Table Of Content‘We love the inspirational and hopeful stories that Sabine Vermeire shares
in this book! She opens the door to her therapy room to offer illustrations of
a variety of creative ways to accompany children and their carers in facing
extremely challenging circumstances. It is clear that Sabine draws these stories
from years of hard-won experience. She never pathologizes or loses hope, and
oftentimes she finds ways to bring humor and play to heartbreaking situations.
The ways of working she offers are never simplistic, and they take the wider
context of marginalized lives into account. For us, the heart of the book is the
attitude she conveys toward the children, parents, and carers she works with. If
all therapy could be practiced with her attitude, we are sure that both the lives
we touch and our own would be better for it’.
Jill Freedman (MSW) and Gene Combs (MD), authors of Narrative
Therapy: The Social Construction of Preferred Realities
‘This is a beautiful book by an exceptional family therapist who works with
children who lived their lives within stories of trauma, violence and neglect.
Sabine’s therapeutic focus is on ways to find connection and on setting out on
journeys of discovery and healing. There always is a group of friends, family
and other supporters who root for the child on their long expedition. Sabine
wonders with them whether princesses ever go to the bathroom, she wants
to learn everything there is to know about dinosaurs, she is concerned about
poisonous question marks, and she has no doubt that white rabbits can write
beautiful letters. Playfulness definitely can help a family therapist to do a bet-
ter job!’
Professor Peter Rober, PhD, clinical psychologist, family
therapist and family therapy trainer at Context-Center for marital
and family therapy (UPC KU Leuven)
‘This elegant book brings rich ideas from family therapy, narrative practice and
playful approaches of working with children. Sabine has brilliantly weaved in
her skillful and highly nuanced work with children with such clarity and spar-
kle. She has brought in multiverses of complexities that children’s lives can
get sucked into in the face of trauma and adversity. And yet, at the same time,
thrown light on how we can position ourselves through playful curiosity to “do
hope” and steps we can take to respect children’s voices and lived experiences,
invite agency and practice solidarity. This delightful book will be my compan-
ion for life, and I would highly recommend it to all practitioners who work with
children, families and their networks’.
Shelja Sen, Narrative Therapist, Writer, Co-founder
Children First, India
Unravelling Trauma and Weaving Resilience
with Systemic and Narrative Therapy
Unravelling Trauma and Weaving Resilience with Systemic and Narrative Therapy
is an innovative book that details how clinicians can engage children, families and
their networks in creative and collaborative relationships to elicit change within the
context of trauma and violence.
Combining systemic, narrative and dialogical theoretical frameworks with
clinical examples, this volume focuses on therapeutic conversations that can help
children, and those involved with them, deconstruct their experienced difficulties,
and create more hopeful stories and alternative ways of relating to one another
through a sense of play. Vermeire advocates for serious playfulness as a way
of directly addressing trauma and its effects, as well as along ‘trauma-sensitive’
side paths. Puppetry, artwork, interviews and theatre play are used to weave
networks of resilience in ever-widening circles and this approach is informed by
the awareness that individual problems are always to be seen as relational, social
and political.
This book is an important read for therapists and social workers who work with
traumatised children and their multi-stressed families.
Sabine Vermeire is a systemic and narrative psychotherapist, supervisor and
trainer. She works at Interactie-Academie, Antwerp, Belgium.
The Systemic Thinking and Practice Series
Series Editors: Charlotte Burck and Gwyn Daniel
This influential series was co-founded in 1989 by series editors David Campbell
and Ros Draper to promote innovative applications of systemic theory to
psychotherapy, teaching, supervision and organisational consultation. In 2011,
Charlotte Burck and Gwyn Daniel became series editors and aim to present
new theoretical developments and pioneering practice, to make links with other
theoretical approaches, and to promote the relevance of systemic theory to
contemporary social and psychological questions.
Recent titles in the series include:
Emotions and the Therapist: A Systemic-Dialogical Approach
By Paolo Bertrando
Creative Positions in Adult Mental Health: Outside In-Inside Out
Edited by Sue McNab and Karen Partridge
Ethical and Aesthetic Explorations of Systemic Practice: New Critical
Reflections
Pietro Barbetta, Maria Esther Cavagnis, Inga-Britt Krause and Umberta Telfener
Working Systemically with Refugee Couples and Families: Exploring
Trauma, Resilience and Culture
Shadi Shahnavaz
Psychotherapeutic Competencies: Techniques, Relationships, and
Epistemology in Systemic Practice
Laura Fruggeri, Francesca Balestra, and Elena Venturelli
Systemic Perspectives in Mental Health, Social Work and Youth Care
Anke Savenije, Justine van Lawick, and Ellen Reijmers
Unravelling Trauma and Weaving
Resilience with Systemic and
Narrative Therapy
Playful Collaborations with Children,
Families and Networks
Sabine Vermeire
Designed cover image: Detail of ‘Solution’, 2022, mixed media on
canvas, 200 X 220 cm, Tatjana Gerhard
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Sabine Vermeire
The right of Sabine Vermeire to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-367-76639-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-76638-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-16786-0 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003167860
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
Series editors’ foreword xi
Foreword to Unravelling trauma and weaving resilience
with systemic and narrative therapy xiii
Introduction 1
Three stories to set the scene 1
More than 25 years ago 1
Ten years ago 2
A few weeks ago 6
Three of my many teachers 10
1 Dis-covering a web of complexities 15
Introduction 15
The urge to act 16
Actions, emotions and the body hijacking the therapy room 16
The temptation of unhelpful dances 17
Embracing complexity 18
Scientific theories 18
Expert problem definitions 22
A multiverse of worlds 24
Wider social and political contexts 26
Conclusions 28
2 A collaborative therapeutic journey 30
An insider’s perspective 30
A systemic and narrative approach 33
What creates well-being? 35
Resilience and resilience processes 36
viii Contents
An invitation to collaborative practices 38
Safe grounds 40
Re(dis)covering a sense of personal agency 41
Social sharing of experiences, emotions and stories 41
New relational dances 42
Re(dis)covering a sense of relational agency 43
Re(dis)covering a sense of coherence 44
Re(dis)covering a sense of belonging 45
Hope as a door to possible futures 46
Serious playfulness and playful seriousness 47
Playfulness as an attitude 48
Doorways to imagination 52
Negotiating playfulness 54
Weaving networks of resilience 55
3 First meetings 58
Intake as re-connection and re(dis)covery 58
Doing safety 62
Widening the scope 64
A team of support 66
‘Talking about our talks’ 67
Possibilities and disadvantages of keeping silent and
speaking 69
Utterances of relational involvements 70
What do we need to talk about? 72
Radical re-positioning and listening: interviewing the child 76
Unexplored areas and forgotten stories 78
A manageable way of speaking 79
Ways of responding 82
Planning and documenting our collaborative journey 84
‘The harvest’ of our meeting 84
Conversational settings 86
4 The tentacles of trauma and adversity 90
Creating a context for sharing stories 90
The puppet show: re(dis)covering a sense of agency 93
Responses to the performance 98
The quiz as a context of acknowledgement 99
Ordering the messy stuff into a story 101
Do horses hurt themselves? 109
Contents ix
Brewing stories: imagine the unthinkable 112
Trapped in feelings of guilt 118
Looking at then and there from alternative perspectives 123
Taking a stance: opening doors to new actions 124
Documents as consolidation 125
5 Performing new relational narratives 128
Entangled relationships 128
Looking for common ground 130
A collective investigation of relationships and social worlds 131
From immobilising verbs towards new actions 136
Question marks do not fall out of the sky 138
Re-membering the body 140
I am the only one on this planet … 141
Ever widening circles 144
Back to start? 145
Russian dolls unveiling unsuspected intentions 148
6 Injured relationships and ‘broken homes’ 151
Ambivalence and complexity 151
Some preliminary thoughts on violence 153
Opening conversations about troubled relationships 154
Family constellations on the table 155
Articulating the unarticulated 160
In search for sparkling lights 161
Relatives off stage 162
Attachment unlimited 165
Revisiting shame and revenge 168
A timeline of shame 168
A sense of belonging as an antidote to shame 171
Kicking against the world 172
Disadvantages then and there 173
What about ‘revenge’? 174
Signs of involvement 175
Witnessing as small steps to reconnection 176
7 Engaging with parents, carers and professionals 178
A special bond and position 178
A parent or carer in need 181
