ABSTRACT

This is a book that delves into the relationship between therapists’ sometimes fraught engagement with their own emotional histories and those of their clients, offering a creative template for opening up important conversations.

Each of the chapter authors contributing to this volume focuses on seminal life events that inflect the emotional tenor and quality of attunement in the consulting room. A broad range of subjects is covered, which either highlight themes around identity or reflect the kinds of challenges that bring young people to therapy, including bereavement, the experience of otherness, dislocation and migration, disrupted family relationships and life-threatening illness.

With compelling clinical vignettes illuminating the resonances between therapists’ stories and those of the clients they present, this book is an engaging and insightful read for all practitioners in the field, especially those working in child and adolescent mental health.

chapter |4 pages

Introduction

chapter Chapter 1|10 pages

Not a blank slate

The role of our history in our therapeutic work

chapter Chapter 2|10 pages

Stepping into the unknown

Reflections on transitions

chapter Chapter 3|12 pages

Shame, guilt, secrets, and lies

How differentness within and outside the family shapes our sense of self

chapter Chapter 4|12 pages

Feeling dislocated

Some personal and clinical reflections on the experiences of relocated families

chapter Chapter 5|10 pages

Mother and other tongues

Personal experiences and clinical reflections

chapter Chapter 6|9 pages

The Biafran War

A transgenerational legacy

chapter Chapter 7|13 pages

Sibling death

Mourning in childhood and beyond

chapter Chapter 8|9 pages

Separation and loss in adolescence

The impact of the Iranian revolution

chapter Chapter 9|13 pages

Holding on tightly, learning to let go

Personal experiences and clinical reflections

chapter Chapter 10|12 pages

Masculinity and the male therapist

The internal and external struggles

chapter Chapter 11|12 pages

Suspended animation

A traumatic family history without a context

chapter Chapter 12|12 pages

My story, our story

Co-parenting two adopted boys

chapter Chapter 13|13 pages

One of many

The impact of growing up in a large family

chapter Chapter 14|10 pages

The search for belonging

An unfolding story

chapter Chapter 15|10 pages

The meaning of home

The loss of the ‘motherland’ and how this shapes the formation of identity

chapter Chapter 16|11 pages

Parenting a child through a life-threatening illness

Then and now

chapter |4 pages

Epilogue