How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching Families | Page 129

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encourages cut off members to return to the family
may use descriptive labels like "pursuer-distancer," and help members see the dynamic occurring;
following distancers only causes them to run further away, while working with the pursuer to create
a safe place in the relationship invites the distancer back.
coaches and consults with the family, interrupts arguments, and models skills...

Techniques
Bowen did not believe in a "therapeutic bag of tricks." Questioning the family and constructing a family
genogram are the closest things to basic techniques all Bowenian therapists would use. Carter has assigned
tasks to the adult couple to help them realize more about their family history, and encourages letter writing
to distant members, visiting mother-in-laws... to speed things up. Guerin accepts the family's opinion of who
"has the problem" and works from there with a variety of techniques to help all family members own some
responsibility for helping that sick member get better. He will also use stories or films to present another
real or imaginary family with the same problem as the family in therapy, and highlight how the family in the
story or film overcame their difficulties.
Other concepts:
Emotional divorce (like when a sick child holds the parents together); theory is important; no one ever really
leaves the family system; mother-child symbiosis when unresolved predisposes to schizophrenia; solid self
vs. pseudo self; over- under adequate reciprocity.
Two natural forces: growth of individual and emotional connection. Emphasized the first.
Fusion breeds anxiety and increases emotional reactivity. Three outcomes of fusion: physical or mental
dysfunction in a spouse; in a child; chronic marital conflict.
Dysfunctional reciprocal relationships: include over adequate/under adequate, decisive/indecisive,
dominant/submissive, hysterical/obsessive, schizoid/conflict, or cut-off between spouses.

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