Sep 22, 2026 · 23 min · 9 segments
David and Dr Jenny Brown reflect on the previous episode with Michael DeRuyter, **“Hope Beyond Repair”** and what his experience of foster and adoptive parenting can teach us. How can we honour the…
Jenny BrownHost
David BrownHost
The realities of, I do think there is an overreach of labelling everything trauma these days.
Originally in the diagnostic manual of psychiatry, Trauma, in fact, even now, it is categorized as an extreme life-threatening event.
Well, that is the more recent definition of trauma, but we have extended it to so many things, relational trauma, the upset of the trauma of having kind of a rejection in the workplace or... having a parent interfere in your life, everything is being labeled trauma these days, which I think detracts from genuine and real trauma.
I would say that in the Michael story, we are talking about significant adversity i like the word adversity more than trauma actually just because trauma just sounds like a single label and adversity we look at the variations the extent of it how many adversities have been in place So I think we have, in the case of Michael's adopted son who came to his family aged 10, we've definitely got a sequence of substantial adversity caused by disruption.
I think Michael said his first placement was a relative and then multiple placements that broke down.
And just to think about the disruption to a child's development of that kind of relationship disruption is huge so yes attachment is disrupted and yes there is a ripple effect of the disruptive trauma i'm happy to use the word trauma here
Look, one of the ideas that Michael spoke about was moving from seeing his son's behaviour as fixed to seeing it as a range of functioning.
What does that actually mean and why might it be a useful way for parents to think about a child who's struggling?
Yeah, it was great, wasn't it? And I think, David, I kind of skipped your question on what does Bowen theory have to offer here as I was going through my reactions to the overuse of trauma.
But I think Michael's example is a really good application of Bowen family systems that we're never looking at a fixed state, that a person's functioning and coping has a range and context impacts it enormously.
And that's the dynamism of a family systems approach that everything is moving and adjusting.
with an attachment disorder, he saw his son as a young, developing, work-in-progress human being of great value, even with all of his reactive and difficult and challenging behaviors, that those behaviors and his son's coping capacities always had a range.
The realities of, I do think there is an overreach of labelling everything trauma these days.
Originally in the diagnostic manual of psychiatry, Trauma, in fact, even now, it is categorized as an extreme life-threatening event.
Well, that is the more recent definition of trauma, but we have extended it to so many things, relational trauma, the upset of the trauma of having kind of a rejection in the workplace or... having a parent interfere in your life, everything is being labeled trauma these days, which I think detracts from genuine and real trauma.
I would say that in the Michael story, we are talking about significant adversity i like the word adversity more than trauma actually just because trauma just sounds like a single label and adversity we look at the variations the extent of it how many adversities have been in place So I think we have, in the case of Michael's adopted son who came to his family aged 10, we've definitely got a sequence of substantial adversity caused by disruption.
I think Michael said his first placement was a relative and then multiple placements that broke down.
And just to think about the disruption to a child's development of that kind of relationship disruption is huge so yes attachment is disrupted and yes there is a ripple effect of the disruptive trauma i'm happy to use the word trauma here
Look, one of the ideas that Michael spoke about was moving from seeing his son's behaviour as fixed to seeing it as a range of functioning.
What does that actually mean and why might it be a useful way for parents to think about a child who's struggling?
Yeah, it was great, wasn't it? And I think, David, I kind of skipped your question on what does Bowen theory have to offer here as I was going through my reactions to the overuse of trauma.
But I think Michael's example is a really good application of Bowen family systems that we're never looking at a fixed state, that a person's functioning and coping has a range and context impacts it enormously.
And that's the dynamism of a family systems approach that everything is moving and adjusting.
with an attachment disorder, he saw his son as a young, developing, work-in-progress human being of great value, even with all of his reactive and difficult and challenging behaviors, that those behaviors and his son's coping capacities always had a range.
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