Solutions for Parental Alienation (PAS) Part 1
When Children Reject or Hate Parents © Martyn Carruthers

Online Coaching & Training

If you feel rejected by your family, the consequences can be intense.
We help people dissolve the consequences of
covert emotional incest and parental rejection.

Parent Alienation & Rejection 1: Before Adolescence

Parent Alienation 2: After Adolescence . Covert Emotional Incest

Any rejection by a family member can feel terrible. Abandonment or betrayal by a parent, partner or child can trigger especially strong emotions. And if you are rejected because of someone's deliberate manipulation - you may carry the emotional baggage for a long time.

When Children Reject or Hate Parents

Although it is a crime to incite hatred on the basis of color, religion, or creed, inciting hatred is common in dysfunctional families. Children may be manipulated to hate other family members. A parent who causes a child to hate the other parent is guilty of Parental Alienation (PAS) - abuse that is sometimes called emotional blackmail. Some parents abuse their own children to gain advantages.

The consequences of abuse may be delayed for years. Later in life, many abused people experience intense emotions and limiting beliefs from this damage, although they rarely identify the root causes. They may have learning disabilities, eating disorders, immature habits or chronic emotional problems.

Common consequences of parental alienation include mentor damage, chronic conflict and identification with a victim.

Parents who deliberately hurt children may feel diminished relationships with their family, with their community and with their God. (This diminished sense of life seems to be equally true for agnostics and atheists.) By Sense of Life, I refer to the sense of purpose and meaning; that you ascribe to your life.

We help people prevent partnership breakdown, dissolve its consequences and prevent recurrence. PAS is not gender-based - both fathers and mothers play and lose this terrible game.

My Child Hates Me! / I Hate My Father! / My Father Rejected me!

There are systemic causes and consequences for a parent to abuse a child or for a child to reject a parent. Families, communities and courts often respond emotionally to these situations, often to support the weaker parent, regardless of any manipulation used to incite the child's rejection or to make a family member seem somehow bad.

This can be a factor when children do not communicate with their parents. In extreme cases, child victims of parental alienation may hate, abuse or even commit violence against their parents, especially during teenage years when they feel the consequences of their damage (without knowing why they are damaged).

The adolescent children of abusive parents may be highly emotional - or they may be highly dissociated, avoiding feeling or expressing any emotions. Their reactions to earlier relationship damage may become lifetime habits ... until those emotions are assimilated. (It seems that more damaged people seem to become helping professionals than healthy people.)

Who is Hurt? Who Suffers?

Although many adults may consider young children to be stupid and naive, most children are intelligent and sensitive to family relationships,  Children may be unable to communicate their observations with adult language, and they be may ignored or ridiculed if they try. Children often communicate with symptoms.

• Adopted children may be encouraged to dislike or reject their birth parents
• A child may be guided by family, community or cult members to reject a parent
• A child may be simultaneously manipulated by both parents to reject each other
• A child may be manipulated by a parent who wants custody, or to punish the other

Although the suffering associated with these consequences is often ignored, a child who rejects a parent, the rejected parent and the supported parent will often suffer emotional consequences. If the parent alienation includes covert emotional incest, emotionally enmeshed adult children may suffer obsessions, partnership problems and/or sexual problems.

Coaching Children . Mother-Son Entanglement . Father-Daughter Bonds

Parents who Alienate or Reject Children

Parental alienation predicts common behavior patterns that we often see during marriage counseling, family therapy and couple coaching, especially concerning separation and custody of children. However, families, communities and courts often seem to prefer and support biological mothers and deny support or custody to biological or substitute fathers, regardless of facts.

Were You Rejected?

Being rejected is probably not about you ... and there may be little you can do about it. We can help you talk out your feelings, assimilate your emotions, develop whatever relationships are still possible and find some form of resolution or completion.

Whole families can be enmeshed in unpleasant emotions. Sometimes it's better to say Goodbye for now! Be aware that you might seek substitutes for your family, and that finding parent-like partners may delay your maturity. We can help you sort out your emotions and build quality friendships.

Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS)

Either parent can initiate a sequence of events leading to parental alienation. A common pattern is:

1. A parent of pre-adolescent children rejects his or her partner
2. The children show loyalty to that parent by rejecting their other parent
3. The custodial parent tells the children what is true and asks the children to tell the truth
4. The children support their custodial parent and reject the alienated parent - with true lies
5. The custodial parent may implant false memories to further alienate the rejected parent
6. Following emotional maturity, victims of PAS often reject their custodial parents and explore relationship possibilities with their alienated parents

Sequence of Parental Alienation

We have heard this sad story many times ... parents who reject their partner's qualities expressed by their children. They may encourage their children to not talk or act like the other parent. The children learn to habitually hide, reject or repress huge parts of themselves.

1. The parents experience a conflict that they cannot resolve or ignore
2. Instead of getting coaching, they allow the conflict to become a crisis
3. One or both parents neglect the effects of their crisis on their children
4. One parent rejects the partner's qualities (behavior, beliefs and / or values)
5. That parent rejects the partner's qualities in the child (e.g. don't act like your father!)
6. The child denies or suppresses qualities similar to those of the alienated parent
7. The child hides or represses any dangerous qualities of the alienated parent
8. The child dislikes people who have similar qualities to the alienated parent
9. The child rejects or hates the alienated parent - privately or publicly
10. The child identifies with the rejecting parent, who the child may perceive as a victim
    

Immaturity & Child Abuse

Alienating a child's parent is child abuse and children often suffer from the tactics that the parents use to try to control and punish each other. We coach people to dissolve the consequences of:

1. covert emotional incest
2. physical, emotional or sexual abuse
3. abusing children as dependent hostages
4. betrayal, rejection or abandonment of one partner by the other
5. court ordered suffering - child custody by a rejected or hated parent

We help victims of family rejection, abandonment and parental alienation dissolve heavy emotions, change limiting beliefs, improve relationship skills and prepare for healthy partnership.
 

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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.