Parental alienation - seems very common with PD's?

[rockandhardplace]

I've found myself following a few threads where PA was brought up and it's amazing how frequently this seems to happen with PD's. As a parent, this is my biggest concern since recognising my stbx (ever hopeful) was likely a mix of NPD and BPD, possibly APD, but seems a bit too emotionally reactive to be really calculating. It feels like it's such a big topic for people dealing with PD's that it almost needs it's own section or something? I have so many questions for people who have experienced alienation - either as a child or parent, either severe leading to loss of child/parent or milder and just damaging to the relationship/child.

The big question on my mind at the moment is what happens in the adult children of alienation minds to make them keep rejecting the other parent? I read and listen to Amy Baker a lot and I'm going to go back through those resources too, but one of the things about severe PA is the reasons that children have for rejecting a parent are usually trivial or they can't even say why. Like "I feel uncomfortable at mum/dad's house" or "mum won't let me stay up late".  I can see how children can be brainwashed to reject a parent, but as an adult if the other parent has consistently tried to keep in their lives and wants to reconnect what do they tell themselves is the reason for the continued rejection? Does the PD manage to wipe out all good memories over time or something?

[escapingman]

Rock, I assume my posts are one of the ones you refer to. I can reply as a parent, not a child. The PA is the worst and dirtiest trick in the book of a PD, and uneducated people in the system don't see it. I haven't seen my daughter for 7 months and the social worker happy tells me that the reason is that I made her feel bad. No other reasons. WHATSOEVER. When I try to explain what happened I am being shouted at. Not much you can do. The PA started over a year before I filed for divorce, I am sure STBX knew already then and it was part of her discard. STBX made fun of me at any opportunity, told my daughter I did things I didn't do, slagged my entire family off. STBX tried with my other daughter too, but she was more clued up and instead of joining STBX ended up being rejected by STBX.

What I have read the only way to reverse this is to have contact and try to get a positive relationship with the child. In my case it is impossible with a social worker that has no clue about what is going on and rather ruins my relationship with my daughter forever than to add 1 and 1 and get 2.

[Associate of Daniel]

In my case, my UNPD exH is too emotionally reactive to actually plan any acts of P.A.  His behaviour can have the effect of P.A. though.

His UNPD wife (my ds16's smother) however, is extremely intentional. And she has my UNPD exH under her thumb and he's too weak to stand up to her.

Thankfully ds seems to have avoided falling into the P.A. pit.  He has had a few slips over the years.  He's now starting to really struggle with his dad though, which, while validating for me, is painful for me to see as well.

I want ds to have a relationship with his UNPD father, but one where he accepts he will never be able to have his emotional support.  A relationship that is protected by strong boundries.

I think it would be safest for ds to not have his UNPD smother in his life but I will not say any such thing to him unless he starts to struggle with her as well.

AOD

[rockandhardplace]

EM - social workers are not trained in PA, most are not even given that much training in any form of family violence, very little on post-separation abuse. There's also lots of controversy about PA because some abusers claim PA when their children actually have genuine fear of them from their behaviour. What's really crazy is that on the one side abusive parents are often given shared custody because having 2 parents in a child's life is seen as being so important and yet when children are coached to reject a healthy parent the same child advocates will shrug and say well the child has a right to refuse a relationship. The weird thing is that the PA research shows that a lot of children will still want a relationship with an abusive parent as we have an innate love for our parents, so when a non-abusive parent is being rejected it's a red flag for PA. And yet many judges, social workers, therapists etc will assume the child has a good reason to reject the parent. Unfortunately, the psych who came up with the term many years ago was a horrible misogynistic loon who's written some really weird things about child sex abuse so people in the DV field refer to rejection of a parent as domestic abuse by proxy. They know PA happens but they are more worried about children having to spend time alone with an abusive parent than miss out on a relationship with a healthy one.
There are lots of people on here who've experienced PA in some form or to some degree or another. So the thing I keep wondering about is not just that it's a bigger issue with PD's than is discussed but when parental-child relationship is completely severed and never recovered wouldn't that mean that child grows up with just the PD to parent/influence them? Is that part of why some never re-unite with their parents? They are so damaged by growing up in that unhealthy environment? When I read about the impact of PA it focusses on the impact of the loss of the relationship for both the parent and child and the psychological effect of being torn like that. But I never hear about the possible impact of being stuck with only a PD parent. Surely that is what's really damaging? Some people believe that children use a kind of psychological splitting like what PD's have, where it's better for their mental  health to essentially split the parents into one all good and one all bad. But if that's true that puts an awful strain on these kids mentally. When they reject a parent and it's causing anxiety to have to see them, well-meaning therapists often encourage the other parent to let go for the sake of the kid. To lessen anxiety. And in a sense maybe that does help with that internal struggle but to do that they have to make the other parent all bad and then it's hard to encourage them later on to believe that they were wrong about them.

[xredshoesx]

in my situation i was a child who experienced PA.

the quick version of the events- my mother filed for divorce, then left the marital state and took me with her ,violating the child support orders (basically parental abduction).  my father declined to pursue legal action and i did not see my father from age 7- age 21 save one phone call and one court ordered supervised visit.  i did not live with my mother most of this time  and ended up in state custody for the majority of my teen years until my mom 'got' me back.   there's a lot about what happened in between those years that even i don't comprehend as an adult, but at one point my father signed off his rights and then his house burned down, killing one of my half sisters, and my mother was a person of interest in the arson but nothing was ever proven in court. 

i found my dad's family by accident at 19, and we have a rocky relationship at best now.   his second wife has been super helpful in bridging the past for both of us and did everything in her power to make it less awkward.   

i think my dad knew how truly out of pocket my mother was and made his decision to not be involved out of fear.  my mother enlisted her parents (who had custody of me until she got remarried when i was in middle school) as the agents of her PA campaign.  when i got to know my dad as an adult i saw some of the things about him that made him the way he is, and i get it, but part of me will always be angry he didn't come get me to take me HOME when my mom took me the second time (it had happened more than once that she grabbed me and left me with her parents and then took off on her own)