Parental Alienation Anonymous
Please visit Parental Alienation Anonymous for their full website at https://parentalalienationanonymous.com/
You will find information about:
Zoom Meetings, Podcasts, PAA 12-Steps & Questions for each step, PAA Promises, Non-Violent Communication Resources
and more helpful support.
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ALIENATION is a family disease.
Living with the effects of someone else’s ALIENATING BEHAVIOR
is too devastating for most people to bear without help.
WHO WE ARE.
WE are a recovery-based community. We believe that healing ourselves emotionally and spiritually gives us the greatest opportunity to be the best people, grandparents and parents we can be.
PA-A is a fellowship that offers a program of recovery for families and friends who are affected by alienation regardless of whether or not the alienator recognizes the existence of a problem or seeks help.
Support groups such as PA-A provide inspiration and opportunities for turning the most deeply painful and humbling experiences into useful purposes.​
how do we recover?
We recover by SHARING:
1. Our EXPERIENCE (what it was like),
2. Our STRENGTHS (what we are doing to take care of ourselves emotionally, spiritually & physically),
3. Our HOPE (our actions and intentions for the future).
PRIOR TO PARENTAL ALIENATION ANONYMOUS.
Before Parental Alienation Anonymous (PA-A), we kept ourselves busy seeking solutions for the alienator (child, parent, spouse, etc.). When what we were trying to accomplish wasn’t succeeding, we told ourselves to work harder or to try something else. We may even have told ourselves; it was our fault if we couldn’t convince the alienator (child, parent, spouse, etc.) to get help. If we could only find the right words at the right time, relayed in just the right tone of voice, then maybe we could get the alienator to see things our way.
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Desperate to fulfill our dreams for a happy family life, we thought that devoting all our energy to the problem was the answer. Little did we know we were actually contributing to the problem by trying to force solutions.
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That nothing we say or do can cause or stop someone else’s ALIENATING behavior.
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We are not responsible for another person’s disease or recovery from it.
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Not to suffer because of the actions or reactions of other people
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Not to allow ourselves to be used or abused by others in the interest of another’s recovery
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Not to do for others what they can do for themselves
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Not to manipulate situations so others will be nice, eat, go to bed, get up, pay bills, or behave as we see fit
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Not to cover up for another’s mistakes or misdeeds
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Not to create a crisis
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Not to prevent a crisis if it is in the natural course of events
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By learning to focus on ourselves, our attitudes and well-being improve. We allow the alienators in our lives to experience the consequences of their own actions.
In Parental Alienation Anonymous (PA-A), we learn that we didn’t cause the alienation in our lives, we can’t control it, and we can’t cure it. If we are trying to force solutions, we can remember “Easy Does It.” Though we can’t expect our lives to always be easy, the slogan suggests that everything doesn’t have to be so hard all the time either. “Easy Does It” reminds us to be gentle with ourselves.
We don’t have to try harder or do better. We have tried long and hard enough. Though we may not be able to change the alienator (child, parent, spouse, etc.), we discover there is one person we can change – ourselves.
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We learn to address the stress, fear, anxiety, powerlessness and hopelessness that parental alienation causes, we slowly start to regain our balance and learn how to embrace life under these incredibly trying circumstances. It is a process, not an event
Recovery means living life on life’s terms, facing pains and fears. In our alienation, we sometimes felt like helpless victims.
Recovery means gaining or regaining the power to see our options, to make careful choices in our lives.
Recovery means rebuilding trust with ourselves, a gradual process that requires much motivation and support.
As we learn and practice careful self-honesty, self-care, and self-expression, we gain authenticity, perspective, peace and empowerment.
By concentrating on healing ourselves emotionally, spiritually and physically, we are acknowledging that we are important, lovable and that the work to heal the family system needs to start with us, the individual.
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As we learn new coping mechanisms, new ways to communicate and other life skills, we start to transform our lives.
By learning to focus on ourselves, our attitudes and well-being improve.
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We learn that detachment is neither kind nor unkind. It does not imply judgment or condemnation of the person or situation from which we are detaching. Separating ourselves from the adverse effects of another person’s ALIENATION can be a means of detaching: this does not necessarily require physical separation.
Detachment can help us look at our situations realistically and objectively.
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Detachment allows us to let go of our obsession with another’s behavior and begin to lead happier and more manageable lives, lives with dignity and rights, lives guided by a Power greater than ourselves. We can still love the person without liking the behavior.
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IN PAA WE LEARN:
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God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things i cannot change,
the courage to change the things i can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
There are bound to be setbacks and moments of fear and frustration. Support – professional, group, and family
– helps us get through such trials safely, when we are honest about them.
THE 12 STEPS OF PARENTAL ALIENATION ANONYMOUS (PA-A.org)
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1. We admitted we were powerless over PEOPLE (Our alienator, our children and any other relationships)—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God (interchangeable with the Universe, your higher power or anything else that gives you comfort) as we understood Them.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God (interchangeable with the Universe, your higher power or anything else that gives you comfort), to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God (interchangeable with the Universe, your higher power or anything else that gives you comfort) remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Them to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God (interchangeable with the Universe, your higher power or anything else that gives you comfort) as we understood Them, praying only for knowledge of Their will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other folks suffering from this disease, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
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Many of us first reacted to this list like those who first encounter AA’s Twelve Steps: “What an order! I can’t go through with it!” And, in the same way that AA members comfort newcomers, we in PA-A are happy to reassure, “Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles.” The point is that we are willing to grow along the lines we have set down. We aim for balance, understanding that “our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God/Higher power (etc) and the people about us.” We claim progress, never perfection.
Our description of Parental Alienation, coupled with our personal adventures before and after finding recovery, make clear three pertinent ideas:
• That we had serious problems—relationships—that we could not solve despite our best efforts.
• That no accessible human power had relieved our relationship problems.
• That reliance on God, a Higher Power, or a higher purpose could—and would—restore us to sanity and set us free.
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The 12 Promises Of 12 Steps Of The PA-A:
The promises are from pages 83-84 of the Big Book and cover the promises of what will happen when we diligently work the steps of the 12 step program. Note that these promises from the Big Book come in the context of working Step 9, the step of making amends.
“If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through …” (i.e., referencing the step 9 described in the previous paragraph of the Big Book)
Promise 1
We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
Promise 2
We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
Promise 3
We will comprehend the word serenity.
Promise 4
We will know peace.
Promise 5
No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
Promise 6
That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.
Promise 7
We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
Promise 8
Self-seeking will slip away.
Promise 9
Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
Promise 10
Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
Promise 11
We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
Promise 12
We will suddenly realize that OUR HIGHER POWER is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
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The Family Disappeared Podcast
We’re a community of parents, grandparents, children, aunts, uncles and family members struggling with disconnection, alienation, estrangement and erasure from our kids, grandkids and families lives. WE are a recovery based community. We believe that healing ourselves emotionally and spiritually gives us the greatest opportunity to be the best people, grandparents and parents we can be.
By concentrating on healing ourselves emotionally, spiritually and physically we are acknowledging that we are important, lovable and that the work to heal the family system needs to start with us, the individual. As we learn new coping mechanisms, new ways to communicate and other life skills, we start to transform our lives.