Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:29 Welcome to the molding health show. Our goal is to leverage the wisdom and experience of a health care practitioners to sit you on a part of self-discovery and healing. These insights coupled with the multidisciplinary approach to each area of interest should provide an invaluable resource to everyone looking for a better approach
Speaker 2 00:00:46 To health. In
Speaker 1 00:00:48 This episode, we speak to Paula Hildebrand, a social worker based in Johannesburg, South Africa. She discusses the topic of family and trauma counseling from a social worker perspective
Speaker 3 00:01:00 Afternoon, and welcome to today's show today. We're going to be discussing counseling worth Paula Hildebrand, a sauce whip accredited social worker in South Africa. Um, Paula, welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 00:01:17 Thank you so much for having me share. So I really look forward to today.
Speaker 3 00:01:21 Lovely. I look forward to chatting to you as well. I think that family and trauma counseling is such a huge thing in our country and maybe a lot of people don't really understand what that entails. Could you tell us a little bit more from the perspective of a social worker, what family and trauma counseling would be or family trauma counseling.
Speaker 4 00:01:45 Thanks. Shares. I think these are so central to social work. A lot of our training is around protecting vulnerable groups. And with that often is the breakdown of family and the family not being able to handle a scenario, keep protection or provision in the home, and then to restore family, to put it back into a healthy environment is very much central to social work. Um, predominately we've worked with children, but this is true across the board. It might be an addict in the home. There might be divorced and, um, physical violence in the home. There are many aspects that play out, um, that caused the trauma in the home or this crime, the whole family held up at hostage in their home or their ancestors, that kind of thing, or being in a car while they're being hijacked as a family. There's a lot of trauma that families experience either from outward or inward harm.
Speaker 4 00:02:35 Um, and as a social worker, we come into that understanding that we have to find resilience and strength within the family, but to rebuild good, healthy practices, ways of being sustainable and consistent to actually look out for the whole family, not individualistic that whole family looks out for each other. So the strength of family therapy is that we take away eventually the need for, as the family starts for filling the needs. It needs the whole family needs in order to maintain a sense of wellbeing. And this is really a challenge because for many families that haven't had the opportunities of good role modeling building up to that place, or they've had huge big crisises in their life or death of their parent or the loss of work, or maybe some other kind of, um, harmful act that took out of the family, a certain amount of peace and Goodwill and normality Amazon crisis. And for many people they've forgotten the basics of being caring and loving and speaking well and actually being selfless within a family group. And part of social work is to try and rebuild that ethic and principle this of love and connection.
Speaker 3 00:03:54 Wow. So you guys cover such a huge and vital part of that healing process for a family that has gone through some sort of trauma. And, you know, I know when everybody, when any, whenever anybody hears the word trauma, they automatically assume, you know, crime or, you know, a high tracking or a death, but trauma can also be something a lot closer to home. Like you say, a drug addict in the house, or just, you know, verbal or emotional or physical abuse within the house would also cause trauma within that family structure as a social worker, you know, are there any specific therapeutic plans or processes that you would take a family through to kind of assist them in building back that resilience and trust within each other?
Speaker 4 00:04:49 She has a lot of different approaches. Um, and as practitioners, we normally choose our favorites at work with our own temperament and our own sense of what is good practice. Um, but I prefer to try and adapt the approaches that I use dependent on the people that I'm with, what works for them. And it doesn't have to be overly verbal and talk therapy. Sometimes we use other kind of engagements, be it play therapy with children or making families play together. And I'll talk about the interaction while they're playing Lego or playing a board game, we'll try and work out what the dynamic is. So we don't always use words, but the real process from beginning to end is to acknowledge hurts, acknowledge the pain, get everybody to talk about what it's been like for them. What has been they experienced and to have a voice for many people in the family there, they don't feel like they have a voice or they're serious repercussions if they speak their mind.
Speaker 4 00:05:44 So to create a place where you can explore the hurt, then to start understanding each other's perspective. Cause listening to understand is different from listening to get information, to fight better, you know, such a create that place where the family starts really listening to each other. And then where there obvious gaps in knowledge or expertise, you know, to try and pull that input into place. Be it, uh, working with addiction, the specific skills that you need to work through there. So there might be added things or maybe truancy children are going to school, other mental health issues as a lot of mental health, um, come to the fore over COVID with anxiety levels and depression being very common. And then people feeling socially disengaged. So trying to put skills into that place. So it's acknowledgement seeing what the need is creating, understanding. And then we start looking, what is the strength in this family?
Speaker 4 00:06:33 What can we draw from? We good at making plans, we mess up a lot, but we stand up a lot and get on a Kelly's work with that. Or you know, it, we've got an incredible sister that's really good helping with kids. So we're going to bring her in because she can help with aftercare a little bit to, to carry this family through a season. Or maybe we just need to share a household with two families just to get through this financial hit. And how do we sit that in place until we on our feet again? So there's a practical side with social work. That's really important also saying, how do you feel about sharing a house with your family? Again? What are your constructs? What are the issues there? How can you overcome that? How can you be amenable to each other against you kind of talk about the psychology of the solution as well, but the solution doesn't come from the social worker, the solution comes from a joint conversation with the whole family and working that out.
Speaker 4 00:07:22 So from beginning to end, that is the end phase is sort of on shares. The reason why I love trauma work, people think I'm freaking nuts, but I love it because it does something about bringing our strengths to the fall. We do this trauma makes us do housekeeping. It makes us take a look at ourselves, look at our circumstances, okay, it's a painful experience. But when you do that, your desktop and sorta things, and the family pulls together and in your own strengths, you pull your strengths to the fore. And most people are much stronger having become resilient through trauma than they ever were before the event happened. I don't think they ever get to the stage where they're sound glad it happened, but they can look back and say, my life is better. And that is almost 90% of the people that I work with in trauma can say to me at the end of the day, my life is basically because of the journey that I've walked through and what I found and learned about myself on the journey of walking through trauma.
Speaker 4 00:08:19 And I believe trauma should be dealt with within family groups and community groups. Um, I'm not one for really being happy with someone dealing with trauma, just the patient and myself, knowing about it. Um, often there's sometimes especially sexual abuse or that kind of stuff. Sometimes it's just the two of us that keep the secret. I'd much rather have the softness and the caring and the support of a broader community or a family, or just a partner in that space, um, to try and normalize and bring ssessment. So that's something, if you try and do social workers also bring out who are the people that can stand with you and be there with you through that trauma, because family is not just a mom and dad and two children, family is, you know, three or ladies living together, or it can be, you know, um, same sex marriage with a bunch of kids, or it can be, uh, uh, roommates studying together, or it can be a childhood at household, or it can be a single mom moment for kids. It can be an old mother and a young daughter living together can be many different shapes. Um, and family unit that we work with is who wants to be connected and he loves and who sustains. And that's what we work with is no textbook or what a family should look like. Thank goodness. I actually love
Speaker 3 00:09:37 That. You say that because I've always had this thing, you know, it's the strangest thing, but this idea that your family is, you know, you're, you're designed to love the people that you grew up with, but they don't necessarily, they're not necessarily your family, your family can be a close group of friends, or as you say, a college roommate, now it's the people that you feel the most connected to the people that you feel the safest worth. And so from that aspect, it makes a lot of sense to me that if somebody is going through a trauma that, you know, you would want to bring these people in together to help them as a unit to deal with the trauma that either an individual or the group has going through. So I love that concept that, you know, family is not necessarily mom and dad and two and a half kids. It can be absolutely anything. It's about an action and love and supporting each other, not necessarily about biology. Is there any advice that you can give as a social worker for a family that may have suffered a trauma, or is really just considering maybe a little bit of family counseling to almost maintain that family dynamic
Speaker 4 00:10:58 Chess? Um, for many families they're trying to deal with the concerns or, or trauma internally first, um, sometimes the way they choose to do it might be everybody drinking too much. You know, it's not all as choosing to deal with it in the healthiest way, but normally people go to trying to work at work and they put the best effort in they'll try and have a conversation as knows talking to them. They're not listening to us, or then they give up on, on the own resourcefulness. And at that point it's good to bring in a therapist or someone to sit with you in family therapy, but it's really much better to do it at a much earlier place saying we're sort of struggling, but we're not broken. Can we sit with you? Can you help us do that, make us do this better? And I do have, um, people that come to me, sort of like family counseling, but it's marriage counseling.
Speaker 4 00:11:46 They'll come to me saying we've got quite a good marriage between now being married for 30 years. And we wanting to replace a, of rebirth. The sense of, I was trying to do reboot and rebirth, and I got so strange where it in between, but just start afresh with a fresh idea of what they want to bring to the marriage. So sometimes coming to therapy is to add, can I say the icing on the cake? Sometimes it is to build a cake from scratch. Some of us just define the egg some way that we can start working with. So it can, you can join at any point. And obviously, you know, we never know how long therapy could actually go because it, like I say to you, how long do people go to hospital for? Well, it depends why they go there. We can't really say, but, um, generally if you come before it's actually become a broken scenario, um, I'd much rather people come to family therapy before they'd look at a divorce scenario.
Speaker 4 00:12:42 Um, long before they get to that point is look at bringing wholesomeness into the space, um, families coming to talk about in the empty nest syndrome or, um, a child that's particularly having a struggle cause often a family therapy, this one person that carries this symptom and it'll be maybe a very naughty child or some sort of the spectrum is very wide on that one. And then we have to do family therapy because Johnny's a real trouble causer and we need to sort this out and you need to tell him because he's not listening to us often, that's the entry into the door, but Johnny is not the problem. Johnny is part of a family. And when they come in the door, Johnny is not my problem. He's not my client. My client is relationship. Okay. So he's acting out, he's got rehab responsibility for that, but why, what is he trying to get attention?
Speaker 4 00:13:31 What is he pushing against? What he's putting against? What can the family do to bring more health? Who else owns some of the change that's required to build this forward? And so for families that are scared to do that, it's quite easy to send Johnny for therapy listener, look at the family, but all families, even if you not to blame, and I don't believe therapy should be about blame, but all families need to earn the responsibility to support each other, to, to know how to do well by each other. And that's with it. It becomes an, it can be, you know, my therapy for family too, because you work really quickly. You get a lot done in a few sessions compared to individual sessions. It's not as deeper work as what you do with individual, but it allows for the dynamical change to shift to a point where people individually are feeling better and their wellbeing is being met in the family and their need for deepest or counseling artists in the process. So, um, I can go from about three sessions to my 10 sessions in family therapy, generally, something like that. I don't really like to have less than three. I just feel like you don't really trust each other enough. You know, I'm still that strange on T at that point, you know,
Speaker 3 00:14:45 I actually think that's brilliant, you know? Yeah. You don't get to know a person in one or two hours. It takes a bit of time to get to know a person. But I do agree with that concept of, you know, a family as a unit. And if something in the unit is pulling left, whilst the rest is pulling right to actually kind of try and see, you know, why is this person pulling left? What's causing that as opposed to just the idea of, well, stop pulling left, you know, we're going right. So I love the fact that you say, you know, it's about Johnny is not necessarily the patient. It's the family unit is the patient and let's try and see what's causing the symptom. You know, you're treating the illness, not just the symptom, you know, you're treating the whole person, not just the snotty nose when they have a cold, I think that's hazing analogy.
Speaker 4 00:15:40 Yeah. So that is not that, you know, what's the family work a lot of it when I sit with a family, um, obviously you're trained to assess all the time. You're looking who sits, where how do they engage all that kind of stuff. But what I'm really looking at, what is working here? Why did they choose to try and make this work better? What is the strengths here? What is the magic magic beans? Can I say that kind of keeps us family together. Often we think, um, therapies about pathology. Who's messed up. Why they messed up? Can they please stop messing up? You know, that kind of conversation very much around what's broken and ill. And yes, there is healing and trauma and family, of course, there's lots, that's wrong. Let's not be naive. But the real approach is how do we make this a flourishing garden? How do we bring wellbeing into this place? Part of it is weeding, but a lot of it is really putting goodness back into the soil.
Speaker 3 00:16:34 Thank you so much for that. That's just, but that's exactly it. It's not always about, you know, what was wrong. It's about how do we make things better to help the person who's having a problem? I think that's absolutely amazing. So if a family was looking to reach out to you set up counseling sessions, um, would they be able to email you? Do you have a website that they could go to, to book an appointment?
Speaker 4 00:17:03 They can definitely send me emails for be the easiest way to have direct contact and we can take it from there and I'll reach out and we'll put something in place.
Speaker 3 00:17:13 I'll add your email details at the end of the show. Um, so that people can just get into contact with you. I think it is important with family counseling that you go and get help before it's absolutely fallen apart and try and repair it rather than cause the end things there. You know, you need to try at least fix something and it's sometimes easier to fix earlier on than it is to fix when it's totally fallen apart.
Speaker 4 00:17:43 Exactly. It's much harder to heal when it's really got to that level of hurt.
Speaker 3 00:17:50 Thank you so much for your time, Paula. And thank you for just giving us a little bit more of an insight as to what family counseling could be and you know, the different types of trauma that could occur into a family. I really appreciate you taking the time to spend with us.
Speaker 4 00:18:07 Thanks, Jess. I really appreciate the time and thank you to the listeners for engaging with us today. Wonderful.
Speaker 3 00:18:13 Or catch up with you again soon.
Speaker 4 00:18:16 Thanks Jess. Hey everyone.
Speaker 1 00:18:18 Thanks for listening as always stay tuned and we'll speak to you in the next episode.
