Nonviolent Resistance in Trauma-Focused Practice

This book presents Nonviolent Resistance (NVR) for trauma-focused care, adopting a systemic and trauma-orientated approach to aggressive and self-destructive behaviours in young people. Based on systemic therapy methods and principles in socio-political NVR, NVR targets aggressive and self-destructive child behaviours in a relational way to help parents develop self-efficacy in responding to the problematic behaviour and grow a supportive community around the family. In this book, Peter Jakob integrates the original NVR model with aspects of trauma and attachment theory, solution-focused therapy and narrative therapy, in order to expand the efficacy of NVR in trauma-focused work. Grounded in Jakob's extensive clinical experience and research, the book will help the reader navigate the complexity of working across various systems in family therapy and counselling, particularly within challenging contexts such as multi-stressed families, adoptive families, foster- and residential care. Method descriptions and illustrative case examples are featured throughout the chapters to ultimately help readers contribute to their clients' (re)discovery of their internal and interpersonal resources and ultimately promote healing from trauma for everyone involved. This text is an essential resource for a wide variety of mental health professionals, social workers and family workers, as well as caregivers and managers in residential care.

Dr Peter Jakob is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist, and Systemic Therapist in private practice, Partner in "Connective Strength" and Co-Director of the Canadian Center for NVR Therapy and Practice. He is a renowned international speaker, and has trained many professionals in using the approach, leading to its integration in the work of many local authority children's services and child and adolescent mental health services in the UK.

Introduction: Trauma-focused work in Non Violent Resistance Part I; Systems that heal 1. How can the family, foster home or residential home become a healing environment? 2. Anchoring parents: From a threatening or critical social environment to an emotionally safe support network 3. New possibilities: working with parents of children in care Part II; Resisting the parent's trauma 4. Hope-generating therapeutic conversations: Recognising strength and agency 5. Parental presence and self-perception 6. Hope and self-confidence 7. Overcoming setbacks 8. Collaborative psychoeducation in NVR 9. NVR as exposure therapy 10. Mattering and the experience of erasure: The existential crisis of meaning in the life of a parent 11. Unhinging erasure, re-establishing a sense of mattering Part III; Child-focused NVR 12.Child and trauma: A theoretical integration 13. Caring dialogue 14. Epilogue: The younger person's resistance