Bedbugs and Parental Alienation

Parental Alienation Survivor | Author | Podcast Creator & Host of iWasErased Reflections | Giving Voice to Erased Parents | Creator of the iWasErased Newsletter

December 2, 2025

Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, as children, we would always make things light as we prepared ourselves for a well-earned sleep. Often, we would include the phrase “don’t let the bedbugs bite” after

wishing everyone a good night. At the time, we really didn’t understand what this meant because we were so young. Instead, it was just something

we thought was amusing to say.

As I became an adult, I forgot all about this, and I still never knew what a bedbug really was. However, these memories of my youth were brought back to life in the late 1990s when I read about these tiny creatures in the news. For the most part, I was under the impression that they were confined to certain regions on the East Coast and were most problematic in hotels.

However, I now know these nasty little bugs are everywhere and are almost impossible to eradicate. They bite you relentlessly as you sleep under the cover of darkness and leave their mark wherever they appear on your body. You can spray them with chemicals, and they do disappear for a short amount of time, but just like magic, they reemerge after you thought you were rid of them. Simply put, they are very resilient.

The same holds true for people who choose to alienate us from our children. There was a time when we only heard about parental alienation and thought this was a myth or perhaps only appeared in other people’s lives elsewhere. Unfortunately, this was not true. Just like bedbugs, they are everywhere and are hard to defeat. We can use our can of legal spray to keep them at bay, but it is only a temporary fix.

They come out mainly under the cover of darkness and inflict wounds not on our outer skin, but rather underneath, where they are not visible to the naked eye. Alienators cause their destructive damage as they feed upon our very blood and then scurry off to hide in great satisfaction to digest their actions. It is only when we awaken from our slumber that we see and feel the effects of what they caused.

While it must be said that all creatures, both great and small, have a purpose on our planet, we must also recognize that some are problematic and do actually cause harm to us. As such, we recognize they must be dealt with appropriately. This means that when we are in their environment, we must respect their territory and they must respect ours.

Perhaps, we should do this with our human counterparts who choose to invade our lives in such a manner that disrupts or causes harm in our lives in the form of severe mental and emotional wounds. Should we allow them to continually attack us without consequences, or should we seek legal ways to end the wrongful actions they commit? Ignoring the situation will only intensify it and make it unmanageable.

While a bedbug is an irritant, it is certainly not a danger to us physically, mentally, or emotionally. Further, they are simply trying to survive by feeding themselves, which means our blood is a source of life for them. However, an alienator does not need to commit their wrongful actions to survive. They do it because of the incessant desire to destroy the object of their hatred.

If we choose to allow this to happen, then we are nothing but a feeding vessel for them to satisfy their hunger ofvengeance against us for a failed relationship. They will continue to feed their hunger of hatred against us, and eventually, we will become nothing more than an empty vessel that is unable to survive. We must and need to use every legal can of protection at our disposal.

Unless we act now, the infestation will continue and grow at a rate beyond our control, and this means the marks our children and we bear on the inside will never recover. We must address the problem with appropriate measures and ensure that our lives remain in a constant state of peace, free from the infestation of alienation.

Can you now see the comparison between bedbugs and parental alienation?

By David Shubert

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