Navigating the Legal System Through a “Child-Centric Approach” With Expert Cathy Himlin Part 1 - Episode 48

Ever wonder how to support children caught in the turmoil of high-conflict divorce and custody battles? Join us as we host Cathy Himlin, a seasoned licensed marriage and family therapist, who shares her profound insights into family therapy within the court system. Through her child-centric approach, Cathy reveals the intricacies of helping children reconnect with rejected parents, offering listeners a unique look into her innovative modalities for mending broken relationships, and her specialized parenting class designed to aid rejected parents.

Navigating the complex world of court-involved family therapy can be daunting, but Cathy demystifies this challenging landscape. Learn about the "list of three" method for selecting therapists and the ethical dilemmas professionals often face. Cathy highlights the importance of maintaining clear boundaries and a child-focused approach, steering clear of controversial reunification practices. We also discuss significant legislative changes in California that are shaping the future of family therapy, emphasizing the importance of supporting and repairing family bonds without causing harm.

The journey doesn't end when children become young adults. Discover the ongoing efforts parents make to maintain connections with their children even into their mid-20s and beyond. Simple acts like sending cards can have a profound impact, even if initially met with rejection. We introduce the Rejected Parents Newsletter (which you can sign up for on Cathy's website),  packed with strategies for mending strained relationships. Drawing parallels between attachment issues in foster care and those in high-conflict divorces, this episode offers valuable insights into fostering resilience and healthy family dynamics. Don't miss this enlightening discussion on therapeutic approaches in family conflict.

Cathy Himlin - www.himlinconsulting.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Like I really think to do this work you really have to understand one, the dynamics of a high conflict divorce or custody dispute. Two, the expectations and the legal expectations and the expectations of a judge or a courtroom and how the parties treat the whole thing. If you don't understand all the intricacies of that, this is not normal therapy. I joke with colleagues who want to learn from me, like how to do this type of therapy. This is family therapy on steroids and you have to understand court dynamics to know how to navigate the system a little bit so you can do your therapy within, you know, protected room.

Speaker 2: 0:38

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.

Speaker 2: 1:08

Welcome to the Family Disappeared podcast. Hi, my name is Lawrence Joss and welcome to the Family Disappeared podcast. And today we have a true superhero on the podcast. Her name is Kathy Himlin. She is a psychologist, she works in the court system, she has worked in the foster care system, so she has a tremendous amount of information and a wonderful child-centric approach to working in the court system, to working in therapy. A lot of great, great, great information on this podcast Definitely something you want to listen through.

Speaker 2: 1:41

She has a newsletter that I'll share during the podcast. That's free, free consultations, all kinds of good stuff for you folks to to chew on and maybe get something out of. And, uh, if you're new to the community, welcome to the community. Uh, we're a 501c3 nonprofit, so there's a link in the chat. If you want to support the nonprofit, we can use your funds to keep expanding the services that we offer and we are a peer-to-peer run. This podcast has got a bunch of different people working behind the scenes to make it possible. We also have a free 12-step program, which is a support group for alienated parents and grandparents and alienated young adults or adults that have had contact with their parents or grandparents. And I'm using alienated, but it's estranged, it's erased, it's disconnected. The words are irrelevant, I just happen to use that word because it generates a little bit of energy and sometimes it's useful and sometimes it's divisive. But this is going to be an awesome show. Hang on tight and if you're driving, put on your seatbelt and let's jump right on in.

Speaker 2: 2:45

So I would say when I first started struggling with my kids and getting access to my kids and what was going on and I didn't really understand anything like I started talking to different therapists and to different people and we're trying to figure out what to do next. You know what I mean and some of the mirroring I got back, even from therapists was crazy making Like I would tell them something. They'd skip over some information that I gave them and then there'd be in some other place that wasn't useful to the kids, and I wasn't educated enough to really understand what was happening in the family system or or what was happening just in the therapeutic setting. So, um, I finally found some really good therapists that could show up and be present, that were child centric, that could really help me, and it was really about me learning about what was going on. It was about me understanding what energy and what I was, when to get therapy, where to get therapy, how to advocate for yourself, how to best advocate for your children and how to also work through.

Speaker 2: 3:50

Some of the damage that you've done has been life-changing, and I am so grateful for those people that I've popped into that have saved my life. Thank you, thank you for your expertise, the time you've taken and everything else you've done to help push the ball forward a little bit. And with that, let's jump into this really cool, interactive, fascinating conversation with Kathy. So, kathy, it's so great to have you on the show today and, just for the audience to get to know you, can you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you.

Speaker 1: 4:19

Sure, I'm Kathy Himlin from Himlin Consulting, and thank you for having me on your show. I'm Kathy Himland from Himland Consulting, and thank you for having me on your show. This is great, lawrence. What I am is a licensed marriage and family therapist and professional clinical counselor, and I specialize in working with families who have children who reject one parent, usually in high conflict, divorce or custody disputes, and I've been doing a lot of work with these families for over a decade and I've developed a modality of how to help these families reconnect with each other or the children and the parents reconnect, and supporting the parents and how to reach their children in a way that the children may receive them better. I have a parenting class that I've developed based on that same modality, to help the parent who I call is the rejected parent and I just I love helping and supporting parents and kids that have broken relationships. I want to help repair and heal those relationships.

Speaker 2: 5:17

Well, thank you for that introduction and I know you have a lot of years in this field and a lot of different experiences. I'm going to go in a couple different directions so we can give the community as much useful information as possible. And, just continuing on with your introduction, can you elaborate a little bit on your child-centered approach when it comes to dealing with the kids and what that looks like?

Speaker 1: 5:39

So there's different stages of what we call, you know, court and ball family therapy, and the child centered approach is when I really, you know, sit down alone with the kids, as we would anyways, and as a therapist, as an intake. But I go a little bit beyond that and I try to find out why. Why is it that they're rejecting their parent? I don't put them in the room with a parent right away, like some. Some models are like that where you see a therapist and then immediately the child and the parents in the room together.

Speaker 1: 6:08

I spend time with that child to build trust and rapport.

Speaker 1: 6:11

I want them to have a voice and I want them to feel safe and I want to really understand what it is that's making them not want to see the parent, and so, with that on top of that, so I'm looking at developmental needs and stages wherever they're at.

Speaker 1: 6:25

I'm looking at their perspective on the situation, because kids get things in their heads that have nothing to do with the adults in the situation either. So I try to understand, like, what's going on with them and just emotionally and psychologically, where are they at, what are they needing? What are they needing from the other parent? What didn't they get or what do they need more of, so we can help them get their needs met. And so by doing that, instead of just doing traditional family therapy and treating the parties as almost equals, we really focus on the children's needs emotionally, psychologically and perspective developmentally, versus trying to get them to see how their parents are feeling, because they're kids and we've got this power differential and they really need their parents to show up emotionally and see what they're going through. So that's child-centered to me.

Speaker 2: 7:17

Well, yeah, I love that Really centering the child's needs and figuring out developmentally where they are, what they're processing, what's stuck in their head. And is this something that's a court-ordered intervention or is this just like a regular therapy that people would come directly to you for?

Speaker 1: 7:31

It's both. I do work with high-conflict divorce and custody dispute cases, though, so a lot of times the cases I work with are court-ordered. Sometimes people seek out my services that haven't even been involved in courts yet because they're already having a rejection happening within the family. So it's both.

Speaker 2: 7:50

And within the court-ordered therapy, because there's a lot of different age ranges of kids that are struggling with some kind of rejection or whatever particular word. Alienation, estrangement or whatever word we're going to use is not really important, but just the idea that there's different ages. Estrangement or racial, whatever word we're going to use is not really important, but just the idea that there's different ages. Does the court let you sit with kids only between a certain age or is it pretty much any age? Child will have the opportunity, if it's court ordered, to actually get to sit with you for this intake and this building of trust with you.

Speaker 1: 8:20

Sure, yeah, I've worked as young as three-year-olds and up all the way through teenage Only minors. Right now it's rare that I'll have an adult. That's a whole different group of parents with adult children who are rejecting them. But yes, three-year-olds and up stipulate it's up to me clinically whether I decide how often I see a child, how often I see one of the parents, and I do have to work with both parents separately, because the one parent who may have full custody or most of the time they see more in the center of the child's life, I call them the central parent. I still need to work with them, but I don't put the parents in the same room, especially in a highly contentious divorce. But, yeah, it isn't a matter of them letting me. It's that, that's my requirement, that's my modality and so if they want to work with me, that's how I work and everyone in, at least in San Diego, that knows me knows that's how I work.

Speaker 1: 9:15

I'm very clear on my paperwork and I have them actually sign a stipulation allowing me to make the decision on when I see either parent and when I put the child and the parent together. So I don't have court, not the court as in the judge, but just the court process interfering with the therapeutic process. I want to keep court away from my therapy room, even though it's court ordered. So I want free reign on how I do this, because every case is different. It's so complex, it's not black and white at all, it's not simple. There's no simple answers to these things, and it takes a lot of time for me to untangle and tease out what the real problem is, because sometimes I get told one thing in the beginning and other things come up later.

Speaker 2: 9:58

Yeah, and I love that you're very explicit and very clear about your paperwork and keeping the court out of the therapy room. That sounds really really useful. Clear about your paperwork and keeping the court out of the therapy room that sounds really really useful. And I see a lot of times where therapists don't necessarily have those boundaries or those explicit frameworks of what they're working with, which tends to create more harm than good, sometimes bringing the therapist into a situation like that. Do you see that happening often?

Speaker 1: 10:20

I hear stories because sometimes I'm not the first court-involved family therapist to be involved with a family like they've been to a few other people.

Speaker 1: 10:28

Sometimes I'm not the last either, but I do hear stories of how there are some therapists that I call them court-informed. I really think to do this work you really have to understand one, the dynamics of a high conflict divorce or custody dispute. Two, the expectations and the legal expectations and the expectations of a judge or a courtroom and how the parties treat the whole thing, want to learn from you, like how to do this type of therapy. This is family therapy on steroids and you have to understand court dynamics to to know how to navigate the system a little bit so you can do your therapy within, you know, protected room. So, yeah, I do have really clear boundaries and sometimes I'm even ordered to do things that's unethical and I have to say no because and I did in one case where I said I apologize, your Honor However, I have to answer to the State Board of the Board of Behavioral where family law ends or where your licensing intersects with that. It's just two different laws, so that's happened before.

Speaker 2: 11:54

Yeah, and again, just the boundaries, saying no. Having agency and seeing therapists that are really prepared and able to navigate the spaces is wonderful to hear, because we don't always hear the positive stories and I would say, like, when it's a court ordered therapy, is it something that the judge is ordering Go see this particular therapist, or the parents going out and finding you as a resource therapist and then introducing you to the court system? How does that part work?

Speaker 1: 12:22

Well, usually they will ask Well, there's a couple of ways. One party, like the judge, will say this parent A, pick three therapists, and parent B, you get to pick one of those three therapists. That's how it's usually done. Sometimes the judge doesn't make, or the court doesn't make, an order at all, and so they just work it out. Judges tend to not recommend one particular person because that would be bias, I think I'm not sure. So they put it on the parties, but they set up something like that. So we call it the list of three. So I often end up on a list of three.

Speaker 1: 12:53

I have a 30% chance of being on that case. I never know. I had someone look at the title of the book I'm about to read lately and go I don't want her on this case because she's favoring the parent who's getting a kid. That's rejecting them. It made no sense and that's fine. I mean I'm. I'm here to support both parents. It doesn't seem like it, but I am here to support both parents too. But yeah, that's how they. That's how they pick us Usually.

Speaker 2: 13:20

I love when I hear a little tidbits like the list of three. I'm like what is that? You know it sounds spicy, but thank you, thank you for sharing that. I think that's really useful for a lot of us. And this child centered approach in the court system. Is this different than reunification or is this your approach to reunification and just packaged a little bit differently?

Speaker 1: 13:41

Right? Well, this is my approach to reunification. And in California, the state of California, governor Newsom I forgot the name of the bill exactly but now we're technically we're not supposed to even use the word reunification. That's only for dependency cases. So I don't even say that word anymore because it's because of the reunification camps that were happening and there's been a lot of legislation against those, which I have nothing to do with that.

Speaker 1: 14:05

So, yeah, this therapy, technically, in other states they call it reunification therapy. That's why I say now in our county we say conjoint therapy and now we're even getting rid of that word. I think I heard in a meeting a couple of months ago with some judges. So what we're doing is what I'm doing. I don't know what everyone else is doing is. I'm calling it court involved family therapy, because that's a safe word. That's all it is. I'm just here to help repair our family relationships. I'm not here to force anyone to do anything. I can't force anyone to do anything anyways, even if I wanted to. So I'm here to do therapy, not cause harm, because I don't want to be associated with that camp, and that's a whole different camp and there's a lot of people against the work that's being done in what's called reunification therapy. So I'm over here, child centered, just helping out, supporting everybody, if I can.

Speaker 2: 14:58

I'd love to hear that, because there's a lot of people in our community that have tried reunification and just pulling their hair out and frustration and not going anywhere and really, really painful process for all stakeholders, you know, not just for one particular parent or just the kids, like it just seems like a crazy making situation where the court's so involved that nothing necessarily moves in a useful direction. So I love that there's this other approach, that's child centered. And he also brought up the idea of Newsom's new law and you know like there's like rumors or misinformation going around that reunification is gone. You can never have this kind of therapy with your kids and you're saying, no, that was just not a useful word. There was camps, there was some stuff going on that wasn't necessarily in the best interest of the children and that's why the law was changed. But there's still these modalities available that a child sends to help people through the court process. Sure, that a child sends to help people through the court process.

Speaker 1: 15:48

Sure, and you know, if they want they separate and label it for dependency court, which is where foster kids are. They can do that I can work with. I have the scope to be able to work with families that have kids in foster care as well and we can call that reunification therapy. But I guess there's now they've drawn a line and either way you slice it, for me I handle the cases the same. It they've drawn a line and either way you slice it, for me I handle the cases the same. It's just a label in my mind.

Speaker 1: 16:12

I don't, but it's the forcing thing that's gotten attached to the word reunification that's made it a negative thing, because there is has been some situations where kids have been pulled from their beds in the middle of the night and forced to go to these camps and it's not a healthy thing to do, you know, in my opinion so, and I'm not a part of that group. But on, when you look on social media and I, you know I've jumped on and looked at a few things and they'll say, if you're doing reunification therapy, and then they associate it. There's a lot of misunderstanding around that word. They'll associate it with that kind of thing and it's. I've never been doing that kind of thing, so I've always been doing what I do right now, that kind of thing. So I've always been doing what I do right now, even though we technically called it reunification therapy for a little bit.

Speaker 2: 16:51

Yeah, oh, I love that and I think it's so incredibly useful. And so many people get attached to a word, whether it's reunification, parental alienation, whatever the word is and the word is not important. It's the work that we're doing to help support families and help support children, and I really want to like stress that to anyone out there that's listening to the podcast or maybe the first time. This is about getting healthy. This is about changing the course of our lives and supporting our kids and before we started the interview, you mentioned to me that you don't use the word parental alienation in court because it has stigma and different stuff around that. Can you just talk to that for a couple minutes? Because a lot of parents get frustrated when they go in because they think I got this word, this is it, this is the golden egg or whatever it is, and this is going to change the course of court, but it's it's not useful in most cases and from your experience. Can you just talk to that for a couple minutes?

Speaker 1: 17:39

Sure, I mean it's, it's a thing in the literature. It's really a hot topic in social media, from what I can tell. And if I was to go into a courtroom because I considered a professional witness as well, so if I was an expert witness, if I was to go in on the stand and I use that word I will probably my testimony might be thrown out and become not credible. So I don't use. There's a lot of what do you call it? There's a lot of conflict in the psychological community around that word too. There's it's polarized, and then it's all hot with the social media, like I said, so I don't use it. But you know, set that word aside.

Speaker 1: 18:17

There's behaviors that happen and and part of what I teach and support the parent who's being rejected by a child is the other parent, who I call the central parent Cause. Again, they're the center, more of the center of that child's life right now. They may be doing some things inadvertently to drive the child away from the parent. They may be actually saying direct things like don't see that parent. There could be a bunch of reasons why, and that's one thing I front load in the beginning of a case that I'm working on or in my parenting class that I work on, because it's not just this evil person who's trying to drive your child away from you. There are so many reasons why a child rejects a parent and sometimes it's just internal to the child and wherever they're at again, developmentally in how they view the world. Sometimes it's little things, like they overheard a conversation on the phone that that central parent didn't mean to happen. It doesn't take much right. So I think that in all the cases I've seen to say a derogatory remark about your co-parent, pretty much I haven't met anybody yet and maybe there's people out there that have done it, that have been perfectly never thrown the other parent under the bus Not one. I haven't met one yet and I've been doing this a long time. So it's on a continuum or sort of like have you done it a few times and you're trying your best and you just sort of leaked over here, or are you over here actively campaigning against the other parent? So I think it's just on a continuum of how bad it is and I just sit back and I wait to see how it's going to play out in a family.

Speaker 1: 19:53

I don't make those judgments up front. I hear things and I try to correct parents when they are saying negative things about the other parent in front of me, which is they probably shouldn't be doing that in front of a therapist. You could go up on the stand and or they they show the kid like court material or read them reports. And let them read a court report or some like court orders or something. Then I'll I'll take my time to try to correct them and try to show them how it's hurting their child to do that.

Speaker 1: 20:20

But I don't judge them and pathologize them that they're these bad, parental, alienating parents that are mentally ill or all the things that get thrown at these parents over here there's again. They do some of the things they do for a variety of reasons, like anxiety. They've got past trauma, they're projecting a bunch of stuff on the situation and just the simple fact that divorce, custody disputes is so highly charged and traumatic in and of itself just being in the family law system. It's such a trauma for most families and parents that when you're on edge and your limbic system as in your lizard brain or your fight or flight reactions to things are going, you're not logical. You're just like up here, reacting all the time. So there's so many reasons why this happens over here and it's just too too simple of an explanation to say parental alienation is happening. No, no, there's so much more to it than that Way complex.

Speaker 2: 21:18

Yeah, it's definitely, definitely, really, really complex and, yeah, and important, as you're saying, for parents to know that there's a lot of different dynamics going on and us as parents bring all our baggage into the relationship that we co-create and have kids and and we're all responsible. There might be overlaying, trauma, other things going on, but, like for me as a parent that's, you know, doesn't have access to a couple of my kids Like I co-created that family system, I am responsible for some stuff that happened and I'm definitely not perfect. I've definitely done some things that haven't been great and it's important to acknowledge that because that's part of the healing. And I would think, as you're going through the child-centered approach and the parents and the kids are reconnecting that, do you find that when parents is that part of the healing process where parents start to acknowledge their own part and does that somehow help the kids? Or is that not anything that the kids ever really see?

Speaker 1: 22:10

Well, if they're in in my counseling room, in my therapy room, yes, I mean, that's part of it. So I do try to help parents see how have you contributed to help shift their perspective, not to be blaming or doing anything like that, because we all contribute to a family dynamic, or doing anything like that because we all contribute to a family dynamic. It's, again, rare for me to find a parent who really has done hardly anything and those are the ones who have withdrawn. Right, they haven't tried and they've just given up. So that's technically doing something. It gives the child a message that you don't care, but it's not like they did anything wrong. So what I do is I really work with the other parent, the rejected parent, and I call them the peripheral parent. I try to soften the language around it because they're on the periphery, on the child's life in the moment, but they're not the out parent. There's a lot of words that are I'm using, rejected, because that's the name of the book. But what I do with them is I really try to help them see ways to at least validate, have validating language maybe they never used before when we get to put them in the room with a child. So we work on like role playing and teach them active listening skills, validating attunement, so attachment parenting because when we're so upset in a divorce, custody dispute, we're emotional, we're leaking our own negative emotions and we, just as parents, don't see what the kids need. Because we're so much in this crisis and I get it so I try to help them go just like what I do with my boundary to the court. Here's the courtroom and here's your relationship with your child and when you come into this, whoops, sorry. We have to totally be focused on what the child needs and let's show and talk and say things that'll help that child know that you really get them, you really understand where they're at.

Speaker 1: 24:00

I was on a case a long time ago and there was a child that wasn't speaking and this happens a lot and I we were working with this one parent or I was working with them to validate and it's it's, it's emotion coaching. I can go into that if you want me to attachment based emotion coaching and they had some scripts based on what the child had complained to me about, of what they wanted differently, and that's why they weren't seeing the parent Like if I have a child that gives me things, I've got something to work on. If I've got an angry child, I've got something to work on. It's the silent ones that are hard. When we got to the family session, the child was silent and the parent just read their scripts and they genuinely said things that they needed to do to address the issues that the child had presented. And the child said nothing throughout the whole session.

Speaker 1: 24:46

So when that happens, I go well, you're seed planting. You're planting seeds in their brain for later. However, in this session there was a tear that came out of their eye, so I knew that that parent had reached them and that's good. We're not going to get like a 180 degree turnaround child who's just happy jumping up and down, especially a teenager to see their parent after something like this. But it's a matter of correcting past hurts and genuinely showing that they understand their perspective and that's that's that seed planning that I talk about with the parents. So even if we can't like, heal or fix things, so there's some contact.

Speaker 1: 25:25

You know, after those sessions sometimes a lot of times, I think, cause I've been hearing some stories lately in their early to mid twenties they'll come back around. You know, if you've actually tried to do things like that. Or if parents keep trying like they, they don't stop giving birthday cards or presents, or Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever it is. They celebrate and they, they show up at graduations and concerts and events, without, of course, embarrassing their kiddos. If they just keep doing that to show that they still love them, they still care, but not going up after and saying, hey, I'm here just making you know, like send a text, send a note. So things like that make a big difference, because it may be not a good time right here to do it, but it'll sit in them for later, I guess.

Speaker 2: 26:12

Yes, that was a lot of good stuff and just to clarify for the folks listening, like the idea of leaking information is when we're talking to someone and maybe something passive, aggressive slips out, where we say, oh, your parents or your mom or your dad this, and then we say, oh, I'm not going to say anything.

Speaker 2: 26:30

Could be like a real simple explanation of leak. You know, just some information that the kids don't need, that just comes out in a very subtle way, is still really, really harmful. I just wanted to clarify that for the community. And you just said something interesting about birthday cards and stuff like that. When kids are younger and when I'm younger I'm just going to use up until 18, once they turn 18. After 18, where they start to become young adults, and then the early 20s and stuff like that, do you still suggest to parents, even at that age where their cognition is coming on, at 26, 27, like to continue reaching out and continue sending cards, or is there a time that a parent just steps back and gives them that space and that developmental age range?

Speaker 1: 27:18

I haven't given a lot of thought to that, but in my, in my nature, my knee jerk would say, yeah, keep doing it. If I was in that situation myself, I I mean, why stop showing your love and care to a kid? You're still giving them space. They're adults. You're not coming over to their house, knocking on the doors and saying, hey, you should be coming and visiting with me or having contact with me. You're not doing that.

Speaker 1: 27:41

So I think sending a card and showing that you're still thinking of them because the thing is is that at any point in their life they could turn around and go. You didn't care because you stopped. You don't want to give them that. That's one reason. The second, the bigger reason, is continually showing that love and care and it hurts, right, and when you're rejected, to keep doing that must feel awful, because you're sending a card off into the space, this black hole, and there's no feedback, or maybe you get a nasty text or email or phone call back. Right, it's. I think you should just keep showing your love to your kids. That's. I think that's the best thing to do.

Speaker 2: 28:22

Yeah, yeah, that's a. That's an interesting topic and a hot topic and, uh, you know, yeah, for me personally, I sometimes I send stuff and sometimes I just take care of myself and I choose to parent in a different way, by being of service and helping other people. So, yeah, that's a complex question. I was just curious on your take on it and, uh, you had shared with me that you actually have a I think you call it the rejected parents newsletter for folks to learn different things that are going on best practices, other tips or strategies that you can give folks. Can you talk about that for a couple seconds here?

Speaker 1: 28:56

Oh sure, I started that several months ago. I'm actually carving out little bits of my book that I'm writing and putting it in a newsletter. So we're talking about you know, there's reasons why your children reject you and there's a couple of newsletters that go through a lot of the reasons why they do. And then, like recently, if I can remember the recent one that I did, what I'm about to is leaning into conflict, the one that I just did. This is a good question. It's funny. You write something and then you go blank. But it gives it gives tips on how to reach your child and giving hope to parents who have given up because they feel.

Speaker 1: 29:34

A lot of parents I work with get depressed, despondent, like nobody's helping them, the court's not helping them, their attorney's not helping them, the other parent's not helping, nobody's helping. The schools are looking at them like they're some criminal. They can't even talk to a teacher sometimes. I mean it can be really, really harsh for them. So there's tips on how to reach out to your child If you have contact, especially what you can do to to fix the relationship in that moment, um to help shift how you talk to your child, so they will be more open, so open that emotional door. So there's a lot of little tips like that that I put out and I can't remember specifics because I don't have it in front of me, because it's funny thing, when you write something it just goes. If I looked at it I would be able to tell you more.

Speaker 2: 30:21

I have the same poop brain that I think that you have. I think it might be catchy, but yeah, but yeah, that's funny. And then the newsletter is free. We will make sure that we put the link in the show notes, so click on that and grab whatever resources that Kathy has for you.

Speaker 2: 30:36

And I'm going to take a little go down a little different path here, kathy, because I know that when you first got into this field, that you were actually working within the foster care system and doing stuff like that, and some of the research that I've read and some of the articles I've read they compare like the foster care system and some of the attachment disorders that happen in the foster care system are very similar to what parents are going through in this high conflict. Divorce and targeted parent alienation whatever word you want to use, but there's a correlation. Do you find that to be true? Haven't actually been seeped in both of these different arenas? Wow, that was a great first part of the podcast. Man, kathy, man I'm saying the word man, people, folks Kathy has such a wonderful plethora of experiences and knowledge and I just love her presentation and how soft it is, and I think that's such an important thing for when we're dealing with people therapists, attorneys, whoever that they actually have the ability to communicate and show up authentically. So I think the show was full of great information but also a great way to role model, like what am I looking for in the therapist? What am I looking for in a professional other stakeholder that I'm going to be working with, and you can clearly see the expertise of someone that's able to communicate and the wonderful information that she's shared, and I would definitely go check out her newsletter.

Speaker 2: 31:59

If you haven't, and if you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, like, share with folks. Let us know what follow-up questions you might have for Kathy or follow-up questions you might have for us. We really would love the interaction and there's a bunch of great resources. In the show notes there's a link to the free 12-step program, which is life-changing. If you're struggling, if you're feeling isolated, lonely, confused, you don't know what to do. Next, come by, check out some meetings. There's also a link in there for the Family Hope Project, which is a virtual art gallery, just a place where we get to express ourselves. There's our email address familydisappeared at gmailcom.

Speaker 2: 32:39

Let us know what you think, what's going on, any topics you think might be interesting for the show. You might know someone that would be great to be interviewed. Anything that you'd like to do, we'd really appreciate that. And I think I've said everything I'm supposed to say and if I miss something, you'll get it next time. And in case someone hasn't told you yet today, I love you, I love being part of this community and if I love you sounds strange and awkward, it is. It's strange and it's awkward and it's beautiful and I love you and have a beautiful day and we'll see you in the neighborhood soon. 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.