From “Villainous” to Valiant

When alienators try to make a parent the "bad guy," they must work even harder to be the superhero their children need

Photo by Esteban Lopez on Unsplash

When I’m involved in a divorce where a parent is the victim of parental alienation, I always tell the lawyers, “If you want to see a sane person act insane, take their children away from them for no reason at all.”

Think of it: How would any of us behave while suffering the unbearable loss of a child, on top of financial and emotional bankruptcy, loneliness and isolation? Often these parents have been accused of heinous acts towards their children when all they can remember are nights of putting their child to bed, changing diapers, going to school events, coaching baseball, reading bedtime stories, and all of the other day-to-day parenting tasks that consumed their life. Then one day it’s all ripped from them. Suddenly they’re characterized as abusive and not allowed to see their children. Not allowed to talk to them. Not allowed to enter the place they called home for years maybe just hours before. The laws that once governed their understanding of the world have disappeared, replaced by a governing body of alien form, where a person with every reason in the world to lie can say whatever they want, while the powers that be make life-altering decisions based on the possibility of truth rather than factual truth.

After being kept from their children, sometimes for months and years, alienated parents are an easy target for allegations of mental health problems, anger management issues, and irrational behavior. Alienators are masters at creating a false narrative about the other parent, at taking natural suffering in the face of inhumane treatment and bending it into pathology. One of the tactics I often see used involves picking out a normal flaw and magnifying it tenfold, until only a thread of truth remains. Suddenly a parent who has dealt with mild levels of depression and anxiety is suffering mental illness; who enjoys drinking socially is in the grips of alcoholism; who lost their temper with their child a couple of times over years is emotionally abusive. Welcome to family court, where “innocent until proven guilty” does not apply, and where evidence can consist of nothing more than an apparently honest reporter with an emotionally convincing delivery. Is it any surprise that these parents sometimes become overly reactive? Should we really expect more from these clients under siege than we would expect from ourselves in the same circumstances?

The answer, unfortunately, is we must.

Alienated parents must not become what others claim they are

Sadly, sometimes mentally healthy parents contending with months or years of litigation, succumb to the pressure of the twisted narratives about them and begin responding to life irrationally and, seemingly, subconsciously playing the role assigned to them by their abusers. In their desperation, after months of repeatedly being told they are incompetent, rageful, mentally ill, or deficient in any number of other ways, these behaviors begin to manifest in ways that reflect the picture in the distorted not-so-fun-house mirror held by the other parent.

When I work with a targeted parent, I always ask them to describe the narrative that has been spun up about them, because it helps me assess their current responses and prevent them from falling into the trap of giving the alienating parent more ammunition.

When a parent loses access to their children, it’s emotionally devastating. The child is still out there somewhere, like a ghost the parent might catch a glimpse of here and there. I do my best to help parents come to the realization that the best thing they can do with their new, dramatically altered life is continue to be a person that their kids would be proud of and will be proud of should the regain access. This positive outcome will have more of a chance of materializing if the parent manages the terribly hard work of fighting through the pain and chaos and rising to meet the challenge, no matter how unfair it is.

Meeting the challenge might include optimizing physical health, educating themselves about the law, gathering with others in the same leaky boat for support, and learning how other people have overcome immeasurable losses and endured horrible tragedy only to survive and thrive afterwards. (Three great options are Greg Ellis’s book, The Respondent, as well as the video series and community.)

Meeting the challenge means playing the long game and not giving in to the abuse, so that if—and hopefully when—they are able to reconnect with their children once more, their kids won’t find the person they were falsely told they were, but the incredible, strong and unshakeable superhero they are.

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by Kelley Baker, PhD

Dr. Baker has over 20 years of clinical experience working with families going through separation and divorce. She has served in forensic evaluation and therapeutic roles, specializing in parent-child contact issues. Currently, her practice is focused on training for mental health and legal professionals on parental alienation, forensic consulting, and building social awareness on the negative effects of parental alienation and the benefits of shared parenting.