Everyday Trauma | She HAS a MOTHER.

Everyday Trauma: The Drama of the Alienated Child

https://karenwoodall.blog/2019/11/11/everyday-trauma-the-drama-of-the-alienated-child/

“Thus he spent his whole life searching for his own truth,

but it remained hidden to him because he had learned at a very young age

to hate himself for what his mother had done to him. (…)

But not once did he allow himself to direct his endless, justified rage at the true culprit,

the woman who had kept him locked up in her prison for as long as she could.

All his life he attempted to free himself of that prison,

with the help of drugs, travel, illusions, and above all poetry.

But in all these desperate efforts to open the doors that would have led to liberation,

one of them remained abstinently shut, the most important one:

the door to the emotional reality of his childhood,

to the feelings of the little child who was forced to grow up with a severely disturbed, malevolent woman,

with no father to protect him from her.”
― Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting

The work we are doing now (2019), is to bring our understanding of what has happened to alienated children to light and to develop new routes to resolution which can be widely replicated. This project continues apace and increasingly involves clinicians around the world in a united understanding of the need for practice which is informed by all of the therapies which are known to be useful with families affected by induced psychological splitting. The longer we do this work, the more aware we are of the intra-psychic world of the alienated child. The more we know about this state of mind, the more we can assist in the resolution of the internalized split which has created the drama seen in parental alienation.

Children are vulnerable in the intra and inter-psychic world where their experience is largely in the felt senses. As such they are sponge-like in their capacity to absorb feelings and beliefs of others and if they are subjected to distortions of the same, they will follow the psychological pathway which is laid out for them, even living out dramas which belong not to them but to those long gone in their family who have left a legacy of unresolved trauma.

As part of my work is currently focused upon the experience of adults who were alienated as children, I am coming to see how, in the felt sense, that unresolved trauma, which is passed from influencing parent to child, lives on if it is untreated. Even where children have reunited with a parent as adults and even when on the outside it appears that resolution of the external split of the parents into good and bad has been resolved, these adults speak of feeling divided. What is clear to me is that the experience of splitting in childhood, in which the incapacity to hold two realities in mind is induced, is a life-long legacy which needs our attention.

I have come to think of the experience of children of divorce and separation as an everyday trauma which is overlooked and ignored by everyone until the red flag of alienation appears and the child refuses completely to maintain relationships with both parents. It is my view, and always has been, that if we were to pay more attention to the needs of children in divorce and separation for support in what is a barren and frightening landscape for them, we would see much less alienation and much more successful adaptation to the crossing that the family makes from together to apart.

Having worked in the field of family separation for almost 30 years now, I have seen my fair share of successful family transitions and I have seen more than my fair share of families who have failed to make that happen. What I have come to understand, is that within the families who fail, is an unwell parent hiding in plain sight who is triggered by the everyday trauma of the divorce into taking control of the dynamics around the child.

I have written extensively on this blog and elsewhere about the harm that comes to children when a parent is unwell and the child is rendered completely dependent upon that person. Working with adults who were alienated as children is teaching me more about the long-lasting harm that does. What is also clear to me is that the induced psychological splitting which is suffered by alienated children is the cause of all of the drama which is seen around the child at the time of the divorce or separation.

In essence, the only way a child suffering everyday trauma which is overlooked and ignored can signal that they are in danger is by using the defense of psychological splitting. As in previous discussions on here, when a child is being terrorized in the inter-psychic world by a loved parent, the only way to cope with this is to create a defense which allows continuation of that love. Although it is a gross distortion of mind to love one’s abuser, it is an escape mechanism from an intolerable dilemma and as such it is used by alienated children routinely.

We have now had five or more decades of this everyday trauma, and it is only now that we are beginning to see a shift in consciousness around the world about the harm done to children in divorce and separation. For five decades or more the drama of the alienated child has been attributed to the parent who has been rejected, a parent who is healthy and well and who has also been tricked, trapped and entangled into the dysfunctional world of an unwell parent.

We now know that the rejection of a parent is simply a by-product of the pathological alignment between the child suffering induced psychological splitting and a parent who is carrying unresolved trauma. Knowing that means that our focus upon the drama of the alienated child can begin with understanding the route in so that we can build the route out of the child’s need to use defensive splitting.

In a world which is criss-crossed with blame, shame, and inter-psychic terror, we are joined with the children who suffer this and in joining them, we as clinicians ourselves become vulnerable to a world full of heroes and villains narratives. From this position, where we are loved by one group and hated by the other, worshipped by some and denigrated by others, where tall tales and conspiracy theories abound and where even those who as professionals should know better, are busy diagnosing us online, we become aware at the deepest levels possible of the everyday trauma suffered by alienated children and the families they have rejected.

Which means that our work is focused where the reality lies and where reality lies, new insights are made possible.

This everyday trauma, this drama of the alienated child is the next child abuse scandal to come to light in the western world.

Suffering little children, who as adults still do, will have their day.

COMMENTS on Everyday Trauma

Nov. 11, 2019
“Which means that our work is focused where the reality lies and where reality lies, new insights are made possible.
This everyday trauma, this drama of the alienated child is the next child abuse scandal to come to light in the western world.
Suffering little children, who as adults still do, will have their day.”
Only by recognizing and fulfilling the NEED to GRIEVE the life the alienated child deserved and should have had will HEALING the SCARS begin. (VERY, VERY IMPORTANT OF SO MANY YEARS IT TOOK OF "ALLOWED" GRIEVING MY DAUGHTER'S LIFE SHE DESERVED AND SHOULD HAVE HAD TO BREAK THE BARRIER OF HEALING TO A EXTENT. NOW, IT IS MY DAUGHTER WHO STATED THESE EXACT WORDS IN HER POEMS I RECEIVED AND I'VE ALWAYS KNOWN SHE HAS NEVER BEEN "ALLOWED" TO GRIEVE ANYTHING IN ALMOST 14 YEARS BUT PARTICULARLY HER OWN LIFE THAT YES, SHE DESERVED AND YES, THAT SHE SHOULD OF HAD! THERE WAS ABSOLUTELY NO REASON THAT ANY OF THIS SHOULD HAD EVER HAPPENED AND HE INTENTIONALLY WENT TO THE MOST EXTREME LIMIT TO MAKE SURE (AND THREATENED AND PROMISED) FINISH THIS!

11 Nov 2019
It's fascinating, as I’ve said before, to read and understand of your developing knowledge, in seemingly real time. How for me this means a thought I’ve held develops and shifts and focuses, and refines. How a definition I’ve adopted can both narrow and expand, and become both more pointed and more clear.
The two examples of this in the last two of your blogs are from:
‘In Their Footsteps: Trans-generational Trauma in Divorce and Separation’ – where you write “…Induced psychological splitting in children of divorce and separation causes them to be unable to hold two realities in mind. This simply means that the child can no longer tolerate the way in which their lives are divided into two different experiences in the external and internal world.”
and the blog above –
“When a child is being terrorized in the inter-psychic world by a loved parent, the only way to cope with this is to create a defence which allows continuation of that love.”
A light went on for me thinking about how to describe/understand when a child has to say some version of ‘I hate my Dad/Mum’ at the same time as every fiber and instinct in their mind and body is telling them they don’t feel that. The internal/external world.
And then similarly to acknowledge that these children have to reconcile for themselves how a LOVED parent is saying or doing something that hurts them, and find a way to cope with that.

And another observation to put here, just because I’m writing, is about the alienation tendrils that creep out and twist and throttle long into the future. How the loss of a child can mean a parent loses the experience of directly parenting their own child through (difficult/normal) teenage years, so their child’s possible behavior, and that parenting relationship in those lost years is only ever seen through the prism of how they hope they would have parented their child – which when measured up against how any step-children in their life are being parented by their partners through those same teenage years, means the day to day parenting choices made by their partners in front of them can fare very badly by comparison. Just another side effect that ripples out.

13 Nov 2019

It’s so inspirational, to many of us, to see that just keep keeping on – I’m a believer in the saying that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ and the work you’ve done is gradually educating the villagers

As an adult who was first alienated from my father at the age of 7, it has only been in recent years (some 50 years on) that I’ve begun to start comprehending the long-lasting harm that a psychologically unwell parents-with-care can impose on a child……in this case, on me.

An inability to recognize or regulate my most intense feelings and emotions was something I wasn’t even, consciously, aware of, let alone able to manage. A poor understanding of how to develop and maintain healthy boundaries with others negatively impacted my sense of Self (often over-compensating for lack of self-esteem with sporting and other natural talents that ‘masked’ my true sense of inferiority) and the way I connected with others……while I had a clear sense of my own reality, in challenging situations, it was almost impossible to, simultaneously, hold my reality with that of another (very different) person. In summary, consciously, recognizing my own basic human needs was a concept I’d never encountered or developed growing up……because, of course, my own needs were never discussed (or, for that matter, of any importance)

The ‘escape mechanism from an intolerable dilemma’ that alienated routinely use greatly resonates with me and I can only describe the feeling (back then) as “holding on to nurse for fear of finding something worse”……especially when the alienated parent has been demonized and depicted as someone who cares very little (if at all) for you

It was only when I first read you writing that ‘understanding the route in is a prerequisite of planning the route out’ that I was able to start making some meaningful sense of my own, PA-related, childhood and, then, gain a better understanding of options for the possible routes out of defensive splitting where my own adult-children are concerned. You also introduced me to the writings of Alice Miller which have been hugely beneficial in the progress I’ve been able to make with my own journey