The Genogram Casebook by Monica McGoldrick

Author:Monica McGoldrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

COACHING CLIENTS ON DETRIANGLING

A client may at times come in focused on ending an intense cutoff, usually with a parent, but if that is the driving force, one must still guide the client to go slow and understand the surrounding relationships before making a move. As Carter (1991) always said, it is never a good idea to make a dyadic move in the family of origin without understanding and planning for the countermove of the third person in the triangle. Even before this can happen, it is important to help clients understand the patterns of connection with other family members and consider how the triangles operate and interrelate to one another.

First moves often involve initiating regular visits to the parents or other key family members and making time to relate to each of them individually.

If a client has a “pursuing” mother, s/he can begin by researching what happens if she pursues her back. The prediction is that the mother would be likely begin to pull away. Just beginning to research how the relationship system operates can shift a client’s experience with his or her parent, if the person is able to get free enough to pursue the pursuer back. First the client will have to practice breathing and be willing to sit still and really listen to the mother, when she is pursuing. Once the client begins to do this, s/he will probably notice that the mother becomes very uneasy within a very few minutes. One cannot hope for a response if there is no relationship, so the first steps must be to build up the relationship. It is only by becoming a real researcher on one’s family that one can hope to change the patterns. There are no easy fixes.

Alisa Bahr (Figure 6.7), a 30-year-old clinical psychologist and the middle of three children sought help for “family conflicts.” (Some details of this case can be streamed on my video about Triangles and Detriangling, available through our website. To stream segments of this video go to www.psychotherapy.net/McGoldrick.) Alisa’s father, an anesthesiologist, was the grandson of German Jewish immigrants. Her mother was a third-generation Irish American nurse from Brooklyn. Alisa was dating Carlos, a Puerto Rican social worker she had met at work. Her parents were extremely disapproving of her choice of boyfriend, and she was frustrated by their judgmental reaction, feeling they were not giving him a chance and making him uncomfortable whenever he came to visit.

Initially Alisa saw the major conflict as pertaining to her parents’ disapproval of Carlos, but as she began to explore her history and create a genogram with the therapist, a clear pattern of triangles emerged. The whole family was rife with triangles. Alisa’s father, Sam, the younger brother of an older sister, had been in a triangle with his parents seemingly since childhood. He and his mother had been very close, while his father had been controlling and critical. Sam’s parents had apparently been distant from each other and as an adult he had preferred to visit when he was sure his father would not be home.

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