In recent years there has been a deliberate effort by women’s rights campaigners, to undermine public understanding that children can be manipulated and caused significant harm in divorce and separation. This has been a well orchestrated campaign which has sought to persuade policy makers, government and the judiciary that children are being removed from protective mothers and handed to abusive fathers by proponents of Parental Alienation Theory which has been decried by the same campaigners, as pseudoscience. Instead, those who campaign against PA Theory, promote their own self created labels such as Court and Perpetrator Induced Trauma, and Child and Mother Relationship Sabotage, which they say are more appropriate for the dynamic which is seen when children reject their mother.
Whilst using labels such as Child and Mother Relationship Sabotage might seem like a clever reframe of Parental Alienation Theory, it still has the problem of how to deal with the child who is rejecting and hating their mother with exactly the same fervour as a child said to be suffering from Parental Alienation or Resist/Refuse dynamics. In reality, it really doesn’t matter what the label is that we use to describe the problem, the problem still exists in that the child who aligns and rejects does so with great determination, leaving people fighting over the root cause and how to treat it, or sometimes, even whether it is necessary to treat it.
In my experience it is both necessary to treat it and know HOW to treat it. Over the past few months, I have been collating and analysing contemperanous notes on the work I have done with over a hundred moderate to severely alienated children. I am doing this in order to ensure that the learning from this work and the development of the methodology used to treat children in this state of mind is properly curated. Running alongside this work, is an independent evaluation of the experiences of adult children who were removed from abusive parents in residence transfer in the family courts in England and Wales. Two of those children have already presented their testimony at a seminar in the Palace of Westminster in November last year. In September this year, those now adult children will speak at an International Symposium in Cambridge, UK, which will bring together key thinking on the treatment of Childhood Relational Trauma, which is the overarching term we use to describe what is happening to children of divorce and separation when they align with one parent and reject the other.
Childhood Relational Trauma
Childhood Relational Trauma is the right umbrella term for this problem in children of divorce and separation because it is –
a) rooted in the psychological literature which provides significant information on treatment for children who have been abused by caregivers
and
b) it enables an understanding of this complex form of relational trauma to be better understood by professionals.
and
c) It empowers parents to understand what they can do to help their children to recover from the disorganised attachment behaviours which are seen when children enter begin to align with one parent and reject the other.
Understanding the Family Relational Trauma Story
When this problem is properly understood as a relational dynamic occuring around the child, which is caused at the outset by primitive defences of denial, splitting and projection, the root of the trauma story becomes easy to recognise. At its heart, this trauma story is one of a child developing situational disorganised attachment behaviour due to impact of being parented by a frightening and unpredictable caregiver. The child defends against awareness of what the unpredictable caregiver is doing by identifying with the demands of that parent and by projective identification, another form of primitive defence. In doing so, the child is seen to strongly align with a parent whose behaviour is unpredictable, regulating this parent with reassurances of their allegiance with the narrative that the other parent is the cause of all the anxiety. The rejection of the other parent in this scenario is a by-product of the alignment and not, as too many assume, the cause.
The child is not the only person in the family system to suffer from the onset of primitive defence behaviours however, the parent in the rejected position also suffers from the onset of defences which we call ‘reactive splitting’. This describes the way that a parent who is blamed and shamed by a child, through false allegations (often supported by the aligned parent), copes with the frightening impact of this dynamic. We use the chart below to teach parents how to understand what is happening when children reject, we do so because we know that parents in the rejected position are in fact healthy parents upon whom children in recovery from disorganised attachment behaviours, will come to depend for development of a healthy sense of self. In supporting these parents, we aim to provide for their children, a path back to full relational health.
From Harm to Healing – Understanding What Happened to You – Relational Healing Chart for Parents in the Rejected Position – Family Separation Clinic 2024
Disorganised Attachment and Trauma
The trauma of the alienated child is that of being in a position of being frightened by an unpredictable caregiver or one who is themselves suffused with anxiety, often to the degree where there is repeated direct exposure of the child to unwarranted expressions of fear. The child is therefore unable to obtain the regulation and calming that they need, instead being coerced into a dyadic fused experience of the frightening parent’s emotional and psychological state of mind. As the other parent has been held up in the child’s mind as the source of the anxiety, the child is in the double bind position of not being able to obtain regulation from either parent, leaving the child in a terrorised state of mind in which disorganised attachment behaviour results. As Dr Dan Siegal explains below, this may lead to violent reactions in the child due to the continuous exposure to the fight/flight/flee/submit dynamic which is activated in the brain when the child is exposed to unpredictable and frightening caregiving.
Building Safety for Alienated Children
Amidst the now constant battling between advocates on the matter of whether this problem exists and what it should be called, parents around the world are faced with the reality of the harm that their children are suffering. At the Family Separation Clinic we are fully focused on helping those parents to find ways to help their children to heal from the harms which are being caused, which are being misunderstood, badly addressed and in some circumstances actively encouraged by activists who profess to be concerned about children’s wellbeing when in reality they are only concerned with their own rights. Building safety away from this battle is now our major focus and our work with families around the world is expanding to include survivor groups, therapeutic parenting training to meet the needs of children with disorganised attachments and listening circles to provide regular learning for those who want to take this route to help their alienated child. Our aim in developing this aspect of our work, which we call the Lighthouse Project, is to establish a wealth of resources to support healthy parents to protect their children where possible and, where necessary, to enable them to help their children to heal when this becomes possible.
The Family Separation Clinic – Lighthouse Project News
Spring Seminar Series No 2
Think Like a Therapeutic Parent – Understanding, Writing, Communicating, Signalling and Managing Your Relationship with An Alienated Child
Alienated children are suffering from disorganised attachments due to the situational pressures upon them caused by divorce/separation and/or a parent’s influence due to psychological/psychiatric issues. Whilst many people claim that children’s alignment and rejection behaviour is caused by high conflict, clinical work with alienated children demonstrates that this misunderstands what is happening in the child’s world.
Alienation of children, when experienced close up, is seen as a defensive response to the trauma of the child being driven to regulate an unpredictable caregiver in order to stabilise the family system and regain a sense of safety. For children whose world is turned upside down by family separation, the onset of the alignment reaction might be slow at first or it might be sudden, the child may be able to tolerate movement between homes or may completely withdraw from one parent becoming hyper aligned with the other. The path to alienation is unique for each child but the common denominator is situational disorganised attachment behaviour which appears after the child is exposed to unpredictability in the family system.
Disorganised attachments are well recognised in the trauma literature as arising in children who are neglected or abused. The Family Separation Clinic understands alienated children as suffering from both neglect AND abuse in the relationship with the parent they are driven to regulate. This is because this parent neglects their emotional and psychological needs in favour of the coercion of the child to regulate parental need, whilst simultaneously causing the child to feel fear and anxiety about their other parent. This double bind position causes the child to enter into a hyper aligned state of mind in which their fear of abandonment by this parent, is calmed by mirroring back to them a shared animosity about the other parent who is now placed at distance. This fused, dyadic relationship response, which flags serious boundary violations such as enmeshment, can cause a long term impact upon a child beyond the rejection of a healthy parent capable of providing healthy care.
Therapeutic Parenting is an approach to working with alienated children which has been adapted by the Family Separation Clinic from work with abused children who are fostered and adopted and pioneered in mild to severe cases of alienation of children both inside and outside of the Family Courts. Based upon successful work with families where children have been severely alienated, including those making serious allegations against a parent, this approach works effectively to heal the parent in the rejected position from the reactive splitting trauma which is caused by the child’s rejection, to build powerful skills for thinking and responding to alienated children’s disorganised attachments therapeutically.
What You Will Learn
- How to recognise projections and persecutory patterns of behaviours entangling your child
- How to spot traps being set by projections and avoid them
- How to understand what your child is thinking
- Where your child goes when they enter into psychological splitting
- How to identify where your child is on the alienation journey from onset to recovery
- Mapping, mentalising and mobilising your key responses to children’s disorganised attachment behaviours
- How to use words to connect with your alienated child
- Modelling critical thinking from near and far
Delivered by Karen Woodall a specialist in treating alienation in children through use of therapeutic parenting both inside and outside of the Family Courts, this second in a series of Spring Seminars, focuses upon helping you to reframe your thinking from that of victim survivor to skilled and confident therapeutic parent capable of responding to the changing needs of alienated children.
Think like a Therapeutic Parent is part of a series of seminars based upon the parenting hand book by Karen Woodall ‘Therapeutic Parenting for Alienated Children, which will be published later this year.
Date April 13th 2024
Time 16:00 – 20:00hrs (UK time)
Cost £60 per person
BOOK HERE
Lighthouse keeping: Survivor support group
An online therapy group for parents of alienated children faciliated by Karen Woodall
This is a rolling therapy group which is open again for new entrants and will be delivered on Zoom, in 6 x two-hour sessions, on the following dates:
- Sessions will begin at 17:00 UK time.
- Tuesday 16 April 2024
- Tuesday 30 April 2024
- Tuesday 14 May 2024
- Tuesday 28 May 2024
- Tuesday 11 June 2024
- Tuesday 25 June 2024
To check your local start time, please click the link below, ensure ‘Date’ is selected, and enter 17:00 – 2024-MM-DD – London in the right-hand boxes, here: https://dateful.com/time-zone-converter
NB: The start time is set to accommodate attendees living in UK, Europe, USA and Canada time zones, however those living in other parts of the world are welcome to attend this course.
A Zoom link for this event will be included in your order confirmation. This link should be used for all sessions.
Cost £240.00
About this course:
Based on 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 course is designed to jump-start the move, from reaction to the trauma of being rejected, to responding to the needs of the alienated child.
Led by Karen Woodall, this group will compliment the work undertaken in Holding up a Healthy Mirror or Higher Level Understanding Courses by offering grounded techniques for mentalising and responding to the trauma of being the parent in the rejected position. 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.
Please note:
A Zoom link for this event will be included in your order confirmation. This link should be used for all sessions. Please contact parenting@familyseparationclinic.co.uk with any questions you may have.
You can find our terms and conditions here
Karen Woodall - Psychotherapist, Writer, Researcher, Trainer 
I tthought I read somewhere a new book was coming out in May 2024. Do I remember that correctly?
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you did Melissa, we are working hard to get it out for May 1st. It is called Choosing Yourself When Your Parents Separate and it is by a recovered alienated child who was moved in residence transfer away from an abusive parent. More details very soon. Kind Regards Karen
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