In children, sustained family conflict leads to struggles with self-esteem, mental health, academics, and future relationships. No one wants to divorce, but sometimes divorce is the only option.

Companionship, comfort, love, affection, validation, and emotional intimacy are things we all seek as human beings. Not only do we seek love, but most of us also tend to seek unconditional love from our partners and family members. No one enters into a marriage expecting to divorce, and no one enjoys the process of divorce because it’s messy, ugly, and we lose a part of ourselves in the process. The animosity harbored during high-conflict divorce can quickly escalate to physical violence, and it’s important to respect your safety in these situations and remove yourself from the situation.

Resentment can build up for many reasons when we think we are seeking things we cannot attain, and sometimes we blame our unfulfilled desires on the confines of our physical reality and on our partner. When there is abuse at home and you have tried counseling and all other avenues of support and behavior modification, sometimes divorce is the best option, ESPECIALLY when there are children involved. The coercive control tactics that surface in physical and non-physical domestic violence also present during high-conflict divorce in which there are toxic relations between the spouses. 

 Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) is when parents actively exploit their own children to engage in psychological warfare with their partner. PAS is a recognized medical illness and can be brought to the attention of a trusted advocate and/or attorney because proper documentation of the symptoms in your spouse can be very helpful during a custody hearing.

PAS is child abuse and it is a form of domestic violence. Domestic violence does not require the presence of any physical or sexual abuse-only emotional. As a result of the toxic relationship between them, alienating parents develop deficits in emotional resilience, and lack the ability to recover after feeling frustrated or disappointed in a healthy way. When unable to cope with the stress of a failing relationship, parents going through a high conflict divorce or time in their marriage become high risk for developing victim mentality and they start blaming everyone else for their problems: “I’m a victim; therefore, I have a right to make your life hell.”

When going through a bitter divorce, parents GASLIGHT. They begin to twist reality and make exaggerated accusations against the other parent. Most often, these accusations are actually projections of their own negative qualities. For example, often times when going through a high conflict divorce, one parent will call the other “selfish”, when it is themself that actually demonstrates more selfish behavior. Some alienating parents engage in a behavior that therapists call “splitting”. Splitting is when an alienating parent tries to convince other family members that another member is “evil”, thus splitting the family into “us against them”.

Parents who engage in severe alienation also lie a lot, and they are good at it. They also carry out actions that harm others, including their child, without feeling guilt. These alienating parents have developed traits and habits similar to those present in antisocial personality disorder. 

Parent alienation behaviors are driven primarily by 1 of 4 reasons:

1)Jealousy: If their spouse finds someone new

2)The Need for Revenge: If a divorce occurred, then this parent now feels abandoned and is unable to cope in a healthy way and acts out in anger instead. This parent is unable to realize that it was their own inability to form a healthy, loving, and collaborative partnership that drove away their partner in the first place. 

3)Money: If the child lives primarily with them, they may try to extort their ex for additional child support.

4)Those who start alienating the child early on during the marriage, may want to have the child for themselves alone 

It may be time to get help if you are:

1. Feeling depressed about the situation
2. Feeling angry at your spouse or ex all the time
3. Feeling anxious about co-parenting with this person

When a child grows up in a home where the parents are in a dysfunctional relationship behind closed doors, and parents refuse to divorce, or engage in a long drawn-out high conflict divorce…Then often, a child grows up in a home where their emotions are ignored, punished, and manipulated.

A high conflict divorce may bring out borderline personality features in some. For example, a parent may become mad when someone important to them won’t give them what they want. This could be a daughter who chooses to spend her time with friends or a spouse who has decided to leave the marriage. Often these situations occur because the alienating partner was not capable of forming a healthy, loving, and collaborative partnership. The goal of the angry parent then becomes to destroy of the other parent’s relationship with the children. They often encourage their children to choose sides and they do all they can to deprive the other parent, who they now see as their enemy, of the ability to continue spending time with the children.