Sandra Speer, Ph.D. Explains Why Parental Alienation Could Be Your Worst Enemy

     Slam the Gavel welcomes Sandra Speer, Ph.D. to the show. Her experience includes having a Ph.D. in Public Safety and 30+ years of experience in the Domestic Violence and Emergency Management industries with research concentrations in abuse, leadership, narcissism, parental Alienation, and interpersonal communication.  I am a published author of the book The Remains of Hurricane Katrina, a chapter in the textbook Terrorism Inside America's Borders, and various articles, coupled with having been a broadcaster for 20+ years 
     Her specialty is investigating CPS/ high conflict divorce cases for origins of abuse, what types are being committed, and communicating as a consultant or as an expert witness to sources within the system to send children to their safe homes.  
     She assists through every step of a case and have helped many leave wrongful placements, physically abusive situations, grooming to be trafficked, etc. 
     Our discussion defined Parental Alienation and talked about why it should be viewed as an abuse and what is Parental Alienation Language.  Also we discussed why do so many parents find that they are wrongfully accused of Parental Alienation and why Practitioners misunderstand Parental Alienation. It is important to allow yourself to go through recovery to become strong enough to fight the horrendous legal abuse many Narcissists commit.
     In closing,  Sandra Speer, Ph.D.  wanted to say that she is proving that dreams can come true with what she is doing today.  As a Legal Advocate, not an attorney, she works with her clients throughout their cases doing whatever it takes to achieve their goals.  Because she is not an attorney, there are no legal limits to whom she can approach for assistance. Sandra also helps her clients emotionally become strong enough to fight their abuser without becoming accused of being a Narcissist or Parent Alienator.

To reach Sandra Speer, Ph.D. : http://www.lifesanswers.net

Her  company website offers information about herself, her company, Legal Advocacy and Life Coaching packages that she offers.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/abusemewhy

https://www.facebook.com/groups/287113156545220

This public Facebook group, “Legal Advocate for You, Not Family Court,” offers general information about legal issues that accompany leaving an abuser and 24/7 Legal Advocacy advice.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:19

Good evening and welcome to Slam and Gavel, the show that tells it all regarding family court, other court issues as well as CPS. I am your host, Mary Ann Petrie. I've got a brand new guest on. Her name is Dr. Sandra Spear. Her specialty is investigating CPS and high conflict divorce cases for origins of abuse, what types are being committed, and communicating as a consultant or as an expert witness to sources within the system to send children to their safe homes. She assists through every step of the case and has helped many leave wrongful placements, physically abusive situations, grooming to be trafficked, and other things as well. Her experience includes having a PhD in public safety and 30 plus years of experience in domestic violence and emergency management industries with research, concentrations in abuse leadership, narcissism, parental alienation, and interpersonal communication. She is the published author of the book The Remains of Hurricane Katrina, also a chapter in the textbook Terrorism Inside America's Borders, and various articles coupled with having been a broadcaster for 20 plus years. I also have links that she has left me that I will put in the podcast notes. I welcome you to the show, Dr. Sandra Speer. How are you doing this evening?

SPEAKER_01: 1:48

Thank you very much for having me. I feel honored that you invited me. Um I don't know if you want to be Mary Ann Petri or you know, Miss Petri, whatever. You know, here in the South, we're used to calling people Miss Petri. So I'll just, or or they call you by Miss Marianne or whatever. I've never gotten used to it because my parents were from Chicago and New York, so I never knew what to address people. So good morning and thank you for having me. Um I thank you so much for the bio. You pretty much covered everything, but the one thing that's most important to a lot of survivors is that I am a survivor. I uh grew up in extreme um mental, physical, and sexual abuse. Um, my father actually was a clinical psychologist who did family therapy. And he did know, I found out from a source many, many, many years later that he did know what was going on with my mother and myself. Um my mother left me with brain damage and everything else. But also then as an adult, because I did not pay attention or it wasn't a matter of paying attention. It's kind of like what I call that victim fog. Uh what happens is you kind of you just get so it's love bombing, it's Stockholm theory, where you feel that you're worried about abandonment, and then you become attached to your your um um abuser, and it's nothing that anyone should ever be ashamed of for not facing earlier in life or not leaving right away because it's something you just cannot get past often. Um but so one of one of my favorite parts of my work is the satisfaction that goes along with reuniting children. And I just recently, and I don't even think about it sometimes when I'm working with my clients, I get so involved in working with them and helping them and believing in them. And because in order to for me to take a case, I have to believe in your case. But I just heard from a woman who the system literally watched her child die, her her first child die in the system, and they were refusing to have her second child come home and blah blah blah. And this woman desperately needed and needed the help. I just heard from her last week, she got reunited. Um, I was so pleased because I had coached her in how to you know cope with the situation. Another situation that I most recently ran into, and keep in mind that I do work across the globe. I work in Europe, I've worked in South Korea, I've worked in the different countries because I learned that this is a global problem. But the one of the things that hits me a lot are the sexual abuse, because also sometimes it's connected with trafficking, sometimes it's not. Sometimes a lot of times it's a grooming process that goes on, and the child runs away as a as a later teenager, and because they've been either sexually active very young, or they have no money, or they're in and they're alone, uh, whatever the source, a lot of times that's what feeds the traffickers, these children. Um, so that's a very important fact to understand about trafficking. It by not helping our children with sexual abuse, we're kind of feeding the trafficking population, as I would call it. Um go ahead. Oh, I agree with you. It's very, very interesting. I've heard um theories that CPS, child protection services, you know, around the world, uh, mainly in the US, I've heard it said that they they're responsible or they're running these trafficking rings. I actually have unleashed quite a uh a very, very big ring. Um just recently. I I um I were I work with Homeland Security every once in a while in different cases. And I brought them a case that was very, very big uh about uh human trafficking going on somewhere, I can't say where. And um what it turned out to be were the officials are involved and major players that yes, CPS was covering because what they didn't want to say is because I couldn't show them marks of abuse. So what they said we we can't go in. Well, this was a very wealthy individual, and I discovered that basically there was a big trafficking ring going on there, and because these children were poor, these children were being put out on the street at 18 or whatever, with you know, no money, no help that they were supposed to get by CPS, they ended up feeding these traffickers because they had been groomed for that life as well. So um very complicated, but it it's it's a horrible, horrible situation. And it's kind of coupled with the Stockholm theory that the victim becomes dependent on their abuser because they're afraid of abandonment, they're afraid of being alone on the street, they're afraid of they get all these promises, and that's it all kind of goes together. But I'm kind of going off track a little bit. We wanted to talk about uh parental alienation, and I think what we need to do is define it first, and we need to look at the fact that it's emotional abuse. It and and by naming it parental alienation, we're giving the court system, the attorneys, uh every individual that's playing in that field, we're giving them a weight of saying to us, oh well, what you're saying is ridiculous. Well, when you turn it around and call it emotional abuse, which is illegal and sometimes punishable with three years in jail, then you begin to understand how to prove it. And um, it's it's come up and talked to me um wrongful rulings. Wrongful rulings can go either way. They do, according to our scientists. I've actually argued with my own predators on this one, uh, that it could be approximately 60% of all women who um accuse men of alien. Uh in other words, when the woman is the alienator, then 60% of our men lose their children over 40% of the women. I don't know. Recently I've been seeing a very equal amount of cases between men and women. The difference that I see, and it may we may be seeing less numbers of what's going on with men because I find that men are more afraid to stand up for help when they're the eight when they're the alienated ones. Um I find that they're sometimes uh punished more severely. Um but on the other hand, I've been seeing a shift in the last year or two toward women going to jail for um emotional abuse, but we're still using a lot of the terminology. Um on an emotional basis, I find that it's it's not only misinterpreted on the side of the judicial system, the lawyers, the attorneys, I mean, the lawyers, the attorneys, um uh, you know, I could get lost in my terminology, but the judges as well, is that people get lost in the pain of it. And they don't look at the um Childress, Dr. Childress, one of our more famous um uh parental alienation researchers, has developed the the theory of abandonment, and that's very, very interesting because as we know, um abusers tend to go through a cycle. I mean, or abuse goes through the the generation cycles, it never seems to leave our families. We do as we're taught. Um and what happens is we're we the parental alienators often grow up in some form of an of an abusive background, or they're alienated as children. We're becoming more and more a product of divorce as the generations have evolved more. We've had more divorces through the years, as many of us can understand, since the 60s, since Gardner originated the theory of um parental alienation syndrome. Um and what's what we're seeing is that we're that people are doing as they're taught. So these parental alienators have been abandoned in their life at some point or another, whether it was the nurturing of a mother, whether it was the alienation of a mother, putting the father out, or the opposite, um they've had this in their life. So this becomes a fear that they grow with and they develop in their life. So when you leave them, um, as when you divorce them, you trigger that feeling of abandonment, that fear of abandonment. And so that's what causes them to say, oh, I'm going to get you no matter what, and no matter what it takes. And because research shows that approximate, I'm jumping all over the place, that approximately 90% of all uh parental alienators are narcissists. We understand that one of the major um facets of a narcissist is that they have no feeling, they have no care, they can hurt someone with without flinching, without thought. So that's why it's so easy for them to use our children and even abuse our children while they're using them against us in court, in alienation, in anything. And we and they try to take the children from you, not because they so much hate you, but because you triggered their fear of abandonment.

SPEAKER_00: 15:15

That's very funny.

SPEAKER_01: 15:15

And that's all you did. That's all you did.

SPEAKER_00: 15:19

And that's no, that's very fascinating. Um, I never even thought of that. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 15:31

So what happens is so be so they become that's why they go after custody of the children, not because they love the children, but because they fear that the children will be if they love you and if they love the targeted parent in any way, shape, or form, then they the child will abandon them. And then what ends up happening is it it here's your little cycle, goes, your cycle goes. If they feel fear of abandonment setting in, then the child become and they begin to threaten the child. Often they will do this with if you love the other parent or you don't worship everything about me, then I then I'm gonna leave you. I'm gonna send you to that other parent who I've taught you to fear. Um, and so the child begins to react out of a fear of abandonment. Because you gotta remember the child just just experienced divorce, so their whole life has changed. And the other situation, and I've got to um clarify one little thing right here. When I talk about child protection services and I talk about parental alienation, if you ever read some of my signatures, they read and/or, I say, if you're experiencing a CPS or and or parental alienation case, please contact me. I say it like that purposely, because one of the methods that our social workers use to keep the children in the system is to alienate the children from the parents. So alienation, parental alienation is not something that just uh parents do. It's it's highly used in the system to uh at one point it was thought of as kindness to the children. Kind of if you turn the children against the parents and they see the the in other words, it it wasn't that they were turning the children against the parents, they were teaching the children the so-called truth about their parents. So they would um so the children would become comfortable in the system, considering they weren't gonna go home. That's wrong. You don't take the love of parents away from children. It just no matter how much you think you're alienating, no matter how much, it's cruelty. It it's absolute cruelty because you're taking the biological, you're taking an instinct away from people. You're born to think that your parents, especially, I hate to say, your mother is your nurturing source and you trust. You take that away from a child and make them hate him. You're not making the child hate the other parent. You're making the child feel guilty for loving the other parent. You're making the child uh potentially have psychosomatic issues the rest of their lives. They may never have a decent relationship their entire life, they may live confused, conflicted their entire life, afraid of abandonment throughout their life. It's it's um it's a it's an extremely um to me, it's about the it's worse than any other form of abuse because sometimes we can successfully prove um sexual abuse. I say sometimes because it is difficult, even that, um, but it can be done. And but the point is we're back to alienation language. You can't accuse, no matter how much that accusation is important. I'm gonna take a little quiet here. Oh, we're talking about the the major effects on children, um, low self-esteem, uh self-hatred, lack of trust, depression, substance abuse, and the most heartbreaking of mine is I would say approximately 70%, 75% of all young adults, and they can be as young as seven and eight and nine years old, children who commit suicide, it's because of parental alienation or some form of emotional abuse. Um, that was one of my situations, and children will be very often very, very quiet, but they will give some kind of signal. And what happens is the alienating parent often blocks the psychological treatment for the child when the child starts threatening um suicide or homicide. Uh, children um do this all the time as a reaction, and um they block it, and someone ends up dead. But it's very normal because alienators do not want the truth to come out because honestly, they do most of them know exactly what they're doing. And in legal terms, it's been known parental alienation has been known to be classified as a psychological hazard to the welfare of children. Yes, it is. And yes, it's marked as causing 50% of the amount of suicides that occur among children. And 75% of all of the successful suicides in children have been attributed to some form of emotional abuse. They're saying 50% is caused by parental alienation, but we've got to keep in mind that parental alienation is emotional abuse. So I'm going to take a minute right now, and I'm sure you have a question or whatever, and um see if anybody would like to ask me anything.

SPEAKER_00: 23:24

Well, you know, a lot of people go back to Gardner, and some people say he's done so much damage bringing forth parental alienation. Um, however, Dr. Craig Childress um has it in the DSM 5, V995.51, that this is child psychological abuse. And the courts are still going on about parental alienation. In fact, in my case, it was called out that um I was uh using parental alienation, and at that time I'm sitting there going, I didn't even know what that was at that time. And then I started researching it. But um, that you know is a different podcast in itself. But um, you know, what is the difference between what Gardner is saying and parental alienation being called junk science?

SPEAKER_01: 24:24

Well, I think I touched on that already, um a little bit. I think what it is is there's two two different situations. One, it's uh parental alienation language. In other words, how you approach your officials or practitioners with what is going on. That's very, very complicated because if you approach them with accusations, or you say that, you know, or even if you say that your child has symptoms, you're going to be viewed as just looking for some way of blaming, or they're going to think that you're projecting, or or whatever. And that's what happens. And also you've got to keep in mind, again, because most parental alienation alienators are narcissists, they're they're quite able to um own the court. And again, as research, as I've learned in research, um, a lot of these cases are won simply because our alienators have the money to not buy the court, so to speak, but to buy the best attorneys. They have the best show in the courtroom, and they're able to hold themselves together and look like the the the they couldn't do anything wrong. Uh uh, they're charismatic. It's it's unbelievable what they can do. Well, what happens is when you try to you number one, your first mistake in court, I'm not saying you, I'm just using that as an expression. I'm saying the first mistake that most people make in court is the first thing is to accuse the other parent, outright accuse them of everything that they're doing wrong. And even if they're telling the truth and they have evidence, they're still appearing to be, oh, tattletale, I want to blame you for everything that's wrong. That's what how it appears in court. The other thing is the narcissist who is the alienator knows how to push the buttons of the targeted parent. So then what happens is we end up having a reaction to whatever the narcissist is doing or saying in court. Boom! Your case is lost because you reacted, which made you look angry, you began to spout off, you began to look like the bad guy who was always causing the trouble while the narcissist is sitting there laughing at you. And you've accused them of doing all these things, but in court, they're doing nothing wrong. And that's where what I work with people on. I help people, number one, work on the their uh communications with the other parties. And the other thing is I help you because I do understand that I'm also a life coach. Um I I help them understand their own feelings and how to control them and how to understand how to be kind to themselves. They're going through their own recovery. So you need to take care of you first, too, in order to cope in court. By the time I have you go into court, you're sitting there just as placid as the the narcissist and and not doing anything. And when I go back to my, I talk about the the how I won this the um sexual predator case. I what I did was I took the evaluation of the the doctor that that questioned whether the individual was a day. She said she stated clearly that the individual was a danger to himself and others, potentially a danger to himself and others, yet he could be safely around a two-year-old child. And I thought to myself, no, wait a minute, that is ridiculous. There is no way that a potential sexual predator uh who has been known to hurt animals and and and you know be a sexually attracted to animals, they tend to find that people that are sexually attracted to animals tend to be sexually attracted to children, especially young children. So I questioned what I did was instead of saying, oh, the doctor said this wrong, the doctor said that wrong, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I went along with her, a complete evaluation, and I brought the question to the court and I said, How is it possible that we can guarantee that the child is safe if we cannot guarantee that he is not a danger to himself and others? I won the case. I won the case not because I was not accusing anyone of anything. I didn't say the doctor was wrong, I didn't say anyone was wrong, I just simply brought the question to the court, and that's how you have to communicate your cause, and you have to talk about the symptoms, you have to talk about uh the symptoms not only of the child but of you as the alienated parent. But you have to do it from an expert's point of view. That's another part of this. You cannot do your own speaking in these cases for the most part, and that's sad because it does cost money to get expert witnesses, and you also have to be very careful of who you use as expert witnesses, because everyone has the answer in this so-called junk science. But it's only honestly the true scientists that, in my opinion, have the answers. Because, for one thing, if you understand science, we're never finished getting our answers. So, for every little bit that we learn, we're looking for more and more and more and more. So to say that this is a junk science, that's only because, in my opinion, the people that are telling me that this is a junk science are the ones that are trying to say, what should be saying to me, I don't understand what you're talking about, I don't understand how to spot it. How do you figure out who the manipulator is and who the alienator is when everyone's using basically the same language? You have to look at the personality makeups, you have to look at the history of the case, you have to look at every word. Um, and um and it's sad, but and you have to look at what the children are saying. That's why I always take things firsthand. I will not take anything from anybody's own writing unless it's in communications or in reports or that such. I I I try never to be influenced by anyone. That's why I always look at both sides.

unknown: 32:54

Dr.

SPEAKER_00: 32:54

Speaker. And the other okay. What about these children that are sequestered with judges and attorneys, and they had been coached by the parent that brought them there during a custody trial?

SPEAKER_01: 33:10

It has to, you have to have an expert who knows how to spot that. That's the only answer I can say. That happens all the time. And the other thing is, is this is one thing. If I could change anything in legislature, I would. And it's that the children should not have a place in the hearings, no matter how old they are. If it's a parental alienation or an emotional abuse question, I think the children should be out of it because I would say, I this is my guess, 99% of those children will be coached on the way in. Or they will answer whatever they think that the alienating parent will want to hear. And it's wrong to these children because if the this is you you hit on something I'm very strong about. Um, because if the child, let's say the child testifies against the the targeted parent, but inside that child, part of the conflict inside that child and the guilt that that child feels is that instinctually that child loves that parent, whether they're mother or father, they want that parent. So what happens is if that parent gets hurt and put out of their lives, they take the blame for it. And the courts are just in my opinion, that is about the cruelest part of this alienation process is putting our children in the courts.

SPEAKER_00: 35:03

Oh, I agree. You said it all. Oh, even when they're you know, young teens, you know, mid-teens, you know, they can still be coached. And then they carry the blame of you know what they have said. You know, oh it it's terrible.

SPEAKER_01: 35:31

It's horrible. Well, you know, uh because often the alienating parent is the one with the money, right? Well, you brought up teens. What do you do with a teen? Buy them up with them the fanciest phone.

SPEAKER_00: 35:49

Boom. Financial control.

SPEAKER_01: 35:53

Exactly. Um, it's it's uh it is you know, give them things, um, start filling their time, you know, the visitation time with all kinds of activities. That's another one of their tricks. Um, but I will tell you, you want to know about mother-father bond. I mean, mother-child bond. I recently had a case, I'm very proud of this one, um, where the attorney was telling the mother, your child is 17, he doesn't want you, uh, nothing, no matter what we can do, he has to talk in court, he's not gonna want anything. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, before they knew me, they put, I mean, this woman spent, you can only imagine, probably$100,000 on you know, legal, you know, help and reunification therapy. And um she came to me after, she finally found me after the reunification. Nothing worked. And I told her, I said, with a teenager, reunification therapy is just basically, in my opinion, gonna fight against you, especially if they're not happy with the therapist and they're being coached on the way in. She said, that's exactly what happened. Well, she actually had the transcripts from everything, and I knew it, and everything was black and white. She had everything for me to look at. It was great. Um, it was total alienation case. It was just one of the most disgusting things that I've ever seen in my life. And one of the more horrible ones. Well, her attorney came to her about six months before the hearing and said, you know, you're gonna lose, you might as well drop out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's no alienation going on. I don't believe, you know, basically, I don't believe in your case. I said to the woman, I said, I'm overstepping my boundaries, but get away from this attorney. You just just just drop it. She said to me, but Sandra, couldn't you do anything to work with him? I've poured all kinds of money into him. And I don't want to back down. And I I understand. I understood because she definitely had a case. And uh so I said, Look, I'll do an assessment, you know, which is an investigation of your case. I'll write the whole thing up, and I can be asked to go in as an expert witness, and you know, often I'm able to turn things around. And she worked with me every inch of the way. We we her method of, you know, her the way she spoke to her attorney began to change, everything. Well, it got to be about six weeks before the hearing, and he block uh he blocked me going in as expert witness and everything because, and they will block me often. Uh, it's some I have to justify enormously sometimes, and I do get a get through it, um, because he knew he began to see that I was making sense. I knew exactly what I was talking about. This was an alienation case. I proved through research, through everything in the case, and case law, blah, blah, blah. I had the whole thing proven. Nothing was a question, nothing was opinion. Well, she came back and she was crying in one of our sessions, and I said, I don't know what to tell you to do with this attorney. I said, Has he seen my report? And she says, uh, he won't even read it. I said, okay. I said, that's it. I said, you tell you go to him tomorrow and tell him that if he does not read my report word for word, then you will be dropping him. She said, Oh, you really think I should? I said, yes, do that. I said, I believe that if he reads it, he'll see what I'm talking about. Well, he came back to her afterwards and he was not very happy with her. And he said, I hate to say it, but I have to agree with you. You have a case of alienation. So it turned at that point. So, and I argued against them going into any more reunification therapy. I was against the whole thing. I was, uh I said, get the child away from the abuser, which is the most important thing. You have to stop the alienation. And you, in other words, you have to stop the abuser. Well, I said, stop him, let him make have no input. Uh, he is to make sure the child gets to visitations, and you have one-on-one visitation between the 17-year-old boy and his mother and see what happens. Well, they passed it through. They let it go through. It went from the child reluctantly going to the visitations to it's about three or four months later now, and he is voluntarily driving himself and also contacting his mother now to set up the visitation.

SPEAKER_00: 41:24

Oh, that's excellent.

SPEAKER_01: 41:26

What does that tell you though? That tells you that instinctually I'm correct, these children want their parents, regardless of what the alienating parent is teaching them. And that's why it's cruelty. And no child, and I write this, no child should be restricted from loving a parent who desires to love them back. As a result of breaking the child and parent bond, the child learns to distrust himself and others. And they often use verbiage and say things and do things that hurt the targeted parent great deal that they would not otherwise do, and later feel horrendous guilt for it.

SPEAKER_00: 42:22

Um is there anything else that you So when you are writing up these reports, you're not using the term parental alienation. Yes, I am. Oh, you are? Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 42:35

But I'm very clear as to distinction that I'm talking about emotional abuse, and I define it. There is a legal definition that states that parental alienation is emotional abuse. Because in my reports, I don't say anything or do anything that cannot be either backed by research, uh, something within the case that's solid, not points given to me by the, you know, the targeted parent, um, or some form of case law. Uh, and that's why my re my assessments are so very strong. And also I've been doing event investigations and um I you know I won my own kids back, and I've been doing investigations for quite a few years. So I know what goes into them. And uh yeah. That's excellent.

SPEAKER_00: 43:44

When they get involved. Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 43:47

That's what CPS drives me crazy because they take the children that shouldn't be taken and they um leave the ones that should be taken.

SPEAKER_00: 44:00

Right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 44:02

It it it happens just about all the time and it it it's it's sick. But on the other hand, I'm not sure if I believe that the way that they're taking children, I mean, what has happened to the system is unbelievable. The system started out as um, you know, you take the children from the family home just long enough to help the parents get to the point where they can have their children back. Instead, we take the children and oh and you know put people through hoops to get them back, which I've learned the hoops to, you know. Um it's it's very interesting.

SPEAKER_00: 44:50

Oh, most definitely. Um, you know, I don't want to keep you too much longer, but what about, you know, what do you think about Mother's Day, Father's Day? I, you know, I think these are holidays I wish we did not have. I think they're just money-making holidays for cards, you know, Hallmark, you know, some of these card places, you know, um, and they're very, I think, hurtful holidays. I don't know, what do you think?

SPEAKER_01: 45:16

Well, for from parents who, for whatever reason, I mean, some of us have I I have a very dear friend that recently lost a child to a sudden death. Um whether it's to death, whether it's to, I think alienation is actually even worse than death, because that's your child, your children are being ripped from you, illegally ripped from you, and often the system is feeding it. Um and the other situation is, you know, I I like your expression. A lot of people say that, you know, Mother's Day, Father's Day uh cards, and this type of thing. And I think we're also losing, we're losing sight of what mothers and fathers are. And I I'm getting kind of lost in this, but what I'm trying to say is for alienated parents, whether it's Father's Day, whether it's Mother's Day, it doesn't matter because most of you are single parents. And that means that either day is equally as hard. And it's especially damaging because everywhere you look, worship your mother, worship your mother, or or uh respect your father. How do you respect someone who allowed your mother to beat you all your life? Or in my case, you know, in my case, or who allowed a sexual predator to move into our house who took advantage of his daughter and he knew about it. Um how do you love and and just instinctually love a person who abused you all your life, but yet you feel conflicted because a lot of times if it's the mother, the child, you do love your mother regardless. And that that's the hardest part, I think, for me to have dealt with. Um, and as far as being alienated from your children, it's like you can reach out and almost touch your children, but then for some reason they bite you instead of accepting your love, which is supposed to be natural. As 90% of all the parents say to me that come to me, they say, This has got to be one of the most painful things I've ever gone through, because when you have a child, you expect it to be the bond for life, no matter what any either of you go through. It's still a bond that that is supposed to be there for life. I mean, people wonder how it, you know, you know, your child goes to jail for murdering someone, and the mother still loves the child. It happens all the time. How do you turn off your love for your child? You don't always say that what they did or didn't do is right or wrong, and same thing goes for the child, too. So the holidays are just as dangerous or just as painful for most of them. Suicides go sky high for those two holidays. And if I don't leave people with anything, I want people to think about a couple of things about committing suicide as alienated parents. I can understand you wanting to give up, but keep in mind that if you give up, you're giving up on your children, which leaves them with a message that they might not have been good enough to keep you alive. And the other thing is it passes on a message to them that suicide is okay. And something, if my father taught me anything, he taught me one thing about suicide. And remember, he was a psychologist, he said to me, suicide is possibly one of the worst things anybody can do because it's a disservice to themselves. Because the second that they close their eyes as the end could be the second that things would open up and start over and start going good. You give up your hope. You give, I understand that you're giving up hope, and that's why you commit suicide, but no matter how far down things go, there's always a way up, there's always something you can do, and it's very, very sad. And the other side of me definitely can understand why people give up. I celebrated Mother's Day alone and Father's Day alone, when you know, thank goodness I only had to do it one year. But I understand what it was, I understand what it is, but you can't give up on your children, and even if you decide that you can't fight in court or you can't fight anymore, outright fight anymore, even if all you do is keep a journal of the love you felt, or the times you tried to give them a present or a card or whatever, these things one day will be very, very important. As long as in your heart you are not giving up on your children, no matter what you do, is giving up, except suicide. And that's uh I I have and I've seen it, and believe me, I've seen some suicides, and it's heartbreaking.

SPEAKER_00: 51:53

And it's also uh what people don't understand is that uh suicides can be generational. You know, uh I've told people don't do this because this could pass down through generations. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 52:09

It sends your child the message that suicide is okay. And it's not.

SPEAKER_05: 52:22

No.

SPEAKER_01: 52:24

My daughter just lost a very dear friend of hers to suicide, and the poor girl was only twenty-eight years old. She had a lot of life to live.

SPEAKER_00: 52:39

She gave up. That's a shame. That's I don't you know, um, I was reading something where, you know, when people do that, they are so depressed and so much pain. You know, I don't know, maybe they're not thinking straight. You know, I don't know what you think of that. Um but they were trying to explain that it was not a selfish act, it's just that they were in so much pain and suffering that they couldn't take it anymore. You know, I exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 53:20

And yes, as I said, I totally understand. I mean, you get to the point where you just say to yourself, I cannot take anymore. And but I try to try to get it across to people, turn for help, do something. This, you know, you know, and yeah, I mean, somebody once told me that um uh uh he's one of my favorite actors. Um he committed suicide, and this woman was uh speaking to a group of of um battered women. And she was saying that he had a right to commit suicide because his physical, you know, he had um dementia and because his mind was leaving him. And I just, and the thing is, when he committed suicide, he was still quite uh he they predicted he had quite a few years where he was gonna be okay, you know, fairly okay. And my point to her was that no one, it's never right to commit suicide. Um, but on the other hand, I understand, I mean, it's a it's a catch-22 because I do understand why people do it and want to do it. And it's you're right, it's not to hurt other people, it's not a selfish act. It's for some people, it's the most unselfish thing that they can do. Because sometimes they're thinking, well, I'm gonna stop being a burden to other people. And so they they they commit suicide. Again, if the people wanted them out of their lives, they probably wouldn't be taking care of them. So it's uh, you know, as I said, suicide is never is never the answer.

SPEAKER_00: 55:39

Oh, I agree. I've told people, you know, and and this was my um experience was, you know, when I was going down that path, I stopped and I thought to myself, wait a minute, my living and breathing is irritating them. So I'm gonna keep living so I can irritate them. Like that. I mean, that's the only I I do, I like that.

SPEAKER_01: 56:12

It it's very similar to what I've said all the time. I I I try to, um I'm staying alive because I know that these companies and these organizations don't like me. And and I feel like there's something I'm meant to do because there's been quite a few times when my life has been a little bit on the line there, but whether with an abuser or what. So yeah. Um, and any of most of us who've been up against narcissists have had a few life threats. Um so yeah, I like that though.

SPEAKER_00: 56:55

Well, and to end on that note, I guess I'd still like to have you come back on as a return guest.

SPEAKER_01: 57:02

Well, I would be honored, just let me know when and time. You know, because I have to admit I listed you today for uh an hour later. I don't know how I got messed up. And when you signaled me, I said, oh boy, I had it wrong.

SPEAKER_00: 57:24

Well, I'm glad you came on and um excuse me. So uh don't jump off. Uh Slam the Galves a podcast to help the public understand what really goes on in these family courtrooms. I'm your host, Marianne Petri, author of Dismantling Family Court Corruption, Why Taking the Kids Was Not Enough, and Cry Out for Justice Poems of Truth. Please join us again here with Dr. Sandra Speer in the future and other exciting guests. Thank you again, Dr. Speer.

SPEAKER_01: 57:53

Well, thank you for having me, uh, Marianne Petri, and um, I was honored to be here at any time.

SPEAKER_00: 58:02

Just let me know. And I'm honored as well. Thank you so much.