What is Systems/Relational Therapy?
Systems/Relational Therapy is a conceptual model which considers our emotions and the ways we connect with others through our emotions, as a unique system.
Each one of us has an emotion based logic and patterning to understand, respond and interact with others. To the degree we recognize the emotions we show or keep hidden, are open or stay private, we develop closeness or distance between ourselves and another.
Systems Relational Therapy increases your awareness and management strength of your specific emotional logic in any relational system of which you are a part.
How does a Systems/Relational Therapy help me with my problem situation or person(s)?
The most unique feature of Systems/Relational Therapy is its reliance on your emotional intelligence, strengthening it, and your confidence in relying on its guidance in your relationship life.
Most therapies rely only on intellectual dialogue, tactics and strategies, of the obstacles within a client's life and avoidance of these.
In Systems/Relational Therapy, the purpose of clinical questions is to gently and gradually open your recognition to the emotion based relating patterns on which you rely.
Systems/Relational Therapy assumes you are a smart person who has plenty of ability to address the practical aspects of a relationship dilemma. The only "tool and toolbox" is your heart based emotions and the degree to which you know what you feel, how you direct this, and would like learning more deeply about your emotion drivers and how these guide the relationships in your life.
Example of Systems/Relational Therapy
Frannie feels close with her mom, whom she describes as "controlling", because mom is loving only under specific circumstances, not necessarily when Fran would like mom's interest. Sometimes this is called "conditional love".
Frannie marries a man with whom she has a good friendship. Over the first twenty years of their marriage, Frannie gradually feels Eric retreat into himself emotionally, and limiting his time and energy in the marriage.
Frannie doesn't directly express her hurt from Eric's withdrawal. She does tell him to do more of the practical household tasks, as an indirect way of indicating her marital unhappiness.
As Frannie's therapist if I say, " I wonder if there is a similarity between how your mom showed her unhappiness with your behavior and how you show your marital unhappiness with Eric, Frannie probably would intellectually recognize this.
We could then talk of practical tips, like scheduling "date night" for Frannie to directly tell Eric she feels hurt by his retreat from her.
The effectiveness will likely be minimal and short term, because intellectual awareness is limited to our thoughts, and thoughts likely shield us from knowing the full power of emotional pain. Systems relational theory guides us to know our emotions and what feels emotionally needed, then utilize our emotion based learning to create practical change in our lives.
If instead as Frannie's therapist, I direct detailed questions to Fran's emotional logic, of how she received and lived with her mother's dynamic, and ask similar questions about how she faces her inner tension from Eric's dynamic, Fran probably will sense the similarities of each relationship with her sense of insecurity they develop in her, say. Then Fran is free to mobilize herself along new roads, both emotionally reconfigured, along with the way she decides to live according to these discoveries!
This thorough and in-depth inner world "deep clean" offers you similar freedom to make a New View from an Old Story!