the alienation, might be normative struggles of parenting an adolescent. One can’t resolve RRDs from alienation dynamics with a treatment plan that is designed to address estrangement dynamics.
Starting over, as you mention, can take time and money, and time is the enemy in parental alienation, but the enemy can also be time spent in counterproductive or contraindicated counseling interventions. I would ask the treating counselor to render a description of what he/she is treating, and a treatment plan to address the identified problems, including who is involved in the intervention, and at what stage and time. If the counselor’s narrative sounds promising, perhaps not perfect or ideal, then stay the course. If not, you may need to reconsider. Again, I would not want to give you a prescription or specific advice without knowing you and the case more thoroughly. I wish you the best. Let me know if I can be of any help beyond this response.
When I went through the worst of my abuse I was so run down I could barely function. Five years of gaslighting. So I committed myself to a mental clinic for refuge. My abusive husband was a well-known medical employee in a small town and no one would listen or believe me. I attempted to get better by leaving for two weeks and stayed with my parents. When I returned with an optimistic plan to get family counseling, I was yelled at and told I was hated by one daughter; the other two were brainwashed by this time as well. I also have an older son from a previous husband. He is 46 this year and my daughters are 37, 34, and 33. They think I left them, but in reality after two attempts to return and mend the damage, I was thrown six feet across a tile floor and dislocated two ribs and was severely bruised. I left when he told me I had to leave or he would murder me. The lies then grew and grew and I did all I could to reclaim the person I used to be. I got a Master’s Degree in Education and taught. I mourn my children everyday of my life. Two daughters communicate but my son and one daughter are defending and aligning with the abuser. He was dishonest; the list of stealing and lying go on and on. Fraud, theft, and even a child out of wedlock before I knew him and a paternity case that caught up with him after he endeared himself to my son who was four at the time. This horrible act of a life of torture and grief is my reward for loving a monster that will always get away with the crimes he commits.
Gemma: I am sorry to hear of your tragic and horrific life story. Unfortunately, Parental Alienating Behaviors become the primary control and abuse tactic used in an chronically abusive and controlling relationship post separation and divorce. The misuse and manipulation of the children becomes the primary means to continue to control, terrorize, and abuse a former spouse. I am heartened you found meaning and purpose in your teaching career, and like many others with adult alienated children, I hope for healing and reconciliation in your future.