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.