Taming the Irascible within and without

1. Taming the Irascible within and without San Mateo County Bar Association Family Law Section April 9, 2010 Sherry Cassedy, J.D. Matt Sullivan, PhD.

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3. “High levels of effective practice and low levels of associated stress were consistently associated with firm role definitions and boundaries, thorough education of clients, standardized office protocols and a highly organized filing system” • “One respondent noted the intensity of dealing with alternative realities existing simultaneously and the resulting need to set a firm line of demarcation to return to their own world and have adequate time away to restore perspective” • Kirkland, K. “Coping strategies for Parenting Coordinators” Journal of Child Custody, vol. 7, 2010

4. Managingthe “cyberspace” part of your practice • The “crackberry” phenomenon, being connected, creating expectations of total availability to clients (by them and you) • Boundaries – non-work hours, weekends, vacations • The burden of email • Charging for email time

5. On-line Threats to your practice Parenting coordination is a made-up, make-work field that has been invented by bottom-feeding extraneous “professionals" who have literally reproduced like bacteria in the family court system. Liz Library

6. Folks who are out to destroy your ability to practice • Generally – Liz Library, advocacy groups • Specifically – Yelp, other consumer-based feedback about professional service websites • Your professional and personal use of social networking • Don’t mix: facebook page? client, professionals • Permanent record

7. Your website • Please enter the 21st century • Description of services • Service forms • Announcements/news • Resources for professionals and clients • Networking, Marketing, practice support • Protection • What do prospective clients find when the “Google” you?

8. Setting Boundaries with Clients • Relationships are governed by”rules” • Structuring the Relationship • Defining the rules • Knowing the Client • Client Role • Client Psychology • Knowing Oneself • Professional Role • Personal Psychology

9. Managing the Professional Relationship between you and your client • Defining the relationship • Office, intake forms, fees, dress, hours, access • What is your professional role? • Role expectations in yourself (MSW, Romance, victim’s advocate) • Role expectations in your client (savior, counselor, winning) • Policies and Procedures • Providing behavioral specificity to the role • Setting expectations for both • Depersonalizing limit setting • Touching base with parameters

10. Boundary issues • Faulty rules - how you define your professional role • Failure to manage and maintain rules - violations

11. The client’s stuff • Focus on own needs • Difficulty taking another’s perspective • Reality is their own point of view • Hypersensitive to criticism • Sense of entitlement • Often long standing, maladaptive ways of thinking, feeling and behaving - Axis II

12. Thinking Errors • Inaccurate perceptions • Distorts, misinterprets information • Poor reality testing, i.e. thinking errors including errors of perception, misattribution, and misinterpretation • Sometimes rigid, simplistic assessments

13. Your Stuff • How do your thoughts, feelings and behaviors effect your definition of and behavior in the role? Countertransference • Intense emotions, familiar patterns • Unconscious, blind spots • Distortion of the meaning of the client’s behavior

14. Boundary Challenges • Pulls • Idealization, need, celebrity, $, friendship, romance • Pushes • Devaluation, demand, threat, criticism, questioning

15. Strategies for managing boundaries • Explicit, detailed policies and procedures as a tool to check boundaries • “slippage” - availability, fees, • Limit setting, training your client • What Aikido tells us • Managing energy • What behavioral theory tells us • Clearly defined expectations of behavior • Consistent response, your posture, modeling • Timely response • Staying in control • depersonalize

16. Getting in and Getting out • Factors to consider in taking a case • Within scope of competence • Type of case and fit with professional and personal goals • Red flags • The intake - client characteristics, attorneys • Patterns of clientele • Say as much about you as them

17. When to get out • Slippage in boundaries with unsuccessful efforts to work within parameters • Threats, abuse, boundary violations, consultation suggests you should end • How to get out - abandonment and retaliation

18. Personal and Professional Support • Knowledge of standards of professional practice • Continuing education • Peer consultation - professional role • Counseling - personal psychology

19. Why is this work in high conflict cases so intense? • Working with difficult clients in a difficult situation • Expectation, “tolerance” and working with challenging client behavior

21. The client’s stuff • Depending on Narcissistic Vulnerability • Distortions based on Axis-II, loss/stress of situation • Projection/projective identification

23. Your stuff • Your role in the case – Neutral/aligned • Personal stuff: Punitive, Withdraw, overwhelmed (caught like the child)

26. The Interactional stuff • Between professional and client, client and client, professional and professional

28. The Contextual stuff • Working in the legal-adversarial context • Tribal dynamics – extended family, professionals