Crafting Co-parenting Agreements Through an Integrative Psychotherapy Lens

When a romantic relationship ends, it's not uncommon for people to turn to psychotherapy to process their experience and to explore how to move forwards. Finding ways to co-parent children when you're no longer in a romantic relationship is an important aspect of living with the new normal post-breakup and can be part of the work of Integrative Psychotherapy. As an Integrative Psychotherapist, I am happy to explore what co-parenting means to clients, as well as their hopes and fears around co-parenting. This can help a person to be clearer about what they want and need from any coparenting agreement.

So, what is Integrative Psychotherapy?

Integrative Psychotherapy is a type of talking therapy which seeks to create a collaborative, trust-based relationship between a therapist and a client. This therapeutic relationship provides a supportive environment to foster emotional openness. An Integrative Psychotherapist draws upon techniques and therapeutic methods from different modalities of therapy, bringing them together in a way that supports the client towards positive change. Integrative therapy places the client at the heart of the work, adapting the therapeutic approach to their individual needs.

The benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy include:

• Inspiring hope in clients
• Providing an alternative and more plausible view of the self and the world
• Providing a corrective emotional experience that helps remedy past trauma (Zarbo, et al., 2016).

How can Integrative Psychotherapy help with crafting coparenting agreements?

To help respond to this question, we can use the list of the benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy given above. Let's begin with hope:

Inspiring hope

When a relationship ends, there can be a whole host of difficult emotions in the mix. It's understandable to feel loss, disappointment and anger, even if the separation is something that's mutually agreed as the best way forwards. At the point of separation, hope can feel very alien. And if there is conflict, or hostility connected to the ending of the relationship, the idea of successful co-parenting can feel extremely challenging. Thoughts may well centre around questions such as:

• How on earth will I manage?
• Will the kids be impacted?
• Have I made a mistake?
• Will I be able to cope going it alone?
• What will friends and family think of me?
• How can we remain civil after everything that's happened?

These questions speak of feelings of despondency, rather than hopefulness. During psychotherapy, a client has opportunity to connect with their own internal and external resources, and to find a sense of their own meaning and purpose in life. To connect with personal values. Slowly, hope returns. In time, the questions can evolve into more hopeful statements of affirmation:

• I have resources in my life that help me to manage.
• I'm taking positive and practical steps to support my children with this transition.
• I'm responding to what's happened in ways that align with my values.
• I am coping with this situation.
• Regardless of what others think, I am taking steps to look after myself and the children.
• I'm able to stay in an "adult" position and communicate clearly.

From this place of optimistic hopefulness and resourcefulness, a person can best articulate what they want and need from any co-parenting agreement. Rather than separation and divorce being an insurmountable barrier, psychotherapy supports a person to hold hope in their own abilities to communicate and articulate what's important for them and their children's wellbeing. That feels hopeful!

Providing an alternative and more plausible view of the self and the world

When a relationship breaks down, it's easy for one or both parties to descend into what Anna Freud called "primitive defence mechanisms", such as denial, projection, splitting and avoidance. These defence mechanisms are unconscious strategies used by the ego to distort reality. Rather than taking a balanced and accurate view of what's happening, when defence mechanisms are driving us, we deny our responsibility, blame the other or unfairly heap all the blame on ourselves, split the world into "good and bad" and avoid dealing with issues.

Integrative psychotherapy aims to support a person by raising awareness of unconscious defence mechanisms. Rather than acting in ways that are outside of conscious awareness, a client is supported to see more clearly their own behaviour and what is happening in them, and between them and others. This provides opportunity to let go of primitive defence mechanisms and adopt a more plausible view of self and others. A person comes to take greater responsibility for their part in events, and to offer understanding to self and others. From this place of self-awareness, it's possible to create and construct co-parenting agreements that are grounded in a more objective stance, and from a place of psychological maturity.

Providing a corrective emotional experience that helps remedy past trauma

Relationship breakdowns can be the result of trauma and can be traumatic in themselves. Traumatised people find it difficult to think clearly, which helps to explain the saying that "hurt people hurt people". When people have been traumatised, they can lash out and behave in ways that cause harm to others. Trauma activates the brain's "fear circuitry," causing the prefrontal cortex (which handles rational thought) to function less effectively. A brain that's impacted by trauma has difficulty concentrating, memory issues, and experiences trouble with decision-making. A traumatised brain will find it more difficult to think logically through the ins and outs of a co-parenting agreement.

Psychotherapy can provide a corrective emotional experience that helps remedy past trauma. In psychotherapy a person has opportunity to work through and process trauma so they can utilise their pre-frontal cortex in decision making, without being hijacked by fear. This allows them to access their creativity and logic when crafting co-parenting agreements that benefit all parties.

So, when it comes to crafting co-parenting agreements, Integrative Psychotherapy has much to offer. The emotional openness and focus on positive change at the heart of Integrative Psychotherapy can support co-parenting agreements. Rather than being a "navel gazing" exercise, Integrative Psychotherapy can focus on positive change and hopeful ways forward, through and beyond trauma, informing the creation and crafting of co-parenting agreements that benefit all stakeholders.

References:

Zarbo, C., Tasca, G. A., Cattafi, F., & Compare, A. (2016). Integrative Psychotherapy Works. Frontiers in psychology, 6, 2021.

Freud, A. (1936). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis. (Revised edition: 1966 (US), 1968 (UK))