Articles

STRENGTHENING YOUR STEPFAMILY BY GOING OUT ON A LIMB!
By Jean McBride, M.S., L.M.F.T.*
STEPFAMILIES, Spring 1994

Remember when you were a child and your mother would send you outside to play? As children we probably gave it little thought except that maybe she wanted us out of the house for awhile. So, we went outside, and played, and had fun. It was stress management for children (and for parents too!). While the motive may have been to get the kids out from underfoot, the method itself had great wisdom. Play provides an excellent opportunity to learn and to grow in ways that are entertaining and non-threatening.

This playful approach to learning is being applied to stepfamilies in a unique program that utilizes adventure-based counseling. Empower Play, a company in Fort Collins, Colorado, was founded in 1992 by a marriage and family therapist and a biofeedback therapist/stress management educator. Its purpose is to provide individuals, couples, and families an alternative therapeutic environment for change. The experiences are designed to stand by themselves or to be an adjunct to ongoing psychotherapy. Adventure therapy focuses on placing clients in activities that challenge dysfunctional behaviors and reward functional change. Clients take an active role in therapeutic activities that are real and meaningful in terms of natural consequences. Activities typically include games, initiatives, (activities requiring group cooperation and problem solving), and a high and low ropes course (Gass, 1993). Traditionally executed outdoors, activities are adaptable to the indoors.

The adventure therapy model is easily adapted to working with stepfamilies. It provides multiple opportunities to assess and to work on issues of trust communication, problem solving, role definition, boundary setting, working as a team and developing a bank of shared experiences. The adventure setting encourages participants to venture outside of their comfort zone, thus producing a state of internal conflict. This conflict provides the motivation for integrating new knowledge and reshaping perceptions in order to make personal changes.

Brock and Barnard* (1988) have identified six general areas of functionality which measure successful, caring families. They are roles, emotional expression, interdependence and individuation, power, communication and subsystems. These areas can be applied to stepfamilies as they work toward becoming healthy functioning families. For the purposes of this article, we will demonstrate how the adventure therapy model is used to help families members explore these six areas. A typical Empower Play experience for a stepfamily will be described. There are many variations on this theme depending upon the needs of the family and the goals of treatment. A family could spend an 8-hour day, a 4-hour day, a weekend retreat, or an hour or so each week as will be described. Families can be seen alone or in groups. Occasionally, dyads from the family would be seen. As you might imagine, there are benefits to each.

In this case, the family consisted of a father, a stepmother, three boys ages 9, 10, 1 2, and a girl age 15. They contracted with their therapist to do adventure therapy to work on issues of trust, communication, and team building. One 90 minute session will be described here. It was the first of a 4-week program in which the family participated.

Session 1

The primary goal of this session was to get acquainted, provide the opportunity for the family to have some fun together, and present the family with a challenging initiative so that they would be required to work together in order to solve the problem.

1) We started with a name game where each person in the circle had to tell their name and then an animal that started with the same sound. For example, "My name is John and I like giraffes." The next person would say the previous person's name and animal and then their own. This continued until all family members and the two therapists had a turn. (Therapists are beginning to informally assess family functioning in each of the six areas previously mentioned.)

2) As participants loosened up a little, we moved on to a family game--the hat race. In this game, 6 hats were placed in row at the end of a grassy area. About 20 feet away, the family lined up side by side with their hands holding onto a rope. They were given instructions to walk together to the other end of the grass, find a hat and get it on each person's head, and then return to the starting point. The catch was that at no time could hands leave the rope. They were given a time limit and set off on their mission. This game is silly. It gives everyone a chance to laugh and have fun. It also provides the therapists with the opportunity to assess communication styles teamwork, frustration tolerance and emotional expressions, leadership and power, and role functioning of each member. At the end of this game, the family and therapists gathered on the grass to discuss how it went. In adventure therapy, this is a vital component. It was in this debriefing that we learned that some family members felt unheard and their ideas not listened to, that the parents had difficulty working as an executive unit, and that communication was not always clear. All of these were discussed.

3) The final activity for the day was an initiative called "Alligator river." In this initiative we presented a scenario to the family. It became a metaphor for them to work with. The family has been out hiking. As they start home they realize that a volcano has erupted and they must hurry to get across the river filled with ravenous alligators before they are burned by the molten lava from the volcano. Their task is to get everyone across the river safely. The good news is that they have a magic backpack (a carpet square) that will float across the river. They must make sure that they do not lose bodily contact with the backpack and that no body parts hang out into the river. If either of those things happen, the alligators snatch the backpacks.

After making sure that everyone understood the directions, the family was given a time limit and encouraged to begin. This is where family communication is so important. One peso had an idea but did not share it with the others. He threw his backpack out onto the river and before he could step on it, the alligator took it (he lost bodily contact with it). This caused frustration and an angry outburst. The family regrouped, but still did not discuss a plan. They started out again only to lose another backpack. By now tempers and frustration were very high. The therapists took the parents aside and suggested that they make a plan and involve everyone in the implementation of it (empowering the executive system).

This time the family as successful, just beating the time limit. We gathered on the grass to discuss the process. Each family member as asked to describe what feelings he/she was experiencing,. We asked if this was similar to things that happened at home. Not surprisingly, members said byes." We learned that the 9 year old felt unheard and not trusted, that the children wanted more time with Dad, and that Stepmom felt completely left out. Roles were ambiguous, communication was unclear, coalitions were forming, ad power was unequal. These issues were addressed in subsequent adventure sessions and in traditional family therapy.

4) We ended the session by going around the circle and asking all participants to share what was the best part of the day for them. We heard comments like spending time together," ‘laughing," "working at something until we get it." This is an example of one day of adventure therapy for a stepfamily. They were able to go back home and begin to use the information gained. They had a shared experience from which to draw as they discussed setting up rules about chores. For example, they could say, "Remember what happened with the alligator game? Let's try to avoid that this time." In following sessions, they actively worked on the issues that arose. They created clear roles and boundaries, greatly improved their communication, had many experiences trusting each other, and learned to work as a team. In the process they had fun being outside together, laughing, and being playful while learning to strengthen their family. Indeed they put themselves out on a limb (literally as well as figuratively!) for their family.

Brock, G. & Barnard, C. (1988) Procedures In Family Therapy. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon Gass, M.A. (1993). Adventure therapy - therapeutic applications of adventure programming. Boulder, CO; Association for Experimental Education.