How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching Families | Page 156

disregard their own individual development. In families characterized by a high degree of loyalty, it is often difficult for the young adult to individuate because individuation may be seen by the family as a form of rejection. Some young adults respond to this dilemma by remaining highly dependent on their parents for emotional and – sometimes - economic support and they often provide companionship and nurturing for one or both parents. The second extreme response of families negotiating the launching stage is for parents and children to distance themselves emotionally from each other to such an extent that they appear to be totally disinterested in each other and totally consumed by self-interest. For example, young adults may declare their independence and cut ties completely with their family in an effort to individuate. Determining what direction a relationship should take is not the primary goal of the clinicians. Rather, the aim of the systemic therapy team is to create a context for change and to offer an alternate epistemology of the problem so that the family can discover their own solutions. Therapists must trust the solutions that families find and must recognize that the pace the family takes roward problem solving is often different from that which the therapist might establish (e.g., sometimes much slower, sometimes much Faster). One way a therapist can induce a family system to find the direction and pace of its solutions, is to accept each family member's perception of the problem and to offer an alternate view, or "reality," of the problem, The aim of this systemic perturhation is to enhance the autonomy of the system. The challenge for the therapist is not to become "married" to the alternate reality that is presented to the family or lo think it more correct than the view a famiIy holds. It is, at best, a more useful view, in the sense that the new reality frees up the problem-solving ability of the system. There are more realities than there are families and these realities only need to be modified when they inhibit individual or family development. An important difference between this model and other family therapy models is that the systemic approach utilizes a non-normative model of family functioning while recognizing that there clearly exist various developmental transitions and stages. (It is intriguing to us that an understanding of a normative model enhances the learning of a non-normative rnodel). However, systemic therapists work against the impulse to direct families as to how they should function or develop. The use of the split-opinion intervention in which one therapist supports the solution of one family membe "