Working Safely with Families and Trauma

By Dr Kate Owen

Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Family Therapist

If you work with families affected by trauma, you will know how quickly the work can feel overwhelming - for the family and for you. Trauma doesn't just affect individuals; it disrupts relationships, reshapes family roles and undermines the emotional safety that holds a family together. Knowing where to begin can be the hardest part.

In trauma work, stabilisation is often seen as the warm-up before the "real work" of processing memories can begin. In my experience with families, the opposite is true. Stabilisation is the real work. When a family learns to regulate together, restore its structure and talk about what is happening without blame, healing is already underway.

This article explores why, and how the foundational schools of family therapy offer some of the most effective stabilising tools.

The Phased Approach to Trauma Therapy

A phased approach provides a roadmap for trauma treatment, ensuring the work unfolds at a safe and manageable pace. The model dates back to Pierre Janet and was brought into contemporary practice by Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery (1992). Trauma experts such as Babette Rothschild have since shown us how to apply it safely in the therapy room. It includes three broad phases:

1. Safety and stabilisation. This foundational phase focuses on establishing physical, emotional and relational safety. Clients learn how trauma impacts the body and mind, recognise signs of hyper- and hypo-arousal, and develop grounding and regulation skills that help them stay within their Window of Tolerance - a term introduced by Dr Dan Siegel (1999) to describe the optimal zone of arousal for functioning.

2. Trauma memory processing. For those who choose it, the aim is not to relive the trauma but to integrate it - gently and safely - into a broader life story. The guiding principle is dual awareness: staying grounded in the present while reflecting on the past. Approaches include Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Clinical Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and, at times, Narrative approaches.

3. Integration and reconnection. Here clients reclaim their lives beyond trauma through restoring relationships, rebuilding their identity and engaging in life with renewed agency, so that the trauma becomes part of their story rather than the whole of it.

It is important to remember that Phase 2 work is optional. Rothschild and others emphasise that not all healing requires revisiting the trauma narrative. For many, stabilisation and present-focused work are enough to restore functioning and reduce distress.

The phases are also not strictly linear, moving back and forth as new stressors arise. And it is in Phases 1 and 3 that family therapy has the most to offer.

Why Work with the Whole Family?

Trauma rarely occurs in isolation - it ripples through entire family systems. When one or more members of a family experience trauma, it often disrupts the structure, roles, boundaries, and emotional rhythms that once held the family together.

Children may take on adult responsibilities, family members may begin to walk on eggshells around one another, and emotional reactivity can increase, leading to conflict or disconnection. Parents may find it difficult to provide consistent caregiving while managing their own unresolved trauma, and siblings may compete for attention, safety or emotional space. In some families, trauma brings silence and withdrawal. In others, trauma triggers hypervigilance and rigid routines. Left unaddressed, these patterns can become entrenched, reinforcing distress instead of creating opportunities for healing.

A systemic approach recognises that the family can be a potential source of recovery. Working with the whole family can:

• Reframe trauma responses as protective and adaptive, rather than personal or intentional.

• Re-establish safety by clarifying roles, boundaries, expectations, and strengthening the family structure.

• Support co-regulation and connection through shared routines, rituals, and responsive caregiving.

• Encourage open communication and shared meaning-making, reducing secrecy and isolation.

• Strengthen relational alliances and foster a sense of collective resilience.

Before You Begin: Is It Safe to Work Together?

Working with the whole family can be powerful, but bringing everyone into the same room is not automatically safe. Before your first conjoint session, it is important to ask whether being together will build safety or erode it.

Consider pausing conjoint work, or seeing family members separately first, when:

• Family violence or coercive control is current.

• A person who caused harm still lives in the home, or a child is at risk.

• A family member is being pressured to disclose, forgive or reconcile before they are ready.

• A parent is too dysregulated to co-regulate, leaving a child to manage the adult's distress in the room.

• There is acute risk of suicide or self-harm, which calls for safety planning first.

Even when conjoint work is appropriate, it may be helpful to begin with parent-only sessions. Parents need psychoeducation and their own regulation skills before they can offer steadiness to their children.

From the very first session, set the room up for safety. Agree on a "pause" signal that anyone can use. Let the family know you will pause or split the session if things become too much. And always end with the family regulated. Simple regulation tools such as Keep Calm Cards can help families practise this together.

Family Therapy Models Across the Phases

Once you have established that it is safe to work together, the foundational family therapy models offer a rich and practical toolkit. Their focus on structure, interaction, meaning-making and strengths maps closely onto what trauma disrupts. Most of their value lies in Phase 1, where they help families stabilise, and in Phase 3, where they support reconnection. In Phase 2 their role is supportive rather than central. Family therapy techniques are not themselves memory processing, but they hold the family steady while one member does that work - something I return to below.

First-Generation Models: Restoring Structure and Safety

When trauma destabilises a family it is often the structure and patterns of interaction that give way first. The early family therapy pioneers offer practical ways to help families reorganise, without requiring anyone to revisit trauma content directly.

Structural Family Therapy. After trauma, one common pattern is to see a child step into the gap a struggling parent has left - cooking dinner, settling younger siblings, monitoring their parent's mood - while the parents themselves are depleted or in conflict. Structural work restores the family's organisation. Through joining, the therapist builds trust with each family member; boundary-making strengthens the parental subsystem; and enactments let the family practise new patterns in the room, returning a parentified child to the sibling subsystem.

In the therapy room: "Mum and Dad, can you two decide together how bedtime will work this week?" And to the eldest child: "Your only job right now is to listen."

Strategic Family Therapy. Trauma can leave families caught in the same painful loop: a teenager's outburst triggers a parent's anger, the parent withdraws in shame, the teenager escalates to get a response - and round it goes. Strategic work tracks the sequence and interrupts it. Reframing the outburst as a protective or regulatory response softens blame, while simple directives such as a pre-agreed pause when voices get raised, give the family a new move to make.

In the therapy room: "When the shouting starts, what happens next? And after that? Who is the first to walk away?"

Bowen Family Systems Therapy. In families with a long history of trauma, anxiety often runs high and travels fast. A child may be drawn into a parent's distress as a confidant or go-between, and patterns of silence or cut-off from earlier generations quietly repeat. Bowen work lowers the emotional temperature through encouraging self-soothing and process questions that invite thinking rather than reacting. And genograms make intergenerational trauma visible - often bringing relief and compassion.

In the therapy room: "When things get tense at home, who do you find yourself pulled toward?" "In the family you grew up in, what did people do with big feelings?"

Milan Systemic Therapy. Trauma frequently leaves families with unspoken rules: we don't talk about the accident, we don't upset dad, we protect mum from bad news. These rules usually begin as loyalty or protection, but over time they leave each person alone with their own experience. Circular questions invite family members to reflect on one another's perspective, gently surfacing these hidden dynamics without putting anyone on the spot. Positive connotation honours the protective intention behind the silence.

In the therapy room: "Who in the family worries most about what happened?" "If the family could talk about it, who would be most relieved? Who would be most worried?"

Experiential Family Therapy. Some families respond to trauma by shutting down. Feelings go underground, conversations stay practical and polite, and family members can feel alone while living under the same roof. Experiential work brings feeling back into contact safely. Satir's focus on moving from survival stances - placating, blaming, being super-reasonable or irrelevant - toward congruent communication helps family members say what is true, while family sculpting lets them show what is hard to put into words.

In the therapy room: "If we made a sculpture of your family right now, where would you put everyone? Where would you like them to be?"

Second-Generation Models: Language, Meaning and Hope

Second-generation models shift the focus to meaning-making, language, identity and strengths. Rather than pathologising, they make space for multiple perspectives within the family, allowing each person's voice to be honoured without needing to agree on a single version of events. Milan's later work, with its emphasis on curiosity, bridges these two generations.

Narrative Therapy. After trauma families often become organised around a problem-saturated story: the angry child, the broken family, the parent who isn't coping. One family member can carry the blame and shame for the whole system. Externalising conversations separate people from problems so that the family can stand together against "The Fear" or "The Anger", rather than against each other. Noticing unique outcomes - moments when the family resisted the problem - and re-authoring them into a preferred story, helps families see themselves as resilient rather than damaged. Narrative approaches can also, at times, support memory processing itself - gently revisiting the trauma story alongside what each person did to survive it.

In the therapy room: "What does The Fear tell you about yourself?" "When has the family stood up to it, even a little?" "What did you do to get through that? What does that say about what matters to you?"

Solution-Focused Brief Therapy. Trauma-affected families often arrive exhausted, having tried everything and convinced that nothing works. Solution-Focused work gently shifts attention from what went wrong to what is already helping, however small. Exception-finding uncovers the times the problem is less present, scaling questions make progress visible, and coping questions honour how much the family is carrying.

In the therapy room: "On a scale of 1 to 10, how safe does home feel this week? What makes it a 3 and not a 2?" "What would be the first small sign that things were getting better?"

In Phase 3, these same models help families consolidate change - genograms making sense of the past, re-authored stories carrying the family forward, and new patterns of connection becoming part of everyday family life.

Supporting the Family During Phase 2

When one family member chooses to process traumatic memories through individual approaches such as EMDR, Clinical EFT or Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, the family remains just as important. It becomes the container that holds them between sessions.

Family work during this phase can:

• Prepare the family. Symptoms can temporarily increase after processing sessions. When families understand this, they are less likely to panic or blame.

• Plan aftercare together. Agree on what helps after a difficult session - quiet time, a walk, a favourite meal, and no big conversations that night.

• Protect boundaries. The family is a source of support, not a de-briefing audience. Children should not be exposed to trauma details they are unable to process.

• Co-ordinate care. If an individual therapist is involved, agree with the family on what information is shared, and keep plans aligned.

Culture and Context

What counts as family, who speaks for it and how healing happens are all shaped by culture. To be truly trauma-informed, our practice must also be culturally safe.

In Australia, this means recognising the intergenerational impact of colonisation and the Stolen Generations on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families. Judy Atkinson's Trauma Trails (2002) traces how trauma moves across generations, and how healing can be collective - grounded in Culture, Community and Country. The practice of Dadirri, or deep listening, articulated by Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann, offers a way of being with families that sits naturally alongside systemic curiosity.

In practice this invites us to:

• Ask who the family is. Kinship networks, grandparents and community may be central to safety and recovery.

• Partner rather than lead. Where possible, work alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and cultural consultants.

• Recognise mistrust as reasonable. Wariness of services is often an adaptive response to history, not resistance.

• Stay curious about every family's culture. This includes migrant and refugee families, where trauma may have occurred across borders and generations.

Final Reflections

Integrating systemic therapy with trauma-informed care is not simply about addressing trauma content - it is about recognising that healing happens within relationships. Too often, stabilisation and relational repair are viewed as preparatory steps before the “real work” of memory processing. But in trauma-informed systemic practice, we recognise that this is the real work.

When families learn to regulate together, restore structure, communicate openly, and reconnect with their values and strengths, they are already engaging in healing. These moments are not minor, they are preferred stories in motion.

As therapists, our role is not to rush families towards catharsis, but to slow down, attune, and join them in co-creating the conditions for safety, meaning, and growth. In doing so, we support the resilience of both individuals and systems, and help families reclaim their capacity for healing and hope after trauma.

Want to Go Deeper?

This article draws on my two-day workshop "Working Safely with Families and Trauma" where we explore these ideas in practice, including practical regulation strategies you can begin using with families straight away.

Further Resources

• Atkinson, J. (2002). Trauma Trails, Recreating Song Lines: The Transgenerational Effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia. Spinifex Press.

• Herman, J. (1992). Trauma and Recovery. Basic Books.

• Rothschild, B. (2000). The Body Remembers. W. W. Norton.

• Siegel, D. (1999). The Developing Mind. Guilford Press.

• Keep Calm Cards - 37 emotional regulation strategy cards for use with children, adults and families.

• Working Safely with Families and Trauma Workshop (scroll down to workshop offerings).

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This article is not therapeutic or supervisory advice.

This article is educational in nature.

Please seek support if needed.