Advanced Level 1 Training Track:

Interventions with emerging adults 

Instructor: Dan Dulberger

  

NVR interventions for Adult Entrenched Dependence (AED) apply to families where a young adult is experiencing is difficulties in emerging into adulthood. Millions of young adults in OECD countries are chronically Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET) , creating  immense mental health, economic and social costs. Many in this category completely fail to emerge into adulthood, instead developing severe social withdrawal and hikikomori-like behaviors, digital addiction, sleep inversion, treatment refusal, anxiety, depression, aggression, and suicidal behavior.

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These so-called “adult children” (ages 20 to 50) also develop extreme dysfunctional dependence on their families, to which family members typically accommodate, i.e. adapt their behavior to avoid or alleviate the adult child’s distress. Adult child dependence, coupled with family accommodation, form a life-long relational pattern termed Adult Entrenched Dependence (AED), which has marked negative effects on the severity of a host of psychiatric conditions.

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NVR’s intervention for Adult Entrenched Dependence helps families of “adult children” break their devastating cycles of invisibility, despair, dependence and accommodation, even without the adult child’s cooperation. The intervention applies the principles Non Violent resistance therapy to cope with difficulties of treatment refusal, self-harm, extreme social withdrawal, addictions and entrenched dependence in adolescents and young adults with or without mental disorders.

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A typical NVR/AED intervention lasts about 10-15 sessions and involves mainly the parents and their social support network. It implements NVR principles such as non-escalating struggle, transparency, publicity, documentation, multi-systemic support and self-change, with the goal of unilaterally changing, not the adult child, but the ecology which nourishes their maladaptive dependence. Like all other NVR protocols, NVR/AED interventions can be applied either as a standalone, short-term parent counseling, or within the context of family or couple therapy. It can be performed with or without the adult child’s engagement, and can be effectively combined with psychotherapy, CBT, psychiatry, social work and coaching.

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This advanced level 1 training track is based on over ten years of NVR work with families suffering from Adult Entrenched Dependence (AED), as also reflected in Dan Dulberger’s and Haim Omer’s book “Non-Emerging Adulthood: Helping parents of  Adult Children with Entrenched Dependence”.

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Delivered by Dan Dulberger, this track offers a complete training in managing a NVR change process with families suffering from AED.   

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About the instructor 

Dan Dulberger  developed, together with Haim Omer and the team of the Israeli Center for Parental Empowerment, an NVR-based intervention that helps families de-accommodate to the entrenched dependence pressures of non-emerging adult children. Read more about Dan

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Recent publications around this track

Dulberger, D., & Omer, H. (2021). Non-Emerging Adulthood: Helping Parents of Adult Children with Entrenched Dependence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108891240

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Shimshoni, Y., Shrinivasa, B., Cherian, A. V., & Lebowitz, E. R. (2019). Family accommodation in psychopathology: A synthesized review. Indian journal of psychiatry, 61(Suppl 1), S93–S103. https://doi.org/10.4103/psychiatry.IndianJPsychiatry_530_18

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Lebowitz, E., Dolberger, D., Nortov, E., & Omer, H. (2012). Parent training in nonviolent resistance for adult entitled dependence. Family process, 51(1), 90–106. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1545-5300.2012.01382.x

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