Merry Christmas, everyone. Welcome back to Healthy, Happy, Wise,
Wealthy. I have with me today Charlie McCready from in
England. You're in England, right? Absolutely. Yeah. So
we're a distance away, but
I just want to say I hope everyone is having a beautiful day.
And today we're going to talk about and
try to dive into some things for some people who probably aren't having a good
day at all. And so this is, in a way, it's kind of a
911 or SOS episode
for those who Christmas is super, super hard. So
we're going to talk about parental alienation. So this is a
topic that, unfortunately, I'm part of this club and
don't want to be. Charlie's been part of this club. He doesn't want to be.
But Charlie has had some really helpful things
that I've watched, been following his socials for. For
years now. And he has programs to help people who are
dealing with this. And we're going to talk about what it is because it's not
widely known, but it is for
anyone who's going through it. It is too often,
sometimes even life ending. It is probably one of the. I think it's one
of the most undiscovered massive traumas that we are
experiencing globally. So,
Charlie, can you just introduce yourself and tell us a little
bit about what led you into doing the coaching and everything
for people experiencing parental alienation? Absolutely.
First of all, thank. Thank you very much for having me on this podcast,
Mary, and thank you for the amazing work that you're doing,
trying to help kind of raise awareness and educate people and give them
help and support and hope. Yeah. So I'm
Charlie McCready. I'm a parental alienation coach.
The reason I'm doing this is because I went through this
firsthand. There is something I call
pre alienation. This is.
I think I've coined the phrase because I've never seen it
previously kind of used. And this describes the period
leading up to the point that you become more aware that alienation is actually
happening through a decade of what I
call pre alienation. So that's all the foundations being laid down. Then
I went through five years of full alienation. So that was a
combination of very limited contact and
no contact at all with. With one of my kids for
two years. But we got through that
and for the last. So I started being able to rebuild the
relationships with. With my children at the end of that five year period.
So we did a lot of work very quickly. We made a lot of progress.
Very quickly. I'm 11 years on from
that. And we're still, you know,
enhancing those relationships. We're still growing, we're still
healing within ourselves. I'm very fortunate. I've done a lot of
that healing work very early on, but my children,
that. It's a bit slower for them, but they're generally in
a good space. And so my mission in life
is, is basically to help as many parents as possible
to understand what alienation is
from the perspective of the child, because you have to see it from.
From their eyes and also understand as a
parent what you're going through, why you're going through it,
how to heal you. And this is the thing that most parents find
really difficult. They're so focused on the kid, they forget
how important their own healing is in, in being able to
help the child. And then I also help them to understand
that the, the alienators themselves and the
limited things that you can do to help kind of mitigate some of the things
that the alienators do. Yeah. And also to bring
back hope, because for most people,
they will end up reuniting with their kid. And I know it seems like this
will never happen, and it seems so far away, but most of us,
we end up with a good outcome. It's just a rough. It's a rough ride
to get there. Yeah. Yeah. Well,
hope is always helpful, you know, I
am. I don't always know that I feel hope, for sure.
Well, one of the biggest things that really
helps parents is acceptance.
And for me, acceptance. And I should caveat this by
saying the people around us, nobody understands
alienation. And so when they tell you, oh, just get on of it, you know,
accept it, move on, they can take a running
hike, running journey. They don't know what they're talking about. But
for, for you and me, the people who have been through this,
acceptance is all about healing within yourself.
But when you attach hope, all you're doing is you're treating
the, the alienation as a transitory phase in your life.
So it's not a forever thing, which for most people it isn't.
It's. I'm. I'm only accepting that this is my reality
right now. But I'm hoping and I'm even better. I
know within my heart that this is going to be better in the future
and that I'm going to get through this. And that makes acceptance and
healing so much easier to deal with. Yeah.
So let's, let's talk a little bit about, like, how
some of the signs to look for And I think, you know, I know for
me and what I hear from. Just hearing the community from a lot
of people, it happens during a divorce or a separation is when,
like, things are kind of, like, going along, but then the divorce, the kids become
a bargaining chip, a way to hurt somebody.
Absolutely. Well, I think maybe if I just preface
that with. With parental alienation
as a term, many people will have come across
a reluctance for. For, you know, this term to be used.
There's a lot of groups who are saying that it's a pseudoscience, it doesn't exist.
It absolutely does exist. It doesn't matter what you call
it. I mean, parental alienation is just a name
that. A label that people put on it. But actually,
it's a range of very distinct behaviors
that are very recognizable, they're very measurable, and
collectively, they create the experience
of parental alienation for the kid and experience of parental alienation for
us. But in a nutshell, it's where one parent
is very intense, intentionally seeking to damage the
relationship between you and your children, which
is different from estrangement. And people often use the word
estrangement. Very different. Estrangement is where you've
done something that has damaged the relationship with a child.
And in ideation, quite often we
end up doing things that actually estranges our kids from us
because we don't understand what's going on and how to deal with it.
But. But for alienation itself, that's very much
the other parent doing this to us.
So maybe if I go back to that. Pre alienation. So,
yeah, pre alienation. This is a new, new idea for me, what to look
for. Yeah, so. So pre alienation
sometimes begins at, like, birth. So it can
be really, really early on. So some of the. The
alienating parents, actually, if I just take
a backward step, the. The people who have a
propensity to alienate, typically
they have some sort of mental health disorder, so
cluster B, narcissism,
bipolar. These are actually
traumatized individuals who
are in their adult life. They're using coping mechanisms
to protect themselves. And those coping mechanisms are
coercion, lying, manipulation,
deceit, delusion. They're all just ways
of protecting themselves. So this kind
of fits in with why they do what they do.
So somebody who this. The pre alienation. So
somebody who, for instance, is stopping the other parent from having a relationship
with the baby, the child, the teen. Quite often
they're doing it because of their own insecurities and their own
need for the relationship with a child, because it's something they didn't have
themselves when they were growing up. Yeah, but
we'll talk about safety as a concept as well because I
think that'd be really helpful to frame alienation.
But pre alienation, you'll begin to see signs where
often the parents, the alienating parent is being derogatory
about us. They'll be presenting us as an inferior
parent, a bad parent, a mean parent, an
uncaring parent, an absent parent.
They'll be stopping us from having an incompetent
parent. An incompetent parent. Yeah, so. But this stuff
is really, really subtle and most people confuse
this with kind of a typical sort of thing in a
relationship that you might expect where one person is being a bit bullying and
a bit derogatory of the other. What's really
going on is more subtle. It is this
creation of the foundations that
one parent is superior, one parent is to be trusted, one
parent is going to be protecting that parent, that child. But often the
alienator is also doing this from a place of fear. Because
the children know if I don't go along with what that bullying
parent is saying or doing, if I don't appease them,
there are going to be consequences. Often I can see some of
those consequences as a child. I can see it in my, my
parent who's been targeted. So the alienated parent.
I can see how they're being, you know, ridiculed and derided
and I don't want to be experiencing that.
It basically sets a foundation for
the full on alienation. And as you say very often,
and these things always come about as catalysts. There's
always something that triggers that shift from kind of
pre alienation into alienation. Sometimes it's the
alienator is getting bored with us. But they, they
don't necessarily want to come out of the relationship so they start having affairs.
But they're also trying to build loyalty with the children thinking,
well, my marriage is coming to an end, so I'm going to make sure that
everybody's aligned with me in advance of that event.
So very often they're planning to exit the relationship with
us. You know, they might say they might be having relationships, other relationships, already
this in advance. And I use the
kind of the analogy of a volcano. So what we
see often when we experience full alienation or
a more prominent alienation is we see this sudden shift in the
kids, but it's not sudden at all. It's been going
on for a very long time. In my case it was a
decade. And that's why I use the volcano Analogy. Because
when you live in the volcano, on the shadow of the volcano, you don't notice
anything until suddenly smoke appears or, you know,
it erupts. But it's been, it's been. That
eruption is as a result of a very long period of pressure
building up. And so. So
suddenly you'll see your kids beginning to turn against you more
overtly. So, like, they'll stop
telling you about their life. They might stop speaking
to you. They might just hide in their rooms. They might not want to go
places with you, especially when you come to that separation and divorce.
Just spending time with you is something that they're
reluctant to do because the alienator is putting so much
pressure on them to not spend that time with you.
Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I,
you know, I. People have asked me over the years, like, what happened? And it's
really hard to go. I don't know, because the chaos didn't
happen in front of me. You know, the storylines
were not told. They were told outside of my presence
behind your back, you know, so you don't even know,
like, well, what did he say? I don't know what he said. Like, it wasn't
in front of me necessarily. You know, nobody will tell you.
Nobody will tell you. And what, what happens as well is that
the. At the point in time that they're preparing for
separation and then going into divorce, they also
start going out to all of our friends and sometimes our family
to the schools. And this is, this is stuff
that we just don't even think of. We're
not that minded in that way. We don't have that sort of approach.
And so they're beginning. They're kind of pre. Alienating the community
around us as well. And family. Community and family. And
they're, they're ruthless. And. And by the time
we become aware of it, it's too late.
And unfortunately, people believe the first story they're told,
not the second story. And it. And when we come along and say that none
of this stuff is true, people don't believe it. It's like, we sound
very defensive. It's. It's like, oh, we've obviously done it.
They've already believed it. And it's very difficult to turn
those opinions around again. Yeah. And we. Look,
I know for me, probably, you know, not stable.
Super. You get super. You're reactive. Like you're.
You just got hit by a bus and you're reacting like that like you've been
in a traffic accident, which, you know, everyone would expect you to act crazy
if they saw what was going on, but this is invisible, so
they don't see it. So you only look crazy. Yeah. Or
unstable, but you're reacting to a real thing. They just
can't see it. And, and also because nobody understands
parental alienation or very few people understand it, for most of us,
we will experience the, you know, the community and the friends and
our family haven't got a clue. And so we
look, we look as if we, we're at fault. And
this is one of the areas I think is particularly hard for women because
the other women around you are very critical and
judgmental about, well, why aren't your kids with you? You must have
done something really bad that they're with the dad rather than with
you. I think women get a much harder time than men do in that respect.
You know, and luckily I didn't have that with women, thankfully.
I mean, that was. So that's. I did have. I did have
some. There's a reason I'm still alive and not, you know, honestly, not
everyone survives this. And that's part of the reason
I, I'm like, man, I. I need to get. Ask Charlie if he will come
on and do this for Christmas. Because if there's
something I can do to reach out, you know, my little part in it,
you know, to reach out to other people, I got to do it.
Absolutely. The. So that the, the
suicide rates is much higher
in, in people who are going through parental alienation. It is
in kind of other parts of the general population, and it's
something like 23 or 25% of people who
go through alienation have suicide ideation. So they consider
suicide as an option. And I would say to everybody in that
position, please don't. Please, please, please
don't. What? Whatever. However hard it seems right
now, you are going to get through it. And anything that
you do to. To yourself, think, think about your
kids. Don't just think about. You think about what, what
you're taking away from your children. And also you're
doing the alienator's job for them if you
do anything like that. Can I just expand
on that as well? Because for parents who are going
through alienation, we tend to go through nine big
emotions. So the first one is grief.
So we're missing the children in our life, and it's a grief which is.
It's a grief of the things we've already lost, the time we've already lost. It's
the time we're currently missing, but
future grief, because we're also grieving for the time that we think we might
lose in the future and it's like a living bereavement for
us. Yes. So we have this great sense of grief
then. Most of the people who go through alienation tend to be quite
empathetic by nature. So with the kind of we
think in completely different ways to the alienator
that that makes us very guilty. And
because we're empathetic by nature, we're very self critical. So we beat ourselves
up about, you know, did I do enough, should I be doing more?
What else can I do in the future? But we're giving ourselves a really hard
time. Then the next one is that we feel
very isolated because the people
around us just don't understand any of this. As we were saying before particular
and we get without criticism from
the people around us as well, which is where the shame comes from, which is
the fourth thing. Then there's powerlessness because anybody
who's dealt with a narcissist, they're very uncompromising people, they're adamant to
hurt us. Anything that we do to try and rebuild the relationship with
the kids or help the kids will be used against us.
So it's like if you give the kid a present, you're bribing them. If you
don't give the kid a present, you're abandoning them.
Then the next one is injustice. So injustice is
at a couple of different levels. There's the injustice, the
legal system, CPS, DCF
all these mechanisms that are there to protect the children don't work
because they don't understand alienation. So we feel a strong sense of
nobody is able to help me and the kids. But it's also
injustice within ourselves because we feel
the kids don't know me as a mum or they don't know me as a
dad. I'm not being given the opportunity
to share my experience, my values, my
worldliness, all the things I thought I was going to be able to
help them with and guide them within their lives. I'm
not being able to do that. So there's a great sense of injustice there.
Then there's anger, which is self explanatory. Then
there's anxiety and fear. I'm going to come back to anxiety in a second. But
fear drives most of these other emotions
because we're in a state of perpetual fear. We're really worried and
this is where the anxiety comes in. It is quite
normal for any parent going through this to
be thinking lots of anxious thoughts about the kid. You know, is the
kid safe? Are they being Fed. Are they in any physical danger? Are
they being, you know, psychologically abused? Are they doing
okay at school? You know, we will have so many different things that
we're anxious about. This is
the, one of the biggest, one of the worst things that you can do as
a parent is spend your time in a state of anxiety
because your, your conscious mind, which is the bit that's, that's
worrying, whatever is going on in your conscious
mind, you give it to your subconscious mind that has got no
filter. And what's also happening, I'll come back to that in a second. What's also
happening is that anything you are thinking, your,
your subconscious mind does not differentiate between
your imagination and real life. So
it experiences, and you experience the
worry about your kid as if it's real.
So you, so if you're basically caught in this, this anxiety loop,
you're, you're going to be emotionally fatigued and drained
as, as a result of you having these constant thoughts. So,
so your conscious mind has a thought of grief or
guilt or shame or isolation that goes down
into your subconscious. Because whatever, whatever you give your subconscious, it's just like
a little computer, it'll work on it for you. And it's got a filter and
it goes. Okay, so Mary, you want me to think about grief, guilt,
fear? Give us a couple of hours, I'll get back to you.
So now it's permeating your dreams. It will wake you up in
your sleep, it'll disturb you while you're at work, or if
you're with friends or you're watching tv, suddenly you're thinking about
grief, guilt, fear again. And because you're thinking about
grief, guilt, fear in your conscious mind, everything in your conscious mind goes into your
subconscious for a second. Go.
And we end up looping all the time. So if, if
you can imagine a marathon race, the,
the alienating parent runs the first hundred yards and they pass you this
baton. And this baton is the grief, the guilt, the fear, the
injustice. And we take that and we start
focusing on that. And then we get into this looping conversation.
And now what's absolutely crazy is we're self
perpetuating. Exactly all the self
harming thoughts that the alienator wants us to
have. Yes, true, which is
bonkers. But there's more. Sorry.
So. So yeah, each of those things that we're
feeling are generally related
to. So it's, it's our experience of grief, it's our unique
version of grief, it's our unique version of guilt, it's our unique version
Of. Of anxiety, whatever those things are. And
most of those actually revert back to old
past memories of. Of us or things that have happened to
us in our past that we're basically
reliving through the experience of alienation.
And this all links to healing. Yeah.
If you were to take an example of. I talk
about triggers a lot. Triggers. Parents will typically
have 50 to 100 different things that trigger them.
And all the trigger is, it's something that's making you feel unsafe.
So it might be seeing another mum with a child the same
age as yours, or it might be watching TV and people playing happy families
where it might be hearing something that reminds you of your ex. But. But
they're all just symptoms of something much, much
deeper. But we also have expectation.
Sorry, take a backwards step. We're empaths for a reason.
We're empaths because most of us didn't receive
enough love, care and support when we were growing up.
And we learned to appease the people around us
so that we would keep safe. That
made us people pleasers. And so we don't like
conflict generally. And we're always trying to fix
the people around us and the situations around us.
This is why when there's excess work and excess stuff to do at work,
we're always the people who stick our hand up, say, I'll fix it. Or you
see a friend who's going through a hard time, I'll fix it. We meet
narcissists, we get married to them, I'll fix it.
We're fixing stuff because that's our defense mechanism.
And then if we think about us as a parent,
we look back to our childhood again and we say, what was the stuff that
was good? What was the stuff that wasn't good? The stuff that wasn't
good. I'm going to make sure that my own kid doesn't go
through this when they're growing up, because it's
normally something that is related to our empathy. So we rejected.
We didn't get enough love, care and attention. So now
we're going through alienation with our kids. So first of all,
we feel really bad for our kid because we're looking at them saying, this
was the last thing that I wanted to have actually happened to you.
So I feel really guilty about that and I might feel a bit grievous about
that as well. But then also, that child, in their
alienating behaviors, is rejecting us. And
now we're feeling rejected, which takes us back to our old
childhood memories, ourselves, of the parents who were Rejecting
us. But we're not aware of that because it's all at a very subconscious level.
But we feel massively threatened.
And in those situations where a child is rejecting us, they need
us to be the strong, resilient, loving parent,
not the parent who's focused on their own issues of rejection
and are caught up in the things that trigger us and make us feel
unsafe. This is why I was saying at the very beginning, parents
don't recognize the importance of their own healing
when it comes to supporting their children.
Yeah, that's all really good. And this was part of,
like, you have a nine step program, right? Did you get to the last one
or did I cut you off? No, no, no. Those were the nine
things. Yes. So the nine step
program is designed to take parents
through what is actually quite a simple
process to help them to reconnect with their kids.
So I start by saying, well,
there is an emotional journey that is parental alienation, looks a lot like
bereavement because it has the same sorts of phases.
So I start by asking parents, where are you at the moment?
And then we begin looking at what are all the things
that are blocking you from moving forwards on that emotional journey.
So it might be you don't want to accept what's happening to your kids right
now because that's just too painful for you. What are the
triggers? So what are the things that upset you? Because that moves you
backwards on that emotional journey. And then what are
your expectation gaps? And basically the
expectation gaps, when our kids are born, we create
all these ideas about what their life is going to be like through to
their mid-20s, mid-30s. A lot of the time, you know, we've mapped
out, you know, their first time they're going to be walking first
schools, proms, college, you know, graduation, all that
stuff. And, and it's. But in our subconscious,
we often don't move on in terms of
aligning the reality of what's really going on with those expectations.
So if we'd expected that we were going to be at, you know, helping our
kids with their prom and we're not involved, that's going to give
us pain. Our expectations and
reality are now out of sync. So it's just
mechanisms that they're mind tricks basically to start understanding
what, what are your pain points as a parent. And
I focus a lot of, a lot of those nine steps is
actually on understanding what are your pain points and
how do we help you to move past them and heal them.
And then the rest of the focus is on what is your child going
through because most children tend to go
through very similar sorts of experiences.
But there's also that everybody's situation is unique. So we
need to look at the dynamic nature of who
you as a parent, who's the alienator? Like as a parent
alienator might have a new partner. They could also be alienating the kid. Their
family might be alienating the kids. Kids might be
alienating the kids. What is the experience that each of
the children is having? Because they have very different experiences.
What is the nature of the child? Some children are more resilient, some children
are less resilient. So you really, you really have to start looking
at the experience the child, child is going through
and, and be able to almost like map it out over a period of time.
We'll say this is what they're going through now. So some people, it'll be
that they're, they're maybe at an early stage of parental alienation,
so they're preparing for what else, you know, how might it get worse? What
can I do that's going to help stop that getting worse?
Other people might be in the thick of it where it's like, okay, well, I'm
more about the healing stage, which my kid. But
in all instances, it's constantly evolving, it's constantly
changing. So we, we have to look
at ourselves as a parent and as a
person and say, my personal healing,
there are things that I need to address so I can go off and do
that. And then there's my, my parenting,
which is where I'm going to have to call constantly, like
evolve and change according to where my kid is at.
So you're almost like a split identity of your parent and,
and person at the same time.
Yeah, well, I think it is very helpful,
you know, to have someone if, because, you know, usually you do
seek out some kind of help. Well, you know,
hopefully, hopefully people do. Yeah. I think, I think the biggest
problem is not enough parents actually do they, they try to
self help, they buy books, there's great books out there. But,
but the books tend to focus on,
they'll, they'll look at narcissism, tons of stuff in narcissism. And
if, and anybody listening to us who doesn't understand narcissism,
go check that out straight away, learn about it.
Right. It's like the rule book of how a narcissist
is going to operate. And yeah, invaluable to you,
but also layering on top of that the dynamics
of the person who is the narcissist.
So you know, with all of our exes, they, they've got their old histories,
they've had trauma in their life. So, so which is the thing
that caused the narcissism. So understand what their particular
pain points and sensitivities so that you can
avoid angering that individual
because if they get angry, they're going to hurt you. And
they've got five key triggers, by the way. They all have
the same five key triggers. The first one is when you
separate, they, they feel that, you know, up until
that point in time there's been a degree of loyalty towards you because their
interests have an element of alignment. But when you do separate, and also
they've seen you as an emotional crutch,
they no longer have any loyalty to you. So
this is why you see a huge shift in the way that
they start alienating the kids when you separate. And also the
thing that alienators like the least is where they don't have control.
So when they separate from you, they don't have control of you anymore. So, so
they try to control you through the alienation.
The second one, anything to do with court, this is a control thing
again, because they find it very difficult to influence
judges. I mean, they'll do everything they can and we've seen them in
action, but what they can't control,
their go to response is, well, if I'm in pain, I'm going to make you
hurt. So they ramp up the alienation.
Yeah. Third one, money.
Anything to do with money. So as empaths, we're all about
relationships with our kids. That's the most important thing in the world for us. Money,
secondary
physical stuff, houses, you know, property,
clothes, cars, furniture. They always want the house, they, they always
want to keep everything. And basically cut out a little
thing that's called us and put that to one side and say, I
want to keep the kids, I want to keep the house, I want to keep
the money, I want to keep everything. But you, you, you, you can go
somewhere else, you know. And
again, if anything that threatens their money, they'll ramp up the alienation.
Fourth one is when you start having a good relationship with your
kids, this is going against what they want. So
they'll ramp up the alienation to try and undermine that,
the progress that you're making. So it'll be one step forward, one step back, one
step forward, one step back. And for a lot of parents, you get
stuck in that routine for years, but hopefully
at some point, and most of us do have this experience, you start making progress
when the kids become more independent. And then the last
one, which many people depending on where they are in the process,
when we go off and we enter into a new relationship ourselves,
that, that can be very threatening to the alienator.
Therefore women alienators. This is
even more threatening than for male alienators. Women
alienators tend to see another mother coming into the lives of their
children as being something that's deeply concerning for them because, you
know, that other woman might develop a good relationship with the children. Child,
you know, and it's not their biological child, but equally
for, for, for many of us, you know, male
partners that, that, that come into the scene or
so where there are male alienators and the, the, the woman
has a new male husband. The
males are very concerned that, you know, this might be a new father figure.
So what they tend to do is they try to destabilize our
relationships. So they'll often create friction by
villainizing the person that we're seeing to make them out to be a bad person.
Anything associated with us is always bad, but they'll villainize that person
or they'll try and do things like create a,
like blackmail. You have to pick or they'll get us as the
aliens parent. We have to pick our child or our partner.
We're not allowed to have both.
Really nasty. What this, the stuff that they do. Oh, it's.
Yeah. And it's, it's, it just can
rain nothing but hell all over your life everywhere
you turn. Yeah. Yeah. And this back
to that point of why it's really important people go and get help. So
you can get books on narcissism, you can get books on alienation.
I would read all these things as well. You can also get some
really helpful materials and support for your, your own healing.
But, but what most people are not so good at is, is
weaving it all together and understanding the dynamics
of how the narcissists are interplaying with your kids
and how that interact is interaction is affecting
your relationship with the kids and how you feel and how you
experience that relationship with the kids. And so that's really
where people like myself step in because we, we
understand dynamics and, and
we can help you to, to understand
why am I going through what I'm going through and how can I experience that
very differently. It's very to large. It's a very mindset
thing. I really help my kids and how
can I help mitigate damage that is being done by the alienator?
Yeah. And then the, you know, there's so many things that can come
into play with society really can
side with the alienator. And they seem to. This is
just society. It seems like whoever has the
power hold, which likely can
be. It can be money or it can be. They're a good storyteller,
can be either one. But they tend to be the one to
win in the social circle, in the,
you know, in the court system. There's too much of that
also, and some of that can get really
dangerous. And I, I do think of like, you know, and
I'm not speaking my own experience in this because it's. First of all, it would
be hard to really speak of your own experience specifically with this kind of situation.
But you hear stories and they, they are, they're
very, they, you know, they, they're
horrifying to me. But of a woman who is, you know, being
maybe being physically abused, financially abused, she can't work.
And maybe there's even like the kids are being
physically or sexually harmed by the, by the
partner, and then the
alienation starts. So it is so critical, I think,
for society and for court systems to go. This can be a life
or death situation easily for both the parent and the child
if you don't get it right. And we have
to get it right. And we have to make sure as a society
we are looking at the, the things we have to look at to go.
This has to be done right for the safety of children and parents.
Like, it has to be done right. It's also, it's also intergenerational.
So, so the societal impact is. Is enormous
because all of the children who are going through this. This
trauma right now, as they grow
up, they can bring a lot of that trauma with them into their own
relationships, their own parental
relationships and their relationships with, you know, their own
children. And, you know, a lot of the
time what, what we see with trauma is, is that people kind of
polarize in terms of the way they respond to trauma. So
a lot of people, so, so people will become narcissistic. So
I become very controlling as a mechanism to keep myself safe,
or I become empathetic, which is I fix everything to
keep safe. And I did talk about
safety. Yeah, yeah. If you want to understand
alienation, one of the best ways is just to look at the lens
of safety. So why people are doing the stuff
they're doing, because either they feel safe or they feel
unsafe. So for somebody who's narcissistic,
that their control mechanisms or their coping
mechanisms, you know, like the controlling, the
manipulation, the lying, the deceit, the coercion all those things,
that's their coping mechanisms to keep
themselves safe. At a deep level. We also find these people
are very immature, so they're emotionally immature. And
they also act like children to infantile because
they're basically little kids in adult bodies
who are finding it very difficult to cope in the world around them.
And what we see often is they. They just takers. They're always take, take, take,
take. They need more, more, more in order to. To kind of fill
up a bottomless pit, a void inside of them,
because these people are never actually happy. They always,
they always have to have more to kind of try and make up for
basically what is an emotional deficiency because they didn't get support
when they were young. Then you get the empaths, or in fact,
let's just start with the kids. Then you get the kids who are being put
under all this pressure by the narcissist
to align with the narcissist, to appease the narcissist, to
kind of keep that narcissist feeling secure. And then
the kids have to put up coping mechanisms themselves. And so the
coping mechanisms will be things like not speaking to us as a
parent, not telling us about our lives, rejecting us,
you know, hiding in their rooms, being rude,
not wanting to observe our boundaries,
a sense of being unsafe with us because we've been told we're a
bad parent. So all the things they're doing are
coping mechanisms to keep themselves safe. And so
we have to learn to look beyond the coping mechanisms and saying,
okay, you're not actually rejecting me. You actually
love me. You do want to have a relationship with me. And I know
it's very hard to hear some of these things when we haven't seen our kids
for a long time, but that's what's really going on within. Within the child.
But they're, they're quoting this loyalty conflict where the pressure of
the loyalty conflict is greater than their. Than their
desire to have a relationship with us. So they protect our. Protect
themselves, not in a relationship with us. Yeah, we
have to know that they do want to do that. And then there's, then there's
the empaths. And as I was saying, our
coping mechanism is give, give, give,
keep everybody around us happy. And most of us in
a family situation with a narcissist, we're like regulators
in that household. We're always trying to keep them on an even keel. We
try to provide a buffer between them and the kids. You know, we're just trying
to keep everything smooth, but from our
perspective, we become quite defenseless. Because
when, when your coping mechanism is. Coping mechanism is give, give,
give, and the other person's coping mechanism is take, take,
take. But they're a bottomless pit. Whatever you
try to do in terms of giving or fixing is never enough.
Most of us get to a point which is a lot of time, we are
the people who eventually seek divorce because
we can't, we can't take it anymore,
where we're perpetually compromising ourselves
in order to satisfy the, these, these
narcissistic needs. Yeah,
I always, I, I use the terminology
of true north. Like, you know, you think,
you know, they're obviously, you know, you fall in love and marry them and start
having kids, so they present as pretty great.
And then over time you're like, what's the true north? And I think true north
to me means their true north is I have to have a
constant source of praise. I have to be praised constantly,
or I have to constantly have attention of some kind. And
so for some people, it can be I need to have all
control of money. And that's their true north. Some of them might.
It might be sex, and that's their true north,
but they have a true north that is somehow centered
around attention on them, it coming to them and
controlling their circumstances and people around them
to get that true north met. Yeah,
I think that's a really good way of putting it. Yeah.
Yeah. So. And until you understand what their true. Once you
understand what the true north is, all the pieces, it goes, oh, that all makes
sense then. That's why they make that decision.
Yeah, this is why, you know, like, if
pity is a true north and they don't care if the kids suffer,
they don't care. They don't care. And I think that's one of the hardest things
for an empath to, to understand because our,
the way that we think is the polar opposite to how
a narcissist thinks. Literally can't
comprehend why they're doing the stuff they're doing.
And our very nature is to try and entreat them to be, you
know, sensible, to be sympathetic
to the needs of the children. And they, they just
don't have any of it, that they will not compromise.
I mean, they can fake it. That's. That's the one thing in society
they can appear to be caring.
And then the love bombing, I think, is, you know, can be part of
it if there's a, you know, they just tell everyone it's. They're in the best
and, you know, they're gonna, they're gonna say that they're the ones who has the
best interest of the kids and they're the ones who are doing X, Y and
Z. And I'm, you know, always doing all these good things. Yeah.
And they're gonna, they're going to make sure that. And then the
projections that they will project whatever they are onto you,
the negative traits. So I mean that,
that projection is the best truth.
It's a truth serum. It is being projected
on the other parent or the other person is.
They're telling the truth about who they know they are.
Yeah. Well, they, they're basically telling you what they're up to. That
all the things they're accusing you of doing is, is, is the
stuff that, it's like they're quite remarkable in this regard.
If they're accusing you of having an affair, that's because
they're, they're sleeping with somebody. If they're accusing you of
hiding money, they're hiding money. And it's really
helpful but unfortunately most of us learn this too late. But
it's really helpful once you realize that all the things you're being accused of is
the very thing they're doing. So go try to root out what they're actually
doing. Yeah. Because they're tell. I mean it is. They are
telling you. That is. I don't know why what in psychology it. That
is. But anyone who's hiding is going to be
projecting what they're doing onto you. Absolutely. I
mean again, this is where the books on, on narcissism are really helpful
because it gives you such an advantage or it gives you
not an advantage, but it gives you a much better level of understanding
about dealing with. But I would also say with narcissists,
be really careful about what I call prodding the bear.
Because if you do something to hurt a narcissist, and this is
why the five triggers were so important, if you do something to nuts,
they will do stuff back to you to, to try
and hurt you. So a lot of the time you need to be
careful about how you tackle
narcissist. You know, you want to be firm, but you
want to be fair. A lot of time having as limited contact with them as
possible is much the best thing. But they're
also used to you being a certain person in the relationship. And a
lot of time we've been way too compromising. And what, what we have
to learn as empaths
is to basically be much stronger, more resilient.
Start rebuilding us our self confidence once More our
sense of self worth and stop fixing
stuff. Because one of the things that is our Achilles heel
is seeing our kids in a position of discomfort
because we feel deeply,
we feel scared basically when we see our kids being
uncomfortable. Because that's our coping mechanism. If I go fix it,
everything will be all right again. So we have to learn with an alienator kid.
Okay, this is an acceptable, although we don't want it
to be acceptable. This is, this is how it is right now.
My kid is going through this right now. It's not actually about
me. It's about their experience. And what we're doing all the
time is we take a kid who's,
who's rejecting us. So I always, I use this analogy as
a parent. We should be focused 100 on our kid. So if our kid is
there in their universe, two universes, us and the kid
we need to be focused on. What do they need from me at this point
in time? I don't care about them. You know, I'll look beyond their
coping mechanisms. I understand what they're experiencing.
So I'm going to give them the love, the care, the support, support that they
need in this moment. But what tends to happen instead
of us being able to focus 100 on the kid is the kids do
things trigger us. And, and these old insecurities and
vulnerabilities that we have from our past get brought to life
again. And we put our old insecurities
around what's going on with the kid. So
path because we got rejected to some degree and now
we're bringing our old rejection into the present
with the kid rejecting us. And we're tying those two things together. They
don't fit together. So in our healing, we have to
learn to deal with our insecurities.
Let all those things go when we can. Now
we can focus. We can really focus 100 on the kid
because we're not getting triggered. We're not getting upset set. We're no longer
associating the child's behavior with us
as a person because those things are, they're not actually
linked. Yeah. And I, you know, I
certainly would say for anyone who's experiencing this to have the
support of someone who's a trauma informed therapist or
working with someone like you, Charlie, that, that really understands.
It or do the two together. So a lot of the time,
yeah, I mean I'm a, I'm a coach, so
I'm, I'm not a qualified trauma therapist.
Okay. And, and I specifically didn't go
off to qualify as a psychologist. Because the
bit that I was most interested in is not recognized by the
psychologists, which is parental alienation. So I've read
tons of stuff and, and very qualified without
the letters. But what I would encourage people to do is, is
yet work with. With people who do have.
Who are very good at trauma. But this is the. But a
lot of the time those, those therapists don't understand
alienation. And this is the gap
because they're trying to heal a more generalized
trauma as opposed to something that is very
specific to alienation, which is the stuff that I can help with. So it's
very complimentary having, having both
parties work together on people saying, oh, I'm in therapy, should I stop the
therapy? I will say, no, keep it going. Yeah, work with me on the
stuff that I'm expert in. Work with them on the stuff they're expert
in. Yeah, well, and I can say the stuff that you experience when you're
going through this is, is. It is
possibly more traumatizing the reactions you get from
family and friends or, you know, people that you're trying to. Because
you need help. But then the advice they come back with is
so not helpful and a little bit arrogant,
but they're trying. So good people are trying. And then there's other people
that come back with advice that aren't trying to. And this is my.
And I do want to talk because my. One of my experiences was that
while I was going through this, such the target.
And this is like a smear campaign. Whole community, whole
family. I'm the target, right, of a, Of a massive smear
campaign that I don't understand because I'm not even being told what. What people
are being told about me. So I don't even know how to. What to say
because I don't even know what the. What's being said. But there were.
So I was trying to find new new community, right?
And in doing so,
wounded people will come to you as a friend
because they know they can throw their crap at you and
you're already a target. So then it escalates. And I had that
happen. And thankfully I had a few super. A couple super stable
friends who, who work with
extreme people who've been extremely, you know,
in extreme situations. You know, one
prosecutes murders, for example, so like, wow, you know, and another
one has lived through the. The stuff that is unimaginable. So,
like, I had two people really, who did understand trauma, even though
they didn't understand this. Go, you need to stop. You need to stop
collecting these people. That are hurting you. There is something
in that energy where it just seems like,
like you're, you're bleeding in the water and you're looking for
help and people, sharks that. Sharks
who look like good people are coming. Yeah, they all
come. They all come out. Yeah. And that was, it was, it's interesting to me
because I had never had that experience. That was the only time in my life
where I was the bleeding person in the water with sharks swimming around me
was at that point. Right. Super post
divorce. It's really interesting as well because in.
And I think everything that you said is a really good point for parents to
be aware of. I also think that a lot of people
do try to be supportive, but
they're coming at it from the lens of their own experience,
normal family life. So that it's a
bit like somebody from, you know, Earth trying to give somebody on
Mars advice on how to live on Mars. Because, well, it must be the same
on Mars as it on Earth. No, it's completely different.
So they're well intentioned. But also what happens is
that the, this is where bereavement comes back
in. I use that as an example when, when we, when
somebody close to us suffers, you know, somebody close to us dies.
The world around us and our family
understands what we're going through. They know how to support us. They know
when to support us, what to do and how to be helpful.
Alienation is the opposite, polar opposite of bereavement.
Insofar as nobody understands what you're going
through. Instead of having a community of
support around you, you're very isolated. And it,
it gets worse because you then have to be, you have to become the person
that helps your children to heal.
You have to be the person that helps your own family to heal.
You have to be the person that helps your partner to heal.
And so you have to be so resilient
as a person and as a parent that. Well,
under attack. Yeah. While under attack from,
from, from all these people. And it's a really,
it's a tough gig. It's probably the toughest thing that any of us
will go through. But there is, there is a plus
for, there's a couple of pluses from all of this.
One of them is you. If you do the sort of things that I would
advocate and other people who have the same sort of opinion that I have,
you become really resilient. You become far
stronger as a result of this experience than when you went into
it. And that, that helps you as a person.
It will literally Transform your life if, if you, if you do the things
that will be beneficial for you in your healing process
so that you come out of this better
off than when you went in, and hopefully you'll have your kids back as well.
Within yourself, you're now very different. The
other thing that it teaches you is love
at a completely different level, because
love is something that when you're in a normal family situation, it's really
easy to love the kids because, well, even when they're
teenagers, it's still pretty easy to love them. But
nobody's in this, like, very conflictual position
child that's rejecting you. Learning to love a child that
is pushing you away all the time is really hard. And
something that we spoke briefly about before, which
we have experience of, is going no contact
with a child where you are the person who initiates
that, because that's something I had to do with
one of my kids because I could see, see the damage that was being done
to our relationship and, and how difficult it
was for her to spend time with me. And so
I decided to. I said. I literally said to her, okay, we're going to take
a holiday, is how I, How I framed it. We're going to take a holiday
from each other. We're just gonna have some space, some time between us
and just give. Give ourselves an opportunity to, to
kind of heal a little bit before we. We're back in each other's lives.
I had no idea how long that period was going to last. That was two
years before we started having contact again.
That was done from a place of, of love,
not fear. And so we learn this whole new
dimension of love. And the other thing that we learned at a whole new dimension
is compassion. Compassion for
our child, empathy for our, for our child, you know, to be able
to not look at the behaviors they're exhibiting, but to
understand you're only doing this because you're keeping safe.
So I'm going to give you that compassion. I'm going to give you that love.
I'm going to give you that support because I recognize what you're going
through. That's ultimately how we
win the kids back is through that love and compassion.
And I think the, the hardest part about that is that
there, I guess maybe it would be like a Stockholm syndrome or something like that,
is that you can experience. Well, there's more than one hard part about that,
but you can experience, like, the abuse of,
you know, an ex through the kids. All of a sudden, they're just
saying exactly what you were trying to escape.
Yeah, I mean I think that's definitely. Your mouth and that's, that's a surreal experience.
Experience. Yeah, it's called, it's called enmeshment. And, and
so that's basically where they start parroting what they've
adopted. The perspective of that parent, you know,
their worldly view that parents ideas about
you, you know, how they think about you and they start using their own
terminology. And you often see this with really young
kids as well that you know, sub 10 years old
just acting like a mini me version of, of the parent
who's alienating them. And it's very distressing for us because
we've been traumatized already by alienating
parent and now we're getting re traumatized
or additionally further traumatized by our kid acting
as, as that person. And also the kids are
encouraged to psychologically abuse us as well. Well,
which can cause all kinds of, you know, talk about they
could develop the cluster B, you know. Yeah.
Like it is so damaging. And this is in, you know, in part why it's
like if in society if there's a way to step in as this is
happening, it could prevent so much stuff
and it's hard to recognize I think but it's all treatable.
I mean there's been quite. I don't know
if there's been a rise in narcissism that some of the statistics would indicate that
there has been a rise in narcissism. I'm just think maybe it's becoming
more understood. But yeah,
trauma, it can be treated. The problem is that the narcissists
don't go off and get the treatment because they don't want to face
the trauma which is why they're doing the very actions they're doing.
Yeah, yeah. It just seems like it's been said that they're not
treatable because of how the. How it is but which
is EMDR. Works really well with narcissists. What's
that? Emdr. So it's like a
tapping association. Well, I was going to recommend EMDR too
just for like that's one of the things I did. And I
was thinking, you know, like if you're going to get counseling when you're
going through stuff, I have recommended to
people to seek a counselor who can do emdr.
And part of that is just because I've my some experience.
I just feel like I've wasted money with people who aren't helpful. But if
they do mdr, the EMDR does the work. Because
you're saying EMDR actually helps narcissism. Yeah.
Yeah. So there are people who work in this stuff called
attachment therapy theory, which is incredibly good at really
diagnosing what's really going on in people's behaviors and how it
fits back to childhood experiences.
And they, they talk about EMDR being very effective.
Something up and God, there's so much we can talk about. Mary. Something
else is often associated with alienation is
diagnosis of autism and adhd.
And this is not genuine autism. This is
the child's reactions, coping mechanisms of
dealing with parental alienation. And we
also see other things like children acting in a very infantile
way, literally regressing with their mental age
as a mechanism to have to kind of move away from having any
responsibilities and acting more childlike so they don't have to deal
with the pressures that are being put upon them. A lot of the stuff that
alienators do because it's, it is a loyalty conflict.
They, they do things like, they put them, they give them false choices.
So they'll say to the child, you decide if you're going to go and
see your mom, you know, today or tomorrow, or you decide if you're going to
respond to the, to, you know, a text or a letter or an email, or
you decide if you're going to accept that present. And what, what they're doing is
that, that's coercion and it's psychological abuse because the
child shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but instead what,
what the parents doing is they're giving them that authority, but, but
they're not giving them actual choice. So I call it false choice because they
don't have options. It's like, well, you decide if you're going to see your mom
or not. Well, the child knows that the answer has got to be, well, I'm
not going to, I'm not going to see my mom because that's going to my
dad. And then it legitimizes the, the father or the
alienator to turn around to you and the courts and everybody else and
say, well, I asked them and I gave them the choice. And they said they
don't want to go and see you, and I can't force them. And there's, there's
so many different ways that they manipulate the kids.
Yeah. And it's, you know, all of them. We, we have,
we have the rule book. We can walk, you know, I can literally walk a
parent through all the things an alienator will try and
you can do. That works to help to kind of get your child
Back. And also the things that doesn't work because we
make lots of mistakes. There's loads of bear traps out there and it's very.
It's very counterintuitive. Yeah. And everyone, you know,
I don't know that, you know, there is a lot of great options.
It seems like from what I was, you know,
discovered and that my situation isn't everyone's situation, of course, but
it just didn't seem like there was a good option.
And in part, it's because no matter what you do, there's going to
be something said. Negative. Yeah.
So if, like, I need space, so you give them space, then you're.
Then you don't care about them and you don't love them.
If you, if you're, you know, trying to be in communication
and, you know, trying to call every day or text every day,
then you're desperate and just don't accept
boundaries. Yeah. So no matter, no matter
what you do there, they will
frame it in a way where you're a bad person.
Yeah. And you're the controlling person. Yeah.
You've segued beautifully into counterintuitive and bear
traps because that's a really good example. When.
When we're experiencing alienation and our child is beginning to reject
us, our fear kicks in because we're thinking, I'm losing the
relationship with my child. So what do we do? We inundate them
with telephone calls, with text messages, with
emails, and the kid is withdrawing
because of the pressure being put on them in this loyalty conflict to
not have the contact with you. So this is where you can actually end up
estranging your kid because sending too many
text messages, you know, and we often say things
like, I miss you, I miss you. Guilt trips. The kids,
I love you is fine, but I'm
always advocating to parents, you know, dial down the amount of
communication that you're sending off to your kid because you're actually
pushing them away from you. And it's counterintuitive because you think, no,
no, no, no, I must increase the level of communication. No,
it doesn't work that way. It. When you decrease the level of
communication, the message you're giving to the kid is, I love
you, I'm there for you. My door is always open for you. You don't have
to say those words. They'll know that from the communication. But also if you send,
you know, if you're no communication with your kid, texting them once a week or
once every two weeks is sufficient. It lets them know you're still there.
If you. They're no contact with you because they
feel they can't have the relationship with you right now. So if,
if you text them every day, they're going to block you.
Because I think I can't cope with this person. I can't cope with the pressure
they're putting me under. They don't, they don't understand my position
because we don't. Because we're not looking at that position. We haven't
experienced it. So, I mean, you know, I haven't. So, I
mean, it's, it's. And it's surreal. Like, at the time, I hadn't known
anyone who'd experienced it. I didn't even know what was happening. I
couldn't have known too, that this was a thing that existed.
Yeah, yeah. And again, I think, I think most people come into
parental alienation. They have no idea they're experiencing it. There
isn't education and awareness out there that, I mean, you,
you stumble across it in most instances and you suddenly go,
oh, wow. So this is the thing I've been going through. This is real.
There's, there's, you know, 22 million people in the US
alone affected by this. That's the kids, the parents, the families.
You know, it's 6 to 8% of the populations of most Western countries. And it's
exactly the same experience in Australia and Europe as it is
in the U.S. canada. It's. It's the same stuff
everywhere, you know, India, the Arab states. And I help parents
all over the world through zoom because it's the same stuff. The
legal systems are slightly different and they're completely ineffective
everywhere. Well, there's a couple of places that are
a little bit better, but generally speaking, they're very ineffective. And
that's part of the challenge. We feel very isolated and alone to deal with
this by ourselves, which is why it's so important to have
the tools to have every means possible
available to us to, to help our
kids, to heal and reconnect with them.
Yeah, it is, man. There's so much to it. And, you
know, also, the thing about this that I just feel like the society
in general would. Might help with understanding
is that when you're being psychologic, like as an adult. Right. So
this is. Does fall in the realm of psychological abuse.
And like, you're, you're not yourself,
like, and I, I really. I almost would love to see some studies
maybe, if, you know, if there's any been done. But, like, I'm like, your brain
doesn't work right? Like brain doesn't work the same.
You can't, it's like you're, it's not, it's like the way
I took care of things prior to this. I feel like
I'm still trying to find my way back to where my brain can manage
some of the things, things in my life that I
managed before. Yeah. This is why your own
healing is so important. Because you, you, you
reach a point where you're very vulnerable, you're very self doubting,
your confidence has been shot to hell. Your self
worthiness is, is very low as well. And your
coping mechanisms are all about fix, fix, fix, fix, fix. And you're
finding I can't fix stuff. And, and so the very, very.
Your empathetic nature is actually working against you
in your healing process. Because the focus is outside of,
inside of you. Yeah. What you need to be working on
is your self confidence, you know, letting go
of self doubt, rebuilding your self worth.
That is the stuff that will help you with your kids and letting go of
fear. Because your kids need you to be the strong,
resilient parent. They need you to be a parent. And what we
end up being is very needy individuals who are scared
because power all transfers to the kid and it,
and the kid loses a parent and we have to get back to
being confident. And this is why this hope is so important.
Know in your heart that you're going to reunite with your kid. Doesn't matter
how long it's going to take. Sometimes it can be a very long period. Know
in your heart you're going to, you're going to reunite with them because
you think differently, you act differently. When
you've got that mindset, if you're coming from a place of
fear, your relationship with your child will
constantly be strained. Person who's
doing that, this is the, this is the counterintuitive, absolutely
crazy stuff. The person who's doing that is you. It's
us. We, we are creating the problem at that point in time.
Yeah.
Well, I think with me, like, you know, I had been on healing journey for
a very long time. So it's like before the worst of it went, I mean,
but it kept escalating. So you know, I had
done some, you know, detox for the physical. I had
Lyme' disease and, and, and then, you know, all the
different things with that and then there was emotional components to that.
So doing all that healing work and then, you know, kind of
starting a creative career out of that and just the thought of
everyone's going to be so excited. But then it turned into,
nope, everyone is not going to be excited,
you know, to, you know, it's just like, you know, you think, you think after
supporting your family for so long, they're going to just have this
joy, joy come back to you that
you do that, you know, that's not what it was. And then I did
hire someone, you know, kind of post divorce to come in
and really just do a complete reset, which is very effective.
But then the full alienation happened after that. Right.
So it's like I had like been very
proactive in healing work. Yeah.
And it didn't, it didn't,
didn't. I don't know how you say didn't fix it, didn't stop
it, but the engine
kept rolling. We, it's a lifetime
mission that we're on. I mean, I,
I'm, I think I did a huge amount of healing work early
on, but I'm still, I'm still working on stuff. I,
I use my, my kids as my teacher. I use everybody
because basically everybody around you in this world is just reflecting
back to you how you're experiencing the world.
And so when your kids say something that is triggering for you or you feel
bad about your kids, that's a little indicator to, to
us to say, okay, there's something that I'm still feeling a bit insecure and
vulnerable about. Right. I need to go off and fix that. And then it
becoming an issue for us. So we should be thankful
in many ways when, when our kids help us to understand.
Okay, that's something that I need to address on my healing journey.
People around us, family, you know, if, if any, anytime we
feel sensitive or insecure, that's a little tap on
the shoulder saying, there you go, there's another one. Go off and fix that one.
And it's like, we'll be doing that for the rest of our lives.
And I do think it's also real critical to go, you don't have to take
everyone's advice. No. For how to heal because most
of, most of it's going to be kind of bad advice and a lot of.
It is down to their own personal experience rather than, than something
that works for a much broader audience. Yeah.
And I always, I am really curious on your opinion. So let's,
let's like step outside to that next circle of people who
are in family members or community
or a counselor, someone in
the, you know, the religious circle, anyone in the community
that they see someone and it's like,
you know, what, what are the signs they look for and how might they step
in to help. And as an example, I would go back and
say before I knew what alienation was, I had an
experience where I was at my kids school and a dad
and his new wife or girlfriend or something just
approached me. I never talked to them before, but they said, yeah,
we're, we're, you know, these, you know, kids, parents. And just
lit into the mom. Now I knew the mom
and it was an interesting thing about, in the, in the, the new
woman was going, and she's crazy. She's crazy like
that. I mean really, it was a very animated
about how crazy the mom was. And I didn't know any of the
terminology, anything, but I'm like, this doesn't feel good.
Like I don't like them. And then I went to the mom
afterwards and I said, like, you know, what's going on? And she's.
And she was just puny. You know, just
emotionally, physically, then even puny. And
it's like he won't stop with, you know, the lawsuits
and I think I'm going to lose him because I don't have the money to
keep finding the lawsuits for financial bullying.
Yeah. So the financial thing there. And you know,
this was, this was in, it was a Christian school. So this stuff, it doesn't
like you being in a religious institution or in a
religion does not prevent it. Sometimes it can make it
harder for people to even see it, which is very frustrating to me.
Yeah, it's it that, that happens all the time again.
It's, it's the lens that people see through.
Then give advice. I will need to
disappear in a couple of minutes. I have another call. Okay.
I'm really sorry that the time passes incredibly quickly when we're talking about this.
Should we just very quickly, in the two minutes available, just talk about Christmas. Because
let's do it. This is something that is, this
is the hardest time of year for many parents and
especially for parents who are going through this, you know, if it's their first Christmas
without having your child. And I would strongly
advocate, please, please, please do not spend Christmas by yourself.
Make sure that you're with family,
that you're with friends, you're with other people. Keep yourself
occupied and try to remember
that, yes, this is not how
you want it to be, but this is one Christmas closer
to being with your kids again.
Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah. And it is such a hard
time, such a hard day. It, it is. And
part of the problem is we make too big a thing of it. We do
too big a thing of birthdays. We make too. Too big a thing of Thanksgiving.
We make two bigger thing of Christmas. It's another day.
And for the alienators, they always want to control those days,
so they will go out of their way to make it impossible for you to
have the kids on those days. Yeah. Oh, they. Yeah,
they. Yeah. And with love,
give your kids that the peace give, you know,
a lot of the time. Yes. Always fight for your kids, but also
be. Be careful so that you don't do things that causes more
problem for the kids. Because sometimes when you're fighting for those special days,
you're actually ramping up the pressure and you're doing the thing that's going to be
worse for the kids. So with love in your heart, give them some space.
Allow them to not have to see you
if that's going to be better for them, and try and see it that way
rather than. I'm losing out and this is unfair and
this is not right. You know, this is. I say you learn a lot about
love. Yeah. This experience.
Yeah, for sure. Well, we are sending love to
anyone who is in the. The thick of it, in the
beginning of it, in the confused state of it,
or. Yeah.
But, Mary, I'd love to come back and do more with you in the future.
For parents, I'd love to help, but apologies, I do need to box.
I have another call I need to jump onto. But, yeah, for all
parents out there. I hope. I hope you can get through this
period knowing that this is all going to be okay.
Thank you, Charlie. I appreciate you so much for coming on. And
Merry Christmas to you and your family and to
all of your clients. Yes. Who's
going through this. Yeah. For sure. All right. Thank you, Charlie.
Okay. Thank you, Mary. Yep. I want to thank Charlie for coming on. Thank
you so much, Charlie. And since I was like, I started losing it a little
bit. This is a very personal podcast. I do want to say for people
who. You have these people in your life who are going through something you
don't understand. You haven't had that experience, whether it's this
topic of parental alienation or something else. I know my experience
has been it is very hard to get advice. It's just not
helpful. And usually people. You just see the world through the lens
of what you've experienced. So if you have not. If you have
specifically experienced something that that person is
going through and you have some things in a compassionate,
understanding way to share, that's when you share. If you have not
left Lived through it. Don't give advice
and saying things like have you forgiven in the, in the Christian community. I just
feel like no one should say that anymore because you're not
understanding the totality of the,
of the nervous system and what goes on in the nervous system
and the, even the brain function that can go down from
that and all the different things. Like people will forget memories
even for 20 years. How would they don't even remember what they're supposed to
be forgiving. So that's. There's different things that people are saying
that actually cause a lot more harm than help. Just get over it. Just get
through it. Well, at least you have one. Some kids.
Well, have you ever thought of like, you know,
there's. It's, it's. It's not helpful. What is helpful
and it's very helpful is your presence. So. So in this
season of presenys with a T. Presence with a, you know, the CE
at the end, just being available, being
an active listener, which means things like you're hearing
it and like you're thinking. That's not
something. I just can't even quite understand that. But that sounds
awful. Should we make
cookies? I don't know. You know, but not
all the time will someone, you know have the energy to
engage with people. But they do need people. People living through
hard things need people around them. And just
the whole, the whole action of presence
and compassionate listening, which means you're not going to have an answer,
but you can see your, your availability and your
willingness to be in their life will be what they need. So
Merry Christmas. And I know this is not for some
people, it's a beautiful Christmas. Some is a struggle, but
just want you to know you are seen and
hopefully someone is listening to and hearing you. So
see you next time.