Nonviolence and Families in Distress – Co-creating Positive Family Narratives against the Backdrop of Trauma, Deprivation, Substance Misuse and Challenging Social Environments (Dutch: Jakob, P. ( 2013). Geweldloosheid en gezinnen in crisis, cocreatie van positieve gezinsnarratieven tegen de achtergrond van trauma, deprivatie, middelenmisbruik en belastende sociale contexten. Systeemtheoretisch Bulletin, 31 (1), 5 – 27.)

Abstract Inspired by the methods and underlying principles of nonviolent resistance in the socio-political sphere, Non Violent Resistance (NVR) as a therapeutic approach supports parents, carers and the community in resisting aggressive, violent and selfdestructive behaviour in young people. Multi-stressed families with histories of trauma and difficult social relationships often experience high levels of such problem behaviour. Due to the multiple challenges faced by these families, which often relate to social isolation, conflict-laden relationships with the wider family and community, long-term involvement with statutory agencies, and severely fractured parent-child relationships, a specific adaptation of NVR has been developed for working with this client group. The model includes the utilisation of previously difficult relationships within the wider family and community and the transformation of difficult patterns of interaction through the use of methods of nonviolent direct action, recognising and safe relationships within the wider network around the family and encouraging the use of safe others as supporters in the process of resistance, establishment of cooperative relationships with professionals through shared action, using NVR methods as trauma therapy, and the use of child-focused methods aimed at restoring a caring dialogue between parent and child. Keywords: non violent resistance, NVR, violence, adolescents, children, reconciliation, child focus, trauma, larger systems Challenges for Multi-stressed Families and their Therapists Nonviolence has been introduced to systemic therapy by Haim Omer, for working with families that struggle with the aggressive, controlling, self-destructive and violent behaviour of their offspring. Drawing on the principles developed by Ghandi, Martin Luther King and others, Non Violent Resistance (NVR) as a therapeutic approach helps parents, carers and teachers raise their presence to challenge child aggression, overcome escalation, and promote reconciliation. A strength of the approach is its openness to adaptation; this has led to the development of many new applications of NVR beyond its original purpose, and enables the development of culturally sensitive ways of implementing the approach to make it acceptable to different communities and professional cultures. E.g., using focus group

methodology, Newman and Nolas (2008) were able to demonstrate that family therapists in the UK would be more inclined to favour the use of NVR, if it was childfocused. This may in part be due to the high incidence of abused children seen in UK child-and adolescent mental health services. Many children with abuse histories, whether remaining in their family of origin or looked-after in care, show high levels of unmet psychological needs, and the author has developed a child-focused way of using NVR, which will be briefly introduced in this article – an example of the adaptability of the approach. Psycho-social professionals often speak of “complex cases” when referring to clients, who have had experiences of trauma (often across generations), socioeconomic deprivation, substance misuse, and live in difficult social environments. This label can be unhelpful to families; it promotes pathologizing social constructions which discriminate against them, designating them as socially inadequate, obscuring their resiliency, and marginalising the inquiry into internal and inter-personal resourcefulness of family members. The conceptualisation by Madsen (2007) of “multi-stressed families” enables more collaborative ways of engaging with this client group. Often, these families do not receive the psychological interventions they require and deserve and, as Van Lawick and Bom (2008) illustrate, therapeutic responses must be adapted to match their specific therapeutic needs. This article will examine some of the key challenges which multi-stressed families and their therapists face, when responding to aggressive and selfdestructive behaviour in children and adolescents. They fall roughly into three categories:  Difficult relationship patterns between members of the nuclear family and the wider family and community;  Long-term involvement with statutory agencies, and  Trauma and fractured relationships within the nuclear family. Each of these challenges will be illustrated in turn, and then ways of adapting the nonviolent approach to help meet them will be outlined. Challenge no.1: Difficult Relationship Patterns between Members of the Nuclear Family and the Wider Family and Community Multi-stressed families with aggressively behaving children tend to struggle with two specific difficulties in regard to the wider family and community: social isolation and/or exposure of parents to dominance and control by other adults. Social isolation in these families can have a number of reasons. Often, mothers are single parents in multi-stressed families, or frequently experience relationships with men as unsupportive at best and violent at worst. Previously traumatised parents may have a general sense of alienation from other people, which is a common post-traumatic difficulty. Histories of domestic violence often lead to agoraphobia in mothers. Violent crime and threatening behaviours in the neighbourhood can act as post-traumatic triggers, which parents avoid by staying at home and dis-engaging from others. Many parent survivors of abuse have developed a profound sense of shame, literally feeling unable to look anyone in the eye, and as a result avoid inter-personal contact. Such feelings of shame, as well as fear of angry confrontation, are confounded, when parents expect hostility by neighbours in reaction to their child’s misbehaviour outside the family home.

In NVR, raising parental presence becomes the key element of change. In order to do so, it is necessary for a mother to be able to utilize a social support network which authorizes the direct nonviolent action she takes, and physically and morally supports her in doing so. Adult supporters are also needed to act as stress buffers between parent and child. Where social isolation is very severe, parents are cut off from such vital support. Martha and her 15 year old son John were living from benefits on a social housing estate with a high degree of socio-economic deprivation. John was referred by the criminal justice system to child- and adolescent mental health services following a recent offense. The psychologist found it very difficult to contact Martha, who did not respond to any communication by telephone or letter and did not open the door when visited. Later, once contact had been established, it transpired that Martha was afraid of having a panic attack if she left the house. On the rare occasions she did, Martha avoided looking at anyone for fear they might “have a go” at her over the way her son and his friends vandalized the neighbouring properties. She also explained her reluctance to open the door as fear of being visited by the housing officer who had threatened eviction following many complaints by neighbours. Martha explained that she saw the entire outside world as hostile and dangerous. She was very afraid of her son’s threatening behaviour and gave in to his demands and unreasonable expectations in order to pacify him. John was her main conduit to the outside world, giving him almost unlimited power over her. Martha had far too few adult contacts to help her reflect on her situation with John, protect herself from his violence and assume a position of authority. Parents who have been abused themselves often turn to controlling or even abusive other adults, when they feel especially helpless in regard to their aggressive child. They have experienced these people as strong and powerful in the past. Guided by the illusion of control (Omer, 2004), they equate strength with dominance and coercion. They then often delegate their parental agency to others, who are critical or judgemental, who give prescriptive advice and who will take the initiative for dealing with the child out of the parent’s hands. This has a number of very serious implications for parent and child. The parent’s confidence is seriously undermined by the fact they have declared themselves unable to be part of the response to the child, and by the critical, undermining communication by the dominant other. A parent who delegates her authority gives her child the message she has completely abdicated her responsibility, and further reduces her parental presence in the process. The parent often “regresses” psychologically, or, as one mother put it: “I feel like I’m 12 years old, and I think and act that way too, when it happens.” If the dominant other has been abusive toward the parent in the past, their re-appearance in the nuclear family and their aggressive handling of the child is likely to trigger posttraumatic responses. The child may be humiliated and intimidated, when their possibly violent birth father, grandparent or family friend coercively intervenes to control them. Feeling unprotected and exposed by their parent, the parent – child relationship is undermined even further. It also exposes the parent to further risk: a mother is often subjected to her son’s or daughter’s violent retaliation, once the relative or family friend has left.

13 year old Jeff experienced social anxiety, and very rarely left the house, so his mother Tess had very little reprieve from his controlling behaviour, physical violence and incessant verbal abuse. Whilst in the therapy session afterwards she berated herself for doing this, Tess would call her father whenever she “came to the end of her tether”. Mark, the grandfather, had been physically violent and verbally abusive towards Tess, her siblings and mother throughout her childhood. On one occasion, when her son’s violence had escalated over several days, she felt terrified, then humiliated by her terror, and finally enraged by her humiliation – and could only think about getting the grandfather to “show him what it feels like”. Still an imposing figure, Mark came to his daughter’s house, shouted at Jeff and threatened to break his arms if Jeff misbehaved again. In front of Jeff, he berated his daughter for her incompetence as a parent and her inability to control her son. This triggered old, abuse-related feelings in Tess, and left her afraid that her son would pay her back for calling in the grandfather, once his fear had subsided. She also felt intensely guilty for having brought the grandfather’s aggression upon Jeff.

Challenge no.2: Long-term Involvement with Statutory Agencies Psychological theories and public policy often hold parents accountable for the violence of their children. Drawing on numerous research findings about the impact of such attributions, Holt (2012) makes a compelling case for the deleterious effects of blaming discourses on parents, which leave them feeling isolated and reduce their efficacy in responding to the abuse. Holt points out how the proliferation of parenting resources, such as parenting classes, books and “Supernanny” programmes on television, add to the construction of parents as contributors to their child’s aggression – which makes the notion that a parent could be seen as a victim of the child’s violence seem untenable in the public eye (p.10). Parents fear that they will be publicly blamed for the abuse they suffer. Psychological explanations that underpin the attribution of child violence to the parent range from attachment conceptualisations to intra-familial theories. Therapists, teachers or child protection workers draw on theories which explain violent child behaviour within the conceptual framework of the pervasive parent-blaming culture. This will affect any parent in such a situation. However, for parents who have low social status, may belong to a cultural or ethnic minority, and have experienced severe trauma over a prolonged period of time, it becomes even more poignant. More than others, multi-stressed families find themselves dependent on statutory agencies for years or even generations. Feeling blamed, shameful and powerless in their presence, parents in multi-stressed families may experience professionals who interact prescriptively with them as all-powerful agents of social control. This then mirrors the interaction patterns, within which parents feel oppressed by members of the extended family or community. Imber-Black (1992) has examined such parallel processes and their counter-productive effects on families extensively, conceptualising them as “structural isomorphism”. Jimmy, a 12 year old autistic boy, had been very controlling towards his mother Sharon and his elderly grandmother. Apart from physical violence, Jimmy also showed sexually transgressive behaviour towards both women, and towards other children at school. Sharon, who has a mild learning disability, frequently felt blamed by her mother for her “ineffective parenting”. After the first two NVR sessions, in

which Sharon showed increasing engagement with the process, the family were referred by the local authority to a parenting centre for assessment. Sharon’s nephew had been sexually abused by his own birth father, who was now in prison. The social workers at the parenting centre told Sharon that they believed she had not protected Jimmy from sexual transgression, and cited the fact that she washed him as an example of her own inappropriate sexual boundaries towards him. The key recommendation was for Jimmy to be referred to a therapeutic community. Sharon cut off all contact to professionals, including Jimmy’s statutory social worker (who was not a member of the parenting centre) and the psychologist at child- and adolescent mental health services, refusing to open the door or answer telephone calls. Sharon’s response to the professional system was interpreted in the parenting assessment as further evidence of the risk she was believed to pose to her son. It took six weeks of intensive effort by the social worker and the psychologist to reengage Sharon and her mother. Multi-stressed families tend to receive input from multiple agencies, rather than having all services delivered from one hand. Fragmented service provision is often the result of medical ways of understanding behaviour problems, with different identified “problems” in the family leading to multiple referrals. This prevents a comprehensive service response. As Sharon and Jimmy’s example demonstrates, the agencies often do not act in joined-up ways, and splits between professionals can mirror splits between family members. It is especially counterproductive when different service responses leave parents struggling to integrate conflicting demands and different interpretations of their family situation.

Challenge no.3: Trauma and Fractured Relationships within the Nuclear Family. The high incidence of trauma-related mental health difficulties in parents – ranging from posttraumatic stress disorder to helplessness depression and other problems, makes it much more difficult for parental authority to be developed in multi-stressed families. Very traumatised parents find that aggressive behaviour, even in a very young child, triggers high levels of anxiety, and can result in abject terror. A variety of posttraumatic responses occur; importantly from a relational point of view, parents tend to develop highly anxious avoidance of their child, both physical – literally staying away – and mental. They may develop dissociative responses: in their own mind, they leave the domestic sphere, so they can no longer be troubled by what feels like the e.g. the violence of the boy’s father. This reduces parental presence, raises the risk of child violence and aggression, and makes it more difficult for the parent to protect themselves and a violent child’s siblings. It also becomes more difficult for parents to be attentive to distress signals from their child and show caring responses. Dismissive child behaviour is also capable of closing down caring responses in adults. Dozier, Higley, Albus and Nutter (2002) were able to demonstrate, that previously caring foster carers became less caring and more punitive, when infants acted as if they did not require their caring responses. Hughes und Baylin (2012) have developed the concept of blocked care. They demonstrated that specific neural pathways, which are generally activated when adults resonate with child need, become de-activated in the face of rejection by the child. It is very common for

children from multi-stressed families to act dismissively and reject caring responses from parents, foster carers or other significant adults. It often makes sense for the child not to signal distress to the parent. Like anxious children, aggressive young people tend to live in a subjectively threatening world; they tend to perceive others as fundamentally hostile (Barrett, Rapee, Dadds und Ryan, 1996). Parent and child operate with negative internalisations of one another. Grace, Kelley and McCain (1993) demonstrated that in mother – adolescent conflict, both have developed negative internal representations of one another and show reduced mutual empathy. An adolescent is unlikely to seek emotional support from significant others whom she experiences as threatening, and of whom he has negative internal representations. For many children who have experienced aggression and violence in their immediate social environment from a very young age, and who may have been subjected to physical or sexual abuse and neglect, distress tends to trigger survival reactivity. Adolescents with behaviour problems show elevated amygdala activity in the brain Ohman (2005), which in turn is associated with greater perception of risk in the social environment (Vasterling and Brewin, 2005). In clinical practice we can see how traumatised young people with survival reactivity show reduced mentalisation, i.e. the ability to be aware of and think about ones own emotions, thoughts and body sensations, and those of the other. Moving into an attack-orientated frame of mind, internal distress is converted into anger within an extremely short space of time. Young people do not feel their own distress long enough in order to signal their need. I have described the way in which these mutual processes between parents and children act as constraints for care responses as the breaking down of the caring dialogue (Jakob, 2013). The absence of a mutually responsive dialogical process between parents and child - in which the child can signal distress, parents can show responsiveness and address the child’s needs, and the child can give feedback to the parents about the effects of their acts of care – leads to children’s psychological needs remaining unmet (Jakob, 2011). Working with children in multi-stressed families or children looked after in residential or foster care, identifiable unmet needs are:  The need for safety and protection;  The need for support in meeting developmental challenges;  The need for a sense of belonging, and  The need for a coherent and sufficiently benign narrative of family and self. The need for a coherent and benign narrative of family and self is often not recognised by professionals and families alike. In story-stem research, children who have been diagnosed with “disorganised attachment” develop more fragmented stories than others. The actual narrative content of stories by children who have experienced abuse in the family is often gruesome, and the protagonists appear cruel and uncaring. When young people do not experience the significant adults in their lives as caring, kind and strong, it is very difficult for them to develop a selfconcept, according to which they themselves are worthy of care. Sometimes, a parent who has been abused herself, and whose daughter or son has been abused earlier in life, develops a corrective script, according to which she

wishes to protect her child from all harm that could come to her. While such a corrective script can indeed be very helpful, it can often lead to an overreaction, and the parent is not actually in touch with the child and her needs. Shelagh has experienced many difficulties with her 13 year old son Duane and 14 year old daughter Chelsea. When she had been Chelsea’s age, she roamed the streets freely by day and at night. At 15, she was raped and severely beaten. Shelagh had become highly restrictive of her daughter’s movements, but felt that she could not restrict Duane as a boy. Fearing Duane’s aggression, Shelagh found herself avoiding his presence when he came home, sometimes to the point of becoming dissociative and “going somewhere else in her mind” when she felt threatened by him, yet invested very much attention and effort in preventing Chelsea from going out. There were aggressive arguments between Shelagh and Chelsea, which resulted in Chelsea attacking her mother physically. Shelagh began oscillating back and forth between attempting to restrict Chelsea from going out, and avoiding Chelsea in a similar way to how she had come to avoid Duane. Chelsea spent whole nights away from home; sometimes, she and her mother would argue over this; at other times, Shelagh withdrew from both her children.

Meeting Challenge no.1: Helping Families Improve their Relationships with the Outside World. Bringing about change in multi-stressed families can appear to be an overwhelming task for parents and therapists alike. However, as an action-orientated approach, NVR offers many possibilities for transforming family relationships. Rather than “repairing” family interaction, the therapist becomes a facilitator of change which is intrinsic to the family itself, by helping them activate their own resources. It is useful to explore exceptions to critical and domineering relationships between members of the wider family or community and parents, in order to develop a support network with safe relationships. The key to eliciting such exceptions lies in asking the parent to identify people, with whom they feel or have felt safe. Useful questions to ask are: “What is it about this person that makes you feel safe? What does she do differently to those in your family, by whom you feel bullied? In what ways do you find that you are a different person, when you are in his presence?” Often, guided by the illusion of control, a parent will not have considered such a safe person as a potential supporter. It will take therapeutic skill, care and effort to help a parent entertain the idea of engaging such a safe person. However, by encouraging the parent to engage with a safe supporter, the therapist enables the re-storying of resistance to aggression: the parent’s own experience of the supporter’s calm, noncoercive responsiveness during critical nonviolent action – e.g. as a witness during an “announcement” or a “sit-in” (see Omer, 2004) will enable a re-evaluation of the meaning of inter-personal strength. This occurs not only on a cognitive level, as a shift of the parent’s belief system, but also becomes an embodied experience; the re-storying is located in action and with physical proximity to the non-coercive supporter. Future-orientated questions, which help parents enter imagined scenarios of resistance together with the safe supporter, are often helpful in motivating them to experiment with “peaceful” support rather than appealing for coercive input:

“Will you follow me on an imaginary trip to the near future? Please imagine you are reading out the announcement to your son in your friend’s presence. What do you see her doing? What about her is supportive? OK, so this feels different to the past, when you used to ask your dad to come and correct Brian by ticking him off – what is new? How come it feels right? How will you notice that Diana isn’t taking over? How will that change the way you feel? How long will it take you to get used to Diana just being there, but you being in charge of what you do?” Where members of the wider family or community have been critical and interacted prescriptively, but have the positive intention to help the parent, there is energy which can be channelled in the direction of more constructive efforts. In such a case, it can be possible to follow the utilization principle and harness these energies whilst transforming the relationship. Not all relationships with others who have been critical or prescriptive towards the parent are irreversibly locked into such interactional patterns, and the parent will not at all times have acquiesced to the dominant other. Searching for alternative patterns – i.e. identifying times the parent has resisted control in these otherwise dominant relationships - can be useful in preparing the ground for the transformation of these relationships. Wade (1997) has developed an approach within a narrative therapy/solution-focussed framework which is based on the assumption that it is intrinsic to human nature to resist when one is being treated badly. However, the ways in which the powerless resist are not recognised within dominant discourse – they will not have been named as resistance. In the therapeutic process, new accounts of the client’s life are co-created by the client and therapist. The the client can recognise their own resistance against having been oppressed. In NVR, identifying and naming a parent’s resistance against past or present control by others will encourage them to develop a sense of agency, parental autonomy and entitlement to support: “I can stand up for myself, and I have stood up to her in my own way… I have to stand up to her now and tell her what she has to stop doing. I have a right to ask for the kind of support from her that I want and need. It’s right for me to stay in charge as a mum; I don’t want her to put me down in front of the kids any longer, when I do things my way.” The next step follows Grabbe’s (2007) “rhetoric of alliance-forming”, where certain forms of communication are seen to be conducive of creating cooperative responses and promoting supportive alliances. The previously controlling other person is invited into the therapy session with the parent. It is important for the therapist to identify and validate the other person’s positive intentionality and acknowledge that they genuinely want to help the parent. Rather than speaking about past inappropriate or unhelpful responses, action preparation is more useful. Shelagh planned to carry out sit-ins in protest against the violent attacks by Chelsea. She wanted her neighbour Jean to act as a witness at sit-ins, but also be available to act as a mediator for her and Chelsea. She brought her neighbour Jean into the therapy session with her. At times, Shelagh had felt undermined by Jean, withdrawing from her when she felt particularly hurt by Jean’s critical and reproachful attitude. The therapist commented on the strength of their relationship, noticing that it had weathered the storms of their arguments. He also noted the fact that Jean was prepared to put herself out for Shelagh and her children, by coming to the therapy session and trying out something new. He then explained what a sit-in is to Jean, and asked Shelagh about her aims for the planned sit-ins. Shelagh wanted to stand

up to her own fear of Chelsea’s aggression, and did not want to “double-up” as before, when Chelsea or Duane got angry (which had been to wrap her arms around herself and rock back and forth, humming to herself in a regressive manner). For the rest of the session, Shelagh told Jean what she needed her to do as a witness in sitins: remain silent, be visible but not in front, touch her lightly on the arm if Shelagh was at risk of being overcome by fear. The therapist asked Jean if she felt she could withstand her own impulse to criticise Shelagh, tell her what to do, or take over the active role in the sit-in. Jean felt that remembering the therapy session and Shelagh’s need to develop her own strength would help her refrain from trying to control the situation. The psychologist asked Jean to carry out an observation task: to note down all constructive responses Shelagh showed during the sit-ins. Jean stuck to the role Shelagh had asked her to take on. Shelagh also noticed in her conversations with Jean that Jean listened more to her, and that she herself spoke more about what she was going to do about certain of her children’s behaviours rather than complaining about them and communicating helplessness. She also found that she and Jean had more fun together and that she was taking a greater interest in Jean’s life, as well. On one occasion, they went to a nearby town and had tea together – Shelagh had not undertaken any such outing for most of her adult life!

Meeting Challenge no.2: Helping Improve Relationships between Professionals, and between Professionals and the Family Divisions between professionals, and between professionals and the family, can be also be overcome following the principle of joint involvement in planned action. Joint action between professionals and the family is planned at multi-agency meetings. The NVR therapist needs to take responsibility for calling in and taking the lead in these meetings. A number of conversational strategies helps to move the process forward:  Creating conversational space for the voice of the parent, so that professionals can empathise with the parent and develop compassion. Rather than remaining guided by their – often pathologizing - theoretical assumptions about the parent or family dynamics, professionals can engage in a dialogical process, in which they gain first-hand experience of the parent’s difficulties and struggle to bring about change. It is the therapist’s responsibility to create this space and centre the parent’s own experience in the meeting. “Languaging” their own experience is empowering to parents; they (literally) feel heard for what they have to say, rather than remaining in a position of having to respond to the professionals’ discourse around them.  Discouraging problem-saturated conversations creates space for actionbased communication, such as the planning of direct nonviolent action. It is a shift from talking about what the parents are seen to be unable to do, to what they can do with the help of the professionals.  Engaging professionals as active supporters of the parents in nonviolent action helps form true working alliances. When e.g. a social worker actively participates as witness in a sit-in, they develop a visceral experience of the challenges the parent faces, while being supportive by virtue of their personal presence and solidarity, rather than just taking an expert position. In such a

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situation, parents are often surprised at the humanity and caring responsiveness of the professional, whom they hitherto may have experienced as aloof and critical. Professionals tend to revise their views of the family, once they have taken part in direct action. In order to motivate a professional to become actively involved, it is very important to work from the assumption that he or she is well-intentioned and wishes to help the family, regardless of how counterproductive their previous communication with the family may have been. The direct action should be planned in the multiagency meeting. Encouraging professionals from different agencies to physically work together: Generally, professionals from different agencies carry out interagency work by taking part in multi-agency meetings and professionals’ meetings, where “talking about” families becomes the professional currency of exchange. Disagreement often creates an impasse in working together, and jeopardizes outcomes by putting parents in a position of having to respond to conflicting expectations by different professionals. To overcome this, I have found it very productive to engage professionals from other agencies as co-therapists in the NVR intervention. In this way, different perspectives within a shared action-orientated intervention enhance the joint work towards shared goals.

After initially struggling to contact Martha, the psychologist from child-and adolescent mental health services joined up with the adult mental health outreach social worker, who was responsible for supporting Martha due to her serious depression. The psychologist learned that she had at least sometimes been let in to the house by Martha. They discussed the assumption, that NVR could help Martha become less depressed by helping her gain more control over her own life. Even though this procedure was unusual for both agencies, the two professionals decided to work together within the same intervention. Eventually, Martha took part in sessions which were jointly conducted by both professionals. Due to Martha’s extreme fear of this person, they decided to invite the housing officer to a multi-agency meeting. At first, the atmosphere in the room was very uncomfortable, with Martha showing anxious body language and avoiding eye contact with anyone, while the housing officer appeared very tense. She had a file on the family with her and spoke about the many complaints she had received due to the family’s (!) anti-social behaviour. The therapist acknowledged how difficult it must be for the housing officer to have to deal with so many angry complainants. He then asked Martha to describe a situation she had told them about in the previous session: hardly looking up from the floor and obviously shaken, she spoke about the way John had manipulated the lock to her bedroom door so he could lock her in from the outside. Listening to this account, the housing officer’s demeanour changed dramatically. She literally dropped the file on the floor, bent towards Martha, and offered to apply for the installation of a safe room in the house with a direct link to the police station. It was apparent that the housing officer had re-evaluated the family’s situation, now responding to Martha as the victim of domestic violence, rather than as the head of an anti-social family. Subsequently, the housing officer and social worker supported Martha and her mother in contacting the neighbours who had been complaining about John’s vandalism around the housing estate; a number of neighbours followed an invitation to a meeting in Martha’s home, where they were able to gain more understanding of her situation. An agreement was reached that the neighbours would contact Martha

and her mother by telephone, if John damaged their properties, so that the grandmother could repair the damage. Further nonviolent steps were taken after that. In the course of her nonviolent resistance of John’s problematic behaviour, Martha’s depression lifted more and more, and she began taking steps to desensitize herself for her agoraphobia.

Meeting Challenge no.3: Developing a Focus on the Child from a Parental Position of Strength Many parents of aggressive adolescents feel guilty at feeling hatred and dislike of their child (Holt, 2011), and want to re-experience the positive feelings they once had.In order for parents in multi-stressed families to change the fractured relationship with their child, they must feel they are approaching their son or daughter from a position of strength, so they can reduce survival system reactivity and reverse the constraint of blocked care. They need to move out of the extreme helplessness of a trauma consciousness state by becoming re-connected with their own capacity for resistance. A parents hostility generally diminishes very quickly when they develop a greater sense of their own agency, opening up space for a focus on the child’s distress. This is even more salient for previously traumatised parents. They need to be supported by the therapist in coming out of trauma states before it becomes emotionally viable for them to focus on their child’s need. Of course, for therapists there is an ethical obligation to help parents overcome posttraumatic reactivity in their own right, whether or not this will enable them to develop greater sensitivity towards their child. Direct action as de-sensitization situations for parents. In any kind of direct action, traumatised parents expose themselves to triggers which generally provoke posttraumatic reactivity – triggers they have formerly avoided. In NVR with traumatised parents, it is helpful to consider any kind of direct action as a de-sensitization situation. Each step should be planned as part of a de-sensitisation schedule, which the therapist and parent develop carefully together. Traumatised parents are especially prone to oscillating back and forth between exposing themselves too quickly to highly anxiety-provoking situations, and complete withdrawal and avoidance. This can lead to serious post-traumatic reactivity, which can be reduced by the careful planning of exposure. In the therapy session, the therapist can help the parent to develop embodied presence: when preparing direct action, the parent is supported to ground herself in the body response of her supporter, who should be present. The parent is guided to perceive her supporter’s body responses during the preparatory role-play, and then become mindful of the effects of the supporter on her own body experience. She is then encouraged to do this again, only this time by looking at the “child” role player, while continuing to observe the supporter’s body language from the periphery of her own vision. Therapists should then work with parents on their own body language, posture and embodied trauma responses in preparation for direct action. It can be very helpful to integrate other trauma-focussed methods into the work with NVR, such as methods drawn from Sensori-motor Therapy, Hypnotherapy, trauma-focussed CBT and EMDR, when there is very intense traumatic reactivity such as intense fear and rage, startle and freeze reactions, high levels of dissociation or extreme drops in arousal due to parasympathetic activation.

Severe setbacks are part of the normal change process for clients who are overcoming trauma. Rather than giving in to a belief that “nothing has changed”, or any improvement is just “superficial”, therapists should normalise setbacks. It is then helpful to utilise solution-focussed methods which have been devised for overcoming setbacks (e.g. Dolan, 1991). Developing a child focus and re-sensitizing themselves for unmet need in their child becomes possible, once parents have internally regained a position of strength. An excellent vehicle to support the restitution of the caring dialogue is the use of reconciliation gestures. Here, the principle of unilateral action in NVR is very useful: parents can be encouraged to persevere in making reconciliation gestures to their child, regardless of the child’s reaction. Following a subtle relational logic, the child who has been unable to receive, because she has consistently demanded and taken, now receives – the fact that the parent perseveres, even though the child rejects her gestures, makes the parent’s caring response truly unconditional. I therefore encourage parents to – counter-intuitively - welcome the child’s rejection because of the opportunity it provides. Parents are subsequently guided by the therapist to plan and then carry out reconciliation gestures, which show the child that they care about his or her distress and have a growing awareness of their unmet needs. By showing sensitivity to child distress without insisting on a positive response, parents give the child an open invitation to join in the caring dialogue. Three methods are especially helpful in this process: need-focussed question sequences, the interview of the internalised child in need in the parent, and therapeutic network meetings.

When using need-focused question sequences, the therapist invites the parent to create an imaginary scenario, in which they have been able to communicate productively with the child about her distress. What would the child say? How would she act? What would the parent’s responses be? Once the imaginary plot has been thickened, the therapist can ask questions which consolidate the parent’s sense of agency in being empathic: How did you become aware this may have been causing your daughter so much pain and suffering? What were the first signs you paid attention to? What enabled you to look behind her anger and catch a glimpse of her distress? The need-focused question sequence is completed with questions helping the parent to plan reconciliation gestures which will make reference to the parent’s perception of the child’s unmet need. These questions should also help the parent plan her own emotional response in such a way, that she can see herself making these gestures without showing any insistence that the child should engage in communication about it: What can you do to make sure you don’t expect your daughter to show any appreciation for your gestures? Who can help you maintain your posture if she rejects your gestures? What would you like her to do to support you, so you don’t communicate hurt or resentment? In this way, the parent’s reconciliation gestures become an action-based, open invitation to dialogue. The interview of the internalised child in need is an adaptation of the interview of the internalised other, a systemic technique aimed at promoting empathy within close personal relationships (Tomm, 1998). The parent is asked to role play their child, but not to replicate the angry or destructive behaviour, but instead imagine an exception,

in which “the child” answers the therapist’s questions, whilst being in touch with his or her own distress. The internalised child in need interview finishes with questions about the kind of parental reconciliation gesture that would show the child, that his father is showing a developing awareness of his needs and ability to care for him. Therapeutic network meetings are useful and in my view necessary, when a young person is being seen in individual therapy for behaviour problems. The NVR therapist engages the individual therapist to act as the voice of the child in need. After negotiating what can be shared and what remains confidential with the child, the individual therapist brings information about the child’s needs into the network meeting. Individual therapists often hold preconceived notions about the parent, assuming that the parent is in some way noxious or damaging to the child, or that they may have brought the problem about due to poor parenting. Such beliefs tend to form in the individual therapist due to the negative internalisations of the parent which the child communicates in their therapy sessions. When these individual therapists have the opportunity to witness the struggles parents face, and see their serious efforts to find ways of addressing the child’s needs, they tend to re-evaluate their beliefs about the parent. Each therapeutic network meeting ends with the joint planning of reconciliation gestures. Duane had been coming home angry from his school for adolescents with behaviour problems. Upset about something that happened at school or on his way home, attacked and hurt his sister. Shelagh was upset and angry, but also mystified about what seemed to have troubled Duane. After discussing past sit-ins, and planning a sit-in to be carried out in response to this violent incident, the therapist invited Shelagh to imagine a time when Duane comes home from school but shows less anger. She was encouraged to imagine herself going up to his room with a cup of tea and quietly sitting with him, giving him the opportunity to share his distress. Shelagh shared her impression, that Duane was being bullied. In the past, Shelagh had felt unable to protect her children from their violent father, who was now deceased. There were also therapeutic network meetings, in which Duane’s therapist shared his narrative of the family. Shelagh gained the impression that Duane was likely to feel she did not care about his wellbeing and safety, and that he may believe she did not cherish him enough to want to make him feel safe. One reconciliation gesture Shelagh developed was to wrap sweets in little notes, which she “smuggled” into his pencil case, and which reminded him that she bore him in mind, e.g. “thinking of you” and “hope today is a good day”. Eventually, she went to the school’s deputy headteacher; working together, they were able to get to the bottom of the bullying and take measures against it. More and more, Shelagh told Duane about the family’s past, and the ways in which she did protect the children, e.g. by giving their father more to drink so he would pass out and she could let them out of the room he had locked them into. Eventually, Duane began telling his mother more about his difficulties with other pupils in school, and he revised his account of the family past. On one occasion, he told his mother: “It wasn’t your fault you couldn’t stand up to dad, you were too afraid of him”.

Conclusions

The narratives of multi-stressed families within professional communities, and the narratives the families hold of themselves, tend to be problem-saturated and contain many negative representations of family members. Large professional systems can mushroom around a family; professionals often feel overwhelmed with their task and at odds with one another and with their clients. This article has sought to illustrate, that it is particularly the action orientation of NVR which can be utilised to help cocreate family narratives, in which safe supportive relationships, parental agency and strength, and caring interaction to meet child needs become the salient themes. However, in order to bring about such new and more productive family narratives, the NVR approach itself needs to be adapted in method and intensity of contact, to meet the particular needs of the families. Due to the risk of setback, it is important that this high volume of work can be made available to the family, community and professional network over a prolonged period of time, in order to do the families justice. Adapting the service response to the families’ therapeutic needs, rather than expecting families to adjust to pre-existing service structures, will yield more positive results in the use of NVR.

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