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The consequences of being rejected by family members can be intense.
We offer coaching, mentorship and training on family constellations,
healthy relationships and reducing parenting stress.
PAS Part 1 - Before Adolescence
. Emotional Incest
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,
they may perceive one parent as rejecting - as a victimizer,
and the other parent as rejected - as a victim.
Children may express intense anger or hatred to perceived
victimizers - and intense sympathy or love to perceived victims. Expressing
anger to victimizers and love to victims may become habits - unhealthy habits
that feel normal, expected and just. These habits may linger for life.
During and after adolescence, healthy children
become biologically ready for parenthood and emotionally ready for
partnership. Adolescents with unhealthy relationship habits may feel unable
fulfill these needs. Instead, such teenagers may withdraw or express strong,
unpleasant emotions. The consequences of unpleasant emotions can include
many adolescent and teenage problems:
Emotional Maturity
following parental alienation, but before emotional
adolescence (which may be delayed), an adult child is likely to accept
and express the rejecting parent's qualities. On gaining
emotional maturity,
the young adult may start accepting the rejected parent
in a number of ways, including:
- lives with the rejected parent (may avoid
the rejecting parent)
- identifies with the qualities of the rejected
partner (Identification)
- oscillates between mother's and father's behavior
(Identity Conflict)
- partners a person who has qualities of the rejected parent
(Transference)
- 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, which we can
provide individually or simultaneously (as systemic family coaching).
Parental alienation (PAS) often seems to depress joy
and sense of life. People
affected by PAS may become unable to feel joyously
connected with their friends, partners, families, humanity and with their
God. If human connectedness can be replaced by depression and suffering,
then parental alienation is a deeply spiritual issue.
(The consequences of parental alienation seem to
include becoming agnostic or atheist - if children
cannot trust their parents, then as adults they may not trust
heavenly substitutes for 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, that child may identify
with that parent and express anger or rage to the other parent
(the 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). This anger may become generalized to all perceived
victimizers and motivate an 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 be learn that
conflict is normal. The side of the child that supports the
father will object to the side of the child that supports the
other parent. We call the result
identity conflict.
We can coach you to resolve these issues.
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My ex-husband played a victim
role very well, gained the sympathy of the judge and was awarded
custody of our two children ... our older child is now
perpetually angry, and our younger child suffers endless indecision.
Portland, Maine |
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. The child’s
interests and rights are usually subordinate to the parents' interests.
Children of divorce are
rarely represented in court, and may be emotionally crushed during
their parent's childish rivalry and power games.
Divorce
. Children of Divorce
. Parent
Coaching
Pleasure may be senseless for parents who have hurt or damaged
their own children. Many people, after alienating a once-loved partner,
seem to depress their lives. Some common symptoms are:
- Ignore personal hygiene
- Avoid completing essential tasks
- Avoid keeping track of finances
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- Ignore important problems
- Consider self-harm or suicide
- Do things that create problems
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Common 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).
- A separated parent states that a child
does not wish to visit the other parent
- A social worker confirms that the child
does not wish to visit the other parent
- The custodial parent and social worker
report to a court
- A court limits the child's contact with the
rejected parent
- The child and rejecting parent bond by
their rejection of the other parent
- The child and rejected parent lose
contact until the child is adolescent
- After adolescence, a teenager
may bond to the rejected parent
- After adolescence, a teenager 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.
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The toxicity of parental
alienation can include the solutions chosen by courts.
Sometimes hated parents are given
custody of children, against the children's will. |
Emotional Maturity & Child Abuse
Children may suffer from the sometimes vicious
tactics that immature parents may use to punish each other. Although
immature parents express depression, anger, and aggression by
withdrawing love, alienating a child's parent is child abuse. Our
systemic coaching can dissolve the consequences of:
- betrayal
of one partner by the other
- physical, emotional or sexual
abuse
- instilling children with false memories
- using children as 'dependent hostages'
- emotional incest
& passive aggression
- court ordered suffering - custody by
the 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 coach
people to deal with relationship disappointments.
Online Coaching for Rejected People
Plagiarism is theft. Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 2004-2011 All rights reserved. |
