From Heartbreak to Healing

Self-Help

synopsis

Synopsis

Fixed - 10/23/2020

From Heartbreak to Healing is a comprehensive introduction to a common but often unrecognizes family dynamic called parental alienation, which is a serious form of both child and spouse abuse that occurs when one parent turns their child against the other parent for no justified reason—often during divorce or separation. It is a serious form of both child and spouse abuse that occurs throughout the world.

This go-to book for parents who do not know what to do when their child rejects them, is based on the author’s personal experience as an alienated parent years before the experience had a name. It reveals her story and how she healed her own grief, summarizes her research of the literature on this new field of parental alienation, and shares the results of the author’s nation-wide survey to interview other rejected parents firsthand about their experience of alienation.
Topics include:

What parental alienation is and how it works
Who teaches their child to reject the other parent and why
Stories of other alienated parents
How to find and screen parental alienation-qualified professionals
What works to resolve alienated relationships
Next steps YOU can take to help erase and prevent parental alienation

As a recommended resource on the International Parental Alienation Sudy Group website, this book is an excellent resource for social, legal, and mental health professions who want to understand and provide best practices to families suffering from parental alienation.

bio

Author Biography

Cara is the author of the book, From Heartbreak to Healing: Resolving Parental Alienation After 43 years as an alienated parent with a professional background in child development and family relationships where she managed child development programs serving working parents and their children, plus a doctorate in children’s [innate]spirituality, she finds answers to her questions: “Why me? How did this happen? and What is the purpose?” Through a process of deep introspection, she overcame decades of depression, despite remaining unreconciled with her son. She has now discovered resources, formerly unavailable, that could have led to a different outcome.

Author Insight

Treatment Depends on Severity

There has been much effort spent during the past 30 years discovering how to resolve a child’s rejection of their parent when the cause is psychological manipulation by the other parent. Because it takes much specialized knowledge and experience to do this work and because specialized training is not yet required for licensure in either the mental health or legal professions, it is extremely difficult for families to find qualified experts to resolve parental alienation. As with any scarce commodity, such experts come at a high cost. From the perspective of those living this nightmare, 30 years is a long time to wait for an affordable solution. Therefore it is my opinion that a focus on prevention is what is needed so this problem can eventually be eliminated. We need to reimagine new ways of offering support services to families long before toxic family relationships occur. What if the go-to service were a team of affordable child development and family relation specialists, therapists, mediators, and arbitrators who could help parents solve relationship problems, rather than a divorce attorney and family court where parents are pitted against one another? Then the well-being of the children and the adults could be better assured whether or not the marriage remains intact.

Book Excerpt

From Heartbreak to Healing

There are two ways severity can be looked at with parental alienation. The first is the level of severity of the alienating behavior. The second is the level of the severity of the child’s symptoms and behavior. It is the second way that is used to determine the level of severity for treatment.

Typical Treatment Approaches by Severity Level

Mild PA may be counteracted by educating the parents about the damaging effects of alienating behaviors such as bad-mouthing and how such behaviors undermine the child’s relationship with the other parent. Once parents realize the long-range damage such behaviors can do and realize that a major criterion for being a fit parent is the ability and willingness to support the child’s relationship with the other parent, many will willingly stop the behavior. Sometimes child development classes can help such parents relate to their children and better understand their developmental needs.

Moderate PA requires therapy focused on changing the behavior of the parents to reduce the level of conflict and improve communication. A Parent Coordinator may work with the parents together, while individual counseling is used to help the alienator stop indoctrinating the child against the target parent; to help the target parent be less frustrated; and, if there is a need, improve parenting skills; as well as to help the child avoid the parents’ battles and have a healthy relationship with both parents.

Severe PA requires the power of the court to act swiftly to protect the child by stopping the abusive behavior with a court order removing the child from the custody of the alienating parent.

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Cara E Koch

From Heartbreak to Healing

Synopsis

Author Biography

Author Insight

Treatment Depends on Severity

Book Excerpt

From Heartbreak to Healing

Comment on this Bubble