1.4 What is the Impact - Parental Alienation

What does it do to a person to go through this? Amy BAKER interviewed 40 adults who self-identified as having gone through this when they were a child. ¹

The loss of a parent causes lifelong difficulties for both the children and the parents. ²

There are short term and long term effects of Parental Alienation. ²

Divorce fractures families but parental alienation should not be allowed to fracture children. ³

Impact on the Alienated Child

The poor child is caught in the middle and ends up in this horrible situation of feeling that he has to choose. ⁴

It is difficult to describe the poisoning of the child’s mind and the punishing of their soul that goes hand in hand with parental alienation. ³

We absolutely know that not having a parent meaningfully in the child’s life portends for huge short and long term negative consequences. ⁵ It’s fairly settled science that exposure to alienation is associated with bad outcomes for these kids through adulthood. ¹

The later adults say it was a really profound interference in the course of their life. None of the interviewed adults said, “Well, it wasn’t that big a deal, it hurt for a while, but then I got used to it.” ¹

When you put somebody in a cult for 10 years, then this cult person “stays at the same age”. They learn no life skills. It’s sort of the same for many alienated kids. ¹

Once the alienation becomes entrenched, it’s extremely difficult to create change. ²

Short Term

For children it’s a very vulnerable time. Toxic stress exposure, whether it’s physical, sexual or psychological abuse, is very damaging to their developing brain. And we know from research in other areas of child abuse, that it affects exactly the functioning. The children grow up, but their brain is not even developing fully to be able to process and think about the world in as rational ways as other people. Because their brain is essentially being damaged by this abuse.
And it’s through that toxic stress exposure that children are living with an alienating parent who’s very abusive. They are controlling their behaviors, their feelings and the way that they see the world. And so the child is essentially very dependent on this person for everything. ⁶

Children are smart. They learn very quickly who has the power over their lives and who can inflict pain and suffering. If they don’t meet the expectations of the alienating parent, as we are seeing, such situations can get very complex. ²

The little child feels relieved to have won the alienating parent’s favour. ³

There are clear indications when a child is just refusing contact at all, like no communication, refuses to go there, that the child has so severely split psychologically. They’ve cut off all that support and everything. And that’s an indication that this child needs serious intervention, because the damage of that long term is really bad. ⁶

And one of the problems about alienation is that we don’t readily see the impact on the child in the here and now. What we see is the impact of the child much further down the line. What we see in a child who becomes alienated, who chooses to use the, and I say ‘chooses’ in inverted commas, the defense mechanism of psychological splitting is that because they have adopted splitting that part of themselves and their experience which they cannot reconcile any longer because of the circumstances that they’re in is split off and hidden from them. ⁷

Very often children are incapable of being able to hold together two conflicting thoughts. Now in psychological terms splitting is a perfectly normal developmental thing to do. So very small infants, when they’re confronted with a world that’s full of very different sensations, that feel overwhelming, will begin to split those different sensations into good sensations and bad sensations.
And even more than that, they will split people into two parts. Melanie Klein talks about the infant who is unable to be able to reconcile the fact that mother who is present and nurturing is also the same mother who is absent and therefore persecutory. And in its early developmental stages, the child will conceptualize the mother as being two separate objects, the good mother and the bad mother, but over time, begins to learn how to integrate that and find ambivalence so that the mother is a single figure that contains both bad and good. ⁸

Now, in cases where alienation takes hold in a child, the child returns to that pathological splitting. And what they’re effectively doing is splitting part of themselves. They feel compelled to reject one of their parents by a parent who is applying pressure to them. And of course, that’s the most unnatural thing for them to do. You end up with one parent being the embodiment of everything that’s good and the other parent of being everything that is bad. But that really is a projection of the child’s inner fragmented self. ⁸

Children can’t tell anybody about the love they feel for the alienated parent other than their teddy. Because if they do, they fear the loss of the alienating parent who has a point that being the only parent that matters. ³

They start to repress the instinct to love a parent and cut off half of themselves. ⁵

It seems to be some type of a coping mechanism or survival strategy. ⁹

It is affecting ¹

their sense of who they are
how they feel about themselves
how they feel about the world

The child loses ⁹ ³

his or her identity
sense of self individuality
independence
autonomy
critical reasoning skills
independence of thinking
and other important characteristics

This is very, very bad for a child. It’s even worse if you realize that the primary problem is a very severe boundary violation. The parent has obliterated the normal, healthy, interpersonal boundaries that should exist between a parent and a child – obliterated or erased those boundaries. The child grows up not understanding normal boundaries, which is a huge problem in itself. ⁹

No matter how confused a child may be about what’s going on with their parents, there is one thing they will know for certain and that is “Hate equals Love” and “The more they hate the other parent, the more they secure the love of the alienating parent“. ³

The child wants to say something to the other parent, anything, “Mom/Dad, thanks for not giving up on me, I’m okay.” But he/she knows that he/she can’t because the wrath of his/her alienating parent should he/she show an ounce of love or compassion for the other parent. Well, that is a fight he/she has long since lost. ³

The little child feels the guilt because he/she knows somewhere inside what he/she has said is a lie. But who would listen anyway now they told the “truth”? ³

The child suffers in silence and feels deserving of suffering and silence. ³

Long Term

Children consider both parents important for their identity. And when they’re led to believe that one part of their identity is bad or doesn’t love them, this has disastrous consequences for their development. Many alienated children ¹⁰ ²

develop psychological disorders
suffer academic decline / have challenges in or drop out of school
experience more unemployment
have an inability to develop healthy relationships themselves
get involved with drugs
participate in more criminal / illegal activities
engage in risky sexual activity
many are suicidal

The more exposure to parental alienation strategies, the more likely the kids are to grow up to ¹ ⁵ ²

have more problems in the area of health
have issues with depression
have issues with anxiety
have poor relationships / difficulties forming peer relationships
have higher divorce rates following in the footsteps of their parents.
have more issues around social adjustment
be stuck developmentally in their life
have issues with trust

It is affecting ¹

profoundly their sense of who they are
how they feel about themselves
how they feel about the world
their ability to get along with other people
their ability to be self-sufficient adults
their ability to ultimately separate from the favored parent who was smothering them and interrupting their development

The alienated children ¹ ⁵

are not happy and confident
stay dependent (are not separate people)
don’t learn critical thinking skills
don’t learn how to navigate interpersonal conflict
don’t learn how to resolve things in a mutually respectful way
don’t learn good values of forgiveness, generosity and compassion
threaten to kill themselves
run away
self-harm

If a child believes the false story that they’ve been sexually abused by their parent, they are at the same risk potential for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as if it actually had happened. ⁵

We have studies about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) in which parental dysfunction like mental illness of a parent (e.g. cluster B personality disorder) will show that there is a permanent restructuring of the child’s brain from these experiences for the negative like not making connections for empathy. ⁵

having empathy is the basis of being law-abiding
not having empathy is the basis of sociopathy, antisocial personality disorder

We know what happens when you’re living with a personality disorder. A borderline has a much higher suicide rate than the general population. This is being modelled for the children. A child being raised by a borderline has a greatly increased risk to becoming borderlines themselves. It’s no accident that so many of these children are threatening suicide. (Linda GOTTLIEB, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWuqahNnZAU))

As the years go by, the child becomes more and more distant and withdrawn from one parent having sided with the alienating parent because of the ongoing campaign of continuing hatred and denigration toward the target parent. ²

It’s hard to stop when kids are at a severe level. They’re often very resistant. It’s just like when you take that person out of a cult, it takes them many years to kind of finally separate from that and recognize the abuse that had happened. Because that cult leader is still in their head, they’re still thinking they’re still part of them. Just like the alienating parent is still influencing how they see the world and it takes a long time to separate from them. ⁶

There are so many wounded who walk around with this guilt because somewhere inside they know what has happened is a lie and they know the truth. ³

There may come a time where she/he may feel such a hole in her/his soul and she/he may try to fill it with something anything to soothe the sadness, the soreness, the guilt, the hate that has been injected into her/him. It would not be a surprise if this hate and void in her/his life sets foundation for her/him to doubt her/himself. Or her/his distorted perceptions of relationships may set the stage for her/him to have unfulfilled and possibly abusive relationships the rest of her/his life. Or her/his invisible wounds lay the foundation for anxiety and depression. Or her/his resounding theme in life that love equals hate will become her/his own internal tug-of-war. ³

Parental alienation does not just impact parents and child it impacts families by eliminating themselves from one another forever. These children don’t just lose a parent. They loose brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. ³

We in the outside world cannot see that. If the child’s leg were broken, and the cause of that broken leg were one of their parents, we would all readily be able to say, This is a problem, and we have to intervene. But because the child has split their mind as a defense, caused by one parent and we can’t see it, we let it be. Culturally, society-wise, we’ve allowed this to happen decade after decade. And what we have now are adult children who are alienated, who suffered psychological splitting in their childhood, who are struggling, and who are facing all of the consequences of having made that awful choice in the post-separation landscape in their childhood. ⁷

For a child to reject a parent is not just about the dreadfulness of murdering a parent who is still alive and saying, I no longer want to have you in my consciousness. It’s about the way that that child has murdered part of themselves and has then been forced to live with it. And it’s only when that child comes into their young adulthood that perhaps the gravest consequences of what they’ve been forced to do really starts to come to light. ⁷

The most severe consequences of having rejected a parent and not having received help are seen when children come to transition points in their lives. They find it very difficult to trust the inner self because the inner self is fractured and broken. Sometimes they will say to me that they feel as if they’re living with a ghost a part of themselves that they don’t have any access to. ⁷

Sometimes they will spend a great deal of time trying to work out how to relate to other people but failing to do that because they have internalized a hero and villain narrative. Someone is very, very wonderful, and then very, very bad. ⁷

And what many children say when they come into therapy is that their sense of authenticity is not available to them. I want to feel wholly me, but there are parts of me missing. I don’t know where those parts are. And I don’t know why I feel like this. I’ve reconnected to my mother. I’ve reconnected to my father. I’m now in touch with both sides of my family. I should feel whole. But I don’t. There are parts of me missing. And I don’t know how to get the sense of authenticity. ⁷

The fragmenting of the self, the creation of splits and schisms is something which not only occurs once in the child as they’re forced to reject a parent in childhood. But further splits begin to occur. And why would that not be, in many ways? If your integrated sense of self is fractured in childhood then the very wiring of your brain is going to be impacted. And so the normal developmental processes which come when the brain wires itself, because you’re in normal attachment relationships with people, are interfered with. People will speak of not having the same executive skills as people of the same age. They will wonder how other people can be confident and certain about themselves when they are floundering. ⁷

The most unnatural thing for them to do is to reject one of their parents, so they have to push it down out of sight. But it doesn’t go away. The attachment relationship is an indelible relationship between the child and the parent. And therefore, as a therapist, the work that you’re doing is to create the conditions in which the child’s authentic self can re-emerge but also helping the formerly rejected parent to reconnect and to provide the conditions for the child. ⁸

Impact on the Targeted Parent

The parent that’s being rejected is typically a perfectly capable, loving parent who was going through this horrible situation. ⁴

Targeted parents ¹

are living in a never ending aggravating grief
have a very profound and intense, unsatisfied yearning to be with their child
are witnessing their child being abused
are profoundly frustrated to see the child not blossoming but wilting under the care of the favored parent
feel the intense helplessness that they cannot protect their child from all the bad things that the favored parent is doing
feel invalidated by the child (“You have no meaning to me.”)

If a loved one dies, you go through various stages. But ultimately you come to accept the reality and the reality doesn’t change. That person has passed away. And you learn ultimately to accept that reality and deal with it.
For targeted parents who have lost a child who thankfully is still alive, it’s a never ending aggravating grief in their life because they know their child is out there. Every day is a reminder that their child is growing and changing and developing. And they’re being deprived the opportunity to help their child and have an influence to. It’s one of the greatest pleasures of parenting is to be able to sort of see your child blossom in the ways that you’re encouraging them to and helping them be good people and to navigate life. ¹

The rejected parent is always on the defensive, always trying to defend themselves from an onslaught of allegations that are not objectively true. ¹¹

They experience more stress and health issues, have more problems with drugs and alcohol. ²

Alienated parents have greater levels of depression, trauma symptoms and risk for suicide. Parents across three polls in the US and Canada had many more post-traumatic stress symptoms as parents who weren’t being alienated and people who don’t even have children. So they had the most trauma symptoms. They also were more depressed than all of those other groups. Alienated parents who were not reciprocating behaviors were the most suicidal compared to those parents who were reciprocating behaviors. And of the parents who were moderately to severely alienated, 47% said they thought about killing themselves in the last year due to a child custody dispute or conflict with their ex. So it’s very severe just for targeted parents and how they’re coping with this and very few have resources. ⁶

One of the biggest problems that alienated parents have is that they lose touch with their own innate sense of having been a parent. We parent quite unconditionally, we just do it. And when you become alienated then not only does everybody else question how good a parent you are, but you too begin to question your own right to parent. ⁸

Impact on the Favored / Alienating / Aligned Parent

The parent that’s causing it to happen, at least for a while, seems to be in control, but really isn’t. Because ultimately, that parent is going to lose out also. ⁴

A high percentage of lone parents are poor and suffer from a variety of health issues such as more stress and higher substance abuse. ²

Amy BAKER, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2zNV1Jvc5I ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
Theo BOERE, Carmen BARKLEY, Larry WATERMAN; Parental Alienation Documentary, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYV8GBrJv9k ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
Susan SHOFER, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cu4XXnKPwCM ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
William BERNET, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjyvc2zVc6c ↩ ↩ ↩
Linda GOTTLIEB, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWuqahNnZAU ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
Jennifer HARMAN, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vrs_hu1HSM ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
Karen WOODALL, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd21RcWakP0 ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
Nick WOODALL, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itK1Ln6qh3c ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
Steven MILLER, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk675aYGHV4 ↩ ↩ ↩
Jennifer HARMAN, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3YdldNXZnQ ↩
Ben BURGESS, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzGMqS8vpa4 ↩