Healing the harm of bullying:
Lessons from restorative practice
A workshop with Margaret Thorsborne
IPBA conference, San Diego
2014
Retributive Justice
Restorative Justice
Crime and wrongdoing are
violations against the
laws/rules:
What laws/rules have been
broken?
Crime and wrongdoing is a
violation of people and
relationships:
Who has been harmed? In
what way?
Blame must be apportioned:
Who did it?
Obligations must be
recognized:
Whose are these?
Punishment must be
imposed:
What do they deserve?
How can the harm be
repaired?
DEMANDING
Cold and
demanding
Warm and
demanding
COLD
WARM
Cold and
undemanding
Warm and
undemanding
UNDEMANDING
Margaret Thorsborne & Associates, 2014
Maurie Abraham, 2014
Case study: “Skinner”
Your physical education class worked a treat - and you begin to dream of that
cup of coffee at recess.
Nick comes out to collect his watch and you notice him white-faced and in
tears. You thought you heard some loud noises from the change rooms……
Nick, after some reluctance, tells you the story and how he now hates PE.
Nick is very embarrassed about getting changed in front of his peers - he has
been called a ‘skinner’ by Sam and his mates. So he goes into the toilet cubicle
for some privacy. Sam, with his mates looking on, give Nick a terrifying time by
trying to knock the cubicle door down and shout awful names at Nick,
“skinner”, “sook”, “big girl”. The door has been damaged and will need some
serious repair work just as Nick will.
Margaret Thorsborne & Associates,
2014
Case study by Dave Vinegrad
Sociogram
Take a minute with someone sitting next to you
and together draw a sociogram connecting up
all the parties in this story. Think through who is
in this story and see if you can draw some
connecting lines between them that represent
the relationships between the parties.
Margaret Thorsborne & Associates,
2014
Mum
Mum
Dad
Dad
Nick
Sam
Tch
Mates
Class
Janitor
Margaret Thorsborne & Associates,
2014
Basic innate wiring for our
emotions
 Interest – excitement
 Enjoyment – joy
 Surprise – startle
 Shame – humiliation
 Distress – anguish
 Anger – rage
 Fear – terror
 Dissmell
 Disgust
Tomkins, 1962 - 91
© Margaret Thorsborne & Associates 2013
7
The Central Blueprint:
rules for living an emotionally balanced life
Directs all behavior and thinking to:
1.
Maximize Positive Affect
2.
Minimize Negative Affect
3.
Minimize the Inhibition of Affect
4.
Maximize the power to do 1-3
Tomkins, 1962-91
PE should be a source of both interest and
enjoyment for all members of the class,
including the teacher.
Margaret Thorsborne & Associates,
2014
Emotional harm
What feelings and emotions would have been
triggered in the case study?
Margaret Thorsborne & Associates,
2014
What is Emotional Harm?
 Presence of persistent or unrelenting negative
affect (especially fear, distress, shame, or anger)
when:
a) the negative stimulus persists or
b) a mood state has been activated or
c) both.
 Chronic distortion in the rules of the Central
Blueprint as a means of compensation.
Margaret Thorsborne & Associates,
2014
Kelly, 2014
What is the effect of Harm?
Persistent negative affect and moods:
 reduce positive affect so that interest and enjoyment of life
diminish because they become more difficult to trigger.
 increase disease risk including depression, suicide,
hypertension, heart attack, gastric ulcer, etc.
 reduce one’s ability to concentrate or care about work or
school (things that require interest).
 impede interpersonal connections triggering shame in
relationships.
Kelly, 2014
Margaret Thorsborne & Associates,
2014
Distortion of the Central Blueprint
1. Maximize positive: can become impossible or can
become excessive pleasure seeking to the exclusion of
life’s realities.
2. Minimize negative: can become impossible creating a
withdrawn, avoidant, even paranoid life style.
3. Minimize inhibition: can become the opposite, reducing
awareness of self and ability to connect with others.
4. Maximize power: can become impossible freezing the
ability to grow and develop new personality strengths.
Margaret Thorsborne & Associates,
2014
Kelly, 2014
The harm tha comes with shame
 When harm causes shame (as it almost always does), it
usually creates further harm. Shame is triggered by any
impediment to positive affect BUT once triggered it also
acts as a further impediment.
 The extreme end product of this process is TOXIC
SHAME that completely isolates people from self,
friends, family, and community.
 Traditional methods of punishment for misconduct
(especially bullying) increase shame in both person
responsible and person harmed, alike making toxic
shame outcomes more likely.
Margaret Thorsborne & Associates,
2014
Adapted from Kelly 2014
Defensive Responses to Shame
How do people respond when shame is
triggered and the information shame
provides cannot be used to
constructively remove the
impediment ?
Margaret Thorsborne & Associates,
2014
Compass of shame
Attack other
Withdrawal
Avoidance
Attack self
Margaret Thorsborne & Associates, 2014
Nathanson, 1992
A note about Anger emotions:
 Feeling angry is much less toxic than feeling shame, fear, or distress.
As children, we notice that when angry, we pump some adrenalin and
feel stronger. Soon we replace the more vulnerable feelings of
shame, fear, and distress with anger scripts.
 Always look beneath anger for the real feelings and vulnerabilities
that make a person appear simply angry.
 Anger blocks emotional connection while expression of vulnerable
feelings enhances it. Hence the use of restorative questions such as:
What did you think at the time? How has this affected you? What has
been the worst of it?
A brief note about Shame vs Guilt:
Shame-proneness: evolves from biology and those individual &
interpersonal shame experiences which foster seeing the self as
defective, as shorn off from others and with little hope of change 
Compass of Shame scripts.
Guilt-proneness: evolves from biology and those individual &
interpersonal shame/fear experiences which foster seeing specific
behaviors as having a “bad” effect on others but as reparable 
action oriented scripts to fix the problem.
Adapted from Kelly, 2014
4 Important principles of
restorative problem-solving
Inclusive decision making
Active accountability
Repairing the harm
Rebuilding trust
David Karp, 2013
Margaret Thorsborne & Associates,
2014
Margaret Thorsborne
Contact details
Email: marg@thorsborne.com.au
Web: www.thorsborne.com.au
Mobile: +61 412 135 015
@ThorsborneMarg
Marg Thorsborne
Margaret Thorsborne and Associates
Margaret Thorsborne and Associates,
2014