Transcription
Andrew Folkler:
All righty, and welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the first episode of Broken Family, where we have conversations on divorce, parental alienation, and high-conflict relationships.
My name is Andrew Folkler, and I’m here with…
Barbara La Pointe:
Barbara La Pointe.
Andrew Folkler:
All righty. All right, Barbara. So, chances are, most people aren’t going to know who we are, so we might as well quickly introduce ourselves. Do you want to take the first go?
Barbara La Pointe:
Yes, Andrew. I will.
I’m Barbara Le Pointe. I’m a divorce coach from Canada, and I specialize in high-conflict relationships and inherited family trauma.
Andrew Folkler:
Right on. My name is Andrew Folkler. I was born in the United States, but I had the pleasure of studying overseas in Singapore and completing my education there. When I came back to the United States due to some family conflicts, I later became more known as a public speaker in the parental alienation field, which happens to actually be the topic of conversation for today. So without further ado, I’ll just jump right into it.
Andrew Folkler:
Parental alienation was coined in 1985 by Dr. Richard Gardner. Since its inception, it’s drawn a lot of criticism simply because the nature of alienation involves the child acting as an active attacker in a relationship, in a breaking divorce. So to put this into all perspective, parental alienations is where one child is programmed by a parent to actively attack and ostracize the other parent.
Andrew Folkler:
It’s a very ugly form of child abuse that has gotten a lot more traction as time has gone by, especially with the rise of the internet. A lot of parents are out there completely unfamiliar with why this is happening. And so they’re not only watching their entire relationship and their marriage fall apart, they’re seeing their children as well taking part in that ostracism.
Andrew Folkler:
And so what ends up happening to really break it down, during that divorce period or the breaking up period, the parent starts inculcating a certain set of ideas into the child. And those ideas tend to be derogatory towards the other parent. Such ideas can include attacks on their mental health, attacks on their physical health, and as well as promote the false idea that the other parent who is being ostracized, they’d promote the idea that they are not fit to be a parent.
Andrew Folkler:
Have you seen anything like this in your coaching, Barbara?
Barbara La Pointe:
Andrew, everything that you’re saying is really resonating because, yes, I see this in my coaching practice with women going through divorce. And unfortunately, I can also speak to this personally, but really what I hear you describing is in divorce, children become pawns and they also become weaponized against the other parent. And it’s really heartbreaking, hence the name of our podcast, really, because it breaks the family apart, I might further say that oftentimes these parents that are alienating or weaponizing children against the other parent are narcissistic. And I do see that show up in my practice as well.
Andrew Folkler:
Okay. Yeah, so how does the narcissistic parent get to this point where the marriage is breaking down and then now they’ve reached a point where they’re willing to turn their kids against the other parent. How is it that that narcissistic parent doesn’t show those red flags early on in the relationship?
Barbara La Pointe:
Beautiful question, because I personally believe that sometimes those red flags are showing up during the marriage, but then become amplified or more jacked up, basically more severe, more intensified during the marital breakdown or the divorce. They may well have very, very well been red flags during the family, when the family was intact, those signs may have been there.
Andrew Folkler:
Okay.
Barbara La Pointe:
But oftentimes, maybe not, but often they are there. The person who’s with, coupled with, and will keep a gender-free and narcissistic parent, is often in a deep state of cognitive dissonance or just denial about what’s going on. So they may be more able to recognize those red flags. And when you transition in divorce, most will feel like things are going to get better because I’m now getting divorced.
Barbara La Pointe:
And in fact, the opposite happens in a toxic situation and it becomes worse. So alienation begins or really, really starts to show up.
Andrew Folkler:
Absolutely. And in my experience, how that manifests is the narcissistic parent or the alienating parent, they employ a certain set of strategies against the child and against the ostracized parent. One of the first things they do is they integrate some sort of distance between the child and the parent. Usually, physical distance works the best. And so what they do is they start looking at moving farther away from the other parents so that there’s a physical distance barrier between the child and the parent.
Andrew Folkler:
But then they also create emotional distance as well. And so this can be done through a few things. One, minimizing the time with the estranged parent. So one of the things that you might see is the alienating parent tries to find activities that are fun for the child during the actual visitation hours of the other parent. Usually they’ll enroll them into sports or other school after school activities.
Barbara La Pointe:
I hear what you’re saying, Andrew, and one of the reasons why I love talking with you is that we can have these rigorous conversations, a very robust conversation, even when we’re in a deep flow of conversation around very serious topics like parental alienation. So that behavior you’re describing of distance, going for lessons during the other parent’s time.
Barbara La Pointe:
It becomes a problem because of the lack of love that’s going on. I might pose the question, why can’t we all get together and go to soccer? But there’s such a conflict at the heart of it that that becomes not possible. And I think that’s the deeper underlying issue.
Barbara La Pointe:
How do you feel?
Andrew Folkler:
It absolutely is because even if the other parent, the parent that’s being ostracized, even if they tried to come with an olive branch, the alienating parent will find ways to stir up trouble. And part of that emotional distance is reaffirming to the child later on that all that drama that was created was the blame is pushed onto the estranged parent.
Andrew Folkler:
And so that child starts to associate in their heads that that parent is trouble. And what ends up happening is over time, that child keeps building that association until the point where when asked, “Do you want to spend time with that other parent?”
Andrew Folkler:
They’re like, “Well, other parent means trouble. So absolutely not. I don’t want to get in trouble. I don’t want to go through drama. My life is already a lot of drama. Why would I want to add more to it?” And so that becomes the rationale in their minds.
Barbara La Pointe:
Well, I agree with what you’re saying. And basically, and you referenced this earlier, it happens sort of bit by bit. It just doesn’t happen all at once. So it’s sort of indoctrinated or integrated into the psyche or the spirit of the child over time. And the outcome is exactly what you’re saying when the child would say, no, I don’t want to go to see mom or dad. Whereas we might postulate that every child wants to see their mother or father.
Andrew Folkler:
Absolutely. I mean, within every child, they every child wants their parents to get along and wants to have a solid and happier family. Even the ones that undergo a great deal of trauma in their lives, it’s a wish that gets locked in the deepest parts of our minds.
Andrew Folkler:
Growing up when I was experiencing something like this, I remember periodically wishing for a more whole family, if that makes sense, simply because there’s always the sense that things would be better if everyone got along. I mean, you’re raised to believe that we need to get along. We need to work together. We need to love and support each other. And yet the people that tell us this are obviously the adults that are not standing by what they’re preaching.
Andrew Folkler:
And so at the end of the day, where everyone is half of both parents, and so not having that half of you be okay in your world, not believing that half of you is trouble, half of you is a unlikeable shadow of your past that you want to hide away from, that gets redirected inward constantly. And you can’t really navigate through it. You can’t really grow past it because it’s this constant sense of personal degradation, if that makes sense.
Barbara La Pointe:
Absolutely. And just to deepen and expand on what you’re saying, it was actually Bert Hellinger, a famous psychotherapist who said that the child is each 50% of each parent. And that’s beautiful when you really just pause to think about it. So if you remove 50% of your child by erasing dad or eliminating mom, that child then grows up fractured and will always be, yeah, you feel it, always belonging to bring that fractured part back to their core self.
Barbara La Pointe:
So I guess that’s why we’re both so, so passionate about this issue.
Andrew Folkler:
Definitely, definitely. And unfortunately, this is a very widespread phenomenon that goes across most of the Western world, at least from what I’ve understand, and even across other parts of the world as well, where I’ve had the opportunity to talk to parents from India who had their children taken from them to the point where some parents went to other countries, for example, had the opportunity to network with people in Singapore as well, where I used to stay. And I’ve also talked to a lot of people in the West.
Andrew Folkler:
It’s a really ugly thing that’s just becoming more and more common simply because as parents are breaking up, they’re taking all that anger and anguish from the broken relationship and they’re projecting it outward, not only to the other parent, but onto the child as well.
Barbara La Pointe:
Yeah, and then broken family really becomes broken child.
Andrew Folkler:
Absolutely.
Barbara La Pointe:
And then broken child becomes broken adult, and that’s where we get the cycle of generational trauma and when does it end? As you know, Andrew, I’ve spoken to many, many women across North America. And like you, I recall one woman saying that when she divorced, she was living in Asia, and she woke up and her husband had taken her daughter’s passport and flew her daughter out of the country. And I just couldn’t even imagine what she went through at that moment in her divorce process. She actually had to relocate to Canada to find her daughter.
Barbara La Pointe:
So it is so much more widespread than we even realize. I wish actually we had had some quotes, but it’s a monumental, monumental societal issue.
Andrew Folkler:
Yeah, absolutely. So now that distance has been put in place between the child and the parent, there is the next few set of steps that occur that really cement the alienation of the child from one of the parents. And for me, that next step is exploiting that fear of abandonment.
Andrew Folkler:
And so initially, the child is slowly being separated out through isolation, you know, both physical distance and emotional distance. And there reaches a point where the alienating parent is going to start talking about how the other parent doesn’t care.
Andrew Folkler:
They’re going to say that the other parent doesn’t love you. They’re going to say the other parent doesn’t want to see you. They don’t want to be a part of your life. And they reinforce this negative mantra, if that makes sense, you know, they’re constantly saying that over and over and over again.
Andrew Folkler:
And one of the things I really want to emphasize is that one of the most effective ways of brainwashing people is constant repetition, because if that’s the only input that is put into your brain, then eventually that just gets cemented in there and ingrained. And so the child is constantly being told over and over again that they’ve been abandoned, that they would not have anyone if it weren’t for the saving grace of the alienating parent. And what ends up happening is that creates this sense of codependency onto the alienating parent.
Andrew Folkler:
From there, not only do you think, oh, this other parent is trouble, now you’re thinking this parent is my guardian angel. And so when faced with the prospect of seeing the ostracized parent, you’re rushing to your guardian angel to save you from the parent, you deem as trouble, if that makes sense.
Barbara La Pointe:
It does. I mean, unfortunately, the child, first of all, doesn’t have a choice, and is forced into a position where they unconsciously have to merge with one parent. And if something’s going on, like what you’re explaining, a scenario where one parent is saying your other parent doesn’t love you, then how can we survive without love? And that child who doesn’t have a choice needs to survive, and so just has to keep going and doesn’t have a choice. And so how will that little girl or that little boy love themselves when 50% of their parent doesn’t, they think doesn’t love them?
Andrew Folkler:
Absolutely.
Barbara La Pointe:
So those self-love issues are being rooted in that child very, very early. And maybe that’s why some describe parental alienation as you did as abuse, because of those current seeds of lack of self-love, it’s a very unloving form of abuse.
Andrew Folkler:
Definitely. And it can definitely turn into a generational thing if not addressed.
Andrew Folkler:
So I guess one question to throw at you is, at a young age, if you grow up with that kind of lack of self-love and you are codependent on a narcissistic person, how does that impact the child growing up? What would that lead, what kind of issues would that lead to psychologically?
Barbara La Pointe:
Well, earlier you had mentioned that that child becomes codependent on the parent, and that parent becomes like the guardian angel you’ve mentioned. So while doing that, they lose their own boundary and they lose their inner dependence or their independence to form their own authentic self. So fast forward that child could have weak boundaries, weaker self-love, or even form a life that manifests with the deficit of self-love.
Barbara La Pointe:
Now if we take that scenario that you’re describing, Andrew, and we look at the bond that is formed between a child and parent, I will use in this example the mother-child bond. That is the first bond that we form in life is with our mom. If that bond is broken, then a sacred bond is broken with ourselves. And we literally end up walking through the world as we grow up, looking for something, searching for something, because our early attachment bond was broken with our mom. It’s the most important bond that we start our life on this planet with. So it’s an example of an early trauma that manifests in a wounded soul.
Andrew Folkler:
Absolutely. And I can say that from experience too. Having spent a good portion of my life alienated from my biological mother, I spent a great amount of time feeling frustrated and wanting to believe that I was acting as someone who knew better and as someone who understood the pains that a mother could cause a child. But the truth was I was really projecting that anger onto myself, believing that I was somehow at fault for that initial breakup and as well as the 13-year period of almost no contact. It wasn’t until I took the time to actually try and build a relationship on my own terms with my own set of boundaries with my mother that I was able to really understand what else was going on behind the scenes, that as a child I was completely unaware of.
Barbara La Pointe:
There’s so many layers to it as to what you’re saying, and a child is just a child. How are they supposed to be conscious of all of that?
Andrew Folkler:
Definitely. And for that reason, that’s why in the past when parental alienation was first thought of as a concept, it was criticized so much simply because nobody would believe that a child would act as an active participant in the divorce. Whether they thought a child would not be able to make those decisions, that a child would not be so programmable to the point where they would become an agent of the narcissistic parent rather than just as an innocent victim on the wayside.
Barbara La Pointe:
I mean, well, first of all, I think we all acknowledge that a child will always choose their parent even if it’s an abusive parent. And second of all, we probably can all agree that a child will unconsciously identify or merge with one of their parents in a toxic situation. And third of all, we can acknowledge, likely, that children are going to act out what is unresolved between their parents.
Andrew Folkler:
Yeah, absolutely. So after they’ve built that fear of abandonment, now that a child’s been emotionally and physically distanced from the parent, they’re afraid of being abandoned, they’re afraid of the other parent, and they’re afraid of losing the guardian angel parent that they have, which is really just someone who is very carefully and very meticulously inculcated a sense of, in a sense, worship of that parent.
Andrew Folkler:
They want the child to be so dependent to the point that they can’t imagine life without them. They take control of finances, they take control of diet, everything from relationships, your friends, all of it becomes an extended part of their control. And afterwards, what ends up happening is there’s always a certain amount of harassment involved of the child to ensure that they maintain a certain set of standards.
Andrew Folkler:
Sometimes that harassment can be completely spontaneous in the sense where it might come at in the form of verbal abuse or just manipulations being told that they can’t participate in a particular sport for a illogical or fallacious reason. And what ends up happening is the child has to recognize that their life is in a two-dimensional box and they can’t step out of line or else they are at risk of getting a lot of yelling and a lot of punishment from the narcissistic parent.
Andrew Folkler:
In a way, this is the “stick” in the carrots and sticks analogy and what ends up happening is the child has to obey the rules or else they’re threatened with abandonment. One of the things that I remember growing up with, especially whenever I got in trouble with something, I would be told, you know, you’re becoming like your mother.
Andrew Folkler:
You’re becoming just like her, you’re becoming a liar like her, you’re becoming a cheater just like her, you’re becoming, and if you become like her, then I might as well send you to her, you know, and that was such a emotionally crippling thing to hear that I, that it not only doesn’t make the child want to cling to the alienating parent more, but it, you start to associate disobedience with being threatened to go see the parent that you have consciously deemed as trouble, if that makes sense.
Barbara La Pointe:
It does and there’s so much that you actually just said, you know, so much of this hit me right here in my into the open heart. We talked about that parent controlling the child, but we, we don’t own those children, those children, you know, in a loving, loving universe, we can’t if that’s actually the opposite of being a parent, right?
Barbara La Pointe:
So, controlling a child, we don’t own them. So that’s the opposite of role of parent and I think it underscores that that’s abuse. And then you mentioned your parents saying to, well, you’re becoming more like her. How did that play out in your life?
Andrew Folkler:
It put a lot of fear in my life. It made me think that because my mother was positioned as the standard of everything bad, even though none of that was true, even though she’s, you know, a wonderful woman who’s helped me a lot in these last few years, she was put as the pinnacle of everything bad and so being told that, you know, as a threat, you know, I will send you over there to her and you’ll never see me again and you can go live your life of debauchery and everything with her that was this terrifying, terrifying idea, just simply because then if life was bad now, how much worse would life be in this hypothetical, right?
Andrew Folkler:
And so I was just constantly afraid of being forced to reconcile with her. And part of that is also the participation in the alienation as a child, you’re told what to say, you’re told how to interact with that other parent. And so naturally you’re the boundaries of being a nasty kid, get lifted for that parent. And so I know what I’ve said to her, I know how I’ve treated her in the past. And now I have to go and see her that there’s some sort of reconciliation that I would have to come to terms with if I, and so knowing that both being afraid of going to her as well as being afraid of owning up to all the things I’ve said to her in the past, it creates this very mixed emotion of fear and guilt.
Barbara La Pointe:
And those live inside your body.
Andrew Folkler:
Oh, and eats away at you. That’s more or less how that affected me as far as addressing that growing up. It wasn’t until you take that first step and you go out and you see the parent that you’ve been estranged from, and you take the time to build a relationship with them. Is that, does that fear in your gut just slowly subside and from there, at least you’ll be able to then actually make huge amounts of progress within yourself and within with your relationship with the other parent.
Andrew Folkler:
The thing is, it’s taking that first step. That’s always the scariest part of the whole thing is taking that first step and recognizing that they’re only human, they may, whether they made mistakes in the divorce or not, maybe they are, or maybe they made mistakes trying to reach out and build their relationship with you. That doesn’t matter. They’re only human and they’re trying to have a parent child relationship with you. And so reaching that point of understanding, it’s a very scary place to be in. And it doesn’t get any better until you really dive right into it.
Barbara La Pointe:
Yeah, well, just to back up a little bit and touch, touch on what you said when a scenario was created where that parent is bad, you know, that is an example of personality or a human personality, which is often a high conflict personality. And those personalities operate in extremes, so bad and good, bad parent, good parent. And those extremes break down what psychotherapist Bert Hellinger called the orders of love in a family.
Barbara La Pointe:
But how do you get those love flowing again when one child has been indoctrinated or told and sometimes it doesn’t even have to be languaging. It can just be the body language of a parent, your mother is bad, your mother is not stable, your mother is, you know, whatever it is. How do you reverse that huge wall built between mother and child?
Barbara La Pointe:
Last point, you mentioned that feeling of the child being abandoned. So that plays out in their adult life later, since we’ve touched on this theme. So an adult who’s gone through something like this might actually later start having these deep core fears, like I’m afraid, okay, and we dig a little bit deeper through constellation family practice, down, down, down to their core fear through a process called the basic core language approach.
Barbara La Pointe:
So we identify the client’s core language, and then as we dig, dig down, their core fear might be, I feel like someone’s going to leave me, I feel like I’m going to be abandoned. Now imagine walking through your entire life feeling as an adult in your interpersonal relationships, like that you’re going to be abandoned by your love partner, by whomever you’re intimate with, just abandoning oneself even. All of that goes right back to that alienation, way, way back there in the family tree.
Andrew Folkler:
Absolutely. It absolutely does. And it’s unfortunate because a lot of that is so subconscious that as you grow up, you don’t quite realize it is those habits that were built into the child that are the reason why they’re struggling with their relationships with other people. And it was one of those things that within myself.
Andrew Folkler:
I made a lot of mistakes, be it romantic relationships or even just personal friendships, there was always a certain distance that was maintained regardless of how many years I was friends with these people or romantically involved with certain people. And a lot of that was just because it was the same habits that were built in during the time of the alienation. And undoing those habits take a lot of time and a lot of fear and a lot of self-awareness as well.
Barbara La Pointe:
Really, I feel like in this moment, I just want to honor you for your journey, the inner work that you’ve done, and sometimes we can’t do that work alone because we can’t consciously see our trigger points or the spots in our journey where we’re stuck or connect this way back to our early childhood attachments. And that’s why I’m passionate about working with women is that you can partner with someone to do that and restore safety back into your body.
Barbara La Pointe:
I will also be so open and transparent because I am not in a present relationship with my adult son because I’m alienated from him and I really have gone through that and I don’t mind being vulnerable about that. It’s been extremely painful. And so trying to restore the orders of love between myself and my firstborn son is a daily work.
Andrew Folkler:
Absolutely.
Barbara La Pointe:
Yeah. So I will honor myself for that, too.
Andrew Folkler:
Definitely. It’s those little victories that matter. One of the things that growing up, as an alienated child, you’re taught that your accomplishments are never yours. It’s always thanks to the benefactory work of the narcissistic parent. And learning to take ownership of your success is in some ways harder than taking ownership of your failures.
Andrew Folkler:
And so definitely, I appreciate the compliments on that. I’m definitely not all the way there. I’m still learning. I’m still discovering more about myself and how I can better improve my ability to not only help people, but also help myself and help grow from this experience. That having met a lot of alienated children either through online or in person, it’s still a very long journey. It’s still very difficult to reconcile just how much so many other kids have been hurt. And so that’s part of why I do what I do.
Andrew Folkler:
The last point I wanted to touch on before I wrap up that the four ways that an alienating parent twists a child against the other parent is what I call rewards for compliance. Compliance meaning to act in accordance with the alienating parent. So basically, like I was saying, harassment is going to be the sticks and the analogy, the rewards for compliance are your carrots.
Andrew Folkler:
Basically, the child, as long as every time the child continues to act within the domain of the alienating parent, they are rewarded for that obedient behavior. Whether it’s in the child’s interest or not, it’s irrelevant. As long as they obey, they’re rewarded. And some of those rewards can be in the form of fun activities or concessions such as hanging out with your friends.
Barbara La Pointe:
I just love to do this, distill it down to basic stereotypes of abuse because that really reminds me of domestic abuse between a man and a woman where she gets a punch in the face and the next day she gets a beautiful bouquet of flowers and it entrains this sort of patterning of abuse-reward.
Andrew Folkler:
Absolutely.
Barbara La Pointe:
This is to really strengthen what you’re saying because sometimes, if anyone doubts that alienation is abuse, there’s a…
Andrew Folkler:
Yeah, you’re absolutely correct. And it’s that polarity, like going one extreme to the other extreme that creates this sense of uncertainty and you’re always on your toes knowing that at any moment you could either get yelled at or highly praised. And knowing that the yelling is more prevalent than the praise, it’s a game of Russian roulette in some days.
Barbara La Pointe:
And when do I get to feel safe in my container, in my body? Of course, the child’s not consciously saying that, but they will go through their whole life feeling potentially unsafe or in their home, in their body.
Andrew Folkler:
Absolutely. And as you were mentioning before, it will manifest into their relationships moving forward. Worst case they end up taking up a partner that continues this cycle of abuse or in other unfortunate cases, some people grow up and embody the thing that they were trained to do and in a sense become a narcissistic parent on their own. It’s a very, very ugly cycle. And it’s one thing that I think you’ve mentioned before with the inherited family trauma in our previous discussions. And so it can be a really ugly thing.
Barbara La Pointe:
And William Faulkner said, “The past is never dead, in fact, it’s alive.”
Barbara La Pointe:
So at some point along that big, huge, beautiful family tree, we have to find resolution with these things. Because I agree with what you’re saying, it just patterns on and continues on cyclically.
Andrew Folkler:
Absolutely. Alrighty. So, well, that’s right about what I’ve got as far as how alienation occurs.
Barbara La Pointe:
Can we just wrap up the four summary points that you made, so rewards and concessions?
Andrew Folkler:
Yeah, absolutely. So alienation begins with isolation. In order to destroy the relationship between the child and the parent, the child is not only physically distanced from the parent, they are also emotionally distanced. And part of that emotional distance involves the second point, which is going to be exploiting the fear of abandonment.
Andrew Folkler:
What the narcissistic parent’s going to do is they’re going to convey to the child that the other parent is trouble, the other parent is not to be trusted, that the other parent doesn’t care, doesn’t want to be with them, doesn’t love them, and that it is by the good graces of the narcissistic parent that that child is safe, fed, and taken care of. And so what this ends up doing is it creates a sense of codependency on the narcissistic parent and the narcissistic parent has total control of the child and in a sense puts them in a two-dimensional box.
Andrew Folkler:
Their lives are in complete control by the narcissistic parent. Any time the child steps out of line, be it teenage hormones or a sense of rebellion or just not knowing better, that’s when the third point comes in, which is just harassment. The child will be yelled at, they’ll be hurt, they’ll be in some cases physically beaten. And what ends up happening is the child is taught through these forms of punishment that stepping out of line comes at a high price.
Andrew Folkler:
There might even be threats exploiting that fear of abandonment that the child might be sent to the alienating parent, to the estranged parent, excuse me. From there, the child has to learn to either follow the rules and obey or they get a lot of punishment.
Andrew Folkler:
And so from there, once they start acting in line, once they follow everything to a T and they do, they act in ways that make the narcissistic parent look good, that’s when they get rewarded for their compliance.
Barbara La Pointe:
That’s a great summary and it really brings everything together on this topic of parental alienation.
Andrew Folkler:
Yeah, definitely. I wish they made it a word that was easier to say and more marketable, but unfortunately we’re kind of stuck with parental alienation.
Barbara La Pointe:
Me too, like narcissistic, that’s a hard also to say.
Andrew Folkler:
Yeah, definitely.
Barbara La Pointe:
Just to finish off on that beautiful summary that you just gave, all of that is just too big to put on a child’s shoulders. So I didn’t know I was going to be referencing Bert Hellinger who did family Constellation work so deeply today and I have, but he said that the child is little and the adult is big. And so that was way too much, of course, for a child to take on, for a child to handle or absorb.
Andrew Folkler:
Absolutely. And they just don’t quite have the emotional intelligence to really understand what are the larger forces at play here. We look to our parents as examples of what the world should be like. And unfortunately not everyone gets a good example. So that’s just kind of how that goes. I mean, as far as what to do, if you know you’re in a situation where you’re being alienated from your child, well, a couple things I want to kind of quickly shout out that way.
Andrew Folkler:
If you’re listening and you know this is happening to you or this has been happening to you, you have a few action items to move forward. First thing I would do is look at what kind of resources do you have available. I would definitely look into research, you know, either watching films on either alienation or divorce in general or reading books. Couple that I would recommend would be the Erasing Family film, which is available on the Tubi website.
Andrew Folkler:
I think it’s www.tubi.com.
To Watch Erasing Family for Free click one of the following links:
Andrew Folkler:
And then another great book to look at would be A Divorce Poison by Dr. Warshak. And also look into building a support network for yourself. There’s a lot that I did not cover so far in parental alienation that we can cover in future videos. And we will also talk more as well as in regards to how to address the situation, what things not to do, and as well as explain more on the psyche of the alienated child.
Andrew Folkler:
So we definitely have a lot planned, a lot of guest speakers for future episodes. And from there, we’ll be able to paint a more clear picture on how to address this, as well as other things in divorce and high conflict relationships. Is there anything else that you wanted to add, Barbara?
Barbara La Pointe:
All of that sounded absolutely perfect to me. So Andrew, with respect to our podcast, Broken Family, and the upcoming amazing guests that we have planned, they also had spoken in depth about, I think you and I really want this to be solution-oriented and clear, but clearing a path forward to healing for anyone who might be watching.
Andrew Folkler:
Absolutely. I think that was really an important core value when we decided to get together and collaborate on this podcast.
Barbara La Pointe:
So if I might close this podcast with something positive and something hopefully healing.
Barbara La Pointe:
And getting back to hard words to say, this is a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh, and he’s a Buddhist monk. Do you know him?
Andrew Folkler:
I do not, actually.
Barbara La Pointe:
Okay, so he says, “If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in the moment. Each is present in your body, and you are the continuation of each of these people.”
Barbara La Pointe:
So we truly hope that this podcast will bring healing to our audience in all directions of time.
Andrew Folkler:
That was actually really beautiful. I’m going to have to look that up and save that. That’s pretty good.
Andrew Folkler:
Alrighty, so like Barbara said, we’ve got a lot of amazing episodes planned. We’ve got a lot of amazing guest speakers that we want to bring on board and definitely get their expertise as well. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, things that you want us to talk about in the future, feel free to reach out to us.
Andrew Folkler:
I would start by looking at Barbara La Pointe’s website at barbaralapointe.com, or you can email her at barbaralapointe@gmail.com. If you have anything you want to address to me, you can look, find me on my website at andrewfolkler.com, email me at startnow@andrewfolkler.com.
End of Transcript
Note: This podcast was produced in 2021 in collaboration with Barbara La Pointe Coaching. The downloadable summary for this episode was created for Barbara’s divorce coaching practice. If you would like a copy of the downloadable summary, please go to barbaralapointe.com/podcasts.
To learn more about how divorce coaching can help you, visit Barbara’s website at barbaralapointe.com
