Tag: trauma

Attachment Pathology- Craig Childress PsyD

Novi Sad, Serbia – 4/28/23

This is a pathology of lies. Everything – everything – surrounding this pathology is a lie.

What you take for reality, is a lie.

This presents as a custody conflict. That is a lie. One parent drives the family conflict into the legal system to abuse the ex-spouse by making it as hard as possible to see their child, and costing them thousands and thousands of dollars fighting in court.

It is financial and emotional abuse of the ex-spouse from a desire to put them on “trial” for being a bad parent (spouse) and making the targeted spouse-and-parent defend themselves against false allegations of being abusive of their child.

This isn’t about custody. Custody is simple. It’s either shared 50-50 or one parent gets school-week and the other gets every-other-weekend.

This isn’t about custody, it’s about pathology. A child rejecting a parent is an attachment pathology – a problem (pathology) in the love-and-bonding system of the brain.

The ONLY cause of severe attachment pathology (a child rejecting a a parent) is child abuse by one parent or the other. In all cases of court-involved custody conflict, a proper risk assessment needs to be conducted to the appropriate differential diagnosis for each parent.

All cases. It should be routine, and the diagnostic assessment protocol should be standardized at the highest professional quality. When possible child abuse is a considered diagnosis, our diagnosis needs to be accurate 100% of the time.

We can do that. We need to do that. We never abandon a single child to child abuse. Not one. We always protect the child from all forms of child abuses 100% of the time.

All forms.

This isn’t about custody. That’s a lie. This is about pathology and its treatment. Attachment pathology. We need a proper risk assessment for child abuse to the appropriate differential diagnosis, and we need an effective treatment plan to fix the attachment pathology displayed by the child.

A pilot program for the family court with university involvement for evaluation research would greatly assist in developing high-quality diagnostic assessment and treatment protocols for the family courts.

We need to end the fighting surrounding the child. This is not complex. It is simple. The ONLY thing that’s missing is the motivation to solve it.

That’s changing. I traveled to the Balkans because it’s changing there.

I encourage the professionals in Serbia and the Balkans to consider an APA presentation in 2024 in Seattle to inform your American colleagues of your developments in your approach to court-involved attachment pathology surrounding child custody conflict.

Come visit me in the Pacific Northwest in 2024. We’ll go visit Mt. Rainier and take in a Mariners game. I’m confident the APA would welcome an international submission. You have top-tier professionals working toward a solution. Work for a year, then come and tell us about it.

Craig Childress, Psy.D.
Clinical Psychologist, CA PSY 18857

Entitled- Alienated children feel the targeted parent owes them

If and when we see a child who has been alienated, it can feel as if they’re doing us a favour. Or doing their duty. Or they think there should be something in it for them – a treat, a nice meal, an apology, hard cash … This sense of entitlement stems, of course, from the alienating parent. They feel we owe them too. We abandoned them, or we betrayed them, or we didn’t do right by them, or it’s all our fault. Whatever the scenario, it basically boils down to the same thing: the alienating parent, and therefore the indoctrinated child too, feels that we owe them. We should pay/be punished. We should pay – emotionally, and financially. That’s why it’s quite easy, given our situation to play along with this too and be so grateful to be given an audience, we do roll out the metaphorical red carpet. We don’t behave as we would normally because the time we have (if any) is so precious. It’s like the most unimaginably wonderful gift – better than anything that can be wrapped up at Christmastime with a pretty bow on top – to spend time with our alienated child. Alienation has turned everything upside down and inside out. It’s given the child the upper hand because we LOVE them so much. Because it is exactly our love for them that’s being played here. Teenagers might do this anyway, trying to get what they can from parents, but the alienated child has learned all the manipulative ways of the alienating parent. What it is hard, but nevertheless, worthwhile trying to do is not roll out that red carpet but just behave as we would as if the alienation had never happened. Plus this situation might have left us short-changed (emotionally and financially), rather than them. The alienated child doesn’t need a red carpet, they just need love.

#charliemccready #9StepProgram #parentalalienation #parentalalienationawareness #coparentingwithanarcissist #coparenting #divorce #highconflictdivorce #narcissisticchildabuse #narcissisticabuseawareness #narcissisticabuserecovery #narcissism #narcissist #childabuse

Charlie Mc Cready , The “ Child Catcher “

Do you remember the sinister Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? He terrified me when I was about the same age as the brother and sister in the film, Jeremy and Jemima Potts, especially when he abducts them. The character didn’t appear in Ian Fleming’s book but was a creation of the writer of some of the greatest villains of children’s literature, Roald Dahl and the director, Ken Hugues. In his long black hat, the Child Catcher searches the streets for children with a butterfly net, luring them to him with promises of lollipops. His horsedrawn carriage is transformed into a cage as soon as the children enter it, and he carts them off to prison under the orders of the evil rulers of Vulgaria, Baron and Baroness Bomburst. Their father Caractacus along with Truly Scrumptuous finally rescue all the children, topple the evil regime, and Vulgaria becomes a free country.

In many ways, alienating parents are like child catchers, and what they do is tantamount to a kidnapping. It feels like robbery, our children were taken from us with lies instead of lollipops. But we have to be so careful about the rescue mission. First of all they have to understand they’ve effectively been enmeshed/stolen from us. It reminds me of these quotes:

#charliemccready #9StepProgram #parentalalienation #parentalalienationawareness #coparentingwithanarcissist #coparenting #highconflictdivorce #divorce #childabuse #narcissisticchildabuse #narcissisticabuseawareness #narcissisticabuserecovery #narcissism #narcissist

If you’re the targeted parent – Craig Childress PsyD

What do you do if you’re the targeted parent?

1. Don’t destabilize

You are the healthier parent. You are the protective parent. Don’t rely on the mental health system to see the nature of the problem. You have no support.

You will need to generate the support you need. You are the leader of this family. The child has chosen you for that leadership position by giving you the problem to solve – because the child knows you can solve it.

The family is transitioning from its prior intact family structure to a new separated family structure. The intact family was united by the marriage. The separated family is united by the child’s bonds to both parents.

Divorce ends the marriage, not the family. There will always be a family as long as there is a child.

You will need to take leadership for the family’s transition into a healthy and normal-range separated family following divorce. You are the healthier parent. You are the protective parent.

This is child abuse, we must protect the child. We need you for leadership in that. We then need to generate the professional support you need to protect your child.

2. Don’t Trust Professional Psychology

You must become an informed consumer of mental health services. This is too important for you to be ignorant, lazy, or overwhelmed in your anxieties.

You must understand what is happening at a professional level of understanding. You should NEVER have to explain pathology to a doctor, they should be explaining it to you… but that’s not the case in the family courts with “forensic” psychologists.

That’s an indication of the extraordinarily low quality of the professional services in the family courts when patients are explaining the pathology to the doctors – but that’s what needs to happen because that’s the state of the current situation.

You must work in the broken systems, fixing them, making them work properly. You have everything you need – they are simply not motivated. Holding them accountable to Standards 2.04, 2.01, and 9.01, of the APA ethics code and for their failure in their duty to protect obligations will potentially help them find their motivation.

All mental health professionals have duty to protect obligations. This is child abuse – Child Psychological Abuse DSM-5 V995.51. This is spousal psychological abuse using the child as the weapon – Spouse or Partner Abuse, Psychological DSM-5 V995.82.

Don’t destabilize. Become an informed consumer of mental health services.

3. You want a treatment plan to fix things

This is the WORST possible attachment pathology. The attachment system is the love-and-bonding system of the brain. It is a primary motivational system of the brain developing its patterns for love and bonding during childhood.

There is no worse attachment pathology than a complete breach in the parent-child attachment bond, that is as bad as attachment pathology gets. We need to fix it.

We need a treatment plan to fix it.

Google mental health treatment plans and read the top two returns. Read WikiHow Mental Health Treatment Plans. Become an informed consumer of mental health services.

Know what you should be receiving so you know what you aren’t receiving. You want a treatment plan to fix things.

For that you’ll need an accurate diagnosis for what the problem (pathology) is. The treatment for cancer is different than the treatment for diabetes.

You may need to point that out to the ignorant, incompetent, and unethical forensic psychologists – that the treatment for cancer is different than the treatment for diabetes when they tell you that they “don’t diagnose” pathology.

Then how do you know what to do if you don’t even know what the problem is?

These two sentences mean exactly the same thing, you can use the language interchangeably.

We must first diagnose what the pathology is before we know how to treat it. We must first identify what the problem is before we know how to fix it.

Diagnosis = identify

Pathology = problem

Treatment = fix it

You have a problem. You need to fix it. You want a treatment plan from the mental health professionals to fix the problem. They will first need to identify what that problem is before they can understand how to fix the problem… is it cancer or diabetes?

There are two possibilities. You may need to explain that to the doctor. Either you are causing the problem – OR – the other parent is causing the problem.

Patients educating the doctor about the pathology should NEVER happen… but it needs to happen here because you need to protect your child and the mental health system in the family courts is entirely dysfunctional.

See 2 – don’t trust the mental health system.

4. Find your allies

There are excellent mental health professionals. I’ve worked with them my entire life. They are in clinical psychology working with every other pathology except here in the family courts.

Here in the family courts, you’re the fiefdom of “forensic” psychology and they are the worst imaginable. They are simply here for your money, they solve nothing.

You do not want a forensic custody evaluation. You want a clinical diagnostic assessment.

You will need to go to clinical psychology on the outside of the family court mental health system to obtain the competence you need, and then recruit them back to work with your situation in the family courts.

They will refuse. It’s too dangerous to their license. They have the right to not put their career and livelihood at risk for your situation. We need to make it safe for clinical psychology to return.

We do that by making everything here very organized and structured. We start by bringing Dialectic Behavior Therapy to the family courts (DBT; Linehan). DBT will bring the structure.

DBT will need to be adapted to the family situation in the courts, but the structure of DBT – CBT – Mindfulness – skills instruction – will provide the needed structure for safety to the professionals.

The other group of clinical psychologists who may come to the courts right away are the trauma psychologists working in spousal abuse pathology – Intimate Partner Violence (IPV; “domestic violence”).

The pathology in the family courts is fundamentally a spousal abuse pathology – the emotional and psychological abuse of the ex-spouse using the child as the weapon.

In weaponizing the child for spousal abuse, the pathological parent creates such significant psychopathology in the child that it rises to the level of Child Psychological Abuse (V995.51). But fundamentally, at its core, this is a spousal abuse pathology using the child as the weapon (DSM-5 V995.82 Spouse or Partner Abuse, Psychological).

The IPV therapists may come to the family courts once they see and have a path to solution.

I recommend that everyone look to the DBT therapists. I recommend that targeted dads frame the issue for the DBT therapists from the personality pathology of the ex-spouse (borderline spectrum, expand to the darks). DBT therapists will easily recognize borderline pathology.

I recommend that targeted moms also look to the Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) group of therapists, commonly called “domestic violence”.

Professionals use professional constructs for a variety of professional reasons. There are what I call DV-monkeys, mental health professionals caught on a “side” in parallel process. You don’t want these, and they are not looking to help you either. You want the real spousal abuse professionals, they will understand and use IPV as their organizing construct.

IPV has research support. Professionals remain grounded in research not in their passions (counter-transference).

1) Don’t destabilize. You are the protective parent.

2) Don’t trust professional psychology, you must become an informed consumer of mental health services.

3) You want a treatment plan to fix things. Successful treatment depends on an accurate diagnosis. If we treat cancer with insulin, the patient dies from the misdiagnosed cancer.

4) Find your allies in professional competence and recruit back. Look to Dialectic Behavior Therapy. Look to IPV therapists. You have my Mental Health Consultation page on my Consulting Website as a resource link you can provide to mental health professionals.

Doctors should explain pathology to doctors, but they’re not (yet) motivated to learn what they’re doing. So you will need to explain things to them.

Craig Childress, Psy.D.

Clinical Psychologist, CA PSY 18857

Psychosis Is an Expression of Early Childhood Trauma | Daniel Mackler – Mad In America

This is a perfect summation of trauma, born of abuses unspoken , ignored for decades , until life stressors bring it up for review and healing .

It was so with me, and I was powerless to prevent it , when medicated , I watched it going on with our sons..

With regards to myself and sons , the denial was and still is the foundation for Dad , as it has been his family code, and must be protected from exposure at all cost.

The signs have been there, and in trying to protect or get help , our family was erased and all the icky stuff , denied healing until it’s a monstrous mountain that’s impossible to surmount . Dodging the big stuff , only creates bigger stuff, and when everyone around you has unhealed trauma , denial etc , this becomes a normal set point .

We , as a family attended 1 family counseling session, and ex said he would not return.. not interested

Faith/church/religion was the same; NOT interested..

I came to know his lack of interest in me also, but I noted lack of interest in himself , and a very dark soul wound that drove his desire to be happy , elsewhere , creating a past that served his victim , survivor ” experience”

What makes psychosis confusing is that an eruption of infant trauma is expressing itself through the lens, the body, and the voice of someone who is now an adult.
— Read on www.madinamerica.com/2023/05/psychosis-is-an-expression-of-early-childhood-trauma-daniel-mackler/

Why doesn’t she leave?

Wʜʏ ᴅᴏᴇsɴ’ᴛ sʜᴇ ʟᴇᴀᴠᴇ?

Because he has her so brainwashed that it’s all her fault and that she’s no good to anyone and no one will want her or love her and there’s no way she can possibly make it on her own.

Wʜʏ ᴅᴏᴇsɴ’ᴛ sʜᴇ ʟᴇᴀᴠᴇ?

Because she thinks that if she just tries harder and if she’s a better wife and a better mom that maybe he will be happy with her and he wouldn’t get so angry with her. And maybe he will be the same sweet, charming man that he was when they first met.

Wʜʏ ᴅᴏᴇsɴ’ᴛ sʜᴇ ʟᴇᴀᴠᴇ?

Because he has her convinced that if she tries he will hurt or kill her or her family. Because he has threatened to tell the judge that she is a bad mom and will take away her kids and she will never see them again. Because he has taken away her money and convinced her that she has no good job qualities to make it on her own financially and she will always need him.

More people are concerned with why women stay in abusive relationships than why men are abusing women. Unless you’ve been in an abusive relationship people have no idea how hard it is to escape. Abusers are able to fool those outside the home because they usually only abuse those inside the home.

They need your support.

They need your love.

They do not need your judgement.

Let’s raise awareness 💜

#domesticviolenceawarenessmonth #DVAM2021 #purplethursday

#befearless #lovedoesnthurt #abusenomore #walkingonabundance #thereisnolackinyourlife #UnityInPink&Purple2021 #Courage #BeBrave #ShowUp #StepUp #RisingStrong

Bonds of Mother Son

When the bonds between, Mother and Son are destroyed by varied entitled sources ,mothers blow back is nothing short of spiritual and reclamation.

Our sons are not interested , and since all has been surrendered on my part , I leave them to their own journey , and wakefulness .

The Medicalization of the American Mind – Mad In America

As I experienced the pathology of a diagnosis that was false; a cover up for Domestic, Spiritual,Emotional and financial abuse , I found myself loosing everything . Family destroyed, children ignored and after years of investment in the healing of children , I am surrendering to further investment in myself , with children who like their mother/father guide of 20 years plus , has a trauma bond , secrets, shame etc that’s predominate over healing . Ie : stuck, in denial, or desirous of my demise.

I have been toughened up enough to not show emotions , and not to invest my energies , where I’d prefer not to be any longer .

Watching on the sidelines, taking no interest in me whatsoever, living in distortions , and unforgiving . Knowing how their spirits and souls are affected , and not being heard , in any mode but shaming , blaming and disposal.

Our sons have been guided, by other mothers, wives and abusive relationships , that ” own ” them, and disallow that healing matters, due to the influence that healthy healing might have on their relationships.

Lashing out at me, years ago , requesting I commit suicide , not once but twice …setting me up to be illegally arrested …threatening me with exposure of sexual abuse , writing of these memories ,citing highly distorted experiences , 2 of 3 trying to buy my property , with no though to my future , deny the fact that healing is needed.

With knowledge and awareness of the destiny of actions and none actions , I have no choice but to release , forgive their actions/non actions , for a past , and present that is far from normal , far from love , that prefers secrets, disposal and non forgiveness , and I am assured and assuring that these shadow energies will not be my future.

My efforts to heal myself , will not be breached, of this I am sure , as everything I knew of love was attempted to be destroyed , but I held on .

My prayers for a life of spirit , of sharing experiences and wisdoms are at hand , after much effort , I know my worth , and pray for the deliverance of each child, and adult that lost their normal, natural path , due to a distorted, partner, addictive and abusive , debilitating drugging by psychiatry who have been instrumental in ” erasing families “.

Failure with my own children , who prefer status quo , has taught me well, as years of co council with young people their age , who favor me , and my wisdoms .

While that may not be my future , one on one for the drain on my energy , I will be writing , reading and moving forward unfettered by grievances, abuses etc …for that’s exactly what’s most desired ..that I give up and give in, which just isn’t realistic. Generational trauma and abuse has been resolved , I understand and respect free will, and release the painful , often horrific experiences of past , and disallow any repeats .

Dona Luna 🐸✌️😘❤️

One cause of fragility? Pathologizing our children with psychiatric diagnoses and focusing on a medical solution to life’s problems.
— Read on www.madinamerica.com/2023/05/medicalization-american-mind/