Are You an Alienating Parent?
Have you Been Accused of Being an Alienating Parent?
Are you wondering why your children are acting the way they do, particularly against the other parent?
Are you worried about what might be happening to your children caught up in the conflict between you and your ex-partner?
Are you wondering why accusations of alienating behaviour are being made against you?
It is of course entirely possible that such accusations are false and that you are being a protective parent by removing a child from an abusive situation. If that is the case you do not need to read any further.
If a false accusation of parental alienation has been made against you, then, like any other false accusation is best if you take a stand against this and refute it. The most powerful way refuting this is simply not behaving in a manner of which you are accused. In this respect, it is no different from the way target parents should deal with false accusations of abuse.
Something terrible must be happening if you are engaging in behaviour where the children are acting out, or that such accusations are made against you. Perhaps you can recognise how angry and hurt you are about what your ex-partner has done to you and how they have shattered your world. They have their own issues with this that they will have to deal with. However, at least one of you has to have the children at the centre of their attention focus and concern.
Having said that, you still have to find a place in you for yourself to deal with the issues that led you to use the children against the other parent or at least to say and do things that make their lives difficult with the other parent when in fact they love both parents. You may not even realise you are doing this and most people like you become horrified once they realise what their children are going through!
Emotional pain, hurt, rejection, abandonment, anger and grief and all the complex mixture of experiences, especially with the intense provocation of an ex-partner that come with a relationship breakup can distract us from the fact that we have to hold ourselves intact for our children. It is highly likely that somewhere in your past history and at a formative time in your life, the prototype of the behaviour you are exhibiting now was the displayed to you and you learnt to do it yourself. This is what you may have to deal with.
Parents engaged in alienating behaviour are more often unaware of the effects of their behaviour. They are not malicious in their actions, they simply do not recognise that what they are doing is affecting the children. Sometimes, alienating parents are reacting emotionally to the circumstances in which a relationship ended, one which may have ended quite badly and left them in all sorts of difficulties. It can be a superhuman effort not to react!
However, who is in charge here you, your emotions or your ex-partner?
The children have been lost from the centre of your attention. And this is what we would work together to regain. This is the only way the children’s love for you will endure and the only way you will remain in your children’s lives because eventually, the chances are alienated children may turn against you later on in their lives.
Most extreme alienating parents who display borderline narcissistic and paranoid personality predispositions usually know exactly what they are doing but do not know why they are doing it. They may not recognise the effects of what they are doing.
In the PDF document below are summaries and vignettes of alienating parents I have worked with. It is important for you to draw your own conclusions as to what is relevant to you. All I will say is that , yes, even alienating parents can change. However, if we demonise them and make them evil, they are unlikely to seek help.
For the purposes of confidentiality and the provisions of family law, no names have been used and case details have been changed. If you see yourself here in these examples, then it is possible it is a coincidence and that I have dealt with many cases like yours before.
Or it is possible that you really do see yourself here-if you know what I mean.
Head to the Downloads page and download Testimonials and Success Stories in Working against Parental Alienation.
Similar Posts:
- Family Violence Orders: Should You Really Apply For Them?
- Parental Alienation: A Violent and Potentially Lethal Social and Psychological Phenomenon
- False Allegations and Parental Alienation in Australian Family Law
- Are Mothers and Children being Silenced in the Family Court?
- Alienated Children Ordered Into Juvenile Care: An Australian Perspective
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