Grieving The Loss of a Child to Parental Alienation/Family Kidnapping: A Targeted Parents’ Dreams

 

I take medication to sleep and I still don’t sleep soundly. Last night I dreamed we were caught at a serial killers’ house and I was desperately trying to get us out of there but I couldn’t get to my child in another room.

Other times my child is swept out to sea and I tried to swim to save him but the rip current keeps pulling him farther away from me.

Or he’s on the other side of a brick wall and I can’t climb it to get to him. I can hear him crying for me though.

Or he calls me asking for help and when I ask where he is the line goes dead.

In my dreams he is always 8 years old. Even though in real life he’s 29 years old.

He was kidnapped from me when he was 8. That was 21 years ago. Yet still I have the dreams.

What is PTSD?

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that’s caused by an extremely stressful or terrifying event — either being part of it or witnessing it. Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares, severe anxiety and uncontrollable thoughts about the event.

Symptoms can occur immediately following a traumatic event, or appear years later. When they are so intrusive that they interfere in daily activities, it’s best to seek professional help.

Generally, PTSD symptoms are grouped into four types: intrusive memories, avoidance, negative changes in thinking and mood, and changes in physical and emotional reactions.

intrusive memories may include:

Unwanted, distressing memories of a traumatic event that come back over and over again.

Reliving a traumatic event as if it were happening again, also known as flashbacks.

Upsetting dreams or nightmares about a traumatic event.

Severe emotional distress or physical reactions to something that reminds you of a traumatic event.

Symptoms of avoidance may include:

Trying not to think or talk about a traumatic event.

Staying away from places, activities or people that remind you of a traumatic event.

Negative changes in thinking and mood

Negative changes in thinking and mood may include:

Negative thoughts about yourself, other people or the world.

Ongoing negative emotions of fear, blame, guilt, anger or shame.

Memory problems, including not remembering important aspects of a traumatic event.

Feeling detached from family and friends.

Not being interested in activities you once enjoyed.

Having a hard time feeling positive emotions.

Feeling emotionally numb.

Changes in physical and emotional reactions, also called arousal symptoms, may include:

Being easily startled or frightened.

Always being on guard for danger.

Self-destructive behavior, such as drinking too much or driving too fast.

Trouble sleeping.

Trouble concentrating.

Irritability, angry outbursts or aggressive behavior.

Physical reactions, such as sweating, rapid breathing, fast heartbeat or shaking.

For children 6 years old and younger, symptoms also may include:

Reenacting a traumatic event or aspects of a traumatic event through play.

Frightening dreams that may or may not include aspects of a traumatic event.

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There have been models studied for the states of grief a targeted parent goes through when losing a child to parental alienation and/or parental kidnapping.

When a child is taught to hate a parent through tactics such as lies, manipulation, name-calling and fear, just to name a few. If those tactics are bad enough, such as in our case, a child (or children) may eventually cut off all communication with the target parent.

When this happens, literally overnight a parent’s identity changes. He or she is no longer a parent, coach, mentor, teacher and friend. In some cases like ours, the children may change school districts or relocate to an unknown town. A parent is left feeling devastated, hopeless and lost.

This type of loss is incomprehensible to most people. Our very own children have shut us out of their lives because of lies they’ve been indoctrinated to believe.

Because of this, our type of grief is not publicly acknowledged or socially recognized. Instead of trying to understand what happened, society often times assigns a stigma.

“The death of a child is indisputably one of the most incredibly horrible tragedies one can imagine. Whether by sudden accidental circumstance, or by a more lengthy cause as in illness, the loss of a child is undeniably painful to experience. Painful to the parents, parents to the family, and painful to anyone related to the child. Never knowing the laughter of that child again or the tears, the joys and the accomplishments is a pain no parent should ever have to endure, and yet it happens. No one might be to blame. It can just happen”. (Tim Line)

Imagine a similar pain and the same sense of loss, with one exception-the parent is very much aware that the child is alive.

The effects of Parental Alienation, Parental Child Abduction and retention are very similar to the loss of a child in some other way.

This feeling of bereavement can also affect the child that an abducting/alienating parent claims to love and can have serious emotional scars that can remain for a long period of time — If not for a lifetime.

Yet, parental child abduction and parental alienation remain as silent abuses that the effects never seem to be fully understood unless you or your family have to cope with this trauma yourselves.

Even parents that are lucky enough to have any contact whatsoever with their children, Parental Alienation, where a custodial parent maliciously tries to destroy the relationship between the child and target parent, rips the innocent child from their arms slowly. They witness the suffering. They witness the effects but they feel powerless to do anything about it.

The very sad part of this is it is not unique. There are hundreds of thousands of children and parents affected by Parental alienation and also thousands of cases involving parental child abduction but it is only recently that law professionals are starting to sit up and take notice of the traumatic emotional damage that this can cause target families and children.

If you are a parent, spend a moment to look at your children and imagine what it would be like if you woke tomorrow morning to find that they are not there and you have no idea where they have been taken to or if you will ever see them again. Imagine the minefield of legal litigation required to locate and reunite with your children once they have been found to have been abducted, it even worse, abducted abroad?

Imagine pleading for help from authorities, courts, family, friends and groups but they are reluctant to help to reunite you with your child and in some situations can even facilitate the abduction, alienation and retention by their inaction or bad rulings.

The lay person may find it very difficult to understand the effects on a target parent. Many feel that eventually, time should allow you to “get over it” and just carry on with life but it is not that simple.

Let us look at an extended Kübler-Ross model that tries to explain the stages of grieving and see how that can be applied to a parent who is retained from their children’s lives.

Stage 1: SHOCK AND DENIAL.

In many cases, a target parent can actually identify the signs that abduction and alienation might occur but they are often given false reassurances that this will not happen or is not happening by authorities and legal professionals. When it does, the initial trauma is one of shock and numbness. However, there is a belief that everybody around will be just as horrified at the situation and will do everything they can to find a resolution to return the child to the situation prior to abduction/retention

Stage 2: EMOTIONS ERUPT

Unlike a bereavement resulting from death, the shock never really passes as a target parent fails to understand how the situation could have occurred and begins questioning people around them. One minute they were a loving parent sharing their children’s lives and the next, it is taken away from them, often through no or little fault of the affected parent. Emotions can overflow their usual boundaries. They are expressed in ways ranging from wrenching sobs to gentle tears.

The strongest try to look for a resolution quickly and place their trust in authorities, lawyers, courts and organisations to help them resolve the situation. These emotions heighten even further if heinous “tactics” are used by the other parent to achieve their alienating objectives such as false allegations. This stage in the grieving process is also without end.

Stage 3: ANGER

Mixed with the hurt, many people feel angry. “How could the other parent do this to them?”, “Why aren’t people doing enough to help?”

In cases where false allegations are used as a mechanism to alienate and retain their child, “Why are the authorities listening to them? This is NOT me that they are talking about!”

They sometimes want to retaliate. Although the anger is towards the other parent for their actions, it can also be transferred to other areas such as the lawyers and authorities for their apathy and inaction. The anger can also be misdirected at people closest to the target parent through their absolute despair of the situation and this can affect friendships, relationships and support. This anger one feels can reappear so once again is another stage in the process than can be without end.

Stage 4: SICKNESS

Often the body acts out the pain being felt through actual physical symptoms. Nausea, headaches, diarrhoea, extreme fatigue, lack of sleep are common. In some cases, panic attacks can occur that can be compared to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) especially in situation such as family court proceedings. Once again, as these litigation processes can be ongoing, so can recurrences of the sickness stage.

See my post called Grief: what it does to the body and what it did to me to see how this stage of my grief nearly took my life. I was so ill I was hospitalized for months.  I was unable to open my eyes, I was unrecognizable for nearly a year.

Stage 5: PANIC

Along with a time of sickness and emotional upset, people begin to realise that they aren’t acting like themselves anymore. They begin to worry, wondering if they are becoming mentally ill. They frequently ask themselves “What is happening to me?”. From the outsiders point of view, this is often met with wrongful judgement. They can lose sight of the person they really are and just start to see the shell of the person that the target parent might be becoming without the help to keep them strong and focused. The longer it takes for resolution, the harder it is for the target parent to cope. Apathy often occurs in other aspects of the target parents lives that could affect their work and personal lives.

What if there’s never a resolution? What them?

Stage 6: GUILT

Personal guilt feelings build up as people wonder whether they are somehow to blame for the situation they find themselves in. They ask themselves if they could have done something to make it different…. “if only . . .”

About a year ago I found out that the woman who was my best friend during the time when I lost my son, whose kids were my son’s friends before I lost him, lost her oldest son to cancer. I had been out of her life for all over a decade and hadn’t known she was going through that. When I found out, the guilt I felt was overwhelming. The anger I felt was incomprehensible. How could that happen to such a beautiful mother as she was. She had been there for me through the darkest period of my life and my loss, and I hadn’t been there for her during her loss. I know it wasn’t my fault but the guilt I felt didn’t know that and it hit me strong. How could a God allow that to happen to her and what did that mean for my loss? Did it make the loss of my son less important since mine is still alive and hers isn’t?  I felt selfish and greedy and pissed off that these feelings were invading my mind and body.

Stage 7: DEPRESSION AND LONELINESS

The pain of their loss often causes people to withdraw into themselves. As the depression deepens, friends and family find it harder to draw the person out, to talk them into participating in regular activities again. Many suffer detachment issues in their relationships with others. Mixed with the other stages that are still present in some form, without understanding of family and friends, it can appear as though the target parent does not WANT to be around people who care when it is, in fact, quite the opposite.

Stage 8: RE-ENTRY TROUBLES

Once the effort is made to get back into the normal routine, the pain of loss makes it difficult to be as trusting and open as before the loss. Suspicion must be battled constantly. Friends and families are tested again and again.

Once you are betrayed in such a deep manner not only do you begin to question everyone around you but you begin to question yourself. What is around with them for doing that to you, or was it a defect in yourself that allowed it to happen? 

I recommend checking out Dr Jordan Peterson’s video on relationships, trust, betrayal, and the underworld.

Stage 8. HOPE

Only the very strongest emotionally of the target parents can maintain this. They focus on areas that might be able to help others in a similar situation. They identify the failures in the system that do not seem to protect and try to do something about it. Some try to become advocates or write a book about their experiences. Raise awareness in whatever way they can. Some affected parents can never reach this stage as they feel defeated, betrayed and can even result in major depression or even suicide. 

Stage 10: ACCEPTING AND AFFIRMING REALITY

Sadly, a parent who continues to be subjected to alienation and retention can never fully reach this stage. Many are forced into a position where they have to box all of the emotions that they feel and “give up” on finding a solution as a means of self preservation. Although they do not give up on their love for their children, they give up hope of ever being a parent to that child again.

Once I had to give up on ever being a parent to my son again, that’s when my worries kicked in. I had found out that he was in not one, not two, but three motorcycle wrecks, and hospitalized. Nobody bothered to call and tell me. When I found out about it, I wasn’t given all the information. I was forced to spend months sifting through online police reports until I found his, just to find out what happened. Knowing that at any time something could happen to him and nobody would care enough to let me know keeps me in a constant state of worry. Checking the news where he lives to make sure he’s not in it. Checking his status on FB messenger to make sure he has been online recently which means he’s okay. I’m in this constant state worrying about a man whom I’ve really never met and don’t know. He’s a stranger who I love more than life. 

There is no end to this grief that I’m not allowed to feel.

Honestly, I feel as if they murdered me, I’m just still bleeding out.

FEEDBACK

So I want to hear from my readers experiencing this. What are your dreams like? How old is your child in them?  I want to feel less alone. I want others to feel less alone.

How do we overcome this or do we? Is this it?

Is this just how it will always be?

Why? Why are we subjected to this cruel abuse and torture? It’s it a karmic debt from a past life or just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes?

Anyone? Anyone?  Please leave a comment so we know we’re not alone.

Godspeed.

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Sources:

Parental Alienation Speaks- Disenfranchised Grief

An Intangible Loss – Grieving the Child Who Did Not Die

Ambiguous Grief- Grieving Someone Who Is Still Alive