Parental Alienation Mental Health Self-Awareness Tips

Good mental health maintenance is helpful for everyone. But it’s a requirement for any parents, especially those suffering from parental alienation. We all have to be the best parents we can be, and that starts with being the best and healthiest people we can be. 

Get used to checking in with yourself. Know yourself. And if you need help to achieve your goals of a better you, go get it! 

For many fathers around the world, this is a long weekend to celebrate Labour Day.  Some of you fathers have custody agreements but might not be seeing your children this weekend. Others have been enduring parental alienation and custodial blocking.

But what all fathers whom don’t live with their children have in common is that a weekend away from their kids can be difficult. And a long weekend can even be triggering.

So perhaps today is a good day for a mental health check-in. 

I’m sharing this infographic today as a prompt for any of you fathers to give yourself a self-awareness check regarding depression.

Depression is a complicated subject and no infographic is going to serve as a replacement for a diagnosis from a mental health professional.

But self-awareness is a healthy means to check in with yourself to see how you’re doing. And based on how you feel, you’ll know how to proceed to handle it albeit with a professional or some habit changes to keep yourself on track to maintaining mental health wellness.

So how are you doing?

Do you find yourself feeling more blue than usual, even if it is a minor change?

Are you still looking forward to different interests that make you happy?

How’s your sleep and diet? Are you feeling physically healthy?

These are just a few of the basic questions to ask yourself.

For me, these check-ins with myself are invaluable.

I’ve been going through the legal process for even regular visits with my then 2.5 year old son for the past 5 years. It’s been a long and draining process. I haven’t seen him in 2 years due to custodial blocking and started a new process with my legal team in February. 

Part of that process has been new rounds of social and psychological evaluations to submit to the courts.

I’ve done a good 9-10 of these over the past 5 years, but none since 2020.

These evaluations the past 3 months have been different. I’m answering questions and telling my life story and the story of my marriage, not as someone suffering and confused, but as someone with clarity. I can share something and consciously follow it up with explaining how it made me feel then and how I understand it now.

The process is not triggering, there’s no PTSD involved. There is a difference between reliving negative experiences and talking about them.

But even when we are aware and can accept the reality of our experiences, it’s only human to feel some semblance of sadness. It’s being human I’m this case with parental alienation, to feel sad discussing the death of your marriage.

And with my personal self-awareness, I’ve been keeping an eye on how these evaluations leave me feeling a little somber afterwards.

So I’ve examined other areas of my life as part of my own “check in”.

I was doing a FaceTime call with a friend in Spain the other day, and talking about some of the physical health “wins” I’ve had. I started a keto diet in March 2022, still on it, and lost a lot of weight and feel healthier.

One of the things I have in common with this friend is our mutual love of cooking. 

And I shared with him that even while I maintain the diet, that I’m finding myself ordering food delivery more often when at home, versus cooking.

Cooking has always been one of my biggest passions, but it’s something I was enjoying less recently. And a lot of that loss of interest has to do with the bond I have always had with my son when it came to us cooking together. So now that I’m feeling a little blue some days, I’m less likely to cook.

When you put in the self-awareness work, it becomes easier to spot the trends that you need to pivot in life and make some positive changes.

For instance, I’ve always kept a clean home. Even post-divorce with limited access to my son, I always kept the mindset that our home should always be clean daily, so that whenever my son does eventually visit, it’s a healthy environment.

But I’ve found that the past 2 months, I am not being consistent with not just a weekly deep-clean, but also not regular with 100% of the daily upkeep. I’ll wash dishes immediately after using them, but I find them sitting in the drying rack for 2-3 days.

But the self-awareness check-ins help me find proactive solutions.

Building healthy routines and maintaining them help drive me. 

If I’m feeling a little blue, I go out for a long walk or exercise. I’m reminding myself to attend to living in a clean and healthy environment. I’m proactive in ensuring I’m getting out to do things socially like meeting up with friends. And I’m reminding myself of the interests and hobbies that make me happiest, and remaining engaged with them.

These self-awareness check-ins are a means for me to treat my mental health the same way as physical health. 

For anyone suffering from parental alienation, it’s a stressful situation. It’s one more thing about you that differs from most others. You are prone to triggering events and need to be aware of that.

If a person has high blood pressure, they would adapt to a new life with a diet of less salt. For a father dealing with parental alienation and the potential stress and depression it might cause, think of these mental health self-awareness check-ins as your low salt diet. You put in the work to be the healthiest and happiest you!

#StopParentalalienation 

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