Parallel process in family violence practice and systems
Author
Tori Cooke
Pandora Enterprise Projects
July’s Pandora musing is a response to the intellectual invitation from Carolyn
Cousins (2018) in her paper: Parallel Process in Domestic Violence Services:
Are we doing harm? (Australian Counselling Research Journal, 2018).
Parallel process is a term used in family violence practice to describe the
phenomenon where an individual practitioner can experience emotional
reactions potentially triggered by the client’s story and behaviour. This can lead
to practitioner’s emotional reactions being projected onto the client, which can
be harmful to professional decision making and result in poor client outcomes. It
is why family violence providers ensure clinical supervision and other supports
are provided to practitioners to mitigate any risks of harm.
Pondering how parallel processes show up in individual practice, team
dynamics and potentially the broader organisational context took me to a
delightful intellectual dive into the research for a definition amongst other things:
In family violence work, Cousins proposes that the “dynamics of DFV, those of
coercion and control may sometimes be unwittingly replicated in the
interactional dynamics of individual services and the service system that works
to address FDV.” (Cousins, 2018 p. 1)
“When two or more systems – whether these consist of individuals, groups, or
organisations – have significant relationships with one another, they tend to
develop similar affects, cognition, and behaviours, which are defined as parallel
processes…. Parallel processes can be set in motion in many ways, and once
initiated leave no one immune from their influence” (Smith et al., 1989, p.13).
If the family violence parallel process shows up in complex power dynamics and
is left unexamined and therefore unresolved, then the resultant risk of unsafe
dynamics may then result in chronic stress and burnout. It could then be
concluded that addressing this as early as possible, empowers leaders, and
teams to include reflecting on the parallel process as a key part of the safety
and wellbeing strategies for burnout prevention.
Eva Roszkowski (2017) discusses the value of understanding this phenomenon
as “parallel process thinking, when the dynamics of one system or issue are
picked up and played out by another person, team, or organisational
system”. Her article and examples are well worth a read, and I’ve added the
link below.
Putting the concept of parallel process on the organisational reflective agenda
allows exploration of the workplace culture in a different way. We must ensure
that our curious scrutiny starts with an empathic understanding of the lived
reality that working in family violence systems significantly impacts us all as
human beings (Cousins, 2018). Taking a gentle approach informed by empathic
listening, we can ask ourselves and others some important questions. How
would we know if our individual practice, team dynamics or organisational
culture is impacted by the complexity of a family violence parallel process?
I’m proposing that in order to address the inherent risks, we need to examine
this through noticing, naming and navigating the issues as part of our work with
clients as well as the work in family violence system and operational design and
delivery. This approach allows us to build in risk mitigation strategies and
solutions as early as possible in organisational governance
processes. Noticing, naming and navigating parallel processes enables
leaders, managers and staff in family violence services to put a framework to
negative experiences in service delivery systems as early as possible.
Noticing
Noticing the problem begins with defining the dynamic, in essence that, “parallel
processes occur when one [team or issue] projects elements of its condition
onto the other, and the other absorbs what is projected, (Roszkowski citing
Alderfer, 2017).”
In family violence, the central issue is the misuse of power and how this is
justified, minimised or denied as well as how this is experienced with the
resultant changes in the victim survivor from safety to compliance and
survival. The context of family violence is the family, community and intimate
partner relationships.
How power is misused shows up in coercive control patterns, violence and
emotionally manipulative coercive behaviours (including gas lighting) by the
person using violence. Victim survivors experience confusion, self doubt and
self blame and slowly over time, become hyperfocused in managing at best
confusing patterns of controlling behaviour and at its worst, trying to manage
safety in the middle of dangerous and life threatening violence. Management of
this includes self monitoring behaviours, hypervigilance and hyperarousal, a
mixture of resistive and compliance behaviours to keep safe and eventual
emotional shut down and fear driven responses. In unsafe systems, both
Bloom (2010) and Cousins (2018) talked about team and organisations likely to
see an increase in authoritarian decision making, broad organisational silence,
increase in chronic stress and communication breakdown. Bloom (2010) talks
about organisational alexithymia – the inability to give words to feelings
because of an increase in undiscussable topics – which can become a
significant barrier to constructive change.
We need to notice when these attributes show up in the workplace given the
resultant decrease in trust and confidence. We need to identify exactly what
these behaviours are, how and who they are impacting on in much the same
way we do in the examination and assessment in our clinical work. This
requires courageous leadership and accountability at every level. The naming
of the organic nature of the parallel process gives us all permission to talk about
it without shame and blame. When recognised, organisations can then name
the likelihood of its appearance which enables and empowers decision making
in addressing this complex issue as part of accountable leadership and active
connection to organisational values.
Naming
Parallel process as a concept began showing up in the psychology literature
when Clayton Alderfer proposed the Embedded Intergroup Relationships
Theory (EIRT) in the 1980s. This was definitely more complex intellectual
reading for me – and required copious amounts of coffee and cat company for
good digestion. Well worth the read and brain stretch!
Alderfer speaks at great length and detail on the EIRT
https://psychology.fandom.com/wiki/Clayton_Alderfer and is well worth a
Sunday afternoon investment in a deeper examination of groups within
systems. What stood out for me as being most useful was the way he spoke
about group characteristics. Alderfer positions that groups are characterised
by:
- Group boundaries
- Power differences
- Affective patterns
- Cognitive formations (including distortions), and;
- Leadership behaviour
- Membership within a group is determined by the boundaries around it, which
can be physical or psychological. The concept of permeability refers to how a
group regulates its transactions with other groups, and groups can be
overbounded or underbounded (Alderfer, 1988).
Power differences between groups usually involve the varying availability of
resources to different groups. Generally, the more resources a group has, the
more power it has. (Alderfer, 1988). One could say with a reasonable amount of
confidence, that in the organisational context, the above depicts a contextual
fertile ground for the festering of parallel processes that mirror family violence.
The application of parallel process thinking to family violence program
design, practice and service delivery as well as organisational operations and
leadership, allow us to name the potential issues and concerns at the earliest
opportunity. This requires us to notice the patterns of behaviours – the
hotspots that show up as poor staff retention, hesitancy to attend meetings and
supervision, poorly facilitated staff meetings and then becoming curious about
what may be occurring. Parallel processes may show up on a continuum from
benign annoying behaviours in a team meeting to severe gaslighting resulting in
lack of collaboration between service areas.
The resultant lack of trust and poor communication can mean teams and
service areas work in silos and exhibit behaviours underpinned by jealousy,
intimidation and unhealthy competition.
In family violence work, accountability, responsibility, respect, honesty and
empathy are core values that are central to the complex solutions required in
our interventions. We are nothing if not innovative and courageous in the
development of extraordinary services and responses that pay attention to
managing risk, working with health, safety and wellbeing as well as expecting
change and accountability to solve the problem.
In much the same way, naming the parallel process involves not only
respectfully calling out the issue when it shows up, but importantly framing this
beforehand as an organic likelihood! We need to interrupt these dynamics at
the first practical opportunity and put in place accountability measures that hold
us all responsible for the change work needed to address unacceptable power
dynamics that mirror coercive control behaviours and patterns.
By naming the issue and building parallel process thinking into program risk
mitigation strategies, family violence services have a profound opportunity to
meaningfully navigate the issues that are likely to show up sooner rather than
when things become problematic.
Navigating
Navigating and resolving parallel processes in organizations is an important and
ongoing set of reflective practices and actions and not without challenges. But
once noticed and named, the next step is to identify the impact on the
organisation by observing patterns of behaviour and communication by
proactively engaging in regular staff surveys, and incorporating other feedback
mechanisms at every level to gather data on how everyone is experiencing the
workplace. It can also be worthwhile to include client and external stakeholders
as they are likely to have their own experiences to add.
Drawing on this important data, organisations then have the opportunity to
address the underlying issues that are causing the parallel process using the
organisational values. Incorporating regular discussions that allow reflective
questions like ‘What do we do when family violence dynamics show up in our
teams and workplaces? How we show up according to our values? How do we
talk about this at every level of the organisation? What do we do next?
This then enables addressing parallel processes within the organisation through
proactive planning, discussions and actions as part of risk
management. Finally, it may help to seek outside assistance from a specialist
consultant or other expert who can provide an objective and neutral perspective
and can offer recommendations to assist in building the health and wellbeing of
all who undertake this important work.
If we are to be truly values focused and committed in our work in family violence
with those experiencing and using family violence, it makes sense to be further
called upon to add parallel process thinking to our clinical and operational
reflective conversations to empower modelling the values and behaviour
associated with non-violence and non abusive practices.
References
Can We Use Parallel Processes to Solve Organizational Problems?.\
https://gothamculture.com/2017/05/25/can-parallel-processes-solve-organizational-
problems/
How Leaders Get in the Way of Organizational Change.
https://hbr.org/2021/04/how-
leaders-get-in-the-way-of-organizational-change
Can We Use Parallel Processes to Solve Organizational Problems?.
https://gothamculture.com/2017/05/25/can-parallel-processes-solve-organizational-
problems/
Trauma-organised systems and parallel process.
https://sandrabloom.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011-BLOOM-TRAUMA-ORGANIZED-SYSTEMS-PARALLEL-
PROCESS.pdf
The Parallel Process Between Residential Organizations, Care Staff ….
https://cafwaa.org.au/Symposium/BrianFWorkshop_ParallelProcess.pdf
Using Parallel Process to Build Organizational Resilience.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-answers-within/202210/using-parallel-
process-build-organizational-resilience
Parallel Process in Domestic Violence Services: Are we doing harm?
https://www.acrjournal.com.au/resources/assets/journals/Volume-12-Issue-1-
2018/Cousins%20C.%20%282018%29.%20Parallel%20Process%20in%20Domestic%
20Violence%20Services-%20Are%20we%20doing%20harm_.pdf