Families in Conflict: Working with Complex and Challenging Relationships in Therapy
Violence and aggression can be prominent in families experiencing conflict, devastatingly impacting those affected. Working with families where violence is present poses unique challenges for clinicians, both personally and in terms of effectively and safely intervening. Many clinicians actively avoid this work, or do not feel adequately trained and resourced when these clients present in the therapy room. Although rarely discussed and taught outside of forensic psychology, significant advances have been made in this area, which can empower clinicians to significantly impact the lives of those affected.
With a combined professional experience of over 25 years between them, Tiffany Rochester and Daniel Simsion have always worked at the pointy end of clinical presentations - individuals and families caught up in cycles of violence and conflict. Tiffany and Daniel are committed to working within a contextual behavioural framework to help vulnerable people and families that others often consider “unlovely” or “undesirable”, and see fostering psychological flexibility and resilience as an achievable outcome. The harrowing alternative is often lengthy, costly, ineffective court processes that take years of people’s lives and achieve poor outcomes.
In this practical and experiential workshop, participants will be taught how to conceptualise high-conflict and violent families and individuals through the lens of psychological inflexibility. We will show you how a compassionate, systemic focus fosters long-lasting change and breaks multi-generational cycles of violence and trauma. We will use experiential exercises to demonstrate interventions that bring healing, reconnection and collaboration to fractured, adversarial systems. We will also include critical information about the support and resourcing clinics need to have in place to work successfully with this population and protect staff from burnout.
Drawing on Daniel’s experience in forensic settings, participants will learn how to:
- assess the multi-generational, contextual history and cycle of violence;
- explore the challenges in working with perpetrators of acts of aggression and violence; and
- explore successful contextual behavioural science interventions for bringing about adaptive prosocial change.
Drawing on Tiffany’s experience in high-conflict separations, participants will learn how to:
- Analyse the level of conflict in a separation dynamic through the lens of psychological inflexibility.
- Use practical therapy interventions to support separated families in the aftermath of aggression and conflict, including: How to help families set and keep healthy boundaries, develop collaborative co-parenting practices in contrast to a history of conflict and trauma, and
strategies to facilitate healthy parent-child relationships and relationship repair.
About Tiffany Rochester, BPsych, MAppPsych(Clin):
Tiffany is the Founding CEO of Co-Parenting Companion and The Same Mountain. She has provided Clinical Psychology services in Western Australia for 18 years. Tiffany has always worked within a systems framework with a particular interest in complex families. In her early career, she trained and worked in a multisystemic therapy program with the families of serious, repeat juvenile offenders. In recent years, she has focused on working systemically with high-conflict families entrenched in the Family Court. Tiffany is passionate about applying an ACT/CBS lens to working with families and sees that practitioners who work from a contextual behavioural analysis/ACT framework are ideally and uniquely skilled for working with complex systems.
Tiffany provides supervision to psychologists across Australia and Singapore and previously served as President, Conference Chair, and Board Member of the Australian and New Zealand chapter for ANZ ACBS.
About Daniel Simsion, LLB, BPsych, DPsych:
Dr Daniel Simsion is a senior clinical psychologist with the Victorian government specialist forensic mental health service, Forensicare. Following undergraduate studies in law and psychology, he completed his Doctorate in clinical psychology at La Trobe University. He has worked across forensic hospital and prison-based units, providing psychological assessment and intervention for people within the forensic system. He is currently based on a specialist prison-based unit that works to address complex and challenging behaviours. He is also a member of the La Trobe University Actualise CBS lab and has served as secretary, president and conference co-chair of the Australian and New Zealand chapter of the ACBS.
On completion of this workshop, participants will be able to:
1. Explain the multigenerational cycle of violence.
2. List drivers of risk that predict aggression and perpetuating factors that predict continued violence use.
3. Analyse separated family dynamics using a psychological flexibility framework.
4. Select appropriate ACT interventions for individuals and systems with a history of conflict and aggression.
5. Define the challenges in working with aggression and violence
6. Explain essential safety considerations for working with populations with a history of conflict and aggression.
7. Describe the most protective factors for children involved in high-conflict separation and those that elevate their risks.
8. Describe critical issues to consider to ensure therapy supports, rather than inadvertently hinders, the family and protects the client (and the practitioner!) from further court involvement
9. List therapist variables that make things better - or worse - for the client.
10. Explain flexible therapy solutions within an Acceptance & Commitment Therapy framework to move families from conflict to collaboration, no matter which part of the system the clinician is working with.
Target Audience: Intermediate, Advanced, Clinical
Components: Conceptual analysis, Literature review, Experiential exercises, Didactic presentation, Case presentation, Role play
Package Includes: A general certificate of attendance