Summer seminar series

One-off online workshops for parents of alienated children and their families with Karen Woodall

About these workshops:

Ghosts of the Unremembered and unresolved past

20 July 2024, 09:00 to 11:00 UK time

This session will focus on the link between transgenerational trauma transmission, attachment, and alienation in children of divorce and separation.

The seminar will explore the way in which unresolved trauma, in the lives of parents who are separating, can manifest in the here-and-now as a child's strong alignment with a parent with unresolved trauma and consequent rejection of a parent. Using case studies from practice, Karen Woodall will lead you through the way in which some children who are said to be alienated, are in reality, enacting an unremembered and unresolved traumatic event from the past.

This will be of interest to parents as well as practitioners and will utilise a psychoanalytic exploration of the problem of alienation in children as well as a structural therapy approach to thinking about how to address the problem.

The language of the alienated child

31 August 2024, 09:00 to 11:00 UK time

This session will focus on learning to listen and respond to children with disorganised attachments.

Using her pioneering therapeutic work with alienated children, which has been praised by the High Court of England and Wales, Karen Woodall will introduce you to the language of the alienated child and how to listen and respond in circumstances where children are strongly aligned with a parent and rejecting of the other.

Using object relations, attachment and trauma theories, Karen will explore the ways in which children who are said to be alienated, are all using similar metaphors, speech patterns and symbolic behaviours to manage the dilemma they are facing.

When you understand what the child who rejects is really saying, you will understand the trauma bonding which is the underlying cause of the problem for the child. In doing so you will begin to learn how to respond in the language of the alienated child to build the covert alliance which is necessary to support children and young people who are trapped in the mind of a controlling parent.