How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching Families | Page 145
Interventions:
Joining and accomodating (same process: joining emphasizes therapist's outer adjustment to family,
accomodating therapist's inner adjustment; adopting family's affective style;
joining from a distant position = teaching, advice),
mimesis (imitation, or joining from a close position),
tracking (of family communications and behaviour, or joining from a median position),
enactments that simulate transactions to be changed,
detriangulation of IP by forming a coalition with him against a parent,
maintenance (of the family's current structure),
marking boundaries (when they are strengthened, the subsystem's functioning will increase),
mimic IP to show that he's like the powerful therapist rather than deviant, make the IP a cotherapist
to the overfunctioner,
reframing in terms of structure or interaction,
unbalancing by escalating stress,
general restructuring techniques (e.g., rearranging how they sit, blocking certain transactions,
working as a family insider)..
Assessment of therapy
A structural therapist strategically chooses who to talk to first to both facilitate their joining the family and
to gain information on the family’s situation. Once there is comfort with the presenting problem the
therapist expands to the whole family and starts making intelligent guesses about structural concerns.
A family’s responses to exploring the presenting problem are useful in assessing structure. Time is taken to
assess the relationship of the parents in the family.
Four steps identified by Minuchin and his colleagues.
1. Ask questions about the initial complaint so the family begins to see that the problem extends to the
whole family and not just the “problem member.”
2. Help the family see how their interactions may be unintentionally furthering the family’s problems.
3. Briefly explore the family past, particularly to determine how adults have developed the perspectives
currently contributing to the presenting problem.
4. Explore options encouraging productive family interaction, in order to encourage structural change.
Therapy techniques : The seven steps of family therapy
Step 1: joining and accommodating
Unlike individual therapy, a therapist is seen as an outsider to the system initially. Building an alliance,
disarming defences, and offering empathy and expression time to everyone in the group is essential to
joining.
Gentle, understanding, and simple interactions with children are preferred.
Considering who is influential in the family and attempting to join with doubters is especially important in
bypassing resistance.
145