Don’t let the pathology consume you.
You are more than the pathology. You had a life. You have a life. You have a lifetime to come.
You are faced with a challenge. The other parent is pathological – problematic. The other parent is creating attachment pathology in the child toward you for advantages and secondary gain to the pathological parent.
You will need to lead your family into a post-divorce solution of a healthy and successful separated family structure. The child is giving you a problem because the child knows you can solve it. You’re the healthier parent.
The other parent is collapsing into their pathology. It is up to you to lead the family into a solution. You just need support. You want a written treatment plan to fix things.
The pathology wants to drive this into the legal system and make it about custody. You want to move this into the healthcare system and make it about treatment.
Then you must become an informed consumer of mental health services to effectively advocate for yourself and your child. Be kind, always be kind. Be relentless in protecting your child.
The pathogen will try everything it can to destabilize you. Remain in your center-place of confidence. Don’t trigger into your fears. Use your executive functions of linear-logical reasoning and planning ahead.
Shift the focus from custody to treatment, make the pathogen argue against treatment – this will expose it. You want a written treatment plan, for that you’ll need a diagnosis.
Understand the approach. Understand the diagnosis.
In all cases of severe attachment pathology surrounding court-involved custody conflict, a proper risk assessment for possible child abuse needs to be conducted to the appropriate differential diagnosis for each parent.
Patients should NEVER have to explain the pathology to the doctor… but you do. That is a highly concerning professional problem. We will be working to fix it.
The doctors should know as least as much as you do – more. They should know all about cross-generational coalitions and shared persecutory delusions, and they should be explaining the child abuse and spousal abuse pathology to you.
They’re not. You will need to navigate their ignorance.
You remain stable. You remain in your authenticity. You did nothing wrong. It’s not your fault. Bad people are doing bad things, we are going to make them stop.
Don’t let the pathology (problem) consume who you are. You have a challenge, there is a pathology in your family. It’s an attachment pathology, a problem in the love-and-bonding system of the brain. The source of the problem (pathology) is in the unresolved childhood trauma of the pathological (problematic) parent.
This is a pathology of lies. Everything about the pathology is a lie. It is a delusion – a false belief – a delusion is a fixed and false belief maintained despite contrary evidence. No amount of contrary evidence will ever change a delusion because that’s the definition of delusional.
The type of delusion (created in unresolved childhood trauma) is called a “persecutory delusion” – it is a fixed and false belief in supposed victimization.
The American Psychiatric Association provides the following definition of a persecutory delusion:
From the APA: “Persecutory Type: delusions that the person (or someone to whom the person is close) is being malevolently treated in some way.”
The differential diagnosis for severe attachment pathology is child abuse by one parent or the other;
Either the targeted parent is abusing the child, thereby creating the child’s attachment pathology toward that parent,
Or the allied parent is psychologically abusing the child by creating a shared persecutory delusion and false attachment pathology in the child.
One way or the other, the differential diagnosis for severe attachment pathology (i.e., a child rejecting a parent) is child abuse. The only question is, which parent?
In all cases of severe attachment pathology surrounding court-involved custody conflict, a proper risk assessment for possible child abuse needs to be conducted to the appropriate differential diagnosis for each parent.
You have a problem. You need to fix the problem. You need a written treatment plan to fix your problem. That requires a diagnosis. Diagnosis guides treatment. The treatment for cancer is different than the treatment for diabetes.
The treatment for child abuse by the targeted parent is different than the treatment of psychological child abuse by the allied parent. Is there a persecutory delusion present?
Does the child have a fixed and false belief that the child is being “malevolently treated in some way” by the parenting of the targeted parent? Does the allied parent share the child’s fixed and false belief that the child is being malevolently treated in some way by the parenting of the targeted parent?
Is there a shared persecutory delusion?
You don’t want an assessment (you do, but don’t start there). You want a treatment plan (google WikiHow mental health treatment plans). For a treatment plan you will need a diagnosis (diagnosis guides treatment). For a diagnosis, you will need a proper clinical diagnostic risk assessment for possible child abuse to the appropriate differential diagnosis for each parent.
Start with the written treatment plan and don’t let go of that. Hang on and don’t let them shake you loose from treatment – you want things fixed.
That ends with obtaining a proper risk assessment for the proper diagnostic issues of concern. Are you abusing your child? Is the other parent psychologically abusing the child? We need an accurate diagnosis to guide the development of an effective treatment plan.
If we treat cancer with insulin, the patient dies from the misdiagnosed and mistreated cancer.
You need support. You are the protective parent. The mental health professionals should be accurately diagnosing the pathology (problem). They should be providing you with support. They should be your allies in generating a solution – i.e., the successful treatment of the child’s attachment pathology toward a parent.
Diagnosis = identify
Pathology = problem
Treatment = fix it
You have a problem. There is a pathology in your family. It is an attachment pathology, a problem in love-and-bonding. You need to fix it. You want a written treatment plan to fix the problem (pathology) in your family.
The differential diagnoses of concern are:
1) Possible Child Psychological Abuse (DSM-5 V995,51) by the allied parent who is creating a shared persecutory delusion and false attachment pathology in the child,
2) Possible Spouse or Partner Abuse, Psychological (DSM-5 V995.82) of the targeted parent by the allied parent using the child as the weapon.
In all cases of severe attachment pathology surrounding court-involved custody conflict, a proper risk assessment for possible child abuse and possible spousal abuse using the child as the weapon needs to be conducted.
They have duty to protect obligations. They have competence requirements – Standards 2.01, 2.03, 2.04.
Don’t destabilize, don’t trigger into your fears and insecurities. You’re fine, you did nothing wrong. There is a pathology (problem) in your family surrounding love-and-bonding. You’ll need to fix it.
You’ll need help from the mental health professionals in fixing your problem. Be kind. Be resolute. Become an informed consumer of mental health services and the pathology in your family.
It is NOT your obligation to educate the doctor about the pathology they are treating – they should already know. Unfortunately, you do have to educate the forensic psychology people in the family courts.
That speaks to the immensely low quality of professional services in the family courts when the patients are educating the doctors about the nature and treatment of the pathology.
The other parent creates chaos. You remain grounded. You remain authentic to what you know. Develop a plan. Execute the plan. You are the protective parent.
You are the healthier parent. The task ahead is for you to lead your family into a successful post-divorce separated family structure. You just need support.
Craig Childress, Psy.D.
Clinical Psychologist, CA PSY 18857
GreatCosmicMothersUnite 