Systemic Psychotherapy/Family Therapy
Systemic Psychotherapists/Family Therapists work with families, couples, individuals and organisations. The work focuses on how to help people find constructive ways to help each other by focusing on relationships and the contexts of people lives. Systemic psychotherapists respect that there will always be different viewpoints and that there are many truths. Systemic Psychotherapy works collaboratively in exploring possible ways forward.
Systemic Psychotherapists sometimes work individually and sometimes as part of a team. By working in a team the family is able to hear different possibilities about what might be causing the difficulties and several different strategies for resolution. Discussion between the therapists can take place in front of the family, which gives them an observer position in which to reflect on what is happening. Most families find that working in this way is particularly useful with complex situations.
Some Systemic Psychotherapists will work in organisations using their experience of human relationships and group dynamics to help team building and organisational change using appreciative enquiry. Appreciative enquiry looks at what is going well and the strengths of a company rather than the deficits. in using this approach there is less need for individuals to defend their position and they are then more able to hear others points of view.
Systemic psychotherapists (family therapists) will have undergone specific training and belong to a professional body such as Association for Family Therapy and the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy.