SYSTEMIC THERAPY

Systemic therapy is a psychotherapeutic method. It understands problems not as a disorder of an individual person, but as a consequence of a disorder in the social environment of the individual - i.e. the system.. A system can be, for example, the family, the school or the work environment. The interactions between the person concerned and his/her environment are therefore the focus of systemic therapy.
Systemic therapy views people as part of a system. All persons in a system are directly interrelated - for example in a family, partnership, school or workplace.

Changes in a system therefore affect all members. Disturbed relationships or unfavourable communication patterns within the system can affect the mental health of individual members (see Diseases).
Systemic therapists therefore trace a person's problems back to a disturbance in the system (constellations). The therapist assumes, among other things, that each disturbance also fulfils a certain purpose in the system. Together with the patient, an attempt is made to uncover the function of the symptoms within the system.

Systemic therapy is first about understanding the relationship structures and patterns within the system. Who takes on which roles? Why does a person behave in a certain way? How do the people interact with each other? Unbalanced relationships, unhealthy patterns as well as unfavourable communication are considered in systemic therapy to be decisive influencing factors for psychological problems. The solution is therefore to change these unfavourable patterns.

The therapist focuses on the existing resources that the patients and their caregivers bring with them.. Often, those affected have skills that they have not used or have used incorrectly. This could be the ability to listen well, to mediate disputes or to assert oneself.
For the treatment of mental disorders, the therapist also explores what function the symptoms have in the system. An example would be a depressed mother who is a single parent and is afraid that her son might leave her. Her depression contributes to the adult son not moving out because he is worried about her.
However, this does not mean that the therapist is implying bad intentions on the part of the mother. Affected people are usually not aware of the effects in the system. When affected persons understand the connections and see what sense their symptoms have in a system, they can cope with them more easily.

Systemic therapists often use circular questions. They do not ask the affected person directly about their feelings towards another person, but put the affected person in the perspective of a third person. As an example, the therapist could ask a father how his son would describe the relationship between the father and the mother. This change of perspective can be somewhat confusing and unfamiliar at the beginning. However, circular questioning allows the view to always be directed at the whole system.

A wide variety of life issues can be dealt with in systemic therapy. It is considered an effective treatment option for example for affective disorders such as depression, eating disorders, addictions, schizophrenia and psychosomatic illnesses. Children and adolescents also benefit from systemic therapy.

Systemic therapy can also take place in an individual setting. The caregivers are then not present, but the therapist can work vicariously, for example with symbols, to involve the caregivers.

Above all, it is about recognising the complexity of things. Man belongs to a family, a history, a culture, a social and natural environment, etc., with which he interacts. These relationships are not linear but circular: there is rarely a single cause and a single consequence. As therapists we address an individual who is part of a system, and the systems of individuals that are the family and the couple, assuming moreover that we ourselves are part of the therapeutic system. These systems are more than the sum of the individuals that make them up: They have their own organisation, their own dynamics, their own way of being in balance or changing.
Thus, we are interested in the family and social background of the persons, the way couples and families function, their competences and resources, their need for stability and their ability to change. We question values, roles, rules of life, communication patterns, the way people differ from each other, family history and solutions already found. We are concerned not to offer instruction manuals, ready-made solutions or normalisation grids, and we are committed to allowing each:r, each couple, each family to find their own way and their own solutions alongside a therapist who accompanies them a small part of their journey.