Family Disappeared

Systemic Parental Alienation, Family Hierarchy & Survival w/ Dr. Azzopardi Part 2 - Episode 122

• Lawrence Joss

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The conversation delves into the complexities of relationship problems faced by couples, emphasizing the common issues stemming from parenting and intimacy. It highlights the tendency of couples to seek external advice rather than resolving conflicts directly, and critiques the reliance on legal solutions for emotional and relational problems, advocating for a more psychological approach.

Key Takeaways

  • Couples often face problems related to parenting or intimacy.
  • Many couples avoid negotiating their issues directly.
  • External influences complicate conflict resolution.
  • Legal solutions are often misapplied to emotional problems.
  • Emotional and relational issues require psychological approaches.
  • Communication is key in resolving marital conflicts.
  • Seeking help from friends or family can lead to confusion.
  • Understanding the root cause of problems is essential.
  • Negotiation skills are crucial for couples.
  • Legal tools do not address emotional needs.

Chapter

1:20 - Systems theory meets family courts
 2:44 - Family patterns and learned levers
 4:16 - Attachment shifts during pregnancy
 5:23 - Limits to self-reflection and change
 6:59 - Expanding system: courts and professionals
 7:52 - How politics shape couple conflict
 11:04 - GDP, school pressure, and home stress
 13:07 - Navigating legal systems in divorce
 15:04 - Reciprocity and influence in relationships
 17:05 - No legal fix for emotional needs
 19:10 - Prevention through systemic therapy
 21:07 - Challenging constructs and parenting norms
 23:05 - Journal and master’s on alienation
 25:07 - Closing reflections and resources


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)

Connect with Dr Charlie Azzopardi:
Website: https://ift-malta.com/⁩
Courses (IFT Malta): https://ift-malta.com/courses-2/
European Journal of Parental Alienation (EJPAP):
https://ift-malta.com/elementor-1206/

Please donate to support PAA programs:
https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=SDLTX8TBSZNXSsa bottom part

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_01:

Things get more confused because if I have an emotional problem, a relational problem, I need to solve it from a relational, emotional, psychological perspective, and not from a legal perspective. The law comes in typically when the law is broken. So if I have a psychological problem which then pushes me in some way to break the law, that's where the law comes in because I've broken the law. But in a marital conflict, in a typical marital conflict, there's no breaking the law. There's a relationship problem and a psychological or psychorelational problem which needs to be resolved. And if you use or try to use legal solutions to that emotional problem, then you're using the wrong tools to fix your problem.

SPEAKER_00:

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. Systems theory. Who knew that systems theory had such an incredible impact on parental alienation, on the court system, on any kind of attorneys, therapists, psychologists, ad lightums, anything else that you can throw in there that this is all related to different systems, and these systems affect and change your life on a daily basis. My name is Lauren Strawson. Welcome to the Family Disappeared Podcast. Today we have the second part of an interview with Dr. Charlie, who is a systemic therapist. If you haven't heard of that word before, then you need to listen to the show. Understanding systems is one of the most pivotal parts in hope in reclaiming your life and potentially affecting your family's life and the family system. Great resources in the show notes. All Charlie's stuff will be there. We have a free 12-step program. Come out and check it out. It's a system of its own. It's wonderful, it's loving, it's kind. It's based on the 12 steps. It's free. Can't hurt to come out. The link for that will be in the show notes. We're a 501c3 nonprofit. Donate, help the next person in. You know what I mean? This stuff's already paid for, but we want to help and reach as many people as possible. And without your contributions, it's not sustainable, unfortunately. And right now, here we are. Thanks for coming out today. Please comment, share, like. We want to hear from you. You can always reach us at family disappeared at gmail.com. And with that, let's jump right into the show. I don't know if you experience this as a parent, grandparent, as a child dealing with alienation, is that you sometimes see other family members or people that you love and you see some of their behaviors that might be part of what your behaviors are as a parent or a grandparent or as a child. I start to identify some of your behaviors that are your same as your parent or grandparent. And all this stuff is super important because it's how you learnt that, and you learnt that within the system of the family, and everyone had a different lever that they're pulling and pushing on. And the parents naturally are the first touch point for children, and they're starting to install some of these levers unwittingly, and not with malice, but it's just how they've learned to cope and manage the world and understanding how that system works, how we were impacted from our own parents, grandparents, and how we take that into the world is intricate in my recovery, and is the reason that we have the show today because we are here and we are discussing with panels of parents, with therapists, with attorneys. We're talking about systems, but we've never really had a systemic therapist on here. So I'm so grateful for that and how much systems theory has changed my life. Research it, Google it, chat GPT it too, whatever. Learn about your family system. You will learn about another access point on how to change and save your life. And sorry, I had to give that a little shtick because it's important. And let's see what Dr. Charlie has to say on the rest of the show. I'm smiling because I love the way you break that down. I picked my wife because she was super anxious, and I'm good at regulating people's nervous systems because that's what I did for my mother. And she picked me because I was good at doing that, and she had that need to control someone in that way. There was an intense amount of love when we first started dating, and once she got pregnant, she started attaching to the child in an unhealthy way, and the child started meeting her needs in her belly, and I felt the love shut off or diminish. Could never identify it until 10 or 15 years later. Like that energy shifted, and everything she was feeding from me, and I was feeding from her, like you're saying, got disrupted. So the alienation, if we want to call it that, attachment injury, re-injury happened at exactly yeah, at conception, at pregnancy. I think that's such a great way for parents to start looking at their situation in a different kind of way, and even for alienated kids to actually see what's actually happening. I love that you do the systemic view of this because this is where the healing is, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, yes, I think so too. I think the healing starts when people start to understand these dynamics, which are mostly unconscious, but I think by time people start realizing these dynamics and understand themselves even more. But we have to be aware as well that some people, especially people with personality dysfunctions, are unable to reflect and self-reflect in this way. It is difficult for them to digest this truth. It's very difficult. Because understanding this requires lots of change, a radical change, you know, and that change is not very easy. One, because the wiring system in my brain is what it is, so I have to change that. It's not unchangeable, of course, it is doable, but it requires hard work, you know. Just think about how difficult people find it to quit smoking cigarettes, for example. You know, it's the same. Our brain will be wired in the sense that it's addicted to this kind of pattern, which makes it difficult then for people to change. And especially people with personality disorder, especially those implicated in parental alienation, which is the borderline, narcissistic, they have a deep-seated fear of being abandoned. So they rather abandon you before you abandon them. You see, so it's very difficult sometimes for people to understand these dynamics, even in therapy.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, totally. You've got to be in enough pain to be willing to do the work. And it's so fascinating. We keep going on that, but I want to just expand this idea of systems theories out a little bit, especially for people that are struggling with acrimonious divorces or separation, whatever. So now we have the immediate nuclear family, we have some grandparents, and now the system starts to expand when we're in the middle of these trials and tribulations. We got attorneys, we got therapists, we got court-appointed this and stuff like that. How does the system start to shift and what effect do these other players have that are coming into the system? Because sometimes it's hard to understand why a therapist is acting a particular way, or a judge or an attorney, and how the whole system is completely getting shifted again by all this new, I guess, injuries, perspectives, logic, whatever's coming in.

SPEAKER_01:

Let me try to answer this very complex question in a simple way, but in some way I have to start from somewhere. Very few people understand how their relationship is shaped over time in a context which is social, which is cultural, and which is also political. Very few people understand, unless challenged, of course, that the fight between two partners at home is probably the result of a political decision taken somewhere else some time ago. Very few people realize this. For example, let me give a stupid simple example. In Malta, there was a time, some ten years back, in which the government, with all the best intentions, made a decision to redo all the roads of Malta. And he gave a five-year period for all the roads to be redone so that they are all made of beautiful tarmac, soft and smooth. So in five years, imagine I can't remember how many kilometers of roads were made in five years. So what happened? That people going to work in the morning were finding this road is closed, the other road is closed, and we can only go through here. So a lot of traffic was jamming. And from what used to take that person five minutes or ten minutes ride, it became half an hour. So my drive to work was taking longer and longer. There was a time where a five-kilometer, eight-kilometer road would take people one hour to travel because of the traffic congestion. No matter if you take the bus, because buses were also congested, because all the traffic had to pass from that particular road. Malta is not the United States, of course, so we have very limited space. I don't know what you know about Malta, but it's a very small island in the center of the Mediterranean, just beneath Sicily. So what happened? People started becoming very nervous. And one hour to go to work, one hour to go back from work, and people were already before this complaining about having to take the children for extracurricular activities like football, dancing, whatever classes they go to. So people were already poor of time. And with two hours extra in traffic, people started becoming very frustrated. And who was paying for this frustration? Obviously, the partners when they go home, back home to each other. And instead of finding the solace, one would find an angry partner just out of one hour of traffic, exhausted, tired, and not wanting to do anything but lie down and rest, which was not possible because there are the children. We need to cook, we need to do this, we need to prepare for tomorrow, the cleaning, the children's activities, and so on. So people started becoming overwhelmed just with few years of road. In one and a half years, I can say that I've seen so many more couples fighting with each other because he is lazy or because she is this, she doesn't have time management, he doesn't have emotion regulation and this and that. I could see that the increasing number of patients was very visible compared to the previous years. Couple relationships, that is, increasing number of couple relationships calling for help was much, much higher than previous years. And so this traffic congestion thing started creating a mental pressure on people, wearing them of their mental well-being, because it is not a good standard of living to be living in a country where all the roads are closed and you have to try to find a way, you know. And it's very difficult. So this political decision of putting all the roads in perfect condition costed more separations, I would say, and more fighting between partners because of the stress it caused and the tension it caused on individuals to go to work and return from work. Some people decided not to leave home on Saturdays, whereas before they used to go out and have some fun with their family, with the children, go to a restaurant, or have something for dinner outside, and people started not going out because obviously it was a problem. So it really affected families. And many other decisions, of course, all the decisions the government makes. Because we have to remember that governments, especially in the West, all they're concerned about is the GDP. So all they want is to increase their GDP. They don't care about how these increases in GDP are going to affect family life or family relationships or whatever. They say they do, because they mentioned the word family in in every way, but they don't really focus on that. They focus on increasing the GDP. And if the GDP takes for increased hours of work, then this is what they promote: more hours of work to increase the economy, to make sure everyone is equal in the economy. This is how they sell it, then equality and standards, this is how they sell it. But the truth is that they want the economy to improve and grow according to the EU, for example, standards that are set by the EU. And very few people notice how these political decisions influence intimate relationships, even in bed. So it's really complex. Especially then when you see the children and decisions made in parliament about education and the education system, for example. There was a wave in Malta where the government needed a certain level of education in people because there were jobs which the Maltese were not able to do because we didn't have enough educated people to do them. So they started bringing people in from third countries, and that gave the impression that foreigners are stealing our jobs. So parents started pushing their children to educationally achieve more and more and more. And this put pressure on children by the parents who love them so much. But it is still on today that if someone who is 16 stops his education or her education because they want to go to work, they cannot because they feel they're not part of this society unless you go to university or to college or whatever, you're not part of this society. You see, and that's a disgrace because that's very tense. It creates lots of tension.

SPEAKER_00:

Totally. And I just want to like dial it back a little bit. Like I love the analogy for what's going on in Malta and the roads and how like all these different factors really can affect the actual family system. And as people are going into an acrimonious divorce, and they're it's sitting in front of a judge, and there's like an attorney. Like the attorney is the road that's getting repaved. So now instead of being able to get through a conversation, you're sitting with a three-hour conversation with an attorney where it used to take five minutes to resolve the same thing. So now we have all these other stakeholders and the family system in the court system, and each thing has a major, major impact on the family and on the children. So what is my question there? My question there is what would you say to parents that are going through this, grandparents, kids that are going through this about noticing their system within the context of the legal system that is basically the arbitrator of what happens next with the kids or doesn't happen next with the kids?

SPEAKER_01:

There's one big problem with this idea. And the problem is that when people have problems, when a couple has problems, the couple has typically problems either because of the children or because of their intimate relationship. So it's either a parental problem as parents or as husband and wife. So as a marital problem. Now, what do people do? First of all, in the early days of the relationship, some patterns develop in these families that then things get out of hand and then they divorce and separate. Many of these families, many of these couples, typically, when they have a problem, they learn not to negotiate that problem between them. They engage someone else. Even when there are no children, they engage a parent, an in-law, a friend. So they have a problem with each other, but they go talking to someone else about that problem. Whereas if you want to solve the problem with your wife, you have to go sit down with your wife and talk with her and see what you can do. Now, with this pattern, when the going gets stuff, then people go to the lawyer. And the lawyer comes in to solve emotional problems, relational problems with legal tools which don't match. So things get more confused because if I have an emotional problem, a relational problem, I need to solve it from a relational, emotional, psychological perspective, and not from a legal perspective. The law comes in typically when the law is broken. So if I have a psychological problem which then pushes me in some way to break the law, that's where the law comes in because I've broken the law. But in a marital conflict, in a typical marital conflict, there's no breaking the law. There's a relationship problem and a psychological or psycho-relational problem which needs to be resolved. And if you use or try to use legal solutions to that emotional problem, then you're using the wrong tools to fix your problem. So this is typically why things escalate, because when the question becomes not that of giving, but that of expecting. And it's my right to have something, then the problem is completely different. Because it becomes a question of right and not a question of obligation and contribution and dedication and whatever. So people shift, make a big shift from being in a relationship to give everything for it to work better to moving into being in a relationship where they expect everything from the other partner to be done. And this is typically the loss of what I call the principle of reciprocity in a relationship where I lose control over the other partner because I'm losing control over myself. Which means I lose control of how much I affect the other partner. If I want my partner to be happy, I know what I can do. I know the way I need to speak to her, I know the way I need to treat her to make her happy. But as much as I know how to make her happy, I'm able also to make her life miserable if I want. And people lose this sense of control over their partners. And when they lose this sense of control, they shift onto themselves and say, This is my right. So they lose touch with themselves in being able to influence their partner in a way that their partner gives them what they need to fulfill their needs. If I want you to be nice to me, I know I have to be nice to you. Just a simple, you know, idea of the principle of reciprocity. So I know that if I am going to be cruel to you, you're not going to be nice to me. So why do I have to be cruel? You know, so it's often very therapeutic for people to understand this. Very therapeutic. It's life-changing. When I ask couples in front of me, so how have you been trying to resolve this problem? And they tell me, Oh, I tried to do this and that. And did it work? No, it didn't. Did it make things better or worse? Oh, actually, it made them worse. So why do you continue to do the same thing if it makes things worse? And people don't have answers to that because it's their wiring system working autonomously without them thinking about what they're doing.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that explanation and the reprocity and how that works and how like the lack of control affects the family system, and then everything starts to change. And I would say my last question about like the legal system, and I don't know how it works in Malta, but here we're in this family system, and we have this conflict, and we get therapy, and we go to the gym or yoga, and we try to repair stuff, and then we get thrown into a completely alternate reality when we enter a legal system which merges with our family system, and then we're so confused why we're not getting any of our needs met because it's not functioning in the same realm. Like, is there anything you can say about that as we shift from one system and incorporate a much larger system that we have zero control over besides paying for a service, you know?

SPEAKER_01:

I I don't know if I understood your question well, but there is no legal system, no legal solution that can fulfill our emotional needs or our existential needs. Yeah. So because I'm afraid you might leave me, I go to the lawyer and say, I think he has another woman, and I want to leave. And this is a replacement for me talking to you and telling you how concerned I am because I love you so much, and I'm concerned that I might lose you, and I don't want to lose you. So you see, there's this shift. So the law doesn't resolve relationship problems, it might have some effect in putting people in their place so that they obey the law, but they're not obeying themselves or respecting each other in that. They're just obeying the law, you know, and so there is no legal solution for relational problems. And this is the sad thing about it, because maybe in the United States you also have a lot of lawyers, like in Malta, and they need to do something to do something. You know, you know, they need to create their work. So they kind of in some way promote themselves by doing their job, and they need more work, obviously, because I think that's one cultural spin as well about separation here. The courts in Malta are very slow. Some separation processes take years, if not ten, maybe nine, eight, or seven years, which is a very, very long time, very long time. And also, like probably in the United States, as from what I know, like every other country in the world, it costs a lot and a lot of money, which continues to put pressure on people, which makes them more stressed out so they fight more instead of try to make ends meet and make peace with each other or love each other. The expenses make them hate each other even more because you are making me spend this money unnecessarily. You see, so the legal system is not the peacekeeper or the solution that we need. I think we need more humane solutions and more psychological solutions, more learning, that is, about how life really works.

SPEAKER_00:

And as we're winding down here, you started the conversation on the systemic therapy that you do is really about prevention, is about a place to interrupt the system. Can you talk a little bit about what prevention looks like from a systemic therapy perspective?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, from a systemic therapy perspective, my job is to confront maybe or challenge people nicely, sometimes not so nicely, sometimes you have to be direct as well, you know, in addressing these flaws in the relationship that come out in the relationship, especially in relation to children. I always ask couples in front of me, how do you think this is affecting the children? Or how are the children experiencing you? And sometimes I invite children as well to speak up in front of their parents about the situation at home. And in those early stages, in those very early stages, children are freer to speak up. Even parents are freer to speak up. So they are more likely then to learn how to make up psychologically or psycho-relationally using psychological solutions or relational solutions instead of legal solutions. But it is therapy, it is about challenging these unquestioned positions that people take because they say this is normal, isn't it? That the child sleeps with me at night. No, it's not normal. I'm sorry. This is not normal. It's not about normal. There is nothing normal. The normal is what you create, but what you're doing is this, this, and that. And are you aware that this is damaging your child? It's rendering your child dependent rather than independent. Do you want your child to be dependent or independent? You know, so it's all about that. But obviously, there's lots of constructs that people bring in for therapy. Constructs about relationships, constructs about manhood and womanhood. And my job as a therapist is to challenge those constructs. Things like, oh, you know, doctor, how we men think or how we men are. No, I don't know. We're different. We're men, yeah, but we're different. How would I know what you're going through, your experience? There are obviously some things which men experience in a similar fashion, but we're different men. You know, so challenging these constructs which are taken so much for granted is very important in therapy, including constructs about relationships, and including constructs about being parents or being husband and wife or being in a community, living in a community, and so on. I hope I answered the question.

SPEAKER_00:

No, I think yeah, it's great. The systemic interventions early on, you have much more leeway to actually have an effect on the family. And the kids actually feel free enough to have a voice and bring something in you and actually addressing the system versus the individual as the problem. I think that's marvelous. And also in the beginning of the interview, you spoke about the European Journal of Parentalination. You said it's a peer-reviewed journal, so everything is about research and it's being reviewed by other people.

SPEAKER_01:

New practices, research, theory papers as well, theoretical papers as well, are published on it.

SPEAKER_00:

Wonderful. And we'll make sure to put a link for that in the chat, and that's accessible to like lay people also if they want to read the latest articles as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. And actually, at the moment, it's free, freely accessible.

SPEAKER_00:

Wonderful. That's super generous and wonderful. And then you also spoke a little bit about the course you have in the master's study of parental alienation. Can you just talk for a minute about what that means and what that is?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's a course covering different aspects of parental alienation, including the clinical aspect, the legal aspect, the prevention aspect, different aspects. It's a very interesting two years masters. One may do the first year, which is a PG cert. And then the second year is about doing your PG DIP diploma, postgraduate diploma, or the master's by adding a thesis to the work, which is very interesting as well because it involves research if one chooses to do the master's program. It's being done online, so people from different countries access it. It's live, so people would need to engage in live sessions. It's not pre-recorded stuff that people can download. So it involves conversation and discussion about the different topics that we tackle. People who teach on it are very important people in parental alienation. We engage people like Bill Burnett or, you know, all the big names that are very knowledgeable about the topic and they are experts on the topic. So I think it's very important. It's a very important course. Typically, after finishing the course, students say that they have acquired a lot of knowledge, but also a lot of confirmation of the working experience they were having in parental alienation field. I can say it's a very good course, and people come on it from New Zealand to Iceland to Italy to the United States to Argentina, many different people, which enriches the course because we have different perspectives from different people coming from different countries. So everyone is speaking about the legal system, their psychology system, their therapeutic system, their systems which we compare and contrast, and hopefully, eventually we can create share ideas and we can create a unified picture of best practices.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow, that sounds like an incredible, incredible course that covers so much, and that it's in person and you have a world. View instead of just a country view. Oh my God, that sounds spectacular. So uh Charlie, I just want to thank you so much for your time and your generosity. And I'll make sure we circle back so we can get links for all these things that we discuss so people be able to find you and access the work that you offer. But thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you as well for the invitation.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, what a great show. And you know, I love the way that the show ended and talking about these peer-reviewed articles, which are a little dense sometimes, but really provide you with some of the most up-to-date theories, discussions, studies that are out there and that it's free right now. What a deal. And a course. That course that Dr. Charlie is teaching or participating in sounds wonderful. I want to go take it. I don't know who it's open to. I gotta check that out and Google that. But what a great way to learn about this stuff and to help ourselves and to help someone else. Like I know so much of us just want our relationships to be normal, but I think the access point to some of that normalcy is service. At least for me, if I don't do service, I can't really get anywhere. And if I wasn't doing service right now, I wouldn't have had this wonderful conversation with Charlie and learned more about systems. I say my favorite takeaway was he was talking about social, cultural, and political effects that actually affect the family system. And we're just like, hey, my kid hates me. But there's so many different other things going on in the family system and outside influences that affect the family system. Great stuff to think about. Thank you for coming out to play today. Like, comment, share. Donate to our 501c3 nonprofit. The links in the chat. Come by and check out a 12-step meeting. Comment, like, share, and send me an email. Let me know what you think, what you want to discuss, or what you'd like to hear, hear discussed. And I love you. I hope you have a beautiful day. Wow, wow, wow. In case I forget that on the last episode, that was a wowser for me. Really, really, really enjoyed it. Have a beautiful day. 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 are 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.