Parent Alienation-Mitigating the Damage and the Importance of Self-Healing, Interview with Charlie McCready

Robert brings back parent alienation expert Charlie McCready to further discuss parent alienation as well as address the questions and comments from listeners. Charlie discusses the emotional roller coaster that targeted parents go through, including grief, guilt, injustice, isolation, anger, and anxiety. He emphasizes the importance of self-healing and addressing insecurities and vulnerabilities from one's own childhood. We also discuss the dynamics of the alienator and the need to mitigate the damage rather than trying to stop it. Charlie cautions against trying to convince the child that they are being alienated and instead focus on maintaining some semblance of contact and providing unconditional love and support. We also explore triggers, blockers, and expectations that can hinder the healing process. The principal themes of the conversation are: understanding the different experiences of each child, the spectrum of alienating behavior, the impact of enmeshment on children, the intergenerational cycle of alienation, the importance of self-healing, the need for trust and emotional availability, preparing for special days, and maintaining hope.

Key Takeaways

• Parent alienation is a common and heartbreaking experience that leaves targeted parents feeling powerless and isolated.
• Self-healing is crucial for targeted parents, as they need to address their own insecurities and vulnerabilities from their own childhood.
• Mitigating the damage caused by the alienator is more realistic than trying to stop it completely.
• Maintaining some form of contact with the alienated child, even if it is difficult, is important for counterbalancing the negative narrative they are exposed to.
• Triggers, blockers, and expectations play a significant role in the healing process and need to be identified and addressed. Each child's experience of parental alienation is unique and should be considered individually.
• Alienating behavior exists on a spectrum, from severe to naive.
• Enmeshment can have a significant impact on children, leading to long-term psychological effects.
• The intergenerational cycle of alienation can result in children developing cluster B personalities.
• Self-healing is crucial for targeted parents to be emotionally available and trustworthy for their children.
• Preparing for special days and managing expectations can help targeted parents cope with the alienating parent's tactics.
• Maintaining hope is important, as relationships with alienated children can change over time.
• Reframing the narrative and focusing on personal growth can empower targeted parents to regain control of their lives.

Transcript

Robert (00:00)
Hey everyone. And welcome back to the dad to dad's podcast. So a few months ago, we covered the subject of parent alienation and had a pretty in -depth discussion with parent alienation expert, Charlie McCready. And it sure must have resonated with several of you because I received a considerable amount.

of questions as well as comments from listeners. So I thought it would only make sense to bring Charlie back on the podcast to seek his advice and to hopefully answer some of those questions. Charlie, welcome back to the podcast.

Charlie McCready (00:34)
Hi Robert, thank you very much for having me. It's an absolute pleasure to be with you once

Robert (00:40)
Charlie, I tell you what, that last, you know, I mentioned it in the intro that that last conversation we had, it did, resonated with a lot of people. And, you know, I don't know if you know this, but it was actually to date, it is now our highest rated and most downloaded episode. So thank

Charlie McCready (01:05)
Wow, wow, wow, well thank everybody who was so supportive.

Robert (01:10)
You know, I love that, but also at the same time, I hate it, but in the, a way, because it shows that the subject of parent alienation is extremely common. And, you know, reading through the comments, reading through the different messages, the anger and the pain that these parents feel.

Charlie McCready (01:36)
Hmm.

Robert (01:38)
and are going through on a daily basis. I mean, it is heartbreaking, Charlie. Absolutely heartbreaking.

Charlie McCready (01:46)
is. It is. think one of the hardest things for people is there's like this sense of powerlessness and injustice, which is at the root of a lot of the pain that we feel. And it takes us a while to realize just how alone we are in this whole process because the world around us just doesn't understand it. And the legal system doesn't understand it. CPS doesn't understand it. The

don't understand, you know, the therapists and the counsellors. And so there aren't people there available to help us, the parents, or our children, and just protect us in the way that we need to be. And that's something that I don't, I'm sorry to say this for anybody listening, but that's something that I don't see changing in the near future. I think we are going to continue to have to deal with parental alienation by ourselves.

Robert (02:46)
Yeah, unfortunately, well, by ourselves and hopefully with the help of experts like you.

Charlie McCready (02:52)
Yes, and I would say for parents, particularly men, men are really bad at reaching out and getting support. Go get some help because, and I'm not plugging myself there, I'm just saying generally, just go get some help because there's so much that you could learn. And I hope we'll cover some of the things today that will be helpful for all parents. It'll make an enormous difference because one of the things we do is

we tend to kind of focus all of our attention on the kids and say, well, I'll do everything I can for the kids. We don't focus enough time on ourselves. And we don't understand that us being in a good space mentally and emotionally is the foundation stone for getting through this experience for us, for our kids and for our families. And so while we're feeling a lot of pain ourselves,

we actually are in this, I call it the opposite of a bereavement. Because bereavement, most people have been through it, they all understand it, they know typically how to help somebody. So if we were facing bereavement, we would have the support of our families around us. But in this bizarre situation, nobody understands alienation. And we end up being the people who help the family around us, as opposed to the family around us helping

targeted parent. It's bonkers. I mean it's absolutely bonkers this whole thing. And I'm sure, you know, most of the parents who listening to this will have had similar experiences, know, just the world around them just doesn't get

Robert (04:32)
That is very true and a very good point.

What do you suggest for these parents? you know, I mean, know there's talking to people such as yourself, educating yourself, and then you also have to educate the people around you, whether it's grandparents, friends, stuff like that, of unfortunately, of what you're going through. Is there anything that you recommend?

Charlie McCready (04:58)
tons. So maybe it's helpful to explore some of this because there's a lot to unpick in this thing that we call an alienated parents experience. I think let's start with what I call the emotional roller coaster. So this is basically a set of emotions that are typically associated with

Robert (05:00)
Hahaha

Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it again.

Charlie McCready (05:27)
and have some sort of unique impact on us as well. So these will be really familiar to parents. So there's grief, so we have the loss of our child. There's guilt because we typically feel we could have or should have done more. And I'd just like to reassure parents, you've probably done everything you possibly can because you're good parents. It's the alienator that's the problem. Then we also tend to feel injustice.

We feel isolation, we feel powerlessness, we feel anger, we feel anxiety, we get fear. But all of these things are very specific to alienation. And what's actually going on is there is this word grief, but it's not, it's not a, it's your own version of

And that's something that's kind of difficult for some people to get their heads around because what's really going on is that all of us individually, and this is where we each have unique experiences because we're all unique people. you're unique. Each of your kids is unique. The alienator is unique. There are lots of common themes, but we kind of use those common themes as a framework to then work on what are the unique aspects of it. So I'm just going to use

grief for a moment. So grief is something that most people will experience, but it's their version of grief. And so for some people, and these versions of these emotions are typically linked to earlier experiences that we have had. So we, in childhood, so,

Robert (07:15)
in their childhood.

Charlie McCready (07:21)
Actually, I'm gonna switch out of grief and I'm gonna use a different one for a second. Very often with childhood, a lot of us have had experiences of parents who didn't give us enough love and support when we were growing up. know, the aloof dad or maybe the aloof mom or a controlling parent. And what this does is it creates habits in us whereby to get the attention and to support our own needs, to get the love and care that we need.

We have to do things that appease these parents to keep them kind of looking after us basically. And this then translates into us becoming people pleasers in our later life. Because we kind of get used to the habit of unless we keep you happy, you're not going to look after me or you're not going to give me stuff. So I'm not safe unless I keep you happy. So we then go out into the big world, the big wide world outside.

and we start trying to keep everybody else happy. So I'm now gonna tie this back to parental alienation. So when our kids start rejecting us, we then start trying to appease our kids in order to keep them happy so that they will continue loving us. Now I know that a lot of parents will know exactly what that feels like. And this is part of the cycle that we kind of need to break as parents.

because the way that we're developing a relationship with an alienated child is very unhealthy if we're trying to appease them all the time. Because we're still their parent. You are. So you have to kind of look at yourself, your own insecurities, your own vulnerabilities.

Robert (08:57)
We're stepping away from being a parent.

Charlie McCready (09:14)
and address those separately to how you deal with parental alienation. So this is the universe conversation that we had before. Go

Robert (09:21)
Charlie,

That is so hard though. You think about those parents, that's so hard for them, especially when maybe they only have their children for 25, 30 % of the time. And they want to appease their kids. They wanna make sure that weekend they have with them is a wonderful weekend and they wanna keep the peace and make sure they're happy. And that's tough.

It's very tough. So you're saying you need to really kind of put that aside and still be the parent. Even if that visit isn't joyful.

Charlie McCready (10:00)
Yes, right.

So slightly more subtly than that. the whole relationship between child and parent shifts when they're going through alienation. So basically they gain power, we lose power. I totally agree with you. You want your kid to have the best time possible when they're with you. So yeah, we will do things typically that we make more of an effort, but you still want to be aware of the

you're the parent, they're the child. So don't let them become in charge because they're going to push boundaries. And so just onto your point, it is uncomfortable spending time with an alienated kid who is rejecting you. But I would encourage every parent, I get asked this question a lot, is there a point where it gets so uncomfortable you should stop having contact? And I would say as much as possible.

Stick it out. Try to maintain some semblance of contact even when it seems really difficult to do because when you go no contact, it's very difficult to get your child to re -engage with you again. And you lose control over the ability to send them text messages or ability to see them even if it's infrequently and even if it's difficult seeing them. They still experience you as a parent and that helps to counterbalance.

some of the negative narrative that they'll be bombarded with by the alienating

Robert (11:39)
So to kind of jump back, what I'm hearing from you are these parents that are targeted, the alienated parent. There's a lot of healing that they need to do first off on their own childhood. That's a huge step it sounds like that they need to take. Is that

Charlie McCready (11:45)
huh.

Yes, so I always talk about three aspects to alienation. One of them is you as a targeted parent. What is your experience? What are you going through? The second one is what is your child going through? And if you've got more than one child, the chances are that they're each having very different experiences of alienation.

And the third one is who is the alienator? So I'll just walk through those backwards quickly and then I'll come back to your question. So the alienators, first off I should say, I've not yet come across a case where the person who is alienating or prone to alienating has not been through trauma themselves when they were growing up or weren't spoiled rotten as a kid.

Robert (12:34)
Yeah, let's do

Charlie McCready (12:57)
And what happens is they either come through very entitled or they come through traumatized, but it has the same effect on them. So we tend to see the same sorts of characters. know, cluster B personalities, narcissism, psychopathy, that's quite a common trait. So if you could imagine as an alienated parent, you're trying to work out what the alienator is like. Look at narcissism, cluster B, psychopathy.

you'll get some really good insights as to who it was you were married to and then layer in that person's experience as well. So were they really spoiled as a kid? Were they traumatized as a kid? Did they go through, you know, their parents having a difficult relationship? Did they have a really controlling parent? You know, what is it that they went through? Because you can then work out their insecurities and vulnerabilities because that will come into play in terms of how they're trying to alienate your kid.

Robert (13:54)
It seems like personality disorders, that is a very common denominator with the alienating parent.

Charlie McCready (14:01)
Yeah. Pretty much every time. So, and I should just say with alienators, these people do not change. So your tactics with an alienator is all about mitigating the damage they're doing to your kid rather than trying to stop it because the chances of you stopping

is relatively slim as most of us know because the court systems and everything else doesn't really support that. So it's more about you getting ahead of the game because otherwise we're normally quite reactive. That's how we start. We're always reacting to whatever the alienator is doing. So start thinking ahead of them like 12 months, a year and a half, two years. What are they going to do next? Are they going to try and take my kids out of school? What's coming up? Are they going to try and stop me getting medical records?

start thinking in their way of thinking and approach the school first and say, we're going through a bit of a difficult time, can you please ensure that I continue to get reports on my kids? Just thinking ahead, just very quickly on the kids, we have to develop the ability to understand what are they experiencing through their eyes. Stand in their shoes and start to think, what

I need as a kid from my alienated parent because what they need from you is typically what not what you think they need from you because we're so focused on trying to do what we think is right for the kids and most of time it's very involved in our own emotional needs that a lot of the time we're not really putting ourselves in the kids shoes and what the kids want most from us is love and support.

But from our perspective, we want justice, we want truth, we want the kid not to be going through what they're going through. That's stuff that we have to deal with separately to what our children are going through. And that is part of the pain that we go through and part of the healing process we need to go through.

Robert (15:57)
Good.

It's, that's tough though, Charlie. mean, you know, I have, I mean, I could go through comment after comment. If you went through in messages where the parents, you know, it's one of the, one of the subjects I want to discuss with you is when your child doesn't see they're being alienated, what can you do? They don't realize it. They don't see it. And, and, you know, these parents are like, I've tried to

show my child, I've tried to tell them and they refuse to listen, they refuse to acknowledge it. And so you're Bay, are you saying to step away from that and don't try to tell them that they're alienated and let them come up with it on their

Charlie McCready (16:51)
Mm -hmm.

Absolutely. this is an area that it's a bear trap for parents and a lot of people don't see it because we as a parent are consumed with our own emotional needs for justice, for our kids to see us for who we really are, not the version that they're being told about. But when you put yourself in

child's perspective, what they're experiencing is a loyalty conflict that has been instigated by the alienating parent, which basically says, you must side with me. If you don't side with me, there's going to be trouble. And they basically align with that alienating parent as a coping mechanism to stop themselves being basically psychologically abused or other sorts of punishments. The alienates got all manner of ways

getting leverage over our kids. So when we then sit on the other side of that relationship with our child and we're now saying, yeah, but your mum's telling you lies or your dad's telling you lies, what we're doing is we're actually putting the kid in the middle of the battlefield, which is the last place the child wants to be. So if you want to do, and by the way, your child is the one conversation they don't want to have is about

Because if you turn around to say to your child, you're being brainwashed, I promise you they hate that. Because you're basically saying to them, you're a fool, you're an idiot, you haven't got a brain, you're not independent. And you will find that children even try to convince us that some of the things they're saying and doing is of their own thinking. We know it's not. But when you engage in that conversation with your kids, then you run the risk of estranging them.

And people often use estrangement and parental alienation interchangeably. Two different things. Alienating is where somebody is damaging your relationship with your child. Estrangement is where you make mistakes and you create tension with your child. So when you try to correct the child's view about you, the big risk is that you then estrange them from you because they don't want to the conversation.

So guess what? They'd rather spend less time with you. This stuff is counterintuitive, parents get really wrapped up in this because their own sense of self -worth, their own sense of my child should respect me. And when a kid is being disrespectful and the power relationship has changed, and you're desperately thinking, yeah, but I need to persuade you that this is not right, that is an absolute bear trap for us.

Robert (19:52)
Okay, I know we're kind of jumping in and I interrupted you, but this just came up. I was thinking about a message I received shortly after, like a couple days after you were on. Their child has been told a lot of lies about that parent. There has been a lot of false accusations, a lot of character assassination involved. What do you do?

Charlie McCready (20:18)
Mm -hmm.

Robert (20:20)
What does that parent

Charlie McCready (20:20)
The tragic thing is if you start fighting it there and then you've just fallen into that bear trap that we just talking about. Some of the false accusations like the serious stuff, sexual abuse, those sorts of I would hope that that parent can get those cleared in a court, which is then an independent body who will then say, actually your dad, your mum, whoever the accusation is about, didn't actually do this. Now you've got something substantive.

to say, no wasn't me. But for the rest of it, it's really difficult to have that conversation with your kid. And you kind of have to, you have to, I know this sounds, a lot of parents will find this very difficult to accept, but you have to live with a certain amount of this ongoing lie until such time as you may or may not.

be able to ever have that conversation. So to give an example of this, I'm 15 years into the point in time that full alienation begun and I still can't have that conversation with one of my kids.

and hit.

Robert (21:39)
Would it be okay for that parent to even say, I'm sorry you were told this, but you know, would like, hopefully over time you can make your own decision. Is that?

Charlie McCready (21:50)
So if you're the kid, what you will feel deeply uncomfortable with is any form of criticism against the alienating parent because of the loyalty conflict. So you have to align 100 % with that alienating parent. even if I, I mean, at best you can say something subtle like, you know, well, there are two perspectives to everything and, you know, that's not how I see the world or that's not.

you know, not the way that I've experienced it, but I would keep it very, very mild because if you try to defend yourself, your kid's going to react badly.

And here's a crazy thing, we'll come back to rebuilding relationships later, because I think that's really important. we're looking at our child constantly thinking, I wish you were healed. I wish you weren't going through this experience. I wish you could see what's going on. Your child is looking at you going, I wish my dad was healed, or I wish my mom was healed, because...

All the while that we're defending ourselves is all the while that the child doesn't really want to have the relationship with us. Because we're defending ourselves, putting them back on the battlefield. What they do want is for, yeah, this is seriously counterintuitive stuff. What they do want is that, know, providing they're not being disrespectful and stuff like that, but they want to be able

slowly have a bit more of a relationship with you and they want you not to react. So they don't want you getting triggered. They don't want you being emotionally needy. They want you to be their parent, giving them love and support unconditionally.

and you're not doing that when you're trying to correct the record.

Robert (23:46)
No, I mean, it makes sense what you're saying, but it sounds like, I mean, that would just be so challenging, so very brutally tough.

Charlie McCready (23:55)
you get used to it. So let's go back to the healing stuff because this is really related. So I talked about that emotional roller coaster. So that's kind of the first thing that happens. That's the pain that we go through. So we've got the grief and the guilt and the anguish and everything else. This crazy thing happens with us. That is a conversation that we have in

Robert (24:00)
Yeah, let's do

Charlie McCready (24:24)
conscious mind that kicks off and it goes, missing my kid, I'm really frustrated, I feel powerless, the injustice is overwhelming. This has you know, has side swiped me and it's affecting every aspect of my life. I can't work, I can't eat, I'm probably drinking more than I should, you know, I'm a bit of a wreck right now and I'm finding it really difficult to cope with. So that conversation starts. Now your subconscious has got no filter. It does not,

it'll work with whatever you give it and your subconscious is a natural like problem solver. So if you give it grief, guilt, injustice, fear, all these other things, it says, Robert, that's no problem. You want me to go grief, guilt, fear, injustice, give me a couple of hours, I'll be back. And it does. So you've kind of stopped thinking about it consciously. Now you're watching TV or you're trying to do your job or you're at work, bingo, up it comes again, grief,

injustice, fear. Now you're consciously thinking about it. And we loop and we go round and round and round. And some of these conversations have been going on in our heads for years. Now the crazy part about this is the alienator started that conversation going in your head and you're now the person who is self -perpetuating that conversation, doing the job of the alienator for

So now I'm going to link that back to your version of grief, your version of guilt. So every one of these feelings typically has a root somewhere else in your past experience. And what's going on is that you're in a weakened state when you're experiencing parental alienation. So all your insecurities, all the vulnerabilities, all

stuff that you've very successfully oppressed and shoved into the background and ignored in your life and doesn't really appear when everything's going well, when things are not going well, all that stuff comes to the surface. So you're living in this state of heightened tension, perpetually. I mean, it's physically and mentally and emotionally draining on you. So you have to start looking at

What is that narrative going on in my

So there are three parts to this. I say you kind of need to unpick all of this stuff. And this is the way that you kind of basically heal yourself. And when you heal yourself, your experience of alienations really transforms. So I use some sort of mind tricks when I'm doing coaching with parents. And I try to look at some of these things in different, coming at it from different angles so that people are not really aware.

of the ways in which they're bringing up their experiences, but it just helps them to look at it through different lenses. So I asked them to look at triggers. I asked them to look at blockers and expectations. So triggers, like you will know that when you're talking to your kid, they will say, I did this for mom or I did this for dad, you just got triggered. Or they won't tell you about something that's happening in their life, you just got triggered.

or the alienator will say something, you just got triggered. Now what's happening in each of those instances is something that you feel insecure or vulnerable about has just been raised to the surface. So you wanna start identifying what are all those things that are making me feel unsafe or uncomfortable. Because until you identify them, you can't work on them to get rid of them. So those are triggers. Then there's blockers.

So I define a blocker as something that what's stopping you from kind of moving on in your healing process. So a blocker is often linked to acceptance or not wanting to accept things. So what is happening with our children? Not being able to see them, being powerless. Those are all things that again,

typically relate back to insecurities and vulnerabilities that we have. And then there's expectations, which is also quite closely linked to blockers. So expectations is you have as a parent, when our kids are born, like quite quickly after they're born, we create these imaginary scenarios in our heads of what their life is gonna be like. And like

By the time the kids two, we're already kind of working out what they're going to do in their 20s. You know, what it's going to be like as a grandparent. So from a very early point, we've got all these ideas in our head as to what life is going to be like. And then alienation comes along. And now the kids having a very different experience to the one that we wanted them to have. So our expectations are now misaligned with the reality of what's going

Robert (29:24)
Yeah.

Charlie McCready (29:50)
That hurts us. That really hurts us. And if you think about it, it was just an idea that you created some time ago that's now become set in stone in your subconscious. And the reality is not what you were expecting it to be. Sorry. And it hurts you on, I'm gonna throw in another bit here. Sorry, I'm getting quite complicated, but you know, guys can listen to it more than once.

Robert (30:17)
No, no, no, this all makes so much sense.

Charlie McCready (30:20)
This links with your parenting style. Because when you yourself have been brought up, you basically said, what was the good stuff that happened to me? I'll repeat that. What was the stuff that wasn't so good? I'll change that. And that basically is how most of us parent. So linked into those expectations is normally a bunch of stuff about the things we wanted to protect our kids from ever experiencing.

and now they are experiencing it. So we feel bad on behalf of the kid, because they're going through the stuff we didn't want them to ever feel. Then we feel guilt as a parent, because we think, I failed. This is now happening to my kid. It's the last thing I wanted to have happen. So that's the second layer of pain. And then there's a third layer of pain, which is it reminds you of what you went through as a child.

your expectations and your experiences are, these are all the things, these are all things going on in our heads that is creating all this pain for us. So I just give you a lot to think about that, but this is why you have to unpick all the, this thing called our experience of parental alienation. There's lots of aspects to it. And when you start unpicking it, you can start in little bite -sized chunks. You can start to address it.

Robert (31:34)
Wow. Yeah.

It's great the way you put it all together. No wonder you're so good at what you do. And as you're saying that, I'm just thinking, gosh, there's so much self -work for that parent that's being alienated. It's so much work for them to do themselves. Like really hard work. mean, going in from their self -now, going back to their childhood, but really the underlying thing as well are

right along with it is putting yourself in that child's putting yourself in their shoes and really viewing what they're going through and what they're feeling, what they need.

Charlie McCready (32:26)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Robert (32:31)
Am I missing anything with that?

Charlie McCready (32:31)
That's so key because you also have to learn to look beyond what they're demonstrating to you. their behaviors are just, they're normally coping mechanisms designed to stop them getting into trouble. So one of the things that we often, that a lot of us have experienced.

kids won't respond to our text messages. So they'll receive them, they'll read them, but they won't reply to them. And that's normally because in the kid's head, if you send a message, well, they can't stop you from doing that. But if they reply to the message, now they've kind of breached some unspoken rule with the alienator of, I'm now getting in contact with the target parent.

So we've got to recognise that and go, okay, the rules are you can't respond to my texts, but I'm going to keep sending you texts so that you know, which is back to your point earlier, how do you kind of help the kid to realign what's real and what's not real and counter the negative narrative. If you keep sending the texts, never say you miss them, by the way, keep sending them the texts, they know you haven't abandoned

and they'll hold onto that as something very positive. But you kind of have to think about, for each kid, what each of them are going through. You're going to ask me a

Robert (34:03)
No, because everybody's experience is different, correct? I mean, you've said that. mean, it is for each child. I was, go ahead, Charlie.

Charlie McCready (34:06)
Yeah. Yeah.

So

No, no, no, I was just going say I look at everything as being like those three key areas, I see them as spectrums. So you've got the alienator is on a spectrum of being, you know, really very bad alienating behaviour through to what I would call a naive alienator who's doing it because they're a little bit irritated, but actually they might well decide that, yeah, with a little bit of a push from the court, they're going to mend their ways. So you kind of have

severe alienating behaviour right the way through to naive alienating behaviour. The same thing happens with our kids. The severely alienated kids are typically the ones who don't have contact with us, who are really brought in to all of the negative narrative that they've been told about us and very often they're either terrified of the parent who's alienating

Or they've almost become the consort, you know, like the new buddy, the new relationship in that alienator's life replacing us. So both of those things can have that severe alienating impact. And again, some of our kids are only minorly alienated. And then the third spectrum is us, because some of us are, we're in a real mess.

we're struggling to cope with any aspect of this through to some of us are actually in a pretty good state because we've spent the time on healing ourselves. At that point, we're far better able to cope with somebody who's difficult to alienate or a child that's severely alienated. So you have to of look at those three spectrums to kind of say, well, where am I fitting?

And for each of your kids, look at where do they fit on the child spectrum. Because the support that they need from you will be different according to their experience. And also it comes down to their character as well. Who they are as kids. Some of them are stronger, some of them are more malleable.

Robert (36:28)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense. And it's something that one of them, somebody brought up, I hate to keep talking about people who brought up things, one of them brought up about how their child is so enmeshed with their mother. And obviously that's, so I dug into it and started studying some on that. And that seems very common, the enmeshment.

Charlie McCready (36:37)
And that's good, that's good. It's really good to answer their questions.

Yeah, it's I mean Basically what you're talking about there is that there is an alignment almost of views where the children are very much adopting that the the negative Perspectives that we have they basically kind of mirror what the alienating parent thinks about us and that that's very difficult to to break in terms of stopping them from thinking that and his

Here's something, two things actually that are scary and awful. The psychological abuse, that's what it is, often within enmeshment that sort of psychological abuse results in long term psychological impacts on our children. So it is not uncommon to see children themselves start to develop cluster B personalities.

narcissism for instance and it becomes a coping mechanism for them to deal with what the alienating parent is doing to

Robert (38:04)
Wow.

Charlie McCready (38:04)
And this is intergenerational. So if you think about what I said earlier, the alienating parents are normally, or not normally, but a lot of them are traumatized in their own childhood. So they become narcissistic as a result of it to protect themselves. And part of that way of protecting themselves, which most of us have experienced, control, manipulation.

quite childlike behaviour, very self -focused, very uncompromising, and then they project all of those behaviours onto our children, and our children then need to protect themselves from that alienating parent, turning them into a narcissist. And it just, if you're not... the cycle goes on. I mean, the really good news is...

Robert (38:55)
So the cycle just continues and continues and continues.

Charlie McCready (39:03)
that there is this thing called plasticity of the brain which means that the neurons that kind of link together and form our characters and our thinking you can change that anytime you want. Now the problem with the alienating parents is they're so terrified of what happened to them they put all these controlling mechanisms up that they don't want to go back and revisit those past experiences and go through the changes. We as the alienated parents

do go through that process and should go through that process and that's the help you should go and get because the pain that we're feeling you can essentially address by kind of reprogramming yourself.

Robert (39:46)
Okay, so us going through that help, getting that self -help and going through that pain will hopefully eventually be beneficial to that child that's being alienated and prevent.

Charlie McCready (39:59)
Yes, in fact if you really want to help your child You have to help yourself first Now this is is another alienation is so counterintuitive, but this is one of the biggies because as I was saying before we've we all focus ourselves on our kids and Say I need to my kid and eat up my kid But the best way of helping your kid is by being the best version of you

so that you are as available as possible emotionally and mentally for that child. What I mean by that is that when they are with you, you're not getting triggered. You are emotionally healed yourself because this is all about trust. If the child is gonna have a relationship with you, they need to trust you. And trust means that not just do you not talk about parental

you certainly should not be bad mouthing anything about the other parent. But if they say something that triggers you or would trigger you normally, such as, I had a great day with mom and it was fantastic, and you're thinking, yeah, but that was my day, you should have been spending it with me. We must not get triggered, because if you get triggered, your kid thinks, hang on a minute, dad's not healed.

Dad's not happy about this, so I can't talk to Dad about this. So you know, they're gonna shut down. So, because they can't trust telling you without you reacting badly. So you have to work on yourself enormously so that you don't have these triggers and blockers and expectations. Because kids pick up on everything. They pick up on our energy. I mean, they'll walk into a room, they'll know if we're in a good or a bad mood.

Robert (41:31)
Yep, they're going to shut down.

yeah.

Don't you think that

hate to say this, but these alienators, they're so evil. mean, don't you think they do things also to trigger that to purposely trigger? And I feel like so much of it is to trigger that pair, the targeted parent and just to, you know, to, have a friend of mine and I see that happening and it's time and time again where, know, I'll tell him

Charlie McCready (42:09)
Absolutely.

Robert (42:26)
Dude, she's just doing that to piss you off. She's taking them there just, she knows that you want that experience to be with you. She's doing that to just, you know, again, just to piss you off and to make you mad. They're, they're evil. It's not about, it's, it's not about the, it's not about the kids. It is. And this is I told them. said, it's, she's not trying to show the kids a good time or give them that experience.

Charlie McCready (42:39)
Yeah, totally. Totally.

Robert (42:54)
She's trying to make you mad. She's, know, it's

Charlie McCready (42:55)
Nope. Yeah.

So again, this is why we have to do the healing work on ourselves. I would like to think, well, I'm kind of pretty Teflon at this point in time. There's kind of nothing I can think of that my ex can hurl at me that's gonna hurt me at this point in time. And so much of this is about mindset. It's like,

Robert (43:08)
Yeah, it makes so much sense what you're saying.

Charlie McCready (43:28)
that there will be some parents who are out there who are no contact with your kids. And that's a very difficult, that's probably the worst space to be in. But if you reframe things and say, okay, that's the worst that that person can do to me. Like it can't get any worse. I'm already rock bottom. So now everything is upwards trajectory.

and you might be no contact, yeah, prepare for the worst. And as exactly as I said, they're only encouraging the kid to go no contact with you as a mechanism to hurt you. And if you allow yourself to be the person, and you will naturally be hurt, but if you allow yourself to be the person that continues to be hurt, you're giving power to the regulator.

Robert (43:57)
Prepare for the worst. Yeah, prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

Charlie McCready (44:23)
Again, this stuff is really counterintuitive. you have to decide within yourself, I'm not going to let this hurt me. I'm going to live my life. I'm literally going to address all the things that I feel insecure and vulnerable about. Because this is the emotional roller coaster again. You know, it's the grief, it's the guilt, it's the anger, it's all the pain that we feel. It's us.

Robert (44:26)
No, it makes

Charlie McCready (44:51)
It's how we respond to what the alienator is doing that either gives the control back to us or gives the control to

Robert (44:59)
That makes a lot of sense. And Charlie, before I let you go, I've got to ask a question that has come up numerous times or comments.

the where the

alienating parent will use gifts or money to alienate the other parent to alienate. And, you know, obviously that's fairly common because I've received a lot of remarks or a lot of comments on that

how does that targeted parent, how do they handle that?

Charlie McCready (45:30)
So again, this is another kind of controlling technique that's being used by the alienators. Typically it's where the alienators have more money than the person who's being alienated. this is basically a form of bribery.

It's another form of manipulation on behalf of the alienating parent. And for some of us, we're just going to have to accept where they've got a lot more money than we have, that that is something that, you know, that the child's and this is, I see this a lot, a lot of the children, it will align with the alienating parent as part of this whole process of being, you know, treated, given lots of stuff, given whatever they want.

And it's very difficult for us to compete with that. I wish that was the case for

Robert (46:18)
Yeah, or might not Charlie might not even be that. mean, when one example I'm thinking of is where they were not invited to the graduation celebratory dinner they had and you everybody else was but that that mother was not invited to that and you know purpose purposely not and they felt they felt left out. I think

Charlie McCready (46:39)
Yeah.

Robert (46:46)
I mean, I think you have to recognize it. You tell me, but recognize it for what it is and maybe even know you're going to have your own celebration or whatever it may be.

Charlie McCready (46:57)
So yeah, this is, I mean, again, it's back to the theme that you were talking about. This is a concerted effort on the part of the alienating parent to do things that they know are going to hurt you. So I refer to what I call special days. So special days would be things like Christmas, birthdays, Thanksgiving, graduations. Those are days

Robert (47:10)
hurt you.

Charlie McCready (47:23)
you can pretty much guarantee the alienating parent will try very hard to control. They won't want the kids to be with you on your birthday. They won't want them being with you on Father's Day or Mother's Day. Whatever that special day is. So there's another thing that I encourage parents to do. Are you familiar with the concept of paying it forwards?

Robert (47:50)
Sure. Yeah.

Charlie McCready (47:51)
So imagine paying it forwards, but doing this emotionally. So this is something I encourage parents to do. if you, a lot of parents will not prepare themselves for the fact that they're unlikely to get Christmas. And they'll kind of wait until Christmas comes along and then they'll try and deal with that emotionally at that point in time. And it'll feel very difficult for

It's much better if you start preparing yourself emotionally for the things that are likely to happen in advance of it actually happening. I'm going to use what might seem a bizarre example, but you'll see why in a second. if, and I'm not saying our kids are gonna die, but if we know somebody has got an illness and they've got three months to live, we kind of prepare ourselves during that three month period.

for the fact that they're going to pass. And when they do, we've kind of dealt with it. It's done. It's almost a relief when it actually comes to pass. If somebody has a car accident or any other form of accident and they die instantly, we're in absolute shock because we had no time to prepare ourselves for what was gonna happen. And so this is kind of the same thing.

Robert (49:14)
I didn't prepare

Charlie McCready (49:21)
And it sounds, I haven't seen this recommended anywhere else by the way. It's just something that I've found from personal experience, I've found works really well for people. Start looking at how things are actually likely to pan out for you and your kid. And start preparing yourself for that reality. It kind links it with the expectations again. Because if you kind of go six months before Christmas, okay.

I'm probably not going to see my kid at Christmas. You've already decided, know, I'm going to go do something else. I'm going to keep myself busy. I'm not going to be sitting sad and miserable because that's what the alienating person wants me to do. I'm going to go see some friends. I'm going to go see some family. I'll do something else. But you're ready for it. And you're ready for it like months in advance. Because what a lot of people do is they kind of wait and wait and wait until it's almost Christmas time and then they get all sad and miserable.

and then they then spend the Christmas period in almost like the state of mourning.

Robert (50:25)
No, that's that's great advice there. Great advice. And it all goes back. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. A lot of pre planning needs to be done.

Charlie McCready (50:32)
Yeah. Can I just

Can I just touch on hope as

Robert (50:41)
I would love for you to.

Charlie McCready (50:43)
because I really encourage parents to basically, for the things that you can address, address them. For the things that you can't address, learn about acceptance and detachment. And this is all linked with the blockers and the expectations that we have because we spend an inordinate amount of our time.

stressing about things that we can't change and it makes us feel powerlessness and we feel the injustice. It is much healthier for us to accept some things that we don't want to accept but the reason why I link that with hope is you should always have hope because you just don't know how things are going to change in the future. mean stuff kids who have been

cut off for years and years and years, do suddenly pick up telephones or do suddenly message or do turn up on doorsteps. This stuff happens. So always hope that what you want is going to happen, but don't put your life on hold between now and that point. And don't continue to stay on that emotional roller coaster, beating yourself up between now and that point in time in the future.

And the other reason you need to be healed is at the point in time your kid does decide they want to have a relationship with you, if you're not ready, you're going to blow it. Because most of us, because we kind of go, well, I'll deal with it when it arrives. No, it's too late. That's too late. If a kid phones you up, and again, this is one of the big things that parents, big mistake they make.

If a kid contacts you and says, hi, how are you, starts trying to have a relationship with you, a non -healed parent who's still hurting with all that emotional pain and wants the justice corrected and the narrative corrected and all this stuff, is kind of saying to themselves, because the parent's only thinking about themselves, not the kid at that point, they're thinking, thank God, I've waited for five years, 10 years, whatever it is, my son or my daughter's now just phoned me up.

They've turned the corner. They're gonna see, they've seen the light. They're gonna see my side. And what's happening is the kids putting a little tiny toe into the water to see how we are and where we're at. And we respond with the tsunami of like self need and need for validation and need for healing.

All that we do is we wash that kid and that relationship away for another long period of time. Which is another excellent reason why we have to get on with healing ourselves today. There's so much of this stuff is like completely counterintuitive. You know, because we feel bad about working on us when we can't help our kids.

And we failed to make the connection that the only way we help our kids is by helping us.

Robert (53:56)
Charlie.

Yeah, which is really kind of the theme of this episode is self -help. mean, that's probably the biggest step. Yeah, I'm so happy you talked about hope because I want to say this. I did receive a lot of messages from people that had said, I went 25 years without speaking with my children. I went 15 years, 30 years.

And they finally saw through what my ex did. And now we have the best relationship. And not surprisingly, that child well now adult relationship with the alienating parent is non -existent. There's no more relationship there once they saw what was happening to them. Or there's very little of a relationship. And I think

You know, it's that hope, having patience, praying and...

You're doing all you can right and doing all you can and from what you're saying Self -help is pretty much where it

Charlie McCready (54:57)
Okay.

Absolutely. I would encourage everybody to kind of look at their own emotional roller coaster and say, what am I experiencing? Me, kind of, and really get in to the granular elements of what am I really going through? Because you can then start addressing your insecurities, our own insecurities and our vulnerabilities. And the more that we do it, I call it conscious thinking, it's just starting to

really aware of the stuff that's going on in your head and the more you do it the more you can start addressing these things. It's onion layers. You start with the big ones and you kind of work your way through and it's a lifelong journey. You I still do it when I'm with my kids. They're now you know 30 and 32 and I'm having conversations with them and they'll say something and I go thank you little trigger yeah good okay there's another one for me to address but they won't get any response from me at the time because

become very good at that, but I'll know inside of me, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's another one that I just need to get rid of. But the other half of that equation is healing yourself and letting go is one half. The other part is, and I call it the rear view mirror, because we live our lives by constantly looking at our past experiences and that becomes

our reality going forwards. So if we had a bad experience, know, some of these bad experiences we had as childhood, we're constantly expecting that to happen again and again and again and again and again going forwards. So we're driving the car by only looking behind us. And when you think about all these insecurities and vulnerabilities, they're past experiences that are still with us. And we're just looking in the rear view mirror all the time. So you want you want to take that rear view mirror down.

and look out the windshield. And so this is why I say to parents, be clear about where you actually wanna go. So half your healing process is getting rid of these insecurities. The other half is saying, okay, what's the stuff I need to change? So I wanna get rid of all the insecurities, that's one part of it. I need to change as a parent. I need to adapt my parenting style.

That's another part of it. need to, as we were saying before, see everything through the eyes of my child. That will help me to kind of be the version of me that I need to be going forward that is really going to help my kid. And the other thing is giving yourself permission to get back on with your life. Now, that can be really hard for parents when they're early in the process of being alienated, but I would encourage you even then to start thinking.

Right, what most people don't get is this doesn't go on for weeks, days and months. This goes on for years and decades. And so, know, when you realize that and you think, okay, am I really gonna put my life on hold for five years or 10 years or 15 years or 20 years? That's crazy. And again, you're just doing what the alienator wants. You're doing their job for

Robert (58:06)
Yeah. Yeah.

Charlie McCready (58:28)
So counter -intuitively, you have to get back on of your life again. Get back on the horse. Give yourself that permission to be a strong, happy parent again. That's also who your kids wanna see. Because we have it in our heads, unless I'm sad and miserable, my kids won't appreciate that I miss them terribly. Well, when you're like that with your kids, they don't wanna be with you, because you're sad and miserable.

So there's nothing worse than being a sad, miserable, triggered, blocked parent. But that's how so many of us think we should be. It's bonkers.

Robert (59:03)
Yeah, yeah. Charlie, that is so valuable. It really is. And look, I know there's probably people out there listening that, hey, who is this guy? Can he help me? How do people find you? How can people reach out to you and have you assist

Charlie McCready (59:24)
So I've got a website charlemcready .com. I'm also on Facebook and Instagram and also LinkedIn as Charlie McCready as well. quite simply the way that I help people is primarily in two ways. The first one is I have something called the Nine Step Program, which basically takes a parent through this kind of disentangling process.

of saying, what's going on with my experience, with my kids' experience, with the person who is the alienator, and then helping them to look at, what are the things that I should change in my particular circumstances, and then helping them to do that. So the programme does that as sort of a whole package. And the other thing I do is coaching. So the coaching is done more on like an hourly basis.

Some people want to do mini versions of the programme and other people just want to come along and talk about some specific things that they're trying to address with their child or with themselves. So those are the key ways that I do it. People really like it as well. They get so much value at being able to talk to somebody who understands

Robert (1:00:47)
Yeah, that understands it. That's been there and that understands what they're going through. It goes back to what you said earlier in the show that earlier in the podcast that a lot of those around them just don't understand don't understand what they're going through and don't understand what it is. So they find themselves having to educate them but there they have you an expert you've been there done that still doing it.

Charlie McCready (1:01:11)
I make the analogy of you don't understand what being a parent is like till you have kids. And this is exactly the same thing. You have no concept of what parental alienation is like until you're actually in that situation. And only other people who've been through it really understand at an emotional level. It's not some...

theoretical exercise, you know, when somebody says, my kid is not in my life, and other people have been critical about me because, you know, my kid's not in my life, only those of us who've been through it get it.

Everything else is just theoretical.

Robert (1:01:51)
Well, you obviously get it. You obviously do. And Charlie, I cannot thank you enough for coming back on and look, we might have a part three down the road as well. Cause after, after the last time you were on with the different comments and questions and you know, I would get them and it's like, I'm not the expert. Reach out to Charlie. I mean, it's, you know, they would ask me, what should I do? And it's like, reach out to

So you will probably Yeah, there will probably be a part three down the road and look I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to To come back on I definitely do and and thank

Charlie McCready (1:02:19)
I'm very

Well, thank you for the opportunity to, again, talk to more parents because I'm really passionate about trying to help people who are going through this process. And I think these sorts of podcasts are really valuable just to give people a sense of what they're dealing with and hope. That's the most important thing.

Robert (1:02:55)
That's the big thing. is hope. is definitely is. All right, Charlie. Thank you until next time that you're on here, but I appreciate you and look, thank you all for listening to the dad to dad's podcast and you can find us on Spotify or Apple podcast as well as on YouTube and Instagram. And don't forget to hit the like and subscribe button so you don't miss any future episodes and we will see you all next time