Lesson 7 of 8  - evolve a high-nurturance stepfamily
	How to Select Effective Stepfamily Counsel 19 Questions to Ask By Peter K. Gerlach, MSW Member NSRC Experts Council

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        This is one of a series of lesson-7 articles on how to evolve a high-nurturance stepfamily. This series extends the concepts in Lessons 1-6, so study them first. These articles augment, vs. replace, other qualified professional help. The "/" in re/marriage and re/divorce notes that it may be a stepparent's first union. "Co-par-ents" means both bioparents, or any of the three or more related stepparents and bioparents co-managing a multi-home nuclear stepfamily. 

        This article hilights (a) why get professional stepfamily help, and (b) how to shop for effective help. See these questions and answers on "counseling" for more perspective. Also see this interesting New York Times reprint that says that skilled "talk therapy" can often produce the same results as prescrip-tion drugs.

  Why Get Counseling?

        Whether you're considering stepfamily re/marriage or already re/wedded, it can be a great help to get some informed professional coaching along the way. Counseling is different than therapy in that it's primarily educational, and doesn't focus heavily on emotions or the unconscious mind. Some useful and appropriate counseling and therapy targets for co-parents are:

Doing a reality-check on the probable long-term success of stepfamily re/marriage before re/wedding;

Helping assess  for false-self wounds (co-parent Lesson 1); and/or personal recovery design and management;

Clarifying who belongs in your multi-home stepfamily, and resolving membership conflicts over this (Lesson 7);

Forging realistic expectations in your new stepfamily (Project 4).

Promoting healthy mourning (in adults or kids) after (a) divorce or death and (b) re/marriage (Lesson 3);

Learning to help minor stepkids master their sets of up to 30+ unique adjustment needs (Projects 6 and 10);

Learning how to compromise values conflicts successfully - specially around co-parents' priorities, family loyalties, parenting, and/or money; and how to do consistently-effective verbal problem solving ( Projects 2 and 9);

Clarifying co-parents' roles and responsibilities ; and ...

Resolving old and/or current relationship barriers with (co-parenting) ex spouses or other key relatives.

       Whatever your need, there are specific traits to look for in picking an effective professional helper. Many seasoned pastoral counselors, psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, doctors, mediators, and family-law professionals are skilled and experienced at helping people with personal and family problems. If they've had no training in stepfamily uniquenesses and realities,  they may not be able to help. Through unawareness, they may make things worse. How can you guard against that?

Prepare

        To raise the odds of your filling your current primary needs...

Check  to see whether your true Self is leading your unique team of personality sub-selves. Option: check to see if that's true of your partner. If false-selves dominate either of you, you may be distorting reality and focusing on the wrong things. See Lesson 1;

Evaluate whether you and your other co-parents all agree on your stepfamily identity and what it means. If not - and you can't correct that on your own - use informed professional help to do so.

Study these 60 stepfamily myths and realities and reality-check your expectations. You (all) may need education, not professional help! The Break theCycle! guidebooks are a lot more economical than hiring professionals! Note the difference between (family) therapists and licensed family-life educators (credential: CFLE). With qualified stepfamily training, the latter may fill your needs for less money.

Study and discuss this Project-4 quiz on basic stepfamily knowledge, and fill in any signifi-cant "knowledge gaps" by following the links there. A really informed professional will know how to answer all the items in this quiz, and should be able to coach you on understanding and applying them. An ideal professional will also be thoroughly grounded in the topics in these life-skill, communication, and good-grief quizzes.

Reality check: can you name the five major stepfamily re/divorce hazards and the seven Lessons that can neutralize them? If so, have you made good progress on the Lessons? If not, informed professional help may help learn why not, and how to progress.

Review these common co-parent unawarenesses, and see if any apply to you. You'll prob-ably need objective counsel on this, for typical co-parents don't know what they're unaware of!

Dig down - alone or with your partner - to discern your primary needs. Then reflect on whether you need professional help to fill them or something else. If the former, then...

Authorize yourself to shop for competent help. As an investor of your time, energy, and money, you have a right to evaluate professional competence. To shop, ask some pointed questions. Note how the candidate answers as well as what s/he says.

        If s/he responds confidently, clearly, and without irritation or evasiveness, then green light. If the professional seems offended or intimidated by your interviewing them, look else-where. Option: print this and take it with you as a shopping guide. Invest time in following the links below (after you finish this) so you'll be able to evaluate the answers you get.

  Useful Shopping Questions...

        1) "Specifically, what kind of professional stepfamily training have you had? When?" If "None," or "A little," keep looking.

        2) "What experience do you have at helping adults assess if they're "Adult Children" (from low-nurturance childhoods)?" (Note: these Web articles call Adult Children Grown Wounded Children,  or GWCs.) If the candidate seems credibly experienced, ask: "How do you help Adult Children recover ? Are you an Adult Child? Are you in personal recovery? "Is it 'working' for you?" If your candidate is guided by  his or her true Self, s/he should welcome with these questions.

Over 80% of the 1,000+ co-parents I've met since 1981 are significantly- wounded GWCs. If the can-didate is not familiar with "Adult Child" (they won't know "GWC"), look elsewhere. False-self wounds seem to be a key reason for our U.S. divorce epidemic and many other social problems

        3) "Do you have any special training and experience with helping clients meet and harmonize their inner families?" "Yes" is a great asset, and you may have to settle for "No." This special skill can help typical co-parents (and kids) heal false-self dominance and related wounds, which cause or contribute to most family problems.

       Currently, few therapist and (I suspect) no attorneys, mediators, judges, case workers, or teachers have this Lesson-1 training. Option: ask if the candidate is trained in Inner-family systems therapy and/or psychosynthesis.

        4) "Do you treat stepfamilies differently than biofamilies? If so, how - specifically?" If the candidate says something like "No, a family's just a family," thank them and look elsewhere.

        5) "What unique hazards and tasks do you feel that stepfamily co-parents face, and (specifically) how do you help with those?"

        6) "Do you have special training, experience, and skill at promoting healthy grief , and spotting and freeing up blocked grief?" If s/he does, ask: "How do you usually do that?" Frozen mourning in adults and/or minor or grown kids promotes personal and family distress.

        7) "Why, specifically, do you believe more stepfamily re/marriages fail than biofamily (first) mar-riages? What do you do to help typical re/marrying couples avoid re/divorce - specifically"? If the candi-date shows any confusion, vagueness, or resistance to this, keep shopping.

        8) "Have you ever lived in a stepfamily? If so, has that biased you in working with stepfamily cli-ents?" Clinicians and mediators are people too! Many are  psychologically wounded, and some grew up as stepkids and/or have re/married or re/divorced.

        9) "How do you believe stepfamily values conflicts and inclusion or loyalty conflicts should be handled?" If s/he can't describe each of these or a believable solution for them clearly, look elsewhere.

        10) "How do you help stepfamily members spot and resolve (persecutor - victim - rescuer) rela-tionship triangles ?" (These usually occur with significant role and relationship conflicts). Ditto.

        11) "Do you believe that both divorced parents are equal co-parenting members in a child's two-home stepfamily ?" If "yes," ask "Then are you comfortable working, if needed, with ex mates who are co-parenting together?" If you get "No," or "It depends" to either question, look elsewhere. Ignoring the needs and values of any of your kids' co-parents steeply raises the odds of escalating conflict.

        12) "About how many stepfamily couples (or co-parents) have you worked with?" "Over 50 couples" is a reassuring answer. More is better.

        13) "Are you comfortable working variously with individual adults, couples, kids, and everyone together in a client stepfamily?" "Yes" is a big asset: successful education and clinical work with stepfamilies often requires working with a mix of family members alone and together, over time.

        14) "What special needs do you feel typical minor stepkids must fill that intact-biofamily kids don't face?" (There can be over 30!)

        15) "In your opinion, what's different about stepparenting?" The key aims are usually the same as bioparents, but the family environments are different in almost 50 ways.

        16) "What training and experience do you have in teaching adult couples the seven skills that em-power effective communication ?" If "none" or "little," keep looking.

        17) "Do you have special training and experience with (a) assessing and (b) managing all four kinds of addictions (substances, activities, relationships, and mood states)?" If they do, ask: "Generally, how do you approach helping addicts and their families?" If they seem vague, yellow light: addictions are com-mon in stepfamily "trees," and are major signs of wounded ancestors and co-parents and low-nurturance families.

        18) "How do you manage client families who have groups of complex, concurrent problems?" This is true of most divorcing and step families, so consistent clinical focusing and prioritizing with the co-par-ents helps fill their needs.

        19) If the professional works for an agency or is in a private practice, ask: "Does your  supervisor or clinical consultant have special training in (all the topics above)?" If "No," ask: "Then if we work together, are you willing to seek and consult with a local clinical specialist who does have special stepfamily and re/marital training?"

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       If you discuss questions like these thoroughly with a prospective professional consultant, you'll probably spend your first hour without getting into your current family problems. Option: do a phone in-terview first. In the long run, this shopping is a high-return investment of your time, funds, and energy, compared to having five or more unproductive (expensive) hourly sessions with a consultant who works from inappropriate biofamily rules, norms, biases, and expectations.

        For perspective, it takes most stepfamilies five or more years to merge and stabilize after (each) re/wedding. It's a disservice to you and your kids to make an uniformed choice in hiring stepfamily and re/marital help. It's healthy and OK to take your time!

 An effective professional will work steadily to empower you co-parents to identify, clarify, and resolve your problems, not to solve them for you... Option: refer your consultant/s to this site (http://sfhelp.org) and the related guidebooks, and use selected parts of them as resources in your work together.

        Pause, breathe, and recall why you read this article. Did you get what you needed? If so, what do you need now? If not - what do you need? Is there anyone you want to discuss these ideas with? Who's answering these questions - your wise resident true Self, or "someone else"?

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Updated  August 30, 2010