COUC 601 Week 1 Group DB Forum 1 Example

Group Discussion Board Forum 1: Thread and Reply

COUC 601 Theories of Family Systems, Group Discussion Board Forum 1 (thread and reply)

Thread by [Student Name]

The prompt, the writer's background, the family example and the classmate's post are composites standing in for the course's own forum; the textbooks, Scripture and studies are real and described from their published sources; the requirements follow Liberty's public course guide for COUC 601.

Thread

Imagine Kayla, a fifteen-year-old referred by her school counselor because she has missed twenty days of school this semester. Seen individually, the explanation is straightforward: she has anxiety, perhaps social anxiety, and needs coping skills and gradual exposure to the classroom. That view is not wrong, and an individual counselor could help her. But this week's reading shows how much it leaves out, because it treats Kayla as if she lived alone.

Goldenberg et al. (2016) describe the shift from linear to circular causality as the core of systemic thinking. In linear thinking, A causes B: Kayla's anxiety causes her absences. In circular thinking, behaviors loop back on one another. Suppose Kayla's father recently lost his job and has become withdrawn, and her mother has begun working double shifts. On mornings when Kayla says she feels sick, her mother stays home with her, and the house becomes calmer for a day. Kayla's staying home may relieve her own anxiety, but it may also keep her mother home and give the family a shared focus that distracts from the father's depression. The more Kayla stays home, the more the parents organize around her, and the more her absences continue.

From this angle, Kayla is the identified patient, the family member whose symptoms carry the family's distress. Her school refusal may help maintain the family's balance, what systems theorists call homeostasis, even as it hurts her. The family life cycle adds another layer: families with adolescents must loosen boundaries to allow growing independence, and this family is trying to make that transition during an economic crisis. McGoldrick et al. (2008) show how a genogram can make such patterns visible across generations, for example if Kayla's mother also stayed home to care for a parent when she was young.

A systemic counselor would not stop treating Kayla's anxiety, but would ask a different first question: what happens in this family when Kayla stays home? In practice, that means inviting both parents to the first session, mapping the family's morning routine and exploring the father's job loss, with the goal of helping the parents support each other so Kayla can return to school. Her anxiety would still be treated, but as one part of a pattern the whole family can change, and the parents' own stress would become part of the work rather than something hidden behind their daughter's symptoms.

The research supports this approach. Shadish and Baldwin (2003) reviewed 20 meta-analyses of marital and family interventions and found that they were effective, that differences among approaches tended to be small and that clinically significant change occurred in about 40% to 50% of those treated.

Ripley and Worthington (2014) frame their hope-focused approach around faith working through love, and that phrase captures what I hope to bring to family work: helping family members act in love toward one another, even when they feel stuck.

Paul reminds the church that when one member suffers, all suffer together (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, 1 Corinthians 12:26). Families work the same way.

Classmates: when you think about your own family, can you see a time when one person's struggle held the family together in an unexpected way?

Reply to Nicole

Nicole, your thread described a couple you know in which the wife's drinking became the focus of every family conversation, and you wondered whether family therapy can really help with something that seems to belong to one person. I think the systemic concepts we read this week suggest it can, and recent research agrees.

Carr (2019) pulled together the trial and review literature on couple, family and other systemic work with problems that center on an adult. His conclusion was that systemic interventions, used by themselves or combined with other treatments, are supported for a long list of adult difficulties, among them couple distress, sexual problems, partner violence, anxiety, depression and other mood problems, problem drinking, psychosis and coping with chronic illness. Alcohol problems are on that list, which speaks directly to your example. The review does not claim that family therapy replaces individual treatment, but it shows that involving partners and families can be an effective part of care for problems we often treat as individual.

Your example also illustrates circular causality in a way that may be useful for a future client. If the husband responds to his wife's drinking by criticizing her, checking on her and taking over her responsibilities, and she responds by drinking more and hiding it, then each partner's behavior maintains the other's. Neither is to blame for the whole pattern, and both can help change it. Goldenberg et al. (2016) describe this kind of reciprocal influence as the reason systemic therapists look at sequences of interaction rather than searching for a single cause. It also means that the husband can change his part of the loop even before his wife is ready to stop drinking.

At the same time, I think your instinct that the drinking belongs to one person deserves respect. Systemic thinking can be misused to spread responsibility so widely that no one is accountable, and in situations involving addiction or abuse, safety and personal responsibility must come first. A counselor might work with the couple on their pattern while also supporting the wife's individual treatment and making sure the husband has support of his own, such as Al-Anon.

The hope-focused approach of Ripley and Worthington (2014) seems especially fitting here, since a couple worn down by addiction may have lost hope that anything can change. Building hope through small, visible changes in how they treat each other could make the larger work possible. How do you think a counselor should decide when to see the couple together and when to see each partner alone?

References

Carr, A. (2019). Couple therapy, family therapy and systemic interventions for adult-focused problems: The current evidence base. Journal of Family Therapy, 41(4), 492-536. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6427.12225

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Goldenberg, I., Stanton, M., & Goldenberg, H. (2016). Family therapy: An overview (9th ed.). Cengage Learning.

McGoldrick, M., Gerson, R., & Petry, S. (2008). Genograms: Assessment and intervention (3rd ed.). W. W. Norton.

Ripley, J. S., & Worthington, E. L., Jr. (2014). Couple therapy: A new hope-focused approach. IVP Academic.

Shadish, W. R., & Baldwin, S. A. (2003). Meta-analysis of MFT interventions. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 29(4), 547-570. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1752-0606.2003.tb01694.x