Therapists--IV

So how then do family therapists (MFTs) intervene with their family members? Are they always "on" and looking for something to fix? Do they ever relate to their family members as just that: relatives? Do MFTs cross boundaries that they shouldn't? Should they completely avoid being helpful if they are able to help other families with similar issues?

Here is what some MFTs had to say about this:

I was seeing 65 people (clients) a week. Now that's frightening, right there. If a therapist sees more than 30 clients per week, assuming that each session is an hour apiece, that is bordering on emotional and mental burnout. I once saw 40 clients a week while I was still an intern, before I realized the truth of the advice I had been given not to see over 20 clients weekly. But this guy--seeing 65? He'd been at this for over 40 years. I wonder though, since he called one individual, "...a little s***" Sounds like burnout to me, which is a cause of and is caused by, boundary violations.

I do offer advice...when [my husband] runs into a people problem he runs them by me and we talk about them.

... sometimes the unresolved stuff from [my wife’s family of origin] gets in our way and then I will say, “this is what’s happening”. [Quoting his wife] “Well, you know you’re therapizing”, and I’ll say, “You know, you’re right, cause it’s affecting me and I need you to do somthin about it”.

This one always makes me laugh: ...If somebody will ask me about someone who looks like they’re having a break[down] and, you know, they’ll describe to me and I’ll say, “It sounds like they’re having a break you need to call somebody.” Well, actually, if I have a relationship with that person I’ll tell them what I think. Um, if I don’t have a relationship with that person, I don’t know how they…or what it is that they are asking me for, and I’m much more apt to suggest that they try seeing somebody professionally. Before I say much, yeah…cause, I mean, people can be really weird about that and very weird people can ask you about their very weird relatives. …people can want you to diagnose their relatives; that’s one weird. People wanting you to diagnose their relatives, all the while you’re looking at them and diagnosing them and that’s weird.


Most of the therapists talked about their family members in highly discipline specific jargon: My husband has a emotional dysregulation problem. I have to be very cognitive and [not] flood his amygdala.

Like I said, I think [my brother has] got some attachment issues um, and some beliefs, some core beliefs about himself that he really needs to take a look at.

This one is a classic: My seventeen-year-old daughter was ADHD, very strong willed, and so I did the behavioral chips system with her and she came home and was really upset and misunderstanding, thinking about that she was going to drive the [family car], my husband saying that she was not. She ...just totally threw a fit, and hated us and ran upstairs to her bedroom, and she was going to have her boyfriend taker her and run away. So I talked my husband into letting me handle it. He came in with me and sat down next to me, as she sat there and said what horrible parents we were and how we didn’t understand her, we didn’t care… So, I said, “So, what you’re saying is that you think we’re horrible parents, we don’t understand, we don’t care” [Start to laugh again]. She just went on and on, I just kept validating and, not agreeing, but feeding back where she was coming from. He watched her just calm down right in front of me, and ever since then he’s really started using the technique himself…

So perhaps there are times when it is helpful to be a therapist when interacting with some family members. Clearly, there are those who abuse the trust family members put in them, expecting that they will be regular type relatives who relate to them in ways that are typical of family members.

Therapy is an interesting business. Being a therapist is even more interesting. Thought you'd be interested to see what people other than me have to say about it all.