Children's Health Initiative

Just A Dad From Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada

Stressed Children in Alienated Families.

Acute Stress Response [1920]

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If, as we talked about yesterday, parental alienation is so difficult for adults that we need to run stress management courses for parents, how does it hurt children? Well, in many of the same debilitating ways except children have less experience to rely on, when trying to interpret events. The effects of stress on children are the same as for adults, but children whose parents are locked in battle often hide their feelings from both parents. It helps kids to heal from alienation if they can find a safe harbor where they can express feelings and learn how to love both parents despite pressures to align one against the other.

After being attacked and stabbed, Austrian empress Elisabeth of Bavaria boarded a ship, unaware of the severity of her condition as a consequence of an acute stress reaction. Bleeding to death from a puncture wound to the heart, Elisabeth's last words were, "What happened to me?"

""Acute stress response" was first described by Walter Cannon in the 1920s as a psychological condition arising in response to a terrifying or traumatic event. This condition is also the first stage of the fight or flight response. Since most divorces do not meet this criteria for a sudden murderous event, we needed a different name for the grinding stress that children of divorce experience in parental alienation. According to the social worker and blogger, Monika Logan, citing Dr. Richard Warshak, the frequent stress related diagnosis for children is Adjustment Disorder. The stressors that cause adjustment disorders may be relatively minor, like loss of a girlfriend/boyfriend, a poor report card, or moving to a new neighborhood. It is thought that the more chronic or recurrent the stressor, the more likely it is to produce a disorder. The objective nature of the stressor, however, is of secondary importance. Stressors' most crucial link to their pathogenic potential is their perception by the teen as stressful. Henriksson et al. (2005) states statistically that the stressors are one half related to parental issues and one third to peer issues. The presence of a causal stressor is essential before a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder can be made.

...stress is inevitable when you’re being asked to discard a parent you love very much. Having the ability to rise above this stress first requires a greater understanding of the nature of stress.

Physical and social changes during adolescence often create more stress than at any other time in life, but living in a divorced family doesn't have to add this stress. As the above video says, if you have even one minute there's something you can do about it.

"It means your future hasn't been written yet. No one's has. Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one." - Doctor Emmett Brown, Back To The Future Part III

Only 92 days left till International Parental Alienation Awareness Day