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Month: June 2021

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PA-A Step One

PA-A Step One

Posted by By PA-A support June 25, 2021Posted in12 Steps and their related questions, What is a 12 step meeting?6 Comments
"We admitted we were powerless over people – that our lives had become unmanageable." Many of us come to Parental Alienation Anonymous (PA-A) filled with despair and hopelessness.  Some of…
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As a alienated parent & grandparent I am used to t As a alienated parent & grandparent I am used to the negative feelings like sadness, longing, isolation, fear & even anger at times. The holidays intensify all these feelings and as the days turn into months and years I have built up my holiday resiliency and I have added a bunch of resources to support myself. During the holidays I surround myself with family & friends of choice. It took me time to build this new community and years to reclaim the joy and happiness of the holiday season. With all that being said I find it hard to stay connected to these “good” feelings without feeling overwhelmed. On regular days I have right sized my negative & positive feelings & emotions. But on the holidays it feels like the good and positive things in my life are too much, that how can I have a full and meaningful life and not have access and connection to my kids and grandson. I tend to look for coping mechanisms for the good feelings. Over eating, lots of sugar, extra tv anything to escape the good feelings or at least take the edge off. Just when I think I have this PA thing figured out it moves and grows a new ARM/LEG or whatever that thing is that I wasn’t expecting. So my recovery is. I share my story, I let my close friends know how I’m doing, I go to a lot of paternal alienation support group meetings on zoom, I reach out to other parents for support and I take it minute by minute. I plan on having a fantastic holidays and I will be a bit sad. A happy holiday to all!!
The holidays arrive shortly. This time of the year The holidays arrive shortly. This time of the year can be really challenging for people struggling with PA. I always have family & friends around that love me on the holidays and I feel really lonely and isolated at times. In my experience if you haven’t experienced PA directly and first hand in your own life you can never fully hear or understand how I feel. Having support group meetings on these holidays is incredible important to my emotional recovery. The meetings help me build resilience and tools that I can take out into the rest of my life. My big plan for the holidays is to …… 1-attend a meeting each holiday 2-reach out to other people struggling with PA with a simple text so they know that someone is thinking of them. 3-support myself so I can be present and available for all the loved ones that are around. 4-be happy and center my joy. 5-send love to my children and grandchild that I do not have contact with. For me this is usually at the end of my meditations. We all need a plan for the holiday. What is your plan. There is a great free brochure on the website PA-A.org on how to prepare for the holidays. Hope to see you at a meeting
I understand a lot of what my kids are experiencin I understand a lot of what my kids are experiencing emotionally and physically. I do not pretend to know exactly how they feel or the intricacies of being an alienated child. Adding the layer of 3 siblings reinforcing the system of alienation in their own ways. Also the fifth entity in the room ( my ex & 3 kids =4), the actual system of alienation. The system creates velocity and takes on its own shape and form and helps keeps all the players in the PA system stuck and enmeshed. When I separated from my ex I died several emotional deaths. Not having her PA love left me in anxiety, fear and panic all the time. I see this same struggle in my kids. The pain is so intense when ever they take a step away they feel like they will die. They have to come back to the alienation. I offered to alienate my whole family if my alienator would just love me again. I needed her to feed on me to feel stable and able to function. Thankfully I found recovery and a place to heal. It was hell and at the same time so rich to come back to my real self. I know this is the journey all our kids and grandkids will need to go on. I am anyone of my kids. I know the life they are living because I lived it too. I helped it grow and showed them that it was ok to live that way. Today I believe I am a beacon to another way of life. I do not know if I will reconnect with my kids, I do know that I fight everyday for them. I share my story, show up and support parents and grandparents struggling with this pathology and am the best me I can be. I am the change I want in my family system. I also am a work in progress and have so much more to learn. I share this in hope that we as a community can create as many paths forward for our kids as possible. This is not a me struggle it is a us struggle.
This new Thursday meeting is hosted from Singapore This new Thursday meeting is hosted from Singapore!!!!! We wanted to offer a more accessible meeting to Europe & Parts if Asia. Please come out and support the meeting. Today’s reading on the 3rd step was very provocative. I was taught to figure it out myself, that I was some how omnipotent and knew more than anyone else. This served me well for a very limited time. It allowed me navigate and get through my early years. It was a needed strategy and tool for survival. As an adult struggling with the ever changing weather of life and the ravages of PA this strategy failed miserable. My life fell apart and I didn’t have the emotional and spiritual tools to cope anymore. Step 3 was a relief, I got to stop playing God. I got to put down the self whip and surrender. To be clear surrender is not giving up, it’s letting go of being responsible for everything. There is a spaciousness with turning my life over to a higher power that I get to define but not control. I have space now to take care of myself, to build a sustainable life. To be a better son, brother, father and friend. If the 12 steps are new and they don’t make sense. Welcome you are exactly at the same entrance I walked through. It’s not a quick fix or silver bullet, it is a place to grow emotionally, spiritually and a place to empower all kinds of change in our lives. You will need to try several meetings to gain some traction and comfort. If you are familiar with step 3 please share below on the reading.
There are parts of the family system of parental a There are parts of the family system of parental alienation that I need to own. It says in our 12 step recovery literature “Alienation is a family disease, one person gets sick and the rest of the family becomes sick as well!!” I didn’t know anything about PA when I was married. I didn’t know that their was anything irregular going on in my home several years before the divorce. I was ok with my parents coming over for holidays, birthdays and other celebrations. We went to their house often too. When I was young we had an open door policy family was always allowed over whenever. My wife had a closed door policy, I know now why. It wasn’t until years after the divorce that my mom shared that she never owned a car seat because she was never allowed to take the kids by herself. That she never had the kids sleep over because my alienator wouldn’t allow it. I own responsibility and accountability in this, I was complicit with the system. This allowed these behaviors to continue and this to become the norm. So in essence I helped set the table of alienation in my kids life. I was as sick as the alienator. I helped uphold some of these dysfunctional behaviors. I am not saying all the things the alienator has done and continue to do is ok, I am saying I am responsible for some of it. This is about centering myself in my life, what the alienator is doing or not doing gets moved out of the center into a more appropriate place. This is a incredible important step in fighting alienation. My 12 step recovery helps me look at my part and identify areas that I need to work on. Work is defined as emotional, spiritual and sometimes physical. Knowing and owning my part is liberating and empowering. I no longer have to be a victim. I can take back all aspects of my life, address my shortcomings and become the man I thought I was. This is not a linear journey. Some days I am a much better version of myself and some days I revert back to behaviors that doesn’t serve me.
We had another fantastic Sunday meeting. The sloga We had another fantastic Sunday meeting. The slogans are a great way to dig into our recoveries and discover some places of growth as well as some spaces we need to pay a little extra attention. Today I will let it begin with me. 1-I will try and pause before I respond to anyone. 2-I will take some extra personal time to nurture my self. 3-I will own my shortcomings and mistakes and make amends where necessary. 4-today I will let go of the labels in my family…,Father, daughter, mother ect. I will try to meet each thought about family members with love and acceptance. 5-Today I will be sad at times and appreciate the tenderness. I will also appreciate that my sadness doesn’t have the power to sink my ship because of the recover work and support I have. Happy Tuesday to all. How will you let it begin with you today!!
see all of this in my 3 kids/young adults behavior see all of this in my 3 kids/young adults behavior and makeup. The demands of Allegiance by my alienator are crippling developmentally to the kids. It is said that in certain aspects the kids are frozen emotionally at the age that the enmeshment/allegiance and fragmentation start. It makes so much sense. My kids are responding and reacting from such a young mindset because they are frozen there. Generally the individuation process helps the kids become independent critical thinkers and they start to catch up emotionally to their actual age. PA has stolen so much from them. They are the victims in this pathology and need understanding, love, patience and attunement if they ever reach out. That is my work in recovering from PA. To be prepared to support them from a place of stability and integration.
Parental alienation is all consuming and completel Parental alienation is all consuming and completely overwhelming. Initially there was very little space for me to live my life. I couldn’t concentrate at work, sleep was hard, my food was all crazy and the life I thought I loved was falling apart. Resilience was not a word that I really understood or even used. It was explained to me that it’s like a muscle that has atrophied and I had to work on it to gain strength and stamina. G-R-A-C-E has been a great tool for me as I navigate PA and my life. I use it before I engage in a call, meeting or email that might be provocative and have a sensitive subject matter. It just brings me back to my body and intention over and over again so I can act from a place of integration and groundedness. As I attend 12 step meetings (this is my foundation) and practice resiliency techniques like grace I am able to show up for my kids and family in a completely different way. For me this is what it looks like to parent. I am the only parent my kids have that is doing this incredible deep and meaningful work. I might not have contact but that doesn’t mean I can’t parent.
Parental alienation wants me lonely, isolated, sca Parental alienation wants me lonely, isolated, scared, uneducated and on a continuous downward spiral. It is in this place that I become part of the disease albeit unwillingly. I am reactive, defense and respond from a fragmented desperate place. When I can start to reclaim myself and working on my recovery I start the upward spiral. The spiral needs energy to move it. So I attend support group meetings, I read to understand the disease, I see a therapist, I exercise and I work on myself. I start the healing journey of addressing my own trauma and family if origin dysfunction. From this place my kids have an advocate and parent that is grounded and available if they ever need. 12 step groups are based on an empowerment model, it’s a place to recover a relationship with our selves. I experience those downward spikes less and less as I recover more and more. Recovery takes energy and time. It is a slow process and not that immediate fix I so wanted in the beginning of PA. Today I am aspiring to be that man I always thought I was.
Sundays slogan meeting was fantastic!!! This weeks Sundays slogan meeting was fantastic!!! This weeks slogan was “easy does it” Early on in PA I wanted relief immediately. I thought if I didn’t get an answer, couldn’t solve this problem, couldn’t sleep, work or function that I need to figure it out immediately. By trying to force solutions I caused a lot of of unnecessary pain. Today I take it easier, and slow down more often. I do not have to try jam a round solution into a square box anymore. Recovery was giving me the ability to pause and consider my intention and focus my attention there. I can wait until I am prepared and resourced before I respond to the challenge of the day. I now know taking is easy is a useful asset. Time, patience and the ability to pause before I act saves myself and kids a lot of pain. Where did you or are you going to apply “easy does it” in your life
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