Changing with Families - A Book About Further Education For Being Human Read online

  Changing with Families - A Book About Further Education For Being Human

  Richard Bandler

  John Grinder

  Virginia Satir

  The process of writing this book was, for the three of us, an opportunity to change and grow and integrate parts of our experience of doing family therapy and individual therapy. We came to understand explicitly how the communications skills we use in those contexts applied to writing this book together. Taking three very different models of the world, three different types of background, we found a way to use those same communication skills to communicate with each other and then finally to translate the communication we found effective among the three of us onto paper. So, we wanted to tell those of you who are reading this book that this book contains some of the ways which we found delightful and useful to use to communicate not only with families in the context of therapy, but also with each other in the process of writing. The very same patterns that we identify in this book as patterns of effective communication with members of a family in the context of'a therapy session are precisely the patterns of communication that we used to write this book. And it gives us great pleasure, and is a continuing delight, to find ways of being effective in communicating with ourselves, and with our other colleagues in writing this book. Hopefully, we'll communicate to you some of the excitement and joy we have in the process of communication. For us, communication means experience—the ability to be in touch with what we are feeling—to be able to see clearly what is available at a point in time—to be able to hear with precision the sounds of life. These skills, which we are constantly developing in ourselves, were the essential ingredients in writing this book.

  Bandler

  Grinder

  Satir

  CHANGING WITH FAMILIES

  A Book About Further Education For Being Human

  To Bob Spitzer,

  who has made possible

  so much of the actualization

  of our creativity.

  About This Book and Us

  The process of writing this book was an opportunity for the three of us to change, to grow and to integrate parts of our experience of doing family and individual therapy. We came to understand explicitly how the communication skills we use in those contexts applied to the writing of this book together. We took three very different models of the world — three different types of backgrounds — and, finding a way to use our common skills to communicate with each other, we were able to put onto paper the knowledge we had gained. So we want to tell our readers some of the ways which we found delightful and useful to communicate, not only with families in the context of therapy, but also with each other in the process of writing this book. The very same patterns which we identify in this volume as patterns of effective communication with members of a family in the context of a therapy session are precisely the patterns of communication which we used to write this book together. We believe that our ability to be congruent in our communication is a skill we carry with us throughout our lives — both in our communication in therapy and in our other inter-personal relationships as well. It gives us great pleasure and is a continuing delight to find ways of being more effective in communicating with ourselves, with our colleagues in writing this book, and, hopefully, in communicating to you some of the excitement and joy we have experienced in the process of communication. For us, communication means experience — the ability to be in touch with what we are feeling, to see clearly what is available at a given point in time, and to hear with precision the sounds of life.

  These skills, which we are constantly developing in ourselves, were the essential ingredients in the writing of this book. We want to emphasize that our desire in creating this book is to offer people-helpers some of the tools, patterns, ways of developing new choices with families which, up to this point in time, we have used only among ourselves. We invite and encourage each of you — as we will continue to do — to use these skills as an opportunity to find new possibilities for communication for yourselves and for the families with whom you work. We believe there are entire worlds of ways of being effective and creative — entirely new dimensions about human communication in our lives which we have yet to discover. Deeply,

  Richard Bandler

  John Grinder

  Virginia Satir

  Preface

  This book is about people who hurt and about the people who want to help them go beyond that hurt.

  The world is full of good intentions and equally well populated with the evidence that these intentions do not always come to fruition. Parents want the best for their children, children for their parents, therapists for their clients, and clients for their therapists. How does it happen, then, that these very well-intentioned people have so many relationships of pain and trouble, when the opposite is what they are intending? Our belief is that something occurs which is outside of the awareness and control of either person — a missing piece. We believe that this missing piece can be added, learned about and fully used by everyone. This book is about our ideas of doing just that with families — helping them to find this missing piece for themselves.

  It is hard for us to conceive how one can really experience himself as a responsible person without a thorough understanding of the difference between what people intend when they communicate and what the outcome of their communication is. We believe that all people, given the tools, not only want to, but will, learn and change. This is a normal direction of life asserting itself. We believe that all people have all of the skills they need; our job as family therapists is to make these skills accessible and useful for them. In this sense, no person is fragile. That is, everything which affects a human being or concerns him can be openly talked about, if it is presented to him in an acceptable way and at a time when he can hear it. In fact, for us, it amounts to a personal insult to behave toward another human being as though we could not openly acknowledge him and all of his parts. We believe that this is caring in its most exquisite sense. It is sometimes necessary for the therapist, when clearly allied with the growth goals of the one with whom he is working, to team up with the parts of that person desiring growth in such a way that the therapist becomes a tough leader in relation to the person's obstructive parts. It is difficult sometimes for a therapist to be present while another person is struggling, yet constructive struggle is the process by which we learn and grow. We believe that at any point in time every person is doing the best he can with the knowledge he has. We respect that, and at the same time we respect the wish and ability to change, and we are willing both to lead and to support the struggle to do so. In this sense, then, there need be no failures.

  Our approach assumes that the therapist in his person is the chief tool for initiating change. Our view is that the therapist models that which he expects to change. We are speaking specifically of the process and not of the content. Our thrust is to change coping, which is a process, and, therefore, the therapist's use and teaching of process is a primary consideration. To be especially emphasized is the condition of the therapist's sensory channels: His ability to see, his ability to hear, his ability to feel, smell and taste need to be developed, operating, and clear. In our model it is essential that the therapist detect information and patterns of communication instead of deducing them. Furthermore, the therapist must be able to discriminate between inputs that trigger learnings and experiences from the past for himself and those which come entirely from the person with whom he is working.
This means that the therapist is clearly able to distinguish between himself and his boundaries and those of the persons outside of him. It makes a great deal of difference in the therapeutic outcome whether the therapist talks and reacts to an extension of himself or to the person sitting in front of him. Keeping straight what's you and what's me is the thrust of all of this, and producing a meeting between the two is the goal.

  It is our belief that at this point in time the evolvement of the condition of being human is only in its infancy. Therefore, it behooves all of us to become explorers and not judges; we see ourselves as making a contribution toward the further education of being human. As a matter of fact, we expect that we will come out of each of our experiences with other people a little changed. If we don’t, then we feel that we will have fallen into the category of judging.

  What we are presenting here is a model of the step-by-step process which fills in the missing pieces between what people intend in their communication and what the outcome of that communication actually is. Our method is to create new experiences instead of working to eliminate the old ones. Many therapeutic models of the past seem to have been built around the idea that there is an ideal person and, thus, the concepts were to be used as a way of altering the personality to fit the "ideal" mold. We believe that there is no universal model of a human being; we believe that each person has his own model of his own ideal. We are glad of it, and this uniqueness is what we strive for in our work. This is consistent with the biological fact that each human being is truly unique.

  We want to emphasize that the model for family therapy which we present here is designed to create experience. It is our belief that much time and effort is wasted creating models which people then use to replace experience. The families — the people who come to therapists for help — are then squeezed into the categories contained in the model, rather than being sensed and responded to creatively. We offer our model as a way to assist you to fully participate in the moving experience of changing with families, participating in the process of growth, of creating experience, of the family's pain and the family's joy. Our model, essentially, is a way of helping people-helpers to tune themselves in to the ongoing processes for growth of the families with whom they are working — a way of seeing, hearing, feeling, sensing, experiencing and responding clearly and creatively to the process of communication and change in family therapy.

  Our conclusion from our experience and from our observation of the people we have known is that they have learned five personal "unfreedoms" which fetter them and bind them and which are mistakenly called civilized. We will list them in their corrected form, which will include that which was corrected:

  (1) The freedom to see and to hear what is NOW instead of what should be, could be, was, or will be.

  (2) The freedom to feel what is felt NOW instead of what should be, could be, was, or will be.

  (3) The freedom to say what is NOW instead of what should be, could be, was, or will be.

  (4) The freedom to reach out for what you want instead of what you should want, not having to wait for someone to offer it to you.

  (5) The freedom to take risks in your own behalf instead of only waiting for a change in the situation to make it possible for you to have what you want for yourself.

  To summarize,

  When I can see and hear what is here now, feel what I feel now;

  Say what I feel, think, hear, see now;

  When I can reach out for what I want now;

  And can take risks in my own behalf now;

  When I can communicate all of this congruently now;

  And can get feedback creatively now;

  Then I am in a position to cope inventively with the situation outside of myself and the life inside me successfully –

  NOW .

  This book is our effort to translate people “unfreedoms” into freedoms.

  PART I

  Introduction

  In the following pages we will present our particular view of the manifold and exciting field of family therapy. As with any complex area of human behavior, the ability of therapists to perform family therapy far outruns their ability to explicitly understand and communicate to others what they specifically do when they practice family therapy. The purpose of this book is to attempt to make understandable to the reader the patterns of which we have become aware in our practice of family therapy and to catch up the theory of family therapy with its practice. Specifically, by extracting the patterns of family therapy, we hope to accomplish several things: First, by forcing ourselves to become aware of the patterns of our own behavior in doing family therapy, we will become more systematic in our work and more effective as people-helpers, and, second, we will be able to more effectively communicate our experience to others involved in family therapy so that a meaningful dialogue becomes possible among all of us as we help one another to become more successful and dynamic in our work.

  The way that we hope to accomplish these goals is by creating an explicit model or map for our behavior in family therapy. By explicit model we simply mean a guide for behavior which can be used by anyone wishing to work as an effective family therapist. This guide for doing family therapy will be explicit if it presents the patterns necessary for a therapist to work in family therapy effectively and creatively in a step-by-step manner which makes it possible for the therapist to learn and to use these patterns. As we understand it, models or maps for behavior are not true or false, accurate or inaccurate, but, rather, they are to be judged as useful or not useful for the purpose for which they were intended. Since the model which we create here has as its purpose to assist each of you in becoming a more effective family therapist, we present it to you and invite you to take the model, the patterns we identify here, and to use them in your work in family therapy.

  The first task which we need to accomplish is that of finding some common experience with which each of us, as family therapists, can identify. If we can succeed in this, then we can all begin together the journey to a better understanding of our work. If we can find this experience, then we can have a mutual reference point, or point of departure, from which we can build the model so that it will be useful for all of us. In a field as complex as family therapy, there are so many places from which we could start that it is difficult for us to choose among them. However, we have decided to begin with the patterns of verbal communication — the patterns by which the therapist and the members of the family communicate with one another in words. This is not a judgment that words are more important than, or have some priority over, other forms of communication such as body movements, tone of voice, etc., but simply a place — a set of experiences — which we all share and from which we can begin.

  In order to assist each of you as you read this book to connect the words before you on this page with the actual feelings, sights, sounds, smells, tastes — with the excitement of working with a real family in your experience — we will proceed by presenting excerpts from transcripts to illustrate the patterns in our experience which we wish to most vividly model. Finally, as we begin, we would like to remind you to identify the patterns from the transcripts in this first part of the book; this part is designed simply to give you practice in identifying the patterns. Once we have identified a pattern, we will not identify it again each time that it occurs, but, rather, we will continue to move on to other patterns. In Part II, we will sort these patterns into natural groups which will help you to organize your experience in family therapy. We suggest that you simply sit back, breathe comfortably and use your skills to connect the words before you with your own experience.

  PATTERNS OF EFFECTIVE FAMILY THERAPY LEVEL I

  There are several important things which an effective family therapist assumes when he or she walks into a session with a family. First, the fact that the family has come to family therapy is a direct statement that they have hopes that they can change. This is true in our experience even when the family members are not aware of i
t. In fact, even in the extreme case of court referrals, the family has made a choice to come to therapy rather than selecting jail. Their presence in therapy, then, is a direct reflection of their hopes about continuing as a family, and that they believe at some level that they are capable of change.

  Second, we assume, by the fact that the family is in our presence for therapy, that they recognize at some level that they need assistance in making those changes. In our experience, we have found it useful to assume that the family has the resources necessary to make those changes, and our task, then, is to help them tap those resources. Thus, one of our major goals is to assist the family members to recognize and accept the resources already in the family system, although they may be presently unacknowledged and untapped. The therapist will work to develop rapport and mutual trust with the family as a necessary first step in making changes. Without trust, no real risks will be attempted and no real changes will occur.

  Third, by accepting the particular therapist, the family is accepting that person as a guide to lead them in changing. The therapist serves as a model for the family. More specifically, the therapist offers a model of openness — the freedom to select from what is available that which is relevant at the time and place for the therapist and for the family. This requires that the therapist be in touch with his own processes, as well as with the needs of the family. This modeling occurs not only at the conscious level but also at the subliminal level, i.e., the messages carried by the therapist's body posture, voice tone, etc., serve as a model for the family members.