How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching Families | Page 78

Disengaged Parent
These family structures in which one parent protects the family's maladaptive patterns of behavior are
characterized by little or no cohesiveness and lack of an alliance between the parents or parent figures as a
subsystem. One of the parents, usually the father, refuses to come into therapy. This is typically a father
who has remained disengaged from the problems at home. The father's disengagement not only protects him
from having to address his adolescent's problems but also protects him from having to deal with the marital
relationship, which is most likely the more troublesome of the two relationships he is avoiding. Typically,
the mother is over-involved (enmeshed) with the identified patient and either lacks the skills to manage the
youth or is supporting the identified patient in a covert fashion.
For example, if the father tries to control the adolescent's behavior, the mother complains that he is too
tough or makes her afraid that he may become violent.2 The father does not challenge this portrayal of
himself. He is then rendered useless and again distances himself, re-establishing the disengagement between
husband and son and between husband and wife. In this family, the dimension of resonance is of foremost
importance in planning how to change the family and bring it into therapy. The counselor must use tasks to
bring the mother closer to the father and distance her from the son. That is, the boundary between the
parents needs to be loosened to bring them closer together, and the boundary between mother and son needs
to be strengthened to create distance between them.
To engage these families into treatment, the counselor must form an alliance with the person who called for
help (usually the mother). The counselor then must begin to direct the mother to change her patterns of
interaction with the father to improve their cooperation, at least temporarily, in bringing the family into
treatment. The counselor should give the mother tasks to do with her husband that pertain only to getting the
family into treatment and taking care of their son's problems. The counselor should assign tasks in a way
that is least likely to spark the broader marital conflict. To set up the task, the counselor may ask the mother
what she believes is the real reason her husband does not want to come to counseling. Once this reason is
ascertained, the counselor coaches the mother to present the issue of coming to treatment in a way that the
husband can accept. For example, if he doesn't want to come because he has given up on his son, she may
be coached to suggest to him that coming to treatment will help her cope with the situation.
Although the pattern of resistance is similar to that of the contact person protecting the structure, in this
instance, the resistance emerges differently. In this case, the mother does not excuse the father's distance. To
the contrary, she complains about her spouse's disinterest; this mother is usually eager to do something to
involve her husband; she just needs some direction to be able to do it.
Families With Secrets
ometimes counseling is threatening to one or more individuals in the family. Sometimes the person who
resists coming to counseling is either afraid of being made a scapegoat or afraid that dangerous secrets (e.g.,
infidelity) will be revealed. These individuals' beliefs or frames about counseling are usually an extension of
the frame within which the family is functioning. That is, it is a family of secrets. The counselor must
reframe the idea or goal of counseling in a way that eliminates its potential negative consequences and
replaces them with positive aims. One example of how to do this is to meet with the person who rejects
counseling the most and assure him or her that counseling does not have to go where he or she does not
want it to go. The counselor needs to make it clear that he or she will make every effort to focus on the
adolescent's problems instead of the issues that might concern the unwilling family member. The counselor
also should assure this individual that in the counseling session, "We will deal only with those issues that
you want to deal with. You'll be the boss. I am here only to help you to the extent that you say."

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