Parent-Teen Conflict Dissolution Workshop

BC School Counsellors Conference 2015 Ninetta Tavano MSW, RSW

Agenda

1. Narrative Therapy Key Points2. Parent-Teen Conflict

• Parenting Discourse 3. Conflict Dissolution Map

• Repositioning Practices• Definitional Ceremony & Outsider Witnesses

4. Role-Play5. Therapeutic Example

Narrative Therapy: Key Points

• Narrative practices are interested in supporting people to separate from the problem (single) stories that have been capturing their lives and to step into more preferred ways of living (multi-storied).

• Identifying the discourses (i.e. gender, sexuality, parenting) that are supporting the problem is an important step to fully understand its influence.

• New stories can be fragile and vulnerable to setbacks. It is important to engage in practices that thicken the preferred story i.e. definitional ceremony, therapeutic letters, certificates.

Single Stories

Rich Story Development

Discourse

Taken-for-granted understandings (truths) composed of culturally prescribed / sanctioned ideas, attitudes and courses

of actions that shape our lives, identities, relationships and institutions.

What is our dominant parenting discourse? What parenting practices are supported by these discourses? How are young people viewed in relation to these ideas?

Tough Love

Conflict Dissolution Map

• The conflict dissolution map invites people to take a position outside of the relationship which has been circumscribed by conflict.

• This supports them in breaking from limiting and restrictive discourses (parent) and to incorporate aspects of other more preferred relational forms: aunt, friend, coach (re-membering).

• Further, this map invites individuals to act as ‘outsider witnesses’ in the context of definitional ceremony practices to further thicken the preferred story.

Repositioning

• To facilitate repositioning, a person is invited to identify a figure who significantly contributed to their lives and to share stories of their experiences with this figure.

• This person is interviewed in ways that contribute to the figure’s expressions of acknowledgment, understanding, love, compassion and / or acceptance becoming more richly known and that draw out the identity of the figure.

• It is important that these expressions and practices of living are defined in their particularities to enable a strong familiarity with the relational skills and the sentiments of living associated with them.

• As this person gets more familiar with the specifics of these skills in the repositioning interview, she/he/ they is invited to reflect on what these expressions suggest about the figure’s perspectives on life and about their purposes, values & beliefs.

• And further, if preferred, the person is invited to incorporate these skills & sentiments into the relationship captured by conflict thus dissolving it.

Mrs. Doubtfire

Re-positioning Interview Questions

• Describe the figure’s words, actions and gestures that fit with the acknowledgement, acceptance, care or respect you’ve identified.

• Were there any conversations with her/him/them in particular that touched you? • Describe what X said to you at these times, the words she/he/they said to you?• Which of X’s movements: gestures, facial expressions, posture, and actions, fit with

these words?• What was it about X’s responses that conveyed the acknowledgment, acceptance,

care or respect you’ve identified?• Was there some aspect of the timing of her/his/their expressions that were

especially important?• What values do you think she/he/they demonstrated in her/his words and

actions?• What do X’s responses suggest about what she/he/they wanted for you and what

she/he/they hoped for as an outcome of your time together?

Definitional Ceremonies: Categories of Inquiry

1) Identifying the expression: As you listen to the stories of the person at the center of the ceremony, which expressions caught your attention? Which ones captured your imagination? What struck a chord for you?

2) Describing the image: What images of the preferences for her/his life were evoked by these expressions? What did these expressions suggest to you about her/his purposes, values, beliefs, hopes, dreams and commitments?

3) Embodying responses: What could you relate to as you were listening? How did you feel touched by her/his expressions? How does this ripple into your own life? How did these stories resonate with your own experiences?

4) Acknowledging transport: How is witnessing this conversation impacting you? Where has this experience taken you? In responding to these stories, in what ways might this be changing your sense of self or understandings about your life?