In a world which can feel unpredictable, terrifying and unsafe, the concept of Lighthouse Keeping is one which I use, to enable a sense of stability and security within for those who have suffered from the relational trauma of being rejected by a child in divorce and separation. In such circumstances, where parents are the recipients of so much negative projection, staying steady and staying sane is an almost impossible task at times. Helping parents in this position to understand what is happening and why and what the negative projections are from parents who manipulate their children (and those who support them), is the first step towards creating internal stability in a community which is constantly under attack.
This is a traumatising time to be a parent in the rejected position because there has been a systemic shift backwards, towards hiding the terrible harm which is caused to children when they are triangulated into the breakdown of parental relationships. This hiding of harm, which is being driven by the trans-atlantic campaign efforts to convince the outside world that alienation of children is only ever an allegation made by fathers to hide abuse, isn’t the first time this tide has turned away from protecting children in divorce and separation.
Having had time to read on a long train journey recently, I revisited some of the early writings of Wallerstein and Kelly and their identification of the ‘unholy alliance’ which is formed when a parent draws a vulnerable child into their interpersonal emotional and psychological responses to family change. Widely credited as being the first to raise the issue of children becoming alienated from a parent in divorce and separation in 1976, it is now forty three years since Wallerstein and Kelly undertook the research upon which their book, Surviving the Break Up How children and parents cope with divorce (1980), is based and in which they wrote about a narcissisticly enraged parent who waged war against the other parent in an unholy alliance with a vulnerable older child. During the subsequent forty three years since that work, children’s needs to be protected from exposure to adult feelings about family breakdown, have been the subject of constant conflict between parental rights advocates, the nature of which is often bitter and full of false narratives. A pattern of campaigning which continues to this day.
Finding oneself in the rejected position by a child who becomes contemptuous and grandiose in their assertions that they never want to see you again, is a frightening experience, especially against a backdrop of the (re)-emergence of claims that all rejection of parents by children is evidence that the rejected parent is abusive. Trauma, in the form of being falsely accused and all that accompanies that, is a long lasting harm which many parents in the rejected position suffer from, the ignorance of professionals only increasing the impact of that. Watching the way that campaigners against the concept of alienation of children emphasise their successes and downplay or are simply silent about their campaign failures, I am reminded that this is not about the needs of children or their right to a childhood which is free from harms of all forms, it is about winning a parental rights battle. Losing your child to this inter-personal coercive control is an individual and societal terrorism which causes long lasting reactive trauma to its victims.
Which brings us back to Lighthouse Keeping and the need to assist parents in the rejected position to recover from the traumatic impact of being rejected by a child in order to build skills for therapeutic parenting which is beneficial for children of divorce and separation who are suffering from disorganised attachment, (the underlying behavioural problem for children who are alienated). Training traumatised parents to recover from the reactive splitting which has been triggered by the abuse they have suffered at the hands of parents who influence and manipulate their children, starts with an understanding of this trauma and its pernicious impact over time. When parents who have done nothing to cause the loss of a child, (other than perhaps being in a position where they were vulnerable to the manipulations of an abusive other parent), the stripping away of the capacity to protect the self is a further level of serious harm. Being exposed to the negative projections, not only of the manipulative parent but the mocking behaviour of campaigners who project blame and shame, is a shocking and often serious trigger in the development of mental health problems caused by this trauma. Teaching parents how to understand why they are in the rejected position and, at the same time, why they are so vital in the lives of their children, leads to a recovery of the sense of self as a parent as well the capacity to make sense of the trauma which has harmed them.
Light House Keeping depends upon the capacity to mentalise, which means to be able to keep in mind the reality of the child’s experience as well as your own. Working with the image of a lighthouse is a useful way to begin the process of learning how to mentalise for parents in the rejected position. Being able to mentalise your child’s experience means being able to see how and why they are aligned to a parent who is harming them. This enables parents to signal to their child their understanding that a child in the position of rejecting them is doing so because it is the only thing that they can do in very abnormal circumstances.
The Lighthouse Project is something I began in my spare time (not that I had much), at the start of the pandemic. Working online for the first time, I wanted to trial a way of working that I believed may help parents, a way of perturbing the family dynamics which are often extremely fixed, largely because parents in the rejected position become so afraid to make any changes to their behaviours for fear of repercussions. In small groups, workiing with parents all over the world, I began a process of teaching parents how to utilise a psycho-geneological approach to understanding their experience and that of their child, which changed the way that they felt about the situation. Shifting parents away from an external locus of control (the manipulating parent), towards an internal locus of control (their own self), I found that when the parent in the rejected position shifted, the internal systemic dynamic shifted and for many parents, this triggered a reaction in the outer world which brought their children on a path back home.
The principle of changing the inner to create change on the outer level is based on the principle of structural and systemic family therapy (in that if you make changes in one area of the family system, other changes have to occur in reaction to that) and psychoanalytical understanding of the layer upon layer of transgenerational trauma which is often unresolved in families where children align with a parent and reject the other. This inter-generational seam of unresolved trauma in divorce and separation, which I have been excavating for the past decade, is the source of the behaviours which cause children to become alienated from their own authentic sense of self as they join with a ‘narcissisticly enraged parent in an unholy alliance to eradicate the demonised parent’.
Building that beam to expose the reality of what is happening to children, whilst lighting the path for them to come back home to their own sense of self as well as the relationship with the parent in the rejected position, is what Lighthouse Keeping is truly about. Lighthouse keepers not only hold their own selves steady in the face of that, they shine a light on this trauma to show the world what is really happening when children align with one parent and reject the other in divorce and separation.
References
Wallerstein, J. S., & Kelly, 1. B. (1976). The effects of parental divorce: Experiences of the child in later latency. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 46(2). 256-269.
Wallerstein, J. S. & Kelly. J. B. Surviving the breakup: How children and parents cope with divorce New York: Basic Books, 1980.
Surviving the Trauma: Staying Safe and Sane as Parent in the Rejected Position
Monday 30 October 2023, 6pm – 8pm UK time
Drawing upon their combined experience of over twenty years in direct practice with families where children align and reject, Karen and Nick Woodall’s work demonstrates that at the heart of this family trauma, is a child who has been overwhelmed by inter-personal dynamics in a relationship with a parent using coercive control and other harmful behaviours. As such, the parent in the rejected position is not a harmful parent but someone who is a bystander as this trauma emerges in the child, eventually becoming the recipient of the blame for what has happened when in fact they have been helpless to prevent it and helpless to protect the child from it.
Working with therapeutic parenting as a core strategy which is taught to parents in the rejected position, Karen and Nick Woodall have pioneered a new approach to helping parents to both understand what is happening to their children and help them to heal from the disorganised attachment patterns which are triggered by this relational trauma. Assisting parents to understand that this family drama begins with the child entering into traumatic splitting, which ripples outwards and engulfs the whole family, brings new hope to parents affected by, what has up until now, been a frightening and overwhelming experience.
This seminar aims to provide an introduction to surviving the trauma of being a parent in the rejected position and walk parents through the concepts of stabilising and anchoring in preparation for helping their children when the time is right. In doing so, we aim to give help and hope to a unrecognised and under-served group of traumatised families and in turn raise funds for another group of traumatised people who are homeless and/or trafficked.
This event is a fundraiser for the Salvation Army’s work with those affected by homelessness and people trafficking.
To check your local start time, please click the following link, ensure ‘Date’ is selected, and enter 18:00 – 2023-10-30 – London in the right-hand boxes, here: https://dateful.com/time-zone-converter
Attendance by minimum donation of £30.00. Please consider giving more if you are able.
What Nick is doing to raise funds for the Salvation Army
Nick climbs mountains. Last year he climbed Mount Toubkal in Morocco and in doing so raised over three thousand pounds for the work of the Salvation Army. This year he has been climbing mountains in Crete, Italy and Switzerland, in preparation for his next fundraising challenge.
In November, Nick will be travelling to Nepal for an 18 day trek to Everest Base Camp and the summit of Kala Patthar (5,545m) at the foot of Mt. Everest.
In doing so, he will be raising more funds for the Salvation Army’s work with homeless people and the victims of human trafficking.
About the Salvation Army
The Salvation Army meets the immediate needs of people who have to sleep rough or on the streets, offering emergency accommodation to people who have nowhere else to stay. In support of the victims of human trafficking, the Salvation Army has developed community based Modern Slavery Hubs which provide survivors of modern slavery with a link to their local community and signposting to the range of available support they may need.
100% of any donations, plus any Gift Aid, goes directly to the Salvation Army and will help them to continue this vital work.
We invite you to join us at this fundraising event which will focus on the trauma experienced by rejected parents and offer practical strategies to help you stay safe and stay sane.
To join us on this seminar please follow these instructions –
PLEASE DONATE HERE:
https://tinyurl.com/bdzydexd
1. make a minimum donation of £30.00/$35 (please consider donating more, if you are able).
2. ensure that you include your name (or alias, if you would rather remain anonymous) when you make your donation.
3. email info@familyseparationclinic.co.uk with details of:
• the name you’ve made the donation under
• the date you made the donation, and
• the amount you donated.
We will then send you a link for the seminar (please remember to check your junk folders if you are unable to find this email).
Please note: 100% of your donation will go directly to the Salvation Army. However, donations are made through the JustGiving website. JustGiving offer this service free to charities but ask donors for a contribution to their running costs; this defaults to 15%. You do not need to accept this amount and, if you prefer, can change to a lower contribution or even £0.00.
Please consider adding Gift Aid. Donating through Gift Aid means the Salvation Army can claim an extra 25p for every £1 you give and it will not cost you a penny extra.
TO ATTEND THIS ONLINE SEMINAR, PLEASE DONATE HERE:
https://tinyurl.com/bdzydexd
Thank you so much for your support
Karen Woodall - Psychotherapist, Writer, Researcher, Trainer 