Family Systems Quiz 5

• people constrained by narrow views of their problems create rigid patterns of false solutions
• Steer clients away from problem talk to solution talk

• clients are assumed to be experts on their own lives
• assume that people are resourceful 
• one that has been freed of its presenting problems

setting clear goals and building on exceptions to problems

• to solve the problem as fast as possible 
• its about what families want different in their lives

• help clients amplify exceptions to their problems
• getting people to talk positively will help people think positively

• visitors: not interested in therapy
• complainants: have clear complaints, but usually about someone else
• customers: have clear complaints and are ready to take action

• develop well-focused goals within the client's frame of reference 
• generate solutions based on exceptions

• building on what works 
• focus on what people want rather than what they don't want

• the root cause of family problems is suppressed emotions
• symptomatic behavior is the result of family members shadow dancing with the projections of each other's defenses
• works from the inside out 
• helping people relax defensive fears so that deeper and more genuine emotions can emerge

• environments that allow the natural wisdom of honest emotion (similar to humanistic)
• the healthy family offers its members the freedom to be themselves 
• the family is a place of sharing experience

a set of beliefs based on distortion of historical reality and shared by all family members that help shape the family

• the concept that many family distort their children's experience by denying or relabeling it
• my son has a good life (even though he does not)

• denial of impulses and suppression of feeling
• adhearing to rigid rituals out of being fearful of conflict 
• emotional deadness
• destructive communication that smothers feelings

• blaming
• placating
• being irrelevant
• being super reasonable

• an emphasis on challenging emotional defenses
• aggressively attack defenses to promote emotional expression

unblocking defenses and releasing people's innate vitality

• there are no techniques, only people
• it isn't what a therapist does, it is who they are

a technique in which family members place themselves in a tableau that reveals significant aspects of their perceptions and feelings

• uncovering the hurt and longing beneath defensive expressions of anger and withdraw
• helping couples understand how these feeling are played out in their relationship