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The Impact of Parental Alienating Behaviours on the Mental Health of Adults Alienated in Childhood
Abstract
1. Introduction
1.1. The Alienating Parent
1.2. The Targeted Parent
1.3. The Alienated Child
1.4. Previous Research
2. Method and Materials
2.1. Participants
2.2. Procedure
2.3. Data Analysis
3. Results
3.1. Mental Health Difficulties
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Depression and Anxiety: 55% of participants spoke about experiencing depression and anxiety in their adulthood and the impact they said it had on their ability to function in their daily lives:
“I was a functioning depressed person where I would go to work, I could handle kids, but I would fall apart after that. And the psychiatrist said, “I’m prescribing you this” and he writes it down on his little tablet and he hands it to me, and it says, “move out of your (alienating parent) mother’s house.”
“…. It’s quite scary the depths in terms of my negativity and capability to go into depression…I don’t know to what extent this comes from having been denied the attention of a primary caregiver (alienating parent) for some of my formative years.”
- 2.
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Eating Disorders/Body Image Issues: 20% of participants reported experiencing eating disorders and/or body image concerns that developed in adolescence. There was variability in accounts, with some participants able to explain how the origins of their difficulties arose compared to others who were less certain. The extent to which these difficulties persisted into adulthood for these participants was unclear:
“I started getting an eating disorder, I had bulimia… I didn’t understand either, I didn’t understand why I was doing these things either…”
- 3.
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Personality Difficulties: 40% of participants described difficulties related to personality dysfunction ranging from a formally diagnosed case of borderline personality disorder, (BPD) to a variety of difficulties, including emotion dysregulation, fear of abandonment, splitting, excessive reassurance and validation seeking, mistrust in self, impulsivity, inability to resist urges, and the need to impress others:
“I have noticed as well is I have a very needy vibe in relationships where I’m capable of if I’m getting everything I need, possibly in a borderline narcissistic way…”
“I’ve had… you know…really struggled with perfectionism because I didn’t really know what would set my parents off and if I wasn’t perfect, I’d get disciplined.”
- 4.
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Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): One participant reported suffering from diagnosed PTSD after living an unstable lifestyle. This participant described moving from one place to another and being exposed to unsafe people after her alienating parent reportedly forced her to move out of the family home at 17 years of age. This participant said the effects of these experiences still caused her difficulty in adulthood:
“I was suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder and all I was doing was hiding like a, a mollusc in a shell, away from the world… I didn’t understand what the posttraumatic stress was, I didn’t understand why I was in a perpetual state of anxiety, and I couldn’t switch it off. It’s taken me 30 years to be able to understand that.”
- 5.
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Psychosomatic Symptoms: 10% of the sample reported experiencing psychosomatic symptoms such as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, hypersensitivity to sound and the environment, cognitive “fog”, and alopecia, which some suspected were due to their exposure to parental alienating behaviours:
“I do have moments still today where I can fog over, I have foggy moments, so it has affected me, and I’ve had would you call it chronic fatigue for a lot of life… but it had yeah affected me in a big way physically you know… people say it’s from abuse and stuff like that… I think it has a lot to do with what I’ve experienced, the constant grief…”
- 6.
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Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): One participant spoke about ADHD symptoms and possible related diagnoses. They wondered if they had these diagnoses based on the difficulties they had. They also wondered if these symptoms were related to their exposure to parental alienating behaviours in childhood:
“I think I’ve got serious ADHD; I think I might have mild Asperger’s, I’m not sure… I’m possibly even bipolar, these are all the most likely what ifs, I’ve not got a diagnosis… I do wonder though that considering the symptoms of ADHD and considering I’ve probably had it at an early age, I do wonder if this alienation thing exacerbated it…”
- 7.
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Self-Harm: 15% of participants described experiencing self-harm through cutting with incidents starting from the age of 11 and continuing into early adulthood:
“When I was cutting my legs, I was only 11 years old…I was quite ashamed of that… I had this metal ruler that my brother had given me, and I was doing that but, on my legs, you know, and it was sort of… these little things that started happening over time became my normal.”
“I would hurt myself a lot and one time I ended up in a psychiatric hospital.”
- 8.
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Suicidal Ideation: 30% of participants reported experiencing suicidal ideation from adolescence into adulthood. Some were able to link their suicidal ideation directly to their exposure to parental alienating behaviours:
“I often had suicidal thoughts. That was throughout my 20s. So, I wouldn’t really want to relive like my age from 20 to 25. On an emotional level, it was a horrible life at times. So, I think a lot of emotional instability, but without being able for me at that point, to link it to what I lived, in childhood.”
“I thought about suicide where I wanted- I’d drive my Mustang 140 miles per hour down these country roads- You know how easy would it be for me to run into that tree?… I remember standing in the kitchen right before this emancipation thing (from alienating parent) happened, and there was a knife on the counter, and I considered it.”
“I did get suicidal more than once- I didn’t go through with it. The thing that did stop me was thinking about my kids and wanting to see them again.”
3.2. Addiction and Substance Use
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Alcohol: 55% of participants reported their alcohol consumption started in early adolescence and peaked in their late teens–early 20s:
“I started drinking at 16 but that was more as an escape from home life when I was drinking with my friends from work. Because they’d have parties on weekends and whatever, but you know, I wouldn’t drink much back then. It wasn’t until I was in my 20′s that I drank a lot more.”
“I can’t drink wine I’ve only ever had two glasses of wine in my life—mum was a really big wine drinker she was such a big wine drinker and I’d be her little butler when she was drinking- I’d go and get more wine, so I’d go empty out half her bottle of wine and fill it up with water and she was so drunk she didn’t know. But yeah, I don’t touch wine. I hate the smell of wine…”
- 2.
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Drugs: 35% of participants described using cannabis daily, occasionally, or reported a previous cannabis addiction; 20% of participants reported recreational use of MDMA; 5% of participants reported dangerous use of methamphetamine and hallucinogens. Some of these participants reported relying on these drugs when going out and consuming high doses of their drugs of choice. Some of these participants recalled using substances to numb painful emotions or to feel normal:
“Anything to get away and not feel- but try and feel at the same time. It was a weird position to be in.”
- 3.
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Sex/Pornography: 10% of participants spoke about leading promiscuous and impulsive lifestyles to find connections with others:
“Drugs, alcohol, sex. Just went on a complete spiral out of control. Taking things so that you don’t feel, but then almost like an addiction trying to attach yourself to people so that you can feel something at the same time. Really quite strange.”
3.3. Emotional Pain
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Shame and Guilt: 45% of the participants recalled feeling guilt or shame about their experience. Some had come to understand that although they knew their experience was not their fault, they could not avoid feelings of guilt that lasted into adulthood. Some participants were confused by their guilt or were unable to explain why they felt guilty:
“There’s a lot of blame and guilt, and it’s still there like sometimes I’m like “oh, maybe that was, maybe this is my fault, maybe I have done this, maybe this is wrong, maybe that was lies, maybe this isn’t…” You know there’s a lot of, it’s still a lot of confusion, within myself about what to believe and what not to believe…”
- 2.
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Self-Esteem: 40% of participants reported how being exposed to parental alienating behaviours in childhood had impacted their self-esteem into adulthood, with some feeling worthless and unequal to others. One participant reflected on how low confidence and self-esteem was linked back to not having a voice in childhood:
“For so long, it didn’t matter who I met or from what walk of life they were—it could’ve been a street sweeper, it could’ve been a barrister, I immediately thought that I was the lesser person…I didn’t place a lot of value on myself, and I realise now that I was very vulnerable to being mistreated or abused. I realise now that at some level, I accepted this behaviour and agreed that it was what I deserved…I was always fearful that I’d get ripped off because I didn’t have a voice. I guess that’s what we learned as children- we never had a voice.”
- 3.
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Loneliness and Isolation: 30% of participants reflected on loneliness and isolation. Some chose to isolate themselves from the outside world. Others felt lonely or isolated, which they attributed to exposure to parental alienating behaviours:
“Sometimes you can feel a bit lost and forgotten, especially if you’re in a situation where you’re a fairly highly functioning human, but you have all these things that are still the background, and they just, they just remain there. And not many people understand, and so that can be quite lonely…”
- 4.
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Helplessness: 20% of participants reflected on their feelings of helplessness in terms of their exposure to parental alienating behaviours in childhood or their current experience of being a targeted parent:
“My God I’m still stuck in this mess that someone else created…”
- 5.
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Grief and Loss: 60% of participants described their feelings of grief and loss with the most predominant responses involving a sense of loss around childhood, family, and denial of access to the targeted parent:
“I’ve spent probably the last year, almost straight really grieving and mourning, having to work through this because it was so well hidden, it was so normalised, I was grieving. Grieving my childhood. Grieving the parents, I didn’t get. Grieving the person that I thought I was and who I actually was.”
- 6.
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Anger: 45% of the participants reported feeling varying degrees of anger mainly aimed at the alienating parent. Some reported mild degrees of anger, while others were very specific in their resentment towards their alienating:
“I blame my mother and fuck you, fuck you, you fucked it for a fucking long time, you fucked it love. And there’s a part of me that has such major resentment, major, you know…if she wasn’t so old, if I could drag her into court to sue for that, I would do it.”
- 7.
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Abandonment: 15% of participants spoke about how their feelings of abandonment had impacted their lives as adults:
“I don’t believe anyone’s going to stay.”
- 8.
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Trust Issues: Other participants described how it was difficult for them to trust others, and themselves, due to their vulnerability:
“At this point I find it sometimes hard with people, when I meet people to, to build up trust. I think parental alienation also, it causes a lot of.. trust issues.”
3.4. Coping and Resilience
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Maladaptive Coping: 50% of participants reported using coping styles that were maladaptive, including stoicism, avoidance, indifference, mistrust, creating barriers, vengeful thinking against the alienating parent, and withdrawing, with 59 references made across the dataset.
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Adaptive Coping: participants described using adaptive coping strategies with a total of 56 references made by 80% of the group. They described using adaptive coping skills in adulthood to deal with their exposure to parental alienating behaviours in childhood. These strategies included cognitive reframing, acceptance, forgiveness, healing, self-education about PA, self-care, and engaging in therapy or support groups.
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Meaning Making: all participants spoke about trying to make meaning of their experience in adulthood with 154 references to topics such as using self-reflection and gaining perspective, confusion about their experience of being exposed to parental alienating behaviours in childhood; coming to the realisation the alienating parent was lying; memories; life lessons; conflicting thoughts about their experience and contributing to research into parental alienation.
4. Discussion
4.1. Mental Health Difficulties
4.2. Addiction and Substance Use
4.3. Emotional Pain
4.4. Coping and Resilience
4.5. Key Findings
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Drug use: over half the sample reported past or current substance use. Some described depending on daily cannabis use to get through the day or needing to use recreational drugs when engaging in social occasions to have a “good time.” Baker [11] also found one-third of participants used alcohol or drugs as a coping mechanism.
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Confusion about their experience: many participants described feeling confused about their experience of being exposed to parental alienating behaviours, especially when trying to make meaning of the past. Participants described feeling confused about their identity, their perceptions of reality, and failure to trust their judgement. These findings align with previous research showing that adults exposed to parental alienating behaviours can experience a confused sense of self, which appears to be associated with difficulties in identity development and mental health concerns in adulthood [15]. The confusion encountered by adults exposed to parental alienating behaviours in childhood may be related to the ambiguous losses they experience [10]. Additionally, participants who had sought help from therapists unfamiliar with parental alienation were left feeling invalidated and more confused about their experience.
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Education about parental alienation increased coping: education about parental alienation appears to be associated with the use of adaptive coping skills. This finding may be explained by Foucauldian discourse analysis in which knowledge is hypothesised to increase power [39]. This certainly appeared true for participants who were actively engaged in raising parental alienation awareness, advocacy, self-education, and therapy. These participants seemed better able to describe and reflect on their experiences more so than participants who were not engaged in activities increasing knowledge of parental alienation.
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Intergenerational transmission of parental alienation: The current study gave further weight to findings of previous research showing an intergenerational pattern of parental alienation transmission [11,20]. Of the participants interviewed (n = 20), 50% were parents who described being alienated from their children because of parental alienating behaviours. Participants who were now targeted parents disclosed profound difficulties coping with the fight to maintain relationships with their children; communicating with the alienating parent; attending and financing the ongoing legal battle; trying to find ways to cope with their losses, whilst prioritising their mental health. Some participants had realised they were drawn to partners resembling their alienating parent in terms of similar personality traits and patterns of behaviour. Most of these participants had tried unsuccessfully to regain contact with their children, with one mother capturing the essence of this predicament in her comment “you’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t”.
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Concerning suicidal ideation rate: almost one-third of participants described having past or current suicidal ideation. Many of these participants had attempted suicide. Most were targeted parents who appeared particularly distressed by a continuing cycle of past exposure to parental alienating behaviours and current exposure as an adult. All cited their children as a protective factor in stopping them from dying by suicide, despite non-fatal suicide attempts.
4.6. Practice Implications
5. Limitations and Future Directions
6. Conclusions
“Let’s hope this is the beginning of it… this is the beginning of us, as a society starting to realise… that no matter what happens between parents, that children are not weapons that can be used against the other.”(From an adult alienated child participant)
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
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