All human beings exhibit predictable patterns in their behavior. A high-conflict co-parent, for example, is likely prone to deflecting responsibility and charming others into accepting their viewpoint. They may have found success in explaining away their high-conflict behaviors within the court system or in family therapy. If you’re on the receiving end of such tactics, you may feel like you are going crazy. When your high-conflict ex’s gaslighting is (inadvertently) reinforced by the legal system or mental health professionals, it can feel as though the whole world is conspiring against you doing the right thing for yourself and your children.
We at Pathways Family Coaching know this unfortunate reality well. With years of collective experience in all facets of family coaching, we’re ready to empower you to regain control from a high-conflict personality, both within your family and in the court system. To help you organize and make sense of your high-conflict co-parent’s troubling behavior, we’ve created the Behavioral Pattern Finder (BPF), a powerful software-based service to record, organize, and present your co-parent’s negative behavior. At the same time, the BPF can also be used to document and highlight your own successes as a co-parent, allowing outside parties to understand the complexities of your family dynamic. Together with Pathways Family Coaching, you can take the power back and do the right thing for your children; read on to find out how the Behavioral Pattern Finder can help.
Making Sense of Troubling Patterns
If you’re currently in the throes of a high-conflict separation or divorce, it can be daunting to document harmful patterns of behavior while managing the emotional turmoil inflicted on yourself and your child. Coping with a co-parent’s hurtful tactics is difficult enough, let alone keeping track and making sense of an emotionally exhausting situation. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, confused, and alone in the face of such an onslaught.
You’re seldom the only person affected by these circumstances. Often, judges and mental health professionals also get lost in the onslaught of “facts” and crazy-making tactics brought forward by a high-conflict personality. The truth of the situation (if not clearly documented and explained) can often become lost to professionals who do not have the opportunity to observe the complexities. In these dysfunctional dynamics, you may find yourself feeling like you are the only one that sees the correlation between an event and the abusive tactics that follow. Even worse, it can seem nearly impossible for you, your legal counsel, and other professionals to navigate what feels like an adversarial court system, seemingly designed to create animosity. In short, it may feel like you’re fighting for your child’s wellbeing on your co-parent’s home territory.
To level the playing field, you need to eliminate the back-and-forth he said/she said battle in the courtroom. Instead, parents and professionals will benefit from an organized presentation of facts, showing both patterns of negative behavior (in the high-conflict personality) and positive actions (in the normal range parent). After all, you live through your co-parent’s harmful behavior every day; you need to articulate the details of their behavior coherently to ensure the best possible outcomes for your children.
Proactive Documentation for Long-Term Solutions
Pathways Family Coaching’s Behavioral Pattern Finder is a revolutionary service for logging, evaluating, and presenting behavioral patterns in a high-conflict co-parenting situation. The BPF organizes up to 250 pieces of data into a factual, easy-to-use digital timeline that reveals patterns that may indicate harmful parenting practices, while also highlighting your own parenting strengths.
The Pathways team will work with you to compile documentation of behavioral patterns, such as text messages, emails, police reports, therapist reports, bank statements, and medical reports. This documentation is then chronologically ordered and tagged based on recommendations from top mental health professionals in the field. Finally, we create a visual timeline complete with behavioral “flags,” and review how it can be organized best to demonstrate patterns of behavior to professionals and the courts. The result? A comprehensive and easy-to-understand overview that anyone – including therapists and Judges – can interpret effectively and quickly.
The Behavioral Pattern Finder also allows parents to highlight their positive parenting practices in a clear, chronological and visual manner, proactively answering any questions that a Judge or mental health professional may ask. Don’t wait to be on the defence, reactively searching to “prove” you are a healthy and involved parent. Instead, use the BPF to demonstrate patterns of positive parenting such as meeting your child’s medical and mental health needs, sheltering your child from your co-parent’s abusive behavior, and creating a loving and nurturing environment for your child at home.
The Behavioral Pattern Finder is a powerful tool for making sense of the nuanced, emotionally-charged aspects of a high-conflict co-parenting situation. It allows you to present the whole co-parenting story, illuminating the causes of conflict for the legal health system and mental health professionals alike, allowing everyone to focus on moving towards resolution and healing for you and your child.
Ready to Get Started?
Learn more about Pathways’ Behavioral Pattern Finder here.
Pathways Family Coaching offers solutions for all stages of high-conflict separation and divorce, empowering you to heal and move forward with your family. Request a free consultation today, or contact us to learn about our library of online courses, coaching, resources, and other services.
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