Oprah Knows Why You Are In Therapy
Is it any wonder most people go through more than one relationship before getting married? Do you really find the right person or figure out that it’s a system? Hollywood, what are you doing to us?!:
“(OPRAH.com) — Tricia was depressed. That was her only problem. Although her life had all the right ingredients — successful husband, decent job, close-knit family — Tricia felt so low that she sometimes threatened suicide.
Sometimes it’s easier to obsess over “designated issues” instead of solving the real problem.
Her parents, who’d been drinking, bickered about their mutual infidelity. Her sister wept like a fire hydrant. Tricia’s husband shouted that they were ruining his life.
In short, Tricia’s depression was not her only problem. Instead, it was what I call her designated issue.
Tricia herself would be recognized by systems therapists as a “designated patient,” the one person in a family or group who’s singled out as sick or abnormal, allowing everyone else to feel healthy by comparison.
A designated patient “carries” the group’s dysfunction. A designated issue performs the same service for an individual, dominating our psyches so that other troubles can go unnoticed.” Source
“Systemic therapy neither attempts a ‘treatment of causes’ nor of symptoms, rather it gives living systems nudges that help them to develop new patterns together, taking on a new organizational structure that allows growth.”[1]
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