Family Disappeared

Parental Alienation, Pre-Alienation & Rebuilding Trust with Your Kids Part 2 - Episode 107

• Lawrence Joss

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In this episode, Lawrence Joss interviews Charles McCready, a compassion-based coach who shares insights on parental alienation and the healing journey for parents and children. The conversation covers the importance of understanding child alienation, the dynamics of trust and connection, and the role of grandparents. Charles introduces his nine-step program designed to help parents navigate their emotions and improve their relationships with their children. The discussion emphasizes the need for self-work, support networks, and the importance of living one's life while waiting for reconnection with children.

Key Takeaways

  • Advocate for parents to take their own healing journey.
  • Changing parenting styles can positively impact relationships.
  • Children often experience loyalty conflicts during alienation.
  • Understanding the alienating parent's control mechanisms is crucial.
  • The nine-step program focuses on both parents and children.
  • Building trust with adult children requires a different approach.
  • Grandparents should also engage in their own healing process.
  • Self-work is essential for effective parenting.
  • Living your life while waiting for reconnection is important.
  • Support networks can provide necessary resources for parents.

Chapters

00:00 - Healing Journeys and Parenting Dynamics
02:52 - Understanding Child Alienation and Its Effects
05:57 - The Nine-Step Program for Reconnection
08:56 - Building Trust and Connection with Adult Children
11:39 - The Role of Grandparents in Alienation
14:50 - Empowerment Through Self-Work and Support
17:48 - Living Your Life While Waiting for Reconnection
20:43 - Strategies for Reestablishing Contact
23:53 - The Importance of Support Networks
26:42 - Conclusion and Future Conversations

For more detailed information regarding Charlie McCready and the 9-step program, please click the link below:

https://charliemccready.com/

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sU40Zul0RDNDxb-Vmh0-bWkXpyRnO0qj/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JcmEUSYpt25kkBUCQP2DnmtO7bZI7Cz-/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WaClh5wrJ3AYY9cD4lnrD0aYg-wh61cJ/view?usp=sharing

If you wish to connect with Lawrence Joss or any of the PA-A community members who have appeared as guests on the podcast:

Email - familydisappeared@gmail.com
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/lawrencejoss

(All links mentioned in the podcast are available in Linktree)

Please donate to support PAA programs:
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This podcast is made possible by the Family Disappeared Team:
Anna Johnson- Editor/Contributor/Activist/Co-host
Glaze Gonzales- Podcast Manager

Connect with Lawrence Joss:
Website: https://parentalalienationanonymous.com/
Email- familydisappeared@gmail.com

Speaker 2:

as a parent who's going through their own healing journey. I would advocate everybody go. Take your parents with you, bring them along their own journey, help them to understand what they're feeling, why they're feeling it, how they can help address those feelings, how they can help bring your child back into the fold by doing the same things that you're going to do. So it's like by extension, changing your parenting style. Change your grandparenting style in the same ways, because it's just like they're going through the same stuff that we are.

Speaker 1:

There was a time in my life when I was overwhelmed and underwater. Those days are the inspiration for this podcast. This is by far the ultimate healing journey for all of us. Healing ourselves emotionally, spiritually and physically is paramount to this journey. From this place of grounding, we can all go out into the world and change all our interactions and relationships. We can engage people from an integrated and resourced place. This is a journey of coming home to ourselves. In today's episode we'll start to explore some of these issues. Let's begin the healing journey today.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Family Disappeared Podcast. And Charles has shared so much great information and the show builds upon itself. So it's really useful to understand the context of what we discussed in the previous show. And Charles is a compassion-based coach that has gone through alienation in his own life and has some wonderful tools and frameworks for you to be able to work with what's going on. And whether you work with Charles or you find in a different kind of way, it's really important to listen to what's going on. And whether you work with Charles or you find it in a different kind of way, it's really important to listen to what he's saying because he has a roadmap for what you need to do to start looking at yourself, where you're at in your life, starting to understand your child, what's going on for them, and starting to show up more integrated in your opportunities to connect with your child. I think it's just great and he touches on so many salient points. If you're new to the community, welcome. If you've been here a long time, a little time welcome.

Speaker 1:

We have some great resources in the show notes. We also have a free 12-step program Parental Alienation Anonymous. Come check it out. It's a wonderful community and whether it's this community or another community that you get support on, get support. And a lot of this will tie into the interview with Charles, which is really resourcing ourselves or working on ourselves, and that's what a 12-step program is. It's a place to work on yourself and it's free, and working with other professionals that are allied professionals or coaches to support the process is incredibly important and it's exactly what we're talking about in this interview and we'd love you to engage with us. So please like share comment. We want to know what you're thinking. We want to know what else we can bring to the show. If there's any other suggestions and you can always email us at familydisappeared at gmailcom. We'd love to hear from you. And thanks for coming out to listen to the show, and with that, let's jump into the show. I have you, and thanks for coming out to listen to the show, and with that, let's jump into the show.

Speaker 1:

I have the story coming up for me and I might have shared it before. I remember, right in the beginning of parental alienation, I went out to sushi with my youngest daughter and she couldn't be more than like six or seven and we were sitting at the sushi bar and she knocked over her glass of water and I went like all over the bar and then she looked at me with this like panic, fear, kind of look like that. I was going to yell or scream or something that was going to go on and maybe in certain circumstances or with certain dynamics of the whole family was there. Maybe I would have reacted in not the best kind of way, but I just cleaned up the stuff and said no big deal. I tell you the story and it's really simple and you would think, hey, well, yeah, why would you yell at a kid? They knock over stuff and they also come to conversations with us with fear and feelings and just trying to get through the day and not understanding the dynamics, and why wouldn't we just meet them where they are, just like with a glass of water?

Speaker 1:

So this glass of water spilling was such an important part of my recovery where we just cleaned it up and we continued the conversation. We didn't have to spend a bunch of time talking about the spilled glass of water, and I see a lot of the mistakes I made in the past. Is I wanted to continue talking about the spilled glass of water? If it was my child disrespecting me or not calling me or not texting me or not telling me that they love me, I wanted to talk about that spilled glass of water. And as I stopped doing that or did it less often because I haven't completely stopped, let's be real doing it less often I would create less harm, you know. So I think it's really important and ties into the show. Yeah, let's clean up the spilled glass of water and let's not spend a lot of time talking about it, because then we lose the opportunity to grow trust and grow connection with our kids.

Speaker 1:

And, yep, let's see what else Charles has to say today. I love that you have a framework to actually address the different traumas and the different triggers and that you can do them one by one and laying it out in the way that you just did like 50 weeks, which again might seem long to someone listening out there. But the impact that just working on one at a time is going to have on that relationship, as you were saying, is going to be quite remarkable and quite quick in some instances when you deal with a couple of the really, really big triggers and you were saying before that for the child, they're always scanning the area is my parent safe? Is my parent not safe? And then they come close so they go further away. What else do we look at in understanding the child's experience? What else would be something that we could track or look at or understand in their experience?

Speaker 2:

there's literally and I have this as well, I do this with parents there's literally like a list of about 20 things that most alienated kids experience. So it will include things. Like you know, I'm in a loyalty conflict, but it's helpful to understand what are the drivers for control that the alienating parent is exerting. So is it because they're actually quite an aloof parent and the kid is desperate to have a relationship with them and if they don't appease them, that relationship will be removed from them? It could be things like money. If we can understand what are the mechanisms of control that the alien nature is using, that will help us to understand what you know a big part of what the kid is going through. That's all part of the loyalty conflict.

Speaker 2:

There are things like parentification, where a child is being treated as an adult. They're being shared divorce documents, they're being given information about us. That's inappropriate. They're being treated like a buddy. You know they might only be eight or 10 years old, they might be older, but they're being treated as if they're an adult.

Speaker 2:

There are things like choice, where children are given false choices. It's a burden of responsibility for the kids. We hear this all the time. Oh, the kid has decided they don't want to see you. I can't force them. What's really going on is that that child has been given this false sense of choice, but they're not given options behind the choice. You know it's like, oh, you can pick, you can see mom and dad, or you don't see mom and dad. It's like, oh, you can pick, you can see mom and dad, or you don't see mom and dad. It's like, well, the kid knows, if they pick the one if I want to see the alienated parent they're going to get into trouble.

Speaker 2:

So we can literally walk through a list of all the things that kids typically go through and build like a profile and say, okay, you tick the box on 10 of these things. Okay, so I know that you're going to be sensitive on those 10 things in particular. So I'm going to work with you. I'm not going to get riled by that stuff. I'm not going to get triggered by that stuff. I can understand why you're behaving in that way. I'm going to look beyond your behaviors and I'm just going to give you love and support. I'm going to try and help you with boundaries, but I'll do it in a way that's acceptable to you as a kid.

Speaker 2:

You really have to adapt your parenting style to accommodate where the kid is at and you mentioned this before, Lawrence. It's a dynamic situation. It's constantly evolving. Your kid might be going through phases of more or less alienation and you have to adapt to it. And as they're healing, things will get better. You have to adapt to it. And as they're healing, things will get better, you have to adapt to it. Stay one step ahead. What do they need from me next?

Speaker 1:

I'm really appreciating the way you're talking about what you offer clients and how you break this down and build it back up and it sounds like you have a process and a framework for everything that you do. Do you have a consistent framework that you go through with each parent that you're working through to get them through these different stages so they can start building, kind of like Lego a block on a block on a block on a block?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. So I've got something which I call the nine step program, which I've created myself, and it draws together resources from lots of different places, because when you're dealing with alienation, you're dealing with these three big, because when you're dealing with alienation.

Speaker 2:

You're dealing with these three big areas. You're dealing with the alienating parent. So understanding things like narcissism or psychopathy gives you a kind of a base level understanding of who is this person. Then layer in on top who their character is, what sort of actual experience they've had. You know where is their trauma coming from. That gives you a lot of information about who the alienator is and how you can help to mitigate some of the things that they do. So start getting ahead of the game with them, start learning how they're thinking so you can mitigate some of their actions, but most of the focus so on you and on the kid. That's where the bulk of the nine step program focuses. So what I've done which is unusual, a lot of people, you know, just have therapy. I've got modules. So I've got eight weeks of different modules, which starts off looking at the parents, because we need to understand who's the version of me I'm bringing to the party. Then I look at the kid's experience and your parenting style so we can say how do I need to adapt myself? We've now identified a series of changes that you want to make for you and for your kid. So what are those changes? And then how are we going to bring those changes about?

Speaker 2:

In your life? Something's going to try and stop you, including yourself. Your subconscious will try and stop you from making some of these changes because it's going to feel uncomfortable. But there are ways to get past that. We basically spend eight weeks going through a very structured approach that works pretty much for people who've got no contact and people who do have contact. For the people who do have contact, it's all about putting everything into practice straight away. For the people who've not have contact, it's all about putting everything into practice straightaway. For the people who've not got contact, it's all about being ready for that point in time that you can put these techniques into practice. But you will be on your way down the healing journey regardless, even if you have no contact.

Speaker 2:

And the ninth step is I do two follow-up sessions with people because it's great taking them through that initial journey, but you know they need ongoing support. You can't just let people go and say there you go, I've done the program with you Done. They benefit from getting together. You know, one month later, two months later, How's it going? What's the dynamics, what's changed, what's?

Speaker 1:

working. What's? Not working and people really benefit from that and in doing this nine-step program, what kind of changes are you seeing? Are you seeing like a large population of people reconnecting in a different way, or you just see mostly people getting prepared and their lives changing and not a lot happening with the kids like, how do you track maybe some efficacy?

Speaker 2:

yeah, how do you track? How do you track this working? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. In some instances where you're in a contact situation, we've seen changes like within weeks. And I say within weeks because the first couple of weeks are spent on you as a person and then we start focusing on the kids. So it's only really after about three weeks that you've got both sides of that equation. What we see is that parents who start changing the way that they're dealing with their kids has a huge impact. Here's a really simple example, because we often have less time with our kids.

Speaker 2:

We're quite demanding of them in terms of things like quality time and also we're very focused on me, me, me, because we're feeling distressed and disturbed. When you shift it over and you start creating a more normal relationship with your kid, and if they've got five hours with you and they're on the telephone for two of it, be OK with that. That's what they would be doing normally if they were living at home with you. But because we've only got five hours, we get stressed out because they're not spending quality time with us. Take the pressure off the kids. They start appreciating it. Don't make it about you. So a lot of the time we're talking about ourselves or we're trying to correct the record or we're trying to correct the injustice. When we stop doing that, the kids start feeling safer again with us. These are really simple things that parents can learn within the space of a few weeks and immediately the kids start getting more comfortable with us.

Speaker 2:

There are immediate benefits for a lot of parents and then, of course, for the parents who don't have contact.

Speaker 2:

What I notice is literally a transformational change in how they perceive themselves, how comfortable they feel within themselves, their understanding of alienation transformed to benefit impact, because once you understand what your kid is doing doing, it's much easier to kind of deal with it emotionally.

Speaker 2:

So if you know that they're not in contact with you because they're just cocooning themselves, they're keeping themselves safe, and that there's a good likelihood that they will be in contact with you in the future, then all you're dealing with is the period of time between now and the time that they reach out to you. It's not that they're gone forever, and when they do engage with you, you understand what they need from you to help. That relationship and just having that knowledge is this enormous. It's like a lifting off of burden from parents. They go oh okay, I now get this stuff, I understand it, I understand why I'm feeling so upset and I'm dealing with that, and so they get into a much better place as parents and they become so much more effective at helping their kids and this stuff really works yes, no, I couldn't agree with you more in educating and the empowerment that comes along with understanding the system, what the different players are feeling and why stuff is happening, instead of just reacting to everything that's happening.

Speaker 1:

And being caught in the snowball is just as you're saying. It's just a huge relief and putting down that heavy backpack is incredibly useful. And I would say, my follow-up question to that is you got parents? They're working on this, they're not being hyper emotional, they're being resourced in other places besides their kids. They're taking care of themselves and for parents that are just getting a little bit of contact now that the kids are young adults or adults and they're using this technique strategy or changing their life to be more recovery based, and they're having a little bit of contact with the kids and they're doing the stuff and they're not getting hyper emotional, but nothing different is happening in that relationship with the kid. They're reaching out once in a while in either direction, they're having a conversation, but it doesn't seem to be moving anywhere. What are your suggestions then? What happens in that instance?

Speaker 2:

Be patient. You can't force your kids. It's like the horse and water you can bring them to the trough, you can't force them to drink. And if they're not engaging with you, all it means is that they're not ready, they're not feeling safe. There's probably likelihood that either the alienation is continuing on in the background or there's a second thing which happens with kids.

Speaker 2:

We're basically like computers. We have experiences which are like programs and when we have those experiences the programs kind of stick in our subconscious and we then start acting according to that experience. So the empaths have all those experiences, which is why empaths, narcissists, have those traumas, which is why they're narcissists. The kids, when they go through alienation, also have these experiences, which is essentially time with the alienated parent makes me feel unsafe.

Speaker 2:

If you're not appeasing the alienator, there will be consequences. Me feel unsafe. If you're not appeasing the alienator, there will be consequences.

Speaker 2:

And they get so used to this idea that spending time with us has negative consequences at the hands of the alienator that even when the alienator is no longer there so your kids might have gone off to college and the alienator is not there they might be, you know, 2000 miles away, but their subconscious is still running the same program. And so when the kids associate with us, this program goes oh, hang on a minute, you're going to get into trouble, and you can see it with the kids. And the kids are not aware that this program is running and you'll often see them being with us and feeling just uncomfortable because just being in our presence is difficult for them, because they haven't yet really gone on their own healing journey. So if the kid is still finding it difficult to engage with you or not telling you about their private life or not responding to your messages, these are just their coping mechanisms until they feel a little bit safer to then engage with you.

Speaker 2:

But then every time they do engage with you, you've got to make it a positive experience. So it's like the little baby steps when I was talking about, you know if you've got 50 insecurities.

Speaker 2:

Fix one a week and you can do it faster than that. But it's like the same thing If your kid comes and has a dinner with you or even a phone call with you but it's a good phone call and they feel a little bit safer that starts resetting that program because it goes ah, I felt safe, so the next time they might feel a little bit more confident, they might tell you a little bit more. And again, if they have a positive experience.

Speaker 2:

Tick, I felt safe. Good, I'll go a little bit further and then gradually, gradually, gradually. It's all about rebuilding trust. You're slowly rebuilding that trust with the kid and you have to kind of recognize that's what. You're slowly rebuilding that trust with the kid and you have to kind of recognize that's what you're doing so, yeah, I'm hearing slow patience.

Speaker 1:

It takes a lot of time and sometimes it might even feel like it's standing still or going backwards. And what do you say to parents that have been working for years and they're just tired, like at a point like it appropriate just to step back and not do anything and be available and just put your hat on the rack? Is that something that you would think is useful?

Speaker 2:

or you always want to stay engaged in generating some sort of energy, so stay engaged, but where we get fatigue, we put our lives on hold and we kind of say, well, I can't do this because I haven't rebuilt this relationship with my kid yet.

Speaker 2:

We leave our telephones on at night just in case they phone us. We won't go on holidays, we won't, you know, change job. We won't get a new partner, we won't move house. We just kind of grind to a halt. And so we feel like we're in complete limbo until our kids are back in our lives. This is a nonsense really. We have to give ourselves permission, because that's the thing. We're not giving ourselves permission to move on. So we have to learn.

Speaker 2:

It is okay for me to move on with my life. So it's like this parallel universe. Again there's the universe universe. My kid, my kid, might stay in that place for five years. You just don't know.

Speaker 2:

There's no guarantees how long it's going to take them to come out of this controlled situation under the alienation. But if you kind of knew in advance this is going to be five years long, you think I'm not going to put my life on hold for five years, but the reality is we get a few years down the road and we have put our lives on hold. And so what I advocate to every parent start getting back on with your life. It re-energizes. You Do all the things you were going to do. Start doing them. Don't wait. Sure, you might not want to move to a different part of the country because you want to stay close to your kids in case they have a relationship with you. But you know you can change jobs, you can get new partners, you can go on holidays, you can take up new sports, you can take up new hobbies. Get on with your life, because when your life is busy you're energized. And then the kids. They're still an important part of your world, but they're not all of your world.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, I love that, Definitely get out there, live your life and in living your life you start to build again resilience resources and start to work on these different things that are super triggering around the kids. And yeah, I love that you talk about it. And then what strategies would you suggest when people are just reestablishing contact, like what's a good trust building or connecting strategy and I hear you know being resourced and not putting any of our feelings out there and trying to contain that and getting other support outside of the conversation with the kids. But what other one or two things would you suggest to folks that are just stepping into a little bit of connection, how to build trust, how to build a little bit more continuity with the connection?

Speaker 2:

So changing your parenting style is really the key to this thing, because the child that comes back into your life is not the same child that was the kid who first started being alienated. They're different. They also want to see you as a parent who is confident, who is having a good life, because if they see you being this like broken shell of a person, your kid starts feeling guilty about the fact that they've got some responsibility for the way that you are as a parent. So you getting on with your life is really important for the kid's sake but, the dynamics will have changed.

Speaker 2:

So, for instance, if the kids are starting to engage with you and if they were 14 when it happened and they're now 20, most parents want to start kind of reliving the days of the 14 year old and they want to make up for the lost time and they want to say here's all the stuff that I wanted to give you advice on lost time. And they want to say here's all the stuff that I wanted to give you advice on. You're now dealing with a 20 year old kid who might have been parentified, which means their relationship with all adults is different. They no longer look to adults for advice and this is one of the big mistakes that we make. We kind of feel this is an opportunity. I can now share my values with my child. I can give them advice on how to be as a 20 year old, as you say. This is just one example of how to be different.

Speaker 2:

Don't do it Recognize? Yeah, part of the challenge we have is we don't even recognize that kids lose respect for adults when they get into their late teens anyway, they've naturally lost a degree of respect for you because they think we don't know what we're talking about. We don't understand their world. And then they're alienated on top of that, and the alienation on top of that makes them feel like adults, so they don't think that adults have got anything to say. And then we turn up and we start trying to give them advice. It's like, well, you're just going to push your kid away, so become the coach for your kid, be prepared to let them make mistakes, but you support them on whatever they're doing. You know, if they say dad, I've decided my purpose in life.

Speaker 2:

I'm just going to take out the trash. I'm going to be a garbage man the answer to that is. That's fantastic. That's brilliant. I support you. Wonderful. I'm glad you're doing what you're doing. If they come back, said I'm going to be a neurosurgeon, that's's wonderful. I support you. That's brilliant. That's fantastic. I love that you're doing what you're doing Whatever it is that they are telling you they're going to do.

Speaker 2:

Support them, because that basically says this person loves me unconditionally. I want to be with them. If you don't support them because you're being critical and you're trying to give them advice and you're setting your expectations on how they should be living their life, you just push them away. So you kind of have to rethink your position with your kid and also it's like when they first learn to walk, you have to let them take those first few steps, fall over, smash their face into the ground and they learn from that first time to put their hands up from that point in time afterwards.

Speaker 2:

But if you don't let them fall over that first time, they'll never stick their hands up, they will never protect themselves. And we've got to do the same thing when they're coming out of alienation. We've got to let them make some mistakes, do some stuff. That's not the best thing for them, but it's their choice, it's their life. And this is where the coach comes in, asking them questions how do you think this might work? How do you think that might work? Let them come up with their own answers. They won't be the answer you want, that's okay. It's their answer. But they'll like the engagement with you because you're interested in what they're doing, you're supporting what they're doing.

Speaker 1:

You're saying you know? Yeah, that sounds great, get on with it, I'm there if you need any help. Yeah, I love that. Just reflecting back what they're doing, supporting them in their life and not giving advice unless they ask a question. If they ask a question, naturally provide some information, but really taking a step back and reprogramming how we parent and also bringing up that idea that, hey, we left them at 14, now they're like we need to address them as a 20-year-old and trying to address them as a 14-year-old is going to actually create more distance.

Speaker 1:

So again, containment, holding on to that stuff, getting some resources, work with a coach, you know, have friends, a group, whatever it is to be able to work through some of that stuff. And you know there's so much stuff that we've spoken about. I feel like we can take little bits and pieces of we've spoken about and just do a whole show on that. But I have a couple of other questions for you as we're starting to wind down here. We haven't spoken about grandparents at all and often they're just in the background and fading around and struggling and they don't know what to do. So what advice do you give to them to keep some kind of connection with their grandkids reach out, don't reach out.

Speaker 2:

What does that look like from a grandparent's yeah, so it's a really interesting one because just a couple of the quick dynamics the alienating parents often want to cut contact with our kids so that our parents, so the grandparents, don't get to see our children. Now that's designed to hurt us because the alienator basically hates us so they will cut as many people and things associated with us out of the child's life. Grandparents can be tricky people for an alienated parent to deal with and I'll come to your question in a second because grandparents often are kind of the observers who are looking in, don't understand what's going on with alienation, because they just see the kind of the nuclear family lens. Oh, your kids being unruly. You know you need to bring them in line, just tell them you know, be the parent, enforce yourself.

Speaker 2:

That creates friction between you and your own parents. Worse still, they'll have conversations with the kids saying I don't like what you're doing to you know, your mom, I don't like what you're doing to your mom. Or I don't like what you're doing to your dad, I don't like the way you're disrespecting them, I don't like the way you're disrespecting me. And as far as the kid is concerned, the grandparents are an extension of us and so what comes out of their mouth is the same as like we've said it is the same as like well, we've said it. So if a grandparent says I don't like the way you're behaving, the kid will pull away from us. Leading back to your original question, you know how do grandparents get through this? And the answer is they're going through the same emotional journey that most parents are going through, because they've got the sense of, you know, the grief, the anxiety, the isolation, the injustice all those nine things.

Speaker 2:

They the sense of you know, the grief, the anxiety, the isolation, the injustice all those nine things. They're all happening. For the grandparents as well, and as a parent who's going through their own healing journey, I would advocate everybody go. Take your parents with you, bring them along their own journey, help them to understand what they're feeling, why they're feeling it, how they can help address those feelings, how they can help bring your child back into the fold by doing the same things that you're going to do.

Speaker 2:

So it's like by extension, changing your parenting style. Change your grandparenting style in the same ways, because it's just like they're going through the same stuff that we are.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I hear you change your grandparenting style and how I connect with my parents, but at the same time, when I hear you talk about that, that sounds kind of like people pleasing and me. You would tell a grandparent come talk to a coach, go find your 50 traumas, work on those things. You'd give them the identical advice that you would give a parent. Is what I'm hearing, correct.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, when people go through the program.

Speaker 2:

I also do coaching, by the way, because not everybody wants to go through the whole program. Some people want to do kind of shorter versions but a structured version, or they just want to dip in and out for advice. There are some really simple techniques that you can help people with helping people to understand why they're feeling certain things, the triggers that I was talking about before. When you ask somebody why are you feeling grief, the first two answers that come back are just nonsense, things that your subconscious comes up to defend itself.

Speaker 1:

But it's like a game of question and thread.

Speaker 2:

Question and thread. So ask the question of somebody, pick the thread, because they'll normally reveal something that lets you go down to the next layer. I'll say the first two are nonsense, answers from your subconscious, but go with it. Then you start getting down into the next, like five to seven levels.

Speaker 1:

You can do this in like 10 minutes.

Speaker 2:

And once you start digging down into something. Why are you feeling this way? Why does this make you feel uncomfortable? They'll start focusing more on what is it that they're actually experiencing emotionally, and it nearly always comes back to something that happened way earlier in their life.

Speaker 2:

So I was doing this with a parent only this morning. He's a step-parent and his response to his stepdaughter was he was trying to protect his partner, so the mother of the daughter. But what was really going on was his sense of injustice that had come about when he was a really young kid, and his sense of injustice was manifesting itself in his anger with the stepdaughter because of the way that she was treating the mum. But when he realized, ok, so it's actually my sense of injustice, and I can see now that this is playing out in lots of other different parts of my life, that's a little game that you can play with your parents that will help them to understand, you know. So you're really upset because you'll be able to tell they're triggered by stuff. So you can spend 10 minutes and say, but why is that triggering it? And then you can get down to the root cause and you kind of help them a bit. None of this stuff is rocket science, it's just knowledge to do it.

Speaker 1:

Yes, I love that strategy. That sounds incredibly useful and a wonderful way to connect with your parents as well and to build some trust and some healing, even with the grandparents. That's great, and just as we're getting ready to wrap up, now you have this nine-step program. Is this something that people are doing step-by-step with you? Is it something that's kind of like on demand and people can just do online when they want to do at their own pace? How does it work?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so currently it's only available with me.

Speaker 2:

So what happens is people will sign up to the program. I'll send them the modules because I want them to do work, homework. This is why I'm kind of unusual. I want them to do three to four hours of really looking at what their experience is, so that when they come to the session with me so I kind of do an hour of one-to-one coaching alongside each of those weeks that they come with insights. They come with the answers, because if you just go to a normal therapy session, you could spend three, four hours just coming up with the answers that you can do by yourself at home. I'll bring more of those answers out for me and I'll also help you to understand the links and the connections between you know what you're telling me and some of your experiences. I add value in terms of kind of helping you to really understand yourself. So the program itself is designed to help people unbundle this very complicated area called parental alienation see it in each of its little components and then put it back together again.

Speaker 2:

It's like unbuilding and rebuilding yourself and your parenting style with your kid, so that you can then start helping them far more effectively and also you just feel so completely different. You know you're starting to get your life back on track again. You're starting to feel permission to have some fun, some enjoyment so you should.

Speaker 1:

yeah, I love that you have homework for people, so there's skin in the game and they actually have to show up and invest time in their recovery and in their children. And I think it's a really profound way to parent is to do this kind of work and show up prepared and do the homework. That's part of the commitment to being a parent and unfortunately it's coming out in a challenging way. But good relationship, bad relationship with your kids everyone should be doing this kind of work.

Speaker 2:

One thing I would add as well that I do very early in that process is this looping conversation we were talking about. Most people are getting very caught up in all this negative stuff. You know their insecurities, their vulnerabilities, their fears, their anxiety and in the first session.

Speaker 2:

I get them to start thinking about where do you actually want to go? What does the new future look like? I want them to start getting a sense of hope and a little bit of excitement to get about. Things are gonna get better, but you need to define what that looks like sounds super powerful, subtle, and I really enjoy your presentation.

Speaker 1:

You know that you lead with your heart and compassion and that you are building networks of support and breaking down stuff and that what you're describing is an empowerment program for the parent. It's really about taking back their lives, understanding the system and finding a path forward through their own recovery. I love that. That's everything that you're building upon. I think it's intricate to anyone's recovery. So thank you for the wonderful work, charlie, and for coming on the show, and we're going to have or Charlie's contact information in the show notes so you can get hold of him. I'm hoping you'll share those. Nine different stages of. There was like grief, anger, some different things that we spoke about in the beginning of the show I. That was super great and I'd love to get you back on in the next couple months and just talk about those nine things and go item by item and kind of like dig into the nuances of each one.

Speaker 2:

I think that would be a fantastic conversation yeah, I'd be really happy to do that and I'll make sure I send you those nine things. I'll also send you five triggers for alienators because that will help this audience to understand. Here are things to expect when I push certain buttons. We'll cover that in more detail another time.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I love that. That's a wonderful added gift and thank you for that and thanks for coming out and hanging out.

Speaker 2:

What you're doing is just profoundly amazing. I have so much respect for everything that you've achieved and everything you're seeking to do.

Speaker 1:

It's just amazing and wonderful. Yeah, and I just want to finish with this one tiny little bit. I met Charlie through someone else in the community that's, you know, been working with Charlie for a while and said this is an incredible person out in the world that's doing some phenomenal work, and if you're out listening to the show, this is how we build community. This is how we get a broader understanding of different offerings and different things that people are doing. So I just want to say thank you to the people that are listening, that are making these suggestions, that are making these conversations possible, and with that, charlie, I hope you have a beautiful day and I look forward to connecting in the future. That would be wonderful, and thank you so much for this opportunity. Laurence again, wow, what a great show, and I have so much appreciation for professionals out there that are offering these kind of frameworks to parents, grandparents, even children. Like this is a recovery-based framework that Charles is talking about. That's super specific. And then he gives people homework to actually start to look at yourself, to your triggers, to uncover and discover what's going on in your own ecosystem, so you can show up differently in your relationship with your kids and possibly grandkids, and we also touched on that. This affects every relationship in your life, which you hear me talking about all the time, and this is an empowerment model. I love when a therapist coach even like the 12-step program that we have parental alienation anonymous is a empowerment model where you have actions that you can take and stuff you can work on continuously, you can continuously look at and you can continue to grow as a person. You don't have to pay for it all the time when you're doing work by yourself or joining a free community and you continue to grow and life changes. We don't have to wait for our 50 minute session with a professional that we're paying to see once a week or once a month. We can be doing this every single day and I think that's a really incredible point. That charles brought up in the beginning of the show is like do this work now? Whether you don't have any contact or you have full contact, you have partial contact. Do this work now? The more of this work you do about integrating yourself and dealing with your own traumas, the better life and relationship you're going to have with your kids. So thank you, charles, thank you for your wisdom today and I will definitely be having charles back on the show because again, there was so much that we discussed today. And again and new to the community, welcome. You've got some great shows planned that are going to be coming up in the future. I hope you come out and join that and please like share comment.

Speaker 1:

We are a 501c3 non-profit. We can definitely use your donation and it is to help the next person in. You know, and you might be in a place where you know things are going well or not well or somewhere in between and thinking why would I? And it's to help the next person. Everything that we do is about helping the next person and it's counterintuitive, but service has been the greatest link to recovery for me and I think if you give it a try, you might enjoy it too. And whether it's a donation or just volunteering somewhere, do everything. That's super cool. And that's enough out of me.

Speaker 1:

And in case no one's told you yet today, I love you. I hope you have a beautiful day. I'm headed out to the river. I'm super excited. I'm going to hang out with a friend and be in the sun and be with nature and listen to the rumblings of the river and hopefully not have to think about anything. So have a beautiful day and we'll see you around the neighborhood. Thanks for taking the time to join me on this episode of Family Disappeared Podcast. Do you know someone who can benefit from what we're discussing on today's episode? If so, please share this podcast with them and anyone else in your community that might be interested in changing their lives. Together we'll continue the exploring, growing and healing journey. I will see you on our next episode. Until then, happy days to all.