Karen Woodall – Psychotherapist, Writer, Researcher, Trainer

The Family Separation Clinic provides services to families all over the world and works with professionals who support families too. Our work is focused upon the neuro-relational attachment trauma which is popularly called alienation and is entirely devoted to helping families to heal the impacts of this.

Our social work training pathway, which is operative across the UK, enables social workers who are involved in public law interventions in cases where children are being psychologically and emotionally harmed, to understand at depth, the attachment trauma at the heart of this family drama. This year we continue to train social workers to understand the structural interventions which are necessary to protect children who are bonded to abusive parents. In doing so we are embedding knowledge about the way that this trauma presents in families and the responses that kinship carers can provide, to bring healing to children who are suffering from internal attachment micro shocks which change the way that the brain responds relationally.

Currently in the UK and around the world, the Family Courts are once again controlled by the binary splitting dynamics which are seen in families where children are being abused behind closed doors. Recent public judgments in the UK, show the shocking nature of this and the impact of those who seek to deny that children can be manipulated when they are involved. It is not known what the level of concern in the Judiciary is, about the actions of the people who were involved in some of the distressing behaviours in this deeply disturbing case. On reading it, I cannot help but wonder about the actions taken by the barrister and the media and what kind of belief system drives this.

There is no doubt that the label parental alienation has been mis-used in the UK, it is, like the construct domestic abuse, a perfect litigation tool which can be deployed to obfuscate reality and because these cases are always about personality disorder, psychological distress and an asymmetry of power, labels are the perfect weapons. This does not mean that the problem of children’s alignment and rejection does not exist and it does not mean that where it does, mothers are always innocent victims and fathers are always abusers, far from it. As the public judgment above shows, this is not about binary divisions of hero and villain, it is about the psychological disturbances which are inherent in some family systems and the way in which these interact with the larger institutions to create perfect webs of cruelty, abuse and manipulation.

Cases where children align strongly with one parent who is seen to be harmful in their behaviours and reject a parent who is good enough are always about hidden harm at home. The false narrative, that these cases are only about abusive fathers using a label to perpetuate post separation abuse, has been promulgated by a now well known group of women working in a trans-atlantic partnership for six years and whilst they have been largely successful in terms of scaring away the mental health practitioners who work with these families and they have exerted control over Parliament with their binary narratives, they clearly do not hold complete control over the Judiciary in the UK.

So what next in terms of protection of children from abuse in divorce and separation? How is the reality that some children suffer gross levels of emotional and psychological abuse in plain sight, going to be kept in mind and how are we to raise this to public consciousness in a field which is divided, controversial, lacking in collegiate warmth and often filled with people who claim expertise but do not seem to be able to deliver much in terms of healthy outcomes for families?

From where I am looking, there are several possibilities – the field of parental alienation theory continues to keep recycling the claim that it is scientific by holding conferences around the world which repeat the same claims from the same people. The field of resist/refuse dynamics and the AFCC continues to work with the problem as one of conflict, contact or complex divoce and inbetween that, some of us focus our work on healing the problem and finding replicable routes to empower parents to heal their children from this attachment trauma themselves. That leaves parents and children relying upon models of thinking and practice which do not interact, in a field which in my view appears to have ground to a halt completely in terms of curiosity, interest in finding new routes to repair and being open to challenge.

I long ago decided to leave PASG and parental alienation theory behind, I did so because it seemed to me that attending conferences, listening to self reports and survey results and reducing this deep psychological trauma to factors and signs and strategies was a waste of my time. I also have little interest in the constructs of resist/refuse dynamics although I have respect for the work of clinicians within the AFCC due to their willingness to be curious about what is happening in these families. What I am most interested in are parents and alienated children, working directly with families as I have always done, is what brings us closest to the dynamics we are seeking to heal. And healing is what I am interested in, healing and reapair of intergenerational attachment trauma is what I have always been interested in and what I know about these families, as set out in the case above, is that these are families in which transgenerational repetition of unresolved trauma hides itself beautifully, until the crisis of family separation.

For me, the only road to healing and repair for families affected by this attachment trauma, lies in the return to the depth psychological literature which gives us everything we need to articulate the dynamics, understand how they configure around the child and learn how to heal them. As a clinician of thirty years, I know that this is how this field will progress and how we will finally lift the lid on the Pandora’s Box of this neuro-relational trauma as well as ensuring that it never goes back on. Those who seek to deny that this trauma exists, know that therein lies the truth and therein lies the undoing of the projections which are woven to distract the world from what is really going on in cases like the one above. When the shouting about ‘unregulated experts’ is recognised as being part of the projection from the women’s rights campaigners, (a dynamic which is clearly evidenced by a UK Victims Commissioner who decries the use of ‘unregulated experts’ in the family court on the one hand and then publicly supports unregulated legal ‘experts’ working from the perspective of domestic abuse on the other), the reality of what this group of women have done and continue to do in terms of pulling the wool over the collective eyes of the government and the public at large, will become clear to everyone. In the meantime, children will continue to be abused behind closed doors and professionals and others will continue to get it largely wrong for the families they are working with, which means another generation of children will experience the transgenerational march of trauma which is hidden within the family system.

As we begin 2026 therefore, let’s start as we mean to go on, which is curious, courageous and confident in the knowledge that everything we need to help and heal this family attachment trauma is right there where we need it, in the psychological literature both historical and contemporary. Let’s ditch the labels and leave the constructs behind and roll up our sleeves to stand side by side with the families who need our assistance. When we are working with the trauma not sitting above it, we understand it at its deepest level and that is where the change we are seeking will eventually come.

Cases like the one above show me that now more than ever, the lives of future generations of children, depend upon what we do next.

News from the Family Separation Clinic

For this winter term I am unable to take any new appointments for one to one work and will only be able to offer support through our therapy groups, courses and our new Lighthouse Keeping Club subscription service.

If you would like to join our weekly support group for alienated mothers, please do so now as places are limited and filling up fast. If you would like a payment plan please contact us, we will also have some subsidised places for therapy groups, if you would like to enquire please email me at karen@karenwoodall.blog

Our alienated mothers group and other courses and groups are available to book below.