Resentment, Forgiveness, & Parental Alienation: How to Heal Generational Trauma

you are listening to the Beyond The High Road podcast with Shelby Milford episode number 83 welcome to Beyond The High Road a podcast dedicated to Healing your heart and life following the grief of alienation I'm your host Shelby Milford a twice certified life coach with an advanced certification and post-traumatic growth and grief using proven Concepts based heavily in neuroscience and psychology I developed my own own playbook for reintegrating with life and reframing my role as my daughter's mother even while living apart I went from feeling agonized helpless and directionless to feeling energized confident and most importantly at peace today I get to help other

parents like you to do the same stay tuned hey you guys how are we doing today so after letting go of last week's episode I dropped it released it on Wednesday night and moments later I received a message an Instagram message from one of two of my favorite attorneys who ever represented me and I will say it that way because there is a collection of them over the years I mean funny not funny but um ones I sold dear to my heart and I respect greatly um they were my first two attorneys really it was my my my first attorney ever which I will give him a shout out here in in Austin Texas which is Jonathan Friday and then the next Attorney who is Lisa lren I spent many many hours in their offices

both of them separately listening to them giving me counsel and words to the wise back in the day like what not to do what to wash out for how to conduct myself outside of the courtroom don't dance on bars for instance and what have you so those two attorneys to this day I super respect them they're amazing and so every so often now and again I will get um some correspondents from one of the attorneys back in December she had sent me a message saying that she did not she found anecdotally that rication therapy does not work she uses family systems therapy instead I passed that along to a few of my clients at the time and it was something that helped greatly

but then of course when I was recording last week I completely forgot I realized too that I just told you all the bad things about reification therapy and that's some of the good too but um never offered you up an alternative so there you have it family systems theory and family systems therapy it seems to be the way to go so I wanted to pass that along to you guys but also last week she sent me a book and a couple articles about when a child resists or refuses to go to the targeted parents house um and a book called mending fences which I will be honest I have not read yet because it's not on Audible I listen to books so I haven't read it yet I haven't taken the time to actually put my eyes

on the pages I really do like to listen read to books while doing other stuff as I'm sure many of you do um but I also do appreciate the depth that you gain by actually doing the reading with your eyes having said that the book is called mending senses a collaborative cognitive behavioral reification protocol serving the best interest of the post divorc polarized child and it's by Benjamin gar so it's just a recommendation for anybody who's interested so yeah there's that her message got me thinking and actually just the message about family system got me thinking I have been I don't want to say avoiding but putting off addressing the topic of forgiveness

with you guys for some time and that is because for a few reasons really one is because I haven't fully completed the work to forgive one of the people involved in the elevation um I'm not going to go into detail about that part so much right now but I will say I'm getting closer to that and the other reason is probably obvious is because many of you I am sure are resisting this step in your feeling maybe some maybe some of you have already forgiven and if that's the case I'd love to hear from you so we are going to talk about resentment and forgiveness today but I want to preface this by letting you know right now that if you're not ready that is okay not

being ready is an essential part of your readying you know what I'm saying not being ready to forgive is that's your journey this is part of your walk I don't believe that true forgiveness like deep down forgiveness comes with ease not when we are talking about something as impactful as aention or for instance next to that I would say maybe if somebody got hurt like for Life maybe murdered peral ized the victim of this has been affected for the rest of their life these kinds of offenses there is a lot of self-work that we must do before we can choose forgiveness because let's face it what has happened if you are listening to this and your children are not home

with you or your relationship with your child has been affected as a result of the actions of somebody else it's not okay nothing on the planet could convince me that what a person does to alate a child is justifiable it's not so of course you're upset of course you're angry and of course you want to hold on to resentment it feels protective it feels necessary it is normal to be feeling bitter and angry about what has happened and in order to move on with your life fully and not have it tagging along them tagging along forgiveness is the only way to be free of them and that is the maddening truth of it I can remember being back in the you know as a Hermit up on the hill the house on the hill

feeling Shackled to the personal hell that I felt like they put me at they meaning my daughter's father and stepmother I felt so resentful so bitter so angry so powerless so helpless so chained to them to to the story that they passed on me this is my thinking back then they created this life for me this personal health for me that I would never be able to emerge from I think I'm sure I've explained it to you many times in the distant past that I felt like I was in the bottom of a pit or a well was no exit doors windows no nothing to climb up I felt like I was stuck in this dark ugly hopeless evil place I think I also shared with you that I expected them to somehow

miraculously come knocking on my door and tell me they were sorry and that everything was be okay and that we would work it out once they realized that I was not the person that they were saying that I was things would be fine and saying it now not only does it sound absolutely absurd right I also now see how much I was seeking their approval from that spot that I was really really yearning for their approval now like saying I'm just it's just now becoming evident to me I feel bad for me I have so much compassion for that version of me that I was hurting so much and I was looking seeking yearning for something that I was never going to get from these people who were alienating my child from

me making these false claims all of these terrible dishonest in my eyes the time heartless evil things although stepmom was had stolen my child from me she had single white filed me Hand That Rocks the Cradle lifetime original movie that is the story that I entertained embellished and lived in surrounded myself in and so long as I stayed in that ingry place I I've been using this word a lot but I was tethering myself to them that hold that they had on me I was holding on to that chain just as tightly the resentment I felt towards the both of them required me to spend so much energy I spent so much time and energy on this obsessive anger that I had towards them

that mindset that I created and lived in back then victimized me far longer than needed to be back then I would not have realized that I thought it was not an option for me to not obsess like I thought of course I'm obsessing about this this is my child there's no other way to be there is no other state of mind to choose I felt that it was very necessary to feed and um to sit in that resentment that I held to them that anger that I felt for them that envy that I felt towards them I found it so interesting I forgot about this and just till just now that brenee brown came out maybe a year or so ago with I forget A TRU she was being interviewed by but she was talking

about how resentment is actually she learned it from a fellow researcher of hers that studied emotions that resentment actually stems from envy and is not at all in the family of anger isn't that interesting that when we resent something it's because we're we're envious of it we want that thing and that actually makes a lot of sense when we look at the story that we're going through right we of course we want our children back they've taken them from us and so resentment is the appropriate emotion or the appropriate experience of that is the perfect depiction of it they have what we want they've taken it from us and they have assumed our role even if you there's not

a stepparent active in your child's life the other parent has assumed both the mom and dad role right and erase or is attempting to erase you from your child's life back to the message that I got from my former attorney this is what got me thinking about forgiveness is that what I knew from family systems therapy and family systems theory was really from venan and Craig children and other doctors that have done a lot of the work I think Manish was I don't know like in the 70s or something you know back in 1935 there was already studies and um research being done on this cross-generational Coalition of triangulating the child in on a divorcing or separating marriage right

and so then the child is brought in to act as the other adult in the relationship it got me thinking that the reason why people triangulate is because of their basically their low self-esteem because of their inability to feel confident without the praise or affection the reassurance of somebody else and so whether it's borderline or or narcissistic personality type that is alienating your child from you because they need that so much that's when they pull the child in so as to feel like they have somebody on their team this is their maladaptive way and I'm sure you guys don't know this but this is their way of dealing with the loss that they cannot deal with when you

guys split and if it's a stepp parent doing it it's still it's their maladaptive way of feeling like they are a part of this new family of theirs erasing you is very convenient for them but also it fills the void that they have in their being because they don't accept themselves and so when I was remembering all this it reminded me of forgiveness because the only way that we can ever forgive somebody is to First realize their humanness to First understand that they got here somehow they were not born evil nefarious or bad you know with a bad eg it doesn't happen that way and I remind my clients of this all the time they two at one point were infants and because of

whatever happened along their way and the stories that they hold in their minds about the way the world works this is how they came to doing whatever they've done as far as alienating you they feel inadequate they feel devalued and discarded by somebody in their life and so they have reacted responded by doing the very same with us and maybe many others in their life and I don't say that to fuel your fire or to judge I'm saying this because I think in our process to Healing it's so important to understand the anger that we hold the resentment that we hold and why we hold it and so being able to say it name it call it out it is an essential part of your journey to forgiveness your walk to

forgiveness I was listening to something yesterday the day before that we can never forgive for some concept let's say dad left your family early they left and got married to somebody else and you never saw dad again you can't forgive dad for leaving your mom you will never like a completion there but instead what you can do is forgive dad for how you felt when he left you can forgive dad for the way Christmases were to follow the way that mom maybe took things out on you as a result of not having an outlet you can forgive dad for the times when you went to school with no food no lunches because mom didn't have the money to pay the ways that that affected

you that's what your work to forgiveness you can't just forgive for some concept because it doesn't actually go in and cause you to draw out what your repercussions were so when you instead can same with alienation name what it is that really truly affected you then you're off to a good start with finding your own healing if you are angry about everything they do just because they're them because they're because they they alienated my child and they're bad and they're wrong and they are evil and they lie see how bad they are so see they're lying to somebody else and you find all the external reasons you can never come to a a healthy place for being able to acknowledge how it has

truly affected you does that make sense so you have to get very specific about what what you are mourning what you are grieving as a result of the actions that they have taken and continue to take maybe and as always I think it's very important that you do this work knowing that you were supported like if you need to go back to therapy please do it if you need people around you while you're addressing your own anger and issues please do surround yourself with people that you love and that love you while you're doing this work but it doesn't have to to take very long this is not something that you need to sit on and Ponder and go back over and feel the pain of how they wronged you no it's

simply acknowledging that this is what's been affected as a result of their actions so I wanted to share with you the two major things that I always came back to when I was doing this work um and that I still continue to do with work um when when I still continue to do it the two things that really really were affected were was the fact that I was grieving and am still grieving the loss of the time I know that you guys share that with me we grieve all of this time that we cannot get back with our children all of the memories that we wanted to live out with them the loss of witnessing and being present for these milestones in their lives for me it was graduating Elementary School moving to

middle school for her um and then of course going up to the big leagues into High School her driver's license was huge these are just the more recent ones now of course her driver's license she's a junior in high school prom um her first kiss I don't know if moms ever know that her first real Crush like little insignificant moments that you have over after dinner like horsing around in the kitchen or before bedtime just to be there and listen when they tell you what's going on going wrong with their day with school with whatever I think about those moments often I grieve also um I grieve for her her loss the possibility that she is there wondering whether I'm thinking about her you know

does she think that I'm not thinking about her because you know that's the farest thing from the truth I think about her all the time and so that's one way that it has affected me and there's so many tiny little ways within that right and the other thing that it's affected the other area that's affected is that their continued efforts to alienate erase and replace me I felt put me in a box and reduced me more marginalized me as a woman as a mom as a human I felt like their decision I still do feel that their decisions to act in the way they did you know it affected my entire life how I showed up in every way and now I have to take ownership for a lot of that and I do but let's face it

without their desire to alienate life would be much different than what it is right and so I had to be very Frank with myself about that that their decision and then ongoing decisions afterwards to continue to alienate me affected the way that I moved through my life I mean all the way down to what I do for a living today and so with each intimate relationship I have from starting from when this happened way back when all the way with the probably the rest of my life I believe this will be something that I do share with people today I choose to have it Empower me but without their actions I wouldn't be here so I think it was very important for me to acknowledge that I was mad at them um

and still am sometimes because of the lifelong effects that their actions their decisions have cost me um and those two things really affected me I mean obviously and as a result I deemed them as evil and bad and Sinister all powerful in a not good way that they were manipulative and all of the things that I'm sure that you guys would you know agree upon about your alienating parties but then I realized that I was doing the very thing that I was hating on them for I was unwilling to see that they are just as human as me that in order for a person to alienate that they have to be hurting they have to feel devalued unsupported self-conscious so I realized that actually my anger my resentment my

bitterness my desire in my need so I thought to hate them judge them and to belittle them even though I was desperately trying to get away from them my thinking about them kept me holding on so tightly to them my claws wrapped around the both of them that thought pissed me off that the idea that maybe just maybe I could have freed myself from this jail long ago and my resistance to letting go my indignation victimization my desire to be better all in the name of a morally acceptable sort of Vengeance on them all of that was keeping me stuck in a cell with them and read a lot of emails from y'all some of y'all feel so attached to their narrative to their fight and that my

friends I just want to let you know is optional you don't have have to fight you do not have to battle even if you're going to court instead advocate for yourself and for your children when we are in resistance to them we are the ones that feel that resistance so when I realize that my thinking my anger my righteousness my desire to to rise above to be the one that that acts better the one that takes the high road that commitment to staying there was actually what was keeping me Tethered to them that was my motivation to release them and that's what forgiveness is you guys forgiveness isn't about them it's not about allowing or laying down and taking what they've done it's not about

condoning conforming forgiving them releases them from your head space from your energy so that you can move on with your life when you are committed to not forgiving you'll find that your Innovation your creativity all of the things that make you you are adult the second that you begin to release your hold on your anger all of that starts to come back to you and I think that that is so important for you guys that's why I want it for you like I said I'm still working on it I'm still working on it a lot of it is letting go of your ideas about what is right and what is wrong and what you should have gotten and what you have our ideas about what is owed to us what we feel entitled to as parents

as humans as good people the sense of importance that we all have is oftentimes what will get us into trouble and cause us to go right back into resistance this shouldn't be this way they shouldn't act this way my life should be different they should be different I should be treated better all of that and again I want to make clear that I am not suggesting that what they have done and what they're doing is acceptable or right it is not what they have done is absolutely not acceptable it's wrong and you can state that without holding on to the indignation feeling Shackled by the resentment and the Envy the hate I do want to reiterate that if anger is where

you are today it's okay there's nothing wrong with any of theot the emotions that you're feeling as you've heard me say before your emotions are nothing to solve for it's just I believe it's always much more helpful to recognize where the emotions are coming from it moves you it saves you so much time and energy in the long run to call it out as oppos to entertaining all of the the egoic sort of thoughts that happen around the suffering you know whatever if you're mad they took time from you they made decisions that have affected you and you know will affect you be mad about it say that what really helps me in the whole forgiveness of others I really need to forgive myself too I

didn't want to and I've talked with you guys a lot about this but I thought that by admitting any of my fault or L old stupidness in the moment I I thought that if I admitted that even to myself then I was taking on that blame and it's not the case by like admitting it acknowledging recognizing where you were wrong you were also able to release yourself from the blame in that process too chances are that the resentment that you are holding on to with people that are alienating your kids from you it's not the first time that you have felt singled out devalued discarded and all of that right we talk about that in the self erasing episode so also addressing that like this Al this probably runs

deep yes the alien eating parent has done a number on it they have worn it all out but it probably also happened earlier on in childhood with you so exploring that while you're at it would probably save you some time and effort too right like where has this shown up before for me so that I don't repeat it again for myself right not the alienation part but just the emotions are feeling devalued erased not enough you know all of that when you're able to humanize them and understand that the reason that they're doing this is not because they're Sinister or straight up evil or the devil incarnate or whatever it is that you story that you have about them when you step away from the

Judgment from a place of hurt people hurt people a person that would triangulate a child an adul aian parentified is hurting they clearly felt all of the ways that they are trying to make you SE today and that is why they felt marginalized they felt singled out uh ashamed embarrassed this is really what is driving them so when you can have some compassion and I know this is not an easy step but when you are ready when you become open to seeing how this might be true for them then you're one step closer to forgiving them like I said this is an essential step in freeing yourself from them from the narrative that you might still share with them so if you want to free

yourself from that hell this is the way to go Divine forgiveness for what they've done for what they continue to do one last thought though is that it's common for us to hold on to our resentment because it's doing something for us it helps us to feel like we have a Cause that there's a reason and they're to blame for why we are here without our children if we don't just like I was talking about in a couple episodes ago as far as our uh holding on to the p as and mistaking that for connection if we don't hold on to our resentment then how do we explain why we're sitting here without our children with us right how do we say that iterate that to those we just meet relationships

we're in or will'll have in the future how do we explain how we we have a kid who's still in school and they're not at home with us it becomes easier once your kids are adult age but still inside whatever story you're telling you about that I'm just offering you a way to Freedom here if you're telling yourself that you need to hold on to this resentment in order to make you feel righteous Justified about all of what has happened up until now that is not true Freedom it's conditional and so I just want to offer that instead of holding on to that painful story release it and once you accept you then others will too so sometimes as I hold on to it because it helps us to feel like we have

a cause another reason we hold on to the resentment is because again is that maybe helps us to feel connected to our children because if we're not angry at our abuser then we're doing them dirty you know without the anger then we're left with this story of how we're estranged from our children and we fear that right we don't want to be the ones at fault for all of this so if we have someone to blame somebody to point at it's all because of them my life has become This Disaster because of what they did to me well you continue to put yourself in that box that you're so mad at them for putting you you know so again this is your opportunity you don't need anything more to explain where

you've been but in order to get somewhere different and order to climb higher you must Release Yourself from this chain and then of course the other reason that we hold on to Res which I've kind of hinted at this whole time we we do it because we fear the disc comfort of having to change for our own selves if we have to acknowledge that maybe we're at fault and it wasn't all the enemy then we have work to do then there's the possibility of us feeling more guilty and that would we've got uh tenants to pay or something like that ahead of us and that's just it's not the case at all right this is actually a step closer to your freedom as I've been saying so you feeling un comfortable is

part of the process we feel uncomfortable when we're approaching an unknown territory and the unknown is absolutely necessary in order for you to get out of where you are and where you've been you have to go through discomfort in order to get somewhere different or else you're just going to keep recreating what's already been and if you feel like you're in jail like mental emotional maybe even physical jail because of what the alienator did the only way to free yourself and move out of that jail and into the rest of your life is to let it go you know when you're ready of course so anyway yes forgiveness it's not as bad as you think in fact quite the opposite it's the most

free thing you will ever do but I will tell you too it is the most difficult process you might ever go through besides of course the pain and the suffering of sing in it okay the benefits are immeasurable plentiful it's the gift that keeps on giving to free yourself from the hold of the person that you're hating on so much and honestly the biggest benefit I think that you can get from that is that forgiving is the only way to stop and complete the cycle of intergenerational trauma you unless you this is like an unskippable essential step if you want to models for your child coming from a place of unconditional love you have to forgive yourself and forgive the

perpetrator the only way out of it is through it so if you're not there please don't beat yourself up it's okay I think anger is like an essential part of your healing right feeling like a victim is an essential part of your healing feeling resentment an essential part of your healing there's nothing wrong with where you are currently okay and if you know you've had enough if you're sick and tired of being sick and tired then forgiveness is always available to you and luckily it doesn't require any participation by that in fact that's the great the great thing about it is once and for all it requires nothing from them when we stay in resentment it's because we're wanting them to write

they're wrong we're wanting them to apologize to stop being the way that they are they're not going to stop being the way that they are you know this by now right Let It Go and you don't need anything from them you can actually break the tie that you feel like they have around you you can release yourself from it will you forgive okay guys take care