Adaptive Family Systems: A Marriage and Family Therapist’s Perspective on Promoting Growth and Openness
Family systems develop over time and add stability to a family. They allow for there to be structure and order within the family system. These roles, expectations, and interactional patterns provide stability and safety. They also allow members within the system to know what they can expect from the system. While family systems are generated naturally and without focused effort or intention, they have their shortcomings. They may fail to meet peoples’ individual needs, or they may follow socially and culturally appropriate norms that marginalize certain identities. Therefore, they have the potential to promote and maintain inequalities. This raises the question: What happens when the dynamics and patterns within the family system are no longer working for people within in?
This is when there begins to be turmoil within the family. This can look like disagreements, feelings of hostility, anger, depression, or it can lead to externalizing behaviors such as aggression or substance abuse.
Family systems can be hard to change. It takes courage and intentional effort from the family system to achieve lasting and meaningful changes. Promoting an adaptive family system that allows for flexibility and change will help to create growth, creativity, and openness for all the family members.
Adaptive family systems are important for adults as they navigate life changes. Inevitably all peoples’ lives change, whether it is a new job, new family member, new passion, or some other change. An adaptive family system that can change will help individuals’ as they go through changes in their own world. Adaptive family systems are also important for kids as they develop throughout childhood and adolescents. A rigid system that does not change along with the changes of a developing child may be challenged by the child’s changing needs. This may inhibit healthy and natural development of the child. Therefore, an adaptive and flexible family is a powerful system that can help people cope with change and meet the needs of the individuals.
Family Systems are just like other systems. Take for example, the system for brewing a fresh cup of coffee. First you need to grind your roasted coffee beans. Next, you must ensure your coffee machine has water. Then, you fill the machine with your ground coffee beans. Next, you turn the machine on. The hot water moves through the ground coffee and drips into your mug. Voila, you have coffee. There are many steps in this system and all of them are essential to get that morning cup of joe. They all play a role, and all are important. Now imagine changing one of the steps slightly; this is what a marriage and family therapist (MFT) does. For example, image you grind the coffee beans more than usual, this will leave you with finer coffee. Now when you make your coffee you may notice that the coffee has a different flavor that you enjoy. One small change can have big impacts on the end result.
This is analogous to how MFTs treat the systems that they work with in the therapy room. An MFT can help to change the system by introducing small changes to the system. For example, a family may have difficulty talking to their child about improving his/her grades without an eruption of emotion and an inevitable negative interaction. An MFT may instruct the parents to provide 3 compliments before they can talk about grades with their child. The family tries this and finds that starting the conversation out on a positive note helped the conversation go smoothly. This is a simple example, but it addresses many things that may be happening within the family system. First, by introducing compliments it challenges the ‘critical’ nature that has encompassed this family system. Second, by reducing criticism of the child, the child’s defenses are less likely to get triggered. Lastly, by trying something new the family system is displaying an example of its’ openness to change.
Since the therapist is not an active member of the system, they have a unique ability to challenge the system and promote change within it. Often families want to grow they just do not know how. One important thing to remember is that change is often not a comfortable or pleasant experience. It is also important to remember that the changes will take time and that the entire family system will need to be onboard if they want to make the changes. Since change does not happen overnight, courage and intentional effort are necessary. But the benefits of a family system that can change over time to meet the needs of its’ members completely outweigh the difficulties of the change process. In an adaptive family system, family members feel free to be themselves and express themselves, there is less negative interaction, and there are increased feelings of closeness. Changing the family system is worth it.
