Solutions for Parental Alienation (PAS) Part 2
When Children Reject Parents © Martyn Carruthers

Online Coaching for Adult Children of Difficult Parents

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PAS Part 1 - Before Adolescence . Covert Emotional Incest . Chronic anger

Parental Alienation Part 2 - After Adolescence

Children, especially children under stress, tend to perceive a black or white world. Things are good or things are bad. People are nice or they are nasty. If their parents argue, stressed children may believe one parent to be rejecting - a victimizer, and the other parent to be rejected - a victim.

Children may express intense anger or even hatred to perceived victimizers - and intense love or even sympathy to perceived victims. Expressing anger to victimizers and love to victims can become habitual - emotional habits that feel normal, expected and just. These beliefs and habits may linger for life.

During and after adolescence, healthy children become biologically ready for parenthood and prepare emotionally for partnership. Adolescents with unpleasant beliefs or fixations about their parents, or with other unhealthy relationship habits, may feel unable to fulfill these needs. Instead, such teenagers and young adults may withdraw or continually express strong, unpleasant emotions.

Parental alienation and mentor damage causes many problems for children, although these problems are often latent until children reach adolescence and become teenagers. Then the teenagers' symptoms (often precipitated by unhealthy role models) may seem to suddenly explode. Some symptoms are:

• delayed maturity
• intense bonding to opposite sex parent (emotional incest)
• intense bonding to same-sex parent (may lead to homosexuality)
• chronic anger, depression, anxiety (often called learning disabilities)
• teenage-onset passive aggression, bi-polar disorder or schizophrenia
• high motivation to dissociate (leading to alcohol, drug abuse or other addictions)

Emotional Maturity

Following parental alienation, but before emotional maturity (which may be delayed), adult children may express the rejected parent's (perceived victim's) values and qualities, for example:

1. lives with the rejected parent (may avoid the rejecting parent)
2. identifies with the qualities of the rejected partner (Identification)
3. oscillates between mother's and father's behavior (Identity Conflict)
4. partners a person who has qualities of the rejected parent (Transference)
5. suffers trauma, depression or breakdown and retreats from reality (Lost Identity)

If ignored, this unpleasant drama may continue into subsequent generations. The rejecting parent, the rejected parent and the adolescent children can benefit from our coaching, either individually, or simultaneously (during family coaching).

If the pleasure of human connectedness can be replaced by depression and suffering, then parental alienation is a deeply spiritual issue. Parental alienation (PAS) often seems to depress children's joy and sense of life. Adult children affected by PAS may become unable to feel joyously connected with their friends, partners, families, humanity and with their God.

(The consequences of parental alienation seem to include adult children becoming agnostic or atheist - if children cannot trust their own parents, then they may not trust heavenly or universal parents).

Systemic Family Coaching . Systemic Couple Coaching . Private Coaching

Chronic Anger

A symptom set that we often associate with parent alienation is Identification with a Victim. If a child perceives one parent as a victim and the other as a victimizer, that child may identify with the perceived victim and express anger or rage to the perceived victimizer, often explosively and inappropriately.

After adolescence, the same child may identify with the rejected parent (now seen as the real victim) and express anger to the rejecting parent (now seen as the real victimizer). Such anger may become generalized to all perceived victims and motivate a lifelong obsession with justice.

Chronic Conflict

If a child tries to remain loyal to both parents, and those parents are in conflict, the child will likely believe that ongoing conflict is normal. The side or part of the child that supports the father will object to or battle the side or part of the child that supports the mother. This often results in chronic inner conflict. We call this identity conflict and we often coach people to resolve such conflicts.

Emotional Incest . Identification . Learning Disabilities . Stress Disorders

Power & Privilege

Emotional blackmail is a common strategy for gaining and maintaining the benefits of child custody, even though a mother who disrupts father-child contact defined by court order may be acting illegally.

The best interests of the child, in a court of law, rarely mean the child’s best interests. Parents can vote, parents can file lawsuits and parents can pay lawyers. Children’s interests and rights are usually subordinated to the parents' interests. Children of divorce are rarely represented in court, and they may be emotionally crushed by their parents displays of anger, hatred and victim games.

Divorce . Children of Divorce . Parent Coaching . Depression

Parents who have hurt or damaged their partners or children may later feel depressed. Happiness or pleasure may not make sense. Many people, after alienating a once-loved partner (especially if they also abused their own children), seem to depress their own lives. Some common symptoms are:

Consequences of Parental Alienation or Rejection

Either parent can initiate a sequence of events leading to parental alienation syndrome (and sometimes to legal restraining orders).

1. A separated parent states that a child does not wish to visit the other parent
2. A social worker confirms that the child does not wish to visit the other parent
3. The custodial parent and social worker report to a court
4. A court limits the child's contact with the rejected parent
5. The child and rejecting parent bond by their mutual rejection of the other parent
6. The child and rejected parent often lose contact until the child is mature
7. After emotional maturity, the adult child may bond to the rejected parent
8. After emotional maturity, the adult child may reject the rejecting parent

Many people who felt alienated from a parent have told us that they could not cope with this situation as children, and avoided, rather than hated, the other parent. If the rejecting parent continues to reject the qualities of the rejected partner, the adult child may come to avoid or even hate the rejecting parent.

Perhaps worse, such children may come to hate and reject those parts or aspects of themselves that are similar to the rejecting parent.

Emotional Maturity & Child Abuse

Children often suffer from the sometimes vicious tactics that immature parents use to punish each other. Although immature parents express depression, anger, and aggression by withdrawing love, alienating a child's parent is child abuse. We help people dissolve the consequences of:

• abuse
• betrayal by a partner
• instilling children with false memories
• using children as 'dependent hostages'
• emotional incest and passive aggression
• court ordered suffering: custody by a hated parent

Spirituality seems to be about acquiring virtues - and people often develop virtues under challenging conditions. If you experience danger, you can develop courage, and if you experience lack, you can develop generosity. If you experience guilt you can develop purity, and if you experience depression, you can develop compassion. We help people deal with relationship disappointments.

Online Coaching for Adult Children of Difficult Parents

Plagiarism is theft. Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 2004-2012 All rights reserved.

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Plagiarism is theft. Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 1996-2012 All rights reserved. Soulwork Systemic Coaching was primarily developed by Martyn Carruthers
to help people dissolve emotional blocks and improve relationships to achieve their goals. These concepts and strategies are for general knowledge only. Consult a physician about medical conditions and before changing medical treatment. Don't steal intellectual property ... get permission to post, publish or teach Martyn's work.