Call To Action

January 2018: Call to Action

Please watch this video.

Here are three easy things that YOU can do right NOW

to help end family court trauma!

1. Sign Dr. Childress’ petition to the American Psychological Association (APA). 

The Petition to the APA is on Change.org.

2. Support Ginger Gentile’s Documentary Erasing Family.

Tomorrow, January 10th,  add the frame #erased to your profile picture on facebook--it's easy.

1. Go to Erased Family Facebook and “like” their page.
2. Go to your facebook and click on “update profile picture,” and frames will come up.
3. Select the frame #erased.

3. Support House Resolution 443. 

Here is a summary of the bill:

HR 443 recognizes the importance, effectiveness, and need for trauma-informed care among existing federal programs and agencies. (Trauma-informed care takes into account a patient's history of trauma in the design of the patient's treatment.) Encourages the use of trauma-informed care within the federal government.

Expresses support for the designation of National Trauma Awareness Month and National Trauma-Informed Awareness Day.

Here is what to do:

Call, write, email or visit your state representative in Congress (your opinion will probably be taken by an aid who will relay whatever you tell him or her).  They are paid to listen and relay you message.  Tell them how law enforcement, child protective services and/or family court has ripped apart the bonds between you and your children because they are not trauma informed. 

Believe me, they will listen!   The aid that I talked to has a degree in psychology and worked at a psychiatric hospital!  She was very empathetic and understanding.  

If family court and/or child protective services become trauma-informed, it would end the nightmare!

OR

Contact Congressman Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin and Congressman Danny Davis from Illinois at 202-224-3121.  Thank them for co-sponsoring the bill.  Be sure to tell them where you are from.

Currently 14 Representatives from 9 states have signed on as co-sponsors for this bill.  If you are from on of these states please call the representative and thank them for co-sponsoring this bill.  If you are from another state, please call your representative and urge them to sponsor this bill.

• Rep. Davis, Danny K. [D-IL-7]*,
• Rep. Duffy, Sean P. [R-WI-7]
• Rep. Napolitano, Grace F. [D-CA-32]
• Rep. Kind, Ron [D-WI-3]
• Rep. Grothman, Glenn [R-WI-6]
• Rep. Sensenbrenner, F. James, Jr. [R-WI-5]
• Rep. Pocan, Mark [D-WI-2]
• Rep. Moore, Gwen [D-WI-4]
• Rep. Bacon, Don [R-NE-2]
• Rep. Kelly, Trent [R-MS-1]
• Rep. Comstock, Barbara [R-VA-10]
• Rep. Hanabusa, Colleen [D-HI-1]
• Rep. Love, Mia B. [R-UT-4]
• Rep. Delaney, John K. [D-MD-6]

Boom! Your Done!

I thank you, we thank you, our children thank you!

APA Responds With Respect and Enthusiasm

We were delighted to receive a confirmation from the American Psychological Association's (APA) Committee on Children, Youth & Families (CYF) that our petition had their full attention.  What really made me smile was that they immediately realized that the crisis we experience day and night can not be handled by their committee alone.  CYF bumped our petition up to their parent board, The Board on the Advancement of Psychology in the Public Interest (BAPPI), who determined that our petition has strong practice implications.  And indeed it does!

 BAPPI is considering forming a joint working group with the Practice Directorate but there are others who need to be represented on the work group in order to get all the pieces together.  The following diagram is not perfectly accurate, but illustrates how fragmented and complex our issue is.  However it also illustrates the power of collaboration, which is highly valued by the APA.

The NATP is not a polished, well-funded lobbying organization, or celebrities or even folks with any clout or influence.  On the contrary; we are parents who have been abused, tormented, marginalized and re-victimized by every system in place that claims to advocate for the best interest of children and families.  Even so, we never stopped trying to find a way to protect our children from our narcissistic/borderline ex-partners who have caused so much pain and suffering.  

Now, for the first time in the history of this nationwide travesty, one of the world’s most powerful organizations, the APA has heard our collective voice and responded swiftly with respect and compassion.  

Chills just ran down my spine as I re-read that last sentence.  I know this means that we are just at the starting gate, but my dear long suffering and heroic targeted parents, we are

AT the starting gate

and it’s only April.

We didn't start this war on families in American, but we will finish it. We still need to get as many of us in one place as possible, so PLEASE Join Us!  Submit you name and email in the red and black box at the bottom of this or any page of our website www.targetedparent.com.  

 

Nothing Baffling About Psychological Abuse

The most common and harmful type of child abuse is psychological maltreatment (emotional abuse and neglect).   Decades of research confirm that parents who thwart their children’s emotional and psychological needs cause long term problems equal to and often worse than physical and/or sexual abuse.  Psychological maltreatment is described in two ways.  One description focuses on the parent’s abusive behaviors such as; terrorizing, exploiting and rejecting.  The other way to describe child psychological maltreatment is in terms of the symptoms a child displays when being psychologically abused or neglected.  

Some authors argue that there are mild or moderate degrees of emotional  abuse, but these cases fall below the threshold of psychological maltreatment.  Mild or moderate cases of emotional abuse can be treated as dysfunctional parenting problems.  Psychological maltreatment on the other hand is characterized by chronic, severe, and escalating patterns of psychological abuse that puts the child at risk of psychological harm.

 A growing number of parents who have been linked to psychological abuse display relationally abusive narcissistic/borderline traits.  These parents are very reactive under relenting stress.   Typically, they are unable to transition through the divorce process they escalate their abusive behaviors toward the other (targeted) parent.  Ultimately, the abuser wants to drive the targeted parent out of the children’s lives.   The harm this causes every psychologically abused child (and the targeted parent) is extreme and it is widespread.  Harman and Biringrin (2016) and other authorities estimate that the number of families struggling under this emotional assault could be as many as 22 million.   There is an immediate need to break the cycle of narcissistic/borderline psychological abuse, one family at a time.

Despite the urgent need for intervention in cases of psychological maltreatment, child and family welfare courts and agencies seriously underreport. under investigate, and rarely intervene in these cases.  In the article, Unseen Wounds (Spinazolla, 2014) the authors  suggest that child welfare professionals may be baffled by the “covert” and “insidious” nature of psychological abuse and that those who are responsible to prevent and intervene for the children, may adopt an apathetic or helpless attitude.   As pathetic as this sounds, it may be true.   The problem of stopping child psychological abuse would seem insurmountable,  IF social workers, mental health providers and the courts focused on the abuser only.   Obviously, investigators cannot get behind closed doors to personally witness what any abusive parent is doing.    No one “sees” these acts, except for the (ex) partner who is often not given much support or credibility, and the traumatized child, who should not be re-traumatized by having to testifying against either of his or her parents.  

However, if social workers, mental health providers and the courts used the evidence presented by psychologically abused children in the same way they do for physically and sexually abused children, these professionals would realize that there is nothing covert, insidious or baffling about psychological maltreatment.   In fact, a physically or sexually abusive parent and their victim may be able to hide scars or bruises, or make up stories about how the child fell or had an accident, but psychologically maltreated children cannot cover up their symptoms with clothes or lies.  In fact, these cases are much easier to identify, locate, intervene, and provide treatment for than physical and/or sexual abuse cases, because severely psychologically abused children act out so outrageously that the family draws attention.

Identifying a severely psychologically abused child is as easy as opening your eyes.  The child will conspicuously and reliably display three (3) profoundly abnormal and delusional symptoms when relating to both parents inside and outside of court.  Anyone with a little training can learn to identify the indicators of psychological abuse, as defined by the state statutes and the DSM-V.  The icing on the cake is that the child will hyper bond or enmesh with the abuser against the other parent, leaving no doubt as to which parent is the perpetrator.

Locating psychologically abusive parents is as easy and going down to the court  house.  Due to the abusers’ patterns of narcissistic/borderline traits and their need to escalate conflict, these families can be found in protracted contested custody cases, filling family court dockets across America.   There is not another crime where the perpetrator walks right in through the court doors.  

Intervention and treatment for these psychologically abused children is fairly simple.  The non-abusive parent and abused children need a time of protective separation from the abuser for psycho-educational healing and reuniting.  In addition, each family member needs to learn how to recognize and prevent further psychological abuse.   The family is monitored to ensure that that treatment is effective and preventive measures are put in place, thus breaking the cycle of narcissistic/borderline psychological abuse, one family at a time.

I'm working on linking the full documents described in these blogs.  Anyone know square space?   Kay

Harman PhD, Jennifer; Biringen PhD, Zeynep (2016-01-03). Parents Acting Badly: How Institutions and Societies Promote the Alienation of Children from Their Loving Families (Kindle Locations 522-523).  . Kindle Edition.

Spinazzola, J., Hodgdon, H., Ford, J.,…Kisiel C., (2014). Unseen wounds: The contribution of psychological maltreatment to child and adolescent mental health and risk outcomes.  Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 6, 518-828. doi.org/10.1037/a0037766

Filing A Licensing Board Complaint

Last week I received an email from the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services; Division of Legal Services and Compliance.  Among other things it said,   

 The Marriage and Family Therapist Section screening panel will review and evaluate your complaint at their November 30th meeting and the Social Worker Section screening panel will review and evaluate your complaint at their December 16 meeting.  Each screening panel will evaluate all the treatment that your therapist provided and if the treatment fell below the minimal standard of care, then they can discipline that therapist.

 That’s all I needed to hear!  If either panel decides to discipline this therapist that will be the least of his concerns!  I’m going shopping for a malpractice lawyer!

Before I filed my licensing board complaint, actually long before my family ever  saw this therapist, I had checked him out pretty carefully.  I looked up his credentials and I had a good idea of what the standards of practice were for Marriage and Family Therapists in Wisconsin.  Then, I talked to him directly, explained my situation and my concerns and asked him if he thought he could help.  I even discussed his previous experience with my personal therapist. 

This therapist had had government contracts for providing intensive family interventions with the most troubled families in the inner city.  He told me that he subscribed toBowen’s family systems theory, and was a master at working with people who had narcissistic personality disorders.  I was pretty confident that I had found the best therapist in the area for our Family Court ordered intervention.  I couldn’t wait!

It had taken 4 years to get my ex-husband to participate in this intervention. He had never followed one family court order and masterfully sabotaged countless orders for therapy between my children and me.  However, by this time we were in criminal court, and that is an entirely different ball game.  The Judge ruled that my ex-husband had a choice of participating in this intervention or going to jail.  When my-ex-husband “swore on a stack of bibles” that he would make reconnecting my children and I his top priority, both the Judge and I knew he was lying.  I knew that he would get my children to burn me at the stake to get him off the hook.  They did.  I didn’t. 

This intensive family intervention was my very last chance to do something that would make a difference in my kids’ lives, and I had the probation officer alerted that I would call her if he didn’t show up. 

He did show up, flanked by a child on each side.  The intervention was more like a homecoming game for my ex-husband and I was the “away” team.  I’ve posted my complaint here,  but you really had to be there to believe it. 

I don't know if I will ever stop being

surprised by the bizarre events

that accompany a person with

narcissistic personality disorder. 

I have to give credit to Dr. Craig Childress for my back up plan;  filing a licensing board complaint.  I’ve never done anything like this before, but I felt confident. 

It helped that I understood the seriousness of this pathology and how the therapist would have to assess for it.  It helped that I knew that there must be substantiated evidence and a diagnosis. It helped that I knew that every therapist has to have a written treatment plan clearly indicating how the techniques to be used should resolve the problem and eliminate the symptoms (in a reasonable amount of time).  It helped that I knew that the therapist was supposed to have shared this with us and it helped that I knew the standards of practice that this therapist could be held accountable for.

 It really helped that I knew these things before we started the intervention, because I was able to immediately recognize which standards of practice were missing.

Knowledge is our weapon against all of the atrocities that come against us.  The Alliance is dedicated to providing you with the best, objective, accurate, and helpful knowledge to assist you in stopping child psychological abuse by narcissistic/borderline parents.  It's taking some time to get it out to the website, and we are in the process of "trying out" some things, but we are making good progress.  If you're looking for some information that you can't find, contact me here, I'll see what I can do.

Kay