By the time a client comes to us for help with a conflict, they may have already reached a point of overwhelm.
For many clients, this can make the prospect of repair feel out of their reach at best (and perhaps beyond their capability at worst).
So when it comes to working with clients who struggle to repair a rupture, where might we begin?
In the video below, Shelly Harrell, PhD shares a strategy designed to help clients get to the root of conflict so they can jumpstart repair.
Have a look.
Let me just identify these seven disconnections, and then I’ll share an example of how unpacking those disconnections can be helpful in therapy. The first D is detachment, that separation, abandonment, loss, marginalization, isolation, those dynamics. Disconnection can be expressed and experienced through ways that we become detached from someone or something. The next would-be dehumanization, so thinking about the ways that disrespect, disregard, othering, objectification, pathologizing, these ways that dehumanization dynamics are operating in the disconnection. The third would be delusion, we become disconnected from our own truth, from our own authentic experiencing. There can be confusion, a masking, putting up a mask is a way of presenting something false or holding onto something false, the ways that we distort and deny, or disguise are forms of disconnection, not showing up authentically.
Demoralization is another way of feeling disconnected, despair and disillusionment and hopelessness and apathy, becoming disconnected from a sense of hope. One of the ways, again, disconnection is experienced and expressed is in this demoralization. We can also think about domination, domination, so that intimidation, threat, subordination, silencing, silencing, the ways that power is used in triggering, igniting this disconnection. Then division would be the sixth D. That’s the fragmentation, the compartmentalization, the duality, dichotomizing, the ways that we split. Disconnection can be experienced in terms of this fragmentation division. Then finally, the seventh D is destruction, this destabilization when things feel shattered, erased. It’s a sense that things have deteriorated, maybe been significantly damaged. That’s a form of becoming disconnected or disconnection. These seven Ds can be helpful in really unpacking.
Let me talk briefly about a couple that I worked with for a while, where really unpacking the nature of the ruptures was important work to do with them.
One of the important ones that we talked about and talked through that both of them really strongly connected with was this idea of how demoralization was impacting them. They were feeling this sense of despair and hopelessness around their relationship. They had two children under the age of five, and between work and taking care of the children and household they just felt like there is no space for our relationship, there is no space for our relationship. This demoralization actually started showing up in a giving up, of, “Well, what’s the point? We’re just tired all the time. This is our life; this is what this is going to be.” But naming it, naming that this demoralization had this impact of emotional distance was really important for them.
So just that creative brainstorming process, once it’s identified, what do we need? What needs repair? We were able, with this particular couple, to figure out a way for them to have, it could not be a weekly date night because of their lives and their support systems, but we were able to figure out possibilities for a date night periodically. That was helpful.
For more expert interventions that can help clients better understand and repair ruptures, check out this course featuring Pat Odgen, PhD; Ellyn Bader, PhD; Frank Anderson, MD; and many more.
Now we’d like to hear from you. What strategies have you used to help clients resolve conflicts? Leave a comment below.
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Repair ruptures, such gentle language. A foreign tongue to me. Continue to teach please! maybe one day my words will heel instead of hurt.
Thank you!