7 Things to Do in the Face of Parental Alienation
Have you ever noticed that people get up in arms if someone is caught yelling at, dragging with a collar, or kicking their dog? They will write to the neighborhood blog or local newspaper about bad owners or abuse. I googled and found out that these behaviors do not actually qualify as animal cruelty. It’s all a terrible reflection of what people can do when they feel superior and entitled.
Have you ever noticed what happens if a child is being yelled at, dragged by the hand, spanked? We may have both painful thoughts and feelings about what we witnessed. We don’t write to the neighborhood blog or local newspaper about bad parents or trauma. We can be loudly reprimanded if we make a comment. We tend to look away.
Why am I bringing up this phenomenon? I think that our degree of social awkwardness challenges our ability to speak up. Speaking up is of itself a social skill that requires education and practice.
Too often, people are faced with a conflict: do I speak up or do I stay silent? And if I speak up, how do I do it well? I don’t want to be the messenger who gets shot! In his TEDx Talk, Adar Cohen (2019)[1] says, “It’s human nature to avoid difficult conversations, partly because they’re difficult and partly because we’re worried that having them could make things worse.” Robert Sutton believes that the Mum Effect happens because people are afraid of being blamed or having negative feelings directed towards them.[2]
However, not speaking up while in the presence of another is a way to duck confrontations. Just like writing on Facebook or Twitter is a way to not directly face conflict.
Part of the formula is to get familiar with the positive aspects of anger in addition to acceptance of the fact that speaking up is often conflictual and conflict is uncomfortable.
In a positive way, anger provides us with the energy to defend ourselves. If we consider that our survival instinct gives us choices as to whether we act aggressively (fight), run away (flight), or just stand there (fright), anger can propel us into action. It is an extremely functional emotion-in good measure. What we too often experience, in our own actions or witness to others’ actions, is that saying what you want to say-when you know the other person does not want to hear what you want to say-is anger that is not well executed.
The answer is not silence.
Moshe Ratson, LMFT (2017)[3] states that one of the benefits of anger is to protect our values and beliefs. Anger can make us aware of injustice. Anger can increase emotional intelligence in those who do not resist anger. Anger can be used in such a way as to gain its positive attributes which engages flexibility in a person’s emotional response systems which leads to more adaptivity and resilience. Who doesn’t want to be more resilient?
Anger requires an awareness of feeling angry and the psychological headspace to make a choice. We need to decide whether to act on the feeling of anger and how to respond instead of reacting. We also need to figure out if anger is the actual feeling we are experiencing or whether anger is covering up another feeling (usually fear or pain). We need to make a conscious choice.
Recently, I had a very real time experience with making this choice. My cousin, who didn’t know my preference to not hear any news about my children, spent some rare time with my estranged adult son and his infant son I know nothing about. He included the fact that I was never mentioned in the great chat they shared.
I initially felt some anger. The anger made me think about what else I was feeling. I realized that, my heart felt a little broken.
My son shut the door to me 10 years ago. He has refused to have a discussion via phone, text, email, in person, or in therapy.
So, how did I cope after I heard about the chat that caused me such a pang of pain and how do I speak up for myself?
Well, I thought about my cousin’s perspective with a goal to understand the situation. I know my cousin has good feelings towards my son. After all, my son is intelligent, witty, charismatic. My cousin once tried to speak with my son about his relationship with me, only to be the recipient of a vulgar dismissal. (I am grateful that my cousin tried to reach my son with a request to open that door). However, the consequence of avoidance is that it validates my invisibility. The silence does indeed communicate that it is acceptable that you, my son, are causing me inconceivable pain, my son that I deeply love.
If I get upset with my cousin for not completely understanding my need for support, I do not afford him the understanding that my predicament is not his. And he has had the experience of once being the recipient of an unpleasant exchange with my estranged son. And yes, as many an estranged parent, I still wish others would say something on my behalf, and even repeat themselves, something more about the cruel injustice that an absence of interaction sustains.
Realistically, my sadness is a result of being triggered by the old narrative that runs through my head and heart, the one that says my son has rejected me, he has ghosted me, he has hurt me, and I am powerless to change the narrative-and nobody really cares because my very own son doesn’t care. It’s a feedback loop that has drawn me into the old history. The old narrative is harmful. It hurts me and changes nothing with the relationship to my son at all.
What can I do instead of feeling angry and hurt? The effective way to deal with that old narrative is to catch it, identify it, and choose to live in the moment with a realistic narrative. What is the true narrative? It is to consider who I really love, who is important me, and to realize what events impact me, day to day, in a positive way.
It is not easy to watch people that we love interact with our estranged children. They are not qualified to comprehend this inhuman experience of parent-child estrangement. However, it is our reality and our fact of life and we need to practice useful techniques in order to rewire our brains onto another loop; a loop that lets us know that we can have a very good life without the children that we bore into it.
This is how I avoid being silent.
References:
[1] Adar Cohen, “3 steps to having difficult — but necessary — conversations”, https://ideas.ted.com/3-steps-to-having-difficult-but-necessary-conversations/, (December 16, 2019).
[2] Robert I Sutton, “The Mum Effect and Filtering in Organizations: The "Shoot the Messenger" Problem”, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/work-matters/201006/the-mum-effect-and-filtering-in-organizations-the-shoot-the-messenger, (June 5, 2010).
[3] Moshe Ratson, LMFT, “The Value of Anger: 16 Reasons It’s Good to Get Angry”, https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/value-of-anger-16-reasons-its-good-to-get-angry-0313175, (March 13, 2017).
Have you ever noticed that people get up in arms if someone is caught yelling at, dragging with a collar, or kicking their dog? They will write to the neighborhood blog or local newspaper about bad owners or abuse. I googled and found out that these behaviors do not actually qualify as animal cruelty. It’s all a terrible reflection of what people can do when they feel superior and entitled.
Have you ever noticed what happens if a child is being yelled at, dragged by the hand, spanked? We may have both painful thoughts and feelings about what we witnessed. We don’t write to the neighborhood blog or local newspaper about bad parents or trauma. We can be loudly reprimanded if we make a comment. We tend to look away.
Why am I bringing up this phenomenon? I think that our degree of social awkwardness challenges our ability to speak up. Speaking up is of itself a social skill that requires education and practice.
Too often, people are faced with a conflict: do I speak up or do I stay silent? And if I speak up, how do I do it well? I don’t want to be the messenger who gets shot! In his TEDx Talk, Adar Cohen (2019)[1] says, “It’s human nature to avoid difficult conversations, partly because they’re difficult and partly because we’re worried that having them could make things worse.” Robert Sutton believes that the Mum Effect happens because people are afraid of being blamed or having negative feelings directed towards them.[2]
However, not speaking up while in the presence of another is a way to duck confrontations. Just like writing on Facebook or Twitter is a way to not directly face conflict.
Part of the formula is to get familiar with the positive aspects of anger in addition to acceptance of the fact that speaking up is often conflictual and conflict is uncomfortable.
In a positive way, anger provides us with the energy to defend ourselves. If we consider that our survival instinct gives us choices as to whether we act aggressively (fight), run away (flight), or just stand there (fright), anger can propel us into action. It is an extremely functional emotion-in good measure. What we too often experience, in our own actions or witness to others’ actions, is that saying what you want to say-when you know the other person does not want to hear what you want to say-is anger that is not well executed.
The answer is not silence.
Moshe Ratson, LMFT (2017)[3] states that one of the benefits of anger is to protect our values and beliefs. Anger can make us aware of injustice. Anger can increase emotional intelligence in those who do not resist anger. Anger can be used in such a way as to gain its positive attributes which engages flexibility in a person’s emotional response systems which leads to more adaptivity and resilience. Who doesn’t want to be more resilient?
Anger requires an awareness of feeling angry and the psychological headspace to make a choice. We need to decide whether to act on the feeling of anger and how to respond instead of reacting. We also need to figure out if anger is the actual feeling we are experiencing or whether anger is covering up another feeling (usually fear or pain). We need to make a conscious choice.
Recently, I had a very real time experience with making this choice. My cousin, who didn’t know my preference to not hear any news about my children, spent some rare time with my estranged adult son and his infant son I know nothing about. He included the fact that I was never mentioned in the great chat they shared.
I initially felt some anger. The anger made me think about what else I was feeling. I realized that, my heart felt a little broken.
My son shut the door to me 10 years ago. He has refused to have a discussion via phone, text, email, in person, or in therapy.
So, how did I cope after I heard about the chat that caused me such a pang of pain and how do I speak up for myself?
Well, I thought about my cousin’s perspective with a goal to understand the situation. I know my cousin has good feelings towards my son. After all, my son is intelligent, witty, charismatic. My cousin once tried to speak with my son about his relationship with me, only to be the recipient of a vulgar dismissal. (I am grateful that my cousin tried to reach my son with a request to open that door). However, the consequence of avoidance is that it validates my invisibility. The silence does indeed communicate that it is acceptable that you, my son, are causing me inconceivable pain, my son that I deeply love.
If I get upset with my cousin for not completely understanding my need for support, I do not afford him the understanding that my predicament is not his. And he has had the experience of once being the recipient of an unpleasant exchange with my estranged son. And yes, as many an estranged parent, I still wish others would say something on my behalf, and even repeat themselves, something more about the cruel injustice that an absence of interaction sustains.
Realistically, my sadness is a result of being triggered by the old narrative that runs through my head and heart, the one that says my son has rejected me, he has ghosted me, he has hurt me, and I am powerless to change the narrative-and nobody really cares because my very own son doesn’t care. It’s a feedback loop that has drawn me into the old history. The old narrative is harmful. It hurts me and changes nothing with the relationship to my son at all.
What can I do instead of feeling angry and hurt? The effective way to deal with that old narrative is to catch it, identify it, and choose to live in the moment with a realistic narrative. What is the true narrative? It is to consider who I really love, who is important me, and to realize what events impact me, day to day, in a positive way.
- I remind myself. Speaking up is a learned and practiced skill-one that I cultivate because of my own nature and because my nature led me into my profession of mental health therapy. Asking difficult and pointed questions is part of who I am and what I practice.
- I remember. My loved ones try to be there for me, each in their very own important ways. Some of my friends know how to bathe my pain with their empathy and some of my family know how to wish that things were different for me. All of them just love me. And I am blessed and lucky.
- I talk. I meet with my loved ones and my liked ones to either go deep and or stay light. I need the safety to cry and be angry and to come up for air. Talking helps me either release or it takes me to another place to feel some relief.
- I distract my thoughts. I have developed a few good strategies that allow me to enjoy the life I am living. I do not spend much time thinking the same painful thoughts. Not anymore.
- I love. I look at my husband and think that the things he can do to drive me nuts really don’t matter because he best knows the contaminating thoughts and feelings that can grab at me from time to time. He is at my side and I need to remember that. I feel the crispness of the air mixed with the sunshine as we go through winter. I am grateful that I can go to the market and buy fresh vegetables any time of year.
- I nurture myself as I nurture others. Every day, I watch my dog, Lily, bounding through any field or on any beach-rain, snow, or shine. I feed the birds who grace my windows with their flight and fancy. I release the Monarch butterflies from their nursery to mingle with the honeybees I raise. And I love my Clients.
- I write. I write in my personal journal and now I write in a public forum. Sharing the experience helps me to get it out and feel less isolated.
It is not easy to watch people that we love interact with our estranged children. They are not qualified to comprehend this inhuman experience of parent-child estrangement. However, it is our reality and our fact of life and we need to practice useful techniques in order to rewire our brains onto another loop; a loop that lets us know that we can have a very good life without the children that we bore into it.
This is how I avoid being silent.
References:
[1] Adar Cohen, “3 steps to having difficult — but necessary — conversations”, https://ideas.ted.com/3-steps-to-having-difficult-but-necessary-conversations/, (December 16, 2019).
[2] Robert I Sutton, “The Mum Effect and Filtering in Organizations: The "Shoot the Messenger" Problem”, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/work-matters/201006/the-mum-effect-and-filtering-in-organizations-the-shoot-the-messenger, (June 5, 2010).
[3] Moshe Ratson, LMFT, “The Value of Anger: 16 Reasons It’s Good to Get Angry”, https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/value-of-anger-16-reasons-its-good-to-get-angry-0313175, (March 13, 2017).
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