The Science of Systemic Therapy
Systemic Therapy is a distinct branch of psychotherapy rooted in Systems Theory. It offers an empirically supported, research-backed framework for making sense of people, problems, and change—one that operates entirely differently from traditional, linear psychology.
At its core, Systems Theory recognizes that every stable process in nature is maintained via a self-correcting feedback loop known as a system. From the earth’s rotation and thermodynamic laws to economic structures and environmental habitats, cyclical processes exist in all homeostatic systems.
Human relationships function the exact same way. We get caught in predictable, repeating cycles of interaction, relating to one another based on our established truths (values, biases, and beliefs), which then impact those around us and reinforce those very same truths.
The Systemic Paradigm Shift: An individual’s thoughts, feelings, or behaviors cannot exist in isolation. If you have been struggling with a chronic problem for a long time, it means the problem has achieved a state of homeostasis. Paradoxically, this means that your best individual attempts to solve the problem are contributing the cycle’s maintenance.
Couples & Families: Relational vs Linear Causality
Applying systemic thinking to a relationship means moving away from pointing fingers (linear causality) and looking at the cycle itself (relational causality). Consider the following diagram:
*Note that this example pattern of relating is simplified and rudimentary*
Every time a problematic cycle completes itself, the experience of the problem grows more intense and concrete. As the pain intensifies, your individual solutions keep growing to match the intensity of anticipated pain. For example, a Wife who feels emotionally attacked might withdraw, solving her experience of the problem without the Husband. The Husband then pursues the Wife in his own attempt to solve his experience of loneliness, reinforcing the Wife’s experience.
In fact, it would make less sense if either partner were doing anything different. Since both individuals contribute to the cycle’s maintenance through their own adaptive responses to solve it, this highlights the cycle itself as the problem. Systems shape people, however if people are aware of the system’s manipulations, then people can shape the system.
Breaking the Homeostasis
Though systems are self-corrective, they are also fragile: while it is true that you cannot force another human being to change, a system cannot sustain itself if there’s genuine change at the right level of intervention. If just one variable within the bind authentically changes, the surrounding ecosystem has no choice but to change with it. When one person within a family system genuinely shifts, the entire family’s homeostasis is broken, and a new, ideally healthier way of relating must form.
Individuals
When people hear “Marriage and Family Therapy,” they rarely assume it applies to high-level individual care. However, looking at an individual through a systemic lens is incredibly powerful—and you don’t need anyone else in the room with you.
Instead of treating an isolated symptom, I look for the pattern within all of your patterns. Without knowing it, you’ve been developing adaptive responses that dictate how you navigate life. Many are a slave to their adaptive solutions being tied to past patterned experiences. These subtle nuances can be found in your leisure activities, your relationships, and also impact your career. Regardless, they all share a common architectural theme tied to rigid, deeply ingrained beliefs and solutions related to anticipatory problems.
Dismantling Shame
Often, these internal cycles are driven by the identity or opposition of shame—the linear, cultural belief that you are the problem, rather than recognizing that you are stuck in a problem. Linear problem-solving demands a binary: one person deserves to make sense, and the other does not. Better said, one individual must be accountable for the whole of the problem, while the other deserves only compassion. This oversimplification of problem solving is not only void of objectivity, it routinely facilitates symptoms of chronic anxiety and depressive cycles of shame.
By mapping out the architecture of your lived experience, we uncover the structural and objective logic of the systems maintenance. This doesn’t excuse harmful behaviors, but it allows you to accept accountability without shame, or better said with compassion. Our goal is to map the internal homeostasis of the problem, then replace the unconscious protocols with a flexible, self-sustaining framework of relating to yourself and the world.