Why "Parental Alienation" Might Be Blocking Your Road to Healing

episode number 89 stay tuned hey y'all so today I want to discuss when you feel exhausted put out exacerbated you're at your wit's end because maybe your children are still not responding to you reacting to you they're not showing you love and the way that you think that they should this is such a just a common thing right when is enough enough when do you is it time to throw in the towel I can't take the abuse anymore it's just too much pain to deal with when can I just cut ties completely I need to save myself and get out of this you know what I'm talking about and so I want to address that right now and in hopes that if that is you right if you have any even just an inkling of

that mindset going on or the questioning in your mind about it I mean it's normal right I understand it we all I think understand this so well right feeling used and abused Road hard put away wet and you know devalued undermined disrespected it's definitely a common experience when we're going through something like this but I think that there are some contributing factors I want to simplify this whole thing for you and if you're at the brink right if you're feeling like you can't take it anymore or it's just so much that it stresses you out you're losing hours of your days one of my clients said to me this morning the silence is deafening you're ruminating

about that and finding all the things that are wrong with the fact that your children are alienated and you are in the situation I just want to simplify this a little bit help you to reenter and redirect your mind right and your focus and then also I want to address some other things pertaining to alienation as a whole that um have been coming to a head for me personally and then of course obviously will affect you if you're listening to the show regularly so I'm going to get to that in just a few minutes but for right now I want to focus on this other thing which could be affecting very well affecting your experience of for myom out there Mother's Day that just passed for my

father's Father's Day is coming around the corner just the end of this week especially around holidays and graduation and Mom's Day dad's day these kind and then of course we have Christmas I mean like I said there's always some something some occasion that no matter what time of year it is usually that we can look to and have this sort of of reminder and questions pop up in our heads like um when we're faced with not getting a call for Father's Day right coming up you really wanted to see them or have a court hearing set before Father's Day so that you could see them talk with them on the phone and maybe that's not happening or the odds don't seem to be quote unquote

in your favor at the moment um I want to help you to manage your mind manage your expectations around that I did notifications on my phone multiple times a day for posts like enough is enough should I just give up who else who here has let go has cut their kids off they can't take the pain anymore the you know the abuse the this that that and every time I see these posts I get like I'm hesitating to say frustrated yeah it is a little bit of frustration frustration for y'all for whoever's making this post because and frustration for your whole situation and your families because I know that when I read one of those headings knowing that that's the subject it tells me that you

are unnecessarily suffering if this is you and that you have forgotten or at least this portion of you this emotional part of your brain the one that's right this post has been misled and is believing a lie and so that's basically what I want to tell you is that just like when we say to ourselves um I don't know why this is all happening I don't know why my kids aren't calling me back I don't know why my kids are so me why they're rejecting me I don't know why la la la la la yeah you do know why you do know why and we have a whole pathology to explain it right there's a term for it there's a whole slew of information and research to explain to you exactly why this is

all happening the same thing when it comes to you feeling like you just can't take it anymore you can't take the rejection anymore too hard on you you shouldn't have to endure this and I know that I sound like I'm being jerk or judgmental that's just the way I feel it for you um when I see the notifications for those post because it must be taxing to think of it that way that you just can't take it anymore it is human to have dysfunction inside of you right trying to protect you from harm mostly your ego that is telling you that you shouldn't have to handle this this rejection is nobody should deal with this and you should cut yourself off from them and they should just live

their life separately and you live yours and just get on with it and it's too painful to continue to live knowing that you haven't gotten closure from them right you haven't drawn a boundary that's usually what the the gist of this messaging that you might have inside of you is is right and I just want to offer you that yeah it's a lie when your children reject you and I know that you know this but this is where you have to be diligent with your mind like your conscious unconscious thinking when your children reject you when they don't call you back when they tell you [ __ ] off via text when whatever they're doing or not doing they're not doing because of you

and what you've done now I will say that we can take responsibility for the things that we might have done to play a role and contribute to the dynamic of alienation and the dynamic of of your parent child relationship we'll talk about that in a minute but as far as them rejecting you being whatever to you their behavior toward you or their lack thereof it's not about you actually it speaks more to the Pathology and the dysfunction of the parent or adult who was working stand between you and your children right that's where this is coming from it's not actually a personal attack on you you may feel it personally but the reason that you feel it personally is because you're not

actively using your prefrontal cortex to explain to the emotional part of your brain that yoyo this is not a personal attack like attention all employees this is not a personal attack on us this speaks to what the alienating parent is feeding to the child so in all reality you are not actually enduring anything more than the story that you're attaching to their behavior if you decide that this is a sickness it is a pathology there is a dynamic that is dysfunctional with in the family it is much easier to look at the situation your children how they're behaving with more objectivity and compassion as well which I know kind of contradict each other but it's true you can look at it

and say okay this isn't about me and I kind of feel for the situation you can look at it in almost like a clinical way even as a personal situation because you know it's not about you it's like when you see an alcohol olic behaving or drug addict that's behaving erotically and you know that they're under the influence of this drug or this alcohol or whatever it is right it's the same thing with the alienating parent the reason that they're doing what they're doing has everything to do with their own imbalance right with the with their own pathology and now I'm saying this as a coach not as a psychologist not as a social worker even okay I'm saying this as a coach and my own research about all

of this so know that sometimes my terms may be wrong but you get the idea what I'm saying is that the only thing that you have to endure is your own story about what's happening outside that is the only thing and so if you decide you want to commit yourself to a story that helps you in advocating for your kids in seeing the situation from uh a more objective point of view you will have much easier time quote unquote enduring their rejection of you right enduring their mistreatment of you the thing is is that as adults we cannot be abandoned we cannot be even mistreated if we know something is happened and we are capable of removing ourselves from a situation

does that make sense if we have the tools and we do because we are still from afar in most cases anyway like you're not in physical danger and you can take care of yourself emotionally right nobody can come and program you and your brain from afar you can mentally emotionally care for yourself then nobody can really take advantage of you nobody can really continually mistreat you it's all in the way that you're looking at it and how much power you're giving away so the reason why most parents feel like they need to cut off ties is because they're not recognizing their own power standing in their own power in each and every situation maybe you know it on the Forefront like in

your reasoning part of your brain right in your PFC you know oh well it's not personal there's a there's a situation going on there's a pathology and they're saying this because they're being programmed they're being coerced by the alienating parent or person and so you know it there right but if you don't fully believe it and if you don't practice believing it continuing to repeat that to yourself that sort of Mantra to really know it and respond to your the emotional part of your brain each time it wants to scream and jump up and down then then you're going to revert back to the old thinking and that is why my clients it's like they can't get off the hamster wheel of thinking

why won't my kids respond to me I don't understand why they still want to blame me why they still think that I'm not trustworthy or that they won't take my calls why do why am I still blocked by my children and every time I have to Reas them you tell me why you're still blocked not to reexpose them or anything fully capable adults and that is the point but instead for them to practice and explain it to like from your PFC from the reasoning conscious part of the brain explain it to the emotional part of the brain right you know why it's because there's a situation going on emotionally mentally in the other home right you know that they're being coerced you know that this is a

pathology right but this back part of your brain starts to jump up and down and because that's the subconscious part that runs you 90 95% of the time then you're constantly going to be coming back to this until you learn how to effectively manage your mind you're going to feel yourself running on futes when you have been it's like I know that I've shared with you guys or I've used the analogy before about how it's kind of like having willpower every day we only have so much brain power so much willpower and by the end of the day when we're tired when the brain is tired and it's not yet made the new belief the default then it will revert back to the old way the more

comfortable known way of thinking so this is what you have to be aware of when you're in this place where you're at the brink and you want to throw in the towel and forget it I'm sick of this abuse and they can just whatever I just need closure this isn't healthy for me it's only unhealthy for you if you're beleving what they're saying and you're believing that they their words and their actions non-actions could actually harm you because no other human being can actually emotionally harm you if you are aware of what is happening do you know what I'm saying when you have your own full sense of self and understand that you regulate your emotions and that nobody outside of you can actually

regulate them for you then you have full autonomy and nobody can Tire you out emotionally okay I really want to bring this home because it will bring you so much peace in the long run if you do practice this on the r and it will also cause you to feel steady remain steady when showing up for your kids relentlessly without tiring at all because you know that it's not about you the reason that we all get like this is crazy I can't can't take this anymore is because you're getting butt hurt because you're taking it personally because in your mind you have this idea that children shouldn't act this way they shouldn't be this way ex husbands or wives and stepparents shouldn't blah

blah blah you have all these rules about how it's supposed to be nobody else is living like this and I shouldn't have to it's unfair that is what is causing you to Peter out those stories on top of it we can't change the fact that they're doing what they're doing right but what we can is advocate for ourselves and for our children in the most effective steadfast way slow and steady wins the race you know you keep on and you keep taking care of yourself and your own mind your own mental and emotional health physical health as well I promise you your consistency will pay off you cannot take what is happening as a personal attack on you it's not it has nothing to do with you yes it affects

you but it's when you give into your extra story on top about what that means because you can't do this my child should reect me blah blah blah if you want to find some peace and you want to not feel at the effect of others not feel so attacked and violated that's the story kind of story you have to drop you have to let go of these expectations unconscious expectations they're like the ones that you don't even realize that you have you're in the moment and then you take those unconscious expectations as facts like nope kids should always respect their parents I shouldn't have to deal with this you state it as it's a fact because it's this long time like poor belief of yours

that is not serving you at all and this is why you want to run for the hills Peter out give up find closure to your story here's the thing and here's some tough love I looked up the the word parent I looked up parenting roles definition all the things and nowhere does it say that the role of a parent is to receive love from their child nowhere does it say that the role of a parent is to feel accepted by their child nowhere nowhere does it say that a parent's role is to be invited to graduation and to receive calls from children when the parent believes it's necessary nowhere does it that and I know I I get you I I I feel the same way you do you know I would love to receive

calls to be invited to graduations to all of it but that is not actually the role of a parent and when you're telling yourself that you need to check out of your role maybe the circumstances are not in the way that you thought that they would be but you still are a parent and you can parent from afar but when you're tell telling yourself that you need to check out on the role because the child isn't receiving you or isn't behaving in the way isn't giving you the love that you believe that you deserve then I think that you're missing the point and I mean that with all of the love of my heart but I truly think that you have you're confused I think we take and this is where I wanted to get

to with my own evolution of what has been going on um like how I see my situation of alienation and alienation as a whole um I didn't realize that I still had this belief system construct in my mind that was keeping me resistant angry and at odds with I was saying it last week with stepmom even her dad somewhat like I've let most of the anger go with him but then their stepmom that I was had been very angry and resistant to and I only it's all been coming to a head over the last eight weeks or so if you've noticed I think I have been talking about it a little bit more in the episodes and it was my way of working it out and what I realized along with the interactions I guess that I was

having with the naysayers of Parental alienation um and a couple other um ongoing conversations that I was having with some of the other mental health professionals in the field um I realized that for me anyway the term parental alienation I still use it I think but was causing me to it had become a limiting belief or something I could blame was causing me to feel resistance right I just know that for me the reason I think I thought to use it for so long was actually kind of backwards because and I again not giving it up I think that from here on out there needs to be more context for me because just saying parental alienation feels like weaponizing and also at the same time

stigmatizing because of all of this people getting up in arms and like these quote unquote women's mom's rights groups that are against parental alienation the naysayers you know because of all of their efforts you know with like Hayden's law and then all of the misinformation disinformation that is going out to the public due to some of their efforts and what have you and then of course just lack of information on the General Public's part I feel like the term parental alienation has sort of it's it was stigmatizing before like the the situation that we're in was stigmatizing um right because what have you done in order to be rejected no child ever rejects their parents right

that was how it was just before I had a name for what was going on and then when I had the name parental alienation I discovered that there was a name there was an instant relief but I was just describing this in an email to somebody and I'm still getting the words around it but it also felt like a terminal diagnosis it felt equally as disempowering as it felt relief so you get the diagnosis you're like oh gosh we can solve it and then you realize what alienation is and then you're like no this is just like a sentence a life sentence it feels awful right and so it was equally this relieving empowering empowering all in the same cloud and uh Craig Chris points this out

as do a few other of the professionals out there that when we use parental alienation only right and we don't actually address the abuse that is happening we do ourselves in our children a disservice because we we we set ourselves apart and we're also concealing helping to hide the abuse that's actually happening helping to hide the pathology itself just like shame you know how when I talk about Shame Shame likes to lurk in the shadows so does the pathology the dysfunction of pronal alienation so and I also think that because when I was thinking oh it's all because of the ponal alienation I can't do this because I am an iated parent I blah blah blah because I'm alienated you know it was

like this whole limiting belief like weight that had been on me um and I think is still lifting from me um since the day that I learned that there was this term right I felt like what can I do with this where can I go because there is no solution for this well there's no solution for it because it's not even diagnosable you know just using the term parental alienation at thus far it's not in the DSM I don't know if it ever is going to be in the DSM right and so but also too that term is so polarizing and so stigmatizing that I feel like we kind of shut ourselves back into this corner using it all using it and only it I do believe it accurately explains what we

as the alienated parents feel right but it's not a comprehensive explanation and I don't know if there are the perfect terms for this all I know is I like to judge how I feel inside when I say something and right now I'm not loving that Standalone label does that make sense again doesn't mean I'm not going to use it I just think it welld deserved and and with context you know describing the pathology what actually the Dynamics of it for you specifically each case is a little bit different so how the the symptoms show up for for you specifically right addressing that that is where your power lives if you want to feel empowered like today address how it's affecting you and then you can

decide is it really affecting me this way where can I find my power in it right how can we address this to the courts to your children depending on your situations it's it can be a so many different ways but my job is to help you with your healing yourself so that you can go back out and advocate for your children if that's what's in the cards for you if that's what you want to do but you regardless we got to work on functioning and evolving and so the way that we do that is by stopping the Cycles so again this this is just personal opinion and I'm not the psychologist that would give you the actual accurate answer here but I truly believe that that those of us as

alienated parents rejected parents I think if we had a strong sense of self when we got together with the other parent if the other parent is who is alienating you that alienation would never have ensued to begin with it would not have been possible for alienation to take hold but because we probably this is my theory grew up in a family where we were in the position of taking on the anxiety and stressors of other people in the family we accommodated and absorb the dysfunction the high low emotions of everybody else in the family then if you were like the go-to person that sort of either cared for or you were the funny one to relieve like you felt the anxiety

as a kid and you felt it was your job to fix in some way shape or form and you never address that in between then as a child and your relationship with the person who's telling meting your children from you then it makes sense that when that relationship broke up that you would also want to absorb for looking at triangulation absorb any sort of anxiety or guilt or shame or stress that you thought your child was going to feel and try to take that on as your own pathological parent decided to make them their partner child all of a sudden got promoted up into this role of parent so um in order to fix that like in family systems therapy you know I've been looking at family systems uh theory for

since I was back up on the the house in the hill when I first moved in I can remember having no furniture in the house and right before getting ready to go back to court for the last last time that I did me doing all this research on family systems and looking at mintion sort of cherry-picked information that I wanted to utilize and remember for the court hearing and then I've gone back since to that information the same papers the same studies and each time I guess allowing myself to sort of apply a little bit more a little bit more but it always seemed to be I wanted to like point fingers at and explain why the pathology was there right oh it's the Stepmom she's the crazy one she's BPD uh

that's oh it's my my daughter's father NPD traits they're the problem and I am just the Unlucky person that got stuck with this my daughter obviously is the most unlucky but they're they're they're demonizing me what I didn't realize is that I was trying to demonize them back We Can't Fight Fire with Fire y'all it doesn't work you know when we're weaponizing the word prontal alienation and trying to demonize the other the the sick parent actually um as being the devil and being the complete [ __ ] and the cause for everything now I'm not saying that they're not at fault you still had to play a part in it you still had to play a very integral part in it and so when we understand as a whole

that this Dynamic is off and that the the the roles are reversed and it's basically a sick family unit I used to always think that the only way to solve this whole situation of alienation is for the child to go no contact with the pathogen the person who caused all this Al Nation to be in with they need to go no contact in order to recover our children we needed to remove them from the influence of the sick person but what I realized is that thinking was actually going against everything I believe because what do I teach you guys what do I share with you guys and I do take a lot of pride in the way my approach to my own healing your healing and the consistency with my beliefs and how I

can apply everything that I teach throughout to all areas of your life right and no one factor will switch or change or reverse any of my beliefs like I really follow all of my principles through there's no exceptions to the rules but what I didn't realize is this saky one was not little hanger on her this was a very large hitchhiker if I believing that in order to solve this that we need to remove part of the equation well guess what that that part of the equation right that family member even if it's a stepparent it took a lot for me to get here y'all I will always be fearful and be thinking about the threats of that parent stepparent whoever entering back into the family getting

their dirty grubby Paws around my child again that's the way that I was thinking before like they need to be eliminated and eradicated like shipped off into uh what do they do Exile Island that's I believe I mean I didn't think that they needed to be in Exile Islands but respect it's not a terrible idea no I'm just kidding no it can't work that way that is not my way anyway and it is not rooted Than Love In fact family systems theory family systems therapy actually is the most holistic approach and I would argue I have not gone through this the therapy but I would argue I mean it is in full alignment with my everything all the other principles in my life and what I teach here with you guys is

that everybody that was involved in the dysfunction needs to also be involved in the healing and reconstruction of the recovery of in order for it to work functionally properly like a wol machine now what are the chances of the alienating parents willingly participating I'm not sure I don't know that is something that will you I actually message my former attorney about that the one who actually brought this up reintroduced family systems therapy to me I just brought it up to her and she's not sure um of the numbers but I am willing to bet that this is the way to recovery to a full recovery for any family that is going through this so long as everybody participates like I said we cannot

change what the other people do but as far as your recovery and the way you're thinking about your situation the other parent or whoever's alienating your kids from you my little lesson or what I'm wanting to share with you guys and pass on pass on to you guys is that it could be that you are unknowingly demonizing the other parent like in the name of Parental alienation and it could be [ __ ] with you right just like it was it was causing me to hold on think of them as evil and bad and they're the problem they're what we need to eliminate eradicate Exile right they're bad and they're terrible and you know what it took this last week since the last episode for me to completely turn around

and you know what I have compassion for her today I sh you not because of the way that I'm seeing her in my head I now see her as listen this clearly happened with her because of whatever happened in her past she is only projecting Outsourcing her insecurity onto my child and I don't mean only like she's not doing any harm she's done her behavior and the the coer of control exercise on her part has done a lot of damage irrevocable damage so there's that I'm not saying it's not serious but me taking the approach that she is dangerous and gross and bad and needs to be removed only hurts me and possibly my child and everybody involved too because I'm now still resisting that

and that's not going to get me anywhere it's only going to eat me up inside I'd much rather feel love and understanding and compassion and uh not like exhaust myself from ego you know what I'm saying i' so much rather I don't want to suffer choosing the other way choosing to hate her and resent her and stay angry and look at hers demonize her I'm doing the actual the very thing that she's doing out of fear for the very same reasons you see because if she it I'm talking about this if she is so insecure that she needs to control this little triangle of my daughter me and her she wants to do whatever she can to make my daughter and her be at the same level

and Exile me right when I'm trying to do the same thing with her it doesn't make sense I'm fighting fire with fire and it's just not it it doesn't help so anyway if you're using parental alienation as like a way for you to limit yourself and fuel your your anger I just want to encourage you to include an an include the context of the pathology include what is actually happening and why like to your best knowledge you know like clearly a person that is coercing a child or anybody really is doing it because of their own feelings of inadequacy of not enoughness you know fear of Abandonment of not being loved and needed by somebody and so they project that onto US cast that

onto us so that they don't get abandoned feel abandoned it is faulty wiring on their part it's so Illuminating I think when you understand why people are doing what they're doing um anyway okay listen that's again Happy Father's Day I hope this episode helped to just help help you to restructure reframe the way that you're looking at your situations of alienation and that you can endure anything that you put your mind to and is there even anything to endure anyway it's the story that you've attached to it you could look at this as if there was an imbalance in your childhood and you did not develop the strong sense of self that this is the path that's going to

help you to develop it's giving you the tools like here you go being an alienated parent and choosing to advocate for yourself and for your children you will develop a strong sense of self in doing this work you you know so um I truly believe that the challenges that come before us are always to grow us anyway Happy Father's Day y'all and to the rest of y'all I will see yall next week