Not Divorced - What Alienation Can Look Like Within Intact Families - Episode 26

Have you ever felt caught in the middle of your parent's silent wars, loving them both yet torn by their underlying discord? I'm Lawrence Joss, and in this poignant conversation, we explore the complex world of parental alienation within intact families. Joined by Ceyhun from Turkey, we offer a cross-cultural perspective on family estrangement, and the silent battles that shape our internal and external worlds. This episode promises an introspective journey through the landscapes of enmeshment and codependency that often trace back to before children even enter the picture, setting the stage for a cycle of generational trauma and dysfunction.

Parental relationships can be a delicate web of emotions and expectations, where the line between caregiver and confidante is often blurred. This episode peels back the layers of such dynamics, spotlighting how they can project internalized parental roles into our adult lives and relationships. We open the dialogue on the all-too-common phenomenon where children become the caretakers of their parents' unaddressed issues, leading to a deep-seated struggle for independence and self-identity. With our guest Ceyhun providing insight into how these themes play out in diverse cultural settings, we bring to the fore the necessity of recognizing these patterns for what they are: a call to embark on the path to emotional liberation.

Finally, we wade into the tender waters of emotional incest and the yearning for connection amidst parental alienation. The stories shared in this chapter serve as a mirror for listeners who might find reflections of their own familial challenges. The conversation goes further, addressing the potent desire for paternal recognition and how one's sense of masculinity can be entwined with these formative relationships. As we wrap up this episode, remember that our shared narratives are the stepping stones towards healing, and that you're not navigating these waters alone.
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

First caregiver is the most critical, I think, to survive First I had to kind of side with the mother. So in a way I was torn, I was split. I couldn't love both of my parents at the same time. I think I felt ashamed or I felt under pressure. If I love my father, approach my father. My mother didn't give good reactions, I think. But it was all unconscious. I wasn't fully aware of what was happening at the time. Of course it's only now or in the last few years I can see the picture as I'm taking psychoanalysis in the last three, four years three, four times a week and doing my inner work with spiritual recovery program and 12 steps programs and many other things.

Speaker 2: 0:47

Hi, my name is Lawrence Joss and welcome to the Family Disappeared podcast. It's great to have you here today and we have a wonderful guest today, jaehoon, who lives in Turkey, and we're going to be talking about parental alienation, estrangement and rations. But in a family system where the parents don't actually get divorced, how does that play out when parental alienation is present in a family? And I think so many people can relate to this, because for me, parental alienation was always there. I just couldn't identify it, I didn't know what was going on, and a lot of it is just about some of the dysfunction and the trauma and the generational trauma that we're all bringing in. But we're going to dig into a really cool and deep conversations. And please remember, subscribe, like, leave a review. If you happen to be on Apple podcasts or something else, if you scroll all the way down to the end of the podcast, you can give us a rating of one through five stars, love, five stars. If that's not appropriate for you, do whatever you want. And then there's also a prompt to actually leave a review. I'd love you to write a review and leave some information for folks, no matter on what format you're on, and please like, share YouTube, join our Facebook groups, any of that stuff and all that stuff is always in the show notes. Okay, now we're going to get into the show.

Speaker 2: 2:05

There was a time in my life when I was overwhelmed and underwater. Those days are the inspiration for this podcast. This is by far the ultimate healing journey for all of us. Healing ourselves emotionally, spiritually and physically is paramount to this journey. From this place of grounding, we can all go out into the world and change all our interactions and relationships. We can engage people from an integrated and resourced place. This is a journey of coming home to ourselves. In today's episode, we'll start to explore some of these issues. Let's begin the healing journey today. Welcome to the Family Disappeared podcast.

Speaker 2: 2:39

In my family system, you know, I was married, I had three daughters and I didn't know anything about parental alienation. Like I've said before, for the first eight, 10 years of my journey of going through this and if I expand out my view to be a little bit larger view, which took some recovery and a lot of interpersonal work like this was always present before I had my first child. Like there was this really really, really intense love in my relationship and I thought it was love, and I've said that before, and there are components of love to it. But there was also this enmeshment and codependency and this familiarity where I was helping to regulate my ex-wife's nervous system and that's what she was used to from her mother and that's what I was used to from my mother. So we created this environment where the essence of parental alienation was present without any children, right? So I'm going to say that again, that the essence of parental alienation was present without any children, because we were both, you know, rebuilding this family system that was dysfunctional and was based on a measurement and based on actually soothing each other's nervous systems and playing out these roles. And I interpreted that as really, really, really, really, really deep love. But it was really, really, really, really familiar. It was pre-verbals in vitro when I was in my mom's womb and I thought that was love.

Speaker 2: 4:02

So parental alienation was always present and when my ex got pregnant with our first child, that intense love switched. I felt her go away a little bit and instead of her getting that soothing and that regulation from me, it was the baby now. It was the baby that was just not really anything yet that was starting to soothe her. So, again, instead of her soothing the baby and the womb and everything like that, she started to energetically need to be soothed and that relationship continued to grow and manifest as my daughter was born and was young and stuff like that. And I had no idea, I thought that was just all healthy and the way that life was, and that was my relationship with my mother, where I'd used to soothe her. And that was alienation, like what was happening already, like my child was getting pulled into the space where her whole body and nervous system was getting colonized and turned into this place where it was getting plugged into another entity, to another person, and in doing that was distancing from me because I wasn't providing that same level of juice to her.

Speaker 2: 5:16

And in manifesting all other different ways in families.

Speaker 2: 5:18

We've had so many different conversations where families were saying, hey, there was abuse, there was control, there was all these different things, there was one child getting pitted against me or getting pitted against each other.

Speaker 2: 5:27

So, like these dynamics are always present and this conversation today is really really jumping into those dynamics in a really deep, deep way and we actually spoke about this after the interview. You know, like folks that English is not their first language tend to not be stuck in the same box as I am, where English is my first language, and they get to be a little bit more creative and a little bit more honest because they're not hiding behind words. So in this conversation you get into some really neat stuff and the language is really really really refreshing and important and creative. And, man, that's enough out of me. Let's see what happens. So today we really have a fantastic guest on our show, and all the way from Turkey. This is Jae Hoon, and we're very excited to jump into this conversation. So we're just going to take a second here and if you could just please go ahead and introduce yourself to the audience before we jump into the interview.

Speaker 1: 6:23

Oh yes, thank you, lawrence, for a beautiful introduction. It's nice to be here and thank you for having me here over. I'm Jae Hoon, 35 years old, living in a city called Izmir on the west coast of Turkey, so I've been looking for some specific 12 step programs and I came across PAA. And then I signed up to Neem Sletters and a few months later I came across your podcast episodes on my email and I immediately watched it. I wasn't in a good place at the time and I felt immediately my mood lifted up Watching your content. It felt really irrelevant to what I've been going through and I felt that I found my community here, so thank you for inviting me here to be your guest.

Speaker 2: 7:08

Jae Hoon, it's so great to have you on the show and all the way from Turkey. And this is a worldwide pandemic epidemic of a totally different sorts, where there's so many families struggling all over the world, and we want to have the voices included from everyone, in different cultures and different experiences, and I'm really, really excited for this interview. It's such a different nuance that we've discussed before in living in a family and having alienation present, even though the family stays together. So just to give people a little bit of contextualization, when we first had our conversation, I was trying to understand exactly what alienation looked like in your life and I had a preconceived judgment like alienation means the parents are separated, that the family system has broken down, and when you started talking about it, you're like, hey, my family stayed together and alienation was still present. So just give us like a two or three minute scenario of what your life looked like while the family stayed together and how alienation manifested.

Speaker 1: 8:11

Wow, yes, very nice question.

Speaker 1: 8:14

And how can I answer that in two, three minutes? So it's gonna be a challenge. Yes, my parents have been married, and still for over 30, 40 years I think. They've been always arguing over repeated petty issues, never resolved. They went to family counseling but never continued on a regular basis and so I felt like I was split to choose sides.

Speaker 1: 8:42

Father was mostly career driven and absent in the child rearing practices. I think mother took on the whole role, being both maybe a father and mother, but as a consequence she may have felt like children are her property. So I guess because first main caregiver is the most critical, I think to survive first I had to kind of side with the mother. So in a way I was torn, I was split. I couldn't love both of my parents at the same time. I think I felt ashamed or I felt under pressure. If I love my father, approach my father, my mother didn't give good reactions, I think, but it was all unconscious.

Speaker 1: 9:31

I wasn't fully aware of what was happening at the time. Of course, it's only now or in the last few years I can see the picture as I'm taking psychoanalysis in the last three, four years, three, four times a week and doing my inner work with spiritual recovery program and 12 steps programs and many other things. I think I felt strained as if my parents dysfunctional relationship I had internalized in my mind so it was replaying in my mind all the time and straining me inside and in the external relationships with friends, with romantic partners I was having. I was replaying and reenacting my parents life, probably to find the solution, a cure to rescue them, to help them become again a functional again, not again, but for the first time a functional parents. I felt like a driving force of a dead marriage, driving, pulling force of a dead marriage, trying to revive the dead, rescue mother from the so-called in quote, villain father.

Speaker 1: 10:35

I remember in my childhood I told my mother I'm going to invent a flying car and well, that's a plane. I didn't know, I didn't say it that way, but so I guess I don't know, for some reason I think I internalized my mother's lens and through which I look at the world and saw my, saw the world in her lens, seeing my father probably as the villain and my father probably may be alienated himself unknowingly and be known to him. Sorry, I will cut short. I don't know. I can go to all lengths.

Speaker 2: 11:07

I think that's a that's a wonderful answer and a great setting at the table, and there's so many nuances and interesting things you said, so I'm just going to touch on a couple of them. The first one you said is that your mom was like the primary caregiver and that she kind of like, took on the role of like both parents, so that became like your place that you had to lean into and feel safe, because she was holding both of those spaces and there really wasn't space for your emotional system to connect with your dad in a different way because she was taken all those roles over, correct? Is that what you said?

Speaker 1: 11:40

Yes, I think I thought I glorified my mother as the all good object, all good person. So when something I think didn't work well, I felt maybe I blamed myself for it, I must be the reason for it. I think that now I am understanding. Looking back, looking back retrospectively, my mother saw her in me, saw her ideal son image in me and dismissed and disregarded the rest in me she couldn't or didn't want to see because that wasn't probably working and serving her agenda or how she see the world.

Speaker 2: 12:21

and yeah, that's a fascinating point you bring up again. Like she really liked a certain part of you, the certain part of you that actually soothed her nervous system and, at the same time, was a surrogate for her nervous system to go out and do some of her work in the family system. Right, yes, yes, that's correct. You also mentioned, when you were letting us know a little bit about your story, that this was subconscious, like you weren't even aware of it, like it was like someone installing these buttons, secret buttons, in you, and then they just started to push these buttons without you even knowing and you just, kind of like, lived your life for a long time like this until you started doing your work, but you didn't even realize that you were a surrogate and part of the system. That was kind of like pushing your father away and just keeping all the energy around your mom.

Speaker 1: 13:11

Yes, I think I was. I didn't know at the time. But maybe my mother was reenacting her own issues and traumas from her past where I felt now, looking back, I was maybe my mother's daughter and my mother's mother passed away earlier, so when she was maybe 10 or 12 and she had to take care of her and I felt that she had a mother wound. That was my feeling. That she didn't process the mourning and so she reenacted that whatever happened between them unfinished businesses through me. So I was made maybe her daughter in a way, not son. So that was, I think, being replayed and I tried to reach out.

Speaker 1: 13:58

Reach to my father a few times also. He wanted to spend time alone, isolated, in his room. When I invited, when we made plans going out for a beer or for some drinks, he kindly at the last minute said that he wants to watch soccer or news instead. So I think I felt like I tried also when I wanted to. But father was also for his reasons that I'm not also fully sure. He's like a little bit black box to me, a mysterious guy. He also liked isolation and he was also physically absent and emotionally absent too. But I feel now that my father may have more capacity and even or willingness in himself, buried emotionally, that he can connect actually, but he just doesn't know how.

Speaker 2: 14:49

So I'm really curious about this whole idea that we're kind of talking about and uncovering here the idea of alienation or estrangement in a family system that hasn't fallen apart. And I'm curious culturally, like in Turkey, like do families stay together and divorce is not really that common or welcome, or is divorce just just like it is in the States, where it's pretty rampant?

Speaker 1: 15:16

I think, as in most of the countries worldwide today, divorce rates in Turkey is also increasing and quite rampant. But my parents, I think, having come from smaller, smaller cities, they grew up in smaller cities, their background is more traditional and Turkey as a country overall, I actually relatively maybe to Europe is, of course, more conservative. But my parents were also, in comparison to more modern people in Turkey, I think they had their reasons. They had their fears. My mother said she stayed married for her children, which later events to me show that it wasn't the only reason, or maybe not even the first reason.

Speaker 1: 16:03

I think people need some object constancy in life to feel safe and my take is that my parents were so afraid of many things in their own upbringing and childhood with their traumas that wasn't resolved at all and they even met in debt. Even debt, marriage or death together in death meant to them some safety, some form of safety, that they didn't want it to be a part and they were afraid of maybe, loneliness, allocation of inheritance, because material is quite a topic, a priority for my father and maybe for both. So there's fears, loneliness, familiar habits, strong habits of being together for 40 years in the same swamp, the inheritance, sharing maybe, and what society would say. You know the look of the look of society on videos, whether my mother can. May need to change social circle, may find new circle of friends. So all those reasons may have played out.

Speaker 2: 17:11

The thing that I'm really trying to get to, that I'm having a little bit of a hard time is like alienation, estrangement, like this disconnection from from your father and your mom getting most of your attention and you kind of been like a surrogate to act out in the family, maybe even against your father. Like I'm really trying to dig into the nuances of like the alienation in a family system that doesn't fall apart. So when we first spoke we were digging into this a little bit and like I'm trying to express to the audience like like how does the family system look when alienation is present but the parents aren't divorced? Like what? How would you describe that in your system?

Speaker 1: 17:52

So actually I'm really curious. I want to ask you, lawrence, what focal point, what's the focus you like, the more delving to. I think, but I'm not sure exactly.

Speaker 2: 18:04

Yeah, and I think for the audience and for my curiosity, like once we had our initial conversation and like I'm thinking, like most families that are experienced in alienation, there's a acrimonious divorce, the families are separated, there's two different camps and after our conversation, like I'm realizing like alienation affects every single family system to some degree, right, like there's always some inner talk and there's always some jockeying in the family for a position and it's just part of life and part of just natural dysfunction that we all have.

Speaker 2: 18:38

But within your family system we had spoke that you were kind of like a surrogate for your mother's emotions If I want to relate that to alienation like she was alienating you unbeknownst from your father by needing all the soothing and wanting all your attention and also must. Probably removing her attention when she wasn't getting enough of your attention is kind of like a punishment. So I'm just curious what that dynamic look like in the house. Like how did that work? How did mom get all your attention? How did she react when you went a little bit closer to your dad? How did she pull you back in? Like does that make more sense?

Speaker 1: 19:17

Yes, yes, yes, definitely. It makes a lot, a lot sense. Thank you for the questions. It's a very, very nice question. I think I there may have been.

Speaker 1: 19:26

There may be emotional incest that's played out. That's kind of made me feel dependent on my mother as if I'm married to her, so I shouldn't even consider like going far away for a long time. For example, in my childhood she was every 30 minutes. She was shouting from the window when I was playing with my peers and I was taking that message, as my mother needs her emotions regulated, she feels lonely, she needs me and in a way, as a child when I need a safe heaven, I only had my mother, who needs safe heaven from me, from her child, and so and there we were sharing bed until I was 14, which is quite a late age and when I was taking showers, sometimes she was entering the bathroom without knocking the door and urinating, and generally she never knocked the door. I don't remember her knocking my door when I was in my room.

Speaker 1: 20:22

So there were boundary issues. My mother, I think, didn't know, didn't recognize maybe her own two boundaries at all of anyone. So and just lately, and also I think she unconsciously or unknowingly bred some maybe enmity between me and my brother and father, like she was critisized, criticizing or making me feel guilty or shameful when I say in teenage time I needed a laptop from a father and father's stingy, he's not very generous, so I need to take some time for a week to convince him for that. But in the end when he says yes, and then let's say I'm closer to my father, not for that reason because I want to be closer to my father, naturally, and she can sometimes says, when they are, if they argue over something, that she can say something to make me feel guilty, as if oh yes, your father purchased that, of course, now you're gonna side with him in this argument. So I felt I had to arbitre, witness their arguments all the time, even if that wasn't enough, because I think children shouldn't need to see and shouldn't see their parents arguing these people they want to love the most. And on top of that I had to take sides and be arbiter because I don't know. I was just trying to, I think, make them have some peace with each other. So, and yes, so lately, when I spent, for example, in the last few months, I spent a few days with my father and uncle in a holiday cottage they rented.

Speaker 1: 21:57

I called my mother just to convey the message that I didn't forget her, because she may feel envious, she may feel abandoned and she wasn't available at the time and generally, as envious as she was, as I remember her, she would put aside anything she would be doing and take the. I mean she took the call but she would just keep communicating with me. So that day she didn't turn to my call, or the next day. And so after two months she didn't turn to my call. And on my birthday, on the 16th of September, for the first time.

Speaker 1: 22:33

For my mother, birthdays are very special. She always celebrates and she didn't celebrate my birthday and since 16th of September actually, I've been going through a lot of distress or sadness for that. To me that was like if I told her that she would deny. But that was punitive, a divisive action, because she felt that I abandoned her. I chose my father. No, I was just. I'm just making up the time I couldn't spend with my father in the past in comparison to maybe 30 years of enmeshment with mother. Well, that is.

Speaker 2: 23:07

That is that is powerful and I think this is a really important thing. In parental alienation, estrangement or racial whatever anyone out there is struggling with, is this punitive nature, this control mechanism that we see people use and it's usually withdrawing of love to control someone else. Especially when kids are young, like the parent, that has a tendency or some kind of trauma. Alienation is going to withdraw their love because it's kind of like even like a drug, like the kids experiencing some kind of dopamine reaction from getting that constant checking in every five minutes, like you spoke about. And when the mom stops checking in or the dad or whoever happens to be a parent, whatever gender it is, stops checking in, the kid system starts to shut down and they get really anxious and it's really fascinating, like at 35 years old, that mechanism is still installed in you and you're still feeling that anxiety now. Right that that's fascinating how deep it's in our nervous systems and it doesn't necessarily ever go away.

Speaker 1: 24:03

Yeah, lawrence. Unfortunately, I would rather be somewhere else. Maybe I mean I'm happy to be here, but that's still in the nervous system.

Speaker 2: 24:13

Yes, that can still have a very play in my life, and hopefully decreasingly so yeah, and I just want to like normalize this Like I didn't have alienation in my family system with my parents and stuff like that. But my nervous system is still completely tapped into my mother's nervous system, in vitro, preverbal. I used to soothe my mother and now, at 53 years old, like there's that tendency to want to go over there and soothe her and make sure that she's okay and do all these things, and a lot of times I just watch it in my head and I'm able to take a different action but the first idea is like, oh no, something bad's happening to my mother. I need to fix, save or take care of her, so. So again, this affects every single family and alienation and estrangement goes to the far ends of the balkor. But in between, like every family and every relationship is experiencing this to some sort of degree.

Speaker 2: 25:09

You mentioned a really provocative word, which is emotional incest. You know, and I don't know if the audience out there has really heard this before, but I was working with a somatic therapist and we were doing inner child work and he said like there was emotional incest in your life and this is my personal life with my mom, and again it was the idea of regulating her nervous system and generally. The limbic attunement when a child is born, or even in the belly, comes from the parent to the child, with the parents taking care of the child and, in something that's got a dysfunctional detachment or trauma, the child is taking care of the parent and that's what I understand as emotional incest. For me, is that the same thing that you're talking about?

Speaker 1: 25:55

Yes, I think it's along the lines of what you said, lawrence, that the chemistry is embedded. It's as if the mother just handed over her emotional system and how her mind operates, her shame, fears, guilt, traumas as if I just took on, as if it was mine completely. There was no other room for me to explore my life, so I can only play in the room that she allocated to me, and that was like a matriska doll, you know a doll. In the matriska. I was still maybe in her womb, in a way connected to her emotional limbic system, and it's like parentification. And the sad thing is what saddens me and hurts me the most is the very people that I like. I'm sorry. Why am I checking this? Sorry.

Speaker 2: 26:41

I'm checking my perfection. What's going on? Oh, is that what's happening? I thought you were.

Speaker 1: 26:48

I want to give you the perfect answers you know.

Speaker 2: 26:52

I love that and it's so important to say that live and I think this was probably going to be the best part of the podcast is we all want to be perfect and if we think we're perfect, then everything's going to be okay, because it's the way we regulate our spaces. So I appreciate you telling me what was going on and thank you, yeah, and let's just laugh and talk about what's really happening in our bodies and I think that will be the most authentic podcast we can do together. It's going to be imperfect and messy and maybe dirty, but I love that. Thank you for bringing that humanity and vulnerability into the conversation. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 27:27

Well, I think the love wasn't existential. I didn't probably feel enough or at all an existential love, so it was only conditional. And for children to survive they need any love whatsoever, in any form. And the love was given conditionally on the basis of external achievements, in form of grades. So I had to constantly prove myself through external achievements to earn, deserve love, to prove I'm self worthy, and I think that led me almost to my suicide or to my demise in my relationships, because it's just not how it goes.

Speaker 1: 28:03

I just need to feel worthy for no other reason than I exist, and I think that's what parents need to have their children feel by birth. Just your coming into my world is enough of a reason for you to feel loved and be. You know, I need no other reason than that, that just you're, just my child. But in my, I think, upbringing it wasn't like that at all. It was, on the contrary. I had to. I had to be seen by society before I could be seen by my parents, because my parents were living their life also according to societal expectations or scripts. So this was a. So they were playing a perfect image in the society, but actually underneath there were warped. It was warped broken layers and I felt like I was carrying the burden of those warped broken layers in my life. I was paying the price, yeah.

Speaker 2: 28:57

Again. Another wonderful interesting point you bring up that comes up in a lot of different conversations is this idea before alienation, during alienation, estrangement like people on the outside look at the family and they see a really pretty picture, but underneath the pretty picture is like all the dysfunction that you're talking about and no one's really addressing. But people are just playing their roles and then eventually you know, something cracks or something shifts. So I think that's a I think that's a wonderful point point that you're making something really poignant to think about. And I just want to take a step back for one second. You said you went on a trip with your father and your uncle and on that trip with your father and your uncle were you able to connect? Does it feel like it's shifting and changing now as you're doing your own work and maturing a little bit? Or what is that like now with your dad?

Speaker 1: 29:46

I think it's not as genuine and heartfelt yet, if ever it's still we are tolerating each other, but tolerating better, that we kind of recognize each other as more red lines and boundaries and so, you know, we kind of respect more how to how to respond to each other. But I would say, okay, that's actually a beautiful question, lawrence, because I'm not sure if I mentioned to you in this podcast, but it's because, lawrence, I'm not sure when I complain about my mother's divisive, punitive approach before in the past or lately to my father, my father condones or normalizes it. It's a mother, it's sacred, like not sacred, but it's my take but sacred motherhood can't be questioned kind of thing you know, especially in this culture Mediterranean, maybe more or so, and this is so weird. Actually, I'm alienated to my father and maybe my father is alienated to me. But what I'm envious of maybe PAA and the parents is that they are trying to do the work and reach out to their alienated children, as I understand. But whereas in my situation I feel like I'm the only one who's aware in this parents, with this parents, I'm trying to do all the work on my own and trying to make a point to my father and he's trying to normalize debuts like father.

Speaker 1: 31:10

You're maybe alienated to me. Maybe you will have really nice time with me. Have you ever imagined that possibility? So yeah, but because I'm aware I think it helps, at least I can tell my father. Father, could you please, then, rather than abuse I mean rather than condone the abuse could you please think that I'm happy that you want to spend more time with me, and I understand your story, that your mother didn't call you on the birthday and you felt that it was a punishment. I understand, I hear you and I'm happy that you want to spend time with me. I want to spend time with you too, father, could you please approach this this way? That's what I would love to hear from you.

Speaker 2: 31:51

All right, so you have a longing for your dad to be emotionally available and accessible to you, and also heard something that you say about that.

Speaker 2: 31:59

You're the only one that's doing work and you come in as an alienated child and working with these really interesting and challenging dynamics. And I come in as an alienated parent and that's an interesting mirror right, because I'm feeling in my family system that I'm the only one that's really doing the deep work and that's with my children that I'm alienated from, that's with my one daughter that I'm connected to and that's also with my mom going in the opposite direction. I still feel like I'm the primary person doing all the work and early in recovery I wanted them to change and now it's gotten a lot easier because I don't need them to change Like I'm okay, like I'm separate entity from them, whether it's my children or my mother, in either direction. And early on I was still enmeshed and codependent and had those buttons installed in all different directions and wanted people to be different. Did I even ask you a question or did I just talk for a bunch of seconds? I'm not quite sure.

Speaker 1: 33:01

No, it's so nice to hear your experience, Lawrence. Please continue as you like.

Speaker 2: 33:06

Yes, I guess my question is for you is like it sounds like you're trying to convince your father of what your mother has done to you and you want him to acknowledge that. I'm curious why that feels really important to you.

Speaker 1: 33:21

I think maybe before I was just conditioned to see masculinity in general maybe as the villain or as the enmity, this toxic masculinity and authoritarian masculine.

Speaker 1: 33:36

I think I want to activate more and more the masculine traits in me. Spending more time with my father, I want to learn masculinity from him and there is a I don't know there is a longing, strong longing for a father figure that I want to make up from my past. So instead, when my father is not there, I have my fortunately uncles from my father's side. So I think it's very crucial, lawrence, when this alienation is happening, that one has a support system from 12 steps, but also from the parents' relatives that hears and sees you. So in a way, you know, in this dysfunctional parents, there is this don't trust, don't feel, don't talk rule. For many years I'm exposing that I'm getting out of it, and so it's so nice that I have some support system my uncles from my father's side, from my mother, from my mostly from my father's side, yeah, but also from my mother's side. There is a place that I can go and stay.

Speaker 2: 34:37

Yeah, I'm loving that you have the support from your, from your uncles, and that sounds like it's really dear and important to you. But I'm still there's this thing that I'm a little confused about like you want your dad to hear about your perception and your lived experiences with your mother, and it feels like it's important to you and I'm curious why is it important for your dad to have that part of a shared reality with you, to agree or even to acknowledge that that happened? Wow, that was intense. That's a lot of information and a lot of nuances in there that we don't necessarily get to dig into or hear all the time. And, man, I'm so interested to understand how this lands with you, the audience. So please send me an email at familydisappearthedgmailcom asking any clarifying questions, giving me some feedback. If that sounded good, does it feel too much? Does it feel like you want more? And if you have any questions for Jaehoon and you want him to expand on anything, just put that in the subject title in the email and we'll make sure we get it to him so he can respond. And please like the show, share, subscribe.

Speaker 2: 35:44

You know, join the Facebook groups for PAA, which is Parental Alienation Anonymous, and again, it's a free 12-step program. There's 14 meetings a week. I think we have three or four new ones starting up. There'll be a new one starting in January for children, adults, young adults that have been alienated or working through that process, but it'll be a safe space for just those folks and so much more and a bunch of great links in the show notes. And finally, we are a 501C3 non-profit and in order for this podcast to be brought to you and to be continued to be brought to you, we need your support, and there's a fundraising link that is finally active in the show notes. I ask you to please donate and then donate what you can. There's this amount in there you can pick from, or you can do something a little bit more generous if you have the resources, or you can become a monthly donor. So please help participate so we can continue doing what we're doing, and thank you for your support and the outreach from the community has been phenomenal.

Speaker 2: 36:46

There's also a link in the show notes for the podcast crew. Click on that, give us feedback, ask to be on the show. We've got a bunch of really exciting stuff coming up in season two that you can actually be part of. So that's enough out of me and thank you, and I love you and have a beautiful day and we will see you in the neighborhood. Thanks for taking the time to join me on this episode of Family Disappeared Podcast. Do you know someone who can benefit from what we're discussing on today's episode? If so, please share this podcast with them and anyone else in your community that might be interested in changing their lives. Together we'll continue the exploring, growing and healing journey. I will see you on our next episode. Until then, happy days to all.