Why We Need Need to Change Therapy and Legal Protocols for High Conflict Divorce

One of the most serious, well-intended but thoroughly misguided therapeutic protocols is for a therapist to advocate for what a child wants.  This may be a good idea in most situations, but there is one situation that places a child in the middle of a conflict--when parents are battling over child custody. 

The reason for this is obvious to me, but apparently not to the people who make therapeutic protocols. When there is a high-conflict relationship between parents, putting the child in charge puts the child squarely in the middle of the conflict. If you want to profoundly damage a child, then put them in the middle of the conflict between parents.

In any high-conflict co-parenting relationship, both parents contribute to the problems observable to third parties, such as therapists. When wellness rather than legal cases is emphasized, parents may differentiate themselves from one another by embracing therapeutic coping strategies such as Nonviolent Communication.  Or perhaps, if both parents are fundamentally decent people who are hurt and angry and have poor relationship and coping skills, they have added motivation to learn better relationship and coping skills.  If parents go on to learn these therapeutic skills, so much the better for both the parents and children.  The conventional wisdom is that emotionally abusive parents who engage in parental alienation have either Narcissistic or Borderline Personality Disorder.  These disorders are treatable.  The problem is motivating people with the disorders to embrace therapy.  A Narcissistic or Borderline parent who resists therapy can pretend for the short term, but will show themselves over the long term by their inability or unwillingness to comply with therapeutic protocols.

I spent more than $70,000 on attorneys in my efforts to obtain a Court-Ordered Parenting Coordinator and then on fighting my ex-husband's lawsuit against me seeking sole custody of our daughter, as well as back child support and attorney’s fees from me.  How much therapy would $70,000 dollars pay for?  The legal system provides lots of income for attorneys, who benefit, but neither the parents nor the children, nor my ex-husband’s health insurance company, nor society benefits from this money going to attorneys. Simply by making appointments of therapists and Parenting Coordinators automatic, and divorce being completely reorganized, would be far cheaper and much more healing than forcing these actions to go through the court system. The entire organization of marriage and divorce processes needs to be reformed to emphasize wellness.  We should have been able to have a Parenting Coordinator a week or two after Dr. W recommended one, rather than going through a long process of mediation, arbitration, and legal wrangling to get language that was weak enough to satisfy my ex-husband.  So much damage was done to my children in that intervening time to say the least of me.

Some of the resources for learning therapeutic relationship and coping skills, including Non-violent Communication and Dialectical Behavior Therapy, are very inexpensive.  Marshall Rosenberg, who created Non-Violent Communication, posted many of his workshop videos online precisely because he was more interested in healing than in making money.  Many similar videos are posted online about Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, too.  If both romantic partners are required to watch videos and take workshops on Non-violent Communication, Compassionate Listening, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy before marriage, many divorces may be prevented.  Requiring parents to repeat such workshops during divorce can reduce conflict proactively.  Workshops on these therapeutic skills should also be required for teachers, attorneys, judges, physicians, nurses, politicians…essentially everyone.  Viewing of these internet videos, combined with a modest number of in-person group sessions moderated by therapists or social workers, makes such requirements relatively inexpensive.