Family Systems Theory

               Family Systems Theory. This week I have read lots about the family system theory. It was interesting that over and over again it tell us that it is never just one person. It’s hard or impossible to trace back to what started it all. An example could be a boy who has a drug addiction. He had this because his father is an alcoholic who used to hit his mother in front of him. We could say that it’s the fathers fault. If he didn’t drink then his son wouldn’t use drugs. Let’s look farther back. The fathers, mother had been a heavy drinker as well. So he had learned it from her, the further we look back we see that there is a trend with all the ancestors. Who started it, we will never know. So instead of looking at it as who started it we need to look at the family as a whole. One of the examples is to look at it as a clock. All the gears working together are what cause it to work. If just one gear breaks then the whole clock comes to a stop. Another way is dominos. Set on end and in a pattern if one falls they all come tumbling down. So when a family therapist helps the family, he doesn’t look for the person who started it all he looks for a way to break the habits.

                Think about it what simple things in your life and the life of your family can be blow out of proportion, because we are all trying to find someone to blame. Instead of finding someone to blame let’s find a way to fix the problem.