Swedish author #JonasJonasson,
Jonatan's mother sends Jonatan many good books. How can we be sure that Jonatan receives all the books and messages from his mother?

Book package tracking ID, www.posten.se:
00357059830249355699
00357059830265315325
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As good people, you have the power to #SaveJonatan!

Moira, a victim of alienation and a mental health professional:

"I was about eleven at the time. My first memory of my mother expressing outrage that I still loved my father was when my father took me out to lunch to tell me about the divorce and tell me what my life would be like after the divorce. I recall asking if it would be like a friend’s situation and he said yes. This friend enjoyed a good relationship with both parents and I recall feeling satisfied with this, and not feeling frightened at all about the changes that would occur in our lives. When I came into the house my mother immediately asked me how I felt and I said fine and she burst into tears and raged at me for the first time in my life. She repeatedly stated that if it was her father who left her mother, she would be so angry that she’d never speak to her father again. I clearly recall thinking, “Uh oh, I’m not supposed to be okay with this.” I still remember my father being so surprised and confused the next time we talked and I expressed anger toward him and “outrage” that he was leaving us.

That experience marked the beginning of my mother’s systematic “brainwashing” of us. Each time I was with my father our relationship would return to normal as would my feelings for him. But upon coming home I was literally bombarded by my mother who fired questions at me asking me how I felt, what we did, etc. I recall her telling me that he was undependable, that he didn’t really care, and that if I still loved him it was only because he was brainwashing me!

This is what life was like throughout adolescence. Whether it was my mother constantly putting my father in no-win situations as proof of his horrible nature, or my mother telling my father (without our knowledge) that we didn’t want to talk to him because we were disgusted by him (and then getting off the phone to tell one of us that he didn’t want to talk to us because he was upset with us!), or her encouraging us to write our feelings in a letter to him that she said we would never mail, and then mailing it to him without our knowledge. My mother was also very indiscriminate in whom she bad-mouthed my father to—particularly anyone who expressed concern for him. Most people backed away from him because they just didn’t like the mess, which left us with the sense that she was immensely powerful, no one really saw the truth, so what was the point of fighting it. My father never bad-mouthed my mother. If we ever did complain about her to him, I recall that the most he would say was, “She hurts the ones she loves the most.”

Now here is something that I don’t think people can understand unless they have been an alienated child. After years of counseling that did absolutely absolutely nothing, and various people asking me if I was “okay” (I always said yes), my father (who had historically been passive and just backed away in response to my mother’s caustic behavior) finally approached me at about age seventeen and said that he was hurt by my constant rejection of him and that he felt as though I was being coached to hate him, and was being told things that were not true. He then asked me how I thought he felt in all of this. What is so odd is the effect this had on me—it was almost as if it allowed me to come out of a trance. For years I had just robotically repeated what my mother said, even though I did struggle with it internally, and my father’s direct but respectful confrontation of our relationship broke the trance instantly. My point is that there was nothing to indicate that my passionately expressed hatred and rejection of him wasn’t authentic, but it wasn’t and it was wiped away far more easily and quickly than I think anyone could possibly have imagined (even myself). I recall immediately feeling relief and a flooding of all of my real emotions for him. The experience is quite odd in retrospect, because I do believe at that point that I believed what my mother told me, but if I did then how was it that this gentle confrontation on my father’s part so easily broke though?

I agree with my father’s decision not to bad-mouth my mother, but where I think he made a mistake was in not confronting her mischaracterizations and lies earlier and not advocating for us more. I agree with you when you say that a passive approach is not always best. My mother had our ear constantly, and we had to “go with the program” in order to survive in that house, but we also didn’t have an alternate opinion—we didn’t have any other input to support our true feelings, thus it often felt like we weren’t strong enough to believe in our truth without some outside force to support it. When my mother would lie to us, my father was so afraid of burdening us with his perspective that he often said nothing. My aunt later told me just how grieved my father was and how my aunt would tell him that some day we’d “get it” and we’d come back to him. I just feel as though there were wasted years because I could have been convinced of reality much, much sooner had he been a bit more proactive.

A few more things that you might find interesting—my father was actually very easy-going, sometimes to the point of being passive, never raised his voice and was very reliable. Yet that didn’t stop my mother from describing him as angry, violent, mean, and unreliable, particularly when he attempted to stand up to her. I began to believe her characterization of him even though there was absolutely no evidence to support her allegations, yet in the absence of evidence my mother would create it, which made it very confusing for us children. For instance, after my father moved he would often send us airline tickets for a visit. Often they would never arrive and my mother would use this as “evidence” that he never followed through with his promises. I believe I was about eighteen when I found that cache of tickets hidden in a drawer in her room.

One more thing. The counselors in our lives did far more damage than good. My mother was wonderful at manipulating them, and we simply didn’t have a voice or the words to describe what was going on. It was far too scary for us to speak the truth (particularly when she was there in the room!) and all she had to do was go in, play the victim of an angry and abandoning man and each counselor bought it without question. I can’t tell you how many times my father was dragged in for counseling sessions while I was given a scripted list of my grievances to share with him. I also recall my father telling me later how confused he was because he didn’t know I felt that way—the truth is that I didn’t but did not have the words or insight to tell him what was really going on—part of me knew it was all a lie and another part of me worked furiously to believe the lies because it seemed easier and more convenient. I vividly recall a counselor hugging my crying mother by the elevator one evening after a session and telling her what a good mother she was. My mother used this as a weapon against us for years stating that a licensed counselor told us she was a good mother, therefore she must be!

My siblings and I are all very close and have talked intermittently about what we went through, although none of us knew until recently that this is something so widespread and systematic. I for one become so angry when I hear counselors or court advocates claim that parental alienation isn’t possible—that children can’t be brainwashed. I endured implanted memories and constant attacks if I exercised my right to have a different opinion or relationship with my father. Sometimes I agreed with her just to get her to stop, and ultimately I was not strong enough to manage the dissonance of acting one way and feeling another. So I changed my feelings to match my behavior to rid myself of the dissonance, but the truth never really left me and merely laid dormant until someone (my father) said something which resonated with my truth and validated my true beliefs.

I’d suggest to alienated parents to not give up, to see their children as co-victims, not as abusers allied with the alienating parent, to not assume that what the alienated child is saying is what they are feeling (even if the child doesn’t know this), to not confuse bad-mouthing with self-advocacy, and to know that the alienation may not be nearly as deep as it may appear. I think one of the biggest challenges alienated parents must face is that to navigate the crisis effectively requires almost constant counter-intuitive responses."