The Perspective of the Targeted Parent

This page explains both the perspective of the targeted/erased parent and ways an erased parent can help survive the psychological onslaught.

The targeted parent is often confused and ashamed and bewildered, sometime experiencing depression or PTSD. Their pain is immense, and that is an under-statement. They may not know what hit them. They have a vague sense that their spouse or ex "brainwashed" their child, but no one else believes that. Untrained counselors insist brainwashing cannot happen. In-laws, out-laws, neighbors, and friends assume that if a child is rejecting a parent, that parent must be a horrible parent. That parent has reason to be angry and frustrated, but any display of anger gets used again them. That may be the perspective of the targeted parent.

The targeted parent is forced into a false narrative that stacks the deck against them and that they struggle to explain.

The targeted parent experiences complex trauma.

Read Edward Kruk's brilliant article describing the experience of the erased parent

Read Sue Witcombe's outstanding experience on the perspective of erased parents: Powerless: the lived experience of alienated parents in the UK

See Dr. Many Mathewson paper summarizing her research, entitled The Forgotten Parent: The Targeted Parent Perspective of Parental Alienation .

Karen Woodall offers some tips on the suffering of the erased parent and ways to manage the trauma and despair, in helping the hopeless, caring for the alienated parent.

Dr. Sue Cornbluth discusses the plight and feelings of the erased parent in her blog.

Joining a support group can be very helpful, and a directory can be found here. Reading everything you can about parental alienation can be quite helpful.

The erased parent has a lot of grief to process, and this article on grief might help, and this article on the stages of grief of losing a child to parental alienation.

In the words of the DSM-5 authors "The rejected parent's distress and both the parent's and child's affect, cognitions, and behavior can be affected in such instances. All types of parent-child issues that rise to the level of impact required for diagnosis are likely to have significant implications for the child's, and possibly caregiver's, mental health."

And study the ways to reconnect with your child. One of the main themes is self care, which is needed to up the odds of reconnecting.

The National Institute of Health Published a paper on the Long-Term Effects of the Death of a Child on Parents’ Adjustment in Midlife that uncannily applies to the loss of a child through parental alienation. The pdf version can be found here. Some relevant excerpts include:

• • "bereaved parents reported more depressive symptoms, poorer well-being, and more health problems and were more likely to have experienced a depressive episode and marital disruption than were comparison parents. Recovery from grief was associated with having a sense of life purpose and having additional children

  • The death of a child is one of the most painful events that an adult can experience and is linked to complicated/traumatic grief reactions (Prigerson et al., 1999). For parents, the dissolution of the attachment relationship with the child elicits severe anxiety and other negative emotions associated with loss (Bowlby, 1980). Parents might also experience guilt about having been unable to protect the child (Gilbert, 1997). Furthermore, because the death of a child defies the expected order of life events, many parents experience the event as a challenge to basic existential assumptions (Wheeler, 2001).

  • Thus, many parents grieve indefinitely (Klass, 1999; Rubin, 1993).

  • Among individuals who seek treatment for protracted grief, recent work emphasizes the task of finding meaning in the loss as key to long-term recovery (Neimeyer, 1998)."

  • The unnatural and unjust factors that lead to alienated children prevent or significantly delay to "finding meaning in the loss". The fact that the child is alive but unapproachable further mutates the situation towards bizarre making it a challenge to find "meaning".

Here is a good article on how self-compassion is quite helpful in surviving the criticism directed at the erased parent.

D. A. R. V. O may have been used against the erased parent (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) when they confronted the offender.

Consider adopting a non-blaming point of view, which will at least help you be seen in a better light.