In cases of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) and Parental Alienation (PA), the answer is “yes.”
In one of my previous posts titled, “Profiles of Alienators,” I went into some detail about the type of parent who alienates their child against his or her other parent (known as the “targeted” or “alienated” parent). Usually, a parent who would do such a thing—turn their own child against the other parent—is someone who is psychologically unbalanced and emotionally disturbed.
Often the word “narcissist” is used to describe this type of individual, but a more psychologically accurate term would be “narcissistic/borderline personality parent.” You can find more about this disorder here and how it relates to Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) and Parental Alienation (PA).
In another post on this blog site, I copied this statement from another PAS/PA source:
“Children do not naturally lose interest in and become distant from their nonresidential parent simply by virtue of the absence of that parent. Also, healthy and established parental relationships do not erode naturally of their own accord. They must be attacked. Therefore, any dramatic change in this area is virtually always an indicator of an alienation process that has had some success in the past.”
A point I repeatedly stress throughout this “Divorce and PAS” segment on my blog site is this: it is not normal for a child to reject a parent unless there are true mitigating circumstances for that child doing so. In fact, it is so abnormal for a child to wholeheartedly reject one of their parents and express overwhelming hatred against him or her that something has intentionally happened in that child’s life to separate them from their other parent. And this intentional attack upon that child/parent relationship to split them apart originates through the conscious and unconscious efforts of the other “alienating” parent. This is child abuse.
Only a psychologically damaged parent does such a horrible thing. Any parent that does this is mentally ill and may have been traumatized themselves in some fashion when they were children. As noted above, these mentally ill parents are often known as “narcissistic/borderline personality parents.”
Unless the children who have been traumatized by PAS/PA understand the kind of traumatized individual their alienating parent is (the parent who is responsible for driving a wedge between the child and their once loved parent), true and lasting healing may not occur in that child’s life. Knowledge is both power and healing, and nothing could be truer than with children who have been victimized by an abusive parent to reject their other parent.
What kind of person is a narcissist? What do they do to make them one? What kind of damage do they do to children? How are children affected when they are raised by a narcissist? Do they suffer life-long and permanent mental scarring?
To answer these questions, the following videos will be excellent to start you on your journey of discovery:
After watching these two videos by Dr. Grande, you will have a much better understanding of what your pathogenic parent has put you through. You will understand that you were used, abused and brainwashed by a very cunning individual who did not have your best interests at heart. Worse, you will begin to understand the unfathomable: the very parent you once thought loved and cherished you is the very one who has abused you in incomprehensible ways. And the trauma from such a realization can be overwhelming because such a thing is almost impossible to believe and transcends the boundaries of reality.
For those children who might suspect they have been victimized by a narcissistic parent, this particular post is an introduction to this vast and complicated subject. The internet abounds with additional information on narcissism and how this disorder particularly applies to children who have been at the mercy of such psychologically imbalanced and emotionally disturbed parents in PAS/PA.
My hope is to stimulate the interest in children—and particularly adult children of PAS/PA—to further explore this subject on their own. Unfortunately, like so much of what one finds when they begin to research PAS/PA, the information is deeply troubling and hard to wrap one’s mind around.
Why? Because children victimized by this form of child abuse have no idea that the parent they grew up believing loved them and only wanted what was best for them is, in actuality, a deeply disturbed individual who did not have their best interests at heart. On the contrary, this beloved parent is the source of the vast majority of their pain and suffering and the one responsible for brainwashing them against their other parent.
Worse, the child, who once looked at their other parent, that parent they have grown up hating, whom they have put most of the blame upon for the family’s unhappiness, is the parent who actually loved them and was the one who wanted what was best for them. It turns the world of the child upside down.
For these children who “wake up” and begin to see the light, this process can result in its own source of psychological agony; it can be emotionally jarring as the mind fights to come to grips with being so completely deceived by the other parent who they thought loved and cared for them so much.
What we are dealing with is almost incomprehensible, a journey into such a deep and disturbing psychological pathology that it breaks all norms.
Again, my hope is for those children, traumatized by divorce and who have lost most or all contact with a once beloved parent, can gain the needed knowledge and understanding of the psychological abuse, brainwashing and suffering they have received at the hands of this parent they once implicitly trusted without reservations or conditions. It is here, through understanding and knowledge, where your long journey of healing must begin.