Change Your Mind: Co-Parenting in High Conflict Custody Cases

By Leo Terbieten MFT

My purpose in this book is to shed light and offer solutions to the seemingly unsolvable and destructive cycle of conflict between parents post separation.
We’ll look at the impact of post-separation conflict on parents and children and present concepts that may help liberate your family from the nightmare of dealing with an antagonistic co-parent.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9780692257999

Book preview

Generations

A New Perspective on Co-Parenting

My purpose in this book is to shed light and offer solutions to the seemingly unsolvable and destructive cycle of conflict between parents post separation. We’ll look at the impact of post-separation conflict on parents and children and present concepts that may help liberate your family from the nightmare of dealing with an antagonistic co-parent.

Change Your Mind will help you in three important ways. You can:

1. Become less emotionally reactive in dealing with the other parent.

2. Learn to focus more on your kids and less on negatively engaging your co-parent.

3. Learn about the nature of relationships and how your earlier experiences have conditioned you to accept unfulfilling relationships.

Why co-parenting matters so much

Clinical research on divorce overwhelmingly agrees on one point:

It’s the conflict between parents, and not the divorce per se, that is most damaging to the children. And, I would add, also most destructive to the divorcing couple.

To put co-parenting in perspective, it’s important to realize that the behaviors and attitudes described throughout this book are those of normally good people. Under the stress of custody issues, they understandably react badly.

Although difficult, I believe that a shift in perspective is possible, and that it will defuse conflict. This shift can only come from your determination to change your mind about the need to react to provocation. By this, I don’t mean cave in and allow your children’s best interests to be jeopardized. Quite the contrary, I’ll emphasize ways of becoming a more effective limit setter.

When you learn to change the way you respond to anxiety and threat, you keep yourself and your children safe. Your initial emotional reactions to the other parent’s provocative or concerning behaviors can enable them to label you the bad parent. They can use your emotional reactions against you.

Case study – An abusive parent remains calm, while the abuse victim presents as anxious and controlling

Joseph and Martha had been divorced for three years. Their 11-year-old son, Joey, lived primarily with Martha. Joseph had taken Martha to court like clockwork every year to get more custody time with Joey. Martha believed that Joseph was trying to increase his custody time in order to reduce his sizable child support obligation.

Regardless of his motives, Martha felt threatened by Joseph. She felt that he was trying to take Joey away from her. Joseph and Martha’s personalities were polar opposites of each other. Joseph was calm but aggressive while Martha was anxious and insecure.

Joseph’s constant attempts to get more time with Joey were not limited to his court actions. Barely a day would go by that Joseph wouldn’t try to intrude on Martha’s time with Joey. Joseph would call or text his son, suggesting they go do something together, during Martha’s parenting time, of course. Invariably, he was hours past the transition deadline when he dropped off Joey.

Martha’s method of dealing with Joseph’s constant pressure was to become anxious and angry. She was extremely emotionally reactive toward her ex. Martha began to write emails threatening to take Joey away if Joseph didn’t stop his behavior. She left screaming voice mail messages on his phone.

Needless to say, Joseph milked these reactive behaviors for all they were worth in the family court. He was able to gain extra custody time with Joey as a result. Joseph’s ability to push Martha into reacting emotionally got him what he wanted.

The dynamics of these conflicts

In relationships with constant conflict there’s an irresistible force at play. Often, it’s one parent’s intense and endless dislike, fear and mistrust of the other colliding with an immovable object—the co-parent’s inability or unwillingness to change how they behave. As a parent facing this problem you desperately need a means to protect yourself.

Most importantly, however, the children need their parents to behave civilly toward each other. The critical and profoundly difficult question here is, are there practical and effective ways of dealing with this exasperating situation? It can seem impossible to avoid conflict when you’re dealing with an intractable or pathological parent.

The importance of safety

Based on 30 years of clinical experience, as well as my personal experiences with divorce, co-parenting and being a child of divorce, my perspective is focused on the importance of safety. Safety for the children is foremost during the earth-shaking transition of divorce, but I’m also referring to safety for the parents. If the parents are behaving in ways that place them in jeopardy, then the children also suffer.

Fear and self-righteous anger come up at times during co-parenting. But before you write that scathing email to your ex-spouse (who really deserves it), remember that it’s critical to first change your mind from emotion to maintaining your safety.

Write that email but send it to yourself instead of your co-parent. That way you get the satisfaction of expressing your deepest rage and indignity while remaining safe and secure. Don’t give the provocative parent the satisfaction of thinking that they were able to goad you into having an irrational outburst.

And don’t give him or her the opportunity to use that against you in court, as Joseph did to Martha.

Change Your Mind: Safety, Self-Protection and Assertion

When I speak of the need to change your mind, I’m referring to two levels, the behavioral and the psychological. You don’t have to be in therapy to benefit from this approach, as operating solely on the behavioral level will impact the psychological level and vice versa. The benefits of this approach will strengthen your life and that of future generations of your family.

What I’m advocating here is to be aware of your reactions and their consequences in your co-parenting relationship. The change your mind approach is not a panacea. It’s certainly not an instantly attainable goal, but simply a different way of perceiving your predicament.

When provoked by a situation with your former spouse, the primary considerations should be for your safety and self-protection. This doesn’t mean that you should cower in fear, not express your concerns or forego taking legal action, as appropriate. I’m referring to the general inclination to react emotionally to a situation in which you feel provoked by the other person.

A similar provocation in a business setting generally activates an automatic psychological safety buffer that prevents you from telling a superior or colleague what’s really on your mind. But in co-parenting situations, this safety mechanism gets overridden.

At work you’d think, Caution—there may be negative ramifications for being reactive. But in a co-parenting context, you jump right to thinking, How dare you, and attempt to achieve a verbal nuclear direct hit on the other parent. You figure this isn’t work so you can get away with it. After all, you and your ex have lived together and are used to relating on a personal basis.

Here are three examples of unsafe interactions with the other parent and how self-destructive they can be:

1. Reacting emotionally to provocation keeps you emotionally engaged with them. How can you move on if you’re constantly pulled back into the relationship with your child’s other parent, especially in a negative way? It’s not up to the provoker to stop doing what they’re doing. Really, try to accept the fact that he or she is probably not going to change. It’s up to you to let go and move on despite the continued harassment and provocation.

2. Speaking truth to the other parent opens you up to legal problems. I’ve seen countless examples of angry emails and texts used against a parent during custody disputes. As justified as you may feel in your angry response, the court will perceive you as an angry or controlling person, or even worse, as a perpetrator of abuse.

3. Acting out or expressing your rage at your former spouse is harmful to the kids. Witnessing displays of anger between their parents can make children feel sad, anxious and confused.

Remember, children’s identities are derived from their love of both parents. So when mom expresses anger at dad, or dad raises his voice at mom, the children feel there’s a part of them you hate. Reacting angrily toward the other parent is also poor role modeling. Do you want your kids to live with day-to-day anger and resentment toward someone else when they become adults?

Changing your mind disrupts patterns

When you change your mind, and therefore your actions, it deprives you of familiar, yet dysfunctional, avenues of expression and conflict resolution. Your typical attempt to resolve conflicts might be to escalate into a mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore state of aggression. Or maybe it’s passive-aggressively vowing that