Episode Details

Nothing has to be said out loud. Your child mentions a good weekend at the other parent's house, and there is a pause, or a sigh, or a look. You did not say a word, and your child now knows that subject is not safe here.

Adam Barta is a licensed clinical social worker who founded Head in the Right Direction Counseling Services in 2008, the year his first son was born. It has grown to roughly twenty-two therapists across seven offices in New York State, with clinical supervisors, licensed mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists, and a strong intern program. He deliberately credentialed the practice with Medicaid, Medicare, and the insurers, on the view that mental health care should not be limited to people who can pay several hundred dollars an hour. Much of his high-conflict work has come through the family courts.

He starts by pushing back on the request he gets constantly, which is fix my child. Treating the child's behavior on its own risks telling a kid who already blames themselves that they are the problem, when a trauma-informed reading is the reverse: what looks abnormal is often a normal response to an environment that is not safe. Building an accurate picture takes time, because every person in the family hands the clinician the puzzle pieces they want seen. He is honest about the limits, too. Where both parents carry a high degree of pathology, the work needs a program with multiple therapists and real accountability to a court, and those programs need funding and county support that most places do not have.

From there he lays out the drama triangle, where someone who has been through significant trauma stops assessing a conflict and instead casts the roles: the one being wronged, the one doing the wrong, and the rescuer, with a child or an outside agency pulled in to fill the third part. He names two misconceptions worth the price of admission. That your divorce can be kept separate from the children, and that your child should see your ex the way you do, which he says removes their ability to individuate, from a peer group later and from a partner later still. He is careful throughout to set aside genuine abuse cases. Then he makes the case for humanizing the other parent, not out of generosity but because dehumanizing someone is what allows a person to act outside their own character. Lisa matches it with the exercise she and Chris run before an evaluation or deposition, naming two real things your ex does well, and offers her own example about a shared love of reading and who her son got it from. He closes with a free roadmap he built out of his family court work, and one instruction for today: look at your child, and think about the adult they are going to be.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why treating the child's behavior alone can tell them they are the problem
• Trauma-informed reading: normal behavior in an abnormal environment, not the reverse
• What is still possible when the other parent refuses to take part in anything
• The drama triangle, and how a whole family gets cast into fixed roles
• The nonverbal signals that teach your kid the other parent is unsafe to mention
• Why the story you tell yourself about your ex drives behavior you never chose
• Why fear with no evidence behind it can hurt your case, and what to do with it
• How to name two genuine things about your ex, and why an evaluator will ask

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why sending the child to therapy isn't the fix
3:00 Adam's practice, and normal behavior in an abnormal environment
5:00 How a clinician works out what a family actually needs
7:00 When one parent refuses to take part
11:00 Accountability, court orders, and the co-parenting plan
13:00 The drama triangle, and the roles eve