Try to limit anger, try to increase happy. How to find more positive and affectionate relationships

While we always need to immediately stop aggression and respond to "meanness" ("Michael! Stop that!"), we should quickly move into an Intent to Understand ("What's going on?") and then return later (after 3 or 4 responses born from a simple curiosity to understand the child's experience from the child's point of view) to the social context of rules, limitations, restrictions, and wants-needs-desires of others ("Okay, so you're feeling xyz because abc took place. But you cannot do qrs!"). Finally, because children import our feelings and stresses into themselves, just “as-if” these feelings and stresses were the child’s own, it becomes very important that we work out our excessive stress, anger, sadness, and anxiety. We need to find our calm-and-relaxed place of gently positive happiness. If we can find and enter this brain state often, then our children can join with us in this brain state of relaxed happiness, which is very healing and supportive of successful social relationships and task performance. Because mothers typically are the emotional-psychological core for the children, I typically recommend that father’s support their children’s healthy emotional, social, and psychological development by pouring love and support into the mother. If mom is happy and relaxed, she will be psychologically available for connection with the children. If mom is angry-hurt-stressed, then the children may break psychological connection with her and their behavior will become “problematic.” If there is anger in the marital relationship, try to quickly translate the anger into hurt (you hurt me so I hurt you). If your spouse is angry at you, ask what you did to hurt his or her feelings. Anger typically involves criticism of the other (… so I hurt you). Criticism provokes defensive counter-anger (i.e., an anger-hurt-anger-hurt-anger-hurt two person cycling). Try to disrupt this exchange of hurt-anger-hurt-anger by focusing and discussing the hurt not the anger. Provide nurturance for the hurt. Heal the hurt with compassion, love and understanding. Anger, as an emotion, is not meant to be used within the family or social group. Try to limit anger, try to increase happy. I hope this information may be of some help to you. I'm afraid I can't offer much more at this time because of professional limits on my ability to comment on specifics using online media. Good luck to you and your family in finding more positive and affectionate relationships. Craig Childress, Psy.D. Clinical Psychologist, PSY 18857

My Mea Culpa & Prayer for the Future

Below is my reply to the message left by Kay A. Sell (targetedmom@gmail.com) at: https://plus.google.com/107481159040685358337/posts/gU4LJ6YgU6e Dear Kay Sell: I felt exactly the same way when I first stumbled upon Dr. Craig Childress' Youtube material. "Eureka|, I thought. At last, someone who knows (and can explain precisely) what has been happening in my family for the past 20 years or so. Dr. Childress is the first person I know who has such a complete understanding of exactly the dynamics at play in "special families" like mine. My daughters turned 18 and 20 (in 2014). Only someone who has lived and experienced this family trauma first-hand, from within the family home, can recognize just what an enormous contribution Dr. Childress has made through his life's work and research. Like you, Kay Sell, I am deeply impressed with Dr. Childress' empathy for the plight of all the members of the family including both the alienated and the alienator. While he does not back down from identifying symptoms of pathogenic parenting in all of its forms, Dr. Childress still extends a hand of compassion and understanding to ALL members of the special family. Let there be no doubt. Everyone loses in these special families. Children lose a parent. A parent loses his or her children. A marriage is dissolved. A delusion is passed on to members of the next generation. Lives are potentially destroyed. It is a lose-lose scenario for all involved. All for nothing. That is the most tragic part of all. An true emotionally available parent remains an emotionally available parent throughout his or her lifetime. He or she loves their children unconditionally, regardless of the depth of the problem or the degree to which the attachment system has become twisted. I love Childress' bloat analogy... how a healthy dog's stomach can become twisted or distended. If left untreated, it can kill the dog. Yet a cure is at hand. All it takes is a visit to a vet. Likewise, the family dynamic he describes with such tremendous exactitude can be treated. The treatment is explained in his "Dr. Childress Speaks With the Child" Youtube series. All it takes is a 30-day commitment and a willingness to "lean into the discomfort". It is short-term pain for long-term gain. In the final two minutes of Dr. Childress' 2014 presentation at the University of Southern California, he takes a moment to express a surprising level of understanding for the alienating parent. Even if it is these persons who have complicated his life and continue to do so, Dr. Childress is able to honour the fact that such parents were originally child victims themselves. As small children, they were unable to escape being abused. "Splitting" was their way of coping. It was at that moment, when the first-generation child was unable to escape a terribly abusive situation that the seed of disfunction was planted. It would grow into a fixed delusion. One that the alienating parent would have for life. In his video series "Dr. Childress Speaks to the Child", he show how to transform the situation into a win-win for everyone. That is why, like you, I feel a deep and abiding sense of respect and admiration for the ongoing body of work Dr. Craig Childress is contributing to this terrible, tragic family dynamic. Where there is life, there is hope. As parents, we must always believe that one day our loved ones will choose love over hate, and peace over discord. They say that it takes two to tango. Today I must confront my role in enabling this destructive dynamic to wreck havoc in my family. As a healthy, emotionally-available parent, I should have been stronger. I knew deep down that emotional abuse can damage a child's psyche. Yet I believed that one day things would begin to improve. That one day my children would see me for the loving, caring man and father that I believed (and continue to believe) I am. I underestimated what I was up against. I was weaker than the forces I was up against. I was wrong. Terribly wrong. Today my youngest daughter likely believes that I don't care about her. Little does she know how deeply I love her. I love her the same way today as I did when she was six years old and sitting on my shoulders listening to yet another one of my interminable "Bernie the Monkey" bedtime stories. My love for her has never changed and never will. That is because I remain emotionally available to her... whether she knows it or not. My door is always open awaiting that she walk through it and back into my life. It is up to her now to decide if that is something she is ready and willing to do. It will not be easy, and there are no guarantees. To walk through the open door and back into my life, she would need to thumb her nose at a host of myths and fabrications that have ruled her daughter-father relationship to-date. Finally, in case my younger daughter is wondering, I regret what happened in the summer of 2012. I accept the role I played in it. I acknowledge that my daughter was hurt. I am deeply sorry for the hurt I caused her. My initial action was deliberate. It was meant to communicate to my daughter how it feels to have clothing destroyed. It was bad parenting and I deeply regret it. What happened a split second after that remains a blur. I was looking down the entire time and was in defensive mode when I felt her brush past me. Had I been looking up, I would have realized that she was falling forward. I was not, and did not. If I had, perhaps I could have caught her and prevented her from falling and hurting herself. As a father, I wish I have understood fully what was happening in those few split seconds and handled the situation better. I did not and today I live with the consequences as does she. My only hope is that by studying outside of province, my daughter will gain some perspective. That she will see the past ten years with greater clarity, just as I see those few seconds in the summer of 2012 more clearly with the benefit of hindsight. Finally I want to say thank you to Dr. Childress. I believe that you have hit the nail on the head in describing what is happening in these special families. Keep up the good work. B.N.

Reaction of a Mom in USA who watched all Dr. Childress' videos on Youtube and visited his blog

Dear Dr. Childress, I have long admired your commitment to contributing your brilliant insight and understanding of the "alienation" process. Tonight was the first time I watched your video series, and I am so incredibly impressed. You validate each member of the family, rather than blame and shame. You explain in simple evolutionary terms the horrendous behaviors that have deeply impaired my children's development. I can see how their guilt has created worlds of self destruction and emptiness. You have given me hope that even at 17 and 19, your words may reach them and they may have the chance to find their authentic selves again. Most of all, I believe these videos can stop the inter-generational madness of alienation in this generation giving my children a chance of having happiness in their future families. God Bless You!. I will keep you posted, and if we find success, I promise to help carry your message and talent with the world! Respectfully, Kay A. Sell (targetedmom@gmail.com) Source: https://plus.google.com/107481159040685358337/posts/gU4LJ6YgU6e

A Powerful Poem by Khalil Gibran - "Your children are not your children..."

This posting is dedicated to E. and L. From Dad "On the Children" by Khalil Gibran Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Have a good Feb 6-7 weekend E. and L. Regards, Your Dad XXOO

attachment is at the root of this family's problem. Re-attachment can provide a complete solution

Feb 1, 2015 Today I watched the Dr. Craig Childress guest lecture given at Southern California University approx. 1 month ago. He explains the complex dynamic that, I believe, has been at work in this family for over 20 years. He also offers a way out of this tragic situation, affecting special families like mine. The solution or treatment is given in the second half of his most recent presentation to psychological department at Southern California University. The way out is best summed up in his youtube series called 'Dr. Childress Speaks with the Child'. Wow. At last a way out for me and my loved ones. At last a solution proposed by someone with the unique psychological insight and work experience to have figured it all out. How would Bernie the Monkey get us from there to where we need to go to help everyone and make things OK again? I guess he would start by leaving a clue in a blog. Not unlike this brief note. A day then he would hope and pray that his loved ones would somehow find the clue and check out the Craig Childress body of work in his daily blog entries and his amazing youtube videos. Wow. It all makes sense now that I have a clinical explanation for the terrible darkness that descended on my family so many years ago. Let's hope Hansel and Gretel are able to follow my trail of Childress breadcrumbs and follow them out of the dark forest and back to parental's unconditional love. That is the mission that will absorb much of my free time again this year. As long as I am ALIVE and breathing, I will seek a way to complete the attachment with the loved ones in my life. May God grant me the serenity to change the things I can, accept the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference.