Resolve Parental Alienation (PAS) Part 1

Resolve Parental Alienation (PAS) Part 1 by Martyn Carruthers Would you like to benefit from our experience?

We offer coaching and training on family coaching, relationship happiness,
dissolving emotional incest and resolving parenting stress.

Parent Alienation 1: Before Adolescence

Parent Alienation 2: After Adolescence . Emotional Incest

When Children Hate Parents

Although it is a crime to 'incite hatred on the basis of color, religion, or creed', inciting hatred is common in dysfunctional families. A family member may be manipulated to hate another family member. A parent who incites a child to hate the other parent is guilty of Parental Alienation (PAS) - sometimes called emotional blackmail. Children are abused so that a partner can gain an advantage.

Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) is often accompanied by emotional incest, in which a parent or guardian seems to be too close to a child. Often, the resulting relationship bonds cannot be rationalized and changed without help.

Many consequences are immediate, and some are delayed for years. Later in life many abused people experience intense buried emotions and limiting beliefs from this damage, although they rarely identify the root cause. Common consequences of PAS are mentor damage, chronic conflict and identification with a victim.

Parents who deliberately hurt children may feel a diminished relationship with their community, with their God and with humanity. (This diminished sense of life seems to be equally true for agnostics and atheists.) By Sense of Life I refer to the sense of purpose and meaning you ascribe to your life.

Our systemic coaching can help prevent partnership breakdown, dissolve its consequences and prevent recurrence. PAS is not gender-based - both fathers and mothers play and lose this terrible game.

My Child Hates Me! / I Hate My Father!

There are systemic causes and consequences when a child rejects a parent. Both the family and the community (and courts) often respond emotionally, usually to support the weaker parent, regardless of any manipulation used to incite the child's rejection or to make the other partner seem somehow bad.

In extreme cases, a child victim of parental alienation may commit abuse and violence against a parent. A child, especially during adolescence (which may be delayed) may attack or abuse the hated parent.

Who Gets Hurt?

Children are intelligent and sensitive to family relationships. Although many adults may consider children to be stupid and naive - children may be unable to communicate their observations using adult language, and be may ignored or ridiculed if they try. Children often communicate with symptoms.

• A child may be manipulated by a parent who wants to punish the other, or for custody
• A child may be simultaneously manipulated by both parents to reject each other
• A child may be guided by family, community or cult members to reject their parents
• Adopted children may be encouraged to dislike or reject their birth parents

A child who rejects a parent, the rejected parent and the supported parent will show predictable, often severe emotional consequences. The suffering associated with these consequences is often ignored.

Parent Alienation Syndrome may include emotional incest. If so, later in life, the emotionally entangled or enmeshed adult child may suffer partnership problems and sexual dysfunction.

Coaching Children . Mother-Son Entanglement . Father-Daughter Bonds

Parents who Alienate Children

Parental alienation predicts common behavior patterns that we often see during marriage counseling, family therapy and couple coaching, especially concerning separation and custody of children. However, most families, communities and courts seem to support biological mothers and deny support or custody to biological or substitute fathers, regardless of facts.

Parental Alienation Syndrome

Either parent can initiate a sequence of events leading to PAS.

1. A custodial parent of pre-adolescent children rejects the partner
2. The children are loyal to that parent by rejecting their other parent
3. The custodial parent asks the children to tell the truth
4. The children support their custodial parent and reject their other parent - with lies
5. The rejection of the other parent may include false memories implanted by the custodial parent
6. Following emotional maturity, alienated children may reject their custodial parent and turn to their rejected parent

Sequence of Parental Alienation

1. The parents of children experience a partnership crisis that they cannot resolve
2. Instead of getting help, they become emotionally entangled in their crisis
3. One or both parents neglect the consequences on their children
4. One parent consciously rejects the partner's qualities (behavior, beliefs and / or values)
5. That parent also rejects the partner's qualities in the child (e.g. don't act like your father!)
6. The child denies or suppresses qualities similar to those of the rejected parent
7. The child identifies with the rejecting parent, who is often perceived as a victim
   
8. The child dislikes and represses the dangerous qualities of the rejected parent
9. The child dislikes people who have similar qualities to the rejected parent
10. The child rejects the rejected parent - privately or publicly

The toxicity of PAS is not only in the description of the syndrome but also in the solutions chosen by courts. Sometimes, if PAS is diagnosed, the hated parent is given custody of the child, against the child's own will. This is becoming common in America. TM, Therapist

Part 2: After Adolescence

Immaturity & Child Abuse

Children may suffer from the sometimes vicious tactics that immature parents may use to punish each other. Although immature parents express depression, anger, and aggression by withdrawing love, alienating a child's parent is child abuse. We coach people to dissolve the consequences of:

• emotional incest
• physical, emotional or sexual abuse
• instilling children with false memories
• abusing children as dependent hostages
• betrayal or abandonment of one partner by the other
• court ordered suffering - child custody by the hated parent

Legal Solutions for PAS ... Your Next Step

Would you like to benefit from our experience?

Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 2004-2010 All rights reserved.