As part of an NVR Accreditation Module, I was invited to present to colleagues about an aspect of NVR and my work with families that interested me particularly.
I was inspired by a cartoon which my colleague and I use in our parent groups and colleague training.
This image speaks of expectations: the parent’s expectation of the child and the parent’s expectation of themselves. These expectations build a narrative around the family – influenced by stories of the parent about themselves as a person, parent, or partner and by stories about the parent and child told by the wider family and community. I have become increasingly interested in how expectations insert themselves into the parent-child relationship in unhelpful ways. A key focus of NVR work is to increase parental presence and this blog describes how work with the idea of expectations can support this endeavour.
Starting out together
I wanted to reflect on how myself and my colleagues work with parents and carers to support them to move from a place of exhaustion, helplessness, withdrawal, and disconnection (erasure) into a place of presence and connection; both through the understanding and use of NVR principles and skills and the parent’s experience of the therapeutic relationship. The parental experience of ‘mattering’ (Beckers et al 2022) to the therapist enables the parent or carers to ‘power up’: enabling them to engage with ideas of self-care (where we often begin), transparency and resistance. We show mattering through, amongst other things: being consistent, really listening to the stories they are telling; slowing it down; showing curiosity; creating a sense of safety and space; sharing of ideas and resources; sharing of NVR stories; asking to use their stories as examples for other families. and sharing ideas we had about their family between sessions. We are aware that various contexts, collated as Social GRRRAAACCEEESSS (Burnham J. 2018), influence the way the stories are told and heard by us and the families.
Erasure
When we first meet parents/carers we often hear of the painful gap between a family’s expectations and their lived reality. These expectations can result in a sense of disappointment, failure, and resentment; often leading to a position where the parent does not feel they matter to a child and the child does not feel they matter to the parent. This diminished relational state has been described as Erasure, an idea developed by Dan Dulberger and others (2016), describing the parental experience of reduced influence and significance in their child’s life.
Presence
A key aim of NVR practice is to increase parental presence. This connects to my fundamental belief that change happens from a place of connection. The concept of the parental anchoring function (Omer H. et al 2015) is also important – emphasising parental self-regulation and effective use of support. These are essential components in successful attempts to de-escalate.
Impact of Expectations
Expectations as obstructions in the relationship
We do a lot of talking about the impact of expectations in the parent’s lives at many levels of context. Often these lead to discussions around parental experience of shame and silence – working against the NVR idea of transparency in the struggle and isolating parents from support.
We also address how these expectations get in the way of parent and child relationships and thus their ability to engage in essential NVR practices of letting go. We notice that often parents’ expectations interfere with parental capacity to see their child as a child, their child. As part of our practice, we explore with parents ways which may help to separate the expectations from the person of the child using this map.
Expectations as parental presence
One of the ways parents can avoid escalation is to reduce expectations of their child to minimal levels: screen use, sleep habits, school attendance, and participation in family life become increasingly under the influence and authority of the child. As parental presence increases, we discuss raising appropriate expectations of the child. We help the parents to focus on the skills they already possess and those NVR skills they have learned during our work together.
We have found that cocreating the work helps parents to commit to NVR – letting go of the expectation that we can control our child’s behaviour through rewards and punishment; lowering their expectations of themselves as parents and their child- resulting in a significant decrease in escalatory conversations; enabling more realistic expectations to emerge and fostering an increased sense of connection. This process is part of a helpful cycle – as the parent lets go of unhelpful expectations and begins to feel better about themselves as a parent, the connection to their child increases and they are more able to engage in reconciliation gestures and boundary setting; thus increasing parental presence.
Written by
Sarah Rogers,
Systemic Family Psychotherapist
Face to Face Therapeutic Services
Accreditation Module Participant, 2023
References
Beckers, W., Jakob, P. and Schreiter, M.L., 2022. Mattering and parental presence in systemic therapy using nonviolent resistance: The utilization of imaginary methods. Family process, 61(2), pp.507-519
Burnham, J., 2018. Developments in Social GRRRAAACCEEESSS: visible–invisible and voiced–unvoiced 1. In Culture and reflexivity in systemic psychotherapy (pp. 139-160). Routledge.
Dulberger, D., Fried, M., & Jakob, P. (2016). The presence mind: Functional states of consciousness and responsiveness. Presentation at the 4th International Conference on Non-Violent Resistance, Malmoe, Sweden, 26th–27th May.
Omer, H. and Dulberger, D.I., 2015. Helping parents cope with suicide threats: An approach based on nonviolent resistance. Family process, 54(3), pp.559-575.