Karen Woodall – Psychotherapist, Writer, Researcher, Trainer

The ‘parent in the rejected position’, is a way of describing the experience of a parent who has been driven to the margins of their child’s life by the power and control dynamics which are seen in situations where children align with an abusive caregiver and reject the other. In such circumstances, children are being terrorised by a parent who has control over their external and internal experience of the world and their alignment is about fear, anxiety and survival. This is especially true if they have witnessed abuse of the parent in the rejected position prior to the family separation, or if they have been exposed to ongoing abuse of that parent in the weeks and months following. In some circumstances children are themselves victims of a terrorising parent who uses them as part of an ongoing pattern of power and control against the other, in some circumstances the child becomes the conduit through which echoes of the abuse of the past are channelled towards the parent in the rejected position. In all circumstances, the victims are the children who are captured in this pattern of controlling behaviour along with the parent in the rejected position who becomes worn down and undermined in their struggle to maintain a relationship with the increasingly alienated child.

Alienation remains the right word for what is happening to the child in such circumstances because it is a trauma term which describes the internal world of the child. When caregivers are unpredictable and frightening, alienation of the self from the self, caused by a regressive shift back to the infantile splitting defence, is the outcome. Children who are alienated in this way, develop a true self/false self split(1), which is a psychological division between the authentic, spontaneous, and creative core of a person developed in infancy when a caregiver (often the mother) is attuned and responsive to the baby’s needs and the defensive structure that develops when the child adapts too much to the needs or expectations of others—often due to inconsistent or unresponsive caregiving.

The true self of a child feels real and alive and is capable of genuine relationships whereas the false self has an emptiness and a disconnection from self, it can be functional or pathological, meaning that it can occupy part of the child’s sense of self or the whole of it. The projection outwards of this is demonstrated in the child’s age inappropriate expression of good/bad splitting, where the ‘loved’ object (the frightening caregiver) is seen as perfect and the ‘hated’ object (the healthy caregiver), is demonised and dismissed by the child.

Facing the onset of this split self in the child is incredibly painful for parents in the rejected position who are often, themselves, struggling to recover from the harm they have suffered in a relationship they have escaped from. The disorganised attachment behaviour which accompanies the split, can create incredibly difficult scenes as the child discharges rage and frustration which is caused by the anxiety of having to regulate a frightening caregiver without protection. For too many children, the onset of disorganised attachment behaviour accompanies existential terror that they will be placed into a situation where they cannot regulate the frightening caregiver enough and so their resistance to the parent in the rejected position escalates, as they see this person as a barrier to being able to show their absolute allegiance to the abusive parent. For parents in the rejected position, the onset of this is frightening because it brings the past back into the present, through the body of their child, leading to an anxiety that the abusive parent can never be left behind.

In psychological terms, controlling behaviour is a defence against fear and anxiety and those who control do so with the aim of reducing their conscious awareness of their own fear and anxiety as much as possible. When parents who leave relationships with controlling exes,  do so without awareness of that, they remain vulnerable to their ex being able to control the environment in which they live. Leaving a controlling partner is a process not an event and it must be prepared for, thought through or mentalised in order to be able to do it successfully.  Post separation life, requires understanding, not only of how the controlling partner will behave as an ex partner, but how you have been controlled to experience your own self.

Mentalising means to understand or interpret your own or other people’s mental states—such as thoughts, feelings, beliefs, or intentions. When you mentalise life after leaving a controlling person you must understand their thoughts, feelings, beliefs and intentions before, during and after doing so. This is NOT so that you can try to change them or understand them or forgive them but so that you can predict what they are likely to do and take action to protect yourself and your children from that. Abuse doesn’t stop when you leave a relationship, it often escalates or the focus of it shifts. In psychological terms the vengeful patterns of behaviours which have been used against you by your now ex, will be focused upon your children and being able to mentalise that as early as possible so that you can understand how to help your children, is an essential shift that you must make in your thinking.

The problem for parents in the rejected position is that by the time you leave the abusive relationship you are often worn down to the point of being unable to cope with anymore conflict in your life. Which means that when your child begins to display disorganised attachment behaviours due their exposure to a parent who is now frightening them rather than you, you are exhausted and terrified that your child is turning into your ex. To be able to avoid this collapse into an anxious state of collapse into your own split sense of self, you must be able to mentalise your child’s experience of inter-personal terrorism which if it is being inflicted by their father is likely to feel to the child overtly frightening or if inflicted by their mother, covertly frightening.

The difference between the way that mothers control children and fathers control children lies in the way that children attach to their caregivers. For children, attachment to mother begins early, in utero in fact and certainly in the moments, hours and days after birth. Attachment to father however begins later and is less embodied due to the fact that the child has not emerged from the father’s physical self. Attachment to mother feels different to attachment to father, it is experienced inter-psychically (meaning from mind to mind) due to the way in which mothers anticipate their children’s experiences and break them down in order to mirror back experience which is digestible and understandable. Attachment to father is experienced in a similar way although differently as fathers are less intrinsic to their children’s internal experience and more involved in their path into the outside world.

Therefore, when attachment is used as the channel by which a child is terrorised, mothers are less visible in their actions and use covert strategies such as interpersonal boundary violation, intrusiveness or enmeshment. Fathers on the other hand are much more visible, using overt behaviours such as manipulation, aggression and threats to control the child.

When you understand what your child is experiencing in the attachment relationship, it becomes possible to begin to mentalise what they are experiencing when they are with you.  If, for example, you have been worn down to an anxious sense of self, where your own confidence and wellbeing are fragile and dependent upon others to protect and take care of you, your terrorised child will experience you as a source of anxiety and will feel fearful. When this is coupled with the control behaviours they are experiencing from the abusive parent, it will combine to create a lack of safety and security in their world, propelling them towards the controlling parent who they perceive as being more stable (even when they are not). Therefore, it is essential for you to be able to stabilise your sense of self and build your confidence and ability to convey to your child the capacity to keep them feeling safe and secure.

Keeping them safe and secure means letting them know that you can cope with their tantrums and trauma related behaviours, which you will see when they come into your care or just before or just after they have been in the care of the other parent. In such circumstances, the smallest action of being able to hold a boundary, ensure that they are fed, manage their rude behaviour, leads to bigger actions of being able to convey safety and strength to them.  What this means is that the road to resolution for your children after you have left an abusive relationship, is within the small things that you do to attend to the breaking down of their security, the small things that you can protect, such as being able to sit with them as they discharge their anxiety related rage, being able to show them that the rage they have discharged has not knocked you off balance and then being able to find ways to talk with them about their behaviours and the feelings that lead up to those angry discharges.

Interpersonal terrorism doesn’t end when the adult relationship ends, it simply transfers itself to the next most vulnerable channel and when that channel is the attachment relationship with children, disorganised attachment behaviour appears in the child. When you see this do not assume that your child is turning into your ex but recognise that the attachment channel is being corrupted and that your responses must be focused upon meeting your child’s need for safety and stability.

Therapeutic parenting principles to help in creating safety and stability

Safety: Calm, predictable, and free from threat. The child knows they won’t be hurt, shamed, or abandoned.

This principle focuses on helping a child feel physically, emotionally, and psychologically safe. Many children who require therapeutic parenting may have experienced environments where adults were unpredictable, neglectful, or even harmful. As a result, their internal sense of safety is disrupted.

• Emotional Safety: Adults consistently respond with empathy and emotional attunement. The child feels accepted, even when struggling.
• Trust-building: Safety is established through reliable, non-punitive caregiving, which helps the child learn to trust adults again.

Why it matters: A child who doesn’t feel safe can’t engage in learning, socializing, or emotional development. They stay in survival mode (fight, flight, freeze), rather than shifting into connection and growth.

 Consistency and Co-Regulation: Children healing from trauma often struggle with self-regulation (managing emotions, impulses, and behaviors). They need adults to provide external stability and emotional regulation before they can learn to do it themselves.

Consistency refers to Predictable routines, expectations, and responses, clear, gently reinforced boundaries, Caregiver behavior that remains calm and steady, even when the child is dysregulated.

Co-regulation means: The adult remains regulated and uses their calm presence to help the child feel safe and soothed. Instead of punishment, the caregiver provides emotional support through meltdowns or outbursts. It models how to handle big feelings in a healthy, contained way.

Why it matters: Children learn to regulate by first borrowing the adult’s calm. Over time, repeated experiences of co-regulation build the child’s own capacity to manage emotions and behavior. Consistency creates a sense of stability that’s often missing in a trauma-impacted child’s world.

Helping you to mentalise

References

1. Winnicott, D. W. (1989). The Concept of Trauma. In C. Winnicott, R. Shepard, and M. David (eds.), Psycho-Analytic Explorations, pp 130-148, MA; Harvard University Press.

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The journey of the alienated child
An online therapeutic parenting event for parents of alienated children and their families with Karen Woodall

Saturday April 5 2025
This seminar will be delivered on Zoom between 09:00 and 11:30 UK Time.

To check your local start time, please click the link below, ensure ‘Date’ is selected, and enter 09:00 – 2025-03-29 – London in the right-hand boxes, here: https://dateful.com/time-zone-converter

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Cost £60.00

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15% Discount Voucher: Those who join this seminar will receive a 15% Discount Voucher for the new upcoming course entitled The Journey of the Alienated Child, which will be available in the summer. The voucher will be sent via email before the new course opens for bookings (please see T&Cs here). 

BOOK FOR THE JOURNEY OF THE ALIENATED CHILD SATURDAY SEMINAR HERE