NEUTRALIZING NARCISSISM

Navigating the High Conflict Divorce: Protecting Yourself and the Children from Triangulation and Parental Alienation

Understand the tactics of narcissistic parents and avoid becoming an unwitting accomplice

The high conflict divorce is a battleground between warring parents, but the children are the casualties. Photo by cottonbro studio.

The tactics of the narcissistic parent may be familiar to you if you know someone going through a high-conflict divorce. They try to isolate and undermine the other parent by triangulating the community and making false accusations of abuse. Do you know how to protect yourself from becoming an enabler?

A manipulative technique often used by narcissistic individuals, particularly during and after divorce, is triangulation. An attempt to destabilize relationships by leveraging a third party can profoundly impact children and lead to the loss of a relationship between one parent and their child.

As a part of divorce and custody disputes, triangulation can involve false allegations of domestic violence, which can be used to alienate the victim’s parents from their children and their community.

“False allegations of domestic violence are an under-recognized problem in custody disputes and divorce cases,” says Avieli, a criminology researcher at Ariel University…