Too often, stepfamilies stay stuck and miserable rather
than asking for help and going for therapy. A stepmother may blame herself for not doing a
good enough job, not wanting anyone to know that she feels less than loving to her
stepchildren. A stepson may not connect his fights with his stepfather to his fears of
proving disloyal to his Dad. A stepfather may persist, in vain, in trying to convince his
new wife that everything would be fine if she would just change how she disciplines her
kids.
All of us have difficult and painful times in our lives when
therapy, sometimes quite brief, can make the difference between staying unhappy and
opening up possibilities for effective problem-solving and better relationships. Creating
a workable stepfamily involves surmounting a series of challenges. Therapy can provide the
"boost" and the "structure" that allows family members to clear the
hurdles with more teamwork and less distress.
Therapy can be helpful in many ways.
Educating and normalizing:
Teaching stepfamilies about normal and expectable differences from first-marriage families can revise unrealistic expectations, avoiding constant disappointment.
Dispelling the myth of instant love that the remarried parents' wedding vow means that stepparent and stepchild will love each other right away and just the same as if they bonded at the child's birth--can then help family members develop caring relationships that fit who they actually are.
Normalizing family members experience can ease guilt, anxiety, and self-blame, making for more openness and less defensiveness, clearing up misunderstandings and preventing further conflict.
Putting things in a developmental framework, teaching stepparents who have never been parents before about what children of a certain age are like and what they can be expected to do, allows stepparents to put the child's behavior in perspective. What feels like "he's on a hate-filled campaign to sabotage me" can be better understood as "he's hurt and confused and needs our help to feel secure that the changes in the family don't mean that he's being pushed out."
Sharing information about stepfamily development - for example, how family life is smoother when the stepparent "steps in" very gradually with enforcing rules - can provide strategies that have proven effective for others, reducing family conflict.
Research* shows that this "psychoeducation" brings immediate relief and has a "ripple effect," setting off a series of beneficial changes that help people move beyond the currect impasses.
Developing empathy and clearing up misunderstandings.
Therapy provides a safe forum for stepfamily members to tell their side of the story and feel heard. Stepfamilies typically come to therapy with troubled, hurt or angry accounts of family life. The conditions of their lives are at odds with their ideas about "life as it ought to be lived." The media, political debate, and how they themselves grew up all conspire to make them feel that they are incompetent, impairing their sense of well being. Ungenerous towards themselves ("I wish I were a bigger person, but I get so resentful when the children are here, I feel like I don't have a partner"), they are also blaming toward each other("He doesn't act like an adult, I feel like I've got two children on my hands" or "she's just mean-spirited.")
The therapist slows down the conversation, making sure that each person feels "heard" and understood. This involves interrupting the more usual pattern of "yes, but" statements in which each person defends his or her own position, barely acknowledging what the other has said. Being accepted as a basically well-intentioned person, in the presence of one's family members, provides the basis for recognizing that the others might also be people of good will who deserve empathy, if not agreement. Too often, left to our own devices, we may not get it that "Yes, I understand why you feel the way you do" is not the same as "You're right, I'm wrong, and I give up."
Distinguishing stepfamily issues from what else may be happening
Therapy can help by sorting out what problems arise from expectable stepfamily transitions - "getting to know you" and working out how to create a shared family culture - from challenges that individuals bring to the family based on their histories. Does stepfamily life bring up issues from childhood? Is there an untreated depression?
For example, when remarriage made her a stepmother, Andrea had difficulty in accepting ten-year-old Jack as "a third person in my life." Jack was affectionate and welcoming; Andrea felt guilty and miserable about thinking of the boy as an unwanted imposition. Picking up on a repeated theme in her story, I asked what it meant to her to be in a threesome? She told me of being the only child of parents so devoted to one another that they were never apart for more than two hours. For her, being part of a threesome meant being lonely, as she had been as a girl shut out by her parents' intense intimacy. We talked about finding interests to share with Jack as a twosome, and how working on developing the one-to-one relationships between each family pair, could provide a way for each of them to feel like family.
*See Elion, D. (1990) Therapy with remarriage families with children: Positive interventions from the client perspective. Unpublished Master's Thesis, University of Wisconsin-Stout, and Pasley, K., Rhoden, L., Visher, E.B., & Visher, J.S. (1996) Successful stepfamily therapy: Clients' perspectives. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 22: 343-357.
Anne Bernstein, Ph.D.
is a Licensed Family Psychologist and Mediator in Berkeley, CA.
She is a professor at the Wright Institute, and a Clinical Assistant Professor at
the University of California at Berkeley.
Anne is the author of:
Yours,
Mine, and Ours: How Families Change When Remarried Parents Have a Child Together
Flight
of the Stork: What Children Think (and When) about Sex and Family Building