Tag: parents

The alienated child unconsciously aligns with the parent who is presenting themselves as being good, loving, protective, ‘the only one’. The child then consciously rejects the apparently ‘bad’ parent. Despite how it might appear, this is agonising, traumatic, confusing, and upsetting to them, and yet all the anger and negativity induced is projected onto the ‘target’ parent. It’s quite easy to manipulate this alienation (denigration, judgement, emotional cut-off and/or actual no contact) when that child only hears only one side of the story, over and over again. It’s a horror story, a fiction they come to believe is real. The triangulation/alienation keeps the truth out of bounds and censored, and the ‘target’ parent becomes the monster in the story, a creation of the alienating parent’s imagination and disordered pathology. , The rejection of a loving parent by the alienating child is a coping mechanism. They ‘split’ – good, bad – and think they hate the ‘bad’ parent, and love the ‘good’ parent. This child is terrified of being abandoned by the parent who has inflicted forced compliance and shared persecutory delusions on their child, telling the child they’re the only parent … it’s trauma bonding, similar to Stockholm syndrome, and it is, of course, emotional and psychological abuse. To re-establish any relationship with the rejected parent, that child basically needs to find the courage (because of induced shame, guilt, fear, confusion, anger … the whole parental alienator’s toxic pathology) to hear the other side of the story. In many cases, it might be a story that the target parent is unable to tell if it causes more pain to that child. Often it is better to close the book on the past. It depends on the child and situation. You have to ‘read’ them to see how much they would benefit from hearing anything from previous chapters. It’s painful for any of us – our alienated children being no exception – to find out we’ve been duped, controlled, manipulated, emotionally abused deprived of the love and nurture of a loving, available parent, and believing them to be something they are not. If and when your alienated child reaches out, keep your words in the present tense, and loving, turning the page on the past, and focussing on creating a better future moving forwards.

#charliemccready

#parentalalienationcoach

#alienatedparent

#traumabonding

#coparentingwithanarcissist