I have written about how high conflict divorce effects children and parents. This piece will focus on how high conflict divorce effects therapists.

I am writing as a therapist whose primary treatment focus is the children. Therapists in these situations also have contact with the parents in an effort to lessen the conflict between them. In the best of possible worlds, parent co-counseling is provided by another professional who works in tandem with the child therapist. However this is a very expensive endeavor so few folks have the opportunity to experience this team approach.

A high conflict divorce is a chronic, never ending war between the parents. The children are usually in the middle of this war and the kids get emotionally burned by the scorched earth mentality of their parents. The parents tend to blame each other and have a difficult time owning their part of the struggle.

The therapists who treat the children have the goal of providing a safe space for them in order to express their feelings about the divorce. We, as therapists validate the children’s experience of being in a no win pressure cooker. This validation is a very valuable intervention because without it the children will assume that their experiences are normal and feel ashamed that they are not handling family life well.  

Without therapy, the children may repress or compartmentalize their confusing feeling about the divorce. This can cause them to act out angrily. This may occur because the hurt feelings are so intense and they don’t have appropriate ways of voicing their anguish.

They may also become depressed where they no longer have interests in activities that provided enjoyment.  They may also withdraw from friends and start to do poorly in school.

Often times a powerful bond develops between the child client and the therapist.  The client learns to rely on the therapist to be honest and help develop strategies for moving out of the middle of his parent’s battles.  There are sessions that include the child and one of his parents to discuss concerns of the client.  He may want the safe space and support of the therapist in order to obtain his father’s OK to take drama classes.  The client also may choose to tell his parent that he is tired of hearing him say negative things about the other parent.

Over time the therapist develops positive feelings for his child client.  The therapist is continually amazed at how ingenious the child is.  The child or adolescent learns to look at the whole family system and assess if one small aspect changes and how it would affect her.  She somehow weathers one crisis to the next and still has hope.

The saying that “children are so resilient” is over used and erroneous. It is also used as a rationale for putting them in the middle of their parent’s volcano and not tending to their angst. The therapist’s role of child advocate is an essential element here.  The therapist can make it clear that no one is resilient enough to withstand ongoing emotional devastation that high conflict divorce brings.  The therapist can be a voice of reason in standing up for the child’s needs rather than those of his parents.

We as child therapist must also be cognizant and anticipate what will be upsetting to parents in our work with these families.

If one of the parents feels that we are siding with the other, it can interfere with the treatment and at times can be worse than no treatment at all.  That happens if the child now perceives therapy becoming another instance of parental conflict. Then the child tends to dwell on his parents different opinions about the therapist instead of utilizing therapy for her own needs.

Therapists attempt to develop positive relationships with both parents because we know this is in the best interest of our child clients. We need the parents trust in order to be effective in not only working with the children, but also to create a healing environment where parents will follow our suggestions in dealing with the other parent and their kids.

Therapists who do this work regularly develop a tough exterior out of necessity. One or both parents often complain about our interventions. These complaints run the gamut from constructive criticism to character assassination. We learn to let these comments roll of our backs like rain pouring down in a brief thunderstorm. However, because we are human, sometimes the words can sting and hurt down to the core.

All the more reason for therapists to take care of ourselves in ways we instruct our clients to: Exercising, eating right, getting enough rest, having a social life and having avenues to truly express our feelings.

 Therapists also build up this huge tolerance to our client’s parents stress, traumas, and ongoing drama without any real resolution. It is important to keep the big picture in perspective. The big picture is to provide a space for the children of high conflict divorce to heal, but knowing that this healing is quite limited or impossible as long as the parents bash each other.

We wonder when we hit the wall; when does it become hopeless? As therapists, we always want to be there for our child clients, but if no progress with the parents occurs month after month; year after year we sometimes lose sight of our purpose. Is the purpose to give the children a place to heal from divorce? What if this is not possible because in order for healing, the divorce process has to have an end point? The very definition of high conflict divorce is the antitheses of this.

Or is the purpose of the therapy to provide our clients this sanctuary to speak out against the dysfunctional dynamics between their parents? What if this becomes the sole goal of therapy as the therapist takes in the futility of the parent’s war against each other? Can the therapist hang in there knowing his best efforts will have very limited results? Does empathizing with your client become as painful as staring into the sun? Does her angst cause you to come to tears after every session? Do you find yourself wanting to avoid the sheer chaos that unfolds in front of you?

The therapist has a real dilemma here. If we decide to distance ourselves from our client’s pain, we run the danger of being one of those counselors that stops feeling and merely goes through the motions. If we don’t feel our own pain, we cannot empathize with our clients. This has the risk of traveling over to our personal lives where all painful feelings get pushed away.

If we allow the pain to overwhelm us on a regular basis, we will become ineffective and unable to help anyone.

Therefore it is important to have a balance of the intellectual and the emotional while working with these cases. It is also essential to be aware of your own countertransference issues (traumatic childhood memories that get stirred up during this work). For example if your parents divorced when you were a young person, you may get triggered by an emotionally unavailable parent. You may want to judge him harshly or become angry in his presence. It is important to be aware that you have this issue because you will be triggered and have to be prepared for it when these strong emotions arrive.

You will learn to notice your feelings and not act on them. You will try to be patient and empathetic with your client’s mother or father.

There are parents we work with who have had horrific childhoods steeped in intense abuse and neglect. They haven’t had the opportunity or haven’t reach the point where they are aware that they have emotional problems. They haven’t connected the dots between their traumatic childhood and their parenting issues.

Some of these behaviors are:  rewarding their children for being clingy and punishing them if they exercise independence; treating their kids like they are merely an extension of themselves rather than separate people; giving their kids mixed messages where body language and facial expressions don’t match up with what is expressed verbally; giving children the message that the other parent is evil and that the child must agree or love is withheld and giving children the message that it is their job to take care of the parent’s emotional needs instead of the other way around.

The parents who demonstrate this behavior usually have difficulty separating their needs from their children’s.  For example a parent may feel that his child has to play football because he did.  The parent doesn’t seem to recognize or accept that his son has no interest in football; matter of fact, he abhors the sport.

As therapists, we try to be compassionate towards these struggling parents, but it is difficult to do so while witnessing their children’s lives being disrupted by this behavior on a never ending basis.

When I am feeling sad and frustrated by working with the children of high conflict divorce, I think about what a six year old girl shared in a session, “Wouldn’t it be great if my parents could meet and learn to trust each other again?” 

The possibility that I could be part of ending this war between the parents radiates in my heart.  I could help make the world a better place.  If not, I can provide an oasis for kids looking for a lifeline.

To read more of Bob Livingstone’s work, please click here