Navigating a Traumatic Christmas: Support for Parental Alienation

Merry Christmas, everyone. Welcome back to Healthy, Happy, Wise, Wealthy. I have with me today Charlie McCready from in England. You're in England, right? Absolutely. Yeah. So we're a distance away, but I just want to say I hope everyone is having a beautiful day. And today we're going to talk about and try to dive into some things for some people who probably aren't having a good day at all. And so this is, in a way, it's kind of a 911 or SOS episode

for those who Christmas is super, super hard. So we're going to talk about parental alienation. So this is a topic that, unfortunately, I'm part of this club and don't want to be. Charlie's been part of this club. He doesn't want to be. But Charlie has had some really helpful things that I've watched, been following his socials for. For years now. And he has programs to help people who are dealing with this. And we're going to talk about what it is because it's not widely known, but it is for

anyone who's going through it. It is too often, sometimes even life ending. It is probably one of the. I think it's one of the most undiscovered massive traumas that we are experiencing globally. So, Charlie, can you just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what led you into doing the coaching and everything for people experiencing parental alienation? Absolutely.

First of all, thank. Thank you very much for having me on this podcast, Mary, and thank you for the amazing work that you're doing, trying to help kind of raise awareness and educate people and give them help and support and hope. Yeah. So I'm Charlie McCready. I'm a parental alienation coach. The reason I'm doing this is because I went through this firsthand. There is something I call pre alienation. This is. I think I've coined the phrase because I've never seen it

previously kind of used. And this describes the period leading up to the point that you become more aware that alienation is actually happening through a decade of what I call pre alienation. So that's all the foundations being laid down. Then I went through five years of full alienation. So that was a combination of very limited contact and no contact at all with. With one of my kids for two years. But we got through that and for the last. So I started being able to rebuild the

relationships with. With my children at the end of that five year period. So we did a lot of work very quickly. We made a lot of progress. Very quickly. I'm 11 years on from that. And we're still, you know, enhancing those relationships. We're still growing, we're still healing within ourselves. I'm very fortunate. I've done a lot of that healing work very early on, but my children, that. It's a bit slower for them, but they're generally in

a good space. And so my mission in life is, is basically to help as many parents as possible to understand what alienation is from the perspective of the child, because you have to see it from. From their eyes and also understand as a parent what you're going through, why you're going through it, how to heal you. And this is the thing that most parents find really difficult. They're so focused on the kid, they forget how important their own healing is in, in being able to

help the child. And then I also help them to understand that the, the alienators themselves and the limited things that you can do to help kind of mitigate some of the things that the alienators do. Yeah. And also to bring back hope, because for most people, they will end up reuniting with their kid. And I know it seems like this will never happen, and it seems so far away, but most of us, we end up with a good outcome. It's just a rough. It's a rough ride

to get there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, hope is always helpful, you know, I am. I don't always know that I feel hope, for sure. Well, one of the biggest things that really helps parents is acceptance. And for me, acceptance. And I should caveat this by saying the people around us, nobody understands alienation. And so when they tell you, oh, just get on of it, you know, accept it, move on, they can take a running

hike, running journey. They don't know what they're talking about. But for, for you and me, the people who have been through this, acceptance is all about healing within yourself. But when you attach hope, all you're doing is you're treating the, the alienation as a transitory phase in your life. So it's not a forever thing, which for most people it isn't. It's. I'm. I'm only accepting that this is my reality

right now. But I'm hoping and I'm even better. I know within my heart that this is going to be better in the future and that I'm going to get through this. And that makes acceptance and healing so much easier to deal with. Yeah. So let's, let's talk a little bit about, like, how some of the signs to look for And I think, you know, I know for

me and what I hear from. Just hearing the community from a lot of people, it happens during a divorce or a separation is when, like, things are kind of, like, going along, but then the divorce, the kids become a bargaining chip, a way to hurt somebody. Absolutely. Well, I think maybe if I just preface that with. With parental alienation as a term, many people will have come across a reluctance for. For, you know, this term to be used.

There's a lot of groups who are saying that it's a pseudoscience, it doesn't exist. It absolutely does exist. It doesn't matter what you call it. I mean, parental alienation is just a name that. A label that people put on it. But actually, it's a range of very distinct behaviors that are very recognizable, they're very measurable, and collectively, they create the experience of parental alienation for the kid and experience of parental alienation for

us. But in a nutshell, it's where one parent is very intense, intentionally seeking to damage the relationship between you and your children, which is different from estrangement. And people often use the word estrangement. Very different. Estrangement is where you've done something that has damaged the relationship with a child. And in ideation, quite often we end up doing things that actually estranges our kids from us because we don't understand what's going on and how to deal with it.

But. But for alienation itself, that's very much the other parent doing this to us. So maybe if I go back to that. Pre alienation. So, yeah, pre alienation. This is a new, new idea for me, what to look for. Yeah, so. So pre alienation sometimes begins at, like, birth. So it can be really, really early on. So some of the. The alienating parents, actually, if I just take

a backward step, the. The people who have a propensity to alienate, typically they have some sort of mental health disorder, so cluster B, narcissism, bipolar. These are actually traumatized individuals who are in their adult life. They're using coping mechanisms to protect themselves. And those coping mechanisms are coercion, lying, manipulation, deceit, delusion. They're all just ways of protecting themselves. So this kind of fits in with why they do what they do.

So somebody who this. The pre alienation. So somebody who, for instance, is stopping the other parent from having a relationship with the baby, the child, the teen. Quite often they're doing it because of their own insecurities and their own need for the relationship with a child, because it's something they didn't have themselves when they were growing up. Yeah, but we'll talk about safety as a concept as well because I think that'd be really helpful to frame alienation.

But pre alienation, you'll begin to see signs where often the parents, the alienating parent is being derogatory about us. They'll be presenting us as an inferior parent, a bad parent, a mean parent, an uncaring parent, an absent parent. They'll be stopping us from having an incompetent

parent. An incompetent parent. Yeah, so. But this stuff is really, really subtle and most people confuse this with kind of a typical sort of thing in a relationship that you might expect where one person is being a bit bullying and a bit derogatory of the other. What's really going on is more subtle. It is this creation of the foundations that one parent is superior, one parent is to be trusted, one parent is going to be protecting that parent, that child. But often the

alienator is also doing this from a place of fear. Because the children know if I don't go along with what that bullying parent is saying or doing, if I don't appease them, there are going to be consequences. Often I can see some of those consequences as a child. I can see it in my, my parent who's been targeted. So the alienated parent. I can see how they're being, you know, ridiculed and derided and I don't want to be experiencing that. It basically sets a foundation for

the full on alienation. And as you say very often, and these things always come about as catalysts. There's always something that triggers that shift from kind of pre alienation into alienation. Sometimes it's the alienator is getting bored with us. But they, they don't necessarily want to come out of the relationship so they start having affairs.

But they're also trying to build loyalty with the children thinking, well, my marriage is coming to an end, so I'm going to make sure that everybody's aligned with me in advance of that event. So very often they're planning to exit the relationship with us. You know, they might say they might be having relationships, other relationships, already this in advance. And I use the

kind of the analogy of a volcano. So what we see often when we experience full alienation or a more prominent alienation is we see this sudden shift in the kids, but it's not sudden at all. It's been going on for a very long time. In my case it was a decade. And that's why I use the volcano Analogy. Because when you live in the volcano, on the shadow of the volcano, you don't notice anything until suddenly smoke appears or, you know,

it erupts. But it's been, it's been. That eruption is as a result of a very long period of pressure building up. And so. So suddenly you'll see your kids beginning to turn against you more overtly. So, like, they'll stop telling you about their life. They might stop speaking to you. They might just hide in their rooms. They might not want to go places with you, especially when you come to that separation and divorce.

Just spending time with you is something that they're reluctant to do because the alienator is putting so much pressure on them to not spend that time with you. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I, you know, I. People have asked me over the years, like, what happened? And it's really hard to go. I don't know, because the chaos didn't happen in front of me. You know, the storylines were not told. They were told outside of my presence behind your back, you know, so you don't even know,

like, well, what did he say? I don't know what he said. Like, it wasn't in front of me necessarily. You know, nobody will tell you. Nobody will tell you. And what, what happens as well is that the. At the point in time that they're preparing for separation and then going into divorce, they also start going out to all of our friends and sometimes our family to the schools. And this is, this is stuff that we just don't even think of. We're

not that minded in that way. We don't have that sort of approach. And so they're beginning. They're kind of pre. Alienating the community around us as well. And family. Community and family. And they're, they're ruthless. And. And by the time we become aware of it, it's too late. And unfortunately, people believe the first story they're told, not the second story. And it. And when we come along and say that none of this stuff is true, people don't believe it. It's like, we sound

very defensive. It's. It's like, oh, we've obviously done it. They've already believed it. And it's very difficult to turn those opinions around again. Yeah. And we. Look, I know for me, probably, you know, not stable. Super. You get super. You're reactive. Like you're. You just got hit by a bus and you're reacting like that like you've been in a traffic accident, which, you know, everyone would expect you to act crazy if they saw what was going on, but this is invisible, so

they don't see it. So you only look crazy. Yeah. Or unstable, but you're reacting to a real thing. They just can't see it. And, and also because nobody understands parental alienation or very few people understand it, for most of us, we will experience the, you know, the community and the friends and our family haven't got a clue. And so we

look, we look as if we, we're at fault. And this is one of the areas I think is particularly hard for women because the other women around you are very critical and judgmental about, well, why aren't your kids with you? You must have done something really bad that they're with the dad rather than with you. I think women get a much harder time than men do in that respect. You know, and luckily I didn't have that with women, thankfully. I mean, that was. So that's. I did have. I did have

some. There's a reason I'm still alive and not, you know, honestly, not everyone survives this. And that's part of the reason I, I'm like, man, I. I need to get. Ask Charlie if he will come on and do this for Christmas. Because if there's something I can do to reach out, you know, my little part in it, you know, to reach out to other people, I got to do it. Absolutely. The. So that the, the suicide rates is much higher

in, in people who are going through parental alienation. It is in kind of other parts of the general population, and it's something like 23 or 25% of people who go through alienation have suicide ideation. So they consider suicide as an option. And I would say to everybody in that position, please don't. Please, please, please don't. What? Whatever. However hard it seems right now, you are going to get through it. And anything that you do to. To yourself, think, think about your

kids. Don't just think about. You think about what, what you're taking away from your children. And also you're doing the alienator's job for them if you do anything like that. Can I just expand on that as well? Because for parents who are going through alienation, we tend to go through nine big emotions. So the first one is grief. So we're missing the children in our life, and it's a grief which is.

It's a grief of the things we've already lost, the time we've already lost. It's the time we're currently missing, but future grief, because we're also grieving for the time that we think we might lose in the future and it's like a living bereavement for us. Yes. So we have this great sense of grief then. Most of the people who go through alienation tend to be quite empathetic by nature. So with the kind of we think in completely different ways to the alienator

that that makes us very guilty. And because we're empathetic by nature, we're very self critical. So we beat ourselves up about, you know, did I do enough, should I be doing more? What else can I do in the future? But we're giving ourselves a really hard time. Then the next one is that we feel very isolated because the people

around us just don't understand any of this. As we were saying before particular and we get without criticism from the people around us as well, which is where the shame comes from, which is the fourth thing. Then there's powerlessness because anybody who's dealt with a narcissist, they're very uncompromising people, they're adamant to hurt us. Anything that we do to try and rebuild the relationship with the kids or help the kids will be used against us.

So it's like if you give the kid a present, you're bribing them. If you don't give the kid a present, you're abandoning them. Then the next one is injustice. So injustice is at a couple of different levels. There's the injustice, the legal system, CPS, DCF all these mechanisms that are there to protect the children don't work because they don't understand alienation. So we feel a strong sense of

nobody is able to help me and the kids. But it's also injustice within ourselves because we feel the kids don't know me as a mum or they don't know me as a dad. I'm not being given the opportunity to share my experience, my values, my worldliness, all the things I thought I was going to be able to help them with and guide them within their lives. I'm not being able to do that. So there's a great sense of injustice there. Then there's anger, which is self explanatory. Then

there's anxiety and fear. I'm going to come back to anxiety in a second. But fear drives most of these other emotions because we're in a state of perpetual fear. We're really worried and this is where the anxiety comes in. It is quite normal for any parent going through this to be thinking lots of anxious thoughts about the kid. You know, is the kid safe? Are they being Fed. Are they in any physical danger? Are they being, you know, psychologically abused? Are they doing

okay at school? You know, we will have so many different things that we're anxious about. This is the, one of the biggest, one of the worst things that you can do as a parent is spend your time in a state of anxiety because your, your conscious mind, which is the bit that's, that's worrying, whatever is going on in your conscious mind, you give it to your subconscious mind that has got no

filter. And what's also happening, I'll come back to that in a second. What's also happening is that anything you are thinking, your, your subconscious mind does not differentiate between your imagination and real life. So it experiences, and you experience the worry about your kid as if it's real. So you, so if you're basically caught in this, this anxiety loop, you're, you're going to be emotionally fatigued and drained

as, as a result of you having these constant thoughts. So, so your conscious mind has a thought of grief or guilt or shame or isolation that goes down into your subconscious. Because whatever, whatever you give your subconscious, it's just like a little computer, it'll work on it for you. And it's got a filter and it goes. Okay, so Mary, you want me to think about grief, guilt, fear? Give us a couple of hours, I'll get back to you.

So now it's permeating your dreams. It will wake you up in your sleep, it'll disturb you while you're at work, or if you're with friends or you're watching tv, suddenly you're thinking about grief, guilt, fear again. And because you're thinking about grief, guilt, fear in your conscious mind, everything in your conscious mind goes into your subconscious for a second. Go.

And we end up looping all the time. So if, if you can imagine a marathon race, the, the alienating parent runs the first hundred yards and they pass you this baton. And this baton is the grief, the guilt, the fear, the injustice. And we take that and we start focusing on that. And then we get into this looping conversation. And now what's absolutely crazy is we're self perpetuating. Exactly all the self harming thoughts that the alienator wants us to have. Yes, true, which is

bonkers. But there's more. Sorry. So. So yeah, each of those things that we're feeling are generally related to. So it's, it's our experience of grief, it's our unique version of grief, it's our unique version of guilt, it's our unique version Of. Of anxiety, whatever those things are. And most of those actually revert back to old past memories of. Of us or things that have happened to us in our past that we're basically reliving through the experience of alienation.

And this all links to healing. Yeah. If you were to take an example of. I talk about triggers a lot. Triggers. Parents will typically have 50 to 100 different things that trigger them. And all the trigger is, it's something that's making you feel unsafe. So it might be seeing another mum with a child the same age as yours, or it might be watching TV and people playing happy families

where it might be hearing something that reminds you of your ex. But. But they're all just symptoms of something much, much deeper. But we also have expectation. Sorry, take a backwards step. We're empaths for a reason. We're empaths because most of us didn't receive enough love, care and support when we were growing up. And we learned to appease the people around us so that we would keep safe. That made us people pleasers. And so we don't like

conflict generally. And we're always trying to fix the people around us and the situations around us. This is why when there's excess work and excess stuff to do at work, we're always the people who stick our hand up, say, I'll fix it. Or you see a friend who's going through a hard time, I'll fix it. We meet narcissists, we get married to them, I'll fix it. We're fixing stuff because that's our defense mechanism.

And then if we think about us as a parent, we look back to our childhood again and we say, what was the stuff that was good? What was the stuff that wasn't good? The stuff that wasn't good. I'm going to make sure that my own kid doesn't go through this when they're growing up, because it's normally something that is related to our empathy. So we rejected. We didn't get enough love, care and attention. So now

we're going through alienation with our kids. So first of all, we feel really bad for our kid because we're looking at them saying, this was the last thing that I wanted to have actually happened to you. So I feel really guilty about that and I might feel a bit grievous about that as well. But then also, that child, in their alienating behaviors, is rejecting us. And now we're feeling rejected, which takes us back to our old childhood memories, ourselves, of the parents who were Rejecting

us. But we're not aware of that because it's all at a very subconscious level. But we feel massively threatened. And in those situations where a child is rejecting us, they need us to be the strong, resilient, loving parent, not the parent who's focused on their own issues of rejection and are caught up in the things that trigger us and make us feel

unsafe. This is why I was saying at the very beginning, parents don't recognize the importance of their own healing when it comes to supporting their children. Yeah, that's all really good. And this was part of, like, you have a nine step program, right? Did you get to the last one or did I cut you off? No, no, no. Those were the nine things. Yes. So the nine step program is designed to take parents through what is actually quite a simple process to help them to reconnect with their kids.

So I start by saying, well, there is an emotional journey that is parental alienation, looks a lot like bereavement because it has the same sorts of phases. So I start by asking parents, where are you at the moment? And then we begin looking at what are all the things that are blocking you from moving forwards on that emotional journey. So it might be you don't want to accept what's happening to your kids right now because that's just too painful for you. What are the

triggers? So what are the things that upset you? Because that moves you backwards on that emotional journey. And then what are your expectation gaps? And basically the expectation gaps, when our kids are born, we create all these ideas about what their life is going to be like through to their mid-20s, mid-30s. A lot of the time, you know, we've mapped out, you know, their first time they're going to be walking first schools, proms, college, you know, graduation, all that

stuff. And, and it's. But in our subconscious, we often don't move on in terms of aligning the reality of what's really going on with those expectations. So if we'd expected that we were going to be at, you know, helping our kids with their prom and we're not involved, that's going to give us pain. Our expectations and reality are now out of sync. So it's just mechanisms that they're mind tricks basically to start understanding

what, what are your pain points as a parent. And I focus a lot of, a lot of those nine steps is actually on understanding what are your pain points and how do we help you to move past them and heal them. And then the rest of the focus is on what is your child going through because most children tend to go through very similar sorts of experiences. But there's also that everybody's situation is unique. So we need to look at the dynamic nature of who

you as a parent, who's the alienator? Like as a parent alienator might have a new partner. They could also be alienating the kid. Their family might be alienating the kids. Kids might be alienating the kids. What is the experience that each of the children is having? Because they have very different experiences. What is the nature of the child? Some children are more resilient, some children

are less resilient. So you really, you really have to start looking at the experience the child, child is going through and, and be able to almost like map it out over a period of time. We'll say this is what they're going through now. So some people, it'll be that they're, they're maybe at an early stage of parental alienation, so they're preparing for what else, you know, how might it get worse? What can I do that's going to help stop that getting worse?

Other people might be in the thick of it where it's like, okay, well, I'm more about the healing stage, which my kid. But in all instances, it's constantly evolving, it's constantly changing. So we, we have to look at ourselves as a parent and as a person and say, my personal healing, there are things that I need to address so I can go off and do that. And then there's my, my parenting, which is where I'm going to have to call constantly, like evolve and change according to where my kid is at.

So you're almost like a split identity of your parent and, and person at the same time. Yeah, well, I think it is very helpful, you know, to have someone if, because, you know, usually you do seek out some kind of help. Well, you know, hopefully, hopefully people do. Yeah. I think, I think the biggest problem is not enough parents actually do they, they try to self help, they buy books, there's great books out there. But, but the books tend to focus on,

they'll, they'll look at narcissism, tons of stuff in narcissism. And if, and anybody listening to us who doesn't understand narcissism, go check that out straight away, learn about it. Right. It's like the rule book of how a narcissist is going to operate. And yeah, invaluable to you, but also layering on top of that the dynamics of the person who is the narcissist. So you know, with all of our exes, they, they've got their old histories,

they've had trauma in their life. So, so which is the thing that caused the narcissism. So understand what their particular pain points and sensitivities so that you can avoid angering that individual because if they get angry, they're going to hurt you. And they've got five key triggers, by the way. They all have the same five key triggers. The first one is when you separate, they, they feel that, you know, up until that point in time there's been a degree of loyalty towards you because their

interests have an element of alignment. But when you do separate, and also they've seen you as an emotional crutch, they no longer have any loyalty to you. So this is why you see a huge shift in the way that they start alienating the kids when you separate. And also the thing that alienators like the least is where they don't have control. So when they separate from you, they don't have control of you anymore. So, so they try to control you through the alienation.

The second one, anything to do with court, this is a control thing again, because they find it very difficult to influence judges. I mean, they'll do everything they can and we've seen them in action, but what they can't control, their go to response is, well, if I'm in pain, I'm going to make you hurt. So they ramp up the alienation. Yeah. Third one, money. Anything to do with money. So as empaths, we're all about

relationships with our kids. That's the most important thing in the world for us. Money, secondary physical stuff, houses, you know, property, clothes, cars, furniture. They always want the house, they, they always want to keep everything. And basically cut out a little thing that's called us and put that to one side and say, I want to keep the kids, I want to keep the house, I want to keep the money, I want to keep everything. But you, you, you, you can go

somewhere else, you know. And again, if anything that threatens their money, they'll ramp up the alienation. Fourth one is when you start having a good relationship with your kids, this is going against what they want. So they'll ramp up the alienation to try and undermine that, the progress that you're making. So it'll be one step forward, one step back, one

step forward, one step back. And for a lot of parents, you get stuck in that routine for years, but hopefully at some point, and most of us do have this experience, you start making progress when the kids become more independent. And then the last one, which many people depending on where they are in the process, when we go off and we enter into a new relationship ourselves, that, that can be very threatening to the alienator. Therefore women alienators. This is

even more threatening than for male alienators. Women alienators tend to see another mother coming into the lives of their children as being something that's deeply concerning for them because, you know, that other woman might develop a good relationship with the children. Child, you know, and it's not their biological child, but equally for, for, for many of us, you know, male partners that, that, that come into the scene or so where there are male alienators and the, the, the woman

has a new male husband. The males are very concerned that, you know, this might be a new father figure. So what they tend to do is they try to destabilize our relationships. So they'll often create friction by villainizing the person that we're seeing to make them out to be a bad person. Anything associated with us is always bad, but they'll villainize that person or they'll try and do things like create a, like blackmail. You have to pick or they'll get us as the

aliens parent. We have to pick our child or our partner. We're not allowed to have both. Really nasty. What this, the stuff that they do. Oh, it's. Yeah. And it's, it's, it just can rain nothing but hell all over your life everywhere you turn. Yeah. Yeah. And this back to that point of why it's really important people go and get help. So you can get books on narcissism, you can get books on alienation.

I would read all these things as well. You can also get some really helpful materials and support for your, your own healing. But, but what most people are not so good at is, is weaving it all together and understanding the dynamics of how the narcissists are interplaying with your kids and how that interact is interaction is affecting your relationship with the kids and how you feel and how you

experience that relationship with the kids. And so that's really where people like myself step in because we, we understand dynamics and, and we can help you to, to understand why am I going through what I'm going through and how can I experience that very differently. It's very to large. It's a very mindset thing. I really help my kids and how can I help mitigate damage that is being done by the alienator?

Yeah. And then the, you know, there's so many things that can come into play with society really can side with the alienator. And they seem to. This is just society. It seems like whoever has the power hold, which likely can be. It can be money or it can be. They're a good storyteller, can be either one. But they tend to be the one to win in the social circle, in the, you know, in the court system. There's too much of that also, and some of that can get really

dangerous. And I, I do think of like, you know, and I'm not speaking my own experience in this because it's. First of all, it would be hard to really speak of your own experience specifically with this kind of situation. But you hear stories and they, they are, they're very, they, you know, they, they're horrifying to me. But of a woman who is, you know, being maybe being physically abused, financially abused, she can't work.

And maybe there's even like the kids are being physically or sexually harmed by the, by the partner, and then the alienation starts. So it is so critical, I think, for society and for court systems to go. This can be a life or death situation easily for both the parent and the child if you don't get it right. And we have to get it right. And we have to make sure as a society we are looking at the, the things we have to look at to go.

This has to be done right for the safety of children and parents. Like, it has to be done right. It's also, it's also intergenerational. So, so the societal impact is. Is enormous because all of the children who are going through this. This trauma right now, as they grow up, they can bring a lot of that trauma with them into their own relationships, their own parental relationships and their relationships with, you know, their own

children. And, you know, a lot of the time what, what we see with trauma is, is that people kind of polarize in terms of the way they respond to trauma. So a lot of people, so, so people will become narcissistic. So I become very controlling as a mechanism to keep myself safe, or I become empathetic, which is I fix everything to keep safe. And I did talk about safety. Yeah, yeah. If you want to understand alienation, one of the best ways is just to look at the lens

of safety. So why people are doing the stuff they're doing, because either they feel safe or they feel unsafe. So for somebody who's narcissistic, that their control mechanisms or their coping mechanisms, you know, like the controlling, the manipulation, the lying, the deceit, the coercion all those things, that's their coping mechanisms to keep themselves safe. At a deep level. We also find these people

are very immature, so they're emotionally immature. And they also act like children to infantile because they're basically little kids in adult bodies who are finding it very difficult to cope in the world around them. And what we see often is they. They just takers. They're always take, take, take, take. They need more, more, more in order to. To kind of fill up a bottomless pit, a void inside of them,

because these people are never actually happy. They always, they always have to have more to kind of try and make up for basically what is an emotional deficiency because they didn't get support when they were young. Then you get the empaths, or in fact, let's just start with the kids. Then you get the kids who are being put under all this pressure by the narcissist to align with the narcissist, to appease the narcissist, to kind of keep that narcissist feeling secure. And then

the kids have to put up coping mechanisms themselves. And so the coping mechanisms will be things like not speaking to us as a parent, not telling us about our lives, rejecting us, you know, hiding in their rooms, being rude, not wanting to observe our boundaries, a sense of being unsafe with us because we've been told we're a bad parent. So all the things they're doing are coping mechanisms to keep themselves safe. And so we have to learn to look beyond the coping mechanisms and saying,

okay, you're not actually rejecting me. You actually love me. You do want to have a relationship with me. And I know it's very hard to hear some of these things when we haven't seen our kids for a long time, but that's what's really going on within. Within the child. But they're, they're quoting this loyalty conflict where the pressure of the loyalty conflict is greater than their. Than their desire to have a relationship with us. So they protect our. Protect

themselves, not in a relationship with us. Yeah, we have to know that they do want to do that. And then there's, then there's the empaths. And as I was saying, our coping mechanism is give, give, give, keep everybody around us happy. And most of us in a family situation with a narcissist, we're like regulators in that household. We're always trying to keep them on an even keel. We

try to provide a buffer between them and the kids. You know, we're just trying to keep everything smooth, but from our perspective, we become quite defenseless. Because when, when your coping mechanism is. Coping mechanism is give, give, give, and the other person's coping mechanism is take, take, take. But they're a bottomless pit. Whatever you try to do in terms of giving or fixing is never enough.

Most of us get to a point which is a lot of time, we are the people who eventually seek divorce because we can't, we can't take it anymore, where we're perpetually compromising ourselves in order to satisfy the, these, these narcissistic needs. Yeah, I always, I, I use the terminology of true north. Like, you know, you think, you know, they're obviously, you know, you fall in love and marry them and start having kids, so they present as pretty great.

And then over time you're like, what's the true north? And I think true north to me means their true north is I have to have a constant source of praise. I have to be praised constantly, or I have to constantly have attention of some kind. And so for some people, it can be I need to have all control of money. And that's their true north. Some of them might.

It might be sex, and that's their true north, but they have a true north that is somehow centered around attention on them, it coming to them and controlling their circumstances and people around them to get that true north met. Yeah, I think that's a really good way of putting it. Yeah. Yeah. So. And until you understand what their true. Once you understand what the true north is, all the pieces, it goes, oh, that all makes sense then. That's why they make that decision.

Yeah, this is why, you know, like, if pity is a true north and they don't care if the kids suffer, they don't care. They don't care. And I think that's one of the hardest things for an empath to, to understand because our, the way that we think is the polar opposite to how a narcissist thinks. Literally can't comprehend why they're doing the stuff they're doing. And our very nature is to try and entreat them to be, you know, sensible, to be sympathetic

to the needs of the children. And they, they just don't have any of it, that they will not compromise. I mean, they can fake it. That's. That's the one thing in society they can appear to be caring. And then the love bombing, I think, is, you know, can be part of it if there's a, you know, they just tell everyone it's. They're in the best and, you know, they're gonna, they're gonna say that they're the ones who has the best interest of the kids and they're the ones who are doing X, Y and

Z. And I'm, you know, always doing all these good things. Yeah. And they're gonna, they're going to make sure that. And then the projections that they will project whatever they are onto you, the negative traits. So I mean that, that projection is the best truth. It's a truth serum. It is being projected on the other parent or the other person is. They're telling the truth about who they know they are.

Yeah. Well, they, they're basically telling you what they're up to. That all the things they're accusing you of doing is, is, is the stuff that, it's like they're quite remarkable in this regard. If they're accusing you of having an affair, that's because they're, they're sleeping with somebody. If they're accusing you of hiding money, they're hiding money. And it's really

helpful but unfortunately most of us learn this too late. But it's really helpful once you realize that all the things you're being accused of is the very thing they're doing. So go try to root out what they're actually doing. Yeah. Because they're tell. I mean it is. They are telling you. That is. I don't know why what in psychology it. That is. But anyone who's hiding is going to be

projecting what they're doing onto you. Absolutely. I mean again, this is where the books on, on narcissism are really helpful because it gives you such an advantage or it gives you not an advantage, but it gives you a much better level of understanding about dealing with. But I would also say with narcissists, be really careful about what I call prodding the bear.

Because if you do something to hurt a narcissist, and this is why the five triggers were so important, if you do something to nuts, they will do stuff back to you to, to try and hurt you. So a lot of the time you need to be careful about how you tackle narcissist. You know, you want to be firm, but you want to be fair. A lot of time having as limited contact with them as possible is much the best thing. But they're also used to you being a certain person in the relationship. And a

lot of time we've been way too compromising. And what, what we have to learn as empaths is to basically be much stronger, more resilient. Start rebuilding us our self confidence once More our sense of self worth and stop fixing stuff. Because one of the things that is our Achilles heel is seeing our kids in a position of discomfort because we feel deeply, we feel scared basically when we see our kids being uncomfortable. Because that's our coping mechanism. If I go fix it,

everything will be all right again. So we have to learn with an alienator kid. Okay, this is an acceptable, although we don't want it to be acceptable. This is, this is how it is right now. My kid is going through this right now. It's not actually about me. It's about their experience. And what we're doing all the time is we take a kid who's, who's rejecting us. So I always, I use this analogy as

a parent. We should be focused 100 on our kid. So if our kid is there in their universe, two universes, us and the kid we need to be focused on. What do they need from me at this point in time? I don't care about them. You know, I'll look beyond their coping mechanisms. I understand what they're experiencing. So I'm going to give them the love, the care, the support, support that they need in this moment. But what tends to happen instead of us being able to focus 100 on the kid is the kids do

things trigger us. And, and these old insecurities and vulnerabilities that we have from our past get brought to life again. And we put our old insecurities around what's going on with the kid. So path because we got rejected to some degree and now we're bringing our old rejection into the present with the kid rejecting us. And we're tying those two things together. They don't fit together. So in our healing, we have to learn to deal with our insecurities.

Let all those things go when we can. Now we can focus. We can really focus 100 on the kid because we're not getting triggered. We're not getting upset set. We're no longer associating the child's behavior with us as a person because those things are, they're not actually linked. Yeah. And I, you know, I certainly would say for anyone who's experiencing this to have the support of someone who's a trauma informed therapist or working with someone like you, Charlie, that, that really understands.

It or do the two together. So a lot of the time, yeah, I mean I'm a, I'm a coach, so I'm, I'm not a qualified trauma therapist. Okay. And, and I specifically didn't go off to qualify as a psychologist. Because the bit that I was most interested in is not recognized by the psychologists, which is parental alienation. So I've read tons of stuff and, and very qualified without the letters. But what I would encourage people to do is, is yet work with. With people who do have.

Who are very good at trauma. But this is the. But a lot of the time those, those therapists don't understand alienation. And this is the gap because they're trying to heal a more generalized trauma as opposed to something that is very specific to alienation, which is the stuff that I can help with. So it's very complimentary having, having both parties work together on people saying, oh, I'm in therapy, should I stop the therapy? I will say, no, keep it going. Yeah, work with me on the

stuff that I'm expert in. Work with them on the stuff they're expert in. Yeah, well, and I can say the stuff that you experience when you're going through this is, is. It is possibly more traumatizing the reactions you get from family and friends or, you know, people that you're trying to. Because you need help. But then the advice they come back with is so not helpful and a little bit arrogant, but they're trying. So good people are trying. And then there's other people

that come back with advice that aren't trying to. And this is my. And I do want to talk because my. One of my experiences was that while I was going through this, such the target. And this is like a smear campaign. Whole community, whole family. I'm the target, right, of a, Of a massive smear campaign that I don't understand because I'm not even being told what. What people are being told about me. So I don't even know how to. What to say

because I don't even know what the. What's being said. But there were. So I was trying to find new new community, right? And in doing so, wounded people will come to you as a friend because they know they can throw their crap at you and you're already a target. So then it escalates. And I had that happen. And thankfully I had a few super. A couple super stable friends who, who work with extreme people who've been extremely, you know,

in extreme situations. You know, one prosecutes murders, for example, so like, wow, you know, and another one has lived through the. The stuff that is unimaginable. So, like, I had two people really, who did understand trauma, even though they didn't understand this. Go, you need to stop. You need to stop collecting these people. That are hurting you. There is something in that energy where it just seems like, like you're, you're bleeding in the water and you're looking for

help and people, sharks that. Sharks who look like good people are coming. Yeah, they all come. They all come out. Yeah. And that was, it was, it's interesting to me because I had never had that experience. That was the only time in my life where I was the bleeding person in the water with sharks swimming around me was at that point. Right. Super post divorce. It's really interesting as well because in. And I think everything that you said is a really good point for parents to

be aware of. I also think that a lot of people do try to be supportive, but they're coming at it from the lens of their own experience, normal family life. So that it's a bit like somebody from, you know, Earth trying to give somebody on Mars advice on how to live on Mars. Because, well, it must be the same on Mars as it on Earth. No, it's completely different. So they're well intentioned. But also what happens is that the, this is where bereavement comes back

in. I use that as an example when, when we, when somebody close to us suffers, you know, somebody close to us dies. The world around us and our family understands what we're going through. They know how to support us. They know when to support us, what to do and how to be helpful. Alienation is the opposite, polar opposite of bereavement. Insofar as nobody understands what you're going through. Instead of having a community of

support around you, you're very isolated. And it, it gets worse because you then have to be, you have to become the person that helps your children to heal. You have to be the person that helps your own family to heal. You have to be the person that helps your partner to heal. And so you have to be so resilient as a person and as a parent that. Well, under attack. Yeah. While under attack from, from, from all these people. And it's a really,

it's a tough gig. It's probably the toughest thing that any of us will go through. But there is, there is a plus for, there's a couple of pluses from all of this. One of them is you. If you do the sort of things that I would advocate and other people who have the same sort of opinion that I have, you become really resilient. You become far stronger as a result of this experience than when you went into it. And that, that helps you as a person.

It will literally Transform your life if, if you, if you do the things that will be beneficial for you in your healing process so that you come out of this better off than when you went in, and hopefully you'll have your kids back as well. Within yourself, you're now very different. The other thing that it teaches you is love at a completely different level, because love is something that when you're in a normal family situation, it's really easy to love the kids because, well, even when they're

teenagers, it's still pretty easy to love them. But nobody's in this, like, very conflictual position child that's rejecting you. Learning to love a child that

is pushing you away all the time is really hard. And something that we spoke briefly about before, which we have experience of, is going no contact with a child where you are the person who initiates that, because that's something I had to do with one of my kids because I could see, see the damage that was being done to our relationship and, and how difficult it was for her to spend time with me. And so I decided to. I said. I literally said to her, okay, we're going to take

a holiday, is how I, How I framed it. We're going to take a holiday from each other. We're just gonna have some space, some time between us and just give. Give ourselves an opportunity to, to kind of heal a little bit before we. We're back in each other's lives. I had no idea how long that period was going to last. That was two years before we started having contact again. That was done from a place of, of love, not fear. And so we learn this whole new

dimension of love. And the other thing that we learned at a whole new dimension is compassion. Compassion for our child, empathy for our, for our child, you know, to be able to not look at the behaviors they're exhibiting, but to understand you're only doing this because you're keeping safe. So I'm going to give you that compassion. I'm going to give you that love. I'm going to give you that support because I recognize what you're going

through. That's ultimately how we win the kids back is through that love and compassion. And I think the, the hardest part about that is that there, I guess maybe it would be like a Stockholm syndrome or something like that, is that you can experience. Well, there's more than one hard part about that, but you can experience, like, the abuse of, you know, an ex through the kids. All of a sudden, they're just saying exactly what you were trying to escape.

Yeah, I mean I think that's definitely. Your mouth and that's, that's a surreal experience. Experience. Yeah, it's called, it's called enmeshment. And, and so that's basically where they start parroting what they've adopted. The perspective of that parent, you know, their worldly view that parents ideas about you, you know, how they think about you and they start using their own

terminology. And you often see this with really young kids as well that you know, sub 10 years old just acting like a mini me version of, of the parent who's alienating them. And it's very distressing for us because we've been traumatized already by alienating parent and now we're getting re traumatized or additionally further traumatized by our kid acting as, as that person. And also the kids are

encouraged to psychologically abuse us as well. Well, which can cause all kinds of, you know, talk about they could develop the cluster B, you know. Yeah. Like it is so damaging. And this is in, you know, in part why it's like if in society if there's a way to step in as this is happening, it could prevent so much stuff and it's hard to recognize I think but it's all treatable.

I mean there's been quite. I don't know if there's been a rise in narcissism that some of the statistics would indicate that there has been a rise in narcissism. I'm just think maybe it's becoming more understood. But yeah, trauma, it can be treated. The problem is that the narcissists don't go off and get the treatment because they don't want to face the trauma which is why they're doing the very actions they're doing. Yeah, yeah. It just seems like it's been said that they're not

treatable because of how the. How it is but which is EMDR. Works really well with narcissists. What's that? Emdr. So it's like a tapping association. Well, I was going to recommend EMDR too just for like that's one of the things I did. And I was thinking, you know, like if you're going to get counseling when you're going through stuff, I have recommended to people to seek a counselor who can do emdr. And part of that is just because I've my some experience.

I just feel like I've wasted money with people who aren't helpful. But if they do mdr, the EMDR does the work. Because you're saying EMDR actually helps narcissism. Yeah. Yeah. So there are people who work in this stuff called attachment therapy theory, which is incredibly good at really diagnosing what's really going on in people's behaviors and how it fits back to childhood experiences. And they, they talk about EMDR being very effective.

Something up and God, there's so much we can talk about. Mary. Something else is often associated with alienation is diagnosis of autism and adhd. And this is not genuine autism. This is the child's reactions, coping mechanisms of

dealing with parental alienation. And we also see other things like children acting in a very infantile way, literally regressing with their mental age as a mechanism to have to kind of move away from having any responsibilities and acting more childlike so they don't have to deal with the pressures that are being put upon them. A lot of the stuff that alienators do because it's, it is a loyalty conflict. They, they do things like, they put them, they give them false choices.

So they'll say to the child, you decide if you're going to go and see your mom, you know, today or tomorrow, or you decide if you're going to respond to the, to, you know, a text or a letter or an email, or you decide if you're going to accept that present. And what, what they're doing is that, that's coercion and it's psychological abuse because the child shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but instead what, what the parents doing is they're giving them that authority, but, but

they're not giving them actual choice. So I call it false choice because they don't have options. It's like, well, you decide if you're going to see your mom or not. Well, the child knows that the answer has got to be, well, I'm not going to, I'm not going to see my mom because that's going to my dad. And then it legitimizes the, the father or the alienator to turn around to you and the courts and everybody else and say, well, I asked them and I gave them the choice. And they said they

don't want to go and see you, and I can't force them. And there's, there's so many different ways that they manipulate the kids. Yeah. And it's, you know, all of them. We, we have, we have the rule book. We can walk, you know, I can literally walk a parent through all the things an alienator will try and you can do. That works to help to kind of get your child Back. And also the things that doesn't work because we make lots of mistakes. There's loads of bear traps out there and it's very.

It's very counterintuitive. Yeah. And everyone, you know, I don't know that, you know, there is a lot of great options. It seems like from what I was, you know, discovered and that my situation isn't everyone's situation, of course, but it just didn't seem like there was a good option. And in part, it's because no matter what you do, there's going to be something said. Negative. Yeah. So if, like, I need space, so you give them space, then you're.

Then you don't care about them and you don't love them. If you, if you're, you know, trying to be in communication and, you know, trying to call every day or text every day, then you're desperate and just don't accept boundaries. Yeah. So no matter, no matter what you do there, they will frame it in a way where you're a bad person. Yeah. And you're the controlling person. Yeah. You've segued beautifully into counterintuitive and bear traps because that's a really good example. When.

When we're experiencing alienation and our child is beginning to reject us, our fear kicks in because we're thinking, I'm losing the relationship with my child. So what do we do? We inundate them with telephone calls, with text messages, with emails, and the kid is withdrawing because of the pressure being put on them in this loyalty conflict to

not have the contact with you. So this is where you can actually end up estranging your kid because sending too many text messages, you know, and we often say things like, I miss you, I miss you. Guilt trips. The kids, I love you is fine, but I'm always advocating to parents, you know, dial down the amount of communication that you're sending off to your kid because you're actually pushing them away from you. And it's counterintuitive because you think, no,

no, no, no, I must increase the level of communication. No, it doesn't work that way. It. When you decrease the level of communication, the message you're giving to the kid is, I love you, I'm there for you. My door is always open for you. You don't have to say those words. They'll know that from the communication. But also if you send, you know, if you're no communication with your kid, texting them once a week or once every two weeks is sufficient. It lets them know you're still there.

If you. They're no contact with you because they feel they can't have the relationship with you right now. So if, if you text them every day, they're going to block you. Because I think I can't cope with this person. I can't cope with the pressure they're putting me under. They don't, they don't understand my position because we don't. Because we're not looking at that position. We haven't experienced it. So, I mean, you know, I haven't. So, I

mean, it's, it's. And it's surreal. Like, at the time, I hadn't known anyone who'd experienced it. I didn't even know what was happening. I couldn't have known too, that this was a thing that existed. Yeah, yeah. And again, I think, I think most people come into parental alienation. They have no idea they're experiencing it. There isn't education and awareness out there that, I mean, you, you stumble across it in most instances and you suddenly go,

oh, wow. So this is the thing I've been going through. This is real. There's, there's, you know, 22 million people in the US alone affected by this. That's the kids, the parents, the families. You know, it's 6 to 8% of the populations of most Western countries. And it's exactly the same experience in Australia and Europe as it is in the U.S. canada. It's. It's the same stuff everywhere, you know, India, the Arab states. And I help parents

all over the world through zoom because it's the same stuff. The legal systems are slightly different and they're completely ineffective everywhere. Well, there's a couple of places that are a little bit better, but generally speaking, they're very ineffective. And

that's part of the challenge. We feel very isolated and alone to deal with this by ourselves, which is why it's so important to have the tools to have every means possible available to us to, to help our kids, to heal and reconnect with them. Yeah, it is, man. There's so much to it. And, you know, also, the thing about this that I just feel like the society in general would. Might help with understanding is that when you're being psychologic, like as an adult. Right. So

this is. Does fall in the realm of psychological abuse. And like, you're, you're not yourself, like, and I, I really. I almost would love to see some studies maybe, if, you know, if there's any been done. But, like, I'm like, your brain doesn't work right? Like brain doesn't work the same. You can't, it's like you're, it's not, it's like the way

I took care of things prior to this. I feel like I'm still trying to find my way back to where my brain can manage some of the things, things in my life that I managed before. Yeah. This is why your own healing is so important. Because you, you, you reach a point where you're very vulnerable, you're very self doubting, your confidence has been shot to hell. Your self worthiness is, is very low as well. And your coping mechanisms are all about fix, fix, fix, fix, fix. And you're

finding I can't fix stuff. And, and so the very, very. Your empathetic nature is actually working against you in your healing process. Because the focus is outside of, inside of you. Yeah. What you need to be working on is your self confidence, you know, letting go of self doubt, rebuilding your self worth. That is the stuff that will help you with your kids and letting go of fear. Because your kids need you to be the strong,

resilient parent. They need you to be a parent. And what we end up being is very needy individuals who are scared because power all transfers to the kid and it, and the kid loses a parent and we have to get back to being confident. And this is why this hope is so important. Know in your heart that you're going to reunite with your kid. Doesn't matter how long it's going to take. Sometimes it can be a very long period. Know in your heart you're going to, you're going to reunite with them because

you think differently, you act differently. When you've got that mindset, if you're coming from a place of fear, your relationship with your child will constantly be strained. Person who's doing that, this is the, this is the counterintuitive, absolutely crazy stuff. The person who's doing that is you. It's us. We, we are creating the problem at that point in time. Yeah. Well, I think with me, like, you know, I had been on healing journey for

a very long time. So it's like before the worst of it went, I mean, but it kept escalating. So you know, I had done some, you know, detox for the physical. I had Lyme' disease and, and, and then, you know, all the different things with that and then there was emotional components to that. So doing all that healing work and then, you know, kind of starting a creative career out of that and just the thought of

everyone's going to be so excited. But then it turned into, nope, everyone is not going to be excited, you know, to, you know, it's just like, you know, you think, you think after supporting your family for so long, they're going to just have this joy, joy come back to you that you do that, you know, that's not what it was. And then I did hire someone, you know, kind of post divorce to come in and really just do a complete reset, which is very effective.

But then the full alienation happened after that. Right. So it's like I had like been very proactive in healing work. Yeah. And it didn't, it didn't, didn't. I don't know how you say didn't fix it, didn't stop it, but the engine kept rolling. We, it's a lifetime mission that we're on. I mean, I, I'm, I think I did a huge amount of healing work early on, but I'm still, I'm still working on stuff. I,

I use my, my kids as my teacher. I use everybody because basically everybody around you in this world is just reflecting back to you how you're experiencing the world. And so when your kids say something that is triggering for you or you feel bad about your kids, that's a little indicator to, to us to say, okay, there's something that I'm still feeling a bit insecure and vulnerable about. Right. I need to go off and fix that. And then it

becoming an issue for us. So we should be thankful in many ways when, when our kids help us to understand. Okay, that's something that I need to address on my healing journey. People around us, family, you know, if, if any, anytime we feel sensitive or insecure, that's a little tap on the shoulder saying, there you go, there's another one. Go off and fix that one. And it's like, we'll be doing that for the rest of our lives. And I do think it's also real critical to go, you don't have to take

everyone's advice. No. For how to heal because most of, most of it's going to be kind of bad advice and a lot of. It is down to their own personal experience rather than, than something that works for a much broader audience. Yeah.

And I always, I am really curious on your opinion. So let's, let's like step outside to that next circle of people who are in family members or community or a counselor, someone in the, you know, the religious circle, anyone in the community that they see someone and it's like, you know, what, what are the signs they look for and how might they step

in to help. And as an example, I would go back and say before I knew what alienation was, I had an experience where I was at my kids school and a dad and his new wife or girlfriend or something just approached me. I never talked to them before, but they said, yeah, we're, we're, you know, these, you know, kids, parents. And just lit into the mom. Now I knew the mom and it was an interesting thing about, in the, in the, the new woman was going, and she's crazy. She's crazy like

that. I mean really, it was a very animated about how crazy the mom was. And I didn't know any of the terminology, anything, but I'm like, this doesn't feel good. Like I don't like them. And then I went to the mom afterwards and I said, like, you know, what's going on? And she's. And she was just puny. You know, just

emotionally, physically, then even puny. And it's like he won't stop with, you know, the lawsuits and I think I'm going to lose him because I don't have the money to keep finding the lawsuits for financial bullying. Yeah. So the financial thing there. And you know, this was, this was in, it was a Christian school. So this stuff, it doesn't like you being in a religious institution or in a

religion does not prevent it. Sometimes it can make it harder for people to even see it, which is very frustrating to me. Yeah, it's it that, that happens all the time again. It's, it's the lens that people see through. Then give advice. I will need to disappear in a couple of minutes. I have another call. Okay. I'm really sorry that the time passes incredibly quickly when we're talking about this. Should we just very quickly, in the two minutes available, just talk about Christmas. Because

let's do it. This is something that is, this is the hardest time of year for many parents and especially for parents who are going through this, you know, if it's their first Christmas without having your child. And I would strongly advocate, please, please, please do not spend Christmas by yourself. Make sure that you're with family,

that you're with friends, you're with other people. Keep yourself occupied and try to remember that, yes, this is not how you want it to be, but this is one Christmas closer to being with your kids again. Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah. And it is such a hard time, such a hard day. It, it is. And part of the problem is we make too big a thing of it. We do too big a thing of birthdays. We make too. Too big a thing of Thanksgiving. We make two bigger thing of Christmas. It's another day.

And for the alienators, they always want to control those days, so they will go out of their way to make it impossible for you to have the kids on those days. Yeah. Oh, they. Yeah, they. Yeah. And with love, give your kids that the peace give, you know, a lot of the time. Yes. Always fight for your kids, but also be. Be careful so that you don't do things that causes more

problem for the kids. Because sometimes when you're fighting for those special days, you're actually ramping up the pressure and you're doing the thing that's going to be worse for the kids. So with love in your heart, give them some space. Allow them to not have to see you if that's going to be better for them, and try and see it that way rather than. I'm losing out and this is unfair and this is not right. You know, this is. I say you learn a lot about love. Yeah. This experience.

Yeah, for sure. Well, we are sending love to anyone who is in the. The thick of it, in the beginning of it, in the confused state of it, or. Yeah. But, Mary, I'd love to come back and do more with you in the future. For parents, I'd love to help, but apologies, I do need to box. I have another call I need to jump onto. But, yeah, for all parents out there. I hope. I hope you can get through this period knowing that this is all going to be okay.

Thank you, Charlie. I appreciate you so much for coming on. And Merry Christmas to you and your family and to all of your clients. Yes. Who's going through this. Yeah. For sure. All right. Thank you, Charlie. Okay. Thank you, Mary. Yep. I want to thank Charlie for coming on. Thank you so much, Charlie. And since I was like, I started losing it a little bit. This is a very personal podcast. I do want to say for people who. You have these people in your life who are going through something you

don't understand. You haven't had that experience, whether it's this topic of parental alienation or something else. I know my experience has been it is very hard to get advice. It's just not helpful. And usually people. You just see the world through the lens of what you've experienced. So if you have not. If you have specifically experienced something that that person is going through and you have some things in a compassionate,

understanding way to share, that's when you share. If you have not left Lived through it. Don't give advice and saying things like have you forgiven in the, in the Christian community. I just feel like no one should say that anymore because you're not understanding the totality of the, of the nervous system and what goes on in the nervous system and the, even the brain function that can go down from that and all the different things. Like people will forget memories

even for 20 years. How would they don't even remember what they're supposed to be forgiving. So that's. There's different things that people are saying that actually cause a lot more harm than help. Just get over it. Just get through it. Well, at least you have one. Some kids. Well, have you ever thought of like, you know, there's. It's, it's. It's not helpful. What is helpful

and it's very helpful is your presence. So. So in this season of presenys with a T. Presence with a, you know, the CE at the end, just being available, being an active listener, which means things like you're hearing it and like you're thinking. That's not something. I just can't even quite understand that. But that sounds awful. Should we make cookies? I don't know. You know, but not all the time will someone, you know have the energy to

engage with people. But they do need people. People living through hard things need people around them. And just the whole, the whole action of presence and compassionate listening, which means you're not going to have an answer, but you can see your, your availability and your willingness to be in their life will be what they need. So Merry Christmas. And I know this is not for some people, it's a beautiful Christmas. Some is a struggle, but just want you to know you are seen and

hopefully someone is listening to and hearing you. So see you next time.