Skills and Awareness (Individual or Group) for Targets of Parental Estrangement, often referred to as Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS)

Location

Sessions held in Chelmsford, Essex

Purpose

This Parental Estrangement Coping Skills and Support Group has been designed to provide education, information and emotional support to estranged parents who have become targets of Parental Alienation, a process often referred to as Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), or Parental Estrangement.

PAS occurs when one parent tries to manipulate, sometimes even brainwash, their child into obsessively hating their other parent. It takes place most often during or after divorce.

Estranged parents, targeted for alienation, can often feel helpless and overwhelmed by changes in the behaviour of their child or children, as well as in the intensity of the alienation campaign waged against them.

The purpose, then, of the Parental Estrangement Coping Skills Group is to provide insight into, and to ease the burden of potentially devastaing alienation and estrangement.

We live in communities where it's assumed that if there's an estrangement, the parent must have done something really terrible. Consequently, many estranged parents suffer in silence, with nowhere to turn.

This support group is an opportunity for estranged parents and targets of Parental Alienation Syndrome to be in direct conversation with other parents who are experiencing the same thing they are.

Intendend Results

In the Parental Estrangement Coping Skills Group you will learn how to:

• Identify the many signs of Parental Estrangement in your child, and the pathways to recovery. We look at the methods your ex-spouse may use to poison your child's mind and turn him or her against you, such as:
  1. complaining to your child that they no longer have enough money post-divorce, and that their lifestyle is now diminished
  2. making false allegations to your child about and against you, such as promiscuity, or sexual abuse, or drug and alcohol abuse or any other illegal activity
  3. getting your child to choose them over you
  4. encouraging, or at least allowing your child to feel and show anger towards you
  5. persuading your child or children to spy or covertly gather information to be used later against you
     
  6. telling your child or children everything about why the marriage failed and feeding them details about the divorce settlement, including financial information
• Manage and deal with the feelings of guilt, shame, anxiety, fear, regret, anger, worry, sorrow, frustration and disappointment that can overwhelm you during the process where your child is rejecting, blaming and refusing contact with you.
• Understand the precise nature of Parental Estrangement and Parental Alienation Syndrome. Knowledge is Power, and naming something makes it knowable and more accessible. In particular, you will learn what is happening with the other, alienating parent, with a view to developing strategies to manage and combat it.

• Heal the wounds by developing compassion for yourself as well as for your child or children. We find ways to forgive them for how he or she has hurt you in the past, or present (without condoning or excusing their behaviour), and to take responsibility for whatever ways that you may have contributed to the problems in your relationship with your child or children
• Get and maintain support from friends, family and other support systems.
  

Structure

The Parental Estrangement Coping Skills Group is a series of ten weekly, two-hour sessions. I cover the following: