Reunification Starts With Stability | Parental Alienation Truths - Episode 134

Lawrence Joss explores the deeper emotional and systemic realities of parental alienation in this conversation with Cindy Hirsch, CEO of ISNAF (International Society for the New Alienated Family). Together, they examine why stability must come before reunification and how becoming a grounded, regulated “lighthouse parent” creates the conditions for reconnection. 

The discussion unpacks grief as a natural response to ambiguous loss, the impact of splitting and weak boundaries within family systems, and why healthy boundaries protect rather than punish. Joss and Hirsch emphasize that reunification is a long, non-linear process of reconnecting, reattaching, and rebuilding trust over time, and that meaningful change begins with personal agency and inner stability.

Key Takeaways

• Parental alienation can be overwhelming and confusing.
• Building a supportive community is crucial for healing.
• Stability is essential for effective parenting during alienation.
• Grief is a natural response to loss, not a failure.
• Healthy boundaries are necessary to prevent alienation.
• Reunification is a long process that requires patience.
• Self-awareness and personal growth are key to navigating family dynamics.
• Emotional regulation helps in dealing with stressful situations.
• Support from professionals and peers is invaluable.
• Change in family systems starts with individual change.

Chapters

0:00 - Welcome And Community Resources
1:31 - Why The Individual Shifts The System
3:20 - Five Things No One Tells You
5:21 - Stability First: The Lighthouse Parent
7:35 - Practical Grounding And Support
9:10 - Grief Explained And Normalized
11:29 - Nonlinear Stages And Renewal
13:07 - Losing The Inner Compass
15:02 - Reintegrating The Self
16:28 - Boundaries As Protection
19:05 - Modeling Healthy Limits
20:28 - The Long Arc Of Reunification
23:10 - Letting Go And Creating Space
25:05 - Resilience, Systems, And Agency

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)

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This podcast is made possible by the Family Disappeared Team:
Anna Johnson- Editor/Contributor/Activist/Co-host
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Connect with Lawrence Joss:
Website: https://parentalalienationanonymous.com/
Email-         familydisappeared@gmail.com

Transcript

Welcome And Community Resources

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Are you thoroughly confused navigating parental alienation? Is the pain overwhelming? Do you just not know what to do anymore? And no matter what you try, the distance remains. Like you struggle and struggle and you reach and you reach and you can't get anywhere. Does that sound familiar? I know you hear all kinds of advice. I know you hear all kinds of advice, and there's all kinds of information out there that doesn't really explain why this is happening. If you're new to the community, welcome to Family Disappeared. My name is Lawrence Joss. It's a pleasure to be the host for the show. We have some great resources in the show notes. We have a free 12-step program, Parental Alienation Anonymous, a wonderful human beings and an incredible community. If you're tired of trying to explain your stuff to friends and family and no one understands, come to a meeting. Build some community and you might choose another group. Whatever you do, don't do this by yourself because it's impossible. Find people that actually are able to walk with you, walk next to you. Not to fix you or change you, but to walk next with you and share their experience, strength, and hope. There's also other resources in the show notes. Email me at family disappeared at gmail.com. Love to hear from you, suggestions, ideas, likes. Yeah, definitely a lot of likes. What's good about what we're doing? So, you know, that keeps that keeps us going and motivated too, as we're all volunteers. And as a reminder, we're a 501c3 nonprofit. This is all free for everyone. And to continue to bring a free and add additional resources, we need people to contribute. You're not contributing for yourself, you're contributing for the next person in. And that's a huge part of this healing. Like it's so I focus and I-centric, my pain, but it's not my pain. It's a universal struggle and it's a universal pain. And how do we lift each other up? And sometimes I'm lifting you up so you can get closer to your kid, and I'm not getting any closer to my kid, but I'm sharing in that experience. It's transformational and healing for me too. There's no quick fix here. You know, for years and years and years, I thought I needed to find a silver bullet. And as I tried more and more things and I couldn't get anywhere, I realized the silver bullet was me. Like I had to start doing that work. And we address a lot of that in today's discussion with Cindy. We talk about the internal patterns, the patterns that come out of our family of origin, all these different things that we use as coping mechanisms, and how we need to start working on ourselves internally in order to adjust and move these. And as we start to change the patterns in our own lives, then we can actually find a point of intersection in the family system where when we apply pressure, things can potentially start to change. And you might have heard this from me before, but the number one access point in any system is the individual. So we're just talking about a family system when we talk about systems quite often because people want to just focus on individuals, the alienating parent, the judge, the therapist, whatever it is. But the reality is this is all within a system that we are dealing with. So unless we open our perspective up to a system perspective on the family level, it's very hard to understand all the moving pieces. So I think this will be really useful and open up some different thought processes for you and different access points, and also some immediate stuff you can consider and start to work on. And this isn't about blame. This isn't about being a bad parent or a good parent or the worse parent or the best parent. This is about actually showing up for our own lives. This is about agency, and agency means like our own opportunity to show up and communicate how we want, to show up and present how we want, to show up and not argue or too argue what our body language is, the tone of our voice, like all these different things or patterns, or even like if we shut down when stuff gets overwhelming. So we actually have agency, and this is it's not about us being wrong or done something wrong. It's about, oh wow, there's a problem in the family, and how can I improve myself? Is there a potential for me to impact the family in a different kind of way? And I think the more important thing here is I know we want to stay on just the family because this is the problem. And in a systems theory perspective, the family is at the tip of the iceberg. Maybe getting my kid back is at the tip of the iceberg, but if all I focuses on that and I argue and I fight and I scratch and I start to help perpetuate some of the dysfunction within the family system, is I'm just pushing parental alienation forward. So as I go a little bit deeper in the system, I start to see all the other aspects that are driving this top thing at the top of the system. And if I can start to affect things at the bottom of the system, like how I show up, how I talk, when I communicate, when I don't communicate, boundaries, compassion for myself, taking a break. You know, all these things get built into the system and they help change and shift the trajectory of the system. So we're going to be talking about a bunch of that today. Today we have Cindy Hirsch, who is the CEO of ISNAF, I-S-N-A-F. It's the Internal Society for the New Alienated Family. Cindy has been doing this for a lot of years and has worked with a lot of families and has an extreme amount of experience personally and on the organizational level. And I'm really excited to hear what she has to share today. The five things that no one tells you about parental alienation and why you need to know about them. Number one, why stability comes first. You know, I hated hearing this. I hated hearing that reunification, reintroduction of the kids and stuff, nothing can happen until you're stable. You know what I mean? And people didn't necessarily use those words with me, but if you're in a conversation and people's eyes start to roll or they start to ask you for other extenuating circumstances or stuff like that, like I found for me that I wasn't really, really grounded in myself and I was really just telling people about the story. I wanted people to know about my story so they would jump onto my team and we could go kick in some doors and go rescue my kids. And it didn't serve me very well because I was coming from a dysregulated place. So stability is key to moving forward in a functional form and it's imperfect. You know what I mean? I've been practicing this for a long time, and sometimes I'm a knucklehead. Sometimes I stick my foot in it and it's it's human. And sometimes it's it's painful and emotional and hard, and it's okay that I mess up. I have compassion for that. And a beautiful thing about messing up is actually taking responsibility for that. And that's an internal responsibility working on myself, and sometimes it's an external apology. Even if the other person has a part in it, it's really, really important. And the eighth and ninth step in a 12-step program, address making amends in places you think you could never make an amendment. But it's never about the other person when you're acknowledging what's going on for you. It's about giving you freedom. It's about cleaning your side of the street so you can continue to walk on it unobstructed. And it's the most free and wonderful thing in the world, and it's counterintuitive. And that's an aside, that's a good aside, but an aside anyway. And as we're talking about this inner stability, we're gonna jump into what Cindy has to say. And she uses a really powerful metaphor to talk about this inner stability. I'm gonna keep quiet for a second, just a second, and we're gonna get into what Cindy has to share with us.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

The lighthouse parent, solid and stable in any storm and any wind for your child. And that's what we have to be, and when we can get ourselves to that level of stability through any storm, stand there stable while our children are out there, you know, going through what they're going through. That's what will attract them back into our life.

Practical Grounding And Support

Grief Explained And Normalized

SPEAKER_00 7:21

So to be clear, stability isn't just an emotional calm. It's feeling grounded and present, it's feeling our feet on the ground, it's being able to take a breath when everything around us feels like it's moving at a thousand miles per second. And this happens over and over and over again in parental alienation, estrangement, erasure, whatever you want to call it. I don't care if you're a parent, a grandparent, or a child in the middle of this or trying to connect with a parent. Like once you get into these environments with attorneys and therapists and X, Y, and Z, it's hard to stay grounded. But that's what we're talking about. It's not just emotional stuff, it's actually, how do I do that? Can I take a breath? Can I just stop for a second? Can I excuse myself for a minute? You know, like these skills are paramount, and they're not necessarily just about the internal ecosystem. Sometimes the internal ecosystem is beating too fast, ah, like that. And I need to step away. And there's nothing wrong with saying, hey, I need a second. And I just want to reiterate this again support is incredibly, incredibly important. The organization that Cindy works for runs iSNAF offers a bunch of great resources, really, really, really affordable and accessible, sometimes even free. And it's a wonderful place to go. Parental Alienation Anonymous is a wonderful place to go. They're different resources, but both incredibly important. And I don't care if you like either one of those. You can't do this alone. And you can't do it with just your family of origin, and you can't do it with just your friends. You need to find folks that are experiencing this too, and professionals that are in this realm. And sometimes it's hard because there's a lot of people out there preying on a lot of people that are in trauma and experiencing a tremendous amount of emotional pain. So practice going to different places and find a place that resonates with you that's accessible, affordable, and sustainable. The next part we're going to get into here is grief is not failure. Grief is not failure. I'm going to say that again. Grief is not failure. Grief is a human response. And I know in the process for myself, like I'd get super, super sad and I would think I was doing something wrong. There's a fine balance here that we're talking about. If I'm continuously being emotional and I'm trying to get a reaction out of my children or out of some other people, I would say that is not grief. That's more like performative. I'm trying to be super emotional to get other people to soothe my own nervous system because I'm not really feeling stable and resourced myself, like we're talking in the first segment. So grief can be weaponized too, unfortunately. And you see the other parent or the other players or the other stakeholders getting upset or angry or mad, and you can see different emotions getting manipulated. And I can do that too as an alienated parent. I don't get a pass. I'm human too. I'm using the same strategies in some cases that the other parents using. So let's just say that. But in essence, grief is wonderful. It's part of the process. And not having access to a kid is like losing a loved one. You know what I mean? I know we talk about ambiguous loss here where it's just the thing. Is it real? Is it not? Is it coming back? Is it not coming back? It's like a soup sandwich. I heard about a soup sandwich early on at 12-step meetings. You know what I mean? And a soup sandwich is something you can't really grip, but it's there and you want to eat it. And you're kind of like your child, like you can't really hug them, but they're there and you want to, but you can't get a grip. You know what I mean? And it's not necessarily like they're standing in front of you. It's more like a metaphor, the court system, the other parent, the therapist, whatever circumstances you're battling through, the allegations, it doesn't matter. I just want to say if you're grieving, you're doing perfect. You're doing wonderful. You're doing what so many of us are doing and have done. You know what I mean? And and there's stuff always to look at in our grief process and how we're presenting and what's going on. But grief is beautiful. It's real. I grieve for my kids all the time. Even saying this, I can feel some emotion in my eyes. If I stay with that feeling, I must probably start to cry. You know what I mean? I can feel like welling up in my like solar plexus, and I just want to curse and yell. I don't curse on this show often or maybe never, but I love to curse. I just want to throw that out there. Curse away if you like to curse. Okay. Cindy has some stuff to say about this too.

Nonlinear Stages And Renewal

SPEAKER_01 11:23

One of the things to know about grief, it's you know, archetypical for any loss or extreme change in life. People go into grief because life changes. The stages are not linear. Denial, bargaining, there's anger, and there's depression, and then you get to acceptance. Now, the key is to recognize this is normal and natural, nothing's wrong with me.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

I had this assumption that my grief would be really bad and then be okay. I had a I had an idea that it was linear. It started at one point and went to another point, but it's not. Now that I'm a little bit more removed from those initial days, my grief comes in and out. And when it comes in and out, it's kind of like in the middle flow. It doesn't get really big and it doesn't completely go away. You know what I mean? And sometimes when there's a seminal event, marriage, wedding, birth, death, it goes off the charts and I get surprised by it. But don't be. It's gonna come and go, and it's gonna get really, really heavy and it's gonna get lighter. The more I work with it, the more I tap into my own feelings and spend time with some of my own grief, the more it stays in more of a mid-range. I don't get super high and I don't get super low. And it is a strategy, it's a survival strategy, and it's also working on my own inner ecosystem, which is incredibly, incredibly useful.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

What I could see was we needed to not only teach the parents about that grief, we needed to help the parents recreate themselves. It's like a butterfly. You're you know, stuck in a little cocoon, you're the caterpillar, all fuzzy, you know, uncomfortable with what you're dealing with, and cocoon, and then you suddenly recreate yourself to the butterfly, and now you can be empowered and have a life and find yourself and just re-identify yourself.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Number three, when parents lose their inner compass. You know, we're talking a lot about inner ecosystems and taking care of yourself and all these different players around you and different circumstances that you can be in. And it's really interesting because some of the experience of an alienated parent mirrors the same experience of a child or of a parent. I don't care what direction you're coming in. The show is for everyone and most probably for every family, whether you're experiencing parental alienation or some other form of just family. So when we talk about splitting, which I I know we've spoken about and a lot of you know about splitting is a time when you can't hold the reality of what's happening, so you have to split off in order to survive. And we all see this happening with our kids, and a lot of us see this happening with our parents. I see this happening with my mother all the time. Like she can't handle what's really going on, so she cuts off and just shuts down. You know, and the way it was taught to me is like I have a certain capacity to hold the emotional experience. And at a point I reach my capacity and then I need to take a breath. You know, it's kind of like holding your breath underwater, and then you got to come up and take a breath. And that's kind of like what cutting off is coming up from underneath the water, taking a breath, recalibrating and going in. But when you take that breath, you kind of lose your compass sometimes. And some people might lose their temper, some people might cry, some people might do some other kind of behavior just to not die. And they might just not hear what's going on. They might just completely shut down, walk away, hang up, run away, not return an email, curse, yell at the bartender, yell at the person at the grocery store. Like all these are forms of cutting off. And it's really important to notice that in ourselves because it's part of our protection. It's part of what's happening on our own ecosystem. Cindy has some really cool things to say about this too. Let's listen.

Reintegrating The Self

SPEAKER_01 14:50

When the parents are going through the alienation, they split because they go into, I don't know how to be a parent anymore. You find yourself saying to yourself, part of me feels like, you know what, I need to go. I should be there. And then the other part of me says they told me not to go. When we're whole and complete and owning our parenthood, we know exactly what we need to do, and the inner voice will tell us exactly this is what I do because I'm a stabilized parent, and that's what I do as a healthy parent.

Boundaries As Protection

SPEAKER_00 15:16

So that internal split in a parent creates confusion in their own lives, in their own way of interacting and relating with whoever. So, very similar to the kid or the parent or whatever the family member you're talking about, the person that's experiencing the split needs to do some interpersonal work so they can come back to their original self, to their integrated self. And that's what we want for our kids. So, isn't this kind of cool that we get to do that too, and we get a role model that that's possible? What a gift. And again, like I might role model this to your kid, I might role model this to your parent. Your parent might role model this to my kid or someone else in my family. Like, this work is interconnected with every single person in the world that has a family, a loved one, anything. So it's basically everyone. So this work that we're being called to is profound and it's crappy. And I don't want to do it. I just want my kids in my life. I want to go on with my life, and I just want to pretend that everything's okay. And even in relationship, you know what I mean? It's challenging. And it's not okay sometimes. So this is the work. This is the work to make it just a little bit better. Not perfect, a little bit better. Oh, this is a good one. Number four, boundaries as protection, not punishment. Boundaries as protection, not punishment. So alienation doesn't happen in family systems where there's clear, delineated boundaries. It happens in family systems where there's a lack of boundaries or there's blurs. There's blurs between who's in charge, who's not in charge, who to listen to, who not to listen to. Are there rules? Are there not necessarily rules, but are there like, hey, this is my space, or is there a place for a correction when someone creates some kind of harm? That's part of a boundary, is saying, hey, when there's something going on, like I would like to do a repair with you. I don't need to agree with you, but let's talk about it. You know what I mean? Boundaries are like, hey, we're not gonna sweep it under the rug when stuff happens, we're gonna talk about it. You know, so boundaries are really, really paramount. And this was taught to me by a dead dear friend that there's a huge difference between boundaries and walls. And I used to say I set boundaries, and she's like, you set walls, you build walls, and she's like, you have boundaries. Boundaries are pliable, malleable, and negotiable. So think about your boundaries. Are they pliable, malleable, and negotiable?

SPEAKER_01 17:40

It's important to know that we only become alienated inside of a family system with weak boundaries or no boundaries. In a healthy family system, every generation is in their own lane in a horizontal line. So what happens in alienation is that the aligned parent builds a relationship with the child and adultifying the child, oftentimes parentifying the child. Those are severe boundary violations. So setting boundaries is critical.

Modeling Healthy Limits

The Long Arc Of Reunification

SPEAKER_00 18:08

So healthy boundaries are a great indication for everyone around you. And it doesn't matter if it's your kids at work, at school, on the playground, on the bus. Like having healthy boundaries is a great way to be a role model, is also a great way for you to stay regulated and within your own space. A lack of boundaries, sometimes people are people pleasers. So they have no boundaries, so they're always trying to take care and fix other people, and that regulates the nervous system and they think they're doing a good thing. And maybe a lot of times they are. And it's a lack of boundaries, you know? And then there's other people that just get really close to you or barge through a boundary. So there's all different aspects to boundaries, but healthy boundaries are a great way to role model to other people in your environments what it looks like to be healthy and have a healthy relationship. And not everyone's gonna like it, especially if you grow up in an environment where there are no boundaries, and then all of a sudden there are boundaries, you look like the crazy one. Like I think uh I look like the crazy one. I like to think I'm not, I like to think I'm doing a significant amount of work, but it's counterintuitive to the family system that I raised my kids in that I was part of, that I contributed to. So all of a sudden that I'm changing, should everyone else change at the same rate that I'm changing? I would like that. Not gonna happen, not a reality. Not happening in my original family of origin. Doesn't happen at work, doesn't happen anywhere that I know of. So we plot along. We have boundaries, we learn, we negotiate, we change. Sometimes we ask for something different, and sometimes we need to leave. And sometimes we just need to be patient. This is another tough one. Number five, understanding the long arc of reunification, the long arc of reconnecting, the long arc of having your loved one back in your life. So the long arc is is again crappy. I remember in the early stages of this, I was at a 12-step meeting, an old timer. I think my my I was having problems with my oldest daughter. So from 12 to 13, she didn't talk to me, and then from 13 to 18 we had a relationship, and then she stopped talking to me again. So he had told me at that time where I wasn't having any relationship with her. She said I might take into her 30s for you to have a relationship. And I'm like, what a terrible thing to say to another human being. But he had experience with this. You know what I mean? It's a long game and it's crappy. It's about working on myself, it's about showing up, it's about helping other people, it's about giving my my children, other loved ones, with even a parent or grandparent time to to evolve and grow and stretch, and time to find places where there's spaces to be creative as family members. And that takes time. Let's see what Cindy has to say about this.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

It goes alienation, reconnect, to reattach to get the child to experience an emotion towards us, then to reunification. And then it takes about three years to have that relationship stabilize, and then you're back to home free again. Once the child does reunite, they will acknowledge it and they will apologize for it. We tell the parents in that reunification, always be ready and prepared to set them free.

Letting Go And Creating Space

Resilience, Systems, And Agency

SPEAKER_00 21:11

Yeah, and in this long arc, it's not about forcing outcomes. I've tried to force so many different outcomes, and I think I do still. I don't know if it's possible to completely stop, but it's not about forcing them, it's about letting go over and over again and creating space for stuff to change and happen. And it's super slow and frustrating. And I'm sitting in the middle of it right now. I don't know what to do in the situation I am with my middle daughter. You know, we've had some contact over the last six months, actually a year and three months or something, and it that doesn't feel connecting. It feels yeah, it hurts. It hurts to have a little bit of contact, but not really be connected, and I'm not really sure what to do from that space. And I'm working on it with some people that I go to when I'm struggling. And by doing the show, I get to work on it as I'm talking and as it's metabolizing and moving through my body. Body, but it's time, it's time to address it in a kind, compassionate, clear way. And like this is months of me considering how to address it. Where in early parental alienation, it was minutes, seconds, hours. It took a long time to get today's. I just want to say if if you're early on in this, the pause is really, really useful. You don't have to react, you don't have to answer, you don't have to pick up the telephone call straight away. Take a breath, get support, find people to help you discuss with them before you jump into something that could be volatile. And also figure out what your boundaries are in a volatile situation and be super clear and kind, expressing them. Hey, this feels a little bit overwhelming. I'm I need to take a couple minutes. Can I reach back out to you tomorrow? The other person might not like it, but that's none of your business. Take care of yourself. It's going to give you the best opportunity to move forward in a positive light. So parental alienation doesn't just take our children, our parents, our grandparents, our grandchildren. It takes our resilience, it takes our mental stability, it takes our confidence, it takes our understanding of how the world functions or how we want to project on the world that it functions, how the legal system in our head functions, but once we're really in the middle of it, it's like chaos. So it takes away all these different things that we've used to stable ourselves and protect ourselves, and we have to relearn how to do that in this new environment that we are pulled into and also into a reality that some of us get to ignore. Some of us because of our privilege, some of us because of our access, some of us because we've never had to be involved in a lot of these different systems. But the systems are broken. So we have to start to change and start to affect the first system, which is our family system, and eventually hopefully participate in affecting other systems. And the most important and salient thing I got to say today is your stability is not just for you. It's for everyone you come into relationship with. They will be interacting with you from a different point. You will have different, more meaningful relationships than you've ever had in your life, and you will lose some relationships you thought were really meaningful. And it's a beacon for your kids to come back to if you're really stable, if you're really taken care of, if you're really solid. Everything around your world is going to be flowing in that direction. So it's something worth considering. Wonderful stuff in the show notes. Check out our free 12-step program. Check out what iSNAF has to offer. Reach out with questions, family disappeared at gmail.com. Donate. Let us bring more cool stuff to you. You know what I mean? And it doesn't matter if you can donate a little, if you can donate a substantial amount. Like we need resources to continue doing what we're doing. But more importantly, to expand and all these different things that we're talking about. We can bring all kinds of trainings to you on these, super accessible, free. You know what I mean? You can go pay$300 or$500 or$10,000 to do something, but we have the availability to bring experts in this. And a lot of people in the community are already experts. And it's wonderful. It's a wonderful opportunity, but people need to participate and help him provide resources if they can. And sometimes volunteering is a resource too. We would love that as well. So if you want to watch the full conversation with Cindy, there will be a link in the show notes. Come out and play with us again in case no one's told you yet today. I love you. I hope you're having a beautiful day. I hope this was useful. Please comment, share, let us know if it's useful. That's what keeps us going, like I said in the beginning of the show. And thanks for coming out to play today.