Episode Details

Your child comes back from time with the other parent and something is off. They are colder, quicker to blame you, repeating lines that are not theirs. You are left holding the version of your kid who just walked back through the door, and wondering what you are supposed to do with it.

Christine Cocchiola returns to the show to talk about the children living inside a psychologically abusive home. She researches and teaches on coercive control, and she names something family court is still catching up to: that emotional abuse of a child, and the use of a child as a weapon against the other parent, is abuse even when no one is being hit. The conversation opens with a real letter from an abusive parent to a child, and what it exposes about the dynamic a kid is being raised in.

Christine and Lisa work through how children absorb that climate even when the cruelty is not aimed at them, and what a targeted parent can actually do about it. How to meet a child or teenager who comes home dysregulated after a visit. What to do when your own child starts treating you the way the other parent does, testing boundaries or turning abusive language back on you. And why staying the steady, safe home matters more than winning any single argument about who said what.

The throughline is a hard one for a parent in the middle of it: you cannot control what happens in the other house, and you cannot argue a child out of what they are being told. What you can do is stay regulated, hold the boundary without becoming the parent you have been painted as, and keep the door open for the child who is watching more than they let on.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• How children absorb the emotional climate of a psychologically abusive home, even when the abuse is not aimed directly at them
• What a letter from an abusive parent to a child can reveal about the dynamic
• How to respond when your child or teenager comes home from a visit dysregulated or distant
• What to do when your child starts treating you the way the abusive parent does
• Why staying the calm, safe home does more than correcting every distortion in the moment
• How to hold a boundary with a child who is acting out without confirming the story they have been told about you

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Christine Cocchiola on Instagram (@coercivecontrolisipv): https://www.instagram.com/coercivecontrolisipv

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.