YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Hello. I am an adult child of parental alienation. I was alienated from my mother when I was four years old, after my parents' volatile divorce. For those of you unfamiliar with parental alienation, it is a form of psychological abuse when one parent essentially forces or brainwashes their child into rejecting the other parent. This can be done subtly, over time, or quickly with intimidation. (see Ryan Thomas Speaks videos). The parent that does this almost always has Narcissistic or Borderline Personality Disorder, although it has usually gone undetected as ppl w/ these disorders don't usually seek help.

I currently speak and write about parental alienation, and am writing my memoir, hoping to spread awareness. It is epidemic, and often goes unrecognized by the mental health profession, lawyers, judges, teachers, friends, etc etc. I am curious if anyone here has realized they were alienated from a parent, due to the narcissistic or borderline actions of the other parent. Many adult alienated children remain in denial for their entire lives. Some figure out what happened to them after hearing or reading something that triggers the realization. There are very few speaking out about it, though many, many alienated parents are.

A documentary is being made, called Erasing Families. There is a lot of information on parental alienation available online. I especially find value in the work of Dr. Craig Childress, Amy Baker and Richard Warshak. In addition, Ryan Thomas, another adult alienated child, offers resources, including videos of his experiences online at Ryan Thomas Speaks.

If you have experienced this, or think you have, I would like to hear from you!

My folks did that! They both told tall tales about one another and used my body (mostly my weight) as a way of "getting even" with one another. Thin was what my Mom wanted, and my old man stuffed me with Wendy's so as to appear "cool".

My parents divorced when I was 4, I visited my dad on most weekends, he left on my 15th birthday, and I cut contact with my mother in March 2010.

What you describe as parental alienation fits my mother to a T. To be fair, my dad was angry, emotionally absent 99% of the time, obsessed with guns to a paranoid level, mentally unstable, and he left when he could no longer pretend that I was the son he always wanted.
My mother didn't often say anything explicit or aggressive about my dad until he left, her hatred of him was much more subtle. Looking back now it was obvious, but when you're a kid you can't pick up on that kind of thing. For example I was bullied terribly in school and her solution was to whine "they bully you because your dad isn't around" which isn't true at all since I wasn't the only kid with an absent father.

Once my dad left, she went on these long rants for hours about how much she hated him and she wrote these long emails to send to every person she knew. My extended family was mad at him for leaving too, but their stance was to just let him go and to support me - which my mother viewed as a personal attack. I didn't need emotional support, SHE did! Up until I cut contact with her, I was just angry all the time at my dad. I couldn't even speak his name, I was so filled with hate.

One of the last things my mother told me was that she had intentionally kept the house that they had bought together just to spite my dad. It was an historic Chicago bungalow, way too big for 2 people, but she kept it after the divorce just to rub it in his face that he didn't get it. She told me that I had gone without as a child (one meal a day maybe, almost no medical care, clothes that didn't fit, etc) so that she could keep the house. The extent of her parental alienation, turning me against him to fill her narcissistic needs, involved neglecting my most basic needs.
The thing is, my dad didn't even want the house!

Thank you for giving this a name for me. I agree, it is as rampant as it is damaging. Will look into the resources you mention. Knowledge is power.

Yep. My Mom is likely has BPD and, at the very least, is an adult child of an alcoholic and multiple generations of trauma. We moved away from my biological father when she married a military man, conveniently leaving me with little contact with my "other" parent. She told me enough about her marriage to make me uncomfortable with him, but also painted a picture of why he was the way he was and told me he loved me, so I actually felt guilty for not feeling daughterly affection. In my case, he's culpable for not fighting her for more time with me, but her stores messed me up good.