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Navigating a Traumatic Christmas: Support for Parental Alienation · Healthy Happy Wise Wealthy

• 0:00
  Merry Christmas, everyone. Welcome back to Healthy, Happy, Wise,
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  Wealthy. I have with me today Charlie McCready from in
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  England. You're in England, right? Absolutely. Yeah. So
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  we're a distance away, but
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  I just want to say I hope everyone is having a beautiful day.
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  And today we're going to talk about and
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  try to dive into some things for some people who probably aren't having a good
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  day at all. And so this is, in a way, it's kind of a
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  911 or SOS episode
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  for those who Christmas is super, super hard. So
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  we're going to talk about parental alienation. So this is a
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  topic that, unfortunately, I'm part of this club and
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  don't want to be. Charlie's been part of this club. He doesn't want to be.
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  But Charlie has had some really helpful things
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  that I've watched, been following his socials for. For
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  years now. And he has programs to help people who are
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  dealing with this. And we're going to talk about what it is because it's not
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  widely known, but it is for
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  anyone who's going through it. It is too often,
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  sometimes even life ending. It is probably one of the. I think it's one
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  of the most undiscovered massive traumas that we are
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  experiencing globally. So,
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  Charlie, can you just introduce yourself and tell us a little
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  bit about what led you into doing the coaching and everything
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  for people experiencing parental alienation? Absolutely.
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  First of all, thank. Thank you very much for having me on this podcast,
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  Mary, and thank you for the amazing work that you're doing,
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  trying to help kind of raise awareness and educate people and give them
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  help and support and hope. Yeah. So I'm
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  Charlie McCready. I'm a parental alienation coach.
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  The reason I'm doing this is because I went through this
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  firsthand. There is something I call
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  pre alienation. This is.
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  I think I've coined the phrase because I've never seen it
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  previously kind of used. And this describes the period
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  leading up to the point that you become more aware that alienation is actually
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  happening through a decade of what I
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  call pre alienation. So that's all the foundations being laid down. Then
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  I went through five years of full alienation. So that was a
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  combination of very limited contact and
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  no contact at all with. With one of my kids for
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  two years. But we got through that
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  and for the last. So I started being able to rebuild the
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  relationships with. With my children at the end of that five year period.
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  So we did a lot of work very quickly. We made a lot of progress.
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  Very quickly. I'm 11 years on from
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  that. And we're still, you know,
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  enhancing those relationships. We're still growing, we're still
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  healing within ourselves. I'm very fortunate. I've done a lot of
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  that healing work very early on, but my children,
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  that. It's a bit slower for them, but they're generally in
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  a good space. And so my mission in life
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  is, is basically to help as many parents as possible
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  to understand what alienation is
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  from the perspective of the child, because you have to see it from.
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  From their eyes and also understand as a
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  parent what you're going through, why you're going through it,
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  how to heal you. And this is the thing that most parents find
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  really difficult. They're so focused on the kid, they forget
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  how important their own healing is in, in being able to
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  help the child. And then I also help them to understand
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  that the, the alienators themselves and the
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  limited things that you can do to help kind of mitigate some of the things
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  that the alienators do. Yeah. And also to bring
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  back hope, because for most people,
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  they will end up reuniting with their kid. And I know it seems like this
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  will never happen, and it seems so far away, but most of us,
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  we end up with a good outcome. It's just a rough. It's a rough ride
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  to get there. Yeah. Yeah. Well,
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  hope is always helpful, you know, I
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  am. I don't always know that I feel hope, for sure.
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  Well, one of the biggest things that really
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  helps parents is acceptance.
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  And for me, acceptance. And I should caveat this by
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  saying the people around us, nobody understands
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  alienation. And so when they tell you, oh, just get on of it, you know,
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  accept it, move on, they can take a running
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  hike, running journey. They don't know what they're talking about. But
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  for, for you and me, the people who have been through this,
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  acceptance is all about healing within yourself.
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  But when you attach hope, all you're doing is you're treating
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  the, the alienation as a transitory phase in your life.
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  So it's not a forever thing, which for most people it isn't.
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  It's. I'm. I'm only accepting that this is my reality
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  right now. But I'm hoping and I'm even better. I
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  know within my heart that this is going to be better in the future
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  and that I'm going to get through this. And that makes acceptance and
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  healing so much easier to deal with. Yeah.
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  So let's, let's talk a little bit about, like, how
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  some of the signs to look for And I think, you know, I know for
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  me and what I hear from. Just hearing the community from a lot
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  of people, it happens during a divorce or a separation is when,
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  like, things are kind of, like, going along, but then the divorce, the kids become
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  a bargaining chip, a way to hurt somebody.
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  Absolutely. Well, I think maybe if I just preface
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  that with. With parental alienation
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  as a term, many people will have come across
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  a reluctance for. For, you know, this term to be used.
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  There's a lot of groups who are saying that it's a pseudoscience, it doesn't exist.
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  It absolutely does exist. It doesn't matter what you call
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  it. I mean, parental alienation is just a name
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  that. A label that people put on it. But actually,
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  it's a range of very distinct behaviors
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  that are very recognizable, they're very measurable, and
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  collectively, they create the experience
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  of parental alienation for the kid and experience of parental alienation for
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  us. But in a nutshell, it's where one parent
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  is very intense, intentionally seeking to damage the
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  relationship between you and your children, which
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  is different from estrangement. And people often use the word
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  estrangement. Very different. Estrangement is where you've
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  done something that has damaged the relationship with a child.
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  And in ideation, quite often we
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  end up doing things that actually estranges our kids from us
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  because we don't understand what's going on and how to deal with it.
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  But. But for alienation itself, that's very much
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  the other parent doing this to us.
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  So maybe if I go back to that. Pre alienation. So,
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  yeah, pre alienation. This is a new, new idea for me, what to look
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  for. Yeah, so. So pre alienation
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  sometimes begins at, like, birth. So it can
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  be really, really early on. So some of the. The
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  alienating parents, actually, if I just take
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  a backward step, the. The people who have a
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  propensity to alienate, typically
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  they have some sort of mental health disorder, so
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  cluster B, narcissism,
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  bipolar. These are actually
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  traumatized individuals who
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  are in their adult life. They're using coping mechanisms
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  to protect themselves. And those coping mechanisms are
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  coercion, lying, manipulation,
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  deceit, delusion. They're all just ways
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  of protecting themselves. So this kind
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  of fits in with why they do what they do.
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  So somebody who this. The pre alienation. So
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  somebody who, for instance, is stopping the other parent from having a relationship
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  with the baby, the child, the teen. Quite often
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  they're doing it because of their own insecurities and their own
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  need for the relationship with a child, because it's something they didn't have
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  themselves when they were growing up. Yeah, but
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  we'll talk about safety as a concept as well because I
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  think that'd be really helpful to frame alienation.
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  But pre alienation, you'll begin to see signs where
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  often the parents, the alienating parent is being derogatory
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  about us. They'll be presenting us as an inferior
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  parent, a bad parent, a mean parent, an
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  uncaring parent, an absent parent.
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  They'll be stopping us from having an incompetent
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  parent. An incompetent parent. Yeah, so. But this stuff
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  is really, really subtle and most people confuse
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  this with kind of a typical sort of thing in a
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  relationship that you might expect where one person is being a bit bullying and
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  a bit derogatory of the other. What's really
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  going on is more subtle. It is this
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  creation of the foundations that
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  one parent is superior, one parent is to be trusted, one
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  parent is going to be protecting that parent, that child. But often the
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  alienator is also doing this from a place of fear. Because
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  the children know if I don't go along with what that bullying
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  parent is saying or doing, if I don't appease them,
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  there are going to be consequences. Often I can see some of
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  those consequences as a child. I can see it in my, my
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  parent who's been targeted. So the alienated parent.
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  I can see how they're being, you know, ridiculed and derided
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  and I don't want to be experiencing that.
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  It basically sets a foundation for
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  the full on alienation. And as you say very often,
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  and these things always come about as catalysts. There's
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  always something that triggers that shift from kind of
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  pre alienation into alienation. Sometimes it's the
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  alienator is getting bored with us. But they, they
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  don't necessarily want to come out of the relationship so they start having affairs.
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  But they're also trying to build loyalty with the children thinking,
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  well, my marriage is coming to an end, so I'm going to make sure that
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  everybody's aligned with me in advance of that event.
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  So very often they're planning to exit the relationship with
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  us. You know, they might say they might be having relationships, other relationships, already
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  this in advance. And I use the
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  kind of the analogy of a volcano. So what we
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  see often when we experience full alienation or
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  a more prominent alienation is we see this sudden shift in the
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  kids, but it's not sudden at all. It's been going
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  on for a very long time. In my case it was a
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  decade. And that's why I use the volcano Analogy. Because
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  when you live in the volcano, on the shadow of the volcano, you don't notice
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  anything until suddenly smoke appears or, you know,
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  it erupts. But it's been, it's been. That
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  eruption is as a result of a very long period of pressure
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  building up. And so. So
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  suddenly you'll see your kids beginning to turn against you more
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  overtly. So, like, they'll stop
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  telling you about their life. They might stop speaking
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  to you. They might just hide in their rooms. They might not want to go
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  places with you, especially when you come to that separation and divorce.
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  Just spending time with you is something that they're
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  reluctant to do because the alienator is putting so much
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  pressure on them to not spend that time with you.
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  Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I,
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  you know, I. People have asked me over the years, like, what happened? And it's
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  really hard to go. I don't know, because the chaos didn't
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  happen in front of me. You know, the storylines
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  were not told. They were told outside of my presence
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  behind your back, you know, so you don't even know,
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  like, well, what did he say? I don't know what he said. Like, it wasn't
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  in front of me necessarily. You know, nobody will tell you.
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  Nobody will tell you. And what, what happens as well is that
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  the. At the point in time that they're preparing for
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  separation and then going into divorce, they also
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  start going out to all of our friends and sometimes our family
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  to the schools. And this is, this is stuff
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  that we just don't even think of. We're
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  not that minded in that way. We don't have that sort of approach.
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  And so they're beginning. They're kind of pre. Alienating the community
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  around us as well. And family. Community and family. And
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  they're, they're ruthless. And. And by the time
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  we become aware of it, it's too late.
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  And unfortunately, people believe the first story they're told,
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  not the second story. And it. And when we come along and say that none
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  of this stuff is true, people don't believe it. It's like, we sound
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  very defensive. It's. It's like, oh, we've obviously done it.
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  They've already believed it. And it's very difficult to turn
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  those opinions around again. Yeah. And we. Look,
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  I know for me, probably, you know, not stable.
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  Super. You get super. You're reactive. Like you're.
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  You just got hit by a bus and you're reacting like that like you've been
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  in a traffic accident, which, you know, everyone would expect you to act crazy
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  if they saw what was going on, but this is invisible, so
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  they don't see it. So you only look crazy. Yeah. Or
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  unstable, but you're reacting to a real thing. They just
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  can't see it. And, and also because nobody understands
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  parental alienation or very few people understand it, for most of us,
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  we will experience the, you know, the community and the friends and
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  our family haven't got a clue. And so we
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  look, we look as if we, we're at fault. And
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  this is one of the areas I think is particularly hard for women because
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  the other women around you are very critical and
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  judgmental about, well, why aren't your kids with you? You must have
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  done something really bad that they're with the dad rather than with
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  you. I think women get a much harder time than men do in that respect.
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  You know, and luckily I didn't have that with women, thankfully.
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  I mean, that was. So that's. I did have. I did have
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  some. There's a reason I'm still alive and not, you know, honestly, not
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  everyone survives this. And that's part of the reason
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  I, I'm like, man, I. I need to get. Ask Charlie if he will come
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  on and do this for Christmas. Because if there's
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  something I can do to reach out, you know, my little part in it,
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  you know, to reach out to other people, I got to do it.
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  Absolutely. The. So that the, the
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  suicide rates is much higher
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  in, in people who are going through parental alienation. It is
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  in kind of other parts of the general population, and it's
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  something like 23 or 25% of people who
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  go through alienation have suicide ideation. So they consider
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  suicide as an option. And I would say to everybody in that
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  position, please don't. Please, please, please
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  don't. What? Whatever. However hard it seems right
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  now, you are going to get through it. And anything that
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  you do to. To yourself, think, think about your
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  kids. Don't just think about. You think about what, what
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  you're taking away from your children. And also you're
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  doing the alienator's job for them if you
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  do anything like that. Can I just expand
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  on that as well? Because for parents who are going
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  through alienation, we tend to go through nine big
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  emotions. So the first one is grief.
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  So we're missing the children in our life, and it's a grief which is.
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  It's a grief of the things we've already lost, the time we've already lost. It's
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  the time we're currently missing, but
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  future grief, because we're also grieving for the time that we think we might
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  lose in the future and it's like a living bereavement for
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  us. Yes. So we have this great sense of grief
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  then. Most of the people who go through alienation tend to be quite
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  empathetic by nature. So with the kind of we
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  think in completely different ways to the alienator
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  that that makes us very guilty. And
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  because we're empathetic by nature, we're very self critical. So we beat ourselves
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  up about, you know, did I do enough, should I be doing more?
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  What else can I do in the future? But we're giving ourselves a really hard
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  time. Then the next one is that we feel
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  very isolated because the people
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  around us just don't understand any of this. As we were saying before particular
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  and we get without criticism from
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  the people around us as well, which is where the shame comes from, which is
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  the fourth thing. Then there's powerlessness because anybody
• 18:07
  who's dealt with a narcissist, they're very uncompromising people, they're adamant to
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  hurt us. Anything that we do to try and rebuild the relationship with
• 18:15
  the kids or help the kids will be used against us.
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  So it's like if you give the kid a present, you're bribing them. If you
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  don't give the kid a present, you're abandoning them.
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  Then the next one is injustice. So injustice is
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  at a couple of different levels. There's the injustice, the
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  legal system, CPS, DCF
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  all these mechanisms that are there to protect the children don't work
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  because they don't understand alienation. So we feel a strong sense of
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  nobody is able to help me and the kids. But it's also
• 18:49
  injustice within ourselves because we feel
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  the kids don't know me as a mum or they don't know me as a
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  dad. I'm not being given the opportunity
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  to share my experience, my values, my
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  worldliness, all the things I thought I was going to be able to
• 19:07
  help them with and guide them within their lives. I'm
• 19:11
  not being able to do that. So there's a great sense of injustice there.
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  Then there's anger, which is self explanatory. Then
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  there's anxiety and fear. I'm going to come back to anxiety in a second. But
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  fear drives most of these other emotions
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  because we're in a state of perpetual fear. We're really worried and
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  this is where the anxiety comes in. It is quite
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  normal for any parent going through this to
• 19:37
  be thinking lots of anxious thoughts about the kid. You know, is the
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  kid safe? Are they being Fed. Are they in any physical danger? Are
• 19:45
  they being, you know, psychologically abused? Are they doing
• 19:48
  okay at school? You know, we will have so many different things that
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  we're anxious about. This is
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  the, one of the biggest, one of the worst things that you can do as
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  a parent is spend your time in a state of anxiety
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  because your, your conscious mind, which is the bit that's, that's
• 20:06
  worrying, whatever is going on in your conscious
• 20:10
  mind, you give it to your subconscious mind that has got no
• 20:14
  filter. And what's also happening, I'll come back to that in a second. What's also
• 20:18
  happening is that anything you are thinking, your,
• 20:21
  your subconscious mind does not differentiate between
• 20:26
  your imagination and real life. So
• 20:29
  it experiences, and you experience the
• 20:33
  worry about your kid as if it's real.
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  So you, so if you're basically caught in this, this anxiety loop,
• 20:41
  you're, you're going to be emotionally fatigued and drained
• 20:45
  as, as a result of you having these constant thoughts. So,
• 20:49
  so your conscious mind has a thought of grief or
• 20:53
  guilt or shame or isolation that goes down
• 20:57
  into your subconscious. Because whatever, whatever you give your subconscious, it's just like
• 21:01
  a little computer, it'll work on it for you. And it's got a filter and
• 21:05
  it goes. Okay, so Mary, you want me to think about grief, guilt,
• 21:08
  fear? Give us a couple of hours, I'll get back to you.
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  So now it's permeating your dreams. It will wake you up in
• 21:16
  your sleep, it'll disturb you while you're at work, or if
• 21:20
  you're with friends or you're watching tv, suddenly you're thinking about
• 21:23
  grief, guilt, fear again. And because you're thinking about
• 21:27
  grief, guilt, fear in your conscious mind, everything in your conscious mind goes into your
• 21:31
  subconscious for a second. Go.
• 21:36
  And we end up looping all the time. So if, if
• 21:40
  you can imagine a marathon race, the,
• 21:43
  the alienating parent runs the first hundred yards and they pass you this
• 21:47
  baton. And this baton is the grief, the guilt, the fear, the
• 21:51
  injustice. And we take that and we start
• 21:54
  focusing on that. And then we get into this looping conversation.
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  And now what's absolutely crazy is we're self
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  perpetuating. Exactly all the self
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  harming thoughts that the alienator wants us to
• 22:10
  have. Yes, true, which is
• 22:13
  bonkers. But there's more. Sorry.
• 22:19
  So. So yeah, each of those things that we're
• 22:22
  feeling are generally related
• 22:26
  to. So it's, it's our experience of grief, it's our unique
• 22:30
  version of grief, it's our unique version of guilt, it's our unique version
• 22:34
  Of. Of anxiety, whatever those things are. And
• 22:37
  most of those actually revert back to old
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  past memories of. Of us or things that have happened to
• 22:45
  us in our past that we're basically
• 22:48
  reliving through the experience of alienation.
• 22:53
  And this all links to healing. Yeah.
• 22:57
  If you were to take an example of. I talk
• 23:01
  about triggers a lot. Triggers. Parents will typically
• 23:05
  have 50 to 100 different things that trigger them.
• 23:08
  And all the trigger is, it's something that's making you feel unsafe.
• 23:13
  So it might be seeing another mum with a child the same
• 23:17
  age as yours, or it might be watching TV and people playing happy families
• 23:21
  where it might be hearing something that reminds you of your ex. But. But
• 23:25
  they're all just symptoms of something much, much
• 23:29
  deeper. But we also have expectation.
• 23:32
  Sorry, take a backwards step. We're empaths for a reason.
• 23:36
  We're empaths because most of us didn't receive
• 23:40
  enough love, care and support when we were growing up.
• 23:44
  And we learned to appease the people around us
• 23:48
  so that we would keep safe. That
• 23:52
  made us people pleasers. And so we don't like
• 23:55
  conflict generally. And we're always trying to fix
• 23:59
  the people around us and the situations around us.
• 24:03
  This is why when there's excess work and excess stuff to do at work,
• 24:06
  we're always the people who stick our hand up, say, I'll fix it. Or you
• 24:09
  see a friend who's going through a hard time, I'll fix it. We meet
• 24:13
  narcissists, we get married to them, I'll fix it.
• 24:17
  We're fixing stuff because that's our defense mechanism.
• 24:21
  And then if we think about us as a parent,
• 24:25
  we look back to our childhood again and we say, what was the stuff that
• 24:28
  was good? What was the stuff that wasn't good? The stuff that wasn't
• 24:32
  good. I'm going to make sure that my own kid doesn't go
• 24:35
  through this when they're growing up, because it's
• 24:39
  normally something that is related to our empathy. So we rejected.
• 24:43
  We didn't get enough love, care and attention. So now
• 24:46
  we're going through alienation with our kids. So first of all,
• 24:50
  we feel really bad for our kid because we're looking at them saying, this
• 24:54
  was the last thing that I wanted to have actually happened to you.
• 24:58
  So I feel really guilty about that and I might feel a bit grievous about
• 25:01
  that as well. But then also, that child, in their
• 25:05
  alienating behaviors, is rejecting us. And
• 25:09
  now we're feeling rejected, which takes us back to our old
• 25:12
  childhood memories, ourselves, of the parents who were Rejecting
• 25:16
  us. But we're not aware of that because it's all at a very subconscious level.
• 25:20
  But we feel massively threatened.
• 25:25
  And in those situations where a child is rejecting us, they need
• 25:28
  us to be the strong, resilient, loving parent,
• 25:33
  not the parent who's focused on their own issues of rejection
• 25:38
  and are caught up in the things that trigger us and make us feel
• 25:41
  unsafe. This is why I was saying at the very beginning, parents
• 25:45
  don't recognize the importance of their own healing
• 25:49
  when it comes to supporting their children.
• 25:52
  Yeah, that's all really good. And this was part of,
• 25:56
  like, you have a nine step program, right? Did you get to the last one
• 26:00
  or did I cut you off? No, no, no. Those were the nine
• 26:03
  things. Yes. So the nine step
• 26:07
  program is designed to take parents
• 26:11
  through what is actually quite a simple
• 26:15
  process to help them to reconnect with their kids.
• 26:18
  So I start by saying, well,
• 26:23
  there is an emotional journey that is parental alienation, looks a lot like
• 26:26
  bereavement because it has the same sorts of phases.
• 26:30
  So I start by asking parents, where are you at the moment?
• 26:34
  And then we begin looking at what are all the things
• 26:37
  that are blocking you from moving forwards on that emotional journey.
• 26:42
  So it might be you don't want to accept what's happening to your kids right
• 26:46
  now because that's just too painful for you. What are the
• 26:49
  triggers? So what are the things that upset you? Because that moves you
• 26:53
  backwards on that emotional journey. And then what are
• 26:57
  your expectation gaps? And basically the
• 27:00
  expectation gaps, when our kids are born, we create
• 27:04
  all these ideas about what their life is going to be like through to
• 27:08
  their mid-20s, mid-30s. A lot of the time, you know, we've mapped
• 27:11
  out, you know, their first time they're going to be walking first
• 27:15
  schools, proms, college, you know, graduation, all that
• 27:19
  stuff. And, and it's. But in our subconscious,
• 27:23
  we often don't move on in terms of
• 27:26
  aligning the reality of what's really going on with those expectations.
• 27:31
  So if we'd expected that we were going to be at, you know, helping our
• 27:34
  kids with their prom and we're not involved, that's going to give
• 27:38
  us pain. Our expectations and
• 27:41
  reality are now out of sync. So it's just
• 27:45
  mechanisms that they're mind tricks basically to start understanding
• 27:49
  what, what are your pain points as a parent. And
• 27:53
  I focus a lot of, a lot of those nine steps is
• 27:56
  actually on understanding what are your pain points and
• 28:00
  how do we help you to move past them and heal them.
• 28:04
  And then the rest of the focus is on what is your child going
• 28:08
  through because most children tend to go
• 28:12
  through very similar sorts of experiences.
• 28:15
  But there's also that everybody's situation is unique. So we
• 28:19
  need to look at the dynamic nature of who
• 28:23
  you as a parent, who's the alienator? Like as a parent
• 28:27
  alienator might have a new partner. They could also be alienating the kid. Their
• 28:31
  family might be alienating the kids. Kids might be
• 28:34
  alienating the kids. What is the experience that each of
• 28:38
  the children is having? Because they have very different experiences.
• 28:43
  What is the nature of the child? Some children are more resilient, some children
• 28:47
  are less resilient. So you really, you really have to start looking
• 28:51
  at the experience the child, child is going through
• 28:55
  and, and be able to almost like map it out over a period of time.
• 28:58
  We'll say this is what they're going through now. So some people, it'll be
• 29:02
  that they're, they're maybe at an early stage of parental alienation,
• 29:06
  so they're preparing for what else, you know, how might it get worse? What
• 29:10
  can I do that's going to help stop that getting worse?
• 29:14
  Other people might be in the thick of it where it's like, okay, well, I'm
• 29:17
  more about the healing stage, which my kid. But
• 29:21
  in all instances, it's constantly evolving, it's constantly
• 29:25
  changing. So we, we have to look
• 29:28
  at ourselves as a parent and as a
• 29:32
  person and say, my personal healing,
• 29:36
  there are things that I need to address so I can go off and do
• 29:39
  that. And then there's my, my parenting,
• 29:43
  which is where I'm going to have to call constantly, like
• 29:47
  evolve and change according to where my kid is at.
• 29:51
  So you're almost like a split identity of your parent and,
• 29:55
  and person at the same time.
• 29:59
  Yeah, well, I think it is very helpful,
• 30:04
  you know, to have someone if, because, you know, usually you do
• 30:07
  seek out some kind of help. Well, you know,
• 30:11
  hopefully, hopefully people do. Yeah. I think, I think the biggest
• 30:15
  problem is not enough parents actually do they, they try to
• 30:19
  self help, they buy books, there's great books out there. But,
• 30:22
  but the books tend to focus on,
• 30:26
  they'll, they'll look at narcissism, tons of stuff in narcissism. And
• 30:30
  if, and anybody listening to us who doesn't understand narcissism,
• 30:33
  go check that out straight away, learn about it.
• 30:37
  Right. It's like the rule book of how a narcissist
• 30:41
  is going to operate. And yeah, invaluable to you,
• 30:45
  but also layering on top of that the dynamics
• 30:49
  of the person who is the narcissist.
• 30:52
  So you know, with all of our exes, they, they've got their old histories,
• 30:57
  they've had trauma in their life. So, so which is the thing
• 31:00
  that caused the narcissism. So understand what their particular
• 31:05
  pain points and sensitivities so that you can
• 31:08
  avoid angering that individual
• 31:12
  because if they get angry, they're going to hurt you. And
• 31:16
  they've got five key triggers, by the way. They all have
• 31:19
  the same five key triggers. The first one is when you
• 31:23
  separate, they, they feel that, you know, up until
• 31:27
  that point in time there's been a degree of loyalty towards you because their
• 31:30
  interests have an element of alignment. But when you do separate, and also
• 31:34
  they've seen you as an emotional crutch,
• 31:38
  they no longer have any loyalty to you. So
• 31:42
  this is why you see a huge shift in the way that
• 31:46
  they start alienating the kids when you separate. And also the
• 31:49
  thing that alienators like the least is where they don't have control.
• 31:53
  So when they separate from you, they don't have control of you anymore. So, so
• 31:57
  they try to control you through the alienation.
• 32:01
  The second one, anything to do with court, this is a control thing
• 32:04
  again, because they find it very difficult to influence
• 32:08
  judges. I mean, they'll do everything they can and we've seen them in
• 32:12
  action, but what they can't control,
• 32:16
  their go to response is, well, if I'm in pain, I'm going to make you
• 32:19
  hurt. So they ramp up the alienation.
• 32:23
  Yeah. Third one, money.
• 32:26
  Anything to do with money. So as empaths, we're all about
• 32:30
  relationships with our kids. That's the most important thing in the world for us. Money,
• 32:33
  secondary
• 32:37
  physical stuff, houses, you know, property,
• 32:41
  clothes, cars, furniture. They always want the house, they, they always
• 32:44
  want to keep everything. And basically cut out a little
• 32:48
  thing that's called us and put that to one side and say, I
• 32:52
  want to keep the kids, I want to keep the house, I want to keep
• 32:54
  the money, I want to keep everything. But you, you, you, you can go
• 32:58
  somewhere else, you know. And
• 33:01
  again, if anything that threatens their money, they'll ramp up the alienation.
• 33:06
  Fourth one is when you start having a good relationship with your
• 33:10
  kids, this is going against what they want. So
• 33:13
  they'll ramp up the alienation to try and undermine that,
• 33:17
  the progress that you're making. So it'll be one step forward, one step back, one
• 33:21
  step forward, one step back. And for a lot of parents, you get
• 33:25
  stuck in that routine for years, but hopefully
• 33:28
  at some point, and most of us do have this experience, you start making progress
• 33:32
  when the kids become more independent. And then the last
• 33:36
  one, which many people depending on where they are in the process,
• 33:39
  when we go off and we enter into a new relationship ourselves,
• 33:44
  that, that can be very threatening to the alienator.
• 33:49
  Therefore women alienators. This is
• 33:53
  even more threatening than for male alienators. Women
• 33:56
  alienators tend to see another mother coming into the lives of their
• 34:00
  children as being something that's deeply concerning for them because, you
• 34:04
  know, that other woman might develop a good relationship with the children. Child,
• 34:08
  you know, and it's not their biological child, but equally
• 34:11
  for, for, for many of us, you know, male
• 34:15
  partners that, that, that come into the scene or
• 34:19
  so where there are male alienators and the, the, the woman
• 34:23
  has a new male husband. The
• 34:27
  males are very concerned that, you know, this might be a new father figure.
• 34:31
  So what they tend to do is they try to destabilize our
• 34:34
  relationships. So they'll often create friction by
• 34:38
  villainizing the person that we're seeing to make them out to be a bad person.
• 34:42
  Anything associated with us is always bad, but they'll villainize that person
• 34:46
  or they'll try and do things like create a,
• 34:50
  like blackmail. You have to pick or they'll get us as the
• 34:53
  aliens parent. We have to pick our child or our partner.
• 34:57
  We're not allowed to have both.
• 35:01
  Really nasty. What this, the stuff that they do. Oh, it's.
• 35:05
  Yeah. And it's, it's, it just can
• 35:09
  rain nothing but hell all over your life everywhere
• 35:13
  you turn. Yeah. Yeah. And this back
• 35:16
  to that point of why it's really important people go and get help. So
• 35:20
  you can get books on narcissism, you can get books on alienation.
• 35:24
  I would read all these things as well. You can also get some
• 35:28
  really helpful materials and support for your, your own healing.
• 35:32
  But, but what most people are not so good at is, is
• 35:36
  weaving it all together and understanding the dynamics
• 35:40
  of how the narcissists are interplaying with your kids
• 35:43
  and how that interact is interaction is affecting
• 35:47
  your relationship with the kids and how you feel and how you
• 35:51
  experience that relationship with the kids. And so that's really
• 35:54
  where people like myself step in because we, we
• 35:58
  understand dynamics and, and
• 36:02
  we can help you to, to understand
• 36:06
  why am I going through what I'm going through and how can I experience that
• 36:09
  very differently. It's very to large. It's a very mindset
• 36:12
  thing. I really help my kids and how
• 36:16
  can I help mitigate damage that is being done by the alienator?
• 36:21
  Yeah. And then the, you know, there's so many things that can come
• 36:24
  into play with society really can
• 36:29
  side with the alienator. And they seem to. This is
• 36:32
  just society. It seems like whoever has the
• 36:36
  power hold, which likely can
• 36:40
  be. It can be money or it can be. They're a good storyteller,
• 36:44
  can be either one. But they tend to be the one to
• 36:48
  win in the social circle, in the,
• 36:52
  you know, in the court system. There's too much of that
• 36:56
  also, and some of that can get really
• 37:00
  dangerous. And I, I do think of like, you know, and
• 37:03
  I'm not speaking my own experience in this because it's. First of all, it would
• 37:07
  be hard to really speak of your own experience specifically with this kind of situation.
• 37:10
  But you hear stories and they, they are, they're
• 37:14
  very, they, you know, they, they're
• 37:18
  horrifying to me. But of a woman who is, you know, being
• 37:22
  maybe being physically abused, financially abused, she can't work.
• 37:26
  And maybe there's even like the kids are being
• 37:30
  physically or sexually harmed by the, by the
• 37:33
  partner, and then the
• 37:37
  alienation starts. So it is so critical, I think,
• 37:41
  for society and for court systems to go. This can be a life
• 37:44
  or death situation easily for both the parent and the child
• 37:48
  if you don't get it right. And we have
• 37:52
  to get it right. And we have to make sure as a society
• 37:55
  we are looking at the, the things we have to look at to go.
• 38:01
  This has to be done right for the safety of children and parents.
• 38:04
  Like, it has to be done right. It's also, it's also intergenerational.
• 38:08
  So, so the societal impact is. Is enormous
• 38:13
  because all of the children who are going through this. This
• 38:16
  trauma right now, as they grow
• 38:20
  up, they can bring a lot of that trauma with them into their own
• 38:24
  relationships, their own parental
• 38:27
  relationships and their relationships with, you know, their own
• 38:30
  children. And, you know, a lot of the
• 38:34
  time what, what we see with trauma is, is that people kind of
• 38:37
  polarize in terms of the way they respond to trauma. So
• 38:41
  a lot of people, so, so people will become narcissistic. So
• 38:45
  I become very controlling as a mechanism to keep myself safe,
• 38:49
  or I become empathetic, which is I fix everything to
• 38:52
  keep safe. And I did talk about
• 38:56
  safety. Yeah, yeah. If you want to understand
• 38:59
  alienation, one of the best ways is just to look at the lens
• 39:03
  of safety. So why people are doing the stuff
• 39:06
  they're doing, because either they feel safe or they feel
• 39:10
  unsafe. So for somebody who's narcissistic,
• 39:14
  that their control mechanisms or their coping
• 39:18
  mechanisms, you know, like the controlling, the
• 39:21
  manipulation, the lying, the deceit, the coercion all those things,
• 39:25
  that's their coping mechanisms to keep
• 39:28
  themselves safe. At a deep level. We also find these people
• 39:32
  are very immature, so they're emotionally immature. And
• 39:36
  they also act like children to infantile because
• 39:40
  they're basically little kids in adult bodies
• 39:44
  who are finding it very difficult to cope in the world around them.
• 39:48
  And what we see often is they. They just takers. They're always take, take, take,
• 39:52
  take. They need more, more, more in order to. To kind of fill
• 39:56
  up a bottomless pit, a void inside of them,
• 39:59
  because these people are never actually happy. They always,
• 40:03
  they always have to have more to kind of try and make up for
• 40:07
  basically what is an emotional deficiency because they didn't get support
• 40:11
  when they were young. Then you get the empaths, or in fact,
• 40:14
  let's just start with the kids. Then you get the kids who are being put
• 40:18
  under all this pressure by the narcissist
• 40:22
  to align with the narcissist, to appease the narcissist, to
• 40:26
  kind of keep that narcissist feeling secure. And then
• 40:29
  the kids have to put up coping mechanisms themselves. And so the
• 40:33
  coping mechanisms will be things like not speaking to us as a
• 40:37
  parent, not telling us about our lives, rejecting us,
• 40:40
  you know, hiding in their rooms, being rude,
• 40:44
  not wanting to observe our boundaries,
• 40:48
  a sense of being unsafe with us because we've been told we're a
• 40:52
  bad parent. So all the things they're doing are
• 40:55
  coping mechanisms to keep themselves safe. And so
• 40:59
  we have to learn to look beyond the coping mechanisms and saying,
• 41:03
  okay, you're not actually rejecting me. You actually
• 41:06
  love me. You do want to have a relationship with me. And I know
• 41:10
  it's very hard to hear some of these things when we haven't seen our kids
• 41:14
  for a long time, but that's what's really going on within. Within the child.
• 41:17
  But they're, they're quoting this loyalty conflict where the pressure of
• 41:21
  the loyalty conflict is greater than their. Than their
• 41:25
  desire to have a relationship with us. So they protect our. Protect
• 41:29
  themselves, not in a relationship with us. Yeah, we
• 41:32
  have to know that they do want to do that. And then there's, then there's
• 41:36
  the empaths. And as I was saying, our
• 41:40
  coping mechanism is give, give, give,
• 41:44
  keep everybody around us happy. And most of us in
• 41:48
  a family situation with a narcissist, we're like regulators
• 41:52
  in that household. We're always trying to keep them on an even keel. We
• 41:55
  try to provide a buffer between them and the kids. You know, we're just trying
• 41:59
  to keep everything smooth, but from our
• 42:02
  perspective, we become quite defenseless. Because
• 42:06
  when, when your coping mechanism is. Coping mechanism is give, give,
• 42:10
  give, and the other person's coping mechanism is take, take,
• 42:14
  take. But they're a bottomless pit. Whatever you
• 42:17
  try to do in terms of giving or fixing is never enough.
• 42:23
  Most of us get to a point which is a lot of time, we are
• 42:26
  the people who eventually seek divorce because
• 42:30
  we can't, we can't take it anymore,
• 42:34
  where we're perpetually compromising ourselves
• 42:37
  in order to satisfy the, these, these
• 42:41
  narcissistic needs. Yeah,
• 42:45
  I always, I, I use the terminology
• 42:48
  of true north. Like, you know, you think,
• 42:53
  you know, they're obviously, you know, you fall in love and marry them and start
• 42:56
  having kids, so they present as pretty great.
• 43:01
  And then over time you're like, what's the true north? And I think true north
• 43:05
  to me means their true north is I have to have a
• 43:09
  constant source of praise. I have to be praised constantly,
• 43:13
  or I have to constantly have attention of some kind. And
• 43:16
  so for some people, it can be I need to have all
• 43:20
  control of money. And that's their true north. Some of them might.
• 43:24
  It might be sex, and that's their true north,
• 43:27
  but they have a true north that is somehow centered
• 43:31
  around attention on them, it coming to them and
• 43:36
  controlling their circumstances and people around them
• 43:39
  to get that true north met. Yeah,
• 43:43
  I think that's a really good way of putting it. Yeah.
• 43:47
  Yeah. So. And until you understand what their true. Once you
• 43:50
  understand what the true north is, all the pieces, it goes, oh, that all makes
• 43:54
  sense then. That's why they make that decision.
• 43:57
  Yeah, this is why, you know, like, if
• 44:01
  pity is a true north and they don't care if the kids suffer,
• 44:05
  they don't care. They don't care. And I think that's one of the hardest things
• 44:08
  for an empath to, to understand because our,
• 44:11
  the way that we think is the polar opposite to how
• 44:15
  a narcissist thinks. Literally can't
• 44:19
  comprehend why they're doing the stuff they're doing.
• 44:23
  And our very nature is to try and entreat them to be, you
• 44:26
  know, sensible, to be sympathetic
• 44:30
  to the needs of the children. And they, they just
• 44:34
  don't have any of it, that they will not compromise.
• 44:38
  I mean, they can fake it. That's. That's the one thing in society
• 44:42
  they can appear to be caring.
• 44:46
  And then the love bombing, I think, is, you know, can be part of
• 44:50
  it if there's a, you know, they just tell everyone it's. They're in the best
• 44:53
  and, you know, they're gonna, they're gonna say that they're the ones who has the
• 44:57
  best interest of the kids and they're the ones who are doing X, Y and
• 45:01
  Z. And I'm, you know, always doing all these good things. Yeah.
• 45:04
  And they're gonna, they're going to make sure that. And then the
• 45:08
  projections that they will project whatever they are onto you,
• 45:12
  the negative traits. So I mean that,
• 45:15
  that projection is the best truth.
• 45:19
  It's a truth serum. It is being projected
• 45:23
  on the other parent or the other person is.
• 45:27
  They're telling the truth about who they know they are.
• 45:30
  Yeah. Well, they, they're basically telling you what they're up to. That
• 45:34
  all the things they're accusing you of doing is, is, is the
• 45:38
  stuff that, it's like they're quite remarkable in this regard.
• 45:42
  If they're accusing you of having an affair, that's because
• 45:45
  they're, they're sleeping with somebody. If they're accusing you of
• 45:49
  hiding money, they're hiding money. And it's really
• 45:52
  helpful but unfortunately most of us learn this too late. But
• 45:56
  it's really helpful once you realize that all the things you're being accused of is
• 46:00
  the very thing they're doing. So go try to root out what they're actually
• 46:03
  doing. Yeah. Because they're tell. I mean it is. They are
• 46:07
  telling you. That is. I don't know why what in psychology it. That
• 46:11
  is. But anyone who's hiding is going to be
• 46:14
  projecting what they're doing onto you. Absolutely. I
• 46:18
  mean again, this is where the books on, on narcissism are really helpful
• 46:22
  because it gives you such an advantage or it gives you
• 46:25
  not an advantage, but it gives you a much better level of understanding
• 46:30
  about dealing with. But I would also say with narcissists,
• 46:34
  be really careful about what I call prodding the bear.
• 46:37
  Because if you do something to hurt a narcissist, and this is
• 46:41
  why the five triggers were so important, if you do something to nuts,
• 46:45
  they will do stuff back to you to, to try
• 46:49
  and hurt you. So a lot of the time you need to be
• 46:52
  careful about how you tackle
• 46:56
  narcissist. You know, you want to be firm, but you
• 46:59
  want to be fair. A lot of time having as limited contact with them as
• 47:03
  possible is much the best thing. But they're
• 47:06
  also used to you being a certain person in the relationship. And a
• 47:10
  lot of time we've been way too compromising. And what, what we have
• 47:14
  to learn as empaths
• 47:18
  is to basically be much stronger, more resilient.
• 47:23
  Start rebuilding us our self confidence once More our
• 47:27
  sense of self worth and stop fixing
• 47:31
  stuff. Because one of the things that is our Achilles heel
• 47:35
  is seeing our kids in a position of discomfort
• 47:38
  because we feel deeply,
• 47:42
  we feel scared basically when we see our kids being
• 47:46
  uncomfortable. Because that's our coping mechanism. If I go fix it,
• 47:50
  everything will be all right again. So we have to learn with an alienator kid.
• 47:54
  Okay, this is an acceptable, although we don't want it
• 47:58
  to be acceptable. This is, this is how it is right now.
• 48:02
  My kid is going through this right now. It's not actually about
• 48:06
  me. It's about their experience. And what we're doing all the
• 48:09
  time is we take a kid who's,
• 48:14
  who's rejecting us. So I always, I use this analogy as
• 48:17
  a parent. We should be focused 100 on our kid. So if our kid is
• 48:21
  there in their universe, two universes, us and the kid
• 48:27
  we need to be focused on. What do they need from me at this point
• 48:30
  in time? I don't care about them. You know, I'll look beyond their
• 48:33
  coping mechanisms. I understand what they're experiencing.
• 48:37
  So I'm going to give them the love, the care, the support, support that they
• 48:40
  need in this moment. But what tends to happen instead
• 48:44
  of us being able to focus 100 on the kid is the kids do
• 48:48
  things trigger us. And, and these old insecurities and
• 48:52
  vulnerabilities that we have from our past get brought to life
• 48:55
  again. And we put our old insecurities
• 48:59
  around what's going on with the kid. So
• 49:03
  path because we got rejected to some degree and now
• 49:07
  we're bringing our old rejection into the present
• 49:10
  with the kid rejecting us. And we're tying those two things together. They
• 49:14
  don't fit together. So in our healing, we have to
• 49:18
  learn to deal with our insecurities.
• 49:22
  Let all those things go when we can. Now
• 49:25
  we can focus. We can really focus 100 on the kid
• 49:29
  because we're not getting triggered. We're not getting upset set. We're no longer
• 49:32
  associating the child's behavior with us
• 49:36
  as a person because those things are, they're not actually
• 49:40
  linked. Yeah. And I, you know, I
• 49:44
  certainly would say for anyone who's experiencing this to have the
• 49:47
  support of someone who's a trauma informed therapist or
• 49:51
  working with someone like you, Charlie, that, that really understands.
• 49:55
  It or do the two together. So a lot of the time,
• 49:59
  yeah, I mean I'm a, I'm a coach, so
• 50:03
  I'm, I'm not a qualified trauma therapist.
• 50:07
  Okay. And, and I specifically didn't go
• 50:10
  off to qualify as a psychologist. Because the
• 50:14
  bit that I was most interested in is not recognized by the
• 50:17
  psychologists, which is parental alienation. So I've read
• 50:21
  tons of stuff and, and very qualified without
• 50:25
  the letters. But what I would encourage people to do is, is
• 50:29
  yet work with. With people who do have.
• 50:33
  Who are very good at trauma. But this is the. But a
• 50:36
  lot of the time those, those therapists don't understand
• 50:40
  alienation. And this is the gap
• 50:43
  because they're trying to heal a more generalized
• 50:47
  trauma as opposed to something that is very
• 50:51
  specific to alienation, which is the stuff that I can help with. So it's
• 50:54
  very complimentary having, having both
• 50:58
  parties work together on people saying, oh, I'm in therapy, should I stop the
• 51:02
  therapy? I will say, no, keep it going. Yeah, work with me on the
• 51:05
  stuff that I'm expert in. Work with them on the stuff they're expert
• 51:09
  in. Yeah, well, and I can say the stuff that you experience when you're
• 51:13
  going through this is, is. It is
• 51:17
  possibly more traumatizing the reactions you get from
• 51:22
  family and friends or, you know, people that you're trying to. Because
• 51:25
  you need help. But then the advice they come back with is
• 51:29
  so not helpful and a little bit arrogant,
• 51:33
  but they're trying. So good people are trying. And then there's other people
• 51:37
  that come back with advice that aren't trying to. And this is my.
• 51:40
  And I do want to talk because my. One of my experiences was that
• 51:45
  while I was going through this, such the target.
• 51:48
  And this is like a smear campaign. Whole community, whole
• 51:52
  family. I'm the target, right, of a, Of a massive smear
• 51:56
  campaign that I don't understand because I'm not even being told what. What people
• 52:00
  are being told about me. So I don't even know how to. What to say
• 52:03
  because I don't even know what the. What's being said. But there were.
• 52:07
  So I was trying to find new new community, right?
• 52:11
  And in doing so,
• 52:15
  wounded people will come to you as a friend
• 52:19
  because they know they can throw their crap at you and
• 52:22
  you're already a target. So then it escalates. And I had that
• 52:26
  happen. And thankfully I had a few super. A couple super stable
• 52:30
  friends who, who work with
• 52:33
  extreme people who've been extremely, you know,
• 52:37
  in extreme situations. You know, one
• 52:41
  prosecutes murders, for example, so like, wow, you know, and another
• 52:44
  one has lived through the. The stuff that is unimaginable. So,
• 52:48
  like, I had two people really, who did understand trauma, even though
• 52:52
  they didn't understand this. Go, you need to stop. You need to stop
• 52:56
  collecting these people. That are hurting you. There is something
• 52:59
  in that energy where it just seems like,
• 53:04
  like you're, you're bleeding in the water and you're looking for
• 53:08
  help and people, sharks that. Sharks
• 53:12
  who look like good people are coming. Yeah, they all
• 53:15
  come. They all come out. Yeah. And that was, it was, it's interesting to me
• 53:19
  because I had never had that experience. That was the only time in my life
• 53:23
  where I was the bleeding person in the water with sharks swimming around me
• 53:27
  was at that point. Right. Super post
• 53:31
  divorce. It's really interesting as well because in.
• 53:35
  And I think everything that you said is a really good point for parents to
• 53:38
  be aware of. I also think that a lot of people
• 53:42
  do try to be supportive, but
• 53:46
  they're coming at it from the lens of their own experience,
• 53:50
  normal family life. So that it's a
• 53:53
  bit like somebody from, you know, Earth trying to give somebody on
• 53:57
  Mars advice on how to live on Mars. Because, well, it must be the same
• 54:00
  on Mars as it on Earth. No, it's completely different.
• 54:04
  So they're well intentioned. But also what happens is
• 54:08
  that the, this is where bereavement comes back
• 54:11
  in. I use that as an example when, when we, when
• 54:15
  somebody close to us suffers, you know, somebody close to us dies.
• 54:19
  The world around us and our family
• 54:23
  understands what we're going through. They know how to support us. They know
• 54:27
  when to support us, what to do and how to be helpful.
• 54:30
  Alienation is the opposite, polar opposite of bereavement.
• 54:34
  Insofar as nobody understands what you're going
• 54:37
  through. Instead of having a community of
• 54:41
  support around you, you're very isolated. And it,
• 54:45
  it gets worse because you then have to be, you have to become the person
• 54:50
  that helps your children to heal.
• 54:54
  You have to be the person that helps your own family to heal.
• 54:58
  You have to be the person that helps your partner to heal.
• 55:02
  And so you have to be so resilient
• 55:06
  as a person and as a parent that. Well,
• 55:09
  under attack. Yeah. While under attack from,
• 55:13
  from, from all these people. And it's a really,
• 55:18
  it's a tough gig. It's probably the toughest thing that any of us
• 55:21
  will go through. But there is, there is a plus
• 55:25
  for, there's a couple of pluses from all of this.
• 55:29
  One of them is you. If you do the sort of things that I would
• 55:33
  advocate and other people who have the same sort of opinion that I have,
• 55:36
  you become really resilient. You become far
• 55:40
  stronger as a result of this experience than when you went into
• 55:44
  it. And that, that helps you as a person.
• 55:48
  It will literally Transform your life if, if you, if you do the things
• 55:51
  that will be beneficial for you in your healing process
• 55:55
  so that you come out of this better
• 55:59
  off than when you went in, and hopefully you'll have your kids back as well.
• 56:03
  Within yourself, you're now very different. The
• 56:06
  other thing that it teaches you is love
• 56:10
  at a completely different level, because
• 56:15
  love is something that when you're in a normal family situation, it's really
• 56:19
  easy to love the kids because, well, even when they're
• 56:22
  teenagers, it's still pretty easy to love them. But
• 56:26
  nobody's in this, like, very conflictual position
• 56:31
  child that's rejecting you. Learning to love a child that
• 56:35
  is pushing you away all the time is really hard. And
• 56:39
  something that we spoke briefly about before, which
• 56:42
  we have experience of, is going no contact
• 56:46
  with a child where you are the person who initiates
• 56:50
  that, because that's something I had to do with
• 56:54
  one of my kids because I could see, see the damage that was being done
• 56:57
  to our relationship and, and how difficult it
• 57:01
  was for her to spend time with me. And so
• 57:05
  I decided to. I said. I literally said to her, okay, we're going to take
• 57:08
  a holiday, is how I, How I framed it. We're going to take a holiday
• 57:12
  from each other. We're just gonna have some space, some time between us
• 57:16
  and just give. Give ourselves an opportunity to, to
• 57:19
  kind of heal a little bit before we. We're back in each other's lives.
• 57:24
  I had no idea how long that period was going to last. That was two
• 57:27
  years before we started having contact again.
• 57:31
  That was done from a place of, of love,
• 57:35
  not fear. And so we learn this whole new
• 57:39
  dimension of love. And the other thing that we learned at a whole new dimension
• 57:42
  is compassion. Compassion for
• 57:46
  our child, empathy for our, for our child, you know, to be able
• 57:50
  to not look at the behaviors they're exhibiting, but to
• 57:53
  understand you're only doing this because you're keeping safe.
• 57:57
  So I'm going to give you that compassion. I'm going to give you that love.
• 58:01
  I'm going to give you that support because I recognize what you're going
• 58:05
  through. That's ultimately how we
• 58:08
  win the kids back is through that love and compassion.
• 58:13
  And I think the, the hardest part about that is that
• 58:17
  there, I guess maybe it would be like a Stockholm syndrome or something like that,
• 58:21
  is that you can experience. Well, there's more than one hard part about that,
• 58:24
  but you can experience, like, the abuse of,
• 58:28
  you know, an ex through the kids. All of a sudden, they're just
• 58:33
  saying exactly what you were trying to escape.
• 58:37
  Yeah, I mean I think that's definitely. Your mouth and that's, that's a surreal experience.
• 58:41
  Experience. Yeah, it's called, it's called enmeshment. And, and
• 58:44
  so that's basically where they start parroting what they've
• 58:48
  adopted. The perspective of that parent, you know,
• 58:52
  their worldly view that parents ideas about
• 58:55
  you, you know, how they think about you and they start using their own
• 58:59
  terminology. And you often see this with really young
• 59:03
  kids as well that you know, sub 10 years old
• 59:07
  just acting like a mini me version of, of the parent
• 59:11
  who's alienating them. And it's very distressing for us because
• 59:15
  we've been traumatized already by alienating
• 59:18
  parent and now we're getting re traumatized
• 59:22
  or additionally further traumatized by our kid acting
• 59:26
  as, as that person. And also the kids are
• 59:30
  encouraged to psychologically abuse us as well. Well,
• 59:34
  which can cause all kinds of, you know, talk about they
• 59:38
  could develop the cluster B, you know. Yeah.
• 59:42
  Like it is so damaging. And this is in, you know, in part why it's
• 59:46
  like if in society if there's a way to step in as this is
• 59:49
  happening, it could prevent so much stuff
• 59:53
  and it's hard to recognize I think but it's all treatable.
• 59:58
  I mean there's been quite. I don't know
• 1:00:02
  if there's been a rise in narcissism that some of the statistics would indicate that
• 1:00:05
  there has been a rise in narcissism. I'm just think maybe it's becoming
• 1:00:09
  more understood. But yeah,
• 1:00:12
  trauma, it can be treated. The problem is that the narcissists
• 1:00:16
  don't go off and get the treatment because they don't want to face
• 1:00:20
  the trauma which is why they're doing the very actions they're doing.
• 1:00:24
  Yeah, yeah. It just seems like it's been said that they're not
• 1:00:27
  treatable because of how the. How it is but which
• 1:00:31
  is EMDR. Works really well with narcissists. What's
• 1:00:35
  that? Emdr. So it's like a
• 1:00:39
  tapping association. Well, I was going to recommend EMDR too
• 1:00:43
  just for like that's one of the things I did. And I
• 1:00:46
  was thinking, you know, like if you're going to get counseling when you're
• 1:00:50
  going through stuff, I have recommended to
• 1:00:54
  people to seek a counselor who can do emdr.
• 1:00:58
  And part of that is just because I've my some experience.
• 1:01:02
  I just feel like I've wasted money with people who aren't helpful. But if
• 1:01:05
  they do mdr, the EMDR does the work. Because
• 1:01:09
  you're saying EMDR actually helps narcissism. Yeah.
• 1:01:13
  Yeah. So there are people who work in this stuff called
• 1:01:17
  attachment therapy theory, which is incredibly good at really
• 1:01:21
  diagnosing what's really going on in people's behaviors and how it
• 1:01:25
  fits back to childhood experiences.
• 1:01:28
  And they, they talk about EMDR being very effective.
• 1:01:32
  Something up and God, there's so much we can talk about. Mary. Something
• 1:01:35
  else is often associated with alienation is
• 1:01:40
  diagnosis of autism and adhd.
• 1:01:44
  And this is not genuine autism. This is
• 1:01:48
  the child's reactions, coping mechanisms of
• 1:01:52
  dealing with parental alienation. And we
• 1:01:55
  also see other things like children acting in a very infantile
• 1:01:59
  way, literally regressing with their mental age
• 1:02:03
  as a mechanism to have to kind of move away from having any
• 1:02:07
  responsibilities and acting more childlike so they don't have to deal
• 1:02:10
  with the pressures that are being put upon them. A lot of the stuff that
• 1:02:14
  alienators do because it's, it is a loyalty conflict.
• 1:02:19
  They, they do things like, they put them, they give them false choices.
• 1:02:22
  So they'll say to the child, you decide if you're going to go and
• 1:02:26
  see your mom, you know, today or tomorrow, or you decide if you're going to
• 1:02:29
  respond to the, to, you know, a text or a letter or an email, or
• 1:02:33
  you decide if you're going to accept that present. And what, what they're doing is
• 1:02:37
  that, that's coercion and it's psychological abuse because the
• 1:02:41
  child shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but instead what,
• 1:02:44
  what the parents doing is they're giving them that authority, but, but
• 1:02:48
  they're not giving them actual choice. So I call it false choice because they
• 1:02:52
  don't have options. It's like, well, you decide if you're going to see your mom
• 1:02:55
  or not. Well, the child knows that the answer has got to be, well, I'm
• 1:02:58
  not going to, I'm not going to see my mom because that's going to my
• 1:03:01
  dad. And then it legitimizes the, the father or the
• 1:03:05
  alienator to turn around to you and the courts and everybody else and
• 1:03:09
  say, well, I asked them and I gave them the choice. And they said they
• 1:03:12
  don't want to go and see you, and I can't force them. And there's, there's
• 1:03:16
  so many different ways that they manipulate the kids.
• 1:03:19
  Yeah. And it's, you know, all of them. We, we have,
• 1:03:23
  we have the rule book. We can walk, you know, I can literally walk a
• 1:03:26
  parent through all the things an alienator will try and
• 1:03:31
  you can do. That works to help to kind of get your child
• 1:03:34
  Back. And also the things that doesn't work because we
• 1:03:38
  make lots of mistakes. There's loads of bear traps out there and it's very.
• 1:03:42
  It's very counterintuitive. Yeah. And everyone, you know,
• 1:03:46
  I don't know that, you know, there is a lot of great options.
• 1:03:50
  It seems like from what I was, you know,
• 1:03:53
  discovered and that my situation isn't everyone's situation, of course, but
• 1:03:57
  it just didn't seem like there was a good option.
• 1:04:01
  And in part, it's because no matter what you do, there's going to
• 1:04:05
  be something said. Negative. Yeah.
• 1:04:09
  So if, like, I need space, so you give them space, then you're.
• 1:04:13
  Then you don't care about them and you don't love them.
• 1:04:17
  If you, if you're, you know, trying to be in communication
• 1:04:20
  and, you know, trying to call every day or text every day,
• 1:04:25
  then you're desperate and just don't accept
• 1:04:28
  boundaries. Yeah. So no matter, no matter
• 1:04:32
  what you do there, they will
• 1:04:35
  frame it in a way where you're a bad person.
• 1:04:39
  Yeah. And you're the controlling person. Yeah.
• 1:04:43
  You've segued beautifully into counterintuitive and bear
• 1:04:46
  traps because that's a really good example. When.
• 1:04:50
  When we're experiencing alienation and our child is beginning to reject
• 1:04:54
  us, our fear kicks in because we're thinking, I'm losing the
• 1:04:58
  relationship with my child. So what do we do? We inundate them
• 1:05:02
  with telephone calls, with text messages, with
• 1:05:05
  emails, and the kid is withdrawing
• 1:05:09
  because of the pressure being put on them in this loyalty conflict to
• 1:05:12
  not have the contact with you. So this is where you can actually end up
• 1:05:16
  estranging your kid because sending too many
• 1:05:19
  text messages, you know, and we often say things
• 1:05:23
  like, I miss you, I miss you. Guilt trips. The kids,
• 1:05:27
  I love you is fine, but I'm
• 1:05:31
  always advocating to parents, you know, dial down the amount of
• 1:05:35
  communication that you're sending off to your kid because you're actually
• 1:05:39
  pushing them away from you. And it's counterintuitive because you think, no,
• 1:05:43
  no, no, no, I must increase the level of communication. No,
• 1:05:46
  it doesn't work that way. It. When you decrease the level of
• 1:05:50
  communication, the message you're giving to the kid is, I love
• 1:05:54
  you, I'm there for you. My door is always open for you. You don't have
• 1:05:57
  to say those words. They'll know that from the communication. But also if you send,
• 1:06:01
  you know, if you're no communication with your kid, texting them once a week or
• 1:06:05
  once every two weeks is sufficient. It lets them know you're still there.
• 1:06:09
  If you. They're no contact with you because they
• 1:06:13
  feel they can't have the relationship with you right now. So if,
• 1:06:17
  if you text them every day, they're going to block you.
• 1:06:21
  Because I think I can't cope with this person. I can't cope with the pressure
• 1:06:25
  they're putting me under. They don't, they don't understand my position
• 1:06:29
  because we don't. Because we're not looking at that position. We haven't
• 1:06:33
  experienced it. So, I mean, you know, I haven't. So, I
• 1:06:37
  mean, it's, it's. And it's surreal. Like, at the time, I hadn't known
• 1:06:40
  anyone who'd experienced it. I didn't even know what was happening. I
• 1:06:44
  couldn't have known too, that this was a thing that existed.
• 1:06:47
  Yeah, yeah. And again, I think, I think most people come into
• 1:06:51
  parental alienation. They have no idea they're experiencing it. There
• 1:06:55
  isn't education and awareness out there that, I mean, you,
• 1:06:58
  you stumble across it in most instances and you suddenly go,
• 1:07:02
  oh, wow. So this is the thing I've been going through. This is real.
• 1:07:06
  There's, there's, you know, 22 million people in the US
• 1:07:10
  alone affected by this. That's the kids, the parents, the families.
• 1:07:14
  You know, it's 6 to 8% of the populations of most Western countries. And it's
• 1:07:18
  exactly the same experience in Australia and Europe as it is
• 1:07:21
  in the U.S. canada. It's. It's the same stuff
• 1:07:25
  everywhere, you know, India, the Arab states. And I help parents
• 1:07:29
  all over the world through zoom because it's the same stuff. The
• 1:07:32
  legal systems are slightly different and they're completely ineffective
• 1:07:36
  everywhere. Well, there's a couple of places that are
• 1:07:40
  a little bit better, but generally speaking, they're very ineffective. And
• 1:07:44
  that's part of the challenge. We feel very isolated and alone to deal with
• 1:07:47
  this by ourselves, which is why it's so important to have
• 1:07:51
  the tools to have every means possible
• 1:07:54
  available to us to, to help our
• 1:07:58
  kids, to heal and reconnect with them.
• 1:08:02
  Yeah, it is, man. There's so much to it. And, you
• 1:08:06
  know, also, the thing about this that I just feel like the society
• 1:08:09
  in general would. Might help with understanding
• 1:08:13
  is that when you're being psychologic, like as an adult. Right. So
• 1:08:17
  this is. Does fall in the realm of psychological abuse.
• 1:08:21
  And like, you're, you're not yourself,
• 1:08:25
  like, and I, I really. I almost would love to see some studies
• 1:08:28
  maybe, if, you know, if there's any been done. But, like, I'm like, your brain
• 1:08:32
  doesn't work right? Like brain doesn't work the same.
• 1:08:36
  You can't, it's like you're, it's not, it's like the way
• 1:08:39
  I took care of things prior to this. I feel like
• 1:08:43
  I'm still trying to find my way back to where my brain can manage
• 1:08:47
  some of the things, things in my life that I
• 1:08:51
  managed before. Yeah. This is why your own
• 1:08:55
  healing is so important. Because you, you, you
• 1:08:58
  reach a point where you're very vulnerable, you're very self doubting,
• 1:09:02
  your confidence has been shot to hell. Your self
• 1:09:06
  worthiness is, is very low as well. And your
• 1:09:09
  coping mechanisms are all about fix, fix, fix, fix, fix. And you're
• 1:09:13
  finding I can't fix stuff. And, and so the very, very.
• 1:09:18
  Your empathetic nature is actually working against you
• 1:09:22
  in your healing process. Because the focus is outside of,
• 1:09:26
  inside of you. Yeah. What you need to be working on
• 1:09:30
  is your self confidence, you know, letting go
• 1:09:34
  of self doubt, rebuilding your self worth.
• 1:09:37
  That is the stuff that will help you with your kids and letting go of
• 1:09:41
  fear. Because your kids need you to be the strong,
• 1:09:45
  resilient parent. They need you to be a parent. And what we
• 1:09:49
  end up being is very needy individuals who are scared
• 1:09:54
  because power all transfers to the kid and it,
• 1:09:58
  and the kid loses a parent and we have to get back to
• 1:10:01
  being confident. And this is why this hope is so important.
• 1:10:06
  Know in your heart that you're going to reunite with your kid. Doesn't matter
• 1:10:10
  how long it's going to take. Sometimes it can be a very long period. Know
• 1:10:14
  in your heart you're going to, you're going to reunite with them because
• 1:10:17
  you think differently, you act differently. When
• 1:10:21
  you've got that mindset, if you're coming from a place of
• 1:10:25
  fear, your relationship with your child will
• 1:10:28
  constantly be strained. Person who's
• 1:10:32
  doing that, this is the, this is the counterintuitive, absolutely
• 1:10:36
  crazy stuff. The person who's doing that is you. It's
• 1:10:39
  us. We, we are creating the problem at that point in time.
• 1:10:45
  Yeah.
• 1:10:49
  Well, I think with me, like, you know, I had been on healing journey for
• 1:10:52
  a very long time. So it's like before the worst of it went, I mean,
• 1:10:56
  but it kept escalating. So you know, I had
• 1:11:00
  done some, you know, detox for the physical. I had
• 1:11:03
  Lyme' disease and, and, and then, you know, all the
• 1:11:07
  different things with that and then there was emotional components to that.
• 1:11:11
  So doing all that healing work and then, you know, kind of
• 1:11:14
  starting a creative career out of that and just the thought of
• 1:11:18
  everyone's going to be so excited. But then it turned into,
• 1:11:22
  nope, everyone is not going to be excited,
• 1:11:26
  you know, to, you know, it's just like, you know, you think, you think after
• 1:11:30
  supporting your family for so long, they're going to just have this
• 1:11:33
  joy, joy come back to you that
• 1:11:37
  you do that, you know, that's not what it was. And then I did
• 1:11:41
  hire someone, you know, kind of post divorce to come in
• 1:11:45
  and really just do a complete reset, which is very effective.
• 1:11:50
  But then the full alienation happened after that. Right.
• 1:11:54
  So it's like I had like been very
• 1:11:57
  proactive in healing work. Yeah.
• 1:12:02
  And it didn't, it didn't,
• 1:12:05
  didn't. I don't know how you say didn't fix it, didn't stop
• 1:12:09
  it, but the engine
• 1:12:12
  kept rolling. We, it's a lifetime
• 1:12:16
  mission that we're on. I mean, I,
• 1:12:20
  I'm, I think I did a huge amount of healing work early
• 1:12:23
  on, but I'm still, I'm still working on stuff. I,
• 1:12:28
  I use my, my kids as my teacher. I use everybody
• 1:12:31
  because basically everybody around you in this world is just reflecting
• 1:12:35
  back to you how you're experiencing the world.
• 1:12:39
  And so when your kids say something that is triggering for you or you feel
• 1:12:43
  bad about your kids, that's a little indicator to, to
• 1:12:46
  us to say, okay, there's something that I'm still feeling a bit insecure and
• 1:12:50
  vulnerable about. Right. I need to go off and fix that. And then it
• 1:12:54
  becoming an issue for us. So we should be thankful
• 1:12:57
  in many ways when, when our kids help us to understand.
• 1:13:01
  Okay, that's something that I need to address on my healing journey.
• 1:13:05
  People around us, family, you know, if, if any, anytime we
• 1:13:09
  feel sensitive or insecure, that's a little tap on
• 1:13:13
  the shoulder saying, there you go, there's another one. Go off and fix that one.
• 1:13:16
  And it's like, we'll be doing that for the rest of our lives.
• 1:13:20
  And I do think it's also real critical to go, you don't have to take
• 1:13:23
  everyone's advice. No. For how to heal because most
• 1:13:27
  of, most of it's going to be kind of bad advice and a lot of.
• 1:13:31
  It is down to their own personal experience rather than, than something
• 1:13:34
  that works for a much broader audience. Yeah.
• 1:13:39
  And I always, I am really curious on your opinion. So let's,
• 1:13:43
  let's like step outside to that next circle of people who
• 1:13:47
  are in family members or community
• 1:13:50
  or a counselor, someone in
• 1:13:54
  the, you know, the religious circle, anyone in the community
• 1:13:58
  that they see someone and it's like,
• 1:14:03
  you know, what, what are the signs they look for and how might they step
• 1:14:07
  in to help. And as an example, I would go back and
• 1:14:10
  say before I knew what alienation was, I had an
• 1:14:14
  experience where I was at my kids school and a dad
• 1:14:18
  and his new wife or girlfriend or something just
• 1:14:21
  approached me. I never talked to them before, but they said, yeah,
• 1:14:25
  we're, we're, you know, these, you know, kids, parents. And just
• 1:14:29
  lit into the mom. Now I knew the mom
• 1:14:34
  and it was an interesting thing about, in the, in the, the new
• 1:14:38
  woman was going, and she's crazy. She's crazy like
• 1:14:41
  that. I mean really, it was a very animated
• 1:14:45
  about how crazy the mom was. And I didn't know any of the
• 1:14:49
  terminology, anything, but I'm like, this doesn't feel good.
• 1:14:53
  Like I don't like them. And then I went to the mom
• 1:14:56
  afterwards and I said, like, you know, what's going on? And she's.
• 1:15:00
  And she was just puny. You know, just
• 1:15:03
  emotionally, physically, then even puny. And
• 1:15:07
  it's like he won't stop with, you know, the lawsuits
• 1:15:10
  and I think I'm going to lose him because I don't have the money to
• 1:15:13
  keep finding the lawsuits for financial bullying.
• 1:15:17
  Yeah. So the financial thing there. And you know,
• 1:15:21
  this was, this was in, it was a Christian school. So this stuff, it doesn't
• 1:15:24
  like you being in a religious institution or in a
• 1:15:28
  religion does not prevent it. Sometimes it can make it
• 1:15:31
  harder for people to even see it, which is very frustrating to me.
• 1:15:35
  Yeah, it's it that, that happens all the time again.
• 1:15:39
  It's, it's the lens that people see through.
• 1:15:43
  Then give advice. I will need to
• 1:15:47
  disappear in a couple of minutes. I have another call. Okay.
• 1:15:51
  I'm really sorry that the time passes incredibly quickly when we're talking about this.
• 1:15:58
  Should we just very quickly, in the two minutes available, just talk about Christmas. Because
• 1:16:02
  let's do it. This is something that is, this
• 1:16:06
  is the hardest time of year for many parents and
• 1:16:09
  especially for parents who are going through this, you know, if it's their first Christmas
• 1:16:13
  without having your child. And I would strongly
• 1:16:17
  advocate, please, please, please do not spend Christmas by yourself.
• 1:16:21
  Make sure that you're with family,
• 1:16:25
  that you're with friends, you're with other people. Keep yourself
• 1:16:29
  occupied and try to remember
• 1:16:32
  that, yes, this is not how
• 1:16:36
  you want it to be, but this is one Christmas closer
• 1:16:40
  to being with your kids again.
• 1:16:44
  Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah. And it is such a hard
• 1:16:48
  time, such a hard day. It, it is. And
• 1:16:51
  part of the problem is we make too big a thing of it. We do
• 1:16:55
  too big a thing of birthdays. We make too. Too big a thing of Thanksgiving.
• 1:16:58
  We make two bigger thing of Christmas. It's another day.
• 1:17:05
  And for the alienators, they always want to control those days,
• 1:17:09
  so they will go out of their way to make it impossible for you to
• 1:17:13
  have the kids on those days. Yeah. Oh, they. Yeah,
• 1:17:17
  they. Yeah. And with love,
• 1:17:21
  give your kids that the peace give, you know,
• 1:17:25
  a lot of the time. Yes. Always fight for your kids, but also
• 1:17:28
  be. Be careful so that you don't do things that causes more
• 1:17:32
  problem for the kids. Because sometimes when you're fighting for those special days,
• 1:17:36
  you're actually ramping up the pressure and you're doing the thing that's going to be
• 1:17:39
  worse for the kids. So with love in your heart, give them some space.
• 1:17:44
  Allow them to not have to see you
• 1:17:48
  if that's going to be better for them, and try and see it that way
• 1:17:51
  rather than. I'm losing out and this is unfair and
• 1:17:55
  this is not right. You know, this is. I say you learn a lot about
• 1:17:58
  love. Yeah. This experience.
• 1:18:02
  Yeah, for sure. Well, we are sending love to
• 1:18:06
  anyone who is in the. The thick of it, in the
• 1:18:10
  beginning of it, in the confused state of it,
• 1:18:13
  or. Yeah.
• 1:18:19
  But, Mary, I'd love to come back and do more with you in the future.
• 1:18:24
  For parents, I'd love to help, but apologies, I do need to box.
• 1:18:27
  I have another call I need to jump onto. But, yeah, for all
• 1:18:31
  parents out there. I hope. I hope you can get through this
• 1:18:35
  period knowing that this is all going to be okay.
• 1:18:40
  Thank you, Charlie. I appreciate you so much for coming on. And
• 1:18:44
  Merry Christmas to you and your family and to
• 1:18:48
  all of your clients. Yes. Who's
• 1:18:52
  going through this. Yeah. For sure. All right. Thank you, Charlie.
• 1:18:56
  Okay. Thank you, Mary. Yep. I want to thank Charlie for coming on. Thank
• 1:19:00
  you so much, Charlie. And since I was like, I started losing it a little
• 1:19:03
  bit. This is a very personal podcast. I do want to say for people
• 1:19:06
  who. You have these people in your life who are going through something you
• 1:19:10
  don't understand. You haven't had that experience, whether it's this
• 1:19:14
  topic of parental alienation or something else. I know my experience
• 1:19:18
  has been it is very hard to get advice. It's just not
• 1:19:21
  helpful. And usually people. You just see the world through the lens
• 1:19:25
  of what you've experienced. So if you have not. If you have
• 1:19:29
  specifically experienced something that that person is
• 1:19:32
  going through and you have some things in a compassionate,
• 1:19:36
  understanding way to share, that's when you share. If you have not
• 1:19:40
  left Lived through it. Don't give advice
• 1:19:44
  and saying things like have you forgiven in the, in the Christian community. I just
• 1:19:47
  feel like no one should say that anymore because you're not
• 1:19:51
  understanding the totality of the,
• 1:19:54
  of the nervous system and what goes on in the nervous system
• 1:19:58
  and the, even the brain function that can go down from
• 1:20:02
  that and all the different things. Like people will forget memories
• 1:20:06
  even for 20 years. How would they don't even remember what they're supposed to
• 1:20:10
  be forgiving. So that's. There's different things that people are saying
• 1:20:14
  that actually cause a lot more harm than help. Just get over it. Just get
• 1:20:18
  through it. Well, at least you have one. Some kids.
• 1:20:21
  Well, have you ever thought of like, you know,
• 1:20:25
  there's. It's, it's. It's not helpful. What is helpful
• 1:20:28
  and it's very helpful is your presence. So. So in this
• 1:20:32
  season of presenys with a T. Presence with a, you know, the CE
• 1:20:36
  at the end, just being available, being
• 1:20:40
  an active listener, which means things like you're hearing
• 1:20:43
  it and like you're thinking. That's not
• 1:20:47
  something. I just can't even quite understand that. But that sounds
• 1:20:51
  awful. Should we make
• 1:20:54
  cookies? I don't know. You know, but not
• 1:20:58
  all the time will someone, you know have the energy to
• 1:21:02
  engage with people. But they do need people. People living through
• 1:21:06
  hard things need people around them. And just
• 1:21:10
  the whole, the whole action of presence
• 1:21:15
  and compassionate listening, which means you're not going to have an answer,
• 1:21:19
  but you can see your, your availability and your
• 1:21:23
  willingness to be in their life will be what they need. So
• 1:21:26
  Merry Christmas. And I know this is not for some
• 1:21:30
  people, it's a beautiful Christmas. Some is a struggle, but
• 1:21:34
  just want you to know you are seen and
• 1:21:37
  hopefully someone is listening to and hearing you. So
• 1:21:42
  see you next time.