This year we have several books coming out which focus upon the recovery journey of the alienated child. Due soon is the Therapeutic Parenting Handbook for Alienated Children, which accompanies our Holding up a Healthy Mirror and Higher Level Therapeutic Parenting for Alienated Children Courses.
Due in May is the Young People’s Survival Guide ‘Choosing Yourself When Your Parents Separate’ which is written by a formerly alienated child who is now fully recovered.
Later in the year the story of a recovered alienated child who is now training to be a social worker, his story was told by his father Thomas Moore in his book Please Let me See My Son and the new book is the story told by his son, giving a unique perspective on the relational trauma suffered by different family members when a child rejects a parent.
Also coming soon is a workbook for children and parents and practitioners who work with them called ‘Minding Your Own Business’ which is a practical guide to supporting alienated children in recovery using the therapeutic route delivered by the Family Separation Clinic to many young people who have been harmed by a parent in divorce and separation. An excerpt from this book is below.
The See-Saw Position
The See-saw position is one which many children take up when parent’s divorce, it is an internal experience and you might be familiar with it. The See-saw position is when you find yourself moving between feelings about your parents in a strong way, you might notice that you feel this when you are moving between your parent’s homes or you might remember feeling it when you were still spending time with both parents. See-sawing in your feelings means that you feel yourself to be strongly on one side or the other in terms of your feelings about your parents. You may feel entirely convinced that one parent is right and the other is wrong for example, only to switch that feeling when you spend time with the other parent. If you are see-sawing in your emotional responses to your parents you are knee jerk reacting to their feelings not feeling your own. You are doing this because you feel, at a deep part of yourself, that you are not safe and that your parents can’t keep you safe. This is usually because one of your parents (or both), are making you feel unsafe inside, this is happening because there is not enough of a boundary around their feelings, which you are picking up on and reacting to.
Minding Your Own Business – Your Internal World
Your experience of your parents is that they have been in ‘conflict’ for a long time and so you may feel confused when you are told by adults around you that this is not your parents being in conflict but about something that the parent you used to live with has been doing. In this process of working together, I am going to help you to use your own ability to think, to help you to understand what has been happening to you and why the courts or social workers or both, have intervened. You may feel angry that you have to do this work because you know your own mind better than anyone else, but I am not going to persuade you that you don’t know your own mind or feel your own feelings. What I am going to show you is that what you think you know and what you feel because of that, is a perfectly normal thing to know and feel in the very abnormal circumstances you have been in.
Understanding Parental ‘Conflict‘
First I want you to notice how I have put the word conflict in inverted commas. I do that because I am directing you to notice that because it is highly likely that your experience of what is happening between your parents is that they are in conflict with each other. More than that, it is highly likely that you feel that the parent you were rejecting, has caused the conflict and is maintaining it by doing things that the parent you have felt closer to doesn’t like.
It is also highly likely that this feeling that your parents are in conflict, leaves you feeling in a deadlocked state of mind, deadlocked meaning you cannot find a way to understand what is happening and so you are constantly reacting to exernal stimuli, which in this situation, is the way that one parent’s feelings are always changing.
Are are of the following scenarios familiar?
- One of your parents is more forthcoming about what is happening in the relationship between your parents, this parent shares more and as a result, seems to care more?
- The parent who shares less, feels as if they care (about you) less and as a result you feel more distanced from them?
- When you are hearing about something the parent who shares less with you from the parent who shares more, you find yourself feeling angry on behalf of the parent who shares more?
- You find yourself on a see-saw of emotions, when you are with the ‘share more’ parent you feel warm and fuzzy but at times you also feel a little ‘icky’ (meaning you feel uncomfortable and you don’t quite know why), when you are with the parent who seems to share less or feels more distant, you find yourself feeling guilty without quite knowing why.
- You regularly find yourself in conflict with the parent who shares less with you and that conflict (be honest) is always you fighting the ‘shares more’ parent’s battles.
Share More/Cares More
If one of your parents shares more about the break up or things that are happening between your parents, you might feel (have felt at the time), important and special. If this is you, it is essential to keep in mind that you are a child and that your parent has a responsibility to protect you from adult matters. Whilst hearing about what is happening between your parents, or about how your parent feels in general might make you feel important and special, it is the wrong place for you to be in the family because it means that you are being exposed to adult issues which are not your responsibility. When you are involved in parental issues in this way it might make you feel as if your parent cares more about you but in fact it means that your parent is not protecting you as they should.
Shares Less/Cares Less
The parent who shares less about the break up or adult matters is likely to make you feel as if they care less about you but this is an illusion and it is important to break through this so that you can begin the process of thinking and feeling for yourself. Sharing less about parental issues is not about caring less it is about caring more and this is why.
In a world where children have the right to be protected by the adults who care for them, the parent who does not share adult matters with you, or their feelings about the other parent, or how the break up is affecting them, is protecting you and your right to a childhood. Let me explain.
Whilst this might feel as if the parent is excluding you from things you feel you should be involved in, it feels this way because the parent who shares more with you, has breached that protective boundary that the parent who shares less with you is holding in place. Remember boundaries protect your right to a childhood in which you do not have to worry about adult matters (including your parent’s divorce), these are the most important boundaries of all because it is an adult’s responsibility to protect you and support you not the other way around.
Therefore, when you feel as if the parent who shares less with you is witholding and more distant because of it, it is because this parent is upholding that protective boundary whilst the parent who shares more and feels as if they care more because of that, is breaching it. Whilst you feel that the shares more/ cares more parent is protecting you, in fact it is the shares less/cares less parent who is protecting your right to your own feelings and your own childhood.
Boundaries
Boundaries are the invisible walls around relationships which ensure that we are able to feel our own feelings. When parents breach those boundaries there is a high risk that you will lose the ability to feel your own feelings and begin to feel as if the parent’s feelings are your own feelings. This can cause you to enter into a pattern of knee jerk reacting to a parent’s feelings because you are anxious about how a parent is feeling. If this is you, you are likely to be responding to the ‘shares more’ parent’s changing feelings, which can leave you feeling tired and worried all the time, it can also mean you find yourself in the see-saw position.
2024 is a year of outputs from the Family Separation Clinic and the four books above are just part of the practical help we will be providing to families affected by this problem around the world.
Our courses and resources will be expanding this year to include delivery to Australia/NZ and Hong Kong and our content will be developed to make many of our resources available to watch on demand.
First Quarter 2024 Courses, Therapy Group and Listening Circles
All of our courses and resources are open to parents and wider family members. Our aim is always to help you build a strong toolbox of skills and the confidence to use them. To support this we are currently offering two levels of training in Therapeutic Parenting for Parents in the Rejected Position, our foundation course and a higher level course. These are supported by drop in Listening and Learning Circles which are available to join as you wish to get additional support. A new group called Lighthouse Keeping, is for survivors who need additional support, this runs every other week in blocks of six and will help you if you find that you are suffering from anxiety and symptoms of complex traum
Holding up a Healthy Mirror
This is the foundational course for all parents in the rejected position who want to learn more about Therapeutic Parenting. We are delivering this in an intensive format across one week for parents in different time zones. The dates and times that I will be running this course are –
15/16/22/23 January
@ 9am – 11am UK time for Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong
and
@5-7 UK time for UK, USA and Canada
Cost: £180 (£25 per hour)
Higher Level Therapeutic Parenting for Alienated Children
This course is for anyone who has completed the Holding up a Healthy Mirror Course and is a depth course which focuses upon Contemporary Trauma Theory combined with Internal Family Systems Theory and Structural Therapy. This course gives you a clear understanding of how to use the language of parts with alienated children and how to understand and respond to the child’s behaviour using an approach which has been tailored for alienated children by the Family Separation Clinic. I will deliver this course in an intensive format across one week in February in different time zones. The dates and times I will be running this course are –
Australia/New Zealand/Hong Kong (UK and Europe).
5, 6,7,8 February
@8.30am – 11am UK time
and
UK/Europe/USA & Canada5, 6,7,8 February
@ 5.30 – 8pm UK time
Cost £350 per person (£35 per hour).
Lighthouse Keeping – Survivor Support Group
Based upon contemporary trauma theory, Lighthouse Keeping is a way of reframing the reality of being a parent in the rejected position away from helplessness to an active and positive mindset.
Beginning with an understanding of trauma and its impact, this group, is designed to jump start the move from reaction to the trauma of being rejected by a child to responding to the needs of the alienated child by working at therapeutic depth on the impact of this trauma on internal and external relational health.
Led by Karen Woodall, a Psychotherapist for almost thirty years, fifteen of which have been spent working with traumatised this group of families, will compliment the work undertaken in Holding up a Healthy Mirror or Higher Level Understanding Courses by offering grounded techniques for mentalising and healing from the trauma of being rejected by a beloved child due to harm being caused in the relationship with the other parent or caregiver.
This course will be useful to you if you feel helpless, are suffering from symptoms of anxiety, are just entering the process of being a parent in the rejected position or are supporting someone in this situation.
Dates – 16, 30 January 13, 27, February, 12, 26 March
@17:00 to 19:00 UK time
Cost £ 240 (£20 per hour).
Listening Circles
29th January – Understanding reactive splitting for parents in the rejected position
12th February – Understanding teenagers and disorganised attachment
26th February – Recovery Journeys
11th March – Writing to your alienated child
Karen Woodall - Psychotherapist, Writer, Researcher, Trainer 
This was a very interesting read coming from the position of the spouse of a rejected parent. However, our children are now adults (although only recently: ages 21-26), and long separated from the court, guardian ad litem, social worker “world.” They have been enmeshed with the rejecting parent for well over a decade, with little to no contact with my husband or me.
I would be interested in hearing how these questions and discussions would differ as between a clinician and ADULT alienated children who are still separated from the rejected parent. I suspect the adult children may still have the many of same feelings expressed here from an adolescent POV. If you have any examples of how you as a clinician would talk to an adult alienated child I would appreciate reading that.
I found particularly interesting the comment/question of the clinician about that vague sense of guilt that an alienated child may feel when with the parent who shares more and appears to care more. I am convinced my stepchildren intellectually know better somewhere deep down inside but it is just way too much work and way too difficult to face the wrath of the shares more/cares more rejecting parent to try to re-establish a relationship with my husband. they are also showered with an enormous amount of time, attention and resources so it would be pretty miraculous if they could set those aside in favor of reestablishing a relationship with a parent who is likely to hold more appropriate boundaries in terms of that type of thing.
Anyway, Karen, this was very interesting and I appreciate it and appreciate you and your work. Thank you
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Hi Jennifer, the issue is that the splitting suffered by children takes a good deal of healing and as the child/young person doesn’t know it is there(it is a defence) it can take some time and struggle before it dawns that something might be amiss. I don’t think that many clinicians have considered the reality of how splitting for young people in this arena works myself, so they are not curious and do not join the dots when listening to what young people are saying to them, they assume that rejection of a parent must means something is wrong with that parent rather than something is wrong with the young person’s internalised world -all of which is why training parents in the rejected position is so important, because they are the people the young person is likely to encounter first – because of the drive to reconnect which occurs in so many young people – if that parent knows what the problem is they are in prime position to assist the young person to fully recover. I am writing more about all of this at the moment. k
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SO looking forward to the books. Thank you for your continued work in this excessively difficult space.
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Thank you Melissa much appreciated. K
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Karen-As a parent who is definitely in the “shares less” category, what you’ve written above is wonderfully concise and compassionate for kids caught in pathological enmeshment. I appreciate your research and devotion to this work.
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thank you, I am writing for young people right now and working with young people who are recovered on new books too. Much to come in 2024. K
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Is it possible to obtain video access to recorded sessions of these courses. I am usually in class or at work when the live sessions are being held. I am interested in obtaining any written materials on therapeutic parenting. Thank you.
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Hi Celina, we will have resources availble for watch on demand soon. Kind Regards Karen
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