Reclaiming Connections: A Guide To Mending The Rifts Of Parental Alienation With Ginger Gentile

Welcome to Journey Beyond Divorce Podcast, where we provide valuable insights and strategies for families dealing with high-conflict divorce. Today, we're diving into critical areas to help families overcome the challenges of parental alienation.

Episode Highlights

• Understanding Parental Alienation: We'll explore the basics of parental alienation and its impact on both children and the alienated parent.
• Strategies for Reconnecting: We'll spend most of our time on the HOW - how to be strategic in getting back into your child’s life. This is Ginger Gentile’s Zone of Genius!

Guest Spotlight: Ginger Gentile

• Who is Ginger Gentile?: Ginger Gentile is a dedicated filmmaker and activist renowned for her work on parental alienation.
• "Erasing Family" Documentary: She directed the groundbreaking documentary "Erasing Family," highlighting the struggles children and parents face due to family court injustices.
• Advocacy and Mission: Ginger's advocacy efforts are focused on transforming the stigmatized conversation around parental alienation into one of problem-solving and healing. Her mission is to create educational content that not only informs but also supports affected families in reclaiming their relationships.

Resources Mentioned:

• Erasing Family Documentary
• Erasing Family the Website
• Ginger's Website

Visit Ginger's Website for Resources:

Social Media:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• YouTube

Free Video Lessons by Ginger Gentile: Exclusive to Listeners of Journey Beyond Divorce

•  ✅How to Reunite with Your Child: The 6 Steps to Reverse Alienation
•  ✅The Most Commons Mistakes Parents Make in Reuniting

The Reversing Alienation Roadmap

Roadmap to Reverse Alienation with Group Coaching

Journey Beyond Divorce Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Soberlink
• Book a Free Rapid Relief Call

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Listen to the Podcast here

Reclaiming Connections: A Guide To Mending The Rifts Of Parental Alienation With Ginger Gentile 

In this episode, we're talking about reclaiming connections, a guide to mending the rifts of parental alienation, which is actually a pretty heavy lift. With me is quite the expert, Ginger Gentile, who is the Erased Child Whisperer. I’ll get to that in just a moment. We're diving into this incredibly difficult, painful topic, critical areas to help families overcome the challenges of parental alienation.

Parental Alienation & Its Impact On The Children & Alienated Parent

Parental alienation is such an abusive behavior that goes on. We're going to explore the basics of parental alienation and the impact it has on both the children and the alienated parent. We're going to spend most of our time on how to be strategic and get back into your child's life. I believe that this is Ginger's zone of genius. A little bit about my guest before we dive in.

Ginger Gentile is a dedicated filmmaker and activist renowned for her work on parental alienation. She directed the groundbreaking documentary Erasing Family, which is a must watch. It highlights the struggles children and parents face due to family court injustices, because the family court is so ill-equipped to handle this.

Ginger's advocacy efforts are focused on transforming the stigmatized conversation around parental alienation into one of problem solving and healing. Her mission is to create educational content that not only informs, but also supports affected families in reclaiming their relationships. I am so excited to talk to you. This is such a vitally important topic. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you, Karen, for inviting me in that wonderful introduction. Yeah, there's a lot of stigma around parental alienation, even recently. It's not something that really concerns me because I focus on out of court solutions, but there's been a movement to not allow the term to be used in court across the country and in Canada.

People feel a lot of shame and guilt about this. Think about being a stay-at-home mom in one scenario, and then you're alienated. You can't see your kids. It's been a few years. You meet another mom in the supermarket and she goes, “How's your son doing? What college is he going to?” You say, “What do I say? Do I lie? Do I say the truth that I have no idea where he's going to college, that you know more than me?”

These are the dilemmas that parents face. They face a lot of shame and stigma. Often, they're greeted when they look for help with people with solutions that often increase the conflict and the fighting, or they ignore the dynamics of the situation. Give advice that might be good if it's just not a great divorce. You said it's so well, Karen, and the introduction. This is really a form of abuse and it's a very sticky one because it can be nebulous at times. It can show up in different ways. I want to let all the people who are reading right now know there is hope, there are solutions. Sometimes, they're not always overnight solutions, but there are a lot of families who are reuniting and healing from this. There is a path forward.

Yeah. I think that it's important to say that this isn't an accident that this happens. This is a strategic campaign that victimizes the children and alienated way. What I would love to do, Ginger, is just a little context. We've had number experts on over the course. One of the key things is what's the difference between estrangement and alienation? I think that because my audience is high conflict and the children are caught in the middle, and they do sometimes pick sides, and that's different than alienation. Can you just lay a foundation for us?

Sure. I want to warn you and your readers, I'm going to give an answer that maybe no one else gives. When I work with families, and I usually work with the parent who's being alienated or estranged, or is caught in a high conflict battle, I see an unhealthy family dynamic that goes across a spectrum. I work with parents who say they're being alienated, who really have estranged themselves.

I work with parents who the parent who's being alienated is also a high conflict narcissist. The other parent's just better at alienating. I’ve worked with people also who did things that did harm their children, and they've corrected that behavior. For example, I’ve worked with a few alcoholics whose children rejected them because they were alcoholics. They got sober, but was still hanging over the relationship and were able to reunite.

I’ve also seen parents who start off alienated. By alienation, I’ll just give you my definition a second, but then estranged themselves over time because if you stop trying, if you stop showing up, if you say, “If you don't want to see me, that's okay,” then you become estranged. My definition of alienation is conditional love. “I will love you. I will be your mom or your dad, or your stepmom or your grandparent,” because sometimes the alienator is the stepparent or the grandparent, “If you do certain things.”

Things such as reject the other parent and reject their side of their family, or even reject any siblings who associate with that parent, reject any outside help, any therapist who seems to intervene. The cure for conditional love is unconditional love. If parents can show up with the skillset, but based on unconditional love, understanding that their children are not doing this on purpose, that they're caught in a loyalty vine, there's some paths forward.

I feel that there can often be a lot of time spent on diagnosing, is this really alienation or is this justified? I say, no matter what happens, kids need to have relationships with their parents. I am not a fan of the cancel your parent cut off contact with toxic parents movement that sweep in the nation. I know because they have way more followers than I do on social media, like, “Cut them off.”

When you talk to these kids, they always say how unhappy they feel afterwards. Also, it can mean learning to have a relationship with someone that's a limited relationship, that has a lot of boundaries, that has a lot of rules. It means knowing who your parent is, knowing your heritage, your roots, your identity. Parental alienation steals children's identity. It steals their ethnic, religious, and ancestral identity in addition to stealing relationship with a good parent.

The one thing I do reject is when parents say, “I'm alienated. I’ve done nothing wrong. It’s all the other person's fault.” It's like, no, we're in a dynamic that's completely unhealthy and maybe it's 97% of the other fault. By focusing on the 3%, we can actually see some change in the dynamic. I came from this when I made Erasing Family and my own experience as a kid who went through this.

When you talk to parents, whether they're the alienator or the alienated parent, it's very black and white. Kids live in gray. There are cases where there's an extreme alienation and there's an extreme rejection. I definitely see those. The kids, they're in this gray area. I see the way out by seeing the shades of gray and seeing this as an unhealthy family dynamic as opposed to one person who's evil is doing this to somebody who's completely innocent.

Ginger’s Journey Through Parental Alienation & Healing

It sounds to me, Ginger, like if you have just the evil parent and they have all power, then you're powerless. I love your perspective. I would like to pause this for a second and would you share with our audience a little bit of your experience?

Yeah, of course, Karen. I grew up in a family that was filled with fighting constantly. I remember asking my mom one day when I was probably about 7 or 8, “Why do you and dad fight so much?” She said, “It’s because we love each other.” Please don't tell that to your kids because as a coach and an expert, can you imagine who I ended up marrying? I was set up for that one.

My parents got divorced when I was thirteen. During the separation process, they both stayed in the home, like War of the Roses style, to fight over it. I was so relieved when the divorce actually happened. It didn't end. The conflict didn't end with the divorce. Of course, I didn't want my parents to get divorced in the beginning. After three years of going through a divorce with them living together, I was like, “Yes, thank you. They're finally getting divorced.”

They kept going. I then decided, or subconsciously made a decision after college to move as far as away as I could for my family. I moved to Argentina, a country I have no connection to. I did not speak Spanish. I lived there for thirteen years. When I was there, I became a filmmaker, which I wasn't planning on doing. I met a man and I fell in love with him. The first thing he told me was, “It's been six years since I’ve seen my daughter.”

I actually entered this because I fell in love with an alienated dad. I made a film in Argentina called a Erasing Dad. He produced the film. He was also a filmmaker. It's not about him, but it's about all the dads in Argentina who can’t see their kids. I say Dad because before we made the film, the law said custody automatically went to the mother.

It was the most talked about film. It came out in 2014 in Argentina because it was the first film censored. If you are surprised that they censored a film about divorce and custody and parental alienation, but there's a lot of financial incentive to keep things the way they are. I won't go into what happened. Basically, everyone wants to see a censored film. We did a huge media tour. It was very stressful for me because I was basically debating people in Spanish.

They're very angry. They were like very hostile interviews. They would say, “We brought somebody who hates you on the air to debate.” I had no warning about this. I decided to leave Argentina. I also then divorced my then husband. By the way, for the people who are reading and curious, he did reunite with his daughter when she turned 21.

I went back to the US and decided to make another film called Erasing Family. This film is very different because Erasing Dad, which you can watch on youtube, it has English subtitles, it's a true crime film. It's all about the legal system. It's all about the worst cases that end up with a parent murdering their child. It ends up with a mother threatening to kill her son. The father goes to try to get help from the police. They say, “What mother doesn't go crazy every once in a while? Ha ha ha.” She kills the son who's six. The writing on the wall, like in Hollywood, “If I can't have him, you won't. Payback. I took what you loved the most out of this world.” She commits suicide in prison.

It's a very level one film. It's very much about the conflict. When I came back to do Erasing Family, I really focused on the kids' perspective and it's a much more psychological film about healing. I also discovered that in the US, there's a lot of moms who are being alienated. It’s a completely different film and also Erasing Family has hope in the end because we see people reuniting in real time and it's all about removing this blame. It's a deep psychological dive. I think it's because around that time, I began to meditate and work on myself, learn these techniques to reduce conflict in my own life. I was in a very different spiritual, emotional place when I made that film. It's really is a message of healing.

After I made that film, a lot of parents began to contact me because when I was making the film, I would start doing these Facebook Lives just sharing what I was learning. A lot of people saw me as an expert on the subject, whether I was or not. I was just sharing what I was learning. Parents started to contact me. At first, I resisted it because I'm not a coach. I was like, “If you really want to talk to me and work with me as a coach, I’ll start.”

I just started. I started getting people. Moms and dads want to work with me. I trained with the IPEC Institute for Coaching. I trained with Bill Eddie, who runs the High Conflict Institute. I’ve done a lot of other trainings along the way. What those trainings have enabled me to do was move from, let's say, a consultant on parental alienation to a coach.

That means meeting people where they're at, realizing that there's usually deep-rooted trauma, both of the alienator side and the person being alienated and the children. This is really about showing up differently as opposed to a pure legal strategy or a pure talking to your kid strategy. When I work with parents, I combine deep emotional work and healing and maybe seeing family patterns that have gone up with very practical strategy. Some parents have to go to court because the other parents sued them.

In a few cases, it is the best option and most cases it isn't. The general thing, I’ve seen some exceptions, but if this is brought to court right at the beginning, like within three months of the start of the alienation, there can be some good outcomes. When we're on year 5 or 6 and parents go to court, it becomes very difficult. Often, it just becomes this like money and stress pit. More and more experts become involved, more and more evaluations. It moves very slowly. Time is on the alienator side.

This problem is so multidimensional. I have to say I’ve been podcasting since 2016 and it was probably in the first 3 or 4 years I interviewed a not to be named expert in New York City. I didn't even want to publish the interview because throughout the whole interview, and I was learning about parental alienation for the first time back then, it was all doom and gloom. Throughout the entire time, I kept saying, “There has to be a silver lining.”

I ended up actually taking the interview down because I felt like while she articulated the problem, she was a psychologist, she had this perspective that you're screwed. Hard stop. I was like, “I'd never present that message.” I’ve since interviewed a couple of other experts. One is Jennifer Harmon. She was brilliant.

Hope Beyond The Conflict: Why Erasing Family Is A Must-Watch

What I would really like to do here is have you explain a little bit, I was just rewatching the show before the interview and it's a must watch. Let's just do this. Let's just do a public service announcement. Could you describe in a couple of sentences what a Erasing Family covers, the power of it, and why everyone reading right now should absolutely click on it and watch it.

Thank you. The film Erasing Family follows three young adults as they fight to heal their families. This is a burden that no child should have. They are trying to reunite their families in two cases. It's with their parents. In one case, it's a young girl whose the youngest at twelve who was trying to find her brother who ran away. What we see in all of these cases is people, because they grew up in this, not having all the skillsets that they need. I did some really short interviews with kids in different from different places in the country, some middle class, some more working class just talking about how prevalent this is. I didn't screen, I didn't say, “Come and talk to your interview if you're alienated.” I just said, “If you’re a child of divorce, just show up.”

I did no research and all spectrums of alienation. Only one was like, “Everything's fine.” Everyone else was like, I didn't get to see my dad. I didn't get to see my mom. I couldn't see my brother. My mom and stepdad sat me down and explained to me why dad was bad and I had to reject him. I wasn't allowed to see my dad. I was always told my dad's a loser because he doesn't pay child support.”

All this badmouthing that we find so common, it doesn't necessarily lead to alienation, but it can if then there's more malice intent behind it. In the film, you really see these shades of gray and you see how the parents who are alienated maybe could have taken the different path as well, but they didn't have the skills to take a different path.

All this badmouthing that we find so common doesn’t necessarily lead to alienation, but it can if there’s malicious intent behind it.

The most bittersweet story of all is there is a hairdresser who rides a motorcycle. Looks like this tough guy. He's a complete teddy bear. Also, when he made the film and he saw it, he told me he realized how angry he was at the court system, which treated him horribly, and his ex-wife. He had to let that anger go. At the end of the film, he reunited with one daughter very quickly. The other daughter says, “I want nothing to do with my dad. He's not even my dad. It's just blood and DNA.”

Since the film came out, he's reunited with her. I did a follow-up video on my youtube talking about this. It actually inspired me in my coaching program because I saw that letting go of the anger and hurt is so important. I looked at all the families who I interviewed in Erasing Family. In addition to the ones in the film, I also filmed about eight interviews that didn't make the film. Maybe 100 that I didn't even film.

All the parents who reunite follow the same steps. Depending on where you are, there's one step that maybe you can do in a day and one step that maybe takes you six months if you're doing this on your own, maybe years. It's all starts with letting go of the trauma response, letting go of the anger, getting to the root cause of the alienation, which is on the alienator side, but also on your family side, your historical side. That is getting the alienation, if your kids are young, to stop, which is what everyone says you can't do. All of the extras out there like the one you interviewed, “You can't get it to stop. You can't co-parent with a narcissist.”

Yeah, you can. You just need to treat them differently. It's difficult and there's a whole skillset and a way to message them and talk to them. You can co-parent with a narcissist because kids won't reunite if there's still this ongoing conflict. They're always going to feel a loyalty bind. They're probably going to choose the alienator because that's what they chose or were forced to choose or who are being held hostage by. It's strategy and then it's reaching out. What parents want to do in this situation is they want to reach out right away.

First of all, heart wrenching, beautiful description and explanation of the impact on everybody, talking to moms and dads who are alienated. If you think you are, if you are just interested, if you're really struggling, please put some time aside and watch this film because it will be very validating and also informative. What I'd like to do is pivot a little bit.

The First Step Toward Reconnection

You started off as a filmmaker, you were an alienated kid yourself, and here you are with how many different certifications under your belt, coaching. It's so interesting how we end up in the this. I'm curious about your approach, your process, your signature system, and you were running through that really fast. Slow it down. You meet someone, it's somewhere on that spectrum between estranged and alienated. It's not about the blame. You don't want to run right out and try and reconnect with the kid. What do you want to start doing? What's step one?

The first step is letting go of the trauma response because when we're stuck in a trauma response, and if you've alienated, you can't see a kid, you've been traumatized. You can't make rational decisions. We're stuck in a feedback loop. A lot of parents will tell me that they've been trying the same thing over and over again for years.

What does that look like? What is letting go of the incredible hurt and pain and discipline? How do you actually walk? Not that you're going to tell us everything, but how does someone actually do that when every day they wake up to the same pain and the same emptiness? What's the approach to that?

First of all, whenever I work with somebody, if there is a lot of issues, I do believe that I should work with a therapist so the therapist can deal more with deep trauma, mental issues. As a coach, it's always focusing about putting this in practice and moving forward. One thing can be going from hopelessness to hope. Let's find other people who reunited and you can talk to them and see that it's possible.

We can start saying replacing, “I can't reunite, my kids hate me,” to, “My kids love me and I love them.” It’s replacing these, rewiring our thoughts. I also use a lot of meditations for this. Instead of going a deep dive right into, “How do I respond differently to my ex or to my kids?” How's it showing up with work? How's it showing up in your life?

One guy I'm working on right now, his son actually said, “I don't want to see you because I don't like how you drive.” He said he's a good driver. He's never gotten a ticket, never got a DUI. Now here's what interesting, he keeps on bringing up the driving and then he tells me one day how angry he gets at other drivers when they cut him off. This is a way that we could work on that trauma response of because we also get angry at the children, at the alienator and other drivers. I helped him, say, what if he likes to canoe? He's in Florida. Florida also has really bad drivers. I understand his frustration. When I moved to Florida, I decided not to drive ever again. That's how bad it is.

It's instead of it being the teenagers that are the problem, it's the elderly people. I lived in Florida. We digressed.

I was like, “Okay, so when you see an alligator or a tree branch when you're canoeing, do you get angry at the alligator or the tree branch? He goes, “No, there's obstacles.” I'm like, “Okay, we're just going to start seeing everything as obstacles.” That's one way. It really is what speaks to people. Also, when people come from a strong religious background, I’ll bring that in and work with them from their background, whether it's my background or not. Some people aren't religious at all. If prayer helps them, then it can be prayer. An easy one for some parents is we'll just be somebody else.

When they have to respond, we find an avatar, someone famous who they think would have a good response in this situation. It depends because also some parents, they fight fire with fire and they're always very angry. Some are like pushovers. Especially when there's been a lot of abuse. When I work with moms who've been victims to emotional abuse, I actually tell them, “Go look at how rap artists talk. That's how you have to talk to your ex. I don't give a damn about what you say. You're not being angry.” I don't have time for people who are lower than me because I have people that they try to please their ex. I also give the movie What's Love Got to do With It, with Tina Turner as hallmark.

I want to close you here because what I'm hearing is step one is largely about the reframe. How do I look at this situation differently? Rather than a dead end, I see possibility. The second thing that I hear you saying, I did a Karen Solo episode on how one can use the concept of an alter ego. That's what I'm hearing that the rap artist really, it's like, “What's your alt ego?” If you tend to blow up, you need someone calm. If you tend to shrink back, then you need to get a little too in there.

I love the Tina Turner example because she became a Buddhist. She everyone knows she was beaten up by Ike for about twenty years. She becomes a Buddhist, which Buddhism is a pacifist religion philosophy. One day, Ike hits her and she hits him back and she says, “Let's roll.” He never hits her again. She takes back what's hers. When she meets him in the future, she says, “I'm so sorry, Ike, that that happened to you, that you're now poor,” but then she leaves. She doesn't try to solve Ike's problems. She doesn't keep in contact with him. She just sends him love and goes, “Be happy and I'm gone.”

People tend to remain enmeshed. A lot of times, the alienator wants to alienate because it's a way to hold power over you and maintain a relationship. People often fall into this trapped so that an alter ego can be very helpful. We can never fully get rid of a trauma response or feeling angry or feeling sad. That's not the idea. We can look at the emotion, acknowledge it, thank the emotion, ask, “What are you trying to teach me this moment?” And then distance ourselves.

A lot of the time, the alienator wants to alienate because it's a way to hold power over you and maintain the relationship.

Here's a little tool that I give parents who are very sad about their kids. This is very specific because I know you ask me for a specific tool. Let's say it's too painful to see your kids' pictures up on the wall. Very common with alienated parents. They also feel bad about taking them down. One thing that I have them do is I say, “If you want to take them down, that's okay. Put everything in a box and then you're going to set time aside each week, twenty minutes.”

“It can also be every day. It can be once a month up to you. You're going to take out everything in the box and you're going to feel whatever emotion you want to feel for twenty minutes, if you want to cry or if you want to curse. You put them back in the box. It's okay if it takes a while. You might start to feel nostalgic instead of angry or sad taking those items out of the box. You can find your kids' favorite music. A big thing I'm into is having parents start cooking their kids' favorite meals because one thing that is common with alienated parents is they're trying to prove that they're alienated all the time to me, to their kids, to their courts, to their ex.

It's like let's get you back in a mom and dad energy. I want you to cook their favorite meal and then share it with somebody, your partner, someone in need, especially for moms, that mom energy. Sometimes it's going out and volunteering into the community, but really, finding a way to live your best life. It's not like putting the pain away. Let's acknowledge the pain and then do something else because becoming a magnet that attracts your kids back is super important in this process because kids don't want to be with a broken martyr. A lot of parents think, “If I'm a martyr I show how much I fought.” Kids don't want that.

No because that's just more heavy for them because they've gone through their thing as well. There's an author of a book of the genius and all your emotions, Arla mclaren. You just reminded me of that because she talks about how every emotion is there to inform and guide us and then we get to let it go. She said the problem we have especially traumatized is we lost our best buddy and we hold onto it forever.

I love that. It becomes your friend.

Why Alienation Happens & How To Break The Cycle

Let it go. After it's done its job, say, “Thank you very much. It’s a shame. You can leave. Thank you very much, pain. You can leave.” I love that. If step one is that reframing, that finding that, acting as if and stepping back into the parental role, what comes after that?

I'm a little confused because I had 6 steps and it sounds like make them 5 and like step 1 and 2, which is like letting go. Step two is finding the root cause of the alienation.

What does that mean? Give me 2 or 3 examples.

This is both practical and profound. The practical thing is why is the other person doing this? This often is a trauma response, but they might want money. If they have the kid for more time, they get more child support. If we know that, then later on, we can create a strategy around it such as not nickel and dimming the other parent, even though it's not fair and you're giving them more money. I often tell parents, “If you can pay off the other parent to let you see your kids, do it. You're lucky in this case.”

A lot of people say, “It's not fair.” If money will solve this, you are lucky because you can always just make more money. Now, if they are responding to a trauma response, which is very likely, one, you as the parent envision the other parent as a traumatized child who's sick, who has a problem and not an evil monster.

Really see the pain like the child within the brokenness of the person that you divorced. You're seeing them as this powerful person who's ripped your heart out because of your kids. If you could say, “What do I know about them and their childhood or their own pain,” you can begin to diminish that anger and hostility toward them.

Yeah. That's part of it, but there's more steps, there's more benefits to this. After we see their pain, there's also a practical side to this, which is it gives of strategy because a lot of people say, “My spouse is high conflict,” or they will diagnose, which you shouldn't do. “They're a narcissist, they're borderline, etc. I'm like, “They may be “crazy,” but if they have these patterns, they're predictable.” For example, a grandiose narcissist loves to feel important. I was just talking to a mom in a session and she was like, “I always tell the dad why he's wrong and he's has this war against me. I think he's a narcissist.” I'm like, “Start telling him how intelligent he is,” and she was like, “But he's hurting me.”

I'm like, “I'm not saying to go along with what he's doing and become a doormat. You can say, ‘I really value your opinion as the father of our children. You're so smart, you always have great things. What's your reasoning behind this decision?’” do you know how many times they say they don't have a reason and they just say, “Whatever, I’ll just do what you want. Just stop asking me.” If we say, “You're wrong,” and they're high conflict, they like the conflict. I

T can give us a guide. This is very powerful. Also, that alienator is your child grown up if you don't do anything to stop this because they're being raised by that person. We know this is multi-generations, whether you're spiritual or you study genetics, trauma is passed on. This is no longer woo-woo thinking. We have this generational trauma. We have the science behind this. They're also being raised by someone who's teaching them that this is what love is, this is what healthy is, this is normal.

We know from statistics that children, if this doesn't stop, if they become married and don't reject marriage and children altogether, are likely to become alienated or alienators. They have a 50% chance will be okay. Half will either become the alienator or the alienator and the cycle will just repeat and repeat because also a lot of the parents I work with, they were alienated children.

I think I'm missing the strategy here. I say that in in our world too. It's like if you're in a high conflict marriage and you're staying for the kids, they're learning that's healthy love behavior that's intimate love. They'll either become the high conflict person or the codependent person. In that statement for you, it's not like just have a relationship with your kids. “I can't have a relationship.” What is noticing that my daughter may grow up to be an alienator and therefore what?

Therefore, I need to become the breaker of generational trauma. Even if it's annoying. Even if I have to do things I don't like and learn new skills. I have them keep trying.

I have to bite my tongue. I have to feed the other person's personality and speak the language. This is interesting because what you're doing is you're talking to people and saying, in all of your pain, in all of your heartbreak and all of your struggle, you have an opportunity to release that, to let go of that, to reframe the way you're thinking and to really do the incredible hard work of changing the way you look at, think about and engage with this so that you get the prize at the end of the rainbow, which is access to your kids.

Not just access to your kids. You are breaking a generational curse. It's rare the parent who says, “I came from a happy home and I just fell into this.” It happens. Five percent of the people I work with were like, “My parents are still married. They're happy. Everything's great. I don't know how I was tricked.” Sometimes, people will find global victims, but most of the time they're like, “My parents were divorced and I don't talk to my mom. Her parents were divorced and she doesn't talk to her dad. His parents were divorced.” It goes past. I'm going to talk to you about a coaching mistake I made in the beginning and a brilliant lesson it gave me.

In the beginning, I started working with people and I would obviously ask them questions in the first session, but I didn't really have an intake form. Now I have a very simple intake form. In the beginning, people would say, “I'm alienated again. I can't see my seven-year-old.” I was like, “Okay.” We start working on it. In session three they say, “By the way, I was married before and I can't see my two adult children either. I was also married before that.” Sometimes it's like, “You like marrying alienators.” Now I ask about the family history a little more and I work a lot more on that. This is what's important. This pattern will repeat over and over again

Unless you do the work to change yourself.

Very well said, Karen.

That's our message to everyone. You'll meet another high conflict person and get married. It'll be the same person in a different body. You'll rinse and repeat. In seven years, you'll come back and go, “Why is this happening to me?” It’s because you did not do the work yet.

His is practical because if we know what's motivating them and we can see them, even if the motivation is totally unrational, then we know not to use reason because we're not going to get anywhere. Just as, I said, sometimes people are grandiose and they need their ego fed. Sometimes people also in the marriage, the person who's being alienated was m like, “Maybe we need to do it my way all the time.” The person alienates because they feel criticized. That's when it's like really letting go of what goes on in the other parent's house. Unless it's a safety issue, we let it go. We don't tell the other people how to parent because you're divorced now. After we've done this, now we're ready to learn new skills.

I'm going to stop you. First of all, we have a time situation here, so I want to honor that. I'd like you to briefly say what this new skill thing is, but then I want to honor your time and, and then we can leave a cliffhanger and help people reach you. If you have a free giveaway, because what you do is just incredibly so important. It's just been delightful to chat with you about this in your system.

Rebuilding Relationships With Your Kids

I’ll go through the last part because it's a little easier to understand. I'd love to talk about some cases that I’ve had and then I think we're okay for time and then we'll get on how to close up. Yeah, this is something I could talk all day about. After, only after we've done the emotional work and then also at this time, the parent's able to become a magnet that attracts their kids back. They're living their best life, they're going back around the community, is learning new skills.

These are communication skills with, if necessary, your ex and your kid on how to communicate in a completely different way that reduces the conflict, that doesn't draw you into these endless debates or blame or you need to apologize for this. It's a way to get out of it while really holding space for the other person, making them feel valued but not going down these rabbit holes.

Sometimes, parents are like, “If you do all these things, maybe you can see your kid and I'm like, “Don't play that game.” You can listen to the person, you can honor their feelings, but a lot of parents, like if you divorce your new wife, you can see the kids. I'm like, “No, you don't do that,” because they'll come to me. “I'm thinking about divorcing my wife.” I'm like, “No.” People don't know what to do. They're so desperate. It's consistency, especially the parents who will take my course but sometimes don't work with me one-on-one or even the ones who work on me one-on-one will talk about the communication skills. We'll practice them and they're like, “Got it. This is super easy.”

They'll be like, “I use the communication skills and they totally work.” I'm like, “Okay, can you show me the email?” They'll be short because I teach people to be short in their context and polite but full of insults. It's like, “Okay, so it's short but insulting.” They give advice, they tell the other person what to do and we really need to stick to the rules consistently. If people apply them over time, they often will see changes.

It's not just you send one email and then everything changes and the changes in the other person's behavior, not that they're going to offer you an apology, and then with the kids it's really figuring out what your kids need. A lot of parents will send gifts and messages, but sometimes they need a clearing of the error message.

I will leave this one last skill with the parent. One last advice with the parents. This isn't about apologizing for everything you did. That's something you do with your internal work. You write the letter apologizing to your kid for everything you think you did. That does not get sent to the kid. People are sending these letters to their kids. Don't do that.

This isn’t about apologizing for everything you did — that’s part of your internal work. You write a letter apologizing to your child for everything you believe you did.

What you can offer your kid is a blanket apology, especially if you haven't seen them for a while because if you haven't talked to your kid for a while and you say, “Happy New Year, hope you're doing well, love dad,” out nowhere, then they're like, “You don't talk to me for ten years and now, F you.” What we want to say is something like, “I wasn't the best father or mother. I made a lot of mistakes. I didn't know how to be a good parent. There was a lot of fighting and conflict. I take full responsibility for you having to grow up with this. I'm doing a lot of work to improve myself. I love to have the opportunity to learn how I can make amends with you.”

Anything more specific the kid has to tell you because if not, you might apologize for something that the kid isn't actually angry about. We don't want to do that. We want to be open. Also, if you're sending texts or emails or letters, very broad. Share memories. Keep it light. Don't have heavy conversations over text messages. Really push for a meeting and then listen, observe and say, “Thank you for sharing.” Listen. “This is what I'm hearing.” Also, avoid what I call the half-ass apology.

“I'm sorry you feel that way.” You also don't have to apologize. If you really don't feel like you did something wrong, don't apologize. Don't do the, “I'm sorry you feel this way. I'm sorry your mom made you hate me.” No, don't do that. I just want to leave with some practical examples because one thing I run into is every parent who I work with, not everyone but a lot in the beginning will say, “Ginger, this sounds great but my case is crazy. My case is insane.” They lean in like, “What's the secret tip that you're hiding from me?” Now there's more specific strategy we can apply in different situations. Better ways to write emails. A lot of emotional work.

A lot of it is also accountability. A lot of it is also like how to parent when your parental authorities are removed. There isn't like the secret text message that you send that writes everything. What I found with parents who are thinking, “This sounds great, Ginger, for the other parents, but not in my crazy case. Just to give you some cases that I’ve worked on. I worked with a dad who was five years no contact with his son. He didn't have his son's phone number and he didn't have a way to reach his son.

I encouraged him to go to his son's high school graduation even though it's possible his son wouldn't see him. His son didn't see him that day. He made a website for his son. Son didn't respond. Four months later, the son reaches out to the dad and says, “I'd love to see you.” They've now had three meetings and the son's going to spend summer with the dad. This is what people often look at me funny with. If you do the energetic work, you have an energetic bond with your kid, they will feel it.

In so many cases, it's the kid who reaches out. I often ask parents, “If your kid knocked on your door, would you be ready?” A lot of parents think about it, they go, “Ginger, I wouldn't know what to do. What if they were angry at me? What if I reach out and they reject me? I can't deal with rejection anymore. I'm tired of this. I want to give up.” They don't want to give up. They're just so tired of being rejected. Getting in this good place of where you focus on your own actions is very healing.

I worked with a mother who, for fourteen years, no contact. Her son reached out to her. Teenagers. I had one dad whose court order was awful. It was like they had to do an exchange in the Best Buy parking lot. This is Massachusetts where it gets very cold in winter. The mom would bring the two boys, teenage boys, in shorts and t-shirts. They wouldn't want to get out of the car. She would hype them up. They would just be crying. He is like, “Ginger, I don't want to go to these exchanges anymore because the boys won't get out of the car. It's just off.” I'm like, “You’ve got to show up. You cannot give up because the moment you show up, one, the courts say you abandoned the kids. Two, now you're the dad or the mom who abandoned the kids. The kids will feel and it'll be used against you.”

I'm like, “You're going to show up and you're going to find any way to make this fun and happy.” He'd bring the sandwiches. The kids didn't want to eat the sandwiches. He'd bring the dog. We hate the dog now. He was just like, “I'm just going to hold space for five minutes.’ at one point just, he had to say, “It's okay.”

The boys were so taught to hate him that they had a court ordered therapy session and one of the boys ran away. He now has a great relationship with both boys because he just focused on how he showed up and he said, “As long as I show up happy and calm, I win. Even if the boys don't want to get out of the car,  even if my ex yells at me.” He's able to have conversations with the ex now.

I see this a lot of times where it's like when you abandon, this will never change. You start to look at, “How will this change?” There's a lot of techniques that I didn't have a chance to get in here. The main thing is, I found parents who have awful situations and sometimes, it's right away. Sometimes it takes a little work to say, “Ginger, I'm going to try something new. I take full responsibility for what I did. I accept the situation. I'm not here to prove it. What can we do?”

Sometimes, they send one text message and they get a response right away because they've changed. That's the timeline. That depends on each person. Some people just surrender. The ones who are like, “No, Ginger, you don't understand. My ex is horrible. No, you don't understand. My ex is horrible.” That's when it takes longer because when they say, “It is what it is, what can I do now?” If not, then also, you bring to your child that energy, your other parent is horrible.

Raising Emotional Energy & Reuniting Through Love & Healing

I just want to chime in here that Ginger and I were trained at the same coaching school. We work in this paradigm of emotional energy. The lowest level of energy is that victim energy. Right above that is that angry conflict energy. As she talks about energy, what she does and what we do at Journey Beyond Divorce is help people find their way to levitate up to the third level is actually forgiveness.

It's a gateway to all of the shades of love. You then have peace, joy, and ultimate happiness. When you do this work, it absolutely changes you and has a ripple effect on everyone that you touch. You've just done such a beautiful job and I'm so grateful that you're out there in the world doing what you do. This is such a big area that needs healing and guidance.

I'm so grateful, Karen, that you and the Journey Beyond Divorce are really focused on healing. You're like, “No, there has to be a way out of this.” With the parents I work with, and I'm sure you see this as a coach, because a lot of parents, after a high conflict divorce, finances are tough. They spend so much money on court. I worked with one mom who was really struggling, but she found a way reunite with her daughter.

She was like, “I'm now emotionally and financially stable,” because this has a ripple effect. Now, if you're in a better place, you can get better jobs, start businesses, find love again. So many parents I know, when they start, they say, “I’ll never date again,” I can totally understand why. They're like, “No way.” They're like, “I'm going to date.”

Sometimes they've actually said, “My kid who's alienated said to me, they don't want to see me because I don't have a partner.” Kids pick up on this. I’ll leave with this before we get into the how people can find me. You talk about raising your energy. A lot of parents say, “I don't want to show that I'm happy because my kid might see this and feel sad or mad that I'm happy without them.” I’ve talked to so many kids who reunited, they all reunite with happy parents, not sad parents. If you're concerned, share it on social media. Your kid is stalking you with a fake account. I will guarantee you that. Your kid is following you, so be very careful. Use it to your advantage. You can always say, “I went on a great boating trip. I can't wait to share it with my son.”

They know that you're thinking of them, but you're not saying, “I missed my son. I'm alienated.” You're just saying, you're just showing your great life. I’ve seen a lot of parents where the social media can have a huge impact negatively and positively. Use it for good, reach out with love. I can almost guarantee your kid is watching you with a fake account.

For many parents, social media can have a huge impact — both negative and positive. Use it for good; reach out with love. It's almost guaranteed that your kid is watching you from a fake account.

Do you know they all have fake accounts now? I found this out. They spy on their teachers. They're also spying on their alienated parents. They're like, “I'm blocked. My kid doesn't follow me.” I'm like, “They're following you and they are tech geniuses to you. Use this to your advantage. Use this as a window to show how, what a beautiful life, how much healing you are, how you're a changed person. They are watching you.

If you walk into a room and there's a Debbie Downer in the corner, she's not the one you walk over to. It's the person who's magnetic. It’s the person who's got this high energy and they're connecting with everyone and they're joyful. Everything that we can do to help you, the reader, raise that emotional energy for your, the benefit of your own life, and it certainly in these situations, to the benefit of your relationship with your child. How can our readers find you?

Thank you. The easiest way is to go to ReversingParentalAlienation.com, and you can take a free training there, but also, there's two ways I work with people. One is my roadmap program, and that combines a go at your own pace course that has meditations, which walks you through the steps we talked about. I try to keep it as super simple as possible. The lessons are half hour or less per week. You take it when you want and there's an accompanying meditation to rewire your brain. What I found is that people then need to know how to apply this in their own situation practice. Once a week we have a group coaching call on. It's recorded if you can't make it. We talk about how to use the roadmap in your own life.

Now here's what's special. I'm not the only coach on the calls. I think this is one of the few programs of only program out there where the other coaches who we have on are all ex-alienated kids who healed. We also have on parents who healed. There's a lot of programs out there that train parents who are alienated to be coaches, but they haven't reunited yet. Everyone has walked through this.

What I found is we have different techniques maybe, but we all have the same perspective. I have not trained people on their perspective, but they all say, show up with love. Raise your vibration, become a magnet. I'm like, this is good. People just say, it's not like my crazy theory. All the kids say like, “Yeah.” Get healthy, be healthy. Keep reaching out.

Don't give up on us even if we yell at you. Keep showing up. The other way is to work one-on-one with me and I can work like a traditional coach for a set time period in sessions. I also give email support when things come up because parents often need a lot of support if they're texting their kids and X. I also have a program which is really unique, which is, I work with you until you reunite for one set fee and package. However long it takes.

I'm selective about who I work with. I'm almost pretty much full. I am very selective with who I work with. You can also find me on social media, at Erasing Family on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. That's our movie account. Also, it's not just the movie. It is having other kids come on, talk about their experiences. I share tips on there. We share stories from other parents who reunited. It's a very active social media community.

We try to be as practical, we as possible. I do Facebook lives, I do webinars. There's a lot of ways to find me. ReversingParentalAlienation.com, social media at Erasing Family. Just to let everybody know, I do not coach over email, text, or chat. You can ask me about a program, but please don't, because it's just unethical. You know this as a coach. It's like people ask you a question and you don't know all the details.

Also, as a coach, I don't give advice. It's finding the best solution for you and your family because I always say to the parents, you are the expert on your own kids. I'm bringing you back to that expertise and love that you have. I don't like if you're like, “What should I text my kid?” I'm not going to give you that answer over email because I could give you a bad answer. The whole idea is to get you back to that place where you say, “I know what to text.”

Check out Ginger, ReversingParentalAlienation.com. Please take some time and watch this film. You will never Forget it. Again, Ginger, thank you so much for what you do. Thank you so much for coming and talking to our audience and sharing so much of your process and your wisdom.

Thank you, Karen. I love talking to somebody who gets it, who's also about raising energy and vibration. Whatever life throws at you, this is an opportunity to learn and to grow. What a beautiful legacy to leave your kids.

I think we'll end with that and we'll be back again real soon with another episode. Until then, you take care.

Important Links

• Ginger Gentile
• Erasing Family
• Erasing Family on YouTube
• Erasing Family on Facebook
• Erasing Family on Instagram
• Free Video Lessons by Ginger Gentile
• The Reversing Alienation Roadmap
• Roadmap to Reverse Alienation with Group Coaching
• Soberlink
• Book A Rapid Relief Call