social work, emotions, reflexivity, families

Emotions are an inherent part of social work practice because social workers are frequent witnesses of emotionally demanding situations which provoke emotional reactions in them. Social workers are expected to cope with their emotions according to the practice requirements. The execution of social work becomes emotionally demanding and stressful primarily in cases when social workers work with vulnerable children or undergo traumatic events with their clients, such as loss of a close person. Numerous authors anticipate that reflexivity in relation to own emotions is absolutely essential for quality execution of social work. However, there are opinions that even the ability not to reflect in some (primarily demanding) situations of social work practice is also essential to cope with them. In this context, the paper aims at understanding the use of reflexivity in the strategies of construction and reconstruction of emotions in social work with families. In order to meet this objective, the qualitative research strategy has been used, particularly semi-structured interviews with 30 social workers. The acquired data describes the strategies using emotions (re) construction (internal supervision, effective persona, reflexive obsession) as well as not using reflexivity (defensive self). Created data show us that it cannot be said that strategies using reflexion are adaptive and strategies not using reflexion maladaptive. On the contrary, both strategies have more and less adaptive ways of construction and reconstruction of emotions. The created data is inserted in the context of coping and defence mechanisms, and implications for practice and education in social work are discussed.