Posted by pegasus on February 17, 2004, at 15:32:51
In reply to Marriage counseling and individual therapy, ideas?, posted by Racer on February 16, 2004, at 15:21:31
About being in therapy for "your problems", the whole deal with couples therapy is that couples, and families, and all kinds of groups of people have a way of functioning that is constructed together. That means all the people participate in developing this structure or dynamic, whether they realize it or not. So, if any person has a "problem" with that dynamic, all of the people who constructed it together need to take a look at it, and build a new structure/dynamic. Am I making any sense?
It's totally common that there might be one person in the family who is identified as "the problem". But usually they are just the one chosen as the *identified* problem. But their problems almost always arise out of a problem with the underlying family structure. For example, my abnormal psych prof told this story about a family that she had treated that had a kid with a brain injury. So the kid was having trouble in school. The parents brought him in to therapy and said, basically, that the therapist needed to fix the kid because he's disrupting the whole family. Well, it turns out that the dad is having affairs and the mom is alcoholic. And yet, they identify their kid as the person who needs therapy. You know? As if any therapy is going to make him a normal well adjusted child with that other stuff going on in his family.
So, if you are unhappy and your husband is happy, that doesn't mean that you have a problem and he doesn't. It means that the two of you together have created a family structure that works for him but not for you. So, you both need to look at how that happened, and how you can modify the family structure so that you are both happy.
At least, that's my understanding.
- p
poster:pegasus
thread:314160
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040211/msgs/314773.html