About Me

While the teenagers living at the group home had their problems, they by and large were good kids and I’ve often wondered about how that got lost in the process. It seemed as though the emotionality of the family anxiety contributed to their parents overlooking who they were, and I’ve always felt it was tragic that they couldn’t appreciate their kids.

I also observed that those teens could have their symptoms or problems, but when out of their family environment they would stabilize and manage relatively well.

The goal in part was for them to manage themselves well while back in their family dynamic.

These teens lived in the group home for a few months and only started home visits once they stabilized and weren’t acting out as much and seemingly were ready for it. It was not uncommon that during that weekend home visit, they often came back having slipped back into their old reactivity and symptomatic behaviour. That’s not to say that parents “caused” their acting out behaviour, but after they were home even for a short while, the tension between parent and teen increased to the point that each became symptomatic in their own way. But it often resulted in the teen decompensating such that they were viewed to have acted out again, the “problem” was reinforced.

It was in observing the dynamic tension in the relationship between people, in this instance, parent and teen, that I saw the family systems piece… how each in a relationship system influences and shapes the other and someone becomes symptomatic in some way. The anxiety of that tension contributed to what is then seen as a “problem.”

This is true of couples as well as parents and children. It’s see it in the individuals who come to see me in that they also live in a matrix of relationship systems, whether their family of origin, their siblings and parents, their social network or workplace.