Benefits of Family Therapy
“No [one] is an island,” wrote the 17th century poet John Donne.
It’s an insight as old as recorded history—at least, and probably older. We are who we are in large part due to our relationships.
Physicists know that everything there is, right down to protons, electrons, and neutrons, everything is what is as part of a system.
As modern psychology developed it became clear that the insights of the “hard” sciences might also apply to the humanities. Whoever I am, I am also inescapably my father’s son/my mother’s daughter/my spouse’s partner, and so forth.
We call this form of thinking “systems thought.” In psychology we call it “Family Systems Theory.” So many of our personal issues are the result of complicated and unresolved relationship problems. But sometimes it’s hardest to see what’s right in front of us.
Most extended families have a patriarch or a matriarch, if not by title then by emotional clout. Some family members identify as supporters, some as opponents, and some just run for cover. Our relationship to emotional power shapes our self-image.
Most extended families have a scapegoat. This is someone whose behavior has become problematic, at least in the context of the family system. Your relationship with this person may become a key part of how you see yourself.
And most extended families have “factions”: alliances of trust that instinctively oppose other alliances within the larger family system. These are often partial and conditional, which adds uncertainty and instability.
How Family Therapy Identifies and Changes Dynamics
Family therapy is 90% about identifying these dynamics, and 10% about inviting people to change them.
In a family system, whether in a biological family or an organizational family, it’s the way that people relate to each other that has the most impact. In the business world, it is a confirmed truth that “You don’t quit your job, you quit your boss.” In a family system it’s the way that people support—or don’t—each other that fosters psychological health or psychological misery,
This is not a case of blaming all our personal problems on our parents. But is a case of acknowledging the primacy of relationships in our personal formation. Most of what we deeply value in life is reducible not to What but to Who. This is because Mother Nature has designed us for connection.
Some families are enmeshed, where the emotional state of one member quickly becomes the emotional state of all family members. Other families are atomistic, where the variable emotional state of one family member doesn’t even register with other members of the family. Family therapy can remove the “should” and replace them with clear-sighted analysis of what family dynamics actually are.
The Role of Family Therapy in Shaping Healthy Relationships
Family Therapy can simultaneously help those who feel themselves to be at the bottom of the family ladder and those who see themselves as authoritative family figures to appreciate what the organic design of the family system has become, for better or worse. Family therapy can provide shared language so that members of a family can talk to each other—sometimes for the very first time.
Family therapy doesn’t require anyone to do anything, but it does invite family members to share a common understanding of how the way they are relating to each other impacts every member of the family.
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