COERCIVE CONTROL IN PARENTAL ALIENATION – by dr. Sietske Fran Dijkstra

My first interview, for my blogs, was with prof. Jennifer Harman whom I asked to talk about parental alienation as a form of domestic violence.

Now, I have decided to explain parental alienation a step further – through the coercive control of a partner in an intimate partner relationship.

My next guest is DR. SIETSKE FRAN DIJKSTRA.

Who is Dr. Sietske Fran Dijkstra?

Dr. Sietske Fran Dijkstra is a world-renowned expert in the field of domestic violence, intimate partner abuse, and child abuse.

In her rich thirty-year career, she is also involved in parental alienation. I asked Dr. Dijkstra to talk this time about the topic of parental alienation as domestic violence through the model of coercive control as a lever in that drama. Dr.Dijkstra has vast experience working directly with people in need; from women’s shelters, homes for children and young people, from children’s rehabilitation institutions, and institutions for victims of domestic violence. It is her greatest treasure and that is why her knowledge and experience are extremely valuable.

What did dr. Dijkstra and I talk about?

We talked about the following: About the fact that parental alienation is one of the forms of domestic violence.

That such violence goes through a lever of coercive control.

Coercive control is a tactic of behaviors towards the ex-partner and that gender does not play a role here except in the diversity of performance. If the alienating parent is not forced to stop such behavior, children who are manipulated in this game to be weapons of such control get the impression that the alienating parent is right and grow up with such an attitude, passing it on to their relationships and intimate relationships.

The alienating parent allows children to be above their generational role, assigning them the role of adult and dominant person over the alienated parent. In doing so, he corrupts the entire family system, collapsing the system generationally and authoritatively.

It is extremely necessary to understand that parental alienation is violence – intimate partner violence of one parent against the other because otherwise, the abused parent will not know what is happening to him personally and consequently what is happening to the children. So he won’t know how to find his way out.

Understanding what is going on behind the scenes in this manipulation is extremely difficult because the alienating parent controls their children via an invisible remote control (Remote control) since his manipulation has installed a program in children to reject the other parent. But there is a counterbalance to this – Remote care. No one knows our children as we do. And no one can give our children as deep feelings, attention, and care as we do because it comes from the depths of the soul. Our thoughts are full of love, which we transmit to our children who feel them at a distance.)

In addition to reconnecting physically with our children, it is even more important to bond emotionally with the children, because the alienating parent wants to destroy that particular connection. The alienating parent knows the rejected parent very well and will make good use of this knowledge of each of his wounds – acting against him in that very area. And the rejected parent will therefore react in self-defense. His mental health is understandably endangered in such an aggressive and very manipulative situation, but such a parent is not mentally disturbed.

As helpers in the process of alienation, the alienating parent recruits everyone from the family circle – relatives, neighbors, children’s school, and professionals … They will be new attackers on the rejected parent and they are completely unaware of the situation and manipulation. Parental alienation situations are extremely complex.

“You must look wider and deeper into the parental alienation situation.” says dr.Sietske Fran Dijkstra.

For the end:

My request to all experts, lawyers, and judges, is to look at the broader and deeper picture of family psychodynamics in any case of parental alienation. That will lead them to the right answer. Superficiality and a narrow view of parental alienation – only through the prism of child abuse – will not be able to show the way towards the abuser and from whom the child should be separated in this therapeutic procedure.

And what can we, parents, do?

No person knows our children better than we do. No person can take better care of our children than ourselves. The love we feel for them and send them, invisibly, from a distance, has the best therapeutic effect on them, while we are thus separated. Every thought of ours must go in that direction of love.

Because the HEALING POWER OF LOVE is the invisible healing power for our children … no matter where they are or wherever we are.

JR

Jasmina Radulj

Mum and blogger

www.ParentalAlienationHealing.com www.LifewithAlienatedChildren.com