The Hidden Resource In Family Therapy — Your Client's Siblings
Family therapists may see the entire nuclear family, a subset of the family, or even one individual. Regardless who is in the office, when working from a systemic perspective, it is crucial to see the larger picture. And a larger picture often overlooked in helping your clients is the adult siblings. The relationship between brothers and sisters, close in age, has been called a “first marriage.” Siblings are, in fact, each other’s first peer relationship. During this time, they learn (or don’t learn) to start, resolve, and avoid fights; to compete, save face, negotiate; to go back and forth between loving and fighting; to know when to exert power and when to withdraw or rely on other skills such as humor, manipulation, blackmail, tattling, silence. In adult relationships, through “sibling transference,” they may recreate their early relationships, falling back on the familiar. This can impact their marriage, their work, as well as raising their children. This workshop presents three core issues from clients’ “first marriage” (frozen images, crystallized roles, and unhealthy loyalty) that get transferred onto their relationships today. We look at how to recognize a sibling connection to clients’ presenting problems and whether to involve siblings in treatment.