Child Therapists and High Conflict Divorce & Custody Cases

If you are a counselor, social worker, psychotherapist or psychologist who provides therapy services for child clients, you will inevitably end up with a client whose parents are engaged in a high conflict divorce and/or custody dispute. Having provided psychotherapy services for children and families for 20 years, I can assure you it will happen.

Being prepared in advance is the key.

Currently, I receive anxious calls and emails from therapists every week for urgent consultation who have suddenly found themselves roped into the middle of a high conflict, court-involved custody dispute. Sometimes they have received a subpoena calling for their testimony and their clinical record with a resulting spike in anxiety, not knowing what to do. Some therapists are threatened by a parent angered that the therapist is not agreeing to a demand made.

Occasionally, I hear from therapists who have had licensing board complaints filed against them by parents furious that the therapist provided testimony that contributed to a court’s unfavorable ruling. Other therapists have actually had angry parents fabricate criminal charges against them out of hostile and bitter revenge.

These are rare occurrences in the greater picture but knowing it happens even one time is enough to spur me on to offer whatever preparedness support I can to the child therapy community.

Seeing this need, I started offering continuing education training and consultation related to working with divorce cases in 2012. The more I trained therapists and fielded their questions about cases with which they were working, the more I realized how much more a need there is for support.

High conflict divorce cases can be extraordinarily taxing.

I found, in my own clinical practice, that I, too, was becoming overwhelmed by several very difficult, extremely high conflict cases requiring me to testify in court so often it was taking me away from my clinical sessions with clients. It was time to do something about this for myself and my colleagues in the child therapy field.

Seeing how many therapists have not received training and supervisory preparation for how to navigate these kinds of cases, I wrote and self-published a book called When Parents Are at War to get it into the hands of as many child therapists as quickly as possible. I knew that a practical, succinct guidebook was widely needed. Yet, the emergency calls for consultation have continued to pour in more frequently than ever before after the book has sold thousands of copies.

This past year I decided it was time to put together a very unique preparedness course for child therapists that would include five seasoned colleagues who are experts in working with families facing divorce; and high conflict divorce in particular. I wanted to bring forward a variety of voices from therapists in the field who are well-accustomed to successfully navigating these cases. In this article I want to highlight some of the top tips with which all six of the instructors in this course are in consistent agreement.

Top Tips For Child Therapists From the Experts Who Successfully Navigate High Conflict Cases

1. Know Thyself. All the experts I have interviewed agree that a therapist must know their own personal vulnerabilities, limitations, and strengths. Do you tend to be such a lover of all people that you are blind to when you are being manipulated or targeted? Have you been jaded by personal experiences in your own life that might color your view or cause you to be so skeptical you can’t see a family for where they actually are without projecting? We therapists are human and we carry our humanness with us into our work. It is, therefore, vital that therapists have a clear perspective and personal insight into how that might interfere with ability to navigate these kinds of cases successfully.
2. You Gotta Have Boundaries. Akin to the Tip #1 above, it’s essential that therapists are well-practiced in setting and maintaining very clear boundaries with clients from the get-go. Make sure you have very clear protocols and policies in writing from the informed consent of which you remind clients as needed. And…whatever you do, do not stray from your policies and protocols. Families embroiled in high conflict will be the first to push and pull on your boundaries. Stand strong and clear. Your heart strings may get pulled too much. A desperate-seeming parent may guilt you into bending your rules about no calls on weekends. A charismatic attorney might convince you to talk to them about your views on custody. You must set and stick to your boundaries. The boundaries provide structure that preserves the integrity of your therapeutic process with the child client and keeps you in your professional lane.
3. Know Your Role and State it Aloud as Needed. Speaking of staying in your lane, these kinds of cases can very easily pull you off track. If you are the child’s therapist, your role is the child’s therapist. Your role is not custody evaluator. Your role prevents you from providing opinion on where the child spends the holidays or how often they sleep at each parent’s house. As a mandated reporter, your state’s laws will be very clear as to when you must make report to appropriate authorities but that does not mean you are now a forensic interviewer. Or judge. Or guardian ad litem. Know what your role is and what your role is not and be ready to repeat that out loud as needed when pulled off track.
4. Self Care is Essential. When you are working with high conflict and court-involved cases you will likely experience a drain on your energy and time that you won’t experience with other clinical cases. The previous three tips lead us to this tip. Please have measures in place that ensure your self care is non-negotiable. And self care comes in many shapes and sizes. It might be a decision not to take that call coming through on your phone as you prepare dinner after a long day at the office. It might mean your Tuesday morning yoga class is non-negotiable so you make yourself absolutely unavailable during that time. It could mean you realize you’re under a lot of pressure with other events and circumstances and you just don’t take these cases for now and implement a strong screening protocol. I also might mean you get very skilled in the art of saying “no.” Having a self care plan in place that is honored above all else is what is going to keep you healthy, sane and clear about how and when you can be most helpful to the clients you work with.

These tips are…well… just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what this in-depth course covers; but this is a start!

If you are a child and family therapist seeing yourself in this article, please consider hopping over to check out the preparedness course I’ve created for child therapists called Navigating High Conflict Divorce & Custody Cases. You deserve to be well prepared so that you can be confident and clear with the clients you serve in your practice.