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Changing the Picture of Divorce:

A New Model for Healthy Transition

When John and Marian’s thirteen-year marriage began to break down, they tried therapy, but their problems spiraled toward a nasty divorce. Somehow the counseling of various helping professionals only seemed to polarize them, fueling a war neither wanted. Did it have to be that way?

When it comes to influencing how the emotional forces of divorce play out, helping professionals wield a great deal of power. Most, says Jane Appell, Ph.D., are committed to using that power in an intelligent and responsible manner. “We can help our clients to cope and grow through the divorce process; to produce an end result that is not a net loss, but at least a partial net gain for all parties; to promote a peaceful, respectful divorce process and post-divorce environment; and to protect kids from the burden of unnecessary pain,” she asserts. “But a major impediment has been the lack of good training materials to guide us in how best to help people through the divorce process.”

Appell wrote Divorce Doesn’t Have to Be That Way: A Handbook for the Helping Professional as a practical guide to helping clients navigate the complexities of twenty-first-century American divorce. Seasoned advice for helping clients and helpers focus on the big picture of healthy family functioning distinguishes this comprehensive resource.

“Our job as helpers is twofold,” Appell explains. “The first objective is to help normalize the feelings that the client is experiencing at any part of the process, so that he or she feels less anxious. The second is to foster a healthy transition from one part of the process to the next to help the client constructively move on with his or her life.”

Divorce Doesn’t Have to Be That Way offers a wealth of advice and situation-specific courses of action, including:

Guidelines for working with divorcing couples or individuals and their children.
Tools for helping clients transition productively through the various stages of divorce.
Advice on diagnosing and dealing with domestic abuse.
A survey of common traps into which helpers often fall.
Approaches for maintaining neutrality with clients, supporting healthy empowerment, and reinforcing clear rules and boundaries.
An introduction to the nuts and bolts of the divorce system, including the roles and purposes of key players, and alternatives to litigation.
Risk management techniques for helping professionals.

“Once divorce has been determined as the road of choice, it can and must be viewed as an opening, an opportunity,” Appell stresses. “We in helping professions can be the ‘holders of the map.’ We can imagine a rational vision of the future for the client and for the family as a whole. We can encourage the divorcing individual to embrace and internalize this vision. Then we can provide the tools, information, and counseling to help the client get there.”

Jane Appell, Ph.D., is a psychologist in private practice. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Tufts New England Medical Center and the president of the Massachusetts Association of Guardians Ad Litem. She has over 30 years of experience working with families of divorce as a psychotherapist, mediator, parenting coordinator, divorce coach, and child custody evaluator. The remarried mother of two children, she resides in Massachusetts .

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Divorce Doesn't Have to Be That Way is available at online and local bookstores nationwide or directly from Impact Publishers, P.O. Box 6016, Atascadero, CA 93423-6016, www.impactpublishers.com, or phone 1-800-246-7228.