I want to tell you all a secret.  I’m working for you.  Kind of self-appointed volunteer work.  I’m leading your treatment team.

For you, the targeted parents.  I’ve kind of appointed myself to head up your treatment team.  In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s lots and lots of grief and emotional trauma in you.  Not good.  We need to do something about that.

What’s causing you all that grief and trauma?  Oh, you’ve lost your kids.  That’ll do it.

How’d you wind up losing your kids?  Oh.  Oh.  My-oh-my, that’s not good.  My professional colleagues are highly problematic.  We’ll need to fix that.

So I set about doing that.

I’m heading up your treatment team – your trauma recovery team – for you, the parents. Hope you don’t mind that I kind of appointed myself to the position of heading up your trauma-recovery.  Somebody had to do it.

Oh, your kids too.  We’ll protect your kids.  Working on that first thing.  Notice how I got us the DSM-5 diagnosis of Child Psychological Abuse, we’ll be able to protect your kids. And kids are resilient – once we get them back they’ll be okay – a little bumpy and worse for wear, but they’ll be fine.

It’s all of you parents I’m concerned about.  Holy cow, the amount of grief and savage emotional abuse you’ve endured – that is immensely painful.  We need to make that stop immediately, if not sooner.

But boy, that pathogen had you all wrapped up, and it has allies, powerful allies.  Gotta navigate them.  Whew, this is dangerous over here, gotta be careful.

So I spent a couple of years figuring out how we’re going to do this, protect you and get your kids back.  I’m heading up your trauma recovery.

I used to do this all the time in foster care when I was the Clinical Director of the treatment center.  As the Clinical Director, I over-saw all cases coming into the clinic.  I’d assign therapists, oversee the work-up of the assessment protocols, I’d supervise treatment plans, allocate resources for home-based and school-based para-professional support.  We had developmental pediatricians, and OT therapists, and speech and language therapists all at the clinic, sometimes a trauma nurse from the local hospital.  The CPS social worker was part of the treatment team.

I put that all together, that treatment team for each kid, and I was in charge.  So I come over here and, whoa.  This is a hot mess.  These parents are being massively abused and traumatized.  Somebody needs to do something, why isn’t anyone doing something?

Oh.  I see.  Okay.

We’ll somebody has to do something.  Guess it’s me.

So I kind of took you all on as my clients – pro bono.  Because it needs to be done.  If other clinical psychologists want to do it, yay.  Join me.  Let’s start solving this for these parents.  In the absence of anyone else, I took charge of your trauma recovery.

You all think this pathology is about the kids.  No, it’s about you.  It is the savage and brutal emotional abuse of you – as the ex-spouse.  The child is the weapon, you’re the target.  Why do you think you’re called the “targeted” parent?  You are the target.

As head of your treatment team you’ve heard me recommend to you that you get some PTSD therapy; complex trauma, traumatic grief.  You need it, this has been brutal on you.  Your therapist will become part of your treatment team; Dr. C and your trauma therapist.  And Dorcy, she’s the best trauma recovery specialist on the planet.  I found her wandering around helping you all, a pleasant surprise and a good thing.  She’s the best.

If you are a person of faith – whichever belief – your minister, or rabbai, or imam, or coven or whatever should also be part of your treatment team.  Whatever support, bring them.  Meet with your faith leader, explain things, ask them to join the Alliance Facebook group, just to listen and attend, to understand.

This pathology lives in darkness and lies, in the absence of human values.  This is most definitely a faith-based issue.

Your attorneys too, this is a child protection issue, so your attorneys are part of your treatment team, ask them to join the Alliance group and listen, to understand.  Ultimately we will be advocating for the appointment of an amicus attorney representing the court’s interest in treatment.   A role for attorneys will be opening on the treatment team for the family, we are starting now in developing that role with the child protection side.

Your kids individual therapists are also part of the treatment team.  They don’t realize it.  Individual child therapists are not always… aware.  Their focus is too narrow to see.  Individual therapists function best when integrated into a treatment team.

So that’s what I’ve been working on, putting together the framework for all of that.  I’m sort of heading up your trauma recovery team, self-appointed – but somebody had to do it. 

I tried to provide as much free information as possible.  I figure the courts and forensic psychology are taking pretty much all your money (it’s part of the abuse; financial abuse added to the emotional abuse), so I’ve tried to take it easy on you, posted almost everything free to my website and blog.

Foundations for $25, and a couple of resource booklets around $10. That’s not bad considering the thousands you’re paying for ignorance and no solutions.

I even put a handout on my website: “Professional Consultation“, it’s online-free, saves you some money from having to have an in-person with me where I say what I say in the handout.  Figured it would save you some coin if I just put it on my website.

If what I’m doing seems different than what every other mental health person is doing…

It is.  They’re exploiting you, and I’m heading up your trauma-recovery team.  Self-appointed, but I’ve done this type of thing before.

We needed a structured assessment protocol, and we needed a whole lot more knowledge over here.  I’ll ground things in established psychology to avoid the controversy and muck generated by “parental alienation” – we’ve gotta deal with the allies of the pathology.

I spent about 2 years from 2008 to 2010 working out the trauma recovery – your recovery.  Holy cow, you are being massively abused and traumatized – you, the parents.

Yeah, I know your kids too.  But your kids will be easy-peasy to recover, it’s the emotional trauma and suffering of parents, wow, that needs to end – now.  Today.  Yesterday, in fact, many-many yesterdays.

The profound absence of empathy from forensic psychology is stunning – and it should never-ever have happened.

In August of 2017, I had some blog and Facebook posts toward the Gardnerian “experts” – they were in the supposed role of leading your treatment recovery when I came on the scene.  I tried to work with them, but they simply refuse.  So in 2017 I asserted leadership of your treatment team – your trauma recovery team.

They didn’t even know that was part of their professional responsibility to you.  Stunning.

I asked for their path to a solution using Gardner’s PAS – (they have none, I knew that). If they don’t have a path to a solution, then I do.  I’m a clinical psychologist, I work trauma recovery, I’m senior staff background, I’ll head up the trauma recovery if they don’t.

We need to solve this as fast as is humanly possible – now – because lots and lots of parents are in active IPV spousal abuse – brutal and savage IPV spousal abuse.

And… children are losing their childhoods.  That is bad-bad-bad developmentally.  We need to get this stopped today.

That’s why I went with a diagnostic solution.  It is available today.  Right now. Always has been available.  No “new theory” – no need to prove something to someone.  And with diagnosis we can hold all ALL mental health professionals… accountable.

I’ve constructed a carrot-and-stick approach to motivation.  The APA ethics code is the stick of danger for the mental health person – the three diagnostic indicators are the carrot of safety.

That’s not an accident.  My Master’s degree is in Clinical-Community Psychology, the Community part is specific training in how to address pathology by changing community systems… like adjusting the family court’s response to pathology.

I know exactly what I’m doing, because I’ve been specifically trained to do exactly this. I can explain it, if you’d like.

I’ve even done something similar for juvenile firesetting behavior – another court-involved pathology – developed a whole mental health assessment protocol – a national model for assessment of juvenile firesetting behavior – for FEMA and the Department of Justice. I’ve posted work product from that.

Firesetting: Child Interview Protocol

Look at the back of this semi-structured interview protocol, see those boxes – Before – During- After / Thoughts – Feelings – Behavior.  That’s called a “behavior-chain interview” and we’ll be bringing that technique over here to assessment with your families.

Firesetting: Summary

I’m really proud of that Firesetter Summary.  That’s a summary form for the information produced by the assessment protocol. That’s a pretty comprehensive assessment for the motivational issues surrounding the kid’s fire setting.

This is not the first clinical psychology assessment protocol I’ve developed for a court-involved pathology.  I can explain it all if anyone is interested.  The six-session clinical psychology Assessment of Attachment-Related Pathology Surrounding Divorce is a solidly assessment booklet picturegrounded clinical psychology assessment protocol for the family conflict.

What we want to do in developing an assessment protocol is provide a structured approach that is standardized in both its administration and in the interpretation of the data across the people conducting the assessment – this is called inter-rater reliability.  So all mental health people do the same thing and achieve the same results from the assessment based on the same data.

If you disagree with the diagnosis, get a second opinion, that’s the inter-rater reliability component.  Two raters, are these symptoms present, absent, or somewhat present?

 If we’re developing an IQ test, we need all of the assessment administrators to do the same thing, ask the same questions, in the same way… that’s called standardizing the assessment procedures.  And all of the assessment people need to score the responses in the same way and they need to interpret scores in the same way.  All of that is called standardization of the assessment.

If everybody is doing any old thing and interpreting the outcome in any old way, that’s not assessment that’s just a mess.

The child custody evaluators standardize their procedures just fine – but NOT the interpretation of data.  THAT is left entirely to their personal discretion, ignorance, and massive bias.  No controls are placed on the interpretation of data at all.  HUGE problem in assessment.

What I did with AB-PA was to identify three symptoms that are ALWAYS present with this pathology and are NEVER present at any other time, the three diagnostic indicators of AB-PA.  This allows us to standardize the assessment procedures and the interpretation of the data… called diagnosis.  If there is a question, get a second opinion.

Then by limiting the scope of the referral question to a clinical psychology treatment question rather than a child custody question, the treatment focused clinical psychology assessment protocol can be brought in much more efficiently, for around $2,500 rather than the $20,000 to $40,000 of child custody evaluations, and at four to six weeks rather than six to nine months to complete, the limited-scope clinical psychology assessments can provide significantly more timely and useful information for decision-making.

That’s my job.  I’m heading up your trauma recovery team.  I developed an assessment protocol for this pathology. First I had to ground the Foundations, to do that I had to make sure all of the Bowlby-Minuchin-Beck links were solidly grounded.

Personal Reference List of Dr. Childress for AB-PA

There’s all your “peer-reviewed” research.  All the symptoms are fully grounded professional symptoms, attachment pathology, personality disorder traits, a persecutory delusion.  Everything is fully established knowledge so that when we reached this point everything is in place.

I knew the pathogen and its flying monkeys would focus on AB-PA as new theory (I even provided a mimicking of PAS-Gardner by AB-PA-Childress), but there is no such thing as AB-PA; it is entirely Bowlby, Minuchin, Beck – established knowledge.

We have to present a toddler with a new food 11 times before they’ll try it.  Same with knowledge – Bowlby, Minuchin, Beck.  By the 4,823’d time people are staring to become familiar with family systems constructs – cross-generational coalition – emotional cutoff. Some of them are starting to realize that there may be ethical code violations involved with what they’re doing (and not doing).

When I arrived, I found two massively broken systems, the family court system and the professional psychology system in the family courts.  Based on my analysis of the factors, the primary problem was a failure in forensic psychology that then led to the failure of the family court’s response.  Forensic psychology was abjectly ignorant and hugely incompetent.

We needed to fix the professional psychology response to the pathology to then leverage a fixed mental health system to fix the legal system’s broken response.  I had a lot of work to do.  All done.

We are now taking the fixed mental health system response into the family courts.

And I have a secret weapon I haven’t discussed yet.  There are lots and lots of really good mental health professionals out there too, they see the pathology and are trying to help, but structures are preventing them from solving things.  We’re going to release some of those barriers for them.  Shhhh, don’t tell anyone yet, I don’t want the pathogen to know that there are thousands of excellent mental health professionals who will suddenly start appearing.  I haven’t said a word about them up until now.

Ooops.

We are not looking to educate ignorance. We are going to move right past it into solution,  Ignorance can stay right where it is, it’s irrelevant. The solution of knowledge is coming from a different direction than educating ignorance.  There are many-many excellent mental health professionals out there.  I’ve worked with them my entire life.

So I guess I’m fessing up now.  I’m not actually just a clinical psychologist, I’m also heading up your trauma recovery, your treatment team – you – the parents.  The ones with all that massive grief – that pain feeling.  Yeah, that.

Your children too.  That’s why it hurts so much. We have to rescue your kids and protect your kids.  Got it.  No worries, working on it top priority.  And we need to get you some trauma recovery help in here – you parents have been massively abused and traumatized by this family court pathology – IPV spousal abuse using the child as the weapon.

From 2020 to 2022 I’m going to be making noises about putting your treatment team in place.  That will be your organizing family therapist, your PTSD individual therapist, the child’s individual therapist (if needed, I don’t think we need them), the amicus attorney (your attorney until we get an amicus attorney), faith-community if it’s a support for you, teachers too, teachers can join the Alliance group and learn (we’ll develop information for them).

To my professional colleagues, those excellent ones I know are there, you don’t need to wait on me.  These families – your clients – need local-area support… you.  I’m only an email away, I’ll be doing training seminars… but you know what’s right.  Start with diagnosis… make the DSM-5 diagnosis of Child Psychological Abuse when it is warranted, then the parent is empowered to protect their child.

The pathogen’s never dealt with an actual clinical psychologist before.  Surprise pathogen.  Lots and lots of surprises.  Until somebody steps up to relieve me, I’m assuming professional responsibility for heading up the trauma recovery team for these parents and their children.

I’m bringing Dorcy, she is the top trauma recovery specialist on the planet. That’s two, add your PTSD therapist, that’s three.  Add your attorney, that’s four.  Add your minister, that’s five.  Add your school’s teacher, that’s six. Then let’s get you an organizing family systems therapist to guide the recovery of your family into normal and healthy development.

That’s the plan.

Craig Childress, Psy.D.
Clinical Psychologist, Psy.D.

Trauma Recovery Leadership; Parents & Children in Court-Involved Family Conflict.