Family Therapy Express

Welcome back for the next journey of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin, LMFT and Ronda Evans, LMFT where our destination is resilient and connected families. Our guest speaker is Nancy Aikin, LMFT in the Sacramento, CA area. She has specialized in working with families with teens in Hold Me Tight Let Me Go workshops.

All Aboard !

Thank you for listening! 

Kathryn de Bruin is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.

You can follow Kathryn de Bruin

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Welcome back for the next journey of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin, LMFT and Ronda Evans, LMFT where our destination is resilient and connected families. Our guest speaker is Dr. Tat-Ying, a dual family medical physician and EFFT family therapist located in Toronto, Canada, who specializes in groups.

All Aboard !

Thank you for listening! 

Kathryn de Bruin is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.

You can follow Kathryn de Bruin

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You can follow Ronda Evans

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You can connect with Dr. Tat-Ting

Welcome back for the next journey of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin, LMFT and Ronda Evans, LMFT where our destination is resilient and connected families. Today is our second installment in the Attachment in Action Series: Pre-School Stage (3-4 years old). All Aboard !

1:00. A main developmental aspect of this age/stage is the growing ability of perception and absorbing information into informational processing and emotional processing systems. Their thinking is absolutist (black and white).

5:30. Being exposed to differing perspectives represents an opportunity to learn and practice the skill of negotiation in communication/language. This reframes negotiation as a helpful, adaptive skill to learn and practice in the safety of the dyadic interaction.

8:00. In negotiation, both kids and caregivers walk away with something, and not only a memory of a power struggle. The benefits of negotiation are: kids learn to consider differing perspectives; kids learn to translate their internal wants, not wants, desires into verbal language that an adult can understand (self expression, and an emotional need of feeling valued); and, the relationship is intact.

12:20. We use an example from the book Attachment in Family Therapy to describe the stressor (conflicting needs and priorities between adult and child) and different ways parents can respond in this moment.

13:40. Authoritarian parent/caregiver response. The downside of this response is it triggers a power struggle, and the child does not learn differing perspectives and needs of others, and learns to inhibit (not have a voice, inhibit feelings, and feels they don't matter). The pre-school years are a good opportunity to give your child "safe repetitions" (practice).

16:30. Permissive parent/caregiver response. The downside of this response is the child learns they are in charge and in control and they feel overlooked, and not secure. Kids are not provided a predictable structure, rules and sense of security. 

23:00. Re-capping the parent's response from the example in the book which focuses on helping the kid develop the skill of taking other people's perspectives through this negotiation conversation.

26:00. The parent response that values negotiation communication is parenting strategy that keeps the child's developmental stage and needs at the forefront of the dyadic interaction for the benefit of the child.

28:30. We must consider the context that families are in -- generational, economic, threats and dangers. Parent responses make sense in the context.

Thank you for listening! 

Kathryn de Bruin is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.

You can follow Kathryn de Bruin

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Welcome back for the next journey of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin, LMFT and Ronda Evans, LMFT where our destination is resilient and connected families. Today is our second installment in the Attachment in Action Series: Toddler Stage. All Aboard !

3:30. Clear and direct and sequential language because the toddler takes in information and starts to draw conclusions.

5:50. Kathryn provides two side by side examples of an interaction between her and her toddler son: one example in which there is a rupture of conflicting needs/desires, and another example in which there is a goal-directed partnership interaction.

10:30. Toddlers can learn very early about rupture and repair.

11:00. Parents/Caregivers now have two roles of nurturer and protector, and balance the needs of the toddler for exploration with parents need for setting guidelines/rule sets. Parents need to provide/foster a safe enough environment. 

13:30. Another conflicting need is when two caregivers disagree on navigating the needs for nurturing exploration and tending to safety.

14:00. If the two parents have significant differences in their parenting “style” and their own comfort level of balancing developmental needs of exploration and safety, then we can see distress emerge in individuals or in the family.

17:55. When toddlers are under distress, we may see them “adapt” and adopt certain strategies. #1. Toddler Caregiving strategy of parent; perhaps keeping a smile on their face. #2 Toddler Compliant strategy; milder form is Performative strategy; both are about please parent, and fear of punishment, and be good and make parent happy. #3 Toddler Emotional Dysregulation Angry/Helpless; the cue is the parents responsiveness is unclear, inconsistent, ambiguous; so the toddler can’t figure out the contingency; motivated to keep parents attention to maintain the attachment; 

25:50. Contingencies within a household can be slightly different between parents and the toddler can still figure out the contingency and so the toddler experiences their parent-child contingency as consistent and predictable.

27:40. In these strategies the goal of the toddler becomes to keep the parent/attachment person with them, and the toddler lets go of the goal of personal development.

28:00. In an ideal world, how we respond to emotion and distress and the dance of dyadic attachment is in the background, and more importance and priority is put on the development of the toddler/child.

29:00. Treatment considerations in EFFT: think and assess systemically; how does the child’s behavior and affective demonstrations speak to these strategies in dyadic attachment.

33:40. Balancing early childhood intervention in the toddler versus systemic, attachment-based framework/lens and treatment considerations.

35:00. Metaphor of family therapist being the general practitioner with holistic assessment of the whole system, and then refer to specialist for specific, or individual needs.

Thank you for listening! 

Kathryn de Bruin is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.

You can follow Kathryn de Bruin

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Welcome back for the next journey of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin and Ronda Evans where our destination is resilient and connected families. Our guest today is Liliana Baylon, Ph. D. and we discuss integrating play therapy into EFFT when there are families with kids under the age of 12.   All Aboard !

1:00. Play is the way that a baby/infant explores and experiences the world around them. Play and fun is a central need for infants/children. Children communicate using their body and then they rely on the adult to organize their experience and body expression using language. 

5:00. Their body expression and play communicates something of their experience, and through play we can create an open channel where we can engage with them about their experience and help them.

6:30. Play therapy intervention: Create a playful game from using a light switch to help a child express themselves non-verbally.

7:30. Hot potato play therapy intervention: whoever catches the hot potato needs to add something to the current topic of conversation.

10:30. Bringing playfulness to the conversation helps inoculate the conversation and reduces the emotional intensity.

11:30. Play therapy intervention: Using any turn-taking game to take turns sharing something helps to reduce the risk and the emotional intensity. Challenge yourself: how can I use this game in a family session to facilitate family connecting and talking?

15:30. Liliana tells a story of how she uses a game called “Sabo” with her own adolescent family relatives to facilitate a conversation about their language, tradition, change and loss in a playful, safe container of the game.

18:50. As a family therapist, understand the reason/clinical rationale for why you’re incorporating that particular play intervention with a particular family.

20:00. Kathryn tells a story of how she challenged herself to use limited play therapy tools and interventions with a family with young children to see how far she could go with conversation only.

25:00. Track which topics increase distress/stress/arousal in the session, and does the parent attune to the distress, and how does each parent respond to the distress signal?

25:30. Liliana suggests having play dough and scented markers and fidgets available for arousal regulation.

26:50. Understand the benefits of play therapy tools such as play dough (tactile) to include this in your session note such as using play dough for co-regulation.

Thank you for listening! 

Kathryn de Bruin is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.

You can follow Kathryn de Bruin

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You can follow Ronda Evans

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You can contact Liliana Baylon

Website: www.lilianabaylon.com https://linktr.ee/lilianabaylon

Welcome back for the next journey of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin and Ronda Evans where our destination is resilient and connected families. This is the first installment of our Attachment in Action Series. In this episode we focus on attachment in the infant stage. We underscore the importance of assessing for the emotional and relational context at the time of birth and the infant stage, and we provide overview of caregiver responding to baby distress signals.   All Aboard !

1:20. Assessment is about taking a developmental history that includes the contextual, emotional and relational attachment history.

2:50. This Attachment in Action Series and the accompanying conversations are taken from the content in the book called “Attachment and Family Therapy” by Patricia Crittenden, Rudi Dallos, Andrea Landini, Kasia Kozlowska

4:30. Baby/Newborn/Infant stage means that there is joy, and loss because there is change. 

5:30. A developmental history needs to include talking about birth because birth can bring death or trauma or loss.

6:50. When a baby arrives, there is change and the arrival of conflicting needs. Where there is change, there is inherent loss. When there is change, we may see distress and distress means that coping strategies may emerge/become visible.

8:55. Family contexts to consider: Siblings; Non-birthing parent or Non-Primary Attachment parent/caregiver

12:30. Consider other contextual factors for families such as covid.

22:30. Infants are learning to regulate arousal/distress. Parent needs to see the arousal/distress signal from the baby, problem solve about what does the baby need, and respond to the need, so that the arousal/distress will then reduce. So, baby goes through arousal and calm, over and over. This then determines the baby’s internal state of managing their arousal. So the baby experiences and creates a physiological model of managing arousal. Joint, dynamic input from the beginning.

30:25. Winnicott said, “there is no such thing as a baby. There is no such thing as a ‘mom’. There is only a nursing pair”. Life starts as a dyad/pair because the baby is 100% dependent on the caregiver. 

31:40. If a baby never experiences arousal, then the baby never has to learn how to regulate their internal arousal. Or, if a baby gets aroused, and there is no responsiveness, or responsiveness is too slow (temporal lag between arousal and caregiver response) or responsiveness is intermittent/inconsistent, then the baby won’t learn the “contingencies” and the baby does not experience and create the physiological model of arousal regulation. Thus every baby needs to experience arousal so that the internal physiological model of arousal regulation gets created.

Thank you for listening! 

Kathryn de Bruin is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.

You can follow Kathryn de Bruin

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You can follow Ronda Evans

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Welcome back for the next journey of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin and Ronda Evans where our destination is resilient and connected families. Today’s guest Norma Brito de la Cuesta from Costa Rica. Norma has a masters degree, and she has a vast history of experience in the field of psychology, and she is a practicing family therapist. You can hear part one of Norma's interview on assessment in family therapy in episode 18.   All Aboard !

2:34. #6. Discussion of assessment of gender roles and the changing landscape of gender roles, Cultures may have different expectations for gender in terms of behavior, responsibilities, and opportunities, and can impact parenting. 

10:44. #7. Discussion of the intersection of gender and attachment and bonding in children.

12:55. Kathryn recaps the assessment of gender in family therapy.

13:59. Discussed the intersection of gender and position in the family and how that impacts parenting and expectations.

17:43. #8. Cultural identity including immigration, traditions, rituals.

23:21. Kathryn recaps cultural identity of family captured in family tradition and rituals. 

23:54. #9.  Peer influence.

31:09. #10. Respect diversity including parents as role models and the impact of fostering empathy in children/teens.

Thank you for listening! 

Kathryn de Bruin is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.

You can follow Kathryn de Bruin

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You can follow Ronda Evans

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You can follow Norma Brito here

IG: normabritodelacuesta

FB: Norma Brito

Welcome back for the next journey of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin and Ronda Evans where our destination is resilient and connected families. Today’s guest is Dr. James Hawkins from Arkansas. Our episode focuses on shame as a parental block.   All Aboard !

1:00. James opens with what he likes about in EFFT.

5:20. We set our episode focus on parental shame and the impact on attachment when a parent is blocked by shame.

7:30. James locates when in a session we may see a parent get caught in their parental shame. Kathryn clarifies that as a child distills or opens up about their experience, then a parent may get hijacked by the shame as they metabolize what their child is saying and they lose their emotional balance.

9:40. The reframe: As the parent loses their emotional balance and is consumed by shame, the reframe is that this shows how much they care about their child and what their child goes through and experiences and thus shows the parental intent to caregive/to give care to their child when the child needs it.

10:30. James offers a demonstration of how to validate the good reason that shame is showing up at this moment for a parent (flipping the block intervention).

12:25. James talks about the importance of maintaining focus in EFFT sessions particularly when a child opens up to distill and share their experience. Focus: #1 stabilize/resource the child. #2 respond to parental shame by validating it and making sense of it showing up in that moment.

14:50. Kathryn and James relate to times when they have missed that focus and they missed reframing the parental shame and it has affected the kid. 

17:35. Kathryn provides a demonstration of an enactment of validating the kid's response to the parental shame, and then re-focusing back to the parent to help them respond to their child.

18:40. We discuss the power of attachment in coming alongside a parent who gets caught in shame, or when families get stuck in negative patterns.

23:53. James provides a demonstration of how he intervenes when a parent is in emotional distress (ie, shame) and a child moves into an emotional caregiving role to the parent. 

26:05. He honors and validates the good reasons for the existence of the child caregiving, and not only ask the child to "give up" that child caregiving of the parent.

28:00. James differentiates between experiential shame (that is an opening to parental accessibility) with appropriate time and place whereas "behavioral shame" as a defensive/protective strategy, and how behavioral shame in a pattern pulls for positive reinforcement/reassurance

29:45. James and Kathryn discuss the difference between guilt and shame. James describes that when a parent feels guilt in the moment, and then sees their child's position, and can convert this to caregiving action, this is an ideal moment and we the clinician want to put this into action with an engaged encounter (ie, enactment).

34:49. James describes one way to respond/intervene with a "behavioral shame" moment in a parent. He describes this is "a Sue intervention." His intervention focuses on making the process explicit, and some highlighting of the timing of the behavioral shame.

Thank you for listening! 

Kathryn de Bruin is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.

You can follow Kathryn de Bruin

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You can follow Ronda Evans

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You can follow Dr. James Hawkins

Website:  https://www.dochawklpc.com

IG: doc_hawk_lpc

FB: dochawklpc

The Leading Edge in Emotionally Focused Therapy Podcast

Welcome back for the next journey of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin and Ronda Evans where our destination is resilient and connected families. Today’s guest Norma Brito de la Cuesta from Costa Rica. Norma has a masters degree, and she has a vast history of experience in the field of psychology, and she is a practicing family therapist.

All Aboard !

0:55. Norma talks about her vast experience in the field of psychology. 

2:30. From all of her years of experience, Norma's #1 recommendation is to explore deeply with every family about the beliefs and values that guide a family. Norma cautions about implicit bias in the clinicians about what guides or organizes a family.

8:50. Norma describes how to validate what the parent/family brings up at the beginning of family therapy to then be able to ask relevant family-focused assessment questions. She describes that the clinician can say "I want to really understand you as a family, how you think, how you came to be the family that you are. I need to understand deeply who you are and this is coming from a respectful place in me. And so I have some specific questions to ask about."

10:35. Assessment subtopic #1: Parent/Caregiver Goals particularly around the spectrum of independence/autonomy to dependence. What are the hopes and dreams that parents have for their child(ren). Then partners have children and partners may bring the hopes and dreams of their parents/family of origin to their nuclear family. The question becomes "what is better?" 

13:00. Norma explains how the parent/caregiver fears interfere with the respect that kids need to live their own lives and the way the kid wants to live their own life.

15:15. Norma and Kathryn address how there is a generational shift in the younger generations who are empowered with their voice, they ask questions, and they express their opinions, and parents/caregivers need to respect that. Norma cautions that by continuing to setting limits on the kid and discouraging kids from their natural way of asking questions and expressing their opinion then they won't grow in their autonomy and self-responsibility for their life.

16:30. Assessment subtopic #2: Discipline. Parenting with love, support and limits. Norma and Kathryn discuss the interrelatedness of discipline and the purpose/function of discipline. Discipline is to protect the kids; discipline is not just to limit/limitations on the child. Parenting with love, support and limits creates structure and security for the growing child and provides a model of guidance.

21:50. Assessment subtopic #3: Communication. Norma explains how the parent needs to lead with listening and understanding why their child is sharing about a certain topic, and needs to hold their personal reaction or opinion for later. Kathryn and Norma have a discussion about the spectrum of direct and indirect communication.

31:25. Assessment subtopic #4: Education. Clinicians need to ask and listen about the value on the continuum of academic/education/learning-focus versus socialization/extracurriculars/play/fun in a family. 

34:55. Assessment subtopic #5: Family Structure (ie, Extended Family). Who is involved in this child's life and what are the values that those adults/extended family members emphasize with the child(ren)? Another aspect can be when parents see their own parents in the grandparent role be gentle with their children when the parent did not get that from their parent as a child. 

Stay tuned for Part Two of Norma's family assessment coming in mid-September.

Thank you for listening! 

Kathryn de Bruin is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.

You can follow Kathryn de Bruin

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You can follow Ronda Evans

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You can follow Norma Brito here

IG: normabritodelacuesta

FB: Norma Brito

Welcome back for the next journey of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin and Ronda Evans where our destination is resilient and connected families. Today’s guest is Gail Palmer, MSW, RMFT, one of the founders of EFFT. All Aboard !

2:05. (Goal #2) Parental/Caregiver Intent.

4:30. (Goal #1) Parent/Caregiver Buy-In. Clinician advocates for family therapy with parent involvement.

6:40. Stage 1 is about helping the parent to become accessible, responsive and engaged. 

10:10. (Goal #3) - Working with Parental/Caregiver Blocks). Gail and Kathryn talk about why we do the parent work in the order of parental intent first and then parental block(s).

13:00. In Stage 1, we keep the focus on the parent in the parent/caregiving role.

15:15. As Gail says, EFFT is family therapy and it is a child-centered therapy where everything we do with the parent is in service of the child.

19:06. Gail recalls when she approached Sue Johnson with what makes EFFT different from EFCT: there is a power imbalance in the parent-child dyad and children cannot and do not hold equal responsibility for a negative interaction cycle.

19:45. (Goal #4) Parent/Caregiver Accessibility (also called Openness). Once the parent block is processed, then parental accessibility can suddenly show up in session. Gail provides a concrete example of what parental accessibility and openness can sound like in the parent saying "I really want to do this different with you. I really want to listen more."

20:55. Parental accessibility can suddenly show up and can suddenly get blocked again, for example, when once a child shares what has hurt them in their caregiver-child relationship, -- the caregiver can experience shame, grief, emotional pain, their own childhood attachment wounds or negative model of self.

19:55. Ronda slows down the conversation here. Gail describes that when children risk and open up, then the parent can get blocked.

25:15. Gail describes that there is a skill set for catching when a kid risks and opens up and the parent gets blocked. Gail describes skills of making the moment explicit and making sense of how come the block came up at this moment, and co-regulate with the parent, and we differentiate that this parent block is not about the child, and the child needs the clinician to make this transparent.

29:53. Gail tells a story of her relationship with her daughter.

32:15. Family resiliency is about families working through stuff together and getting comfortable with how things dynamically shift and change all the time. 

Thank you for listening! 

Kathryn de Bruin is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.

You can follow Kathryn de Bruin

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You can follow Ronda Evans

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You can follow Gail Palmer

Website:  https://banjo-triangle-m4ym.squarespace.com/