Karen Woodall – Psychotherapist, Writer, Researcher, Trainer

When you understand why some children in divorce and separation align with one parent and reject the other, it becomes easier to understand why the professionals around these families tend to do the same. This week I was again reminded that splitting in teams is a real risk when working with this issue, and how the legal as well as mental health professionals who work with families affected by a child’s alignment and rejection behaviour, are no less vulnerable to the split state of mind than the children they are puportedly representing. This is why it takes a skilled team, led by a wise judge with the capacity to see farther and wider than everyone else, to manage the dynamics inherent in these families in an adversarial setting, (albeit overlaid with an inquisitorial requirement), whilst surrounded by binary narratives which are driven by campaigners with their own often rigid psychological positions.

There are many people working directly with divorce and separation around the world, these are generally divided into legal, mental health professionals who provide services either in the family court system or around it and as such are working directly with families. A further group working in this field are academics, whose research into the personal experience of divorce and separation as well as the systems which individuals must interact with, offers an additional source of information.

In recent years however, there has been another concentric circle interacting in this field of expertise, these are the campaigners whose attempt to sway public opinion through the manipulation of narratives, is often seen to be interlocked with academics who are known to view this issue through an ideological lens. With the rise of this interlinking of academic outputs and campaign narratives, binary splitting in terms of who is right and who is wrong, has become an entrenched background to this work, so much so that it is now very difficult to trust that conclusions drawn from some research, is anything but confirmation of the researchers own internal bias.

Split narratives in academic research

Some research in this field tends to be biased towards the values and beliefs the researcher aligns to. Often called ‘me-search’, the evidence of this is the way in which outcomes are almost always lined up as for or against an issue. In more recent years this split in this field, has begun to focus on proving the claim that ‘alienation is a tool of abusive fathers’ which falls far short of attending to all of the nuanced aspects of harm which can be caused to children who are triangulated into the adult relationship in divorce and separation.

Researchers often claim to be providing an independent view of a subject through construction of replicable studies which allow conclusions to be verified by others. In reality, research in this field has turned into something of a tennis match in recent years as studies claiming one thing is true are challenged by studies claiming that the same thing is untrue and ‘pseudoscience’ as an accusation that the other side’s research is faulty, is freely used by all. The binary split in understanding of the field has become a powerful reality and the reason for this is, in my clinical experience are –

a) the impact of campaigners and their interlocked relationship with academics working from an ideological standpoint.

b) researchers who have little awareness of their own internal biases and who are projecting those onto this highly emotive subject.

c) The primitive defences of denial, splitting and projection are at play, meaning that the personal projections of the researcher become entangled with the projections within the subject matter.

d) Research is being undertaken without placing what is being heard in the proper context – ie self reports of mothers who have been found to have abused their children, are taken at face value without any background context being offered.

Primitive defences provoke strong feelings and when strong feelings meet internal biases, the outcome is often an alignment with what is believed to be the truth, rather than objective evidence which is obtained by curious inquiry. This has never been more true that in the current psychologically split climate where one side believes that their truth is more true than anyone else’s.

Feelings are not facts

There is an old saying in psychology which goes ‘feelings are not facts‘ and this is never more true than when working in the field of post separation abuse of children. In this arena, where we are working with people who are at the rawest edge of change in their lives, which may have been imposed without warning and which takes away all sense of control, feelings run higher than any crisis other than bereavement. As such, in the earliest days of family separation, feelings are treated by the separating family very much as if they are fact, as everyone involved retreats to their tribe of origin to beat the drum of righteousness as a defence against deeply felt pain.

Treading carefully as a practitioner in those early days is important, listening to the narratives but not aligning with any of them, is vital if any kind of beneficial impact can be made. Working with families where the divided narrative has become entrenched and feelings are rigidly claimed as fact, requires an even greater capacity to remain unaligned to any person’s strongly felt ‘truth’. Keeping in mind that feelings are not facts and ideological belief systems do not provide a framework in which psychological integration can be achieved, is essential guidance to successful work in these circumstances.

Splitting is caused when feelings are treated as facts

Splitting is a powerful driver in this space when feelings dominate over facts and much research in this field has now become a meta expression of the splitting which takes place in families.

This is caused by the absence of context, When research is based upon the self reports of parents and the researcher does not set a study in the context in which these self reports are made, when projections, rumour and claim are considered to be all that is needed to draw conclusions about who is doing what to who and how and why, and when media reports are considered by campaigners to be more reliable than published judgments, how can such research be trusted?

Splitting as a smokescreen

The real concern about splitting in this field is the way in which the pathology obfuscates the lived experience of alienated children. When researchers are busy ‘proving’ that alienation is real or not real or a tool of abusive fathers or vindictive mothers, and the naive ones stand to oneside bemoaning the fact that one side doesn’t talk to the other (a catastrophic failure to understand this pathology if ever I saw it), the kids in the midst of this are doing their best to survive.

The reality of splitting in the professionals around these children, is that they often become far more interested in upholding their own version of what is going on, than they are in what is happening to children. Karen Woodall – June 2024

The reality of splitting in the professionals around these children, is that they often become far more interested in upholding their own version of what is going on, than they are in what is happening to children. When some children are trying to survive the unsurvivable, and campaigners are busy trying to obfuscate that reality, whilst research is produced which lacks even the basic curiosity about their lives, the lived experience of alienated children is simply ignored, erased and treated as if it doesn’t exist.

Facts about abuse of children in divorce and separation

What we call alienation of children is psychological and emotional abuse, caused usually by one parent and which causes children and young people to become removed from their capacity to feel and express their own feelings.

When children who are trauma bonded to an abusive parent cannot speak in words about their experience they will show their distress through their behaviours, most specifically in the way that their attachment relationships become disorganised due to the pressure of the double bind they are in. For those who understand the behaviours of children who are trauma bonded, the hyper aligment with one and rejection of the other is the first red flag that something untoward is happening in the child’s primary relationships. Just as we cannot see what happens behind closed doors in adult relationships, the trauma bonded adult who cannot speak about their experience, shows us distinct behaviours and it is exactly the same for children in the same precarious position. Those very same campaigners who seek to obfuscate children’s behaviours, who are vocal about how women behave when they cannot leave an abusive relationship, are failing children who are in the same position. If you look closer at the behaviours of children who are showing strong alignment and rejection behaviours for example, you will see exactly the same behaviours in the abused child as the abused adult who seeks to placate, regulate and anticipate the unpredictable needs of the abusive person they are living with.

The problem for so many researchers and other professionals in this field is that they are so distracted by campaign narratives, projections, rumours and false narratives of those who have been found to have abused their children, that they miss the reality of what is really happening to these children. It takes a cool head, a determined curiosity and forensic drive to get to the heart of this problem in the midst of the binary splitting, but when you do, the truth of what is happening to these children is articulated by those very children themselves.

In September the voices of children who are now young adults, who were removed from abusive parents in residence transfer, will be heard by the outside world at our International Symposium in Cambridge on September 12th. The programme for this event will shortly be announced and we will be centering the lived experience of abused children throughout everything we do on this day, to ensure that their voices are not drowned out by the binary splitting which has infected this field. With professionals joining us from all over the world, we aim to provide a forum in which the real experience of alienated children informs the development of a framework for understanding and working in this field which is evidence based, rather than drawn from some imagined reality. I hope you will join us, online or in person.