Family Disappeared

Patience, Parental Alienation & The Power of Community Support - Episode 108

• Lawrence Joss

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This conversation delves into the complexities of parental alienation, exploring personal experiences, emotional struggles, and the importance of community support. The panel discusses the challenges faced in navigating relationships, the role of institutions, and the impact of recovery tools in managing crises. Through shared stories and insights, the discussion highlights the need for patience, understanding, and resilience in the face of familial estrangement.

Key Takeaways

  • Parental alienation is a complex issue that is often misunderstood.
  • Personal experiences of alienation can vary greatly among individuals.
  • Community support plays a crucial role in recovery from parental alienation.
  • Emotional regulation is key in navigating relationships with estranged family members.
  • Institutions often lack understanding of parental alienation, complicating recovery efforts.
  • Recovery tools, such as patience and surrender, can help manage crises.
  • It's important to take time before responding to emotionally charged situations.
  • The journey of recovery is ongoing and requires continuous effort and support.
  • Coping mechanisms evolve over time as individuals gain more experience in recovery.
  • Building resilience is essential for dealing with the challenges of parental alienation.

Chapters

00:00 - Understanding Parental Alienation
02:39 - Personal Experiences and Introductions
05:42 - Check-In: Current Emotional States
08:54 - Navigating Relationships and Recovery
11:48 - The Role of Institutions in Parental Alienation
14:54 - Complexities of Parental Alienation
17:56 - The Impact of Recovery Tools
20:40 - Coping Mechanisms in Crisis
24:06 - Community Support and Resilience
26:47 - Reflections on Recovery and Growth

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:
https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=SDLTX8TBSZNXS

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 1:

I think if you haven't lived through parental alienation, it's like trying to describe childbirth to someone who's never given birth. It's going to take some time to help people to understand what it is we're going through, that this is a very real thing, even though the facts may be difficult to display.

Speaker 2:

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. Welcome to the Family Disappeared podcast. Hi, my name is Lawrence Joss and welcome to the Family Disappeared podcast.

Speaker 2:

Today we have a panel of parents and grandparents and we are all coming to this podcast with different questions to ask each other about parental alienation and different aspects about it, and it's a super great conversation.

Speaker 2:

There's some familiar faces if you've watched some of the podcasts in the past. We have Stephen and Anna and Renee and Julie and a wonderful collection of folks with different experiences that have been around the 12-step program, different periods of time, and the 12-step program I'm talking about is Parental Alienation Anonymous, which is free, and all the links and stuff are in the show notes if you haven't checked it out, and we're talking about a recovery perspective, so this will resonate whether you're part of a 12-step program, if you have other supports. You just want to learn more about parental alienation, estrangement and erasure and what people's experiences are. It's a great conversation and it has a really nice arc to track how people's lives have changed and what recovery might look like, and it's imperative that I think that we do this work now. You know, if you're in the beginning stages, medium stages, later stages of any of this parental alienation, estrangement or erasure like do the work. The work's going to support your relationship going forward, no matter what it looks like now, and every other relationship in your life.

Speaker 1:

That's a lot in.

Speaker 2:

Just the introduction Welcome to the show. If you're new, welcome. If you've been around a long time, welcome. That the introduction. Welcome to the show. If you're new, welcome. If you've been around a long time, welcome. It's a really great show.

Speaker 2:

We have a lot of great resources in the show notes. Please like, share, comment. We want to hear what you think about these questions we're asking. And at the end of the show there's one bonus question that everyone's going to answer in the comments on probably YouTube or on other social media channels. Let's just say so you can participate. I'd love to hear what you think about that. And we're also 501c3 nonprofit. We'd love to have any kind of support and again, the support is for the next person coming in. It's to help the next person that's coming in have more resources and stuff available. So we would love that from you too, if that resonates. And with that, let's jump into the show.

Speaker 2:

My first experience with 12 step programs was when I was 18 years old and I was actually going to school to the University of Arizona. I went into a 12 step room at 18 years old and there was a bunch of people in there and it was just weird and I don't know how I got to a 12 step room, but I was really struggling and I didn't know what to do and, for some reason, I looked for some kind of support group and I landed up showing up at this room, not really having any language for what was going on, not understanding my emotions, not really getting it, but what I saw was a group of people that were rowing in the same direction, that were trying to support each other and also share what was going on in their lives and also figure out a path through. A lot of this show today just talks about the connections and what keeps us going, what's attractive about recovery and why it matters. I'm so grateful that, 18 years old so that for me is like 37 years ago I wound up in a 12-step room that's had such an effect on my life and more in a 12-step room that's had such an effect on my life and more than a 12-step room, that I started learning about community and what support could look like out of the original family of origin. And that's why I'm here today and this has taken me on this trajectory to be part of this community and on the podcast and sharing the experiences with you.

Speaker 2:

So with that, we're going to jump into the podcast with the wonderful guests of parents and grandparents on the panel today so excited to have some of our old friends back on the show. And what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and introduce ourselves in the way we do it at like a Parental Alienation Anonymous meeting where we just identify ourselves, how we're related to parental alienation if we identify that way, and what kind of time we've been kind of like around the program and hanging out in the community. So, Julie, why don't we start with you? Could you please go ahead and introduce yourself to the community? Sure?

Speaker 3:

My name is Julie. I'm the alienated mom of a now 16-year-old boy, who I now have regular contact with. But that comes with its challenges, and I'm also the stepmom to an alienated 23-year-old boy and we have had no contact for two years.

Speaker 2:

Great to have you back on the show, Julian, and thank you for introducing yourself. Renee, if you could go next, please?

Speaker 1:

Okay, I'm Renee, alienated mom of two adult boys, ages 38 and 39, for most of 30 years. We are in contact for the last two and a half years. I started coming to meetings four years ago and it changed absolutely everything for me.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much, renee, and great great to see you back here with us hanging out. And, anna, you're up next.

Speaker 4:

Hi everyone. I'm Anna, alienated mother of two adult sons, both in their 20s. I haven't had contact with either of them for coming up to nine years now. Glad to be here today.

Speaker 2:

Great to have you back. Anna, Thanks for coming out and playing with us for a little bit. And, Stephen, if you could go ahead and introduce yourself please.

Speaker 5:

Sure, I'm Stephen, dad to five, three of biological and two steps Alienated estranged from a 26-year-old daughter it's been about 12 years, 13 years and mildly alienated from a 20-year-old son, with increasing contact over the recent year. So glad to be here.

Speaker 2:

Great to have you here, stephen, and I'm just going to go ahead and identify too. My name is Lawrence. I identify as an alienated father and an alienated grandfather. I have three daughters. I have a 31-year-old that it's been about nine years with no contact. I have a 28-year-old that we started connecting about six months, maybe nine months ago it's hard to track time sometimes with this stuff and I have a 24-year-old that.

Speaker 2:

I have regular contact with and a couple grandkids I have not yet met. And I'll just say this one funny thing that happened during everyone just kind of identifying julie was trying to think how old her kids were and like her eyes kind of like rolled up and she's like you know, and I so identify with that, because in the time warp of this whole thing, like sometimes it's hard to stay current with what's actually happening in the moment because I know for me I'm tracking, tracking so many different things. So that was like such a beautiful, sweet moment when you did that, julie, and I think so many people out there relate. Like it's hard to stay up to date with what's actually going on.

Speaker 3:

Kind of frozen in time at 13.

Speaker 2:

Totally so. What we're going to do now is we're going to do something a little bit different at the show and Anna actually requested this before the show. We're just going to do a quick check-in so we all just catch up with each other and kind of take like a weather check where we're at today before we start the podcast, and everyone will have one to two minutes to come current with the group and we'll see how that plays out and let us know out in the community if that feels good to have those kind of check-ins, see a little bit more what we go through or what our process is when we're hanging out within community and supporting each other. So, anna, seeing that it was your wonderful idea, why don't you go ahead and check in first?

Speaker 4:

Thank you, lawrence. Hi everyone, I'm grateful for the opportunity to check in and get current. I know when I go to meetings it helps me to land a little bit in my life. Right at the moment it's fairly topsy-turvy and I've been trying to control it in certain directions and I've been pulled back into others. It's nice. I wanted to acknowledge it and say it out loud, because then this recording feels like a meeting and it becomes part of my recovery. Right, because I need to be able to put voice to that, because I'm feeling a little bit all over the place. In order to figure out what's going on for me emotionally, I need to speak to it. So that maybe sounds a little bit out there but thank you for letting me share and I'll pass.

Speaker 5:

Yeah, sounded great. I'm going to thank you for your check and then, stephen, you're up next. Okay, yeah, check it. It's a great idea. Thank you, very helpful.

Speaker 5:

You know, both my relationship with my daughter and my son have kind of moved into a new phase. And my daughter I have a first. Like Lawrence was saying earlier, I have a first grand baby on the way. So there's no grand baby on my side of the family and my daughter, who I've had very limited contact with for a long time, is pregnant currently and there's been some, you know, reaching out in text. But then there's, you know, these periods where there's been a long period of no communication and so just trying to navigate, which is weird because at every phase, right, it seems like it's new again, like I thought I had this nailed down of when to make, when to try to, how often to make contact, how, you know, not overdoing it but not underdoing it.

Speaker 5:

And now, you know, with this pregnancy, and then there's some contact and it's like kind of like reevaluating, like what does that look like and not being totally sure about it. So that's kind of an interesting thing. There I am feeling a little bit of the you know, sadness and that kind of thing of not being more connected to this really neat thing which is a pregnancy and a grandbaby on the way, and just seeing I've seen one picture of my daughter pregnant, so that feels a little difficult or challenging. And then I've got this increasing communication with my son and there's things that have not been discussed, that have happened over the years, that feel like the elephant in the room and trying to decide do we have enough traction to have some of these authentic conversations now or do we not? And so, yeah, I would say I'm feeling very kind of like there's some shifting sand here and just trying to sit with it and be patient and use 12-step recovery to work through that. So, yeah, thanks for letting me check in.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for your check-in, stephen, and congratulations. It is an exciting time and, like you said, moving through these time warp bubbles when you think you got it figured out, and then the next thing happens and it's like, oh wow, I'm starting over. So I totally relate to that. And, julia, if you could please check in.

Speaker 3:

I have increasing contact with my son. I was originally alienated from him when he was 13 and I had zero contact for almost two years. But in the last year I've regained contact and he now comes to my house regularly. I mean, for the most part, it's wonderful. I'm a completely different parent than I used to be, which I struggle with. It's hard. I let a completely different parent than I used to be, which I struggle with. It's hard. I let a lot of things go by that other parents might argue is spoiling him or, you know, not punishing him. But after what I've been through, this is the way I parent.

Speaker 3:

Now, you know, we recently got, I got to go to Europe with him for three weeks, which was well. He was in Europe for three weeks. I was with him for 10 days, but it was was magical, but it had its moments. You know, traveling takes its toll. Being in a foreign country takes its toll and in those moments when he would get really stressed, he would lash out at me and dive into the litany of reasons why he hated me. And then we'd be back in Europe and eating, you know, muscles and things would be okay again. It's a journey and I'm still here and I'm still working the steps, and it's not over yet. And then, of course, there's my stepson, who we hope will reconnect someday, but so far no luck.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for the check-in, julian. Yay you to go on a three-week vacation, spend 10 of those days with your son. Coming from nothing to something gives us so much hope and so healing, and also hearing the cycle of him lashing out and then you're eating muscles. It's just like in his DNA or in his whatever in the moment and then it goes away and you get to eat muscles. I think that's such a great lesson for all of us and anyone that's new to this and struggling and seeing the kids are just trying to feel safe and trying to find their feet and then you know something happens and then they eat mussels. I love it. I got a picture in my head of like oh, and then you know for some people, without a doubt.

Speaker 2:

Renee, if you could please go ahead and do a check in.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to do this again. I'm really looking forward to it. For me, I'm kind of all over the place. As Anna mentioned, life is really in session right now for my children, especially my youngest son, and for myself and for my husband at the same time. But my takeaway is, you know, I woke up this morning kind of in a pissy mood and just kind of irritable, and I didn't sleep well last night and then I went and spent time with the dogs at the animal shelter and it's like now I've had a reset and the takeaway for me is that I can stay in that eye of the storm and I don't have to jump into the chaos. And if I do jump into the chaos, I can quickly step back into the eye of the storm. I am so grateful for learning that lesson in the rooms of recovery.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for that, renee, and I love the maturity that you're talking about, that there is a storm Sometimes I go in, but I'm quicker to find my way out and I know the path out now because I've been practicing for a long time. So I think that's beautiful and I think for anyone new to the show or new to community, and whether you enjoy this community or it's a different community, it takes time to build resilience so you can take a step back and you know, like I know, in the early days you just get sucked in and you stay in and it feels familiar and sometimes you don't want to get out because of the familiarity and then you learn, hey, this is going to kill me. So thank you for that, renee, and I'll just do a quick check. And I feel a little discombobulated.

Speaker 2:

I just got back from traveling and just getting used to being back in my house and, yeah, and it feels when I take a longer trip that, as I do, those transitions from leaving to coming or coming to leaving or whatever it is is the kids come up more like usually it's compartmentalized and I can put it away and I can live my life and everything's great, but when there's these moments of anxiety or stuff going on. It tends to get more intense and then, when I settle, my emotional ecosystem starts to regulate. It's like, oh, they move into a right size. So I feel that part of parental alienation. Where's this shift? Where it's right size and my life is going, and then it like expands in my own head, nowhere else, and takes up more space and it becomes a little bit harder to breathe. And then I'm like, oh, kind of similar to what you're saying, renee, where I just go oh, this is my stuff going on and intersecting and it's not real, it's not in the present time.

Speaker 2:

I take a. So now we're going to play or do something different. We've never done. Everyone's come today with a couple different questions and no one knows what anyone else's questions are. So we're just going to go around. Someone will ask a question and we'll answer the question. We'll follow it along to see if there's any other parts or pieces to discuss and then we'll move on to someone else's next question. And just because Stephen was saying, hey, I don't want to answer my own question before we even started recording, we're going to start with Steven's question because I want to know what it is.

Speaker 5:

Thanks, I've actually got six, but one or two of them are probably run on, so I'll start with a simple one. How about that?

Speaker 2:

I want the one. You don't want to ask. Everyone wants that.

Speaker 5:

Let's start with that one, okay, well, you can let me know if it's. I don't know if it's appropriate for this forum, but I'll read it anyway. Why do you feel that the courts, psychologists, judges and various other key societal institutions are so lacking in understanding on the subject of parental alienation or even reject the reality of it, while so many people are dealing with it visibly and tangibly? Why are some of the moms and mothers groups so aggressively trying to silence the parental alienation community and disregard or nullify the term parental alienation?

Speaker 2:

Okay, that is an intense question. I will definitely give you that. I can see why you didn't necessarily want to ask it and I'll say, like what I'm hearing, your question is we're talking about institutions, judges, other stakeholders within the space that we all try to navigate, why they don't seem to really care or aren't educated or why there's no substantial change. And then I heard a second part where why are some groups and you specifically said mothers groups but why are some groups and you specifically said mothers groups? But I want to include all different kinds of groups, even though there are some groups that might be more in the front, any kind of group out there trying to disprove or fight against the idea of alienation. So let's just start with institutional question about judges, lawyers, therapists, all that stuff. Why don't they care in your opinion or your experience? Yeah, just take that and let's not get too deep into the woods. Everyone take two, three minutes to share on that question and we'll move on from there. So I'm going to start with you first, renee thanks, lawrence.

Speaker 1:

That is an intense question, steven, and my first instinct is this is so complex and the fact that it's very subjective that my experience is different from Julie's experience, is different from Anna's experience, and so on, and I think if you haven't lived through parental alienation, it's like trying to describe childbirth to someone who's never given birth.

Speaker 1:

It's going to take some time to help people to understand what it is we're going through, that this is a very real thing, even though the facts may be difficult to display. You know, it's one of those things that is just so. It's like catching bubbles right. It's like you're constantly trying to explain at least, I am constantly trying to explain, trying to make people understand, and the fact is, my opinion is you're not going to understand unless you've been through it, or maybe in a professional capacity, you've dealt with enough people that are telling you the same story over and over that you have to give some credence to that story. You've got to give it some weight. But other than that, there's many things in this world that if you haven't personally been through it, you're not going to get it, and I think this is definitely one of those.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for that, renee. Yeah, and I'm definitely hearing that people that don't have direct experience have a lot harder time grasping what's really happening in your experience, and you're talking about the complexity of the whole thing. That makes 100% sense. And let me go to you next, julie. What do you think? I think you're most probably the person that's being in court the last out of all of us so your experience might be a little bit different.

Speaker 3:

Currently in court. That is really tough and it's a subject that I kind of push to the corners of my mind because it's so overwhelmingly frustrating I can't even touch it. You know, I think it's a lot of things. I think that, like, my experience is that my ex is an alcoholic, an addict. He was emotionally and mentally abusive and that is not something you can easily prove and whenever I have tried to bring that up with the current therapist that the whole family is working with, they dismiss that, just like they dismiss parental alienation because there's no tangible evidence. I can tell you the feelings that it evoked in me, but I can't prove it and it's easy to dismiss. And I think parental alienation is a similar type of abuse. It is largely mental in nature and, like Renee's analogy of catching bubbles, I can't prove it.

Speaker 3:

I think that part of it is a genuine concern for children, particularly that you know we save them from an abusive home and when a child says that they've been abused, we're supposed to believe them. Unfortunately, in the case of my child, it was a complete fabrication and, interestingly, he never said it to another adult human. He never said it to the doctors in the mental hospital where he was placed when he became suicidal. He never said it to his personal therapist. He never said it to the reunification therapist. He never said it to his father. He never said it out loud. Where he said it was in an online forum to strangers that he had never met in real life, and his father obtained a printout of those conversations. Despite the fact that he never said it out loud, nobody wanted to take the chance that it was true.

Speaker 3:

On the one hand, I can appreciate that If a child is in an abusive home, we're supposed to remove them from that home.

Speaker 3:

On the other hand, it wasn't true and I think that the courts and the therapists they're trying to weave a delicate balance of protecting the child and not. I also think there's a failure in the therapeutic community that I know the reunification therapist that we had to go to dismissed immediately that parental alienation even existed as a concept. Immediately that parental alienation even existed as a concept. She's an older therapist. I'm sure she was last in school at least 20 years ago, if not 30 years ago. Back when I think it was Gardner was originally trying to say it was a syndrome and the research has changed. We've since decided it's not a syndrome, but it is real and I wish that therapists and really all doctors were forced to go back and continue their education and keep reading on the current research, because research changes, as we all know. I mean, if I could fix it, I guess the first thing I would do is beef up the continuing education requirements for all, particularly therapeutic professionals and medical professionals.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for that, julie. And what about you, anna? What is your interpretation of the different stakeholders in the system and their role, and maybe their lack of recognizing some of the dynamics that are happening?

Speaker 4:

It's interesting to think about Lawrence, since I've been involved in legal proceedings, but the conversation this morning is reminding me that I'm grateful that I eventually found a lawyer and I'm in Canada, so I'm different to maybe a lot of the listeners if listening in from the States but a lawyer who was able to guide me through many, many periods of feeling frustrated and not understanding why I couldn't be seen and heard for what I felt was going on, and she would essentially pick I don't like the term battle, but pick the items that we could actually have some success in in order to move forward.

Speaker 4:

And it was frustrating but I needed that guidance because at that point I was very I was very much in shock. I couldn't think clearly and I wasn't really at that point thinking about a definition of alienation, whether or not it was a real thing. I was following her lead because I couldn't think clearly and I'm grateful that she was able to sit me down at a table with a list of items and some that I could bring my stuff to the table and things that I was concerned about and she'd say, okay, we can focus on A, b and C, but the rest of them you need to find other avenues in order to like therapeutically deal with that. But there's not something the legal system can deal with. And she wasn't as crass in her explanation as that and at the time I remember sort of feeling frustrated and thinking I need to be led through this because I'm feeling very shaky right now and I want some sense of agency and moving forward. And she was able to give that to me. It didn't mean that it wasn't a long-winded process, but I am very grateful. She wasn't without compassion, but she was straightforward too and I needed that. Otherwise the way it would have worked with my exes it would have been decades into and it was long enough. She allowed me space to put voice to some of those feelings and I'm grateful that she's someone that works within the system that she herself would admit is very, very broken and faulty, because she's trying to help people like myself and everyone in this room to try and navigate through a very, very broken system that doesn't identify everything that's going on.

Speaker 4:

And it wasn't until the divorce proceedings were done and then I joined a PAA that I started to think okay, I can the energy I guess almost that I saved when I wasn't losing energy trying to think about that stuff when I was sorting through the legal stuff.

Speaker 4:

I can now push that energy forward and help the community, and that's. I don't know if I'm really answering the question, but it's something that I can take control of, because if I think about the definition of alienation and how the legal system sees it and how therapeutic intervention works, I still can't wrap my head around it necessarily. So I have to really narrow it down to what can I do to help the next person that might be struggling with this? And that's what's helped me now. But at the time it felt like another layer, the whole broad subject right, it felt like another layer that was suffocating me and I had a lawyer that was able to just push that up just a little bit so we could keep moving forward. But I know that that's not the case with everybody. I know it's just a minefield in the whole legal arena.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, and it's also super interesting that you're having a similar experience and you're in Canada. You know which is information for everyone and I know different countries have different laws and stuff like that and we need to take that into consideration. And I'm going to answer the question and then we'll give you a shot at your question, stephen. And I'm going to answer the question and then we'll give you a shot at your question, stephen. And when I hear the question about the different stakeholders, my mind goes to a very different place, like I'm hearing everyone talk about an individual experience and mine goes to more of a system. Right, and the system is broken and the system in the United States I'm not familiar with the Canadian system very much, but the actual family court system in the United States is broken and it was never set up to handle what it is handling and there was actually no court system, from what I remember, from my resource, and it was actually started getting set up and being a necessity. After all, the Jim Crow laws came out in the South and then they started building out these court systems to support all these people that were coming into the jail system, that never used to be in the jail system and we're building everything on top of this broken system and naturally it's broken. And I think, again, from my perspective and this might be polarizing to a degree a lot of people that I see have never been sucked into the court system, the jail system, stuff like that, and we're all experiencing this for the first time, but it has always been broken. And now we're saying, hey, this isn't cool, but this is what people have been talking about for the last, you know, 400 years, really in the United States.

Speaker 2:

So, from my perspective, why are these people doing this stuff? Well, this is what they're programmed to do. This is how the system works. It's based on making money, it's based on capacity and everyone's maxed out and there's not enough therapists, lawyers, attorneys, to service even the pool of people there, so it becomes a money grab. And that's how the system is built up is to make money, and I think the statistics are something like it's a $50 billion a year industry in the United States alone, even with like child support, like so much of those dollars actually go to the different parts of the mechanism that are running it and very few of those dollars land up for the child. So, again for me, if there's going to be sustainable change, it's on a systems level and not an individual level. And I know for me in the beginning years it was all about an individual level because the pain was too intense, I couldn't see anyone but myself and I just wanted my kids back. So good, complex questions, stephen. I'm curious what you have to say about it.

Speaker 5:

You know, of course I was, you know, thinking about the questions and thinking about the answers a little bit too, and again I sort of maybe pieces of everybody's responses here that it's such a complex thing. To Renee's point, you know, if you haven't experienced it you don't know, right, so it's not a reality. I've always said this kind of statement is like until the snake bites you you don't know what it's like, right, so you know, you can talk about it like, oh, I think I know what that would be like, but the reality is until the snake actually bites you, and then you're like, oh, that's what a snake bite feels like. You don't really understand it. But I think, more on the systems level too, that the court system itself seems to be set up, even though I know in most court systems it says when a relationship breaks down or there's a divorce or whatever, that we're looking at the best interests of the child. But the problem is that's always framed within a parent winning and a parent losing, and so it feels to me like there has to be a winner right, because we're in a court situation, so there's a suit right which? In a suit, somebody is a winning party, somebody is a losing party, typically, unless mediation works or whatever. So I think it's just that, again like what you said, lawrence, the system there needs to be an overhaul of the system, and this has been this way long before. Maybe we even identified parental alienation.

Speaker 5:

And then the other thing is I think societally we do a really terrible job with endings. We don't do a great job with ending of life. We don't like to talk about death in our society. We don't like to talk about when people end a career. You hear people they get a half hour HR counseling session about what the rest of their life looks like and then they're handed their file box and they're done. And it's the same thing with ending relationships. I think we just don't do a great job when relationships end and how to navigate that and how to keep the kids as a primary focus that it's their well-being that should be at the forefront and how to navigate. I think we don't navigate endings well. We probably need to do a better job societally of learning how to do that in a lot of different ways.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for that, stephen, and yeah, I like that thought that you're throwing out there for us to kind of like stew in a little bit like the idea of endings and transitions and what that looks like, and are we equipped to handle those and all the systems in place equipped to help support people handling like that? And I think everyone said no in their answer to some degree. And I just want to address the second part of your question because I know when you said women's groups or women trying to prove that parental alienation doesn't exist, I felt like my body tight and then my face got a little bit heated. The languaging is difficult because it's identifying one group of people and I think it's a valid question because it is stuff out there and there are different groups that are really triggered by the world, parental alienation, and in the past people have weaponized every term we've ever seen, including the term parental alienation, to manipulate something, to get something, to want something, to do something like that. So I just want to spend. You know, if everyone wants to weigh in, if they have anything to say about this, let's just try to keep it to 30 seconds or so so we can move on to the next question and make sure we have time for everyone's questions.

Speaker 2:

And I will say for me with the women's groups, I don't think it's any different on an interpersonal response than I'm having. I'm feeling scared, upregulated If I don't have the skills, I'm not working on my own interpersonal ecosystem. I just want to get some kind of relief and I'm going to whatever place I think I can get relief and it's saying no, this is real, this isn't real. No, that's really red. You're saying it's brown, and it feels like it just gets its own inertia, kind of like parental alienation.

Speaker 2:

Then all different people are poking and pushing in different directions and the ball just starts rolling by itself Like that's a lot of what I see and then it's just muck. But the actual base of what's happening is real and needs to be addressed and people need to get acknowledged and their lived experiences with the weaponizing of these different words. Yeah, like some people do do that and some people are abusive, yes, and there has to be some horrific stuff happening. Yes, let's honor that and validate that. And there has to be the reality that, yes, there's other spectrums where this is real.

Speaker 5:

That's my take and could I qualify that a little bit, please? Completely agree with you that there's many, many groups and different stakeholders that are in a place of maybe wanting to not look at parental alienation because it's painful or whatever the reasons are. Where that came from was that there's a couple of people out there that are making a fairly large splash in the alienation community and one of them is a formerly alienated child who's now an adult child, who's now an adult, and they have mentioned specifically that out of the groups that have been activated by alienation, this person has particularly had a lot of resistance and personal attacks and that kind of thing from some specific groups. So that's where that came from. But, yes, completely agree with you that there are lots of groups on both sides that are upregulated and absolutely so completely want to qualify that in some way so that that doesn't sound like it's isolating a particular group. It was just coming from a specific situation with a podcaster who's made some pretty big inroads into the alienation community thank you for clarifying that, steven.

Speaker 2:

I think that all gives us a little context, because I know other people out there maybe any some people in this group would just have some kind of physical reaction as we're identifying one gender or one group or something like this and just saying this is a cumulative problem, that everyone is part of it, including me, and I'm part of the solution too, I believe. Anna, do you have anything you'd like to say about the subject, about the different groups?

Speaker 4:

Not that hasn't already been given voice to Lawrence.

Speaker 2:

And Renee.

Speaker 1:

The only thing that I'll say. For me, this has been over 30 years ago that I dealt with this, so I am not someone that gets wrapped up in the politics of everything. I really enjoy keeping my feet on the ground. As far as helping people in the room, sponsorship, all of that and that's really where I put my energy All of those other things, it just feels too intense for me, so I don't really have any additional information in this area.

Speaker 2:

And I love that you brought it back to actually the impact zone like where can I actually make an impact, when can I be of great service? And it's to the next person that's struggling is really what I heard you say, Renee, and that's really what a 12-step program is. It's really about the newcomer. So that's a wonderful way to kind of like break that down and say, hey, yeah, this is happening and where can I make an impact? So that's really what I heard from you, Renee and Julie. Do you have anything you want to protect their children?

Speaker 3:

from that and you can't easily define it and they feel that they're protecting their children from the possibility that what happened to them could happen to their children, or maybe it has happened to their children. I know I was confronted with the option, when I found out I was pregnant and I was separated from my husband at the time to disappear, move away and have my child, and he would never be the wiser. And I didn't choose that option. I had another opportunity, when we first separated, to again run and he wouldn't have had a whole lot of recourse and I chose not to. At every junction I chose to keep my son's father in his life, and it came with consequences.

Speaker 3:

But I realized that whatever relationship my child was going to have with his father was between my child and his father. As much as I wanted to control that or stop that or fix that or put a bubble around it, I couldn't. His father's his father and his relationship with his father is going to have its own twists and turns and I can't protect him from that, and I think the message that I would like to share more is that much as you're trying to protect your child, you can't. They're going to have a relationship with their other parent and you, and it's going to have its own challenges, and every parent on the planet makes mistakes. We all do things that our child may interpret as abusive or neglectful or hurtful, and it's part of life. We need to help our children be resilient and try not to protect them in the form of keeping them from the other parent. That's not always possible. There are a lot of cases where I think it is possible.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, julie. Thank you for that perspective and we're going to move on to the next question and, Anna, you get to pick a question you would like to ask.

Speaker 4:

Like Stephen, if I answer my own question, it's going to be revealing, which is why it was a question in the first place, because it was pertinent for me. So my question is what's the first recovery tool or phrase that comes to mind when you're in a crisis, and do you have an example of how you?

Speaker 2:

lent into that. So what's the first recovery tool that comes up and how do you use it and apply it like actually in your day to day life?

Speaker 4:

and actually the moment is what I'm hearing correct yes, it's something that feels urgent or feels like it's a crisis, so you need to. There's an impetus to address it right away cool.

Speaker 2:

That's a great, great question, and would you like to answer your question first, or would you like me to cycle through the group, because I'm super curious what you have to say about I don.

Speaker 4:

You know what? I don't mind answering it. It's interesting because it's a big part of my recovery. For me, it is slowed down because that's something that I've never been able to do. So press pause, whatever that looks like and I'm smiling because the particular instance I'm thinking of with myself is that this is what I do in my recovery tour I decide to adapt things to suit my narrative. Right, that's okay. That's part of my growth at being progress and not perfection.

Speaker 4:

So when this thing was happening, I did slow down, but I also went into survival mode. So my because my second tool would be asking for help, because if I'm feeling like it's a crisis and I'm feeling like I'm freezing up which I was then I need to get outside advice, and so I didn't do that until later on, which was interesting. So I tried to micromanage things and it didn't work out. And, without going too much into the story, yeah, I slowed down enough to kind of work my way through what went on and I handled it a lot better than I would have done before I was doing recovery work, but there was a price to pay at the end of it and for me, the bigger lesson with all of it was that I still want to control stuff that's emotional, so a lot of it was to do with me trying to push my emotions down and to micromanage everything to have control, because everything felt like it was out of control.

Speaker 3:

And.

Speaker 4:

I need to surrender in those moments. So I'm smiling now. I was not smiling at the time, but it was interesting. It brought that question into my mind. It makes me realize how deep this stuff runs and how the emotional stuff who am I to think that I can control the emotion? I mean, I can't. I can put voice to it, I can ease it out of myself, I can find ways to soothe myself and comfort myself. But I wanted to push it all down and I wanted to show everybody that I had everything under control. I thought I was beyond that. So it's a moment of humility right where I needed to view things differently and I was okay, nothing was disastrous. But it's put me in a position where I have to slow down and I have to rest, because the more I try and push down the emotional stuff, I increase my suffering and I know this up here. But sometimes in here the disconnect right, and sometimes it's an override and I know that it is because that's been my survival right. So it's this is a long-winded answer to my question, but it was just interesting.

Speaker 4:

If I hadn't had those ideas in my head, I wouldn't have been able to almost kind of triage my way through it, a less recovered version of me. I would have totally lost the plot and it would have been a very different outcome, whereas I could feel myself stagger my way through it. So it was manageable. This is the whole thing for me. Recovery work makes my life more manageable. It doesn't mean that I stop being someone that wants to control and wants to push the emotions down and doesn't want to feel the really hard stuff. It just allows me to think, hey, and also, what would people in my circle do in this instance?

Speaker 4:

And so I had all of that stuff going on and I overrode it a little bit, but that didn't last very long, and then I felt myself leaning into the foundation of recovery and I'm like, oh, so it can be like this, so it's had a big impact.

Speaker 4:

But it also feels like another foundational piece, and it feels healthy to admit to it in this podcast, because I like to think that I'm rocking recovery all the time and it doesn't work that way, and I need to be able to say that to myself too. Right, there's stuff that I have no control over, and sometimes I need to be able to say that to myself too. Right, there's stuff that I have no control over, and sometimes I need to rest, and sometimes I need to sit in the sad emotions. And then I was just curious to think, yeah, this is how I showed up, and what do other people do, and how does it play out? It's not just what you pick as a go-to or whatever, but how do you then use that to move forward in a way that's different to the way you might have done in the past?

Speaker 2:

Thank you for that, Anna, and the couple of things that I took away from that. I heard. Slow down plus surrender equals manageability. That's kind of what I got out of it and, honestly to tell you the truth, I don't even remember what the question was. Can you tell me what the question was one more time?

Speaker 4:

The question what's the first recovery tool or phrase or slogan or whatever that comes into your mind when you're in a crisis and you need to step down from the crisis?

Speaker 2:

okay, okay.

Speaker 5:

So we're going to siphon through everyone now, and so, steven, let's go to you next you know mine's very similar to anna's, I think she said, kind of like slowing down and surrender. I would say for me it's's very similar. It's in the word patience To me, woven through the 12 steps of recovery which you know I've been coming to meetings I think it's about three and a half years now is this idea of patience? And what I recognized for myself was, when I was getting into trouble and this was even before alienation like there was a certain amount of impatience in my life, right, and impatience equals control. So when I'm trying to control something, it's because I'm usually impatient, I want some resolution for myself, or I wanted things to feel better for myself, right? So then I would exert this idea of control on others, like if they could just do this, my life would be better, which is a really I mean honestly, it's just a really messed up way of thinking, but here I was right.

Speaker 5:

So I've done a lot of work on that, but I've looked at it pretty heavily and one of the things I've realized is that built into all 12 of the steps that we work, is this idea of patience patience with myself, patience with others, patience with situations in general. And as I've gone along in recovery. What I find is if I can just sit with the situation a little bit longer, oftentimes the answer becomes clear. But when I react really quickly out of the need to control or change something or modify something or make it okay because I don't want to sit with that uncomfortableness that gets me in trouble. I think there's a slogan that says take it easy or something like that. I can't remember the exact, you might know it Lawrence or Renee or some of the longer standing 12-steppers, but there's something like that. It's like take it easy or slow down or something like that, and for me that's been a key. So that's what I would say.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love the idea of patience and I love the way that you describe it, Like I need to get some kind of relief. If I controlled change, painted a different color, then I'm going to be okay. So it's really underneath that. It's just like how am I going to be okay, how am I going to feel safe? And we try to get people to do this kind of stuff. So the patience thing is massive.

Speaker 2:

And I would say at the same time, when we're talking about patience and the need to feel safe and all the things that are connected, that that's the same mirroring we're getting from our children, from our grandchildren, from the people where I work with, from the person at the market is everyone's trying to get that same need met and to identify that in yourself and work with it. My follow-up question would be yeah, and you see that to be true in your children too, but we're not going to go there because we're going to go to Julie on the same question that Anna's asking your favorite thing that you work with through recovery and how it manifests. I think that was kind of the question.

Speaker 3:

Yeah Well, to tag on a little bit to what Stephen said, I have several quotes on my computer monitor that I'm always staring at, and one of them is the strongest warriors are these two time and patience. I think that you know we tend to get wrapped up in wanting results on our timeline and, like you said, it's a patience thing and it's recognizing that it may take a lot longer than you ever thought it would. So the first thing that I go to is step one let go. I have this constant image in my head, as I've been going through this parental alienation struggle, of the finger trap where the only way to get your fingers out is to stop struggling. When I find that I'm caught in the finger trap, just take a deep breath and calm down and relax and let go, and then you can get out of the trap. And that's repeatedly what I have to go to.

Speaker 3:

And you know, every time I get an email from my attorney and my blood pressure just blows through my skull hold on, take a breath. If I don't have the capacity right now to read the email, I don't. There's nothing that says I have to respond within 30 seconds. So take a breath. And if I get a text from my ex, I have a new rule that I wait 24 hours before I read it because I got to get control of my system before I can get to a place where I can read it and respond calmly.

Speaker 2:

I love your analogy of the finger trap and even in relationship, to get in a text from your ex-spouse and initially you're just trying to get something done and then you're in so much pain your fingers are never coming out and you're creating all this tumultuous whatever that word is. But I love 24-hour rule, julie. I love it. It's kind of like the five second rule, when you drop something which you're just adding a bunch of hours and wonderful, wonderful advice and for anyone listening, I love the 24 hour rule not opening the email, taking your time and sometimes you need to look at something, but yeah, what a sign of maturity and recovery. Thanks for sharing that. That's awesome, julie and Renee. What about you?

Speaker 1:

You know it came to mind a second ago when Julie was talking, but really throughout this whole thing I keep looking for the little emoji thing like oh, happy face or heart or whatever, because I love what's being shared here and this is such a thought provoking question and for me what came up was in 30 years this has changed a lot for me, you know, even though I've been in recovery for 30, well, 25 years and 12 step recovery, but I've been dealing with this for 30 years. So it was very different, very knee jerk, when I first was dealing with alienation because I had no support, and then it kind of went to, you know, when I was new in recovery, call my sponsor, call a closed-mouth friend in the program and just unleash. You know, I don't know what to do. This is happening and then eventually, over time, it became hitting that pause button time. It became hitting that pause button, taking a minute to take a deep breath and, as Julie said, kind of letting go of the reins a little bit, because the tighter I hang on and the more I try to control this situation, the worse I make it. And that was my experience over the 26 years that I wasn't in this recovery group is, my kids would reach out and I would do something to mess it up and then I couldn't understand why they disappeared again for another five years or whatever. A lot of that is going through my head right now.

Speaker 1:

Thing I'll mention is Anna and I talk a lot about the amygdala hijack because we are both very emotion driven and the amygdala is the emotion center of the brain. I have to credit Mayo Clinic for educating me on that, that when your brain, your amygdala, is frozen, there is nothing logically you can do to talk your way out of it. Recently I heard a therapist say you have to deal with an emotional hijack with emotion in order to combat it. Logic will not work in that situation and I just heard that a couple days ago. So I'm still trying to process that. But the takeaway for me is that the way that I deal with a crisis situation is going to change based on my recovery, and that's why I work the steps and that's why I try on different things, like reaching out to somebody, because I don't often know what's going to work. So I've got to have some experience based in recovery to know what to try next. So great question, anna. Thank you.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for that, renee, and I love that you're bringing in the years of experience and stuff shifts and changes and as you evolve, stuff is moving and it takes patience and pausing. And also bringing in the amygdala, which is super interesting. The amygdala doesn't actually have any conception of time and space, so if something gets triggered today, but it happened 30 years ago, I'm still reacting as if it's happening in the present moment and that's why the emotions feel so intense and we kind of go offline for a little bit. At least that's the way that I learned it and that might be correct and it might not be. I would say for me something that I heard early on in recovery, which covers basically what everyone's saying, which is super interesting. We're all saying a version of the same was sit still and do nothing. And in doing nothing, that doesn't say don't do your work. I know for me I always wanted something outside of me to fix something inside of me, so when something would come up I would kind of reach out, like a lot of people saying, to try to get some kind of relief. And this particular person was saying sit still, do your interpersonal work, resource yourself, build resilience, and then, in the doing nothing. The next indicated step will be presented as you're working on yourself. And that's been my experience over and over and over again, and I'll just share this quick story.

Speaker 2:

My middle daughter I just started having some contact with. I'm like Stephen, I'm like, yes, no eggshells, not what, who you know is what it feels like. And I texted her and didn't hear anything back and I'm like I'm gonna send that email that's gonna let her know what's going on and you know, like talk about my feelings. And then, two weeks later, she sends a text and says I'm super busy and it's the summer and you know whatever, and it doesn't feel good. I still, you know, don't feel like I'm. I feel like invisible to a degree, and then I'm like that's great, it sounds like you're having a really busy summer and when you get the time, I'd love to see some pictures to catch up on what's actually happening. And then nothing right, and that's part of like the sit still and the patience that comes in. And as we're having this conversation, I see some texts pop up on my screen, which is my daughter replying and sending pictures of my grandkids and what they're doing this summer. So it's like there's no coincidence that we're on this podcast and that's happening, because that happens over and over and over again and I'm not sure how I about it. I didn't look at anything because we're on a podcast and part of me is like I ain't looking at that, I'm still going to blow this stuff up. That's not enough for me. It took two weeks. I don't matter, and I'm not sure how I really feel about that, because it's so raw and I want to see the picture when it.

Speaker 2:

That's my little bit and I think everyone got a chance to answer that and great, it's really neat how everyone was super, super similar. I did not expect that. Well, what a great show. I love everyone's questions and it's also super interesting that as we go through the questions, there's a familiar stream and each question ties into the next question. So you start to see how recovery builds and also how the thought process of just reclaiming our lives and showing up.

Speaker 2:

And the thing that I also want to point out that I love about this is everyone's smiling, everyone's super engaged, everyone is growing and stretching and learning and that's not the way any of us got here. We were like you, if you're new just ripped apart emotional one-hour kids back in our life just trying to breathe, and we couldn't do any of those things. So we got desperate enough to try something different, which was a group environment for support. And, as I always say, I'm not advocating that this is the only way to get support. I'm advocating that we all need a community of people to help us walk through this. I'm advocating that we all need a community of people to help us walk through this, and our family can be useful, but something outside of our family is incredibly useful to use as a resource and to help build resilience, to hear other people's experiences, to get other tools and to learn what to do. And that's a lot of what we do in community and 12-step program. And the other thing that's really important is we learn what not to do, but what other people have tried and haven't been successful at.

Speaker 2:

So I hope you enjoyed the show today. I think it was fantastic. I have a deep affinity for all these folks that were on the show today and a deep appreciation and a gratitude that I get to trudge this road with them, and some days are great and some days are super challenging and at the end of the day, we're all working on ourselves and we're all wanting to change and we're all wanting to be part of a family of choice. I want to be part of a community of choice. I want to have agency in my life and connect with people that feel like they have resonance. So, yeah, I want a place of belonging. That's really what I'm looking for. Maybe that resonates with you or it doesn't. And again, thanks for coming out.

Speaker 2:

And the second part of the show is great, and both of these shows a little bit longer. So I'm hoping you enjoy the longer format and it'd be great to hear if you are and if you like the longer shows, and if not, that'd be great too. Any questions or any comments? Family disappeared at gmailcom. Love to hear from you, comment, share and at the next episode there's a bonus. We'd love to hear your answer to the question and you can share that on YouTube in the comments. So, with that being said, I hope you have a beautiful day. I love you.

Speaker 2:

If no one's told you today, and if someone's told you that they love you today, I love you too. Two people love you, maybe three or four. Whatever it is, I hope you're having a beautiful day and we'll see you around the neighborhood. Thanks, 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.