Following are a few situations that involve patients who did not come for counseling or suffer from mental illness. They represent average cases of normal people taken from everyday life and the common experiences that impel people to seek out professional help, and are usually typical manifestations of DOLIF. They all include well functioning individuals who are not deficient in any way but who are suffering deeply because of lost or fractured relationships with their children. The examples illustrate the extreme distress that a parent experiences when one child becomes socially “lost” to their family. This can be due to extreme anger expressed by the child, or even hatred aimed at one parent, both parents, or the entire family. Over time, the hatred has usually reached the point where it is mutual and there is no return. Overtly, it seems that the child is full of self-indulgence, hate for the occupants of the household, or has developed an allegiance outside the home, such as to a gang, peer group, cult, or an unacceptable love connection. But if we assess the situation in DOLIF terms, nothing could be farther from the truth.
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The first scenario is one where we find that a family is “split down the middle” so that the allegiances of two children are split between their two parents: one child sides with one parent, and the other child sides with the other. In one family with two grown sons, one was a lawyer and the other a businessman. When the boys’ parents decided to divorce in later life, the boys’ loyalties were split down definitive lines: one son stood behind his father, while the other chose to support his mother.
When their divorce case went to court, the son who was a lawyer acted to defend his favorite parent in the legal battle, his father, leaving his brother and mother to find their own resources. One can only imagine their animosity and the vindictive legal case the lawyer-son conducted against the other two. The example illustrates that if you have one PLG parent who is at war with the other parent, plus a child who feels Disfavored by that PLG parent, there is a good chance that an alliance can develop between the ALG parent and the Disfavored child. This dynamic sets up a frightening scenario for two hostile parent-child “teams”. Like a battle between two countries, it is a conflict that can arise and fester over time and ultimately erupt between what once began as a nuclear family acting one group, and ended up splintering into two warring factions!
Another example is an elderly woman who came in because she was somewhat depressed. She had two grown daughters, one of whom was very attached to her. Only when I asked did she mention that this older daughter would have nothing to do with her, and that the negativity between them had been the same for over 10 years now. However, she mentioned that this girl chose to live with her father, whom my client had divorced many years prior, and that the girl is very close with her father. Regardless of the valiant efforts that this PLG mother had made over many years to lure back her Disfavored daughter, her situation remained largely the same, with the Disfavored daughter continually refusing to participate in any contact with her mother, and responding minimally even when sincere and heartfelt approaches were made, such as promises of gifts of heirloom items, or money. Now it may be argued that in this case parental alienation may have played a role. This means that the father may have planned, plotted or otherwise succeeded in convincing and influencing his daughter to hate his wife, willfully contributing to exacerbating a bad relationship between his PLG wife and her less Loved or Disfavored daughter. Perhaps this was so. But the important fact remains that the alienated daughter, due to her Anger over her Disfavored status with her PLG mother as compared with her Favored sister, was open to her father’s negative influence, and an easy target for such Emotional sabotage. Needless to say, this mother was in extreme distress now, finding she was coming to the end of her life, with the problem of the “loss” of her daughter’s love and allegiance, despite the mother’s sincere LOVE for her. In this case, the Favored daughter stepped in to try to help repair the contact between her mother and sister. Although this is not an ideal solution because of the inherent rivalry between the sisters, sometimes, if enough time passes, room for healing is made available in people’s hearts.
