Becoming a parent is a profound life change. It’s a time of joy, excitement, and love—but let’s not sugarcoat it. It’s also a time of sleepless nights, endless diaper changes, and new responsibilities that can stretch even the strongest relationships. For many couples, the transition to parenthood brings unexpected challenges to their dynamic as […]
Preserving the Couple Dynamic During the Transition to Parenthood Read More »
As part of my master’s research, I interviewed adults who experienced childhood sexual abuse and discussed their journeys into parenting. This article explores their insights, focusing on the theme: “The Personal Journey as a Transformative Experience.” For many participants, becoming a parent marked the beginning of a multi-stage process of healing and self-discovery. Holding
Reflections from Childhood Abuse Survivors Read More »
Deciding that you and your partner no longer fit together as a couple can come as a nasty shock or it’s something you’ve known deep down for some time. One partner’s feelings may feel all over the place, they might be grieving and mourning the relationship it once was or you might both mutually
Explaining Separation to your Children Read More »
This article will focus on child sexual abuse as researched in the dissertation titled “Exploring Parenthood amongst Childhood Sexual Abuse Survivors.” This dissertation is a master’s dissertation carried out in Malta by Karen Quintano, at the Institute of Family Therapy, Malta. This article will follow some of the literature, some local disclosures, and what affects
CSA: Definitions, Local Disclosures, and What Affects Disclosures. Read More »
While Christmas, Easter, birthdays and celebrations are known to be occasions of happiness and joy, for a person who is grieving, the holidays can represent something completely different. Although experienced in similar circumstances, grief and mourning are very different. Grief is an internal lived experience while mourning focused on the outward expressions. So how
Grief and Mourning during the holidays Read More »
HOW CAN ONE RECOGNISE PARENTAL ALIENATION? Parental alienation has been present for as long as families have existed. In a previous article we discussed the difference between estrangement and parental alienation. By means of the five-factor model, a professional can know what to look for when attempting to understand whether parental alienation is present or
4. Recognising Parental Alienation Read More »
How can a specialised psychotherapist help a targeted parent? It is deeply regrettable that parents who are alienated endure this kind of suffering in solitude. Beyond the tragic loss of a child, the experience of being an alienated parent is profoundly distressing and beyond the comprehension of most non-specialists; as a result, the alienated parent is
3. Supporting a Targeted Parent Read More »
Estrangement or parental Alienation? In cases where a child naturally harbours strong hostile emotions towards a parent due to abandonment and/or abusive and/or neglectful and/or violent parenting, a child would not be considered as being alienated but estranged (Johnston, 2005). At first glance estrangement can be seen as having similar symptoms to an alienated child
2. Estrangement vs Parental Alienation Read More »
WHAT IS PARENTAL ALIENATION? Parental Alienation is a serious mental condition that affects hundreds of thousands of children and families (Lorandos et al., 2013, p.5) The condition is explained as the child being invited to become involved into the married couple’s struggle by the misleading, alienating parenting practices of the hypothetically favoured parent that creates a parent-child alliance against
1. What is Parental Alienation? Read More »
It comes as no surprise that there are numerous therapeutic approaches, and while they all have the same underlying goal; that is, to assist clients in the best of their ability, systemic family therapy takes a somewhat different approach to achieve this. Systemic family therapy is a form of psychotherapy that aims to
What is systemic family therapy? Read More »
