GreatCosmicMothersUnite

I’ll have lots and lots to say and tell you, but this is the most true thing I can tell you, the universe has this in hand.

We are in a time period of change for this pathology. The other time of failure had to occur, not for as long as it did, and at that severity, but for a variety of reasons that period needed to occur in preparation for this time of solution. I can explain over a beer once we’re done. People had to learn some things, and some things needed to be put on display, to be exposed.

But that time of failure has run it’s far-too-long course, and change is moving through the trees. Do you hear those winds. I do too.

This isn’t about me or Dorcy, or even you. The universe is moving toward solution; each of us have our roles. Act with integrity, act with kindness. Speak the truth clearly. Do the right thing.

That’s pretty much my recommendation for everything. My role is to bring professional knowledge from psychology and huffy-puffy finger wagging at my professional colleagues, Dorcy’s is to… dang, to bring infinity stones to a knife fight.

My point is that I never predicted what she was to bring, and she didn’t create me or AB-PA. Each of us has our role in solution and we may not necessarily see connections right away. And I’m just a single lone psychologist in Southern California, what can I do? I don’t know, let’s find out. You’re just a single lone parent, what can you do? I don’t know, let’s find out.

First thing, the more you find your united voice as the chosen parents to lead the change and recovery of your children, the more power you achieve to do just that. Then, goal one, let’s not accept this abuse and trauma. So that’s going to stop. Goal two, we need the DSM-5 diagnosis of psychological abuse for your children. Goal three, we want written treatment plans. One, two, three our first goals appear pretty clear.

One of my favorite formative books was Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars. It’s pretty interesting to read Julius Caesar describing battle stuff. I think in military campaign terms. Because I’m a bit of a primary source material nut, I recently reviewed the US military’s principles of war; number 1 is Objective.

Objective – Direct every military operation toward a clearly defined, decisive and attainable objective. The ultimate military purpose of war is the destruction of the enemy’s ability to fight and will to fight.

Sentence one describes one form of focus on objective. Sentence two is a second form of focus on objective. What’s most striking is serous no-nonsense. Objective.

If you can find the larger flow for this, the one beyond you, you’ll feel the forces of change rising and it might help. Also what this brings is a deeper understanding that all of this is part of something more. I know your suffering has been immense. I’m so sorry. It should never have happened. I also feel the universe moving, bringing things, shifting things, and if the universe is moving then there is a larger stream of meaning.

Larger meanings are above my pay grade, I’m just a clinical psychologist, but I feel I’m being used in a role. I don’t need to do anything but my role, act with integrity and kindness, speak the truth with clarity, and the universe will work its ways toward solution.

I’ll also carry your stern voice of anger for you to the powers that be. I have a psychology doctorate degree and they can’t hurt me as much as they can hurt you in retaliation. Let me carry the stern and angry voice. You be kind, relentless and kind, at the same time.

The pathogen wants to paint you as angry and aggressive – of course the child doesn’t want to be with you, see how you’re so angry and aggressive.

Don’t let it do that. There are ways to be assertive and gentle at the same time. Think Gandhi, think Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement. Statements of truth made with clarity. Direct and strong, kind, not angry.

Anger will draw anger. Let me be your lightening rod on that, let me carry your angry voice of protest. I have a doctorate degree and am a peer colleague to them, there’s less that they can do to hurt me. They are holding you and your child hostage within the family law and forensic psychology system, you cannot afford to provoke the anger of your evaluators or treatment providers, they will retaliate. They shouldn’t, but the do and they will.

You be kind.

We will discuss parent advocacy skills from school-involved psychology as we move forward. The parent-psychology team has a lot of experience with parent advocacy over there in school-involved ADHD world and autism, and we can begin bringing some of that advocacy structure over here. The website I used back in the day was

Wrightslaw

https://www.wrightslaw.com/

Start by reading the Letter to a Stranger handout.

Letter to a Stranger

https://www.wrightslaw.com/advoc/articles/Letter_to_Stranger.html

There’s a role over in educational advocacy of the educational advocate hired by the parent to work with the school system through the IEP and follow-up appeal processes. They’re wonderful and get great services for the kids, especially learning disabilities, they’re expensive but get things done.

We might need a role like that over here, of psychologists acting as consultants to parents, not doing therapy, just as consultants for you in interacting with all the other (problematic) psychology people who are currently inept and clueless.

Hopefully it won’t take that long to get a solution and we won’t need that level of advocacy support. One of the terms describing the military objective was decisive. That’s within my objective. I’d like to get this solved as fast as we possibly can. Today would be good, and I’m entirely serious on that. We can absolutely solve this today, now. It’s just a matter of proper diagnosis.

We want a DSM-5 diagnosis and a written treatment plan. Jeeze Louise how hard can that be? Apparently pretty hard over here in forensic psychology.

The standards of practice in forensic psychology are substantially below those of clinical psychology and may be actionable. I wish it wasn’t true. We need to establish baseline standards of practice. We are going to do that by using the standards of practice from clinical psychology.

We want a DSM-5 diagnosis in all cases, and a written treatment plan in all cases. That’s standard of practice in clinical psychology. Look to the school IEP as a model for what a written treatment plan should look like. Short and long term goals, specified interventions, defined measurable outcomes, and time frames for goal accomplishment. All standard IEP treatment plan stuff, standard of practice.

Craig Childress, Psy.D.

Clinical Psychologist, PSY 18857

I’m not from forensic psychology. I’m from the world of trauma pathology – all kinds of trauma, but particularly attachment trauma.

In the world of trauma – van der Kolk, Briere, Perry, Courtois – there is a foundational understanding that treatment of trauma involves a team. When we worked with a child in the foster care system, it was through a team.

Trauma benefits from a treatment team approach.

One of the problems with the current court-involved forensic psychology approach is that each mental health person’s involvement is individual. That’s not trauma-informed practice.

Trauma response benefits significantly from a surrounding trauma team, not just individuals, supporting recovery.

In forensic psychology, their assessments are not being coherently integrated into their treatments, and treatments across providers are not being coordinated around a single diagnostic understanding and treatment plan. Services are fragmented and mental health professionals act alone and each in isolation.

That’s not the proper approach with trauma pathology. For one thing, working with trauma pathology is stressful on the professional, called vicarious trauma, so a team approach benefits the professional in supporting a healthy response to the emotional involvement and vicarious trauma of the provider.

In addition, however, trauma presents with “extreme” symptoms – extreme anger, extreme depression, extreme anxiety, extreme conflict – and chaotic high-demand situations to manage. An individual provider approach is often overwhelmed by the severity and chaotic extent of the trauma pathology, which is why trauma teams develop to coordinate different aspects of treatment and recovery.

For example, the child in our childhood trauma clinic would see an individual therapist at the clinic while the parent or foster parent saw a collateral therapist. There might be additional occupational therapy with a clinic-involved OT, and speech and language services may be involved. In a perfect world we also a had a trauma nurse from the local medical center to do home visits and provide support for the parents, foster parents, and child.

Dialectic Behavior Therapy (DBT), the standard of practice for treating borderline personality pathology, is also structured around a team approach. Borderline personality pathology is a trauma pathology and is moving toward reclassification in the DSM diagnostic system as a trauma pathology. Trauma response and therapy benefits from a team approach.

Moving forward with solutions, we will be constructing a team model surrounding families struggling with divorce transitions. We will begin with trauma-informed skill development for the parents (including the skill of mindfulness), and conflict resolution skills, and then move step-by-step up the level of integrated intervention until the family is able to make a successful transition to a healthy post-divorce separated family structure.

It is always in the child’s best interests for the family to make a successful transition to a healthy separated family structure following divorce. So that’s what we must achieve.

We want to intervene as early as possible with low-level yet effective support, and then increase the levels of support as needed for the severity of the trauma issues in the family.

At all levels of this process, the mental health and legal professionals have to work as a team to respond to the trauma factors in the family, and to work as a team in successfully supporting the family’s transition to a healthy separated family structure following divorce.

For AB-PA pathology, I would recommend the court appointment of an amicus attorney and trauma informed family therapist team – not a GAL – not a minor’s counsel… especially not minor’s counsel, that’s essentially appointing legal counsel for the pathology.

The involved mental health professionals also need to work as a team. And in this team I would include family support and parenting coaches.

Cloe Madanes, a top family systems therapist, published a book in 2018 for coaches and therapists regarding family interventions. A collaboration of coaching with professional psychology is abundantly helpful, especially and particularly with trauma pathology, and a family coaching collaboration with professional family therapy would represent trauma informed practice at its best. This is the collaborative professional support we are building for this trauma pathology.

In most cases, individual child therapists are not needed and therapy can be coordinated and handled by a trauma informed family therapist working with a family and parenting support coach. That should be enough in almost all cases. When both parents are pathological, individual child therapy may be warranted.

Family therapy should rely on established constructs – Bowen, Minuchin, Haley, Madanes, Satir – and be guided by outcome measures like the Parent-Child Relationship Rating Scale.

Parent-Child Relationship Rating Scale

http://www.drcachildress.org/asp/admin/getFile.asp?RID=140&TID=6&FN=pdf

Trauma informed therapy should be solution focused:

Solution Focused Therapy

https://solutionfocused.net/what-is-solution-focused-therapy/

Trauma tries to drag us back to the past to solve problems that can never be solved… because they are in the past and the past is gone and can’t be changed. Solutions must come from now and from moving forward – not from trying, hopelessly, to fix past problems.

Solution focused family therapy should center around documentation of child symptoms used to help clarify family roles and expectations, and for treatment planning and decision-making. Always the goal is getting more love to the child, we want 100 mom-love and 100 dad-love going to and being received by all children everywhere.

We never-ever want zero mom-love or zero dad-love reaching the child. That is a very bad emotional, psychological, and developmental thing for the child.

We have all had mothers and fathers. We should all remember from our own childhoods how incredibly important mom-love and dad-love was for us and is for a child. If you don’t remember how profoundly important mom-love and dad-love is for a child, that means you have trauma history in your parent-child background growing up, and perhaps you shouldn’t work with this population of families until your own family of origin issues have been thoroughly resolved.

The solution for trauma pathology is through a team approach. That is what we are constructing.

None of this is Dr. Childress or Dorcy Pruter, it is you. It is you, the attorneys, mental health professionals, and parents… it is you who will be constructing the solution. Dorcy and I provide support tools to help you.

The core of a trauma informed team for court-involved attachment pathology surrounding divorce is a trauma informed and solution-focused family therapist who is teamed with an trauma trauma informed amicus attorney, and a family coach. Perfect.

The approach to therapy and recovery of the authentic child and the stabilization of a healthy separated family structure is structured and systemic, and is guided by ongoing collection of symptom data reflecting family functioning. Treatment plans are written and coherent to the pathology, and treatment decision making is data-driven by documentation of symptoms.

Trauma informed practice is centered around a collaborating professional team.

Craig Childress Psy.D.

Clinical Psychologist, PSY 18857

In another post I referred to some of our group monitors as “pathogen catchers” – I like how that sounds. That’s what they do.

The symptoms of the pathogen are really easy to spot. My goodness, a neon sign sort of stuff.

The pathogen has three defenses, to hide, to seek allies, and to attack to put the other person on the defensive.

We’re likely going to see a lot of that third pathogen defense start happening. Wooo wee, the pathogen’s gonna be scared, and when it’s scared it attacks.

The purpose of the attack isn’t really the content, it’s designed to put me on the defensive, defending myself – because if I’m defending myself then the focus is off of the pathogen.

So one of the features of these attacks is they are “extreme” in their accusations (remember, “extreme” as the descriptor for something means we’re in trauma world – that’s what unresolved trauma does, it makes symptoms “extreme”). Hyperbolic accusations force the target to respond.

Pathogen: Dr. Childress eats children.

People: Dr. Childress, is it true you eat children?

Dr. C: What? That’s nonsense. Of course I don’t eat children.

Pathogen: Dr. Childress denies he eats children, but we have proof he does.

Dr. C: No you don’t. That’s complete nonsense.

Pathogen: Prove to us you don’t eat children.

See what’s happened? The attacks are designed to put me on the defensive, because as long as I’m defending then I’m not focused on exposing the pathogen. These hyperbolic attacks are a symptom of the pathology. A very intriguing symptom, I might add.

That’s why I labeled this aspect of the pathology as flying monkeys, drawing on the popular culture term for this aspect of narcissistic personality pathology:

Flying Monkeys

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_monkeys_(psychology)

At the more extreme ends of this feature is gang stalking and malignant narcissism.

Gang Stalking

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gang%20stalking

This is a feature of severe narcissistic pathology, potentially linked to the Dark Triad personality.

Dark Triad Reference List

http://www.drcachildress.org/asp/admin/getFile.asp?RID=175&TID=6&FN=pdf

I’m more than happy to discuss any of this, or anything about Bowlby and attachment, or Minuchin and family therapy. But I’m not responding to “Dr. Childress eats babies” nonsense symptoms of the pathogen.

What I am doing though, is I’m studying the dickens out of these attacks. I am learning gangbusters as a clinical psychologist about the structure and nature of the pathogen from how it’s responding.

It’s called Response-to-Intervention (RTI). It is a really powerful assessment technique. Basically RTI is “poke it and see what it does.” We’ll be using RTIs down the road in both the assessment and treatment of this pathology.

With AB-PA, we have a very structured intervention – the diagnostic meme-structure of AB-PA; Bowlby, Minuchin, Beck.

I have also constructed a structured context meme-structure surrounding AB-PA through linkages to attachment pathology, personality pathology, complex trauma, and family systems therapy. So I have a defined “intervention.”

In psychoanalysis, it would be analogous to the “analytic frame” established by the analyst to capture the transference narrative.

Now that Dorcy and I have begun active collaboration, we are moving into a more active solution phase. This is going to provoke a lot of fear and anxiety in the pathogen. It’s going to attack. I want to see what the attacks are.

The pathogen is pattern, so I’m expecting two forms:

“New Theory”: AB-PA is a new theory; needs “peer reviewed research” – this is just the Gardner PAS attack transferred wholesale to AB-PA – it doesn’t apply.

“Dr. Childress eats babies”: This will be a personal line of attack on me, smearing and defaming me. This, again, is simply the Gardner is a pedophile line of attack transferred over.

So while I’m expecting to see those two lines, I’ve already got most of the information off of them. I want to see something new. So that’s going to be a lot of fun for me as a clinical psychologist as this gets moving, what’s the pathogen going to do once this first line of attack fails? I want to see the pathogen generate something new. Trauma is pattern. What happens when trauma pattern has to generate something non-pattern.

I don’t think it can. We’ll see.

But just a heads up, for about the next 18 months the pathogen is going to be terrified, so expect a lot of angry stuff going around, and blame stuff, and lots and lots of hyperbolic exaggerations and allegations.

We’re in trauma world. This is my world as a clinical psychologist. No worries on my end. Only threat is from forensic psychology, but I think I’ve got that covered and I’m safe from them. Seriously, I view the AFCC as the evil empire.

Things are likely to get… interesting. That’s the only word that fits for me. It’s going to be trauma world upside-down nutty, but for a clinical psychologist – especially an Internet clinical psychologist – it’s pure gold. Did you know I have background expertise in Internet psychology. Yeah, look at my vitae. I’ve written some peer reviewed articles on Internet psychology – World Health Organization presentation, invited presentation to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science… on Internet psychology. Hmm, and I’m having an amazing time watching what the pathogen does.

What if we transferred this process of Internet study and intervention with a pathology over to something else, like pathological racism and antisemitism? Based on what I’m getting from this trauma pathogen, I think there’s a lot that could be done online – through the Internet – with pathological racism and antisemitism. They are both variants of this trauma pathogen of cruelty and narcissistic pathology.

The important thing when working with trauma pathology is not to get swept up in the “contagion” of the trauma – the “extreme” of the symptoms. Take a deep breath, bring it down. Down. Dr. Childress is not eating babies.

I’m not going to defend. Won’t work pathogen. I’m going to stay right on you. We are exposing you from your crevices and dark places.

I will debate anyone, anywhere, anytime. Set it up. I’d especially enjoy a law school sponsored debate with someone or on a panel. I can guarantee a very enlightening discussion.

The pathogen lies. It lies a lot. It lies all the time. That’s the symptom.

The pathogen hides, but it exposes itself on attack. I’m pathogen bait. Oh, hello pathogen. At least in the Facebook group we have wonderful pathogen catchers who scoot the flying monkeys away, scoot, scoot, scoot, out you go.

It the broader Internet, I’m sure the monkeys are starting to howl, and it’ll likely become a pretty entertaining concert. Let’s watch what happens in the field of forensic psychology – I’m provoking the pathogen a lot, lets see how the forensic psychology allies respond. Will it be as simplistic as the flying monkeys, or will they come up with something… new. Show me new, pathogen.

Craig Childress, Psy.D.

Clinical Psychologist, PSY 18857