When parent alienation starts, you loose control. Since alienation is not a single action, but a series of acts and attitude, it acts more like a disease process that spreads. As alienation spreads, it distorts and corrupts every relationship it touches.Keep in mind that Parent Alienation is a campaign or movement fueled by hate and revenge. The alienating parent becomes a zealot in their cause. They infect the family with their bitterness.
Once the bitterness begins spreading, it poisons every relationship. Although aimed at the cheater, it will spread to the cheater’s family, the relationship between the child and alienating parent and even the relationship between the child and their emotions. A loving parent is transformed into a monster to be feared and avoided. Once the alienation begins, no one will be left without scars.
Alienation also becomes a breeding ground for secrecy and dysfunction. Your children are not allowed to honestly express their emotions or have the freedom to interact as they wish. Instead, their whole social environment is controlled. They may complain that they feel more like a puppet or a performer than a kid. Any formerly positive memories are called into question. In the campaign of denigration, children often experience ‘friendly fire’. What started as a way for one parent to get back at the other leaves you children doubting their own memories, emotions and abilities.
The negative emotional energy behind alienation changes the whole energy of the family. It takes everything positive and turns it into something negative.Make no mistake, negative energy is not the lack of energy, but instead is a powerful energy focused on ‘undoing’.
Those infected with the negative energy, enjoy destroying, tearing down and lashing out. They may even go so far as to include self-righteousness into the mix, which means they are doing all their destruction, and all in the name of doing right, doing good or ‘for the GOOD of the children’.
Just stepping into the home of someone infected with negative energy and noticing the feel, you will be able to tell that something is different. The dominant emotions are fear and anger. The primary way of getting anything done is by control. People no longer do anything out of love. The require either threats or reward in order to do things for others.
The alienation process is best described as a ‘campaign of denigration‘. Much like psychological warfare units, the alienator starts systematically disrupting relationships. They will use their position as a parent to toxify the relationship with the other parent. The poisoning occurs at many levels and in many ways. To call what happens ‘brain washing’ is not an exaggeration. If they can not get the child to hate, then they will get them to accept the plausibility of badness. Scripts are rehearsed over and over until the child accepts what they have been told as what happened. The child is re-programmed into another reality.
When a child is re-programmed, they will have similar reactions to family members associated with the target parent. The same negative reactions they have been trained to have with the target will become more predominant with those associated with the target parent. The metaphor of ‘one bad apple’ may help you understand this phenomena.
Just because you are extended family will not make you safe. The poison, like radiation will spread far and wide. The affair may not have been your problem, but you will sure have to deal with the effects of what happened.
Best Regards,
Jeff Murrah
