ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses an approach to family therapy with the child survivor that stays focused on the child’s needs and points of view and provides an environment where a child can learn to communicate feelings rather than react with automatic dissociative reactions. These sessions can become opportunities for the child to learn more about family boundaries, become desensitized to family triggers, and communicate about trauma from the present as well as the past. For family therapy to be effective, parents must learn to listen empathetically and respond nondefensively. Families may have entrenched ideas or patterns of behavior which can interfere with the child’s progress, and these need to be identified and corrected as much as possible. The therapist’s approach and attitude towards the child provides a model for the possibility of relationships that are reciprocal and in which they share equal power.
