Family Systems

Murray Bowen's Family Systems Theory proposes that families function as emotional units — and that to understand any individual member, you have to understand the system they're embedded in. Key concepts include: triangulation (drawing a third party into a two-person conflict to reduce anxiety), differentiation (the ability to maintain your own sense of self while in emotional contact with others), and the multigenerational transmission process (how patterns pass across generations).

The most clinically significant finding: many of the patterns you identify as 'just how I am' are actually patterns that have been running in your family for 2-3 generations. You inherited them without knowing, and you're transmitting them without intending to.