Deconstructing ‘domestic abuse’ as an Embodied Lived Experience for families and therapists

Working in inner city Bradford with young men who exhibit harming behaviours as a female therapist who has experienced male violence demands a humanising, dialogical position (Seikkula and Trimble, 2005) that resists the dehumanisation of both survivor and perpetrator. This workshop considers a family-therapist encounter in a third sector domestic abuse service involving a British Pakistani young man and his mother. The work is situated within discourses of hegemonic masculinity, white supremacy, capitalism and patriarchy.

Using the social graces (Burnham: 2012) as a facilitator, I will discuss resonance and restraint (Timm and Blow:1999) in my developing relationship with the family. I situate myself as a white, middle-class woman, survivor of male violence, and mother to a son with additional needs who can sometimes harm through violence. I demonstrate how lived experience, including “mother energy,” can be intentionally harnessed to support authentic, transformative relationships and solidarity practices.

By examining this encounter, the group will explore how domestic abuse and trauma discourses can reinforce oppressive power structures through polarising, binary narratives. As a white female therapist I was sensitive to the way this position of privilege and discourses of racism shaped the work and at times the wider system acted to deny the authenticity of our relationship through positioning me as ‘manipulated’ and my client as ‘dangerous’. 

Using this experience, I will invite reflection on how practitioners can bring their own lives into supervision for critical discussion, and how intentional, embodied positioning in dialogical relationships can resist the objectification of both client and therapist. Attendees will engage with the “embodied act of faith” required to resist these objectifying constructions. Drawing on my experience as a mother and on some experience of colonisation through my Irish family fostered solidarity within the therapeutic relationship. Recursively, this family also helped bring healing to my own mother-son relationship.

We will explore how lived experience, compassionate curiosity, and relational risk-taking can support the deconstruction of harmful discourses and contribute to accountability and the cessation of harm in adolescent male violence. I will suggest that separating ourselves from our work is a product of binary thinking and in fact not possible (or desireable). Instead, we can use ourselves with greater intention. By examining the personal as political, this session proposes an approach that transforms therapist, client, and system.

Objectives

Attendees should:

• Begin to situate themselves within their own lived experience and explore how embodied resonance can inform systemic therapy and trauma practice. 

• Engage with the notion of the “wounded healer” (Aponte: 2014) to understand how both therapist and client may be open to change in dialogical encounters. 

• Understand dominant discourses within domestic abuse and trauma, and use positioning theory to move beyond polarised narratives toward solidarity with clients. 

• Drawing on work done by Scerri at el (2018) we will explore our relationship with safety, danger, accountability, and relational risk-taking when addressing violence in families