hi guys welcome back to my channel and if you're new welcome to my channel my name is stephanie yates anyabuila stephanie for short and i'm a licensed associate marriage and family therapist this channel is for fellow therapists those who are thinking of becoming therapists or in the process of becoming therapist and those who are utilizing therapy techniques in order to create their best life and today's video is really for that second group those who are in the process of becoming therapists today we'll be doing an overview of structural therapy if you're curious stay tuned [Music] okay so i'm doing this video actually in response to requests that i got from one of my subscribers i have mentioned that i'd be open to doing model reviews i want to thank my subscribers for specifically requesting structural therapy so with that let's jump right in so structural therapy is a model that was developed during the beginning of the marriage and family therapy movement it's one of the earliest models so when you hear classic versus post-modern models in marriage and family therapy structural therapy definitely falls into the classic model's bucket it was developed by salvador minutian in the 60s and 70s and during that time he was predominantly working with low-income families that he described as disorganized families now i know that really that already comes with its own connotations when we equate impoverished families with disorganized families one of the reasons that he developed this approach is because as we'll notice with a lot of models and really the marriage and family therapy and systemic therapy movement in general it was kind of in response to psychoanalysis by freud and you know psychoanalysis is really all about diving within the client trying to understand what their dreams represent what they're repressing and systemic therapy is a lot more external looking at how the person relates to their outside world munitions approach aligns right with that idea because he was specifically trying to create a model that was very here and now in the moment and concrete not abstract and insight based and trying to help people have these big realizations he was really focused on what can be accomplished in the moment with a specific family the reason it's called structural family therapy is because he would pay a lot of attention to how the family was structured and see the opportunities for restructuring the family in a way that would make it healthier and i do quotes because nowadays with post-modern models we're a lot more cognizant and careful with saying something is healthy and we try to really include the client's opinion of what's healthy and our definition of what's healthy for that client but at that time in the 60s and 70s with classic models there was a lot more emphasis on the expert versus the client and so that expert really is who would make the decision on what was considered healthy so when we talk about the structure of a family mnuchin was really huge on looking at the hierarchy of the family the most simplistic way to explain the hierarchy is that in his view parent should be at the top of the hierarchy and children should come beneath the parents and he could really get his best insight into this based on how the family acted during times of conflict a lot of times a family can present one way but then you put them under any stress or bring up any controversial topic and it becomes a lot clearer who's in alignment with one another maybe you have the mother and the daughter they always team up against the father for example if that is what you're seeing a lot of times that can be a lot more telling than how the family presents when they're not under any duress and this was a huge aspect of what mnuchin paid attention to is whether or not the families during conflict if they band together or did they work in opposition to one another so this is a great way that he could get a good feel for the structure of the family and mnuchin i would say is the one who really introduced the concept or popularized the concept of boundaries and he was looking specifically at boundaries within the family basically what were the rules within a family you know who was allowed to say what to whom so for example you would expect that a wife would be able to maybe challenge a husband on an idea but are the children allowed to do the same thing for example so he was getting good insight into what are the unspoken and spoken rules that limit contact or limit certain language within the family and ideally he would look for boundaries that were firm but flexible so for him he didn't want to see where parents would completely cave in during stress maybe we see where that child becomes this is not his word but a word we use now parentified where that child takes on the mature role that you would expect the parent to take on he wanted to see that they have boundaries that were secure enough where children especially were respectful of the parents but there needs to be enough room for flexibility so for example if the house is on fire and dad is unconscious we don't want a child to feel i can't touch dad in any circumstance right because when you have different circumstances the child should know or the family should know where there are limitations to those boundaries we don't want them to become overly rigid if the boundaries were overly rigid within a family that could lead to disengagement where the family members or certain members are isolated because they don't feel that they can i would say now that that would translate into being open or vulnerable because if the boundaries are too rigid a child might not feel comfortable going to a parent for example if they're dealing with something in their personal life and they become isolated within the family that's an example but if those boundaries are too permeable or too flexible that could lead to enmeshment where the family becomes excessively dependent on one another overlay or inappropriately close these are some of the arguments that they make at the time that would lead to things like incest if the boundaries weren't clear enough where it was understood what was and was not appropriate between two family members or between multiple family members mnuchin identified common problems that he would see with boundaries in the family the first problem that he identified detouring and that's where parents become overly protective of their child they're hyper focused on the child and that can be hyper focused by being overly protective or it can be hyper focused and blaming the child for problems that the family is experiencing and in marriage and family therapy one of the top things you'll hear is the term identified patient and this is basically whoever is being blamed for all of the family's problems and this happens all the time especially if you see children parents will bring the children and say they're just acting so wild they're having all these issues a lot of times they don't stop to ask what are the dynamics or rules within our family that contribute or even make this behavior advantageous for the child a stable coalition is where you have one parent and one child team up together against a parent so i see this all the time when you have like a mother and a daughter be teaming up against the father um in my household it would be my father my sister and i it would always be the three of us and it would kind of feel like my mom was on the outside and so that stable coalition can also be something that would indicate that there is an inappropriate boundary you isolate a family member and lastly you have the unstable coalition and that's where you have both parents who are pulling for the attention from their children or maybe a specific child and they're trying to pull them to their side and this is very common with divorces or couples who are on the cusp of separating or getting a divorce because they're wanting to have as many people on their side as possible and that definitely includes the children this is where i'll often see kids end up feeling like the divorce was their fault um and that's gonna happen a lot of times regardless but definitely when they feel like they didn't do a good job of making both of their parents feel loved and supported by them and that's really because they were in a possible situation where both parents were wanting and fighting for their attention so when it comes to like goals of therapy for structural therapy it was one of those models that did a great job of combining short-term goals and long-term goals so even though ultimately the goal was to restructure that family mnuchin will also have very short-term goals that you could utilize mnuchin was also pretty specific in how therapy plays out briefly i'm going to take you through the different phases of therapy within structural therapy so first is joining and that's where you join with all members of the family this is very important to gain the trust of individual family members it's different from models like collaborative therapy that i practice because the therapist is establishing a relationship in authority so in structural therapy the first structure right happens within therapy so the therapist is really at the top they are modeling what it looks like to take control of a space to take control of the situation to create rules within therapy and so you are establishing a relationship with each person but you are establishing yourself as the expert or authority within the room structural therapy emphasizes during that joining process to really use nemesis where you are mimicking almost the body language and the words that the client is using so that you can really enter their world and and not seem as much of an outsider to this family you want to join into the family so you can really see behind the way they just present to an everyday stranger and actually be a part of this unit so you can get a lot of visibility into how their family is structured and another technique is tracking where you're identifying the values of the family you're finding out their long-term goals as a family as individuals the significant life events milestones that are important to them just really joining and learning about them the next phase of structural therapy is evaluating the structure right so once you get that conversation going and you've joined with the family this is the time where you can really pay attention to see if you see any of those boundary issues that we talked about earlier structural family therapy also utilizes a family structural map or family map and that's where you would it almost looks like a family tree but you say the rules between each person you want to depict the sub-systems the boundaries any coalitions you see within that family even people who aren't necessarily in the room so let's say mom always goes to her mother about marital issues and that bothers the husband then you can even include someone who's not in the room or in the household on that diagram as well and then the important work restructuring the family once you've identified what they need to change their structure for if you have an enmeshed family for example and you're needing to create more rigid boundaries or if you have a family that has two rigid boundaries how do we make it so that they're a bit more flexible once you have that structural diagnosis we go into restructuring the family the things i love about this model is how fun the techniques can be in the room but you do have to be careful with them because you're basically asking the family to step outside of their comfort zone and the reason it's their comfort zone is because they found a way to make it work so when you take these things away from them you do need to be very cognizant and make sure that you are paying attention to what's happening within the room one technique that mnuchin would use with families is unbalancing the family one way he could do that would be by role playing for example he would have each person in the family role play another person in the family and this gives them a better sense of who has authority what is the hierarchy are these two people always paired up because when you're just living life you don't necessarily pay attention to the fact that your go-to person isn't even your husband you're always going to your daughter for example and if someone else is playing that role those things can become more obvious another huge thing would be reframing so some behaviors like mom always asking where you're going might be met with a lot of frustration and annoyance and reframing that as wow your mom is really concerned about your safety and well-being and making sure that you make it home okay just doing things that would make it so that something that was previously viewed as negative could be viewed as positive and a lot of that is by getting insight into the person who does the action to understand why they're doing that another thing to unbalance the structure would be to alter hierarchical relationships how can the therapist do that if the therapist has established themselves as the authority in the room then one way to really balance it out is to align with someone who doesn't have any authority so let's say dad is constantly being pushed to the side and not included in decision making maybe the therapist decides to talk with dad you know maybe pull them to the side and say we were thinking things like that that would unbalance the current hierarchy to create more balance in the family by reestablishing that structure and partnering with someone who doesn't have any power or autonomy within the family and then boundary making this is the one you have to be kind of careful with because it can really lead to a lot of discomfort but it's very necessary a lot of times for not only making the current structure more visible and obvious but also to show how inflexible that structure can be so for example having people change seats in the room if you've got two people who always sit together you break them up you have them sit by somebody else maybe you tell someone who's constantly talking during session they're not allowed to talk this session or someone who never talks that they are to speak on behalf of the family and everybody has to share what their thoughts are with them and then they are the person who vocalizes it things like that that really unbalance the family make them question their current structure and feel more motivated possibly to see the benefits of a different structure utilize the techniques that were introduced in therapy so that they can create a family structure that is healthier so hopefully that quick overview of structural therapy gives you a better idea of why it was created and how it is utilized structural family therapy is all about understanding the hierarchy of the family and the boundaries and seeing how you can unbalance it for families that don't appear to have that perfect balance of firm yet flexible boundaries i ask that you like this video subscribe to my channel and share it with a friend and that way they can let me know their request for the channel as well thank you for watching all the way until the end my name is stephanie yates i'm ubuila stephania for short i really really appreciate you thank you i am